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Taste The "Real" Music Biz at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe
It's off the tourist-beaten track, and it's a venue to visit for serious listening, so the staff doesn't allow conversations during the performances. If you know of the Bluebird Cafe but have not seen it in person, you will likely be surprised at how diminutive it is.
Obscured in a bland line of stores beside Hillsboro Road in Green Hills, with a hardly obvious sign, the Bluebird Cafe is a petite hole in the wall cafe and cocktail lounge, pub, saloon, barroom, where four musicians sing from the middle of the cafe, in the round. It's a extremely free and easy, up close and personal setting, in which to hear a few of Music City's wishful and established artists.
As a matter of fact, the songwriter in the round format got its start at the Bluebird. Artists Fred Knobloch (Used to Blue and Meanwhile), and Don Schlitz (The Gambler and Forever and Ever, Amen), according to legend after a night of drinking, decided to install four chairs looking opposite to each other in the middle of the venue, turn out the lights, and just see whatever takes place. This format turned out to work so well, that you're likely to see it at many songwriter's get-togethers around Nashville.
The Bluebird has not merely developed to be famous as Music City's most respected spot to hear musicians, but it has been the jumping off point for many famed country songwriters, starting back in 1983 when Kathy Mattea got a record contract after playing at the Bluebird for only a little while. As soon as that happened, the Bluebird turned into one of the most competitive places to perform. And this process would continue to repeat over and over, as some of the Bluebird's artist fixtures proceeded to score recording agreements, and singer-songwriter after singer-songwriter came to popularity in the one and the same way. (There have been too many stars "born" at the Bluebird to name them all here, but do you remember Garth Brooks? - Yup, you guessed it, he got his start at the Bluebird, too.)
The Bluebird Cafe provides two shows each night, and reservations are recommended, which you can make on their website (in all likelihood the optimal method) or by phone. But if you haven't made reservations and want to run out there before things start, you really should attempt it - the folks there will do everything possible to seat you at the show. The Bluebird surely ought to be on any visitor's list of
About the Author David Seldon lives in Nashville, Tennessee and operates Music-City-Vacations.com where he writes about goings on, and things to see and do in Nashville. Find more great information at Music-City-Vacations.com
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