Sara Evans

PHOTO/ Courtesy Key West Songwriters Festival

Songwriters Festival taking over Key West in May

BY PRU SOWERS

NEWS WRITER 

 

If you’re a country music fan, you may know Garth Brooks’ hit “Two Pina Coladas.” Or maybe you love Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar” or Rascal Flatts’ “Fast Cars and Freedom.”

 

Great songs. But not written by the country stars who performed them. Like many in their profession, the songwriters who penned those hits are often relegated to the background, providing the creative juice while the performers on stage often mistakenly get the credit.

 

But those same songwriters, including the ones who wrote the hits above, will be front and center stage during next month’s Key West Songwriters Festival. Natalie Hemby (“White Liar”), Wendell Mobley (“Fast Cars and Freedom”), and Gary Chapman, Kristen Kelly and Shawn Camp (“Two Pina Coladas”) will join approximately 180 other songwriters/performers for the five-day festival, which runs from May 7-11.

 

“This is about the people who write the songs,” said Charlie Bauer, the festival’s founder and president. “A lot of people don’t realize the performers don’t always write the songs. This festival is a salute to the people who write the music.”

 

While there will be concerts by stars like Sara Evans, Anders Osborne and Kacey Musgraves – who just won New Artist of the Year at the CMA Awards Sunday night, April 6 – many of the shows will be more intimate, featuring three or four songwriters up on stage. They will tell the story behind a particular song and then perform it, often with harmony vocals provided by the other songwriters on stage.

 

There will be approximately 50 shows during the five-day event, spread all over Key West, including Bauer’s Smokin’ Tuna Saloon, 4 Charles St. Other venues include Ocean Key Sunset Pier, Southernmost Beach Café and Ricks’/Durty Harry’s. There will even be performances on the Fury Water Adventures sunset cruise.

 

One of the highlights will be an open air concert Saturday night starring Sara Evans, who has had five No. 1 hits on the country charts. That show is free and will be held in the 200 block of Duval Street, which will be shut down that evening for the performance. Only six of the 50-plus shows over the five-day festival will require a ticket, including two at the Tropic Cinema, two at Studios of Key West and two at the San Carlos Institute.

 

Smokin’ Tuna’s Bauer started the Songwriters Festival 19 years ago when a Nashville musician named Drew Reid, who performed in Key West, came up with the concept of a festival focusing on songwriters.

 

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