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.

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!

Considering that most song critique services start between 20-35 bucks per song, these evaluations more than pay for your annual $150 dollar membership. I’ll do the math for you, lets say a song evaluation service like www.songwriteruniverse.com charges $30 for a single song evaluation (they do). Doing that 12 times would cost you $360 dollars. So if you only used NSAI for its song critiquing services and nothing else, you’d save $210 per year. I like that kind of math.

Since I have 11 more critique credits and 11 million songs I’m going to submit another one as I write this step-by-step guide.

How to Submit

Assuming you are already an NSAI member, go to their website and log in. Mouse over the green members button on the home page and click on song evaluation. Once you’re there you have the option to view the FAQ page and even short bios of the evaluators. You can actually request them by number later in the process, so read the bios.

Click the “Submit your song evaluations button”, and then click online submissions. If you’re capable of reading this blog you should be capable of submitting your song online. From what their FAQ page says, online submissions are returned much faster than mail in submissions and submitting online is 100% more convenient for everyone. Then click the link that says “Submit your song for evaluation”.

Make sure your song is in MP3 format, because they don’t accept any other file type.

Step 1 of the actual submission process is where you put in your title, request evaluators, and ask any specific questions you have for the evaluator. NSAI even lets you choose the severity of the comments you get! Everything from the wimp option “Take it easy I’m a beginner”, to the option everyone serious about the critique should choose “Lay it on me. I can take it!

Step 2 is putting in your lyrics, make sure to spell check and proofread!

Step 3 is uploading your MP3 file. This takes a minute so be patient.

Setp 4 is…there is no step 4, just a page confirming that you’ve completed your submission.

Now We Wait

The whole process takes about 5 minutes if you aren’t writing a blog at the same time. If you’re a member and haven’t been submitting, get it going on, if you’re not a member and you’re serious about writing great songs, sell some stuff on craigslist to get the 150 bucks and do it.

If anyone reading has gone through the process and received their critique let me know how it went in the comment section! If not check back next week for Part 2, where I’ll go through one of my own critiques!

Doors open at 6pm, but a line starts forming around 5 so get there early if you want to be out before 8pm. The listening starts around 6:30 so you do have some time to meet people or at least make small talk with the person your sitting next to. A single verse and chorus is listened to for 99% of the songs, which are alternated between in town and out of town submissions. In reality less than 2 minutes is spent on any song, even the ones that are chosen, which can be frustrating when you’ve sat through 60 songs to simply here the word pass after your hook hits.

I think I’ll Pass.

If you want to leave self-esteem still intact come in knowing that not only will your song have a 1.5% chance of getting picked for a second listen (1 song was chosen of the 64 that were played), but even the best songs only get listened to through the first chorus. So if your big twist comes in the bridge you may want to pick a different song for this event. Bobby made a great point at the beginning of the night; one may feel like its a competition between the writers in the room, but everyone at NSAI on any given day is competing with Rivers Rutherford and Craig Wiseman and everyone else on music row.

Why you should still go.

This ended up being the best publisher night I’ve been to so far because Bobby Rymer filled the occasional down moment, due to a poorly burned or scratched CD, to take questions and give some insight into what he is really looking for. So what is he looking for you ask?

In a word, original. One of his favorite titles of the night was “All over your face” which turned out to be about a blind man able to “see” the pain of  love lost on another mans face. When the title was read aloud before they played the song the room erupted because no matter how old everyone claims to be, we all act like were 11, myself included. Later he explained that he is always dying for that idea that is different. It could be rock, country, jazz or pop but a great idea is a great idea.  However he didn’t take the song because “even though the foundation of the house was great, the walls weren’t put up right”

After all 64 songs had been played there was some time left so he let the group throw some more questions at him, which prompted the most insightful, moment of the night.

Mr. Rymer let out that when he listens to a writer he wants to hear the songs that said writer would play or listen to when no one else is around. The new stuff. Also saying that he is never looking for the next Craig Wiseman or Jeffrey Steele, he is looking for the first Jimi Anderson or the first you. He isn’t looking for radio clone writers, hes looking for the people who are going to set the new standards.

Get Here.

Overall what I’ve come to realize about NSAI workshops is that there are a lot of reasons to go, but the guest speakers and publishers always end up dropping at least one great idea like the one above, and one like that alone is worth the $150 annual fee. So put on your thickest suit of armor and I’ll see you in August! (I’ll be the guy getting passed on right before or after you do.)

I’m starting this blog with the intent of posting some quality song writing information, whether it be craft, reviews of songwriter events, social networking experiences etc. this is my first post and I’m just figuring out how to use my blog!

If you’re here you should check out www.myspace.com/jimiandersonmusic