Topic: Belfast Nashville Songwriters Festival
Spent a large part of last week at the Belfast Nashville Songwriters Festival ( http://www.belfastnashville.com/ ). Since 1994 Belfast, Ireland, and Nashville, Tennesee, have been twinned as "Sister Cities". The Belfast Nashville festiva ( or BelNash) l is an annual recognition of that relationship. The reason for this is both cities appreciating the Scotch-Irish connections between them.
I particularly focussed on the songwriting workshops. There was a great diversity of opinion on songwriting available. Jason Blume was very analytical in his presentations on Melody, Writing for the Nashville market, and Looking after business. The last of these was particularly good for suggesting opportunities to sell rights to TV and Film producers. Jason was very much high end stuff ( How do you write for the Keith Urbans, Beyonces etc).
Jerry Harmon also did a session which I found more to my way of writing - country singer/songwriter style. I had a good chat with him after the session and am going to send him some work for possible collaboration - who knows ! Andy White also did a great opening session that just let everyone talk about how they wrote - very affirming.
The final sesdsion I attended was with Iain Archer ( toured with Snow Patrol) who went all airy fairy about writing without any structure, but left you with a head full of ideas at the end of it.
There were also over 100 singer songwriters playing across the city, with showcases and off the cuff jams. Included in the price of the delegates ticket were two concerts with Nancy Griffiths and with Ralph McTell.
I'll be back next year.