The Bluebird

“Nashville cats, play clean as country water

Nashville cats, play wild as mountain dew

Nashville cats, been playin’ since they’s babies

Nashville cats, get work before they’re two”

~ Chorus from the 1966 hit ”Nashville Cats” by The Lovin’ Spoonful.

If I were given a work life “do-over,” I’m pretty sure I would have chosen the music business instead of journalism. Not as a performing artist but the person who discovers them. The talent scout who sits in the audience listening to dozens of acts searching for the next big star.

Or at least an asteroid.

In sports, particularly major league baseball, elite scouts have what is called “the third eye,” an invisible gift of seeing what others don’t see. It’s a non-measurable, intangible skill, like the proverbial gut feeling on, um, steroids.

About a month ago, along with our friend Martha, we visited Nashville. A songwriters’ paradise. Tennessee’s capital city on the Cumberland River in Davidson County. Home to those responsible for creating the sounds that define Music City, as it’s known.

I’m not sure what rock I’ve been living under, but I had no idea that Nashville was such a songwriting epicenter. They say even pizza joints and banks have stages for folks looking to try out new material. Who knew?

It’s no wonder those who do break through, at least on the recording side, are known as “Nashville Cats.” It’s what they call the city’s pool of talented session musicians, the artists who back up the main recording artist in the shadow of spotlights.

And it’s not only a haven for country music, which is definitely a major part of the mix in this home of C&W with the famous Grand Ole Opry. As songwriting legend Harlan Howard said, “Country music ain’t nothin’ but three chords and the truth.”

Fun fact: Harlan was born in Detroit.

Nashville’s artists comprise all music genres, including pop, rock, folk, and even blues and jazz originals. In 1966, The Lovin’ Spoonful band had a hit song called “Nashville Cats” that famously extolled the city’s talented musicians. A fitting tribute to songwriters if there ever was.

Just check YouTube and search for the song. (The link won’t embed here.) The first verse goes like this:

Well, there’s thirteen-hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville

And they can pick more notes than the number of ants

On a Tennessee ant hill

Yeah, there’s thirteen-hundred and fifty-two guitar cases in Nashville

And any one that unpacks ‘is guitar could play

Twice as better than I will.

Thanks to our gracious Nashville hosts, Martha’s daughter, Erin, and her husband, Bob, we were lucky enough to get into The Bluebird Café on a Saturday night. We saw a talented quartet of singer-songwriters perform for 90 minutes.

It was fabulous. And quiet as a concert hall when the musicians played. No talking during Bluebird sets. Period. You don’t want to be “that guy” who gets shushed. Lord, I was in “pretend talent scout” heaven.

Located in a small strip mall outside of downtown Nashville, The Bluebird is one of the world’s pre-eminent listening rooms. Over the last 40-plus years, it has gained worldwide recognition as a songwriter performance space where the “heroes behind the hits” perform their own songs.

Yet it’s so much more than that. This unassuming place has just 90 seats, but some of the most significant songwriters and artists have performed on The Bluebird stage. You’re so close to them that you feel as if you’re in a cozy living room with friends.

The Bluebird is where Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift scored record deals, where Keith Urban once played open-mic nights, and where Bonnie Raitt or Vince Gill may drop by unannounced on any given night.

Yeah, I was just thirteen, you might say I was a proverbial knee-high

When I heard a couple new-sounding tunes on the tubes

And they blasted me sky-high

And the record man said every one is a yellow sun

Record from Nashville

And up north there ain’t nobody buys them

And I said, “But I will”

Our long weekend in Music City was a whirlwind. How could we top our Bluebird Saturday night? With a Sunday tour of the Grand Ole Opry and a concert at the Ryman Auditorium, that’s how.

The Opry tour was more fun than I had imagined, and we even got to walk in the iconic “Circle” that sits center stage. It may seem like an ordinary piece of wood, but it means so much more to those who share a love of country music.

For 31 years – from 1943 to 1974 – the Opry show was broadcast from the stage of the Ryman Auditorium. When they moved from there to the new Opry location, they created a perfect 6-foot circle from the wood on that old stage. And the Circle found a new home.

It’s still adorned with the scuffs and scars of the great entertainers who have walked across it.

That evening, after a delicious dinner at a place called Deacon’s New South in downtown Nashville, we saw a concert at the Ryman. Singer-songwriters Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin performed songs from their acoustic tour.

No photos were allowed inside at the show, but I got a heavenly shot of the exterior with stained-glass windows.

“There’s no place like the Ryman,” Chapin Carpenter said. “It’s like playing in your living room.”

Indeed. And bigger than The Bluebird.

The two women performed on stage together for more than two hours. It was fabulous, not only because they sang their own songs, but also because they did others, including one from Don Henley (“End of the Innocence”) and another from Backstreet Boys. Seriously. (“Tell me why. ‘Cause I … want it … that way.”) OK, I’ll stop.

Earlier Sunday, we visited the Gibson Garage, where hundreds of guitars worth thousands of dollars hang from a conveyor belt-type contraption circling above on the ceiling. (See quick video clip below.) It was this guitar player’s nirvana.

I actually held a $3,500 Gibson Hummingbird in my arms. I played it with tender loving care, as if it were a newborn. It was acoustic, yet beautifully electric – if you get my drift. Smooth mahogany back and sides, a square shoulder body style with a Sitka spruce top.

Like driving the Cadillac of guitars. For $3,500. Whoa.

As my old union buddy/guitar picker John Davis says, “It ain’t much if you say it fast.” (Thanks, JD.)

And no, I didn’t buy it.

But I have enough Music City memories and Gibson guitar picks to last a lifetime.

Well, there’s sixteen thousand eight hundred ‘n’ twenty-one

Mothers from Nashville

All their friends play music, and they ain’t uptight

If one of the kids will

Because it’s custom made for any mothers’ son

To be a guitar picker in Nashville

And I sure am glad I got a chance to say a word about

The music and mothers from Nashville