By JUDY SLOANE

Front Row Features

HOLLYWOOD-CBS’s new reality competition series follows Blake Shelton’s journey, along with Grammy winners Keith Urban and Gretchen Wilson, to find the next superstar, with 12 emerging talented musicians vying as opening acts for Urban at music venues across America. The performers must win over local audiences to secure a spot in the next city on their bus tour. The reward for the winner? A recording contract with Country Road Records, a coveted performance slot at the iconic Stagecoach Country Music Festival in 2016 and a grand prize of $250,000.

Blake Shelton, Keith Urban and Gretchen Wilson talked with journalists about their new show, which premieres on Sunday, October19th, 2025, 9:00-10:30 PM, ET/PT on CBS and will stream live and on-demand on Paramount+. On Sunday, October 26 and Sunday, November 2, it will broadcast 9:30-10:30 PM ET/PT and on Sunday, November 9, it will move to its regular 9:00-10:00 PM slot.

Q: Blake, can you explain what interested you in doing this new competition show?

Blake Shelton: I remember several years ago, my good and old friend, Lee Metzger, asking me what do you think if we did a singing competition show where artists got to open for a superstar, and you get to film them out on the road? [The]first thing I said was, there’s no freaking way any superstar will ever allow that. That’ll never happen.

Flash forward to now, we finally came up with a concept that does work. But more importantly, we found a superstar that knows how to play ball and in a scenario like this. Keith Urban. I really don’t know who else could have done this, because he’s got the experience with television, he’s got the old school experience with touring and playing the bars and honky-tonks out there. I don’t know that this could have happened if we couldn’t have got Keith involved.

And then Gretchen was always an obvious choice to be tour manager. There’s really only one Gretchen Wilson in the world, thank God by the way, because she’ll put all of us in our place. And that’s exactly what we needed for the show, someone to keep the group together.

Keith Urban: It’s great to be part of this family, first of all, and part of this show. One of the great things that happened across this season is that we also got to have guest mentors come on board at various places. So we had people I’ve toured with before, like Dustin Lynch, Karen Fairchild from Little Big Town, and we also had Jordan Davis and Brothers Osbourne, so there’s gonna be these surprise guest appearances by these other extraordinary artists.

Q: Keith, obviously you’ve worked in this general genre before. But you have the situation here where the contestants are opening for you, they’re greeting your fans who are coming to see you and expecting maybe certain things from the show.

Keith Urban: It’s a good question. I think the great thing about having Blake, Gretchen, and myself on board is that we’ve all been in that position of opening for somebody, walking out and facing a crowd that not only don’t know who we are, but don’t care who we are. And we’ve got to try and grab them in that minimal amount of time we get given. That’s what makes this show so unique, this real world, this is what really happens. And watching all of these musicians, night after night, have to choose the cover song and an original song and make these decisions of how to connect with this audience and hold them, and hopefully have that audience vote and get them through to the next night. That’s really real-world truth right there about being an artist on the road.

Q: Gretchen, there are a lot of singing competition shows on TV, what sets “The Road” apart from the others?

Gretchen Wilson: This competition is completely different than anything I’ve ever seen on television, so I would have to say that it’s gonna be different for everybody who views it. The rest of the shows are exactly the same. I’m guessing that [those] competitors go back to a really nice hotel room and sleep in a fancy space, and then they come into a studio set every day. This is a real-life situation. They have to tour across the country on a bus, it’s crowded, you get to know each other very well. I almost started crying remembering every little moment that we had out there with all of these musicians. The nerves and the real world behind the scenes that you don’t really get to see is what sets this apart, the rawness of it is different from anything else that I’ve ever seen.

Q: Blake, after so many years on “The Voice,” what was it like for you to be on board this show from the very beginning as an executive producer with such a heavy hand in it?

Blake Shelton: In a lot of ways, it was a dream come true, because as much fun as I had being a coach on “The Voice,” there’s no way for me to do a job for that long and not have ideas about, if I was the boss how I would do this. I think original songs could be a great idea. Songs that are written by the artists. Things that we just never did, for whatever reason.

What if you took these same artists that I’m coaching, and they weren’t in the TV studio with a prompted audience, and you put them in front of people that are ready to see Keith Urban? They’ve been standing outside for 6 hours in the rain, or in the 100 degree heat, waiting to see Keith, and they’re having to watch these people they’ve never heard of before. How would these artists that I’m coaching react in that situation? Not that one is right and one is wrong, but it’s a totally different animal.