Nashville, TN '07 Part Five:

Wow, what a day.

Let me just start out by saying that the BMI building is ridiculous. Gold faucets anyone? It's like Saddam Hussein used to live there. I was wondering if they poured out expensive perfume instead of water but I was wrong.



Since the inspirational message from last time was such a hit (I'm guessing? Nobody left a comment) Here's some more! The top one can be found on the patio of Warner Brother records and the bottom one is found in the lobby of the SESAC building (see below) Click to enlarge!

Today I went to a couple workshops, the first one was a management booking one. They had a really distinguished panel of artist managers, agents and promoters. We talked about the roles of everyone in breaking a new artist and had a chance to ask questions. An interesting thing was that I kept asking questions about touring to one lady who was an artist manager and she just looked straight at me and said that if I was asking those questions that I was ready to tour so who knows, maybe I'll be hitting the road this Summer.

The afternoon session after lunch was spectacular. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings played for us and answered questions. If you've never heard of them, they're a neo-bluegrass duet and they write AMAZING songs. They played one song, "Tear My Steel House Down" which blew me away, I'll have to cover it at open mic sometime.

After the Gillian Welch workshop we went over to SESAC (they're an artist royalty company) for a workshop about Gospel/Christian music. They speakers were Eddie DeGarmo (of DeGarmo and Keys fame) and Brian White (of Brian White and the Justice). I've never heard of them before but apparently they're pretty big wheels in the Christian music machine. (Brian also co-wrote the #1 country song at the moment "Watching You") I was asking questions about the business of writing worship music (something I want to dabble in more) and it was really interesting and informative. I even took a picture with Brian. :)

Later today we went back to the Station Inn for more country music goodness. They had an alumni showcase and some of our clinicians played. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings brought the house down. They are really unreal. It's shocking how someone can be that much better at writing songs than me. I'm not discouraged though, I'm going to dig in my heels and work on improving my writing. :)
I'll leave you with one last image. Nashville is actually not a very big city at all, in fact this is the entire skyline:
Yikes. Well tomorrow is our last day here and we board the bus tomorrow afternoon for the 20 hour bus ride back. I'll do a wrap up report on Thursday or Friday back in Boston. Take care everyone and thanks for reading!