Regional Eddies Music Awards to broadcast live May 2

The second annual Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards – aka the Eddies Music Awards – will be broadcast live at 7 p.m. Sunday, May 2 from Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga. The event is presented by KeyBank.

The awards show will be shot on a closed set in UPH’s Great Hall with about 45 people participating as cast and crew. Four artists will perform during the broadcast, and four panels will discuss the year in local music and how artists, technicians, venue owners and others pivoted during the pandemic. The topics for each panel – hosted by WEQX’s Jeff Morad and WEXT’s Andy Gregory – will vary to reflect the diversity of challenges felt throughout the regional music scene. Winners of 34 award categories – judged by roughly 100 local music professionals – will be announced between segments.

The line-up of artists includes Marty Wendell, a 2020 Eddies Music Award nominee for Country / Bluegrass Artist of the Year; the blues / rock act Jocelyn and Chris, who lead all 2020 nominees with four nominations; bandleader/vocalist/instrumentalist/songwriter Garland Nelson, a two-time 2019 Eddies Music Awards winner; and Schenectady native Promise The Unbreakable™, nominated for Hip Hop/Rap Artist of the Year in 2019 and again this year. Nelson is doing double-duty as show emcee.

The show is being filmed by Chromoscope Pictures of Troy. It will be broadcast live on Collaborative Studios’ Amazon Fire TV, Roku and Apple TV apps, its public access channels in Albany and Schenectady, and on YouTube and Facebook. It will be available on-demand for free after the event. Collaborative Studios and the Eddies Music Awards are initiatives of Proctors Collaborative.

Originally scheduled to be held live April 14, 2020, at Proctors in Schenectady, the show was postponed due to the pandemic. But the second annual Capital Region Thomas Edison Hall of Fame Awards – an offshoot of The Eddies Music Awards – was held just days before civic authorities severely restricted public gatherings in March 2020. The Accents, Blotto, The Fidelities, Hal Ketchum, Lena Spencer and John Sykes were inducted during a sold-out ceremony at UPH.

The award show was rescheduled for an early December 2020 live broadcast and it, too, was also postponed due to rising COVID-19 infection rates in the region.

“The third time is the charm,” said Jim Murphy, Eddies co-founder, of the May 2 date. “There was trepidation around pulling off the event in December that is absent now. Everyone involved is really excited this is happening.”

The dates for the third installments of both the Eddies Music Awards and the Eddies Music Hall of Fame celebration will be also announced during the May 2 broadcast. “The length of time between this show and the next will be considerably shorter,” according to Sal Prizio, Eddies co-founder. “We’re going to get back on schedule and we’re going to bring the music community back together in the same room to celebrate.”

WEXT AND WEQX are a media sponsors for the 2020 Eddies Awards.

Broadcast and event details are available at theeddiesawards.com; winners’ names and event photos will be posted there, after the show.