I sent out my reservations prior to this event so I thought I should give my impression of how it went. For the complete schedule, list of national participants, contest, etc go to: http://www.songwriterfestival.org/

This festival was organized and produced by Amelia Island Songwriter Guild, Inc.

and Joe & Diane Warwick who also own The Florida House Inn where much of the event took place. There were several other venues, however, and it made for easily walking from one to the other. At the Frisky Mermaid at the Florida House, they have a songwriting contest every Wed night and have a great turnout for that http://www.friskymermaid.com/SongWriters.htm

I have to say how welcoming they were to all of us and they did everything they could to make us feel at home. In my almost 40 years of working the area I have never worked Fernandina (not counting many private gigs at Amelia Island Plantation and The Ritz) so it was very cool to meet some find writers and performers that live in the area.  While they are very supportive of each other, they were also very warm and helpful to those of us from the big city. They were also generous in encouraging me to advertise our Songwriters' Circle events at the contest. As I expected, there was not a lot of support from the public-maybe next year that will improve.

Remember, this was a five day contest so it was a major undertaking. Basically, the songwriting contests had nine topics with 3 winners in each category  ($100/$50/$25 prizes). It cost $50 to enter each contest and there could be as many as 12 in each. The public could pay $10 to get in all contests. I entered 3 contests- did not place in two and got a first place in one-the "Drinking" category. Oddly enough, I won with my song "That's What Daddy's Do" which tells the story of my Dad's drinking problems which I never thought of as a drinking song. The nine winners then competed on Sun for Songwriter and Song of the Year with $1000 awarded to each! A young man I met years ago, Tony (can't remember his last name) as part of River City Pry II, was the winner of both and  think it was a good choice. I was not at every contest but as far as I could tell, the finals were the only contest judged by qualified judges as they used some of the ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Nashville folks. The other contests were judged by folks picked from the audience who may or may not know how to judge. The other problem suggestion I would make is that the contest be in categories like country, pop, Americana etc rather that a narrow subject, i.e. "dating".  It was difficult judging as it's hard to compare a good "folk" or "country" song to a good "pop" song. I'm sure they will make corrections in the future. The whole festival created a lot of excitement and even for an old war horse like me-a lot of nerves!   

Now about the Nashville Cats that were down for the Festival. As far as I could tell, with the exception of a fine fellow named Tom (also mentioned that he co-wrote   who worked all week with the sound crew (and 3 judges on Sun)- none of the 15-20 Nashville cats attended any of the contests. It almost looked like they couldn't imagine sitting in the same room with us as they sometimes were in an adjacent bar while the contest was taking place. Joe treated them to a wonderful paid vacation with fishing, eating, boating, golfing-the least they could have done was show a little support. That was part of the reason for having them there.

Actually, I was not at all surprised at all and I returned the favor by not going to any of their shows as well ($15.00 admission). I suppose that the workshops which cost from $50 -150 were a pretty good value as you can't buy gas to Nashville for that.   

All in all I think it was a great first effort. I made some new friends and probably opened the door to future gigs in the area. I hope the producers will be able to do it again next year.

Peace

Larry