Country Music Week on its way to Saskatoon

The Canadian Country Music Awards ceremony returns to Saskatoon next month and with it comes Country Music Week, four days of events, of which many are open to the public.

This will be the second time Saskatoon hosts the CCMAs, after the first time in 2012.

Dawn Woroniuk, chair of Country Music Week, told CBC Radio's Saskatchewan Weekend the reason for the show's return is simple.

"Because we know how to throw a party."

Moreover, Saskatoon proved to the organizers it could attract the sponsorship, volunteers and the support to do the CCMAs in style.

Not that kind of cabaret

The 2012 awards in Saskatoon introduced a number of things that have carried on in subsequent years.

"We started the cabaret, the Friday night cabaret," said Woroniuk, even though the show producers didn't know what that was at first.

"When we expressed to them that we wanted a cabaret, they said 'You mean like a Liza Minnelli show?' And we're like, 'Let's go one province over and have you heard of a Manitoba social?' 'Oh yeah, we know that.'

"'This is pretty much it,'" she said she told them.

The cabaret and the John Deere green carpet are the two innovations Saskatoon introduced that she's most proud of.

"We started that, it was our idea, and that has gone from city to city in the past five years."

'Not pretentious'

She said organizations and businesses in Saskatoon's downtown are also happy to support the show.

"Country music and country artists are just really down to Earth, good folks," she said.

"They're not pretentious; they don't have huge egos. Whether it's on theinternational scale of a Garth Brooks or a Shania Twain, they remember their grassroots, they remember their fans and it's just like having a party with your next door neighbour."

She added that one thing the show has this year that it didn't have in 2012 is the CCMA Legends Show on the Friday night at TCU Place. That's where older and younger artists perform and collaborate, with this year's show featuring Ian Tyson and Paul Brandt.

"You won't leave there without shedding a tear. It's so so powerful," she said.

Country Music Weekruns Sept. 6-10 in Saskatoon. The Canadian Country Music Awardsare Sunday Sept. 10 and will be broadcast on CBC at 8 p.m.