OK...since I'm a few days late on this post and don't have time for a huge write up, I'm going to give a quick recap of the Next Big Nashville festival/conference that went off in Nashville last week. (No rest. The Americana Music Conference & Festival started today.) The third edition of Next Big Nashville added two days of industry panels, a handful of parties and more out-of-town bands to an already full music festival. It was very well run and a lot of fun.

I watched some good panels (all at the Musicians Hall of Fame) and had the honor of moderating a panel about artists rights, the issues and procedures in this sphere and the various organizations that represent labels, recording artists, musicians and songwriters. On the panel were representatives from Sound Exchange, Rightsflow, The Recording Academy, Nashville Songwriters Association International and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Music Row has a good recap of the "Psychology and the Art of Artist Management" panel.

I was humored by the conversation at the "Nashville Curse" panel. Opinions ranged from "It's less country than it used to be" to "Nashville musicians play for themselves and not for larger crowds" (I'm paraphrasing). The Nashville Cream blog has a nice post on the panel. Here's a teaser:

But after niceties were exchanged, everyone settled into what more or less amounted to example after example of why Nashville isn't quite where it wants to be. Why don't we have a healthy indie label with distribution on par with Merge or SubPop to cater to the local rock talent? Why don't we have more rock bands coming out of here? If we're so talented, why aren't our local rock bands producing more hits?

"If there is a curse, it's that people in Austin, TX, don't have to answer to SheDaisy and Brooks & Dunn," interjected Bobby Bare Jr., referring to the frustrating country shadow hanging over our heads.

But props for most entertaining speaker on the panel goes to A&R dude Steve Robertson from Atlantic Records, the heaviest hitter present.

"I was extremely prejudiced against Nashville," he said. "All I knew 11 years ago was that Nashville was a country town." But as he got more calls and more demos sent his way, he started checking out bands. He just wasn't getting the vibe. The bands were talented, they were polished. But it didn't "feel hot."