Montgomery Gentry's Trophy Case

Montgomery Gentry photo courtesy of Sony BMG Nashville.

July 30, 2008 — The Country Music Association will announce the nominees for its 42nd annual awards show in roughly a month or so, and it’s a good bet Montgomery Gentry will be on the ballot.

After all, Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry have been nominated nine straight times as Vocal Duo of the Year. Still, it’s not an easy category: Brooks & Dunn have dominated it for years, and Sugarland swiped the honor in 2007. In fact, out of those nine nominations, Montgomery Gentry has won the Duo award just once, in 2000.

Does that fact bother them? Not particularly. The CMA trophies are an industry honor, but it’s the people who actually buy the CDs and the concert tickets whose opinion matters most to them.

"We want to be able to walk into a honky-tonk, go over to a jukebox and look down, and — I don’t care if it’s the year 3000 — you’re always gonna see a [Lynyrd] Skynyrd song," Eddie told The Tahoe Daily Tribune. "You’re always going to see a Merle Haggard song. You’re gonna see a Waylon [Jennings] and Willie [Nelson] song. And if we can have our name in there somewhere, then me and T can look at each other and say, ‘You know what? We’ve done something.’ That’s the best award you can ever have."

Not that they expect to be around to survey jukeboxes in the year 3000, but the point is made. They’re happy with what they do, and they’re happy there’s an audience out there that loves them for it. Montgomery Gentry is seeing many of those fans this summer on Toby Keith’s Biggest & Baddest Tour.

"The tour is rockin’, " Eddie said. "We’re so happy we’ve got to sit on our hands to keep from waving at everybody."

The Biggest & Baddest blows through four towns at the end of this week: St. Louis on Thursday, Chicago on Friday, Indianapolis on Saturday, and Pittsburgh on Sunday.