Jade Eagleson Takes Home Hat Trick of Awards at 2023 CCMAs
Saturday night, the annual CCMA (Canadian Country Music Association) awards, the Canadian equivalent of the CMA Awards, were held at the FirstOntario Centre in Hamilton, Ontario, and Jade Eagleson added a hat trick of awards to his trophy shelf as he took home the Innovative Campaign of the Year Award (Which was awarded at Friday's Industry Gala), Male Artist of the Year, and the biggest award of the night, Entertainer of the Year.
Right about now, most country music fans in the USA are probably asking who in the world is Jade Eagleson?
Well, let me tell you all about him.
Jade Eagleson is a 29-year-old singer-songwriter from Bailieboro, Ontario who is best known for his songs; "Got Your Name On It", "Shakin' In Them Boots", "Honky Talkin'," "Rodeo Queen," and "Neon Dreamin" among others.
Eagleson was raised on his grandparents's farm in Bailieboro where he tended to the crops and livestock with his father and when he was 12 years old, the young Eagleson picked up a guitar for the first time. When he first started learning to play, Eagleson's dream was to be the lead guitarist in a band but he eventually started singing and writing his own songs several years later.
At just 19 years old, Eagleson put his guitar back in the case and notebook back on the shelf and moved away from his family's farm, traveling to Alberta to begin working in the sheet metal industry as he told Bill Graveland of The Canadian Press in a September 2022 interview leading up to the 2022 CCMAs that he moved to Alberta to learn a trade as a backup plan because there's "not a lot of money in music."
However, halfway through his apprenticeship, the dream of being a musician came calling again so Eagleson packed up his truck and moved back home. Once back in Ontario, Eagleson got a job and worked 40 hours a week until he had saved up enough money and was financially stable enough to start playing gigs at the local bars at night. Eagleson officially began his country music career in 2017 when he won the Emerging Artist Showcase performing "I Don't Drink" at the Boots and Hearts Music Festival which is a multi-day country music festival held at the Burl's Creek Event Grounds in Oro-Medonte, Ontario, the festival is the largest country music festival in Canada and the second largest in North America only behind the CMA Music Festival.
Eagleson released his debut single "Got Your Name On It" in May 2018 before releasing his debut self-titled EP later the same year. "Got Your Name On It" reached No. 6 on the Billboard Canada Country Chart and No. 90 on the Canadian Hot 100. The song has also been certified platinum by Music Canada.
At the 2019 CCMA Awards, Eagleson was awarded the "Rising Star'' award. His third single, "Lucky" which came in October 2019, became Eagleson's first No. 1 hit on the Canada Country charts.
On July 24, 2020, Eagleson released his debut studio album Jade Eagleson which contained all four of the singles that he had released at that point.
In 2021, Eagleson released two of his songs independently, "All Night to Figure It Out" which became his second No. 1 Canada Country hit and is probably my favorite song of his, along with "More Drinkin' Than Fishin" which is a collaboration with another one of my favorite Canadian country artists, Dean Brody. He would also release his second studio album Honkytonk Revival on November 12, 2021, which featured the two aforementioned songs along with "She Don’t Know," a song that he wrote for his wife Marina.
All three singles off of Honkytonk Revival went on to hit No. 1 on the Canadian Country charts making him just the second-ever Canadian country artist to land three consecutive chart-toppers from their second studio album. The first was Shania Twain.
In August 2022, Eagleson released "Shakin' In Them Boots" and was awarded The Top Selling Canadian Album of the Year for Honkytonk Revival at the 2022 CCMAs where he also received six other CCMA Award nominations. (Amazon Music and Alexa Fans’ Choice Award, Male Artist of the Year, Single of the Year for both "All Night to Figure It Out" and "More Drinkin' Than Fishin," Video of the Year for "More Drinkin' Than Fishin," and Ford F-150 Album of the Year.)
In March, Eagleson released his latest single "Rodeo Queen." Both "Shakin' In Them Boots" and "Rodeo Queen" will be featured on Eagleson's third studio album Do It Anyway, which is set to be released on September 29. Do It Anyway is a collection of 13 songs.
You can pre-save Jade Eagleson's latest album to the music streaming service of your source by clicking on the image of the album cover below which will take you directly to the page with links for Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music.
(All album cover images in this article are clickable links to each album.)
Bonus: If you choose to listen to "Neon Dreamin" see if you can find the two hockey references in the song and feel free to let me know in the comments if you do. 🙂
