Kristian Bush Recalls Sugarland’s First ‘Panicked’ ACM Awards Performance

Kristian Bush will be on hand for the 2015 ACM Awards on Sunday (April 19), but he won't be as nervous as in some years past.

The Sugarland guitarist and singer spoke to Taste of Country on Saturday (April 18) in Dallas, where he was getting ready for the red carpet event. He tells us the importance of a young act performing on the show can hardly be overestimated. "It's really make or break for a lot of these acts," he states. "They're debuting new music, they're perforning their hits for maybe people who haven't heard them yet."

Sugarland's own inaugural ACM Awards performance was under less than ideal circumstances. "The first time we played the ACMs, we weren't even really supposed to perform," Bush says. "We were just supposed to talk into the mic at the podium. And then Alan Jackson got sick, and something else happened, and then suddenly they were like, 'Hey, would you mind playing a whole song?' We were like, 'Okay, but where's our band?'" he adds with a laugh.

"So we did. We put the band together and we showed up on rehearsal day, and they were like, 'Hey, could you close the show?' And we were like, 'You're crazy! No one's ever heard of us.' And there was a moment right before we went on where Jennifer [Nettles] was like, wearing Sara Evans' shoes or something -- something didn't work out, they didn't fit, so she just kicked them off and went barefoot. So when you see that performance back, if you ever look at it online, that was us, completely panicked, not knowing what in the world we were gonna do, and Jennifer's like, 'Forget it, let's go barefoot -- just go!' And that was us."

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