Lexington Music Awards are stepping onto a different stage this year
An arts-oriented event, program or ceremony seldom achieves longevity, much less notoriety, on the shoulders of one individual. Since its inception 11 years ago, guitarist/educator David McLean has served as founder and producer of the Lexington Music Awards, as well as its most visible ambassador. But McLean is the first to admit that having the awards move past the decade milestone to its 11th outing this weekend is hardly the result of singular thinking.
“I’d love to say ‘I’m awesome,’” he said. “But if I’ve got one skill — and it’s probably not skill so much as luck — it’s that I’ve been smart enough to place myself with a bunch of very talented people who can actually make this thing fly. I know that sounds like what I’m supposed to say, but there is no way I could have pulled this off on my own. I know my limits. I’m just a guitar player. I could never pull this off without amazing people around me.”
As such, with the help of local media sponsors and representatives from various city arts and organizations — from Edd Mackey of the Lexington Fashion Collaborative to long-running host Bill Meck of WLEX-TV — the Lexington Music Awards has grown into one of the city’s foremost and far-reaching celebrations of the regional music community.
“Every major metropolitan area has some sort of community awards for music and for different arts, for that matter — theatre and all sorts of things,” McLean said.
“While doing a clinic over at Morehead State University, I was talking to one of the jazz guys there who had been out in Seattle during the ’90s. As we all know, there were also some happening things going on in the rock world in the Seattle area in the late and early ’90s. So I started thinking, ‘These guys are living down the hall from each other and they don’t know each other because they’re from two different musical worlds. What would it be like if you put those guys and more in a room just once a year?’ In other words, what would happen if you stuck a Kurt Cobain with a Miles Davis?’ I thought, ‘What was the way to do that? How could you get rap artists and jazz artists, country artists and classical artists, blues artists and reggae artists all in the same room on a single day?’
“To me, the Awards are less about actual awards and more about how can we take these different musical communities that are not always in touch with each other and just get them in the same room and then let them do what artists do?’”
By design, the Lexington Music Awards recognizes a variety of categories representing genre (Americana, Blues, Classical, Country, Jazz, Latin, Rock and more) and instrumentalists, as well as non-artist, industry-related fields (performance venues, recording studios/engineers, music educators, sound techs.) Nominees are selected and then voted upon by panels of regional music professionals, the general public online and by the nominees themselves.
“The critique of many awards programs is usually, ‘Oh, it’s just a bunch of musicians patting themselves on the back.’ So I really liked the idea of having a Venue of the Year and a Recording Studio of the Year, those kinds of things that touch on educators, retail outlets - just a whole industry thing, as well as what you see in a lot of music magazines. You know, categories like Best Guitar Player, Best Bass Player, but also the standard things you see at the Grammys — Best Rock Artist, Best Pop Artist and so on. We thought, ‘We can do a condensed version of all of that and put it under in one roof. So there were a lot of ideas flying around. It seemed like the Awards were a good way to do that.”
With growth, though, comes change. This weekend’s ceremony marks the first relocation of venue for the Lexington Music Awards. Instead of its longtime home at the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center, Sunday brings the ceremony to the Singletary Center for the Arts Recital Hall.
“There were several factors in moving,” McLean said. “We hit 10 years at the Lyric. We did some things I’m proud of, but I’ve not been able to kind of crack through to the next level. So part of the move was wanting to let the ground sort of shift under my feet and force us into new territory. I tend to work better that way. But also, we’ve had a lot of people reach out to us and invite us to their venues. Matt (Gibson, director of the Singletary Center) was one of them. I went over to look at the Singletary and fell in love with the place. I used to go over there years ago with my kids to recitals, so I went over there again and thought, ‘You know, I’ve been talking about working more closely with schools and this place has been staring me in the face all this time. I woke up.”
The move is far from the only signal of growth for the Awards. In keeping with his notion of surrounding himself with “very talented people,” McLean is relying on one-time stage manager Angelee Feltner as the Awards’ new operations manager in charge of marketing.
“I’ve brought Angelee on as a full partner in producing the show, which will free up a lot of time for me. We should actually be able to grow the program further and do further outreach — a lot more than I can do on my own. I’ve not done well when it comes to being able to delegate in the past. This is teaching me lessons on how to let go of things and move from there.”
“The vision I have, through growth and marketing, will include presenting things year round,” Feltner said. “That was part of the foundation of the awards. It not about only providing awards, but providing opportunities for artists to execute what they do best, which it is either promoting their music or their business. This means providing stages for artists to play on and promoting those businesses that artists need — social media, video. How do we get these artists with the right people?
“It’s networking, 100%. It’s an awareness to what’s going on and just taking control, like, ‘Hey, we’re going to host this event where people can come and get to know one another.”
“Ultimately, we would like to be able to build the Awards (ceremony) in size to where it can just become a wonderful red carpet event for the entire Lexington community,” McLean added. “How many events here are there in the year where you dress to the nines and walk the red carpet? Let’s turn this into something the whole community can come out and watch the way people watch the Grammy Awards or the Oscars — something they can be a part of even if they’re not in the industry.”
2025 Lexington Music Awards
When: March 9, 6 p.m.
Where: Singletary Center for the Arts Recital Hall, 405 Rose St.
Tickets: $25
Online: finearts.uky.edu/singletary-center/tickets