West Hollywood goes a little bit country on Wednesday as three Nashville songwriters take the stage for an unusual show.
Singer/songwriters Jane Bach, Sandra Piller and Karen Hart will bring their country tunes to the at 7066 Santa Monica Blvd. Showtime is at 9 pm.
The show is unusual in that all three of the writers will take the stage at the same time to perform “in the round,” a format where the first songwriter will perform one or two songs, then the next will perform a few songs, etc., until it comes back to the first performer for another round.
As media representative John Scott G explained, having all the performers on stage at the same time allows them to join in on each others songs with vocal harmonies or instrumental additions. The result often improves the original or takes the song in a different direction.
A tradition for country music, the in-the-round format is rarely used outside of that music genre.
“Jane wants to establish the Nashville format in other places,” said G. “She wants to bring it out here and let people from other genres see how well it works.”
The in-the-round sessions are often a special treat for the audience as well.
“Doing it in a public setting, as they routinely do in Nashville, allows the audience to have an up-close and personal look at how these hit tunes are created,” said G.
Sometimes other performers are in the audience observing and impulsively decide to join the performers on stage. “If Neil Young is in the audience, he could very well decide to join them on stage,” G speculated.
This will be Bach and Piller’s second in-the-round show at the Gardenia Restaurant. The first one, a quickly put together session in January, was well received despite getting little advance publicity. The pair also did two in-the-round sessions in North Hollywood last fall.
Jane Bach is a Grammy-nominated songwriter, best known from penning Reba McEntire’s chart-topping hit “The Last One to Know.” She also penned JoDee Messina’s hit “Dare to Dream.”
Sandra Piller is getting a lot of buzz currently thanks to her cover of the Doors’ “Love Me Two Times.”
Karen Hart is a three-time winner of "Best Performer" award by the West Coast Songwriters
