A Word on Words; 3104; Amy Kurland

on guns in the once again welcome to a word on words i guess is any girl in the red pleasure that here at five minute talk about the bluebird cafe scrapbook that is your book just out how often tries to talk to me about the bluebird cafe is yours you're the founder the owner the operator but now that i have read the bluebird cafe struggle i know that there are many other people our involvement with you and i'm impressed that people who work for you in your view really work with you and they're all in here along with some were great music writers and performers in the country but tech talk jerry love about what made the cafe which made the book you know i started the cafe in nineteen eighty two in june to celebrate your twentieth anniversary and i really never had big intentions for of all i was just looking to open a restaurant in green house i grew up in the neighborhood and i was looking to do

something fun and hang out with my musician friends and then you take a course i had taken some cooking classes but the live music was purely by accident and when i would say i was in business i realized that i knew and then the first thing many of the cooking the business the music or anything else that i was having to make it up figuring out as i was going along and so i know that any cronin didn't make the bluebird cafe what it is it is the culmination of all the work of many many employees over the years and all the songwriters that approaches a human musicians are and whatever we're outside force it takes to make something a success of location and end just bring grace liu talk in in the early part of the book about that opening piece by you that anyone a place and then the idea came along about music while you eat and and then you tell us that as jonathan around for a place to look in on an oak's

but allowing one hundred thunder and one places to avoid the other was to grab a half and that finally settled there and green hills convenient so the place where housewives mother's professional women and then shopping employees have some food and then the idea for the joe about that about let's put music and food and drink together three vices virtues and revise it is now the book this book is a love letter from me doesn't the people do you about their experiences therein the one that jumps off the page right away from your father gave you want to and why it had basically his advice was don't go into the music business people

that i have done very well in the show we have a bygone music himself sure we moved to nashville my father's a violinist he came here to teach a peabody college and then basically got out of their college professor business to get into the recording industry and shelly sterling was actually i was the oldest string sound on lot of the great country hits from he stopped loving her day her honey to just myriad others so he knew better than anybody that they could make a living in the music business well you get these music and their show this anonymous now after all these years and strangely a partisan on them now in the line to make people involves of the bluebird wine really tickled about that i really like to think of the bloomberg is one of the few open doors the place where no matter how new yorker this business no matter

in just got here and that sometimes can take in and say come on and will give you a chance on until that magical about that and now signatures from people have had the big hats to come back and played and i want to well and that's the other thing that's fascinating to me there are there are entertainers who come there who may have written songs won most of those entertainers come there because somebody performing who wrote songs for them i can remember that there's one there that was a visit by waylon jennings and john wooden came close chapman of solidifying i love that story because there's whalen you know great former many many years on the road in doing it just as nervous out there in the round as the brand new guy that's right end and he's sitting on the state

capitol a couple boys an elevator and he notices that people are gaping room and he asked you know where these people are connected and the writer says the right of the four was what you are women getting dog with it right which is a great line this deal gave you a little lump will comment that you've right in the fall but also the dedication you know vince has played at the blue bird since before he moved to nashville before he was a name at all during that the lean years and he has continued i mean we all know vince is one of the great generous and gracious man in the music business in those benefits and charity events all the time and he is a guy who still continues to come out and see his friends play to check into it doesn't worry that i'm too famous to come to the boomer plays

there all the time and it was very easy for me to say advanced you want to write something for the book and that is so i answer was a lot of his stories he didn't think he want people to know that about him but he was willing to read the dedication and i was thrilled and then the judge chose to come and do when he would just move them around value alito do you know if you stand in a parking lot and he says that at night to claim that he thought the idea of it and now i will say the gun was found early as riders to play i'd done either got me into the writer's mind business for almost kept me out of it because they were awfully nice and on plane where the staff had to come out from behind the bar and sit at tables so that he in many ways dont years ago he told i totally know at they've located here songwriters

he comes out and he doesn't get a monthly basis in the only charges a dollar so clearly he thinks people will play but only a few why did they make it on that and then there is the story can't imitate launch further by capping was just another one of those young singers looking for a place to fly in the fall a baby killer same time we had just opened for business and she came out and played no last saturday nights at the beginning that i sell for a record deal and thrilled that our beginnings in her it was worth the same time and she also has been a very good and loyal friend a recent talk about this concept and around and as it's described you can i haven't been there overnight when the room around that sounds of its drugs and it's really a square for musicians facing the killing each other in the center of the room and in fact we can give credit to fred know walk in dallas let's lay did think that up only you

really can't give them credit for the idea of musicians sitting in a circle and playing songs together but you do it commercially they thought that out i mean it's an old the oldest of treatment was just songwriters plane together but to do it the boulevard where the audience sitting around them almost as if you're in the living room with them i everybody doing their song swap would you know i'll do this one woman a top you with that one and that show is perfect in a room it's very intimate feeling thing is very inside it lends itself to a lot of conversation a lot of talk about creativity opportunities for the guitar players to just chime in with something others didn't sing harmony it's a magical formula use the word magical and trisha yearwood uses exactly the same word is from the whole aura the cafe she says it is a magical place out you we walked in there and seven o'clock in the morning though

it's seen to be absolutely nothing magical about it right and that's absent right you have to do the most magical ingredient is when the guitars and songwriters get their only just happen to have the right shape and the light colored paint on the walls to add salt or the formula chile about a negro to get you know it's a great story how you know when you write all these celebrities and i asked him to send a special memory or a story and you just don't know what you can get in the bloomberg is famous for the fact that we shift people many of people have been offended by the fact that they paid him a dollar attend our cover charge and then been told to be quiet when they're an adolescent the music but they might feel better to know that amy grant leaned back into one of those candles on the table since our hair on fire people are patting her down and trying to keep her from going up in smoke and all we really had to offer was kgb quietly and

terrible smell o and he's not the only one we've got to get different candles well when you talk about the stars bump faith says she started out there singing with gary they feel gary bauer an end and he's says you know she got a contract i think while she was there i hate to use the word chick singer but a lot of bands like to get a girl female lead singer sing with them and carrying that faith in i picked her out of the crowd and said why don't you come in and play with my band i need somebody to sing duets with a new female voice for some of my songs and he had abandoned she was the chick singer and she had the kind of talent obviously that help people just

paper and say that somebody is going to get a record deal and it's so trisha yearwood was there as the chick singer with pat i'll just bet one point it's another way you can get discovered the blue ribbon on real proud of both of those well i use a for those of you just tuning in on talk with amy pearl about her new book the bluebird cafe scrapbook and doug and for those who don't know about the bluebird cafe scrapbook it is a place that's famous not just across the country but indeed morally musicians around the world lay out the very strong i know about the bluebird cafe in the same way that they know about nationally music sitting up part of canadian the fascination of the book is the way you create some sidebars major goal there are these letters notes stories that have come in from a number of people getting one from a former assistant fire chief who said the place caught on

fire you blew a fuse the first night to opening night and our widowed another lovely story but the talk about the little sidebars military about the sidebars as we sent out the letters were probably sent two hundred or more letters that will play their often i discovered that was one group of people who would not certain stories fact that was the blues players i'm gary nicholson mike anderson can afford all these blues players who had been there many many times over the years and we couldn't get anything back and we would have a book that was gonna leave out a very important part of the one third which was the blues night and i said all right they were right to as well just write about them let's do a sidebar to do blue monday did did something about le monde and then i thought well as well have done that and let's make sure that we give a little bit of credit to the most important people played their some of them did write letters in and so we did a sidebar about to adjourn now not don schlitz of internet gary bauer it just to make

sure that we're clear to those people and to ourselves just below our fame came from i would never believe that you told arab ok he says aimee aimee goodbyes and rushing in those korea said of the long view when you're alone i remember proposing to hand oh that was so nice of got it's interesting because that chapter is an example where we wrote all these people and so many people wrote back with bare memory of the night guards played i played before guards employed after guards got played when i was supposed to play golf did this that the other end it's love stories conflict they don't tell the story and then we wrote guys and said you know would you like to weigh in here and he wrote back a

tremendous letter the kind of thing that if i'm having a black day i can open up the guards letter and say i must have been seven and hear us talk about some layer parts of the book you there are photographs of photographs that for a bomb and they are and i'm sure really an innocent for you might be fun if we could just look at some low for grabs and you could tell us how well john el masri if you're attacked asked me who is the most popular person a place a blue bird who does the best business who i think is the artist who should have had the biggest career yet be answered all three of those questions is john ahmad a lot of them are looking ahead a baby maybe it is such a tremendous talent she has been the best fed friend to the

bluebird they'll back in the slack years i knew that i could make payroll if we were having a general friday night so allen and she's still plays she plays all my anniversary shows and christmas shows and if you don't know who john the master's run right out see a show by one of her records she's incredible well i'm speaking in that photo album let me just mention my colleague and paulson who came to the idea of a first amendment nights and those of them one of the vents for us and gann says james madison lot of the bluebird cafe but there's a photograph in there i think from oil but from oil from first amendment night they rate and this was from the first year slashing payments lying island couple things about this one if you can i have your own business you might as well make three do something useful with that some of the time we do benefits would do concerts for children we do concerts for senior citizens

and to be able to get out and celebrate the first amendment what could be a better use of a live music venue to work with ten thousand the first amendment center is great and horrifying and i she may see thing about is how much support to me not to be the pun intended that one no place that we don't just do country singer songwriters but we do some rock and we do some blues and we try to have a certain amount of diversity of music excluding the things i just don't like an hour she had known for a long time and it's a spotter gavin hood he was terrific i think he may have played for both the alamo phone we have some or photographs of whom i just take a look at if you can give us a peek at the next one maybe they'd rather look at me in the control room of abandoned then you also going to

be the recipes i mean there are recipes for sue but silent fauntroy is a wonderful pasta dishes and you took during us is to start this place but amazingly there are great starters songwriters who got recipes there are other favorites talk a little bit about that aspect of the book it came about because we thought we were going to do a cookbook we said bluebird cafe you what's what's been remarkable marketable out there will write to a bunch of stars who played there and get them to send a recipe and we sent the letters we said and send a little memory of the place along with your recipe and the first ten things that came and the story was more exciting than the recipe to change lives whether the book changed a little bit so we said let's write a history a scrapbook of the boulevard based on people's memories but we did continue to keep but having the recipes come in because we wanted to

include that after all we are a restaurant we have recipes people asked for it and to be able to have the faithfuls coca cola caper the dixie chicks chicken recipe or actually cleveland's mexican dish and there is traffic and there are people who really love that honey i think the dixie chicks love to cook goes on at that three separate recipes from we get on them as our poll was also an aspect of it that time so said no to their little obituary people who performed well and who and who made a difference memories linger on loan to the people who are at the place that you know some very important people that were they still alive we would've asked them for a ladder there are people who are part of the bluebird story and just because they have passed away doesn't mean we didn't want to include them

and once we get started with that just like that chapter means a lot to me how wits a way of remembering people who maybe had their careers cut short or how well mom a price so was a regular at the bluebird for years and ten million pictures of the bluebird as she is it in their pictures and of course our panel daniel and ralph vitello who both were some my original people play the bluebird all the time and they were there before the bluebird open they paint did and they came in and help me decide where to set the tables i wouldn't have wanted to lead them out and so then in the back of the book you know some of them of the bluebird cafes across the country and they're not there and they're very special places unless the divine how you decided who made the cut for this book but but it's not just a place like chicago or los angeles or new york atlanta well armed rulers and ill where music is a

dominant theme places like decatur georgia and cambridge massachusetts as for north carolina the average egyptian from about how you decided that you're gonna do for the other places whether in other places like to be where i am i guess there is something of a sisterhood of columbus out they're the ones that you can call and say howdy and so and so do for you the ones that you know they've been doing the same thing we are putting the music first and a couple of the owners are struggling every day and they're doing their own plumbing to support the music business are and so i'm at one point we took the women on the road women around on the road and we went to the canal street tavern in ohio and i do the left that place that i experienced and i know it's a great place to go is no music in that that pie is working so hard to

adjust the bottom line in europe it's probably the largest venue we mention otherwise but if someone's going by these book and they love to go out to listen to music in a good and listening atmosphere i am a little clue where else they can go and that traveling around with this great let me and ask you if you if you have a favorite story in the book i will have to really couldn't come up with a favorite although i do love bernie pittman story we asked a lot of former employees for their memories and that murray was there yes young man came to everyone is about sixteen i'm very proud that he's grown up to become a chef in new york city where he's worked in some truly fine restaurants but has his story about being a chef or anything else it's know about it's about the days when he was the guy who clean the bathrooms and he describes that he was cleaning up that day and he opened the door

to the ladies room to come across melissa etheridge pants pulled down just getting finished with whatever she was doing in there and he says it must be one of the few men in the world of ever seen her half clothed if that kind of story is also one of the stories of the bluebird that could only be told by the staff their kitchen help the musicians i don't know the story i loved marshall chapman story and tell us a story that somehow seemed to me there's one story that led to that some analysts say i brought home blank owner who told us what you remember there's a story in the book well young woman who is now stone co writer came there and her age in her in truth for the game go up between two of the sets who she had been her

best and the audience didn't respond to supposedly one she had three korean still didn't respond so when she realized she had missed the first set the second set comes on some of your life she's in tall cotton from these are real professional you remember those well it's interesting because that story comes along so many times but i think you mean janis am major major star and came to the bloomberg to suddenly discovered that the bluebird but the nashville is such an amazing place for music and that he's she may have been a grammy winning artist and the biggest star in the world but that when you get to nashville you're in a whole other realm welcome you are mentoring and newfoundland but this particular you know i hope will get the chance to another but let's see how this one sells on but there are people whose stories with you we're unable to include their new

stories happening all the time and no photographs being taken on and it's just been so much fun who knew the thing off there could be this much fun what is fun she knows it's fun and we run out of time and talk with a negro and about anew the bluebird caf a scrapbook and thank you for being here thank all of you for watching and just a lull for lower the breeding london's it you know once again welcome to word on words i guess is tina

mcelroy ansa welcomed or own words you know whether that's the name of this book and you know better and none i am fascinated by three characters you create and that's what an essay by six characters in this book but there are three mystical almost as real characters and i wonder where the idea came from to put boeing three women in the same family very real flesh and blown all why are vital passionate women bombed with these other three

discovery one is my fourth novel all of my art my novels deal with the supernatural in some way you are i am a little southern girl i grew up in macon georgia india fifties and sixties and the time when i remember that stories were so that in the end it was stories all ramp but they will go stories everywhere i what i started writing fiction i was a journalist for many years and i was one of four seven girls always wanted to write stories always wanted to write fiction and when i started to work seriously i my first novel on it was just sort of hanging in the air i remembered the stores of my grandfather's home i'll when i was growing up i especially among african american people go stores were were woven through our live it wasn't just you know walking out to tell stories about the real world and now that it's local stories go stores were part of what was told migrating at local stores that teaches moral lessons you know you live this way even the goddess like my great grandmother told us go stores the commerce down you know grandmama old you know and she may be dying so