Bluebird Cafe--a Great Place to Start in Nashville

Blair Boies entered the Bluebird Cafe one Sunday night with a guitar, three songs and dreams of stardom.

“This is one of the best places there is, if not the best” for an aspiring country musician to be discovered, Boies said of the tiny cafe here in the capital of country and Western music.

The storefront room with sky-blue walls and green vinyl tablecloths has the relaxed air of a 1960s coffeehouse, and barely enough space to seat 100 people.

But it has helped boost the fledgling careers of several modern country stars, including Steve Earle, Sweethearts of the Rodeo and T. Graham Brown.

The hopeful musicians who perform at the Bluebird say the cafe offers them a friendly crowd willing to give a new performer a chance.

“When you play here, everybody claps. It’s not like a bar. It’s a listening place,” said Frank (Birdie) Saulino.

Saulino is an established songwriter, but he came back to Bluebird with a new band to give the group a live workout.

The crowd is mostly made up of other musicians, both the struggling and the successful. Between sets, the tables buzz with conversation of deals on the verge of closing, of stars considering recording someone’s song.

Record company executives visit in search of new talent.

“Sometimes I go down two or three times a week,” said Mary Martin, head talent scout for RCA Records in Nashville. “In a sea of mediocrity, the Bluebird soothes the heart.”

Gently shepherding the scene is Amy Kurland, 33, who opened the cafe with a friend in 1982.

Sporting long blond hair and a loose cotton dress, Kurland scurries about the club making sure the sound system is in tune, that the singers are ready and that the audience does not talk too loudly during the acts.

“I’m trying to take the magic of that room, and the magic of the people who have moved to Nashville because they’ve got something to say and team them up in the hopes of helping take that to a larger audience,” Kurland said.

A battered copy of “Joy of Cooking” rests on a shelf in her cluttered office in testament to her original notion of operating a serious restaurant. Now she serves snacks and beer and concentrates on the music.

At the heart of Kurland’s mission is “songwriters’ night” every Sunday at the Bluebird. Musicians who pass a one-song audition get a chance to show off three of their best tunes 6 months later along with other hopefuls. They play for free.

Boies, a 24-year-old Texan, wore a faded blue work shirt with his initials outlined in metal studs when he sang his songs of teary farewells at songwriters’ night. “It’s a step toward getting something else accomplished,” he said.

The most dramatic discovery made at the Bluebird was the group Sweethearts of the Rodeo, Kurland said.

“They came here, did a showcase, got a record deal the next day,” she said. “That’s the kind of thing, when that gets published, the next day little girls from the smallest towns in Mississippi call me and want to get on stage.”