Nashville? Send Me to Garden Grove : * Even the Bluebird, for all its attention on the unsung songwriter, kowtows to the star-making machine.

As a longtime country music fan, I held more than a passing interest in visiting the legendary Bluebird Cafe earlier this month on my first trip to Nashville, the Country Music Capital of the World.

Naturally I also planned to see such other landmarks as the Grand Ole Opry, and it indeed was an awe-inspiring moment to step on stage at the 66-year-old institution that once was host to Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Hank Williams and so many others who ever so much as left a toe print in the sand of country music.

But because I’m always excited about glimpsing the talents of tomorrow, I really looked forward to taking in the Bluebird, a club that has launched hundreds of performers and songwriters.

In one respect, I got what I was looking for at the tiny club (which is in a suburban strip mall shopping center). But in another crucial way, it left me a little homesick for an even tinier country bar right here in Orange County: the Upbeat, quite possibly the Country Music Capital of Garden Grove.

The Wednesday evening I strolled in was “songwriters’ night” at the Bluebird, a room not much bigger and far less elaborate than Santa Ana’s 275-seat Crazy Horse Steak House. As the club’s reputation rests on its accomplishments, not its accouterments, I had envisioned a glorious evening in which the song, not the superstar singer, would be king.

Nashville, you see, even more than its music-mecca counterparts New York and Los Angeles, is unequivocal when it comes to the importance of the songwriter. When was the last time you heard a country record that owed its success to throbbing computerized rhythm tracks or dazzlingly complex studio production work?

Nashville touts its famous “Music Row,” which includes publishing house after publishing house, each with its own stable of staff songsmiths, all toiling to concoct the next country classic.

When I walked into the Bluebird, four singer-songwriters were engaged in a round-robin song-a-thon showcasing their original material. There were no stars among them--the biggest name in the bunch was Russell Smith, ex-lead singer of the Amazing Rhythm Aces--yet the capacity crowd paid rapt attention.

At last, I thought: a place where personality and show-biz hype--image, videos, lip-syncing, lingerie-as-outerwear--take a back seat to the music. But I wasn’t prepared for how much the Bluebird, for all its attention on the (literally) unsung songwriter, kowtows nonetheless to the star-making music-industry machinery. And that’s what brought the Upbeat to mind.

I had anticipated performers chatting between songs, about how a particular song came into being, how this writer solved some sort of structural problem, or how another found the words to express an emotional experience that goes beyond words for most of us. Instead, the repartee centered on which star was preparing to record this song, which publisher had rejected another, and who’s agent that tune was being pitched to.

Applause from the crowd--mostly other aspiring songwriters, it seemed--wasn’t generated by a witty bit of wordplay or an exquisitely crafted verse. The ovations were offered at news that such-and-such song not only was going to be recorded on Mr. White Stetson’s new album, but that it also was in line to be released as a single, thus substantially upping the songwriter’s royalty payment.

It’s the kind of talk you’ll never hear at the Upbeat, a bar that often features crack Orange County country musicians such as Chris Gaffney & the Cold Hard Facts and Patti Booker & the Hired Hands. I wished, just for a moment, that each of the writers in the Bluebird that night could instead be on stage at the Upbeat, where the musician’s goal is to give solace to the lonely guy hunched over a lukewarm beer, or to keep the passions stirring for the amorous couple tucked away in a dark corner.

As the center of the country-music universe, Nashville not surprisingly attracts far more than its share of wanna-be stars, be they performers or songwriters. And perhaps if I’d had more than a pitifully brief three days to explore the city, I’d have found something more akin to numerous clubs I’ve been to in New Orleans, where musicians take gigs because they need to play even more than they need the loose change they wind up with.

With a little more time, I even might have found something approaching the musical Valhalla I encountered in Eunice, La., at a music store where the owner, accordion maker Marc Savoy, had to apologize to his guests at a Saturday morning jam session for having to leave the freewheeling music briefly to sell something to a customer.

But as it was, I came away thinking I probably could have gone on looking forever for something like that in Nashville, where as many would-be singing sensations can be found working its restaurants and gas stations as Hollywood has movie stars and screenwriters biding their time delivering pizzas.

That makes it pretty near impossible to ever forget, really forget, the real reason they’re there: to be discovered. At the Upbeat, maybe the players don’t always receive the same kind of adulation that Bluebird audiences show their peers. But at the Upbeat, the guy at the bar and the couple in the corner know that whoever is onstage that night is up there for them.