Dallas Smith was the big winner at the Canadian Country Music Association award show Monday night, nabbing three trophies including entertainer of the year at a splashy live-streamed event in front of thousands of in-person spectators.
The 43-year-old from Langley, B.C., who performed his single “Hide From a Broken Heart” for the fully vaccinated crowd at Budweiser Gardens, also won the male artist of the year award and single of the year for “Like A Man.”
Smith claimed the top entertainer title for the third straight year, beating out Brett Kissel of Flat Lake, Alta.; Dean Brody of Smithers, B.C.; MacKenzie Porter of Medicine Hat, Alta.; and the Reklaws from Cambridge, Ont.
The bash marked the return of the CCMA show to the live-event sphere for the first time since Calgary hosted in 2019.
Smith, accepting his first award of the night, thanked organizers for “doing what they needed to do to get people in a building again and bring this genre and live music back to life.”
Backstage, he called his entertainer of the year award the “icing on the cake” to a weekend spent with country music fans and artists in person.
“I had this date knocked on the calendar for quite a while, (it’s) signifying getting back together for a lot of people in the industry,” he said. “Last year we did what we could with the CCMAs … but now we’re more back to normal and what this needs to be.”