Our most recent Nashville Berklee Jam featured hit songwriter and country music artist, Rhett Akins as the guest speaker and performer. The Georgia native and member of the red hot songwriting team, “The Peach Pickers” is currently one of Nashville’s hottest songwriters, and his talk focused on just about every aspect of that world you could imagine. Working with Rhett as his tour manager, bandleader, and lead guitarist for the last seven years has given me some great perspective on what goes on in the world of a Nashville songwriter. And on this comfortable late summer night he gave the crowd of alumni and locals at the Fillin’ Sation a real peek behind the curtain into that otherwise secret society. Rhett preceded and followed his talk by performing some of his most recent mega-hits with two members of the alumni house band (Heston Alley on drums and me on guitar) and two other members of his touring band – session aces and former “G-men”, Mike Chapman on bass and Chris Leuzinger on guitar. Rhett also invited fiddle player/singer and Berklee alumnus, Michael Lambert to the stage to perform some classic country and bluegrass.

To read the guest blog post by Shantell Ogden ’05 about the latest Nashville Berklee jam visit http://nashvilleberkleejam.com.

The Nashville Berklee Jam is held on the first Tuesday of every month at The Fillin’ Station. The jam is hosted by Eric Normand ’89 who lives and works in Nashville, TN. He has worked as a performer, tour manager, band leader, guitar tech, guitar teacher, songwriter, website designer, author, and public speaker. He is the author of “The Nashville Musician’s Survival Guide“.