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
Claudia Nygaard
Claudia Nygaard writes a song like a surgeon with a fish knife. She scrapes off the scales, pulls the flesh back, and “aims right for the bone.” -Making A Scene Magazine. She is a mesmerizing storyteller, a cinematic lyricist, and her work reveals a daredevil’s vulnerability and a complete lack of self-censorship. On her latest album Lucky Girl she tackles unwanted pregnancy, dysfunctional relationships, statutory rape, alcoholism, and betrayal. “These are songs ripped right out of our tumultuous country, and sung with such strong belief that it all feels like a come-to-Jesus experience.” Americana Highways. But there are also songs on this recording that are heartfelt, humorous, scrappy, and sensual. With a lush amber honey voice that is powerful, resonant, and deeply emotional, Nygaard delivers thirteen little slices of Americana, and “Any one of these songs could emerge as a country standard.” -Goldmine.
Claudia’s writing has won her numerous awards; and radio chart success. The awards began in Los Angeles during the early years of her career, and they propelled her move to Nashville. In Music City she landed a job as a staff songwriter for Greenwood Music Publishing on Nashville’s Music Row. The position gave her the chance to polish her craft, and she went on to win both the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival Songwriting Competition; and, with the title cut from her latest album Lucky Girl, the Tumbleweed Music Festival Songwriting Competition. The song rose to #3 on the Folk Alliance Radio song chart and the album to #5. It also received generous airplay on the Americana and roots music charts. The press raved about the recording, the songwriting, and her vocals, and Making A Scene magazine included Lucky Girl in their Top Albums of the Year list, as did several radio stations.
Nygaard’s previous album Let The Storm Roll In achieved similar success grabbing the #1 spot on the Cashbox Roots/Country Chart; and five stars from Maverick magazine. Legendary folk music magazine Sing Out praised her voice and said her songs “rival the likes of Guy Clark or Ian Tyson”. Her freshman effort Somewhere Else To Go, released on the UK recording label Round Tower, charted in the top five on the European Americana charts. It was also one of the top twelve records of the year in 2001 for the UK magazine Country Music Roundup.
Claudia is a quick witted and charismatic performer, with a twinkle in her eye that convinces everyone in her audience that she is sharing a secret with them alone. And her storytelling doesn’t end when the song does. Sharing both the inspiration behind the tunes, and also frequently creating outlandish, irreverent, and humorous monologues, her patter is as important a part of her performances as the songs themselves.
Becky Hobbs
Whiskey-voiced Becky Hobbs is one-of-a-kind. She is a gifted songwriter, as well as a captivating entertainer. On stage, she plays some rockin’ keys, yet she can rope you in like an Oklahoma cowgirl with her from-the-heart ballads.
Becky has performed in over 40 countries, including nine in Africa. Her songs have been recorded by Alabama, Conway Twitty (#1 hit "I Want To Know You Before We Make Love"), George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Emmylou Harris, Glen Campbell, Wanda Jackson, John Anderson, Janie Fricke, Lacy J Dalton, Moe Bandy, Shelly West, Helen Reddy, Shirley Bassey, Jane Oliver, Ken Mellons, Charly McClain, Johnny Bush, Demi Lovato, Kristin Chenoweth, Scotty McCreery, Home Free and The Cherokee National Youth Choir. She is the co-writer of Alabama’s hit, “Angels Among Us,” which has been recorded by numerous artists and used by many charities throughout the world, including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Alison Prestwood
Alison Prestwood is a multi-instrumentalist best known for playing bass. She has recorded with Trace Adkins, Frankie Ballard, Brooks & Dunn, Faith Hill, LoCash, Tim McGraw, Olivia Newton-John, Blake Shelton, and more and has performed live with Joe Bonamassa, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Wynonna Judd, Patty Loveless, and Trisha Yearwood. Prestwood is a four-time nominee for the Academy of Country Music’s Bass Player of the Year award.
Suzi Ragsdale
Suzi Ragsdale’s exquisite new EP, Ghost Town, arrives at a pivotal time in our history, when personal contact is limited yet intimate connections remain as important as ever. With this fully original six-track collection, the veteran singer-songwriter and native Nashvillian’s first release in a decade, the themes of connection and transformation are explored with refreshing and reassuring wisdom, compassion and humor. Delivered in a wild-honey-coated voice that echoes her Southern roots, and helmed by British-born producer Sam Frank, Ghost Town is quintessential Americana, an all-encompassing expression of the mind-body-spirit connection that speaks right to the heart. That’s hardly surprising for a woman whose passions – music, cooking and yoga – also feed the soul.
“I’ve always tried to inject something positive into the songs I write,” says Ragsdale. “Even if it’s a sad song, there’s a redeeming, ‘Hey, it’s all OK’ quality. Yoga is compatible with my view of the world and my writing has to be compatible with my view of the world. It needs to mean something to me or I’ll just not write that song.”
The daughter of Country Music Hall of Fame legend Ray Stevens, Suzi was in kindergarten when her voice was first featured on a No. 1 record, as part of the chorus on her dad’s inspirational Grammy-winning hit, “Everything Is Beautiful.” She began recording children’s albums for the classroom at age 10 and singing on demos for other writers when she was just 13. “Every chance I got, I was in the recording studio, sitting on the console, listening,” she recalls. “I was doing what was right for me at the time,” she says. “Now I know I was on the right path, however long and winding it may have seemed.”
That long and winding path includes having supplemented her music-related income by becoming a certified fitness instructor and personal trainer through the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA), since then teaching group cardio and weight training classes at health clubs in Nashville and Memphis, while back in the recording studio she was an in-demand backing vocalist, heard on more than 60 albums by an impressive array of artists that includes Loretta Lynn, Pam Tillis, Kathy Mattea, Suzy Bogguss, Ian Tyson, Tom Paxton, Watermelon Slim, Hank Williams, Jr., Jo-El Sonnier and many others. As a songwriter, artists including Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert, Jamey Johnson, Rodney Crowell, Hal Ketchum, Lari White, Darrell Scott, Anne Murray, Billy Dean, rock duo Nelson and more have cut her material. She also toured as a member in the bands of iconic songwriters Guy Clark and Darrell Scott, the latter of whom produced 1998’s Future Past, her solo debut album, and she recorded a pair of duet LPs with her ex-husband, Verlon Thompson, before releasing a pair of eclectic EPs, Best Regards and Less of the Same, produced by Tim Lauer. While the release of her solo material hasn’t been extremely prolific, it has always been wide-ranging and impressive, and her latest is no exception.
Ghost Town kicks off with the rollicking and infectious “Bonfire,” an ode to de-cluttering and simplifying both the mind and the home, which ends with a celebratory dance around the flickering pyre, while on the EP’s affecting title track, lingering memories of “fairytales, fantasies and lies” haunt the present. Throughout the instantly memorable “Loved and Won,” Ragsdale recites a litany of famous couples, both real and fictional (“Johnny and June, Scarlett and Rhett/ Yoko and John, Romeo and Juliet” in the opening verse) and turns the oft-heard “it’s better to have loved and lost” on its ear. The percussive and thoroughly uplifting “Live Until You Die” assures us in its opening line that even the daily rigors of “Eat, drink, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat” are preferable to the alternative.
To more easily understand the naturalistic sentiment behind “Wildflowers,” the sole co-written track on the EP – penned with producer Sam Frank – perhaps it’s helpful to visualize the six acres of unspoiled property the artist lives on 30 miles west of Nashville, and to take special note of the Sioux teepee situated on the far side of a nearby creek. With room for 10 yoga mats around a fire pit, it’s here where she offers yoga instruction, which she has been doing since obtaining her 2007 certification as a yoga teacher. With instruction in California from yoga guru Steve Ross, formerly a touring musician with rock acts including Fleetwood Mac, Men at Work and the Beach Boys, Suzi’s teaching methods, like Ross’s, incorporate music, fusing two of her great passions, while she also continues to explore her third great love: cooking. As witnessed through her official website, www.suziragsdale.com, her charm and humor are key ingredients not only in Ragsdale’s songs but in her recipes as well. “It’s all therapeutic,” she notes. “I’m just trying to tap into what’s good and true.”
Ghost Town closes, appropriately enough, with “The Ending,” a candidly poignant track in which she muses that when it comes to spoilers, whether they reveal the last chapter of a book or the inevitable dissolution of a marriage, ignorance of the outcome might prove the more blissful option. Driven by a swirling, heart-piercing melody, it is a prime example of the mind-body-spirit connection found in Suzi Ragsdale’s inspiring and memorable work.
“I want it to make me feel something,” she says of her goal with each new composition. “If I get enough time away from it and then let it surprise me again, to give me goosebumps and make me cry happy tears with the pleasure of having done it, that’s what I’m going for. If I’m going to ask other people to spend their time listening to me I want it to be good enough to do that.”
