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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27BIRMINGHAM SONGWRITER NIGHTS • OCTOBER FINALE
KALEEN LAVIN • FEATURED HEADLINER JOSH MOEHR
🌙✨ SOME SONGS ARRIVE IN THE WORLD QUIETLY. ✨🌙
Before the record.
Before the release date.
Before the press photo.
Before the playlist.
Before the numbers.
Before an algorithm decides whether anybody is supposed to care.
Sometimes a song is simply a person standing in front of a room saying:
I made this.
That might be my favorite part.
Tuesday, October 27, we close the book on another month of Birmingham Songwriter Nights at The Nick.
And this night gets very close to the heart of why I started doing these shows in the first place.
Because Birmingham has an unbelievable amount of original music hiding in plain sight.
Songs sitting in phones.
Songs being practiced in bedrooms.
Songs being argued with in rehearsal spaces.
Songs people have carried for years.
Songs that did not exist last Tuesday.
Songs nobody outside a handful of friends has ever heard.
Every once in a while, one of those songs gets a stage.
That is where the magic starts.
ONE MORE OCTOBER NIGHT AT THE NICK
There is something slightly bittersweet about the last show of a month.
For weeks the dates are all in front of you.
Names on calendars.
Flyers.
Messages.
Artist conversations.
Moving pieces around.
Trying to make sure everybody is where they need to be.
Trying to make every night feel different.
Then suddenly almost all of it is behind you.
The earlier October shows have become memories.
Little moments that did not exist when I first typed the dates onto a calendar.
A conversation at the bar.
A song I had never heard.
Somebody laughing.
Somebody getting quiet.
A stranger becoming a friend.
And now there is one room left.
The Nick.
One more Tuesday.
One more collection of songs.
One more chance for something none of us planned to happen.
That feels like the right place to end.
GUNTRAM ANDERLIK
I’ll begin the night the way I usually do.
A short set.
A welcome.
A few songs to open the room.
By this point in October, I’ll probably be carrying all the previous nights with me too.
Every artist.
Every conversation.
Every little thing that happened that was never written on the flyer.
My own songs change because of that.
They are never really fixed objects.
A lyric means something different depending on which week of your life you are living through.
A sad song becomes hopeful.
A love song becomes a memory.
A song you thought was about another person eventually turns out to have been about yourself the entire time.
That is one reason I keep playing them.
They keep telling me things.
KALEEN LAVIN • FULL 30 MINUTE SET
Then Kaleen Lavin gets something increasingly rare:
time.
A full 30 minute set.
Not one song squeezed between announcements.
Not a rushed appearance.
A real section of the evening where we get to enter her musical world and stay long enough for one song to lead naturally into another.
Kaleen’s music moves through acoustic songwriting, country, folk and folk pop, with a warmth and sense of space that feel especially right for an intimate room.
Her Songs for Stargazers title tells you something about the atmosphere before a note even starts.
There is a sense of looking outward.
Nature.
Time.
Wonder.
The small human things underneath much larger skies.
Her songs have enough air around them that you can notice details.
There is something almost celestial around the edges.
Not distant.
More like standing outside late at night long enough for your eyes to adjust and suddenly realizing there was far more above you than you noticed at first.
That feels right for late October.
And giving an artist thirty minutes matters to me.
Everything around us now keeps trying to teach us that art should arrive in fragments.
Fifteen seconds.
Thirty seconds.
Skip.
Next.
Again.
Songs deserve more patience than that.
Artists deserve more patience.
Listeners deserve more patience too.
So for half an hour:
We stop.
We listen.
We let a songwriter build a world.
JOSH MOEHR • FEATURED HEADLINER
Then Josh Moehr closes October.
A lot of people around Birmingham know Josh through Suburban Love Junkies and through the many different ways musicians become woven into a local scene over time.
Playing.
Recording.
Producing.
Engineering.
Helping.
Showing up.
Being one of those people whose musical life extends far beyond the minutes they personally spend under stage lights.
But this night gives Josh another kind of space.
His songs.
His voice.
His project.
Josh is preparing his highly anticipated solo project, and October 27 gives us a chance to hear music from it while that work is still entering the world.
That genuinely excites me.
Because this is one of my favorite stages in the life of a song.
The part before everybody else gets involved.
Before the release campaign.
Before promotional language.
Before streaming numbers.
Before engagement.
Before anybody decides whether the art is performing well.
There is simply an artist.
And the thing they made.
And a room of people hearing it.
Maybe for the first time.
That is sacred territory in music.
We do not treat it that way often enough.
BEFORE THE NUMBERS, THERE WAS A SONG
I know all of this sounds incredibly simple.
A person writes a song.
Another person listens.
That is it.
But that simple exchange has survived every technological change we have ever thrown at music.
Vinyl.
Radio.
Cassettes.
CDs.
MP3s.
Streaming.
Algorithms.
Phones.
Everything changes around the song.
The fundamental moment remains:
Somebody made something because being silent was not enough.
Somebody else heard it.
Connection happened somewhere in between.
That is why these little Tuesday nights mean so much to me.
A flyer cannot build a music scene.
A Facebook event cannot build one.
An algorithm definitely cannot build one.
People do.
Somebody carries the guitar inside.
Somebody runs sound.
Somebody gets the room ready.
Somebody pours the drinks.
Somebody takes the photograph.
Somebody pays the cover.
Somebody brings a friend.
Somebody decides to stay for the artist whose name they did not recognize.
Somebody hears a song.
Maybe they walk up afterward and say:
That one got me.
Maybe that artist goes home and writes another one.
That is it.
That is the whole secret.
People showing up for one another.
📅 Tuesday, October 27
📍 The Nick
2514 10th Ave S
Birmingham, AL 35205
🚪 Doors: 7 PM
🎶 Music: 8 to 10 PM
🎟️ $10 at the door or TheNickRocks.com
🔞 21+ • Nick membership required
🎤 Karaoke follows
LINEUP
Guntram Anderlik
✨ KALEEN LAVIN • FULL 30 MINUTE SET
⭐ FEATURED HEADLINER: JOSH MOEHR
Featuring music from Josh’s highly anticipated solo project.
Come hear something while it is still becoming itself.
Come discover somebody.
Come tell an artist afterward that a song mattered to you.
Come have a drink.
Stay for the whole night.
Help us close another month of these strange little gatherings.
Before the record.
Before the playlist.
Before the numbers.
There was somebody alone somewhere writing the song.
Then there was a room.
Come be in the room.
Let’s close October together.
And then let’s go write November.
🌳✨
#TheNick #BirminghamMusic #BirminghamSongwriterNights #NewMusic #SupportLocalMusic
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The Nick, 2514 10th Ave South,Birmingham,AL,United States
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