Nashville's Flip Side

It's been building literally for decades - the amazingly difficult-to-convey story of the fullness and richness and wonder that is Nashville's non-Music Row music scene. As long as country music has been big business, it has cast a dark shadow over the other genres in Music City, not only obscuring them from public view, but actually choking off some of their energy, like little saplings trying to grow in the shadows of redwoods. But more and more the mainstream media is waking up to the fact that this town has other stories to tell, and so I wasn't terribly surprised (only terribly delighted) to see East Nashville's Family Wash in the New York Times fancy-pants T Magazine on Sunday.

In a nicely developed appreciation piece, novelist Ann Patchett, a long-time Nashvillian, describes the actual community of artists, songwriters and musicians who live here and who fuel each other's work with supportive competition and crafty collaboration. She investigates the rootsy but eclectic community known as Americana and opines: "It feels like the music that happens when talented country folk get together, as opposed to the music that happens when talented producers hire pretty girls." One only need tune in to the horrifying new Fox series "Nashville" to witness a sort of faux-surreal tableaux of that world, and if you hear a note of music within, please write us and describe it for us.

We at the NCO have our own fondness for Americana because it represents the finest art being done in the tradition of country music, bluegrass and the other folk styles that undergird all that was built in the golden age of the Grand Ole Opry. The talents of somebody in that world like Darrell Scott, the NCO's artist in residence, are malleable, adaptable and highly sensitive to collaboration. He's a multi-stringed instrument master, a songwriter and a singer of amazing power and nuance. Just the kind of guy the NCO is looking for. So then, watch for this confluence coming up: On Nov. 1, Darrell is up for Song of the Year at the Americana Honors and Awards at the Ryman Auditorium, a highlight of the Americana Music Association annual convention. (The song by the way is "Hank Williams' Ghost" which has a video shot and directed by yours truly, in case you're interested.) Then the very next night, Darrell hosts the first show in this year's Acoustic Cafe series, a night of "Acoustic All-Stars" featuring some of the best pure musicians you'll ever see: guitarst Bryan Sutton, fiddler Stuart Duncan and more, with the NCO Quartet at Grace Chapel in Leiper's Fork, TN. Should be a night of music that would make anyone flip.