Song Sung Blues

Tin Pan South

April 2-7 at various venues around town

For information, visit www.nashvillesongwriters.com, or check this week’s Tin Pan South program insert in the print edition of the Scene

Being a songwriter in Nashville, even a successful songwriter, is a little like being a surrogate parent. After a long, solitary gestation period, you bring something into the world, only to hand it off to someone else. From then on, in the eyes of the public, you are no longer the parent. If you’re lucky, you get a check that reminds you of your part in the baby’s creation. But somebody else still has your baby—and all the holidays, the attention, the kind words of strangers that come with it.

That makes the annual Tin Pan South event the equivalent of a week’s custody and visitation rights for Nashville’s songwriting community. Starting Monday, for the next six days, the spotlight in Nashville clubs is not on the singer but the song—and more importantly, the songwriter. The event is billed as a festival, but it’s just as much a convention, a celebration, a networking opportunity, and a social outing for people who spend much of their days holed up in offices and practice rooms. It’s also a public show of solidarity for the city’s songwriting community, from the highest-rolling hit-millers to the folks who peddle their tapes up and down the Row every week without fail.

Tin Pan South, the brainchild of Nashville Songwriters Association International, posits Music City as the modern-day heir to New York’s legendary Tin Pan Alley, the hub of music publishing in the early 20th century. There craftsmanship and commerce collided on a daily basis, as some of America’s great popular tunesmiths competed for sheet-music sales with ditty specialists and hacks for hire. That’s as apt an analogy for current country radio as anyone could devise. Especially since country, unlike rock or rap, depends on a steady stream of material that isn’t generated by the artists themselves. Look at this year’s Tin Pan South lineup, and you’ll see a number of songwriters who constantly juggle their craft with the demands of the marketplace.

This doesn’t always make Tin Pan South the most exciting of music events. Too many shows this year feature writers-night lineups you can see most any weekend at the Bluebird. That breeds only complacency—or worse, cozy self-congratulation. The best moments at past Tin Pan South events have come from the unlikeliest pairings—such as Lucinda Williams banging her head with open-mouthed glee to the pure-pop ready-mades of the Smithereens’ Pat DiNizio. It would be great to see Nashville’s finest matched up against the best tunesmiths on the popular-music front today, whether it’s Britney Spears/Backstreet Boys wunderkind Max Martin or the Magnetic Fields’ standards-of-tomorrow supplier Stephin Merritt. The festival could use a lot more outside talent, if for no other reason than to show how strong Music City really is in comparison.

As Tin Pan South prepares for its 10th anniversary next year, these issues are worth keeping in mind. So is the wealth of Nashville songwriting talent located outside the country-music industry, from Bill Lloyd and Swan Dive’s Bill DeMain to up-and-comers like The Shazam’s Hans Rotenberry and the What Four’s Jason Phelan. So are the many songwriting talents who work outside a verse-chorus format—jazz artists, instrumentalists, world music performers. Granted, the festival operates on a limited budget. But we bring up these ideas only to suggest how great Tin Pan South can be, and what potential it has to enrich and invigorate the city’s songwriting community.

At best, over the next six days, you’ll frequently encounter songwriting of an unusually high caliber of professionalism, tunefulness, and accessibility. At worst, you’ll get a crash course in everything that’s killing country music, from bumper-sticker cash-ins and follow-the-leader trend-sucking to faceless, featureless co-writes that barely reflect the workings of one mind, let alone two. But there’s too much good music on hand for you to settle for less. Below, we’ve identified some of the highlights of this year’s Tin Pan South festivities:

Joy Riders Joy Lynn White, perhaps the city’s most undervalued country talent, performs with fiddle player Tammy Rogers, songwriter/producer Angelo (“Believe Me Baby (I Lied)”), and Duane Jarvis, the rare person who gets to co-write with Lucinda Williams. (7 p.m. April 4, Bongo After Hours)

Guy Clark Wanna learn how to write vivid, personal, richly detailed country songs that are nevertheless commercially viable? Hell, we don’t know, but it’s worth a lot more of your time to check out the man who wrote “Dublin Blues,” “Texas Cookin’,” and a half-dozen of the coolest story-songs ever. With Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane, and Verlon Thompson. (7 p.m. April 4, 6º)