Farsighted Fans Spot the Stars from Afar

It's a cloudless day in Nashville. Deep blue sky, cooling breeze - you couldn't ask for a better setting for the CMA Awards.

At a little after 2 in the afternoon, scores of onlookers have already assembled along the metal barriers that line the east side of Fifth Avenue, across from the Red Carpet and artists' entrance into the Sommet Center, site of tonight's CMA Awards. These fans seem as perceptive as they are dedicated: They spot arriving celebrities from a block away, so that they're already chanting their names and waving signs by the time they come into the view of folks with less eagle-like vision.

They're doing sound-checks inside, with the artists and their bands doing one last run-through and the actual presenters reading copy. Kris Kristofferson has just finished reading his lines for the Female Vocalist of the Year presentation and has left the stage. Looking charismatic and handsome, if not downright iconic, in dark gray jacket and jeans, he passes by the press room, stops to add his signature to a line of guitars being autographed for charity fundraising, and climbs the steps leading back toward the Red Carpet tent.

The space from this exit door into the tent itself takes about one second to cover at a normal clip. That's all it takes, though, for someone across the street to shout out, "Kris!" And by the time he's made it through the tent and out toward the parking lot for a brief pre-Awards trip somewhere, his name is rippling through the celebratory crowd.

Smiling into the sunlight, waving happily, he makes his exit just as another star shows up, to escalating chants of "Reba! Reba!"

Bob Doerschuk, 3:33 PM