Puckett’s Grocery Open Mic: Rising Star 4

That's me in green!

Franklin, TN is a known hot bed for spotting country music stars and celebrities out doing day to day errands. You might see Brad Paisley at Ben and Jerry’s or Carrie Underwood at Publix. However it’s also home to an up and coming open mic that is quickly on its way to the top of a must visit for the Nashville open mic crowd. Enter Puckett’s Grocery. The restaurant/venue/grocery store is not home to just any open mic though, for the next 2 months its home to the Rising Star 4 Songwriter Competition. I heard about Puckett’s, held every Tuesday at 6, from some new friends I found at the Bluebird, which was on Monday. So I decided to reschedule my guitar lessons and head out for the second night in a row to a Nashville open mic.

As I made my way through the narrow entrance I wasn’t sure what to expect, but quickly found myself in a cozy southern style eatery with a great local musician playing cover tunes on the Chapman Stick. Definitely better than, and not at all, what I expected. I grabbed a seat at the bar, as most of the tables were reserved for people eating, and spent the 20 minutes before sign-ups started talking to one of my bluebird pals about everything from Chuck Wayne, to Ozzy.

The Process

6pm rolled around and Keith Mohr, the creator of Rising Star, announced that sign ups had begun. The 24 slots were quickly filled. I was number 7, but that didn’t seem to have any bearing on when I actually played. The open mic was MC’d by Wally, whose enthusiasm excited the energy in the already packed house. He explained that the open mic/contest would run in rounds of 4 people, making a total of 6 rounds. I was in round number 5, playing in the number 18 slot over all. Wally also took the time to pass out score cards to everyone in the house, which was about 75 people. They allowed for a rating system, which would later be used to determine the “audience choice” winner. Basically a 1 was saying “Meh, I need a few more beers to get down with this”, and 5 was “YES!”.

A ton of great songs and great songwriters played that night. The aforementioned audience choice and the judges choice winning slots, were not clearly occupied by anyone when the last chord rang out. As the judges tallied the votes and made there final decisions, one special guest judge John Foster got up and played a few songs. My favorite being a hilarious song about the sometimes arduous task of co-writing on music row. Unfortunately at that time Franklin was getting hammered with a severe T-storm, which not only kept knocking the power out, but also turned 4th street into a river, so Foster’s set was slightly over shadowed by the potential tornado producing storm outside.

After he was done, Wally got back up on stage and congratulated all of the writers on one of the most successful Rising Star nights yet. There really were many strong writers in the house that night. As he got ready to announce the judges choice he kept looking over at me, which I took as a good sign. It was. He called out my name (Jimi Anderson) as the judges choice winner! After the crowd cooled back down he announced Johnathan Hepner, as the audience choice winner. This was funny to me because we were both recruited to Puckett’s by the same guy, who we both met at the Bluebird Cafe open mic the night before.

You’re couch isn’t going to lead you to a writing deal.

To me that is the reason to go to open mics. You never know who your going to meet, who will lead you to your next opportunity. What I’ve learned in Nashville and in music so far is that the path to success is like a room full of randomly placed dominoes, and in the beginning you need to knock as may single dominoes over until you find one that starts the whole room tipping over. There is a lot of luck involved, but part of that luck is being out there and giving luck a chance to help you out.

If incredible talent and networking opportunities aren’t enough to get you out to Puckett’s on a Tuesday night, try this on for size: The overall winner gets $500 and plays a round at Puckett’s with some legendary writers. I’ll be playing in the semi-finals on September 22, 2009, go out and play and maybe you will be to.

Bluebird Cafe Open Mic

Let me start by saying I hope you’re reading this in line at the Bluebird Cafe for next Monday’s open mic because you need to be there already if you want to play.

Don’t Be Late

Arriving around 5pm, which I thought was early, for the start of sign-ups at 5:30, I located the first available parking space. This happened to be three strip malls down in front of a Verizon store on Hillsboro Pike. I quickly found myself about 80 people deep in the line of guitars and sweaty songwriters. It was hot.

After chatting with my line neighbors about the heat, the line, the stickers on this guys guitar case ,and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation the line started to move. As I inched closer it became apparent that not everyone was going to get in, but I held out hope, and did eventually make it through the door. 35 people did not even make it into the venue so I stress, get there by 5 if you want to be sure you’re going to get in. 4 of those people were my girlfriend and company, so I was on my own in the mecca of the Nashville songwriters universe.

By that time seating in the Bluebird (75 person max occupancy) was all but gone. I filled out my name on the sign up ticket ( a scrap of paper) and tossed it into the first try bin. Anyone who showed up at an earlier date and didn’t play gets priority, there were bins for 1st and 2nd timers. I squeezed my way passed the bar where I picked up a can of Bud Light thinking there was a two drink minimum (there wasn’t), and made my way to the only place left to stand. For the first hour and a half of the show I was pretty much standing in line for the bathroom, watching the show via mirror strategically hung above the bar for the people lucky enough to call that spot home.

After everyone had settled, the substitute MC Steve Goody got up on stage and went through the rules and general procedures of the night, which were pretty much be ready to play, say your number (I was 32!), play your song, and get off the stage so the next person can play. All in all 59 people signed up, but only about 35 got to play.

So far I guess I could have expected the crowd outside and I could have expected the somewhat rushed performance situation,  it is the bluebird after all, but what I didn’t expect was the level of talent. It wasn’t surprising in that it was the best I’ve ever heard at an open mic, in fact I thought the open mic I played at the Commodore Sports Bar had a much better pool of talent. Like I said it is the Bluebird, so my theory is that anyone passing through town is going to choose that open mic over any other exclusively because of the venue’s reputation as the #1 songwriters hang in the #1 songwriters town. About 8 of 10 songs were average to weird, and I’m not saying that from any kind of arrogant standpoint, everyone there thought the same thing.

That being said there were some great writers too, but they were few and far between. Some of which you’ll read about in my next post.

When it finally came my time to play I had secured at seat at the bar and found a volunteer videogropher, so I was ready. I made my way to stage as the first first timer to play that night, plugged in and stomped out my song ” Life Leaves Me Alone” Check out the video below!

I was very well received, and made my way back to my seat through a barrage of business cards and good jobs, which made me feel great because, it’s the friggin Bluebird! I got the chance to talk to Trent Jeffcoat who is a new writer for Montage Music. I first heard about him at the NSAI pitch to publisher night I wrote about here. Trent is a great writer and seemed like a down to earth guy. Anyone paying attention to the Billboard charts will surely see his name there as a writer or an artist sometime in the next few years.

Was it worth it? Yes!

Those kind of experiences are why playing open mics is a great thing to do. Are you going to get signed to a staff deal just from playing open mics? Probably not, but they do provide a great opportunity to meet people at all levels of the hustle, guys like Trent who are about to break out, and people like you and me who hope to be where Trent is now, a few years down the road. Everyone has something to offer, and that means there is always something to learn.

On Deck

In my next post I’ll elaborate on how playing the Bluebird Cafe open mic lead me to another (better) open mic that lead me to being in the semi-finals of a songwriter competition at Puckett’s Grocery in Franklin, TN. Oh yea and that was in less than 24 hours! Check back tomorrow for that story and leave some comments if you’ve had similar experiences at the Bluebird or know of any other open mics I should check out around Nashville!