Keith Urban will headline Opry 100 Honors Don Williams, a special Grand Ole Opry tribute concert set for June 10 at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville to mark the 50th anniversary of Don Williams joining the Opry roster.
Trisha Yearwood will join Urban as a co‑headliner at the June 10 show, which the Opry has announced as part of its celebration of Williams’s half‑century connection to the institution that welcomed him five decades ago.
The timing of the tribute comes as a newly discovered collection of Williams recordings, Epilogue: The Cellar Tapes, is due May 29 via Craft Recordings. The tapes, which date from 1979 to 1984, were uncovered by Williams’s son Tim Williams and longtime producer Garth Fundis and come from a defining period in Williams’s career that produced songs such as Good Ole Boys Like Me, I Believe in You and Tulsa Time.
The record of Williams’s early milestones is part of the program that frames the Opry tribute: Williams debuted with performances of The Shelter of Your Eyes and You’re My Best Friend; The Shelter of Your Eyes was released in December 1972 as his debut single, and You’re My Best Friend reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in June 1975.
keith urban has long counted Don Williams among his most formative influences, and Urban’s ties to Williams run personal as well as professional — his father was a devoted Don Williams fan, and Urban later duetted with Williams on Imagine That from 2012’s And So It Goes. Yearwood’s connection is rooted in shared collaborators: she and Williams worked with the same longtime producer, Garth Fundis, and Yearwood recorded Williams’s 1984 hit Maggie’s Dream for the 2017 tribute album Gentle Giants: The Songs of Don Williams.
The sequence of announcements creates a tension between anniversary ritual and fresh archival material. The Opry tribute explicitly marks the 50th anniversary of Williams becoming a member, while Epilogue: The Cellar Tapes highlights a later creative window, 1979 to 1984, suggesting the occasion will both look back to Williams’s earliest Opry moments and illuminate stages of his career that followed.
That dual focus — a live recognition on June 10 and the release of unheard recordings on May 29 — positions the Opry event as more than a commemorative night: it will be a public moment where Williams’s early hits and his later, defining work meet in the same narrative, performed by artists who have carried his influence forward.
Urban’s role as headliner answers why a contemporary star tops the bill: his long public admiration for Williams, family connection through his father’s fandom and a direct musical link in a 2012 duet make him an apt choice to lead a program meant to translate Williams’s quiet authority into a present‑day concert. The June 10 tribute and the May 29 release together aim to reframe Williams’s legacy for current audiences and remind listeners why his songs remained central to country music across decades.
