The 10th Annual Country Music Alberta Awards are coming up this weekend and Cochrane and area residents will be rooting for one of our own.

Blake Reid has been nominated for Roots Artist of the Year. 

Reid says "Yeah, it's awesome and it's the first year that they've had this category. I think that they're tipping their hat to people that might be a little bit left of centre in their music direction so hats off to the Music Association for doing that for sure."

He says the pandemic forced the band to wait a bit before releasing their latest single. 

"It's been a crazy year. We were set to release our new album in the documentary film last year but then with the COVID situation we just decided to push it back into 2021. So we actually have released Penny which is our current single that's out on radio right now."

"And it's actually been doing pretty good, it's got picked up on a number of Spotify playlists and is performing well at radio and then that's all in promotion of a spring release of both our studio album and of the documentary film No Roads In, so we're pushing that pretty heavy."

You'll be able to access No Roads In commercially soon.

Reid revamped his barn and turned it into a recording studio and has already recorded a couple of virtual shows from the space.

He says when the world opens up again the space will hold up to 80 people and they're hoping to hold shows there. 

The band has lots on the go for the next while.

"Just full promotion of our releases. So of course our radio singles and then the album drops. We have a studio album called Another Way Home. And that was recorded between Nashville and in Alberta. So that's been released in the full documentary and that associated soundtrack, acoustic soundtrack with that project, and then just more writing."

The 10th Annual Country Music Alberta Awards are on Sunday night and Reid says he's looking forward to being apart of it all, virtually. 

"There's a post party that all of the nominees are invited to. Then during the post party wrap-up there'll be conversation back and forth that way."

We're crossing our fingers for Blake this weekend!