Good 'Ol Girls

Visited Eddie's Attic, an ATL music venue for singer/songwriters. It's where John Mayer, Sugarland, Billy Pilgrim, and countless other singer/songwriters got traction right before their big break and subsequent record deals. Tonight's show was 2 women singer/songwriters and 2 women novelists. When the record companies in Nashville dumped the singer/songwriters, they called each other and found a new purpose for their work. They are touring the country with a social commentary, poetic monologues called Good 'Ol Girls, sort of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues crosses Lily Tomlin's In Search of Intelligent Signs of the Universe for southern red neck girls.

Published novelists Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle wrote the monologues in 1999 and incorporated songs written by Nashville singer/songwriters, Marshall Chapman and Matraca Berg. The show was about all types of women from all types of places, Good 'Ol Girls that are real survivors. The NY Times has called the show a "feminist literary country music review." The thing I really enjoyed about these 4 women together is that it takes master Nashville storytellers, Berg (six #1 Billboard Hits by artists like Reba McEntire, Patty Loveless, Trisha Yearwood, Linda Ronstadt, Deena Carter, Martina McBride, Dixie Chicks, and Faith Hill) and Chapman who has written songs for Emmy Lou Harris, Conway Twitty, Joe Cocker, and Jimmy Buffett and award winning novelitsts Smith and McCorkle out of their normal routine, while repurposing their words and music to show that no matter how different we think we are, we are all really the same. We share the same hopes, the same fears, the same dreams and the same heartbreak. We just experience it in different ways. As one of my all-time favorite poets, Audre Lorde, said "“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” This is really what I got out of the evening. It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

As I was leaving, I bumped into my old friend Happy from Chattanooga, turns out Happy went to Vanderbilt with Chapman and they have remained friends over the years. She introduced me to Chapman, Chapman's husband and then Berg. It was Berg that kept me intrigued, talking about the Nashville Music Industry, being a woman in that industry and living your life as an aging musician. Berg told a story of how young the Nashville establishment thought she was when she recorded her first song at age 26. Now, she is considered a dinosaur, and just barely over 40. She said that today, if you are not under 20, the record labels don't notice you. After seeing all of the baby boomers at this venue, I told her I was trying to get word to Simon Cowell about my idea of Senior Idol. For all those that tried to make it in Nashville, Memphis, and LA and were rejected by the Good 'Ol Boys, their time has come!