‘The Road’ Finalists Tease Finale Performances & How They Made Their Song Selections

The three finalists on Season 1 of The Road will hit the stage one last time before a winner is crowned on the Sunday, December 21, episode. Channing Wilson, Adam Sanders, and Cassidy Daniels will open for Keith Urban at the iconic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and the contestant with the best audience rating will become the first-ever champion of The Road.

Channing, Adam, and Cassidy will each perform a new cover and a repeat original, and they all knew that song selection was crucial as they headed into this final performance.

For Cassidy, she knew she was going to sing “Crazy Love,” which she performed during Week 1, as her original. “You really have to cater to the crowd and make sure it’s something they’re going to like,” Cassidy told TV Insider. “But I knew I was going to do that one either way because I would like to go out the same way I came in. I felt like that was a good start for me and I wanted to play that song on the Ryman stage.”

When it came to choosing a cover, it was a “different story,” Cassidy said. She ultimately went with “Crazy on You” by Heart, which was a different vibe than she was initially planning. “I had a few other things in mind that were more traditional country because the nature of the Ryman Auditorium is the mother church, but I kind of got persuaded to do this more rock song,” she explained. “At the end of the day it’s one of my favorite songs ever. It’s a song that I probably wouldn’t have done on the Ryman stage, but looking back now, it’s kind of badass that I did. I’m pretty OK with it.”

Channing said his selections were “pretty easy.” His original song choice was also his Week 1 song, “Blues Comin’ On,” which is a “very unique song that fits my voice,” Channing explained. “It actually makes me stretch my voice, which is always fun. I wrote it on the Tennessee River, half deep on a bottle of moonshine, listening to old Hank Jr. records. You can’t get more cliché country than that. It wasn’t my first time playing the Ryman, but I knew what I wanted to do, so I went back and pulled that one out that I started the first episode with.”

Connie Chornuk/CBS

For his cover, Channing will be singing “The Ride” by David Allan Coe. “The ghost of Hank Williams haunts the Ryman, I believe that, and that song is literally about the ghost of Hank Williams,” he pointed out. “I don’t second guess anything I did. I thought I laid it down really well and I showed what I’m all about as a country music artist.”

Adam had his cover planned for weeks. In fact, back in Week 2, tour manager Gretchen Wilson suggested that he sing a Brooks & Dunn song, but he said he was saving a Brooks & Dunn cover for the Ryman. “She kind of was taken aback,” he laughed. “She looked at me with this weird face and said, ‘How do you know you’re going to make it to the Ryman?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but if I make it to the Ryman, I need a moment that I feel like it could help me win.'”

Of course, Adam did make it to that final show at the Ryman, and chose Brooks & Dunn’s “That Ain’t No Way to Go” because “90s country has always been at the root of my music and it felt like a great song that would fit a Ryman crowd that also hasn’t been covered a million times by other artists.”

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When it came to his original, Adam made a “last minute decision” to perform “All Summer Long.” Originally, he was going to sing “What If I’m Right,” his biggest streaming song to date. However, he remembered how the crowd reacted when he sang “All Summer Long” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and changed his mind.

“For whatever reason, I saw that Keith Urban crowd really connected with that song and that really stuck out into my mind as one of the most interactive songs that I had,” Adam explained. “Last minute decision, I decided to go back to that song because it did so well and it was such a surprise to me that it connected as well as it did.”

The winner, who gets a $250,000 prize and performance slot on the main stage at Stagecoach 2026, will be revealed during the one-hour finale on Sunday, December 21.

The Road, Season 1 Finale, Sunday, December 21, 9:30/8:30c, CBS