An Evening with Aaron Barker & Dickey Lee
with Aaron Barker, Dickey Lee
CST
(Doors: 20:30 pm )
$27.53
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There are 18 tables, 8 bar seats and 8 church pew seats available for reservation. The remaining pew seats for this show are not reserved in advance. These seats are available on a first come/first served basis when doors open.
Ticket reservations at The Bluebird Cafe are an agreement to pay the cover charge and applicable taxes/fees and to meet the $12.00 per seat food and/or drink minimum.
Ticket holders may cancel their reservation for a full refund of the ticket price and applicable tax (excluding ticketing fees) if the cancellation is made at least 48 hours before the scheduled showtime. Cancellations made within 48 hours of the show are non-refundable. To cancel, please email [email protected] or call 615-383-1461. Phone line hours are Monday-Friday, 12-4 pm.
Note: When making reservations, choose the table you would like and then add the number of seats you need to your cart by using the + button. You are NOT reserving an entire table if you choose 1 (by choosing 1, you are reserving 1 seat). We reserve ALL seats at each table. If you are a smaller party at a larger table, you will be seated with guests outside your party.
Artists
Aaron Barker
Singer-songwriter Aaron Barker is best known for the string of hits he wrote for country superstar George Strait, but Barker’s long career has many other highlights. Long before his success as a songwriter, he made his mark as a charismatic entertainer.Born in San Antonio, Barker got his first guitar at age six, taught himself to play it and was soon singing at school and church events. He also began to write songs at an early age. When asked to create a grade-school art project, Barker turned in poetry rather than work within the visual limits of his red-green color blindness. Those poems eventually became the basis for his first songs.
As a young man, he joined a show band called The American Peddlers as its bass player and lead singer. During his decade-plus tenure in the group, it played hundreds of clubs and military bases, marketed its own albums and amassed a large fan club. Barker was regarded at the time as a top stage entertainer in the Lone Star State.
But away from the band’s flashy smoke machines and laser lights, he played solo gigs, trying out his original material on audiences in small clubs and cafes. He left his successful band in 1988 with the aim of finding songwriting success.
A tape of his tunes found its way to George Strait’s manager. Strait recorded Barker’s song “Baby Blue” and scored a #1 hit with it in 1988. Strait repeatedly returned to the songwriter’s catalog for such successes as “Love Without End, Amen” (1990), “Easy Come, Easy Go” (1993), “I’d Like to Have That One Back” (1994), “I Know She Still Loves Me” (1996) and “I Can Still Make Cheyenne” (1996).
Meanwhile, Atlantic Records signed Aaron Barker as an artist. He charted with his CD’s title tune “The Taste of Freedom” in 1992 and reestablished his reputation as an entertainer. He issued further solo albums in 1998, 2002 and 2006, but Barker’s biggest “hits” as a singer remain the widely heard radio and TV jingles he wrote and recorded for Blue Bell Ice Cream.
Other artists clamored for his songs. Doug Supernaw’s record of “Not Enough Hours in the Night” (1995), Lonestar’s version of “What About Now” (2000) and Clay Walker’s renditions of “You’re Beginning to Get to Me” (1998) and “Watch This” (1997) all became Top 10 hits.
Others who have recorded Aaron Barker songs include Tyler Farr, Trace Adkins, Aaron Tippin, Tracy Lawrence, Neal McCoy, The Oak Ridge Boys, Granger Smith, Willie Nelson, Chris LeDoux, Dean Dillon and Trent Tomlinson. Barker was inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007.
Dickey Lee
Dickey Lee remembers the first time he heard one of his songs on the radio. "I was at a drive-in movie, with a buddy of mine. We went to see some thriller or something. I had the radio on and my song came on. Boy, it was like magic!"The regional success of that song, "Dream Boy," written in 1955 when Lee was fresh out of high school in Memphis, whetted his appetite for a career in music. Despite his father telling him that he "ought to take his guitar and throw it in the Mississippi River and get a job," Lee soon signed a deal with Sun Records. A few more regional hits followed, then in 1962 Lee scored a #6 pop hit with the star-crossed suicide tune "Patches" (produced by Jack Clement) on Smash Records.
But while his nascent pop career thrived with "I Saw Linda Yesterday" and another teen tragedy hit, "Laurie," Lee slowly realized that his true love was country music. When a song he co-wrote, "She Thinks I Still Care," became a #1 country hit for George Jones and was covered by artists like Eddy Arnold and Faron Young, Lee took that as a sign that Nashville was his destiny. It took him a few years to settle there, but when he did, he rode a dual career as a hit country writer and successful country recording artist, beginning with RCA Records in 1971.
Over the next three decades, he racked up 20 BMI Awards, as his songs were recorded by hundreds of artists, including Elvis Presley, Kenny Rogers, Merle Haggard, Brenda Lee, Don Williams, Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, Charley Pride, Randy Travis, James Taylor and Reba McEntire. At the same time, he placed nearly 30 songs on the charts himself, including "Never Ending Song of Love," "Rocky," "Angels, Roses and Rain," and "9,999,999 Tears."
In 2010, a TNT network police drama, Memphis Beat, used Lee's song of the same title as its theme song, in a newly recorded version by Keb' Mo'.
Lee remains active as a writer, a leader of music seminars and a performer, touring with rock & roll revival shows, alongside such artists as Fabian, Bobby Vee and the Shirelles.
Of his feelings about being inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Lee is characteristically modest: "I don't deserve it, but I'll take it."
