NASHVILLE — This is my second year speaking here, and I’m actually having more fun here than the year before. Great music, great people, great town.

Once again I served on the only policy-related panel. Despite the fact that this is not a policy conference, every seat was taken in our panel, which was moderated by Dennis Lord of SESAC and also included Rusty Reid of ICG Copyrights and Bob Regan of NSAI (if you’re going to be in Nashville Monday, and I unfortunately will not be, drop by NSAI’s SONGPOSIUM and hear one of my favorite artists, Delbert McClinton).

I won’t go into details on the panel — it seems like navel-gazing to do so. But I will note this. Based on the attendance, the questions asked, and the conversations I had after the panel (people didn’t want to leave), I learned two things: 1) Many songwriters and artists are not up to speed on what in Washington is influencing their industry. 2) They are painfully aware of this, not at all happy about it, but recognize that there’s only so much they can do, because they’re focusing on their art, after all.

They have friends in Washington. NSAI, for example. They’re based in Nashville but have established a presence in Washington and are known on the Hill. And I’d like to think the Copyright Alliance is there to look out for them. We may not get into the weeds on every issue the way a specialty organization would, but we work with all of those organizations and include as members the wide swath of industries that is music. And of course, we increasingly have songwriters and performing artists, as well as music publishers and other insiders, joining our one voi©e network of creators.

Still, as much as I can impart to them, as I wrote yesterday, I come to these conferences to learn more than I come to educate. And with every conversation I have — including the one with Barbara Ivey, who with her husband Randy has created a recording studio in her South Carolina living room and has actually had a 2-disc album cut there recently by Verlon Thompson — I grow more and more moved by the creators of this country.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 6:50 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under capitol hill, creators, education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.