Luke Bryan and Peyton Manning are co-hosting the CMA Awards and Bryan assures fans it’s going to be a fun show.
Bryan told Fox News Digital he got excited when producers came to him with the idea of having him co-host the show with Manning, telling them he thought it would "be a blast" to share the stage with him.
Although Manning isn’t a country music artist, Bryan acknowledges that his star power "transcends far beyond obviously being a football player," and that the fans will respond well to him as a host.
"Peyton is just a ginormous figure and a ginormous star," Bryan said. "Through the years we've become pretty good friends and worked on some stuff together. It's going to be fun to share the stage with him and see him get a little nervous out there running to helping me run the CMA Awards."
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Bryan opened up about why he feels he and Manning make such a perfect hosting duo, saying they both have a great sense of humor and they both have a genuine love for country music. He cited Manning’s appearances on "Saturday Night Live" as proof that he does well on TV.
"We both don't take ourselves too seriously. And he's obviously been in front of the TV. He's just always done really well in front of the camera, and he's a longtime fan of country music," he explained. "I think our us being on stage will be able to, you know, have a lot of fun with the crowd and just make it a really special night."
As far as who they plan on roasting in their opening monologue, Bryan assured fans that while they haven’t decided what the exact jokes will be, they are working on them and will have a more concrete idea of what the script will be closer to the date.
"I mean, we're going we're going to see what big topics are happening," he said. "You know, going into that week. And we'll have some fun with some people."
Aside from hosting the CMA Awards, Bryan is bringing awareness to the farming community and the hard work they put in and have been putting in for years. He has partnered with the National Pork Board to put on his farm tours, which is a tour featuring concerts held on farms.
He has been putting on these farm tours for a few years now, and through his partnership with the National Pork Board he will be focusing on pig farms. The board heard about his farm tours and reached out about a potential partnership.
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"When you think about the aspect of pig farming and maybe what people's interpretation of that may be, I thought it was a cool campaign to get behind and show the other side of and educate the world on how ethical and clean all of those aspects of pig farming are," he explained. "Make sure that when people go to the grocery store… they can feel good about any pork that they may be purchasing."
One of his biggest goals in hosting the farm tours is to "make sure people don't have this stereotype in their head" that a farmer is someone who spends his day "out in a bunch of mud," and educate them on the fact that these days, farming is more "high-tech."
Bryan says he never feels the American spirit more than when he’s performing on stage on these farms.
"We go out and find these various farming families and farm sites, and we put all of our staging and our semi-trucks, and we put it out there on the stage, and we're literally on a working farm," he said. "Fans come in, you know, 20,000 fans, American flags, nothing feels more American than being out there playing country music on the farm."
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As a major player in the country music game, Bryan is in tune with the up-and-coming artists in the industry, giving an example of a male and female artist he thinks are working really hard.
"I think when you look at what Lainey Wilson's doing out there, she's a young female star that's really turning a lot of heads," he said. "I got a good friend of mine, Hardy, he's out with Morgan Wallen right now. Hardy's just one of the best writers I've ever heard and just has a real knowledge of where he wants his career to go."
He also uses his experience in the industry to help him as a judge on "American Idol," explaining that after having been on the show for a few seasons, he has gotten better at predicting who America will vote for in the end.
"I can really predict how far they're going to go a lot quicker, because I've seen a lot of kids come through the door," Bryan said. "That's when that's when life is really, really special and pretty cool when you know somebody is going to do really well in the competition."
