Nashville Cats
So 40 or so years ago I took my first trip to Nashville.
I was riding shot gun with my uncle Roosevelt who was delivering a load of fertilizer to some place in town. I was constantly thumping on my guitar so he drove the truck through the music district to show me all the places where the music was made.
Just so happened that the Lovin Spoonfuls’ Nashville Cats was popular at that time so uncle Rose and I were singing that as we drove down Broad Street.
The song says there are 1352 guitar pickers in Nashville, I am thinking that is significantly underestimated.
This past week I had the chance to hang for a few days in the guitar town.
Through nothing but blind luck I wound up staying and a Holiday Inn Express right next to Vanderbilt’s football stadium.
I had no idea that it is one of the cities hot spots for singer songwriters, and for the three nights I was there I probably heard 50 folks plying their trade.
Most were very good and some were damn good!
Debi Champion put this together with the help of Lorna Flowers.
Both of these ladies by the way are accomplished song writers and Lorna happened to be celebrating an anniversary of sorts one of the nights I was there.
You can check out the commodore at this link
http://www.myspace.com/commodoregrill
It was pretty wild to sit there and listen to wave after wave of folks take the stage and do a song writer in the round for a couple tunes each then surrender their seats to the next batch.
Folks can audition for a spot at the end of certain nights and get invited back of they have good stuff.
There was a great range of material being presented and while I don’t do much in the way of country country, I appreciate the form.
I was really impressed with one fellow, Trent Jeffcoat who had several songs that were really strong for this form. Probably one of the best car songs I have ever heard, and a couple really funny thrown in too.
His myspace link is