The American Spectator

p>The other week we were in Nashville at the renowned Bluebird Cafe listening to the singer-songwriters do their thing. Mostly this was my songwriter-girlfriend’s idea, though admittedly I rather enjoyed the show. The Bluebird is a venue for serious fans of country music, though you’d never know it from looking at the place, set down in a nondescript strip mall next to a hair salon and a dry cleaners. Not exactly the Metropolitan Opera House, or even the Ryman Auditorium. Maybe that’s apropos, considering how commercial and nontraditional country music has become. Or had become by 1995 when Robbie Fulks first sang what many of us were thinking: br> /p> blockquote> em>Hey, this ain’t country-western br> It’s just soft-rock feminist crap br> And I thought they’d struck bottom back in the days of Ronnie Milsap br> Now they can’t stop the flood of ***holes, there ain’t a big enough ASCAP /em> /blockquote> br> They serve food at the Bluebird, though dining is frowned upon. You wouldn’t chomp on a taco salad at the Metropolitan Opera House during Rigoletto , would you? Try and order nachos at the Bluebird and you are likely to get dirty looks — from me, anyway. Drinking, however, is mandatory there being a seven-drink minimum (that’s what I told my girlfriend, anyway). And where else will one find waitresses who wear T-shirts that read “Shhhhhhh!”?

On the evening we were there four songwriters — Jamie Teachnor, Kerry Kurt Phillips, Kevin Denney and Tim Johnson — performed in the round surrounded by more than a hundred appreciative listeners. Performed is not the right word. These were songwriters, not performers, but they sang well enough, I thought, to make their own recordings. Apparently it takes more than a good voice and great songs to make it in Nashville. It takes pizzazz. And I don’t mean Nudie suits and rhinestone dresses. It takes whatever Keith Urban’s got, and I don’t mean Nicole Kidman. We were most impressed with Jamie Teachnor, from Fagus, Missouri, an unincorporated area on the Arkansas border, who doesn’t look old enough to drink, but writes and sings like someone who’s lived several lives, none of them happy.

AFTER THE SHOW we spoke to Tim Johnson, an Oregonian of all things. He was over by the bar, not surprisingly, giving hugs to Kerry Kurt Phillips. My girlfriend wanted some free songwriting advice. Johnson asked where we were from. “St. Louis?” he cried. “What are you doing in St. Louis? You’ve got to move to Nashville!” Sure, and once you move to Nashville, you have to move to Austin or New York. There’s always somewhere more happening.