Country Music’s Biggest Stars Celebrate The New Year At “Nashville’s Big Bash”
Jack Daniel’s New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash took place in the heart of music city to ring in 2026. The in-person watch party was held this year at Luke Combs’ Category 10.
The five-hour special featured a number of country’s top artists including Dierks Bentley, Brooks & Dunn, Rascal Flatts, Zach Top, Keith Urban, Lainey Wilson, and Gretchen Wilson.
Hosted by country music star HARDY and comedian Bert Kreischer, the public was invited to Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park in Nashville for a free night of music and celebration.
Power Outage In Nashville Postpones The Big Show
Things took a turn when CBS’s legal drama Matlock unexpectedly interrupted the network’s New Year’s Eve broadcast.
Nearly 40 minutes into New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash, country music star Lainey Wilson’s performance was halted during the middle of her performance. The screen went black for a few seconds, then returned with a series of promos for Survivor and other CBS shows before switching to Matlock, which aired mid-episode.
The episode ran for several minutes, repeatedly interrupted by commercials and network promos. During the disruption, a crawl read, “We are experiencing technical difficulties,” and was later updated to say, “We are experiencing technical difficulties and programming will resume shortly.”
Viewers took to social media when the disruption hit, asking the network to clear up confusion.
@CBS what happened to the New Year’s Nashville Bash? It cut out during Lainey Wilson singing, went to commercial & now some CBS show is playing!!
— Jen (@therealjustjen) January 1, 2026
So strange…. #cbsNashvilleNYE cut in the middle of a Lainey Wilson song and hadn’t come back. Hope everything’s okay. pic.twitter.com/QNuzDROwLX
— Maria Amoruso (@MariaWAmoruso) January 1, 2026
The broadcast returned with a performance from Gretchen Wilson after more than a 12-minute interruption, and co-host Bert Kreischer acknowledged the technical issue.
“We lost power here in Nashville, and we got kicked off the air on CBS,” he said as he and HARDY joked none of them caused the delay.