How The Bluebird Café — an 86-Seat Room in a Strip Mall — Became Country’s Proving Ground

How The Bluebird Café - an 86-Seat Room in a Strip Mall - Became Country’s Proving Ground "You walk out changed": The intimate venue has launched careers from Garth Brooks to Taylor Swift - and continues to define Nashville's songwriting culture. Post Malone at The BluebirdAdam DeGross Trending on Billboard People have tried bribing their way into The Bluebird Cafe. For an independent venue tucked away in a Nashville strip mall, The Bluebird has folks trying to get in at all hours of the day just to get a peak at the storied space that has been instrumental in the careers of giants like Garth Brooks , Taylor Swift and many more. “I would be counting money on a Sunday morning and people would be banging on the door having to get in,” says Bluebird Cafe COO and GM Erika Wollam Nichols . “When I wouldn’t let them in, they came around the back and started waiving $20 bills at me and I’m like, ‘No!’” The enthusiasm would seem outsized for an 86-capacity club five miles outside of downtown Nashville that hasn’t seen much renovation beyond sound system upgrades and regularly changing the carpet. But - like many independent venues that have survived the turbulent live music industry for more than four decades - its allure is in the lore. Before any stars graced the stage, The Bluebird Cafe was a 100-seat restaurant opened by Amy Kurland in a former drugstore turned poolhall in 1982. According to Wollam Nichols (who worked as a waitress at the cafe during her years at university), Kurland’s “goal was to make good food, but she also loved music.” Kurland’s father was an established violinist who created a group of string players for hire in Nashville and helped instill in Amy a love and appreciation for hardworking musicians. The Bluebird’s small stage helped local artists be seen and, on the cafe’s first anniversary, the first musician who regularly appeared there secured a deal with Mercury Records. Originally, the artists were amplified by speakers until an acoustic set was booked and changed the course of the venue. “Amy noticed that it just worked in the room - that acoustic music, everybody listened,” Wollam Nichols says. “And it was like, ‘wait a minute, something is going on here with this.’ The size of the room, the fact that people are sitting and listening and the way that the songwriters were really needing to be heard - that all factored into it. It was an organic recognition.” Soon after that, The Bluebird moved to hosting simply acoustic shows - two shows a night, seven nights a week. By 1984, the venue began holding auditions for songwriters to perform on Sundays for the Writers’ Night and, a few months later, songwriters Don Schlitz (“The Gambler”) and Tom Schuyler (“16th Avenue”) decided the best way to make people listen would be to plant the writers themselves in the middle of the room surrounded by the audience. Wollam Nichols explains, “You...

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