The Nashville Berklee Jam presents “Inside the Nashville Music Industry” with Eric Normand and Mike Chapman – August 26, 2013

As host of the Nashville Berklee Jam, the job of booking special guests at this bimonthly event has been an interesting one. The Nashville music industry is chock full of music industry insiders and this fact has yielded some great talks for us over the past year and half. During this time, I’ve been asked a few times to give one of these talks and on Monday, August 26 I decided to share my perspective. Earlier that month I had given an in-depth clinic about the Nashville music industry at the Berklee College of music in Boston, so a continuation of that theme seemed like the logical thing to do. I decided to take it one step further and enlisted the help of my friend and colleague, A-list session bassist, Mike Chapman.

I spoke first, giving a talk that was essentially an overview of the Nashville music industry. Much of this “street level perspective” of the music related jobs in Nashville was basically a condensed version of my book “The Nashville Musician’s Survival Guide”. After my talk, Mike gave a talk which covered some finer points about the recording industry side of Music City. Rather than elaborating on these discussions in a blog, I thought it would be more beneficial to simply share the following videos of these talks (special thanks to Jack Zander for filming, editing and posting the videos). For a different perspective, you can also check out this blog written by Berklee alum, Amanda Williams.

So here you go, videos of our talks and a few performances!

The Nashville Berklee Jam is held at The Rutledge on the last Monday of every other month, with the next event to take place on Monday, October 28 with special guest, performance coach, Diane Kimbrough. After Diane’s talk, she will be sticking around and offering free critiques and coaching to performers and jammers. Please e-mail me if you would like to take part in this part of the event. Or just show up and let me know that you are interested in participating, we’ll do our best to squeeze you in!

For more info about future events, please visit the Nashville Berklee Jam website NashvilleBerkleeJam.com

If you would like to learn more about the Nashville music industry, please check out my website and book “The Nashville Musician’s Survival Guide”.