Nashville, Tennessee – Thursday April 4, 2013 – This past Tuesday night NSAI’s 21st annual Tin Pan South songwriters festival kicked off in downtown Nashville. Presented by Regions Bank, along with supporting sponsors American Airlines, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, the week long festival covers two shows nightly at nine different venues! Great clubs like The Listening Room Cafe, Belcourt Taps, Commadore Grill, Winners Bar & Grill, Hard Rock Cafe, Douglas Corner Cafe, The Bluebird Cafe, The Rutledge Live Music Venue, and Station Inn will welcome fans to enjoy well known songwriters like JD Souther, Jeffrey Steele and Dave Barns, as well as artists like Jake Owen, Charles Kelley, Joey + Rory, and Ashley Monroe.
Tin Pan South reigns as the world’s largest all-songwriter festival. This year over 350 talented songwriters will perform 90 shows at nine of Nashville top music venues. Over 9,000 music fans attend the event annually to hear songwriters tell stories behind hit songs they have written and perform the songs as they were originally composed.
The Listening Room Cafe, a venue located two blocks south of Broadway, which was founded in 2008 to combine a passion for music and love of great food, made sure to have a great line up the first night. With the first show starting at 6pm, fans got in line about an hour early to make sure they managed to get in to see Josh Osborne, Brandy Clark, Jake Owen and Shane McAnally. Upon arrival we sadly found out that Shane was sick and had to cancel. But this town is never short of a songwriter so on stage came Eric Paslay. Known for co-writing Jake Owen’s number 1 smash hit «Barefoot Blue Jean Night» and Lady Antebellum’s «Friday Night«, he also penned a song that Donnie and Marie Osmond recorded and will be in their new Vegas show. Most recently he penned the latest singles for Love and Theft («Angel Eyes«) and Eli Young Band («Even if it Breaks Your Heart«) while also recording himself.
Josh Osborn, played a brand new song that is on Blake Shelton’s new album, Based On A True Story, which was released March 26th and debuted at the number 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot Country Chart. “My Eyes”, which features Gwen Sebastian, is a sexy song that says ‘….my eyes are the only thing I don’t want to take off of you…’
Other songs he played while mentioning that these were the first song that set everything into motion for him were Kacey Musgraves’ current single “Merry Go Round” and the ACM Award nominated “Come Over” by Kenny Chesney.
Brand Clark added that the first song of hers that made it big was The Band Perry’s “Better Dig Two”. After which she played yet another song that is a big hit at the moment; Miranda Lambert’s current single “Mama’s Broken Heart”.
Jake Owen, the obvious fan favorite, played a few songs that never made it onto one if his albums. To him it’s funny to see where he was back then, when writing these songs, knowing that he’s now happily married and a brand new father. You can see a video of one of these songs below. Also playing “Alone With You” and “Don’t Think I Can’t Love You” which he played when proposing to his now wife during one of his concerts, Jake went ahead telling everybody in the room that he wanted to play a song for his father. After spending three months in the hospital for chemotherapy, tonight was the first time he was able to sleep in his own bed again and as his dad always loved “Somewhere In The Middle Is Who I Am” Jake wanted to dedicate this song to him.
Ending his set with “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” while Eric Paslay joined in, the crowd got exactly what they came for; great music by great musicians.
But that wasn’t all. The great this about this festival is that there are two sessions a night so while everyone had to clear the room fans already started lining up outside again.
Next up were Dave Barns, Charles Kelley, Kevin Griffin (frontman of Better Than Ezra) and special guest Emerson Hart
(the lead singer and songwriter of Tonic). Unlike what people might expect, this is not just a country music festival. Many of the songwriters playing have country music hits but the joy also comes from artists working together and performing together. The atmosphere with these men on stage was electric. Charles Kelley was visibly humbled to sit in between them and play songs like “Own The Night” and “Just A Kiss” while listening to Griffin play Sugarland’s “Stuck Like Glue” and Barns play Blake Shelton’s “God Gave Me You” of which you can also see a video below.
For more information on the annual Tin Pan South festival please go to www.tinpansouth.com
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[sws_grey_box box_size=»600″]What a pleasure to watch these artists at work and see the passion they put into their songs. The crowd was so excited and at one point Charles Kelley got off stage and sat on the floor in the audience to just take it all in. What a night!
Marloes Lucy Duizer – Text & Photo[/sws_grey_box]
