The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) has revealed the nominees for the 2024 JUNO Awards – including those for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year and Traditional Roots Album of the Year. The coveted awards will be presented on Saturday, March 23 at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hosted by Canadian pop star Nelly Furtado, the ceremonies will be broadcast live across Canada at 8 p.m. ET on CBC TV, CBC Radio One and CBC Music, and may be viewed online globally at CBCMusic.ca/junos and CBC Music’s YouTube page.
In the running for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year are The Returner (Allison Russell), We Will Never Be The Same ((Good Lovelies), Beyond the Reservoir (Julian Taylor), A Light in the Attic (Logan Staats), and Stand in the Joy (William Prince). Traditional Roots Album of the Year nominees include Paint Horse (Benjamin Dakota Rogers), The Breath Between (David Francey), Roses (Jackson Hollow), Second Hand (James Keelaghan), and Resilience (Morgan Toney)
Also of potential interest to AcousticMusicScene.com readers are the nominees for Blues Album of the Year. These include SoulFunkin’Blues (Blackburn Brothers), Scream, Holler & Howl (Blue Moon Marquee), One Step Closer (Brandon Isaak), The Big Battle of Joy (Matt Andersen), and Gettin’ Together (Michael Jerome Browne).
In addition to her Contemporary Roots Album of the Year nomination for The Returner, Allison Russell –- whose debut solo release, Outside Child, was named 2022 Contemporary Roots Album of the Year — is among the nominees for Songwriter of the Year and Music Video of the Year (for “Demons”). Russell also was nominated in three categories in the 66th GRAMMY Awards and received one received one on February 4 for Best American Roots Performance (“Eve is Black.”)
A soulful Nashville, Tennessee-based, Montreal-born Scottish Grenadian Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and activist, Allison Russell is also a co-founder of Our Native Daughters and Birds of Chicago and was part of Po’ Girl. Her debut solo album, Outside Child, was chosen as Contemporary Album of the Year in the 2022 Canadian Folk Music Awards, while she was named English Songwriter of th
e Year and New/Emerging Artist of the Year in recognition of it. She also accepted awards for both Album and Artist of the Year in the International Folk Music Awards presented by Folk Alliance International in May 2022.
Besides his nomination for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year, William Prince is also in the running for Songwriter of the Year for songs from his album Stand in the Joy. A Winnipeg, Manitoba-based country-folk singer-songwriter from Peguis First Nation, Prince previously received a Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year in 2017 for his debut release, Earthly Days, which was also a finalist for Indigenous Music Album of the Year. His album Reliever was among the nominees for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year in the Juno Awards of 2021, while he won awards for Contemporary Album of the Year and English Songwriter of the Year during that year’s Canadian Folk Music Awards.
A complete list of JUNO Awards nominees can be found, along with additional information, online at junoawards.ca.
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