The Bluebird Cafe

A 90-seat songwriters’ listening room in a Green Hills strip mall, opened on June 3, 1982, by former waitress Amy Kurland. ABC’s Nashville put the room in nearly every episode.

Kurland meant it to be a restaurant, and the small stage was there to sell dinners. Within a few years customers were coming for the songwriters, not the menu.

The in-the-round format was born here in 1985, when Don Schlitz, Thom Schuyler, Fred Knobloch, and Paul Overstreet sat facing each other in the room’s center. Schlitz’s first cut was Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler.”

In 2008 Kurland turned the club over to the Nashville Songwriters Association International, a handoff the cafe describes as more donation than corporate sale. She stayed on as an advisor.

Garth Brooks played the open mics here before anyone knew the name. At a 1988 writers round a cancellation moved him up the bill, and Capitol Records executive Lynn Shults offered him a deal.

Scott Borchetta heard a 14-year-old Taylor Swift play this room in late 2004 and offered to sign her to Big Machine Records. The label did not exist yet.

Look for a storefront between shops on Hillsboro Pike, 5 miles from the downtown honky-tonks. More than 70,000 visitors a year find it anyway.