Martina McBride Calls Her Country Music Hall of Fame Exhibit “a Bucket List Item”
If you’ve ever blasted “This One’s For the Girls” or “Independence Day” in a car full of high school friends, or cathartically wept through an hours-long loop of “Concrete Angel,” you have Martina McBride to thank. And come 2021, you can show your appreciation for those nostalgic memories by visiting her Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit in Nashville, Tennessee.
The singer was initially on the museum’s 2020 lineup, until the COVID-19 pandemic shook up the schedule. But the delay didn’t deter McBride, who’s always dreamt of displaying her career’s evolution within those iconic walls. “The Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit is a bucket list item of mine,” she tells Prevention.com. “I love that museum. It’s so well done and every time I go through it, I learn something new about country music.”
After enduring lockdown with the rest of the country, the museum reopened with social distancing safety measures in place, and currently features exhibits from Brooks & Dunn and Kacey Musgraves, among others. McBride’s display will open in August of next year.
“We’re still kind of putting it together, to be honest, but I kind of see it as a retrospective of my career and my life,” she explains. “So there’ll be mementos from my childhood—I grew up singing at three or four years old. So all of that is intertwined and some early career memorabilia, and some really personal things that you can’t see anywhere else.” She adds: “I just want to make it really personal and special for fans to be able to visit from all over the world.”
The exhibit certainly gives her something to look forward to after a year full of event cancellations and lots of cooking. Outside of music, she says preparing meals for friends and family is her love language. “Especially during quarantine I’ve made—I don’t know, I counted the other day like, over 100 meals,” she laughed. (Her new cookbook, Martina’s Kitchen Mix, is out November 6.)
A post shared by Martina McBride (@martinamcbride) on Sep 1, 2020 at 11:16am PDT
That passion for food fueled her latest partnership with Country Crock on The Cover Crops Project, which aims to help Kansas-area farms maintain long-term soil health by planting 13,000 acres of cover crops. As a Kansas native who was raised on a farm, the topic is near and dear to McBride on many fronts. “I’m passionate about healthier eating, bringing people together around good food, and creating a more sustainable future,” she said in a press release. “More people should know how practices like cover crops help improve the soil underpinning our food supply.”
She also just rescheduled her 2020 Livin’ Life Up tour for next year, and although artists everywhere are discouraged by the abrupt halt of in-person concerts, McBride remains optimistic about their future. “I just, you know, have faith,” she says. “I don’t think anybody really knows how this is all gonna play out or the timeline of it all, but we’re just staying hopeful. I have shows booked for next year and, you know, fingers crossed that we’re going to get to do those shows and be in front of fans live again.”
To hold them over until then, McBride will be hosting weekly Red Barn Sessions with Country Crock from Sept. 29 to Dec. 22, where she will interview some of country music’s newest artists and join them for one-of-a-kind acoustic performances that pay homage to the genre’s roots.
A post shared by Martina McBride (@martinamcbride) on Sep 22, 2020 at 6:22am PDT
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