Nashville’s annual Tin Pan South Songwriter’s Festival, which normally sells out months in advance, is going virtual this year. Which means if you’re a fan of songwriters- and the stories behind songs- this is a rare opportunity to catch the event without having to catch a plane.
The festival is this week, beginning Tuesday night (Oct 20th) and each songwriter session can be viewed- for free- via Tin Pan South’s website, which you can access here.
The line-up, which includes and who’s-who of country music’s top songwriters- Josh Osborne, Shane McAnally, Carly Pearce, Jimmie Allen, Liz Rose, Lori McKenna, Old Dominion and a whole bunch of others- kicks off Tuesday night with JT Harding (Anywhere With You, Different For Girls, Sangria, Beer and Sunshine) interviewing and playing songs with Uncle Kracker, who’s hits include the pop smash Follow Me, as well as All Summer Long for Kid Rock and Smile, which he co-wrote with Harding.
“I actually interview him,” Harding says, “and apparently it’s kinda funny because he and Kid Rock were arguing (while writing All Summer Long) if you could really catch a walleye off a dock…it’s a lyric in the song and it’s a pretty funny story.”
Tin Pan South Songwriter Festival has been around since 1993 and was established to acknowledge and celebrate the myriad of songwriters who write the majority of hits in country music. The name was derived from Tin Pan Alley, a part of Manhattan near West 28th Street, where music publishers flourished as far back as 1885.