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Elaina Smith
The San Diego native, who has co-hosted the syndicated country radio show Nash Nights Live alongside Shawn Parr for the last six years, is going solo. With a new show, Nights With Elaina, launching February 3, and a third season of her podcast, Breaking Thru With Elaina, on the horizon, Smith is poised to rule the airwaves. The on-air personality, who came to Nashville by way of a pop radio gig on Florida’s Space Coast, filled us in just ahead of the show’s official announcement.
Elaina Smith
Age: 31
On moving to Nashville: It was a wild experience, especially because when I was working in Florida, it was a very small town. Then, here I am in this new show, and I think when we started we were on about 50 stations and one of them was New York City, which is the biggest market for radio. It was really intimidating. I used to work in pop and rock radio, so country was not anything I ever thought that I would be asked to do because I am a late bloomer on country music.
New kid on the dial: I compare coming into the world of country music to moving to a foreign country and you want to learn the language. If you come to Nashville, surround yourself with it, meet everybody, and engage with what came before and how it came to be today, then you’ll learn it really fast. I have this crazy appreciation for this genre and it made it really easy to get the ball rolling on the show and create something that is not only for audiences that always loved country music, but newbies like I was.
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Favorite moments along the way: I get so excited for CMA Fest every year because we get to host on the Nissan Stadium stage and go into the audience—it’s wild. I’m able to meet face-to-face with people who have called into the show or followed us on Twitter or Facebook. It’s something I look forward to every year and know that it’s going to be pretty magical. The other thing is voicing the ACM Awards. That was definitely something I did not see coming, but that’s been the story of my life so far. I just stay open to all of the possibilities.
Going solo: The new show is really going to focus on who I am, and reflect the way that I’m very fast-paced. I don’t pay attention to things for that long. I like to consume things quickly. Just like how you consume Twitter or Tik Tok or Instagram. You want what’s there in the moment, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about. It won’t be a complete and total departure from the night show that you’re used to listening to, but it will definitely have a different vibe. So I just cannot wait. And of course it will still have all of the biggest names in country music who will stop by and be a part of it
From the FM dial to podcasting: My passion project is my podcast. It’s all about women in country music and in entertainment and the different road that a lot of us have had to travel because of gender. That’s been a passionate conversation of mine—not just the women who are played on the radio, but also women who are DJs and personalities on the radio. We have experienced the same issues.
Changing the conversation: I had been passionate about this ever sinceI got to country radio because coming from pop, it was not at all unheard of for the women to be played back-to-back. They were kind of ruling the game. It was shocking to me that when I looked at logs for our show there were two to three females for a five-hour show. I got really upset. I feel like radio has a bit of a responsibility because it still has such a power to shape culture. If we’re not giving the perspective of everybody in culture it can be dangerous.