When a song strikes deep, time seems to disappear with everything else.
I’ve long thought music has a way of reaching parts of us that our conscious mind can’t always make sense of. There are feelings buried somewhere beneath the language we use every day, emotions we may recognise without ever being able to properly articulate them. Then the right song comes along and somehow communicates with that part of you directly.
I find myself reflecting on this whenever I think about my time at The Bluebird Cafe, forever a Nashville icon and a place where songwriting is elevated to the highest of arts.
My mind immediately goes back to country music legend Jimmy Fortune singing “Too Much on My Heart”.
He’s sitting only a few metres away, guitar in hand, huddling with three other songwriters in the centre of this tiny room while a lucky crowd of ticket-holders sit in the round in this gorgeous little cottage-style house. Behind him, fairy lights glow against the Bluebird’s blue wall. As he sings, the edges of the room seem to soften. For a few minutes, all I can really see is Fortune framed by this hazy circle of blue and gold.
Then I realise I’m crying. A lot.
At first, it’s quiet enough that I hope nobody notices. Tears start running down my face, and I’m slightly embarrassed by how completely the song has caught me off guard. I look across the circle and notice an older blonde woman sitting opposite me. She’s looking straight at me, and when our eyes meet, she doesn’t immediately turn away. There’s something knowing in her expression. Soon I can see tears forming in her eyes as well.
I look around and realise the room is full of people struggling to hold themselves together. My own quiet tears have become something closer to weeping while Fortune keeps singing a song he wrote more than 40 years ago. “Sometimes it feels we’re worlds apart, and I’ve got too much on my heart”.
This kind of emotional proximity is built into The Bluebird Cafe.
As a lifelong fan of live music and believer in its unique, communal power, I’ve been privileged enough in my career to see some incredible things. A private concert from Beyoncé in Dubai, JAY Z with a homecoming crowd and the Statue of Liberty in the background. Sigur Rós, Radiohead, Coldplay, The Prodigy, Kanye West, The National, Max Richter, Underworld, Stevie Wonder, The Roots – I’ve seen so many memorable concerts throughout my life, but watching Fortune sing through this tune in this space ranks above the best. Emotion, above all else, is what makes something really stick,
The venue sits in an unassuming strip mall on Hillsboro Pike, around five miles south of downtown Nashville. There are only 90 seats inside, packed around small tables in a room that feels remarkably modest considering its place in American music history.
The Bluebird opened in 1982, initially as a restaurant before founder Amy Kurland introduced live music after dinner. Writers’ nights followed in 1984, and a year later came In The Round, the format that would become synonymous with the venue.
Four songwriters sit knee-to-knee in the centre of the room with the audience gathered around them in a loose circle. They take turns playing, sometimes joining each other with a harmony or a few chords. Between songs, they talk about how the music came together and what was happening in their lives when they wrote it.
That conversation is every bit as important as the performance.
We usually meet a successful song much later in its life. There’s a famous singer attached to it and a polished arrangement surrounding it. It passes through radio, playlists, bars and cars until you’ve heard it so many times that you can sing every word without ever wondering who first sat down and wrote them.
At the Bluebird, you’re sitting a few metres from that person.
You hear about the relationship behind a lyric or the conversation that became a chorus. Something you might have sung absent-mindedly for years can suddenly acquire an entirely different emotional weight once you understand what existed before the finished song.
Country music is particularly suited to this kind of scrutiny. The genre has always been raw and unusually honest about the messier parts of being alive. Its greatest writers understand heartbreak without needing to romanticise it. They write about regret, ageing, family and the strange persistence of love long after a relationship has fallen apart. Often, the language is deceptively simple. The Bluebird has spent more than four decades giving those writers the room to be heard.
Its history is formidable. Garth Brooks performed here before becoming one of country music’s biggest stars. Kathy Mattea appeared before securing her first record deal. In 2004, a 15-year-old Taylor Swift played the room and caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, who approached her about joining the label he was putting together, which would become Big Machine Records.
Yet the most interesting thing about the Bluebird isn’t necessarily who was discovered here. It’s what happens when the usual hierarchy of popular music is rearranged, and the songwriter moves into the centre.
The person singing may not be the voice you associate with the song. Sometimes you’ve spent years listening to somebody else’s recording without even knowing the name of the person now sitting in front of you. But there is a different texture when a writer performs their own words. They remember what surrounded them when those words were written. A pause can carry history. A lyric can still appear to hurt.
The Bluebird’s “Shhh Policy” keeps the room almost completely silent during performances. With everyone packed so closely together, you become conscious of tiny sounds: fingers moving along guitar strings, somebody shifting in their chair, a voice catching slightly on a particular line.
And sometimes, somebody trying not to cry.
When I think back to Jimmy Fortune singing “Too Much on My Heart”, I don’t remember much beyond the blue wall, those fairy lights and the faces surrounding him. I remember looking at a stranger and understanding that, for reasons neither of us could know about the other, the same song had found something in both of us.
Fortune kept playing, and for those few minutes, nothing else in Nashville existed.
Where to stay in Nashville
The Bluebird Cafe is worth the trip to Nashville alone. And yet, it’s barely talked about beyond Broadway’s famous Honky Tonks, the Grand Ole Opry’s legend and some of the South’s finest cuisine. If you’re heading on through to Music City, consider these places to stay. I stayed at both when I was in town, and each offers a very different slice of this great city.
1 Hotel Nashville
Location is one of the great strengths of 1 Hotel Nashville. You’re just a block from Lower Broadway, so Nashville’s famous strip of neon-lit honky-tonks is an easy walk from the hotel, along with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Bridgestone Arena. Yet you’re removed enough from Broadway’s most raucous stretch that returning to the hotel after a big night of honky-tonk hopping feels like retreating from the city rather than simply moving the party upstairs. That sense of calm suits the 1 Hotels brand beautifully, with greenery, natural materials and a strong sustainability focus giving the property an almost restorative quality in the middle of Downtown Nashville. Expect to pay around US$530 per night on average.
Kimpton Aertson Hotel
Kimpton Aertson Hotel offers a different perspective on Nashville, swapping Downtown’s tourist rush for Midtown and putting you between Vanderbilt University and historic Music Row. The latter is around 0.4 miles away, so you’re close to the recording studios and industry landmarks that helped build Nashville’s musical identity, including the legendary RCA Studio B. The hotel itself is stylish without feeling overly formal, but its best feature on a warm Nashville afternoon is the beautiful eighth-floor rooftop pool, which looks across the Vanderbilt campus and gives you somewhere to slow down between exploring the city and heading out again at night. Expect to pay around US$340 per night on average.
The author explored Nashville as a guest of Visit Music City.
