Five Grammy Nominees Deliver Appealing Impromptu Showcase

Every year during Grammy season, the Bluebird Cafe, the famous restaurant-cum-songwriters’ workshop in Nashville, hosts a showcase featuring a handful of nominees. At the Troubadour on Monday, nominees Tracy Nelson, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Trisha Yearwood, Randy Scruggs and Ashley Cleveland sat together on the stage and took turns performing songs.

The showcase may have been keyed to the Grammys, but unlike the tightly programmed awards telecast, this group performance was appealingly impromptu. If someone wanted to jump in and add a harmony to someone else’s song, they did so. And while Nashville tends to be regarded as a musically conservative hit factory, these performers eagerly leaped around different styles.

Cleveland, a major Nashville songwriter, worked a blues-folk vein with her powerfully rough-hewn vocals. Chapman, another major Nashville hitmaker for other singers, contributed a few moving ballads--including a duet with guest vocalist Bonnie Raitt--that echoed Joni Mitchell’s more inward-looking work.

Yearwood, a three-time nominee this year and arguably Nashville’s finest purveyor of country-pop, sang her nominated songs with typical force and clarity. Scruggs played some charming bluegrass instrumentals, and Nelson, accompanied by singer Marcia Ball, got nasty with some traditional blues. All five performers were so strong, it will be tough to see any of them lose tonight.