Nashville is known as “Music City” for good reason. Virtually every song you hear on a Country radio station was written within a few square miles of downtown Nashville.
For the most part, those songs weren’t written by the person who sings them on the radio.
That’s what makes Tin Pan South such a memorable event for Country Music fans.
For five days, from March 28 through April 1, more than 400 songwriters will take the stage at ten different venues. They’ll play the songs they wrote that were made famous by the stars you listen to.
“We will go and we will do a couple hour show, four of us, and we’ll kind of take turns,” says Lee Thomas Miller, who has penned 7 number one hits. “That's the way the Nashville songwriter round works and that's what Tin Pan South will be. I’ll tell you a story behind the song that you don't know, then I’ll sing it and hopefully, if you’re a big enough fan that you've come to Nashville to see Tin Pan South, you’re probably going to go ‘oh, I love that song and I know that song'."
Miller is the president of Nashville Songwriters Association International, the host of this year’s Tin Pan South festival. He adds that the writers will often tell stories behind a song that even the star who sings it has never heard.
And if you go to Nashville hoping to see one of those Country Music stars, chances are good at Tin Pan South.
“In the middle of the show,” Miller explains, “one of the writers says ‘let me welcome my friend Kelsea Ballerini up' and she comes up and, of course, nobody had any idea it was going to happen. Those will happen often honestly.”
Just announced stars on this year’s schedule include Kellie Pickler, the Brothers Osborne, Kristian Bush of Sugarland, Maddie and Tae, Michigan’s Trevor Rosen of Old Dominion and Jake Owen.
For the entire show schedule, ticket prices and Nashville information click on http://tinpansouth.com/.
