Bluebird Cafe

Our pal Ed kindly agreed to guest-post on my blog about his recent experiences at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. To what he says below, I will add that I really like Ed's new song called Pretend Promises and Jenni's called The Only Sound. The audience noticed and was wrapped.

I so enjoyed visiting with Ed and Jenni over lunch and both Bluebird evenings. They are two of the reasons I have warm fuzzies when I think of Abilene.

***************************************

10,000,000 songwriters in this country, and every monday night roughly 50 of them converge on the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville for a three-hour open mic session. each person gets exactly nine minutes to sing two original songs. if someone isn't picked the first time they put their name in the hat, they get a stamped coupon that guarantees them a chance to perform the next time they show up for the open mic night. that is what happened to jenni and me. our first night there, too many "second-timers" showed up, so we sat and listened to other songwriters for three hours, then got our coupons stamped. we came back two weeks later (on our way home from vacationing in virginia), and that time we each got to sing two songs.

i had become aware of the Bluebird Cafe several years ago, and i had heard just enough about it to give me an almost completely inaccurate vision of it in my head. i had it pictured as a cozy little hole-in-the-wall in downtown Nashville, probably in some historic old building, with tons of unique ambiance. i had heard that it had a stage-in-the-round, and i could picture an intimate setting with the performer(s) in the middle of the room and all the chairs and tables up close and personal. i also had some kind of vague notion that some very famous people had performed there and/or had been discovered there, so it had begun to take on mythical proportions in my mind. imagine my surprise when i discovered the real Bluebird Cafe - not in downtown Nashville, but several miles from downtown in a 1980s-era strip-type shopping center! i could hardly believe my eyes! it looked like a typical storefront in a typical shopping center that can be found in every city of any size across this entire nation. there was no unique ambiance - absolutely nothing that would distinguish this place from any other "greasy spoon" in the country. once inside, i could see that there was no stage-in-the-round - just a small cafe with a small stage against one wall.

however - both nights we were there, it was inexplicably jam-packed with aspiring songwriters and family or friends they had brought along to give them moral support. the place looked to hold about 75 people, and fully 50 of those were people who had come to sing at the open mic. our first night there - the night we didn't get to perform - we sat through three hours of some of the most gosh-awful songs anyone could ever hear. it was a veritable cliche festival, complete with rhymes like "true" and "blue," "pain" and "rain," and "tear" and "beer." but you've never seen people perform with such earnestness. i'm sure every person who performed thought their songs were going to be the next #1 songs on the country charts. in the three hours we sat and listened, there may have been three or four songs that were creative and interesting.

our second night there - the night we performed - was equally crowded, but since we had our stamped coupons, we were guaranteed a performance slot. so - at the appointed time we each got up and sang our songs as if they were at least as good as the best songs ever written, if not better. and we were SO nervous! we have performed hundreds of times over the last eight years, but i've never been more nervous. and why??? there were no record company execs there - at least not that we knew about. we were playing to people just like us - "undiscovered" songwriters who dream of writing a handful of hits, getting rich, and spending the rest of their lives writing, touring, singing, and living off huge royalty checks.

it was interesting, fun, and something to tell people about later, but in fact, playing there probably had little more significance than playing at a coffee house in abilene texas. i'm glad we got to experience it, but i've played many, many gigs at which i had more fun and found to be much more rewarding.

ah yes - the Bluebird Cafe - a microcosm of the myth that seduces people into thinking they can be successful in the music business. 10,000,000 songwriters in this country, and at any given time no more than roughly two dozen of them actually have a song playing on the radio. in the meantime, the rest of us languish in anonymity and wonder why we haven't been discovered on the internet or at any one of the hundreds of gigs we've played. after all, every one of those 10,000,000 songwriters has penned the greatest song ever written. all they need is the right break - if only they could get a chance to play the open mic at the legendary Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. if only............