Writer’s Kitchen
Jane’s Hideaway
Nashville
3/26/24
As soon as the first writer started singing, Jane’s Hideaway changed from a full restaurant to a listening room, and the audience quieted down. A neon pink sign glowed over the heads of four guitar-wielding musicians poised with their songs for the room and each other.
Every Tuesday night at Jane’s Hideaway in East Nashville, Melody Walker hosts “Writer’s Kitchen,” a play on the classic Nashville writer’s round. Walker calls it “East Nashville’s tastiest songwriter’s showcase,” and that’s exactly what it is. Three to six songwriters sat on stage together in a row and swapped songs for four rounds, with Walker joining in on occasion. This Tuesday, the round featured Angela Morano, Lauren Gray, and Sarah Cait, with a few bonus guest appearances.
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of a writer’s round, it’s essentially a curated space for songwriters to share their writing in an unadorned and focused way. It feels more akin to a poetry reading than a show. The feature is not the performer or performance, but the bare-bones song. With no instrumental breaks, band arrangements, or bigger picture to hide behind, it’s the lyrics, chords, and song structure that the artist serves up to the audience.
Nashville has, maybe obviously, been a songwriting hub for decades — for country music most notably, but for many other genres as well. Some songwriters are also performers and write primarily for themselves, but many more write songs to sell to artists and publishers with a bigger platform, and maybe only ever sing them themselves at writer’s rounds. Rounds are an opportunity for writers to tease out new material, audition their best, and to simply sing their own songs for people. Songs hit differently when they’re delivered by their creator, so any way you slice it, it’s a listener’s treat.
Every round operates a little differently. “Writer’s Kitchen” alone has changed formats several times. Currently, Walker has the round split into two shifts — three writers sing four rounds, then after a break, another three sing four rounds. I attended the late shift. Walker, an esteemed performer herself, has written award-winning songs with the likes of Molly Tuttle and Sierra Ferrell, to name only a few, and it’s worth it just to hear her deliver her songs herself, with her smoky voice and complete vocal command.
The writers she brought on for the late shift covered pretty varied ground. The first, Angela Morano, sang with a keyboard. Her voice and songs were reminiscent of Phoebe Bridgers and Madi Diaz, with very specific and topical lyrics. The first of her songs was about corporate greed in America, with the line, “I’ve got a new job and I make what you want me to want.” Another was about moving to Nashville as a musician. The second writer, Lauren Gray, categorized herself as “honky tonky-ifying the evening,” and sang with an acoustic guitar, the usual songwriter-round instrument of choice. The third writer, Sarah Cait, kicked her songs off with a very John Prine-esque song about being the life of the party. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but her voice was very reminiscent of the Americana-country camp of songwriters of the late 90s. A guest, Alex Barnes, got up and sang a hard-hitting song with the line “it’s 2 a.m. and it’s too late to fight / Let the tin roof do the talking tonight” that I particularly enjoyed.
Jane’s Hideaway, which opened initially at a location in Printer’s Alley (a famous downtown Nashville area), has moved locations to East Nashville, but somehow still manages to seemingly operate as a tourist attraction and pull people from the Broadway craziness. When Gray mentioned on the mic that she was from Indiana, for example, a table erupted, and when someone else mentioned the city of Chicago, the same thing happened. There are possibly more tourists than locals. The ambiance is somewhat unremarkable, with the most interesting feature being the dozens of dried flower bouquets hanging from the ceiling. Otherwise, it’s very New American in vibe.
It’s worth mentioning that Jane’s Hideaway is a restaurant as well. I got the hot chicken sandwich with a side salad and a margarita. I’d say all were fine; possibly overpriced, but I’m not really sure what that means anymore. There is no door charge for any show, so it’s a great place to eat a meal and hear music for free, barring tips to the musician. The sound was quite good, though I wish the vocals had been more defined, as it was a writer’s round after all, and hearing the details of the writers’ lyrics was difficult.
Aside from the sharing of the songs themselves, the Writer’s Kitchen also offered a behind-the-curtain look for listeners. Because of the format, there was a lot of room for origin stories, details about songwriting style, and anecdotes of chaotic co-writes that artists often skip over during a show. But Walker leaves space for writers to luxuriate in their process for an audience. It’s a true celebration of the craft of songwriting that happens in Nashville.
