Editor’s Note: This is a partial version of a story that originally ran in Wood&Steel Issue 1, 2023.
Nashville is widely known as the country music capital of the world, so it might seem odd that Music City’s mecca for country songwriters is a tiny listening room tucked into a row of small-business storefronts in a nondescript suburban strip mall.
We’re talking about the legendary Bluebird Cafe, established in 1982 and still in its original location in Green Hills, 10 miles south of the neon sheen and tourist traffic of downtown Nashville’s bars and clubs on lower Broadway and the iconic Ryman Auditorium.
“People say that country artists have the Ryman, and songwriters have The Bluebird,” says Erika Wollam-Nichols, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of the Bluebird. Erika started working at the Bluebird as a waitress while in college back in 1984, two years after founder Amy Kurland opened the place as a gourmet eatery that served lunch and dinner. Erika was there to experience the café’s transition from a restaurant that occasionally featured live music to a hallowed haven for country tunesmiths and listeners.
“Amy had a boyfriend who was a guitar player,” she recalls. “He asked her if she would put up a little stage, and he would bring his friends to play. So that’s how the music started. When I first started here, it was bands. It wasn’t a songwriter’s venue.”
“When Amy came in that night, the room was completely engaged in the songs,” Erika says. “She also saw that the cash register printed out more sales than ever before. “She was like, maybe the songwriter thing is something to look into.”
In many ways, the Bluebird’s homey, largely unchanged interior décor — with its weathered wooden chairs, vinyl table cloths, worn carpeting, drop-panel ceiling and wall of signed headshots of past performers — give it a quaint, throwback charm that underscores a lack of interest in chasing trendy styles. With a seating capacity of just under 90, and with performers often playing “in-the-round”-style sets, close enough to set their drink on a patron’s table, the venue has held true to its mission of honoring songwriters and their craft by providing an intimate environment for them to workshop their original material and connect with listeners.
“I’ve seen Vince Gill hand his guitar to a table sitting next to him,” Erika says.
If you’re interested in soaking up the rich history of the Bluebird and its important contributions to Nashville’s songwriting community, check out the excellent 2019 documentary Bluebird: An Accidental Landmark That Changed Music History. The film traces the café’s evolution into a songwriter-centric showcase room that helped launch the careers of countless writers and artists like Kathy Mattea, Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, Keith Urban, Taylor Swift and others. An array of songwriting hitmakers, performing artists, Bluebird staffers and others pepper the documentary with stories that reveal how the music club became a vital part of the musical ecosystem in Nashville.
