Carly Pearce and Molly Tuttle brought the holiday spirit with their performance as part of CMA Country Christmas. The Grand Ole Opry member and Tuttle performed a bluegrass medley of popular Christmas songs, with “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” “Let It Snow,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “Christmas Time’s A-Comin’.”
Pearce, who also sang “Here Comes Santa Claus” and “Man With a Bag,” said she was most excited about performing with Tuttle.
“This year I get to perform several times, which is really exciting,” Pearce said. “I’m very excited to do a bluegrass medley of Christmas songs with Molly Tuttle. She’s an amazing, Guitar Player of the Year at the IBMA Awards, just an amazing artist, and bluegrass is really a special thing to me. I grew up singing bluegrass.”
Tuttle was equally excited to make her CMA Country Christmas debut, especially since she got to perform with Pearce.
“I’m looking forward to playing these amazing Christmas songs with Carly Pearce,” Tuttle says. “I feel like the theme of our segment is almost like Christmas morning, and you’re getting up and having a jam session. I grew up in a musical family, so it feels king of like the Christmases we used to have when I was a kid.”
Pearce was also eager to host the holiday-themed show, for the second year in a row.
“When I got the call that I got to come back and host, it was a no-brainer,” Pearce said “Hosting is something that’s really special to me, and something that I really want to continue to do, so I feel very lucky.”
Christmas celebrations have come a long way for Pearce, at least since she was a teenager working at Dollywood.
“I worked in the Christmas show there called Christmas in the Smokies,” Pearce recalls to her record label. “I was 17 and everybody else was much older than me, so what that meant was I had to do all of the things that people didn’t want to do. So, in the Christmas show, during ‘Frosty the Snowman,’ I dressed up as a mascot version of Frosty the Snowman. And just thinking about that girl, who was literally willing to do whatever to be on stage, so much so that she would be Frosty the Snowman, to now think she’s hosting CMA Country Christmas, that’s pretty cool.”
Other performances of the night included Scotty McCreery, Maren Morris, Old Dominion, Dan + Shay, War and Treaty and Steven Curtis Chapman. CMA Country Christmas is available to stream now on Hulu and Disney+.
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