This wasn’t a typical show for country-pop artist Chris Housman. On a weekday afternoon, he had an audience at one of Nashville’s largest music publishers, Warner Chappell.

“I’ll just say that this song is a very true story inspired by an ex-boyfriend of mine,” he began, as he strummed the chords to an original called “The Dog.”

The networking event was arranged by Tiffany Provenzano and Chantrel Reynolds, the two-person, dedicated staff of the Equal Access program, which works to remove barriers for marginalized performers and businesspeople in country music. The music industry made a considerable number of DEI promises a few years back, and in country music, that led to this professional development program. Even though the operation is still modest in scale and in need of additional funding, it’s already having an impact on individual careers and broader industry culture.

That particular day, Housman, who’s gay, shared the stage with other past and present program participants: country singer Valerie Ponzio, who’s Latina, and indie folk-leaning Julie Williams, who’s Black and queer. 

Housman’s been performing since childhood, but having anyone advocate for his talent is new. Just before he moved to Nashville 16 years ago, he came out, and he recognized that that would make it hard to break through in country music. “I just can’t even imagine what things would have looked like if things like the Equal Access Program would have been around when I got here in 2008,” he said in an interview.

Equal Access started in 2022. Its founder, Cameo Carlson, had built her music industry career in other cities and genres, before entering the Nashville ecosystem. “When I got here,” she recalled, “it just struck me going into meetings that everybody was the same. And it didn’t sit right with me, because all the decisions are being made from one point-of-view.”

After becoming the CEO of a management services company called Mtheory and helping launch DEI committees like Nashville Music Equality, Carlson wanted to do more. So she got industry leaders involved, secured funding and recruited the first cohort of Equal Access. Three artists and three businesspeople, like Kadeem Phillips. He’d managed successful rap producers, and was interested in expanding into country music, but found the industry impenetrable.

“It wasn’t, honestly, anybody for me to reach to, to even talk to about being Black in country and being an executive,” he explained, “because no one over there looked like me.”

Through Equal Access, Phillips took on the country duo Kentucky Gentleman as management clients and co-founded the independent label Origins Records. Another executive from the program, Charlene Bryant, became senior VP of Universal Music Group Nashville. A number of its artist alums, including Madeline Edwards, have signed publishing, record, or distribution deals or performed at the Grand Ole Opry, country music’s most famous venue.

“If it was a country thing,” said Phillips, “we got access to it. I got great relationships from that program. I mean, it was all worth it.”

Because, he went on, these are doors he’d been knocking on, and someone’s finally answering.