George Strait, River Phoenix and The Bluebird

Since we've moved to Nashville, Meagan and I have sought out as many "country" movies as we can. Aside from the recent Crazy Heart (which I found to be an enjoyable Hollywoodized take on the quiet, brooding Tender Mercies) we've discovered a few overlooked country flicks from the early '90s. "Pure Country" stars George Strait as a modern country-pop superstar, who leaves all the lights and glamor to seek out his roots. Meanwhile, his tour continues on with a look-a-like lip-syncing to his records while the band mimes along. Eventually George finds a girl out in the country, and to really seal the deal he re-joins his tour and sings directly to her in the front row. The girl swoons. Done deal.


The other movie we watched recently, with a more direct Nashville connection, is "The Thing Called Love". I was pretty excited when I saw Peter Bogdanovich's name listed as Director. Being a huge fan of Last Picture Show, I was disappointed at what a flawed, cliché of a film this turned out to be. It follows a young songwriter (Samantha Mathis) as she moves to Nashville to try and make a career for herself. Focusing around the legendary songwriter's hub, The Bluebird Cafe. She faces stiff competition with bad boy River Pheonix, nice guy Dermot Mulroney, and southern belle Sandra Bullock. Not a great movie by any standard, but I enjoyed watching these movie stars take on the persona of hard-working songwriters. The main problem was they make a love-triangle out of Samantha, River and Dermot. Boring. Plus the songs are mostly really cheesy novelty tunes, even though they all act like they are trying to be the next Townes Van Zandt.


We took the soonest opportunity to check out the real life Bluebird Cafe. With Meagan's mom in town, we took her there last night. While it didn't look exactly as it did in the 1993 film, it did have a lot of the same vibe that they put across in the movie. Ten nervous songwriters of all age groups (I'd say 25 - 65 on this night) each perform three songs. I thought it was cool that most of the songwriters played their most recent material. Some of the dudes with a larger resume relied on their biggest hits (or closest thing to a hit). One of the highlights came from a gentlemen who's lyrics all came from newpaper headlines. "The Nipple Caused A Ripple on the #10 Metro Bus" (about recent breast-feeding on the bus scandal), got a lot of appreciation from the audience. I have nothing against a novelty tune when done right (ie early Randy Newman or Ween's country album). After the "Bluebird approved open mike" section ended we caught a couple songs from the nights main attraction, Tony Haselden. The second song he performed was surely one of his proudest songwriting moments, "You Know Me Better Than That", a song that he co-wrote with Anna Lisa Graham, that none-other-than, "Pure Country" star, George Strait took to #1! And with that our entry comes full circle.