Bluebird Cafe

The Bluebird Cafe didn't set out to become one of Nashville's most famous music rooms. When Amy Kurland opened it in 1982, it was a small restaurant in an ordinary strip mall a few miles from downtown. They added a stage almost as an afterthought. Before long, the music became more important than the food.

In 1985, songwriters Thom Schuyler, Fred Knobloch, Don Schlitz, and Paul Overstreet tried something that would become synonymous with the Bluebird: they sat together in the center of the room, taking turns playing songs and accompanying one another. The "In the Round" format shifted the focus from spectacle to the people who wrote the songs. It remains a defining part of the Bluebird experience today.

The room also became a place where careers could change quickly. In 1987, Garth Brooks performed after a cancellation moved him up in the night's lineup. A Capitol Records representative was in the audience and asked Brooks to come to the label the following day. Years later, a 15-year-old Taylor Swift performed here and caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, who invited her to join the label he was preparing to launch, Big Machine.

That's the strange thing about the Bluebird: from the outside, it still looks like a small cafe in a strip mall. Inside, some of Nashville's most consequential musical moments have happened only a few feet from the audience.