Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key. . .

Okay, so this blog has very little to do with – actually it has nothing to do with – Billy Bragg, Woody Guthrie, Wilco or singing in minor keys, but I’m currently listening to Good Old War sing Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key with Brian Fallon (awesome, by the way) and felt that song title would make a good blog title. So, I stole it. Actually, I did not steal it – that’s wrong. I borrowed it. And gave credit where it was due: Way to go, Billy Bragg (and Woody Guthrie and Wilco, too, I suppose). Good song. Nay, great song.

Aaaaanyway, I am writing (at last) to update you all a little on the happenings here at The BBC of late. Apologies for my tardiness. There has just been so much happening of late that it makes me late in communicating it all to you folks.

So, what have you missed? Or what have I missed commenting on? So much. We recently survived both AMA week and Songposium week. I say “survived” as weeks like these are usually an experiment to see just how long a human being can go without sleep. I’m not sure who holds the record here in the BBC office. It’s a close race. . .

So, AMA week = Magic. We got to see John Fogerty (or “The Foge,” as I like to call him), not once, but twice (!!) and the following people made me cry: Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin, John Prine and Nanci Griffith (their performances were THAT moving – yes, moving)! Perhaps, more importantly for our purposes here at The BBC, we also installed a brand-swanky (yes, swanky)-new photo exhibit by ridiculously rad New Orleans photographer Erika Goldring!!! If you missed the opening (during with Subdude Tommy Malone performed a fantastic set), you need to stop by and check out these awesome shots of folks like: Neil Young, Gillian Welch with David Rawlings, Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy, Delbert McClinton, Wayne Conye, Alison Krauss, John Prine and more! Amazing. I dare you to disagree.

Let’s see. . . what else? A lot else, actually. Songposium week ran September 22^nd-26^th – Songposium is a week of great workshops, super shows and general awesomeness put on by the Nashville Songwriters Association International. There were performances by folks like Eric Kaz, Rivers Rutherford and more of Nashville's always amazing songwriters. All in all, these shows were a hit! Like the ones so many of these Songposium writers have written over the years.

Simultaneously, on the eve of the 26^th, the Bluebird’s very own “Fab Four” were performing at Bluebird On The Mountain at Vanderbilt’s Dyer Observatory. Who are the “Fab Four” you ask? They are Thom Schuyler, Fred Knobloch, Don Schlitz and Jelly Roll Johnson or SKSJ – we’re fans of nicknames around here. Obvi. They have been playing The ‘Bird since the beginning and they have also managed to write many a hit song and win several awards in the meantime: 16^th Avenue, Long Line Of Love, Bobbie Sue, Feels Like Mississippi, The Gambler, Forever And Ever Amen, When You Say Nothing At All. . .Throw in some Grammys, ACM Awards, etc, etc and you have the sum of the Fab Four’s dynamic parts.

The Fab SKSJ (see what I did there? I combined the nicknames) played these songs and more on top of a mountain off of Granny White Pike. It was cooler than I just made it sound. Like, literally (and figuratively). We got rained on at first and then The Schlitz came out and opened the show with Stand A Little Rain and, wouldn’t you know it, it stopped raining and suddenly a bright, beautiful rainbow stretched from one end of the sky to another. Of course. The heavens wouldn’t smite Don Schlitz. . . From then on out, it was all bluebirds and rainbows.

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