“[Carnival Music owner and producer] Frank Liddell has always said something that I hated for a while, but I also love it,” Brent Cobb says. “He would say, ‘Just be great.'” He laughs, then continues. “What’s so cool about that is it’s kind of like well, what does great mean to me?” he continues. “Or it might mean something different to you.”
By all accounts, “great” is exactly what Carnival Music is offering for their Tin Pan South songwriters round at The Country at tonight. Cobb, along with Andrew Combs, Matraca Berg, and Waylon Payne, are set to perform at 9pm.
“Waylon Payne was actually the first writer show I ever saw in town,” Cobb says. “It was him and Natalie Hemby – they were both at Carnival at the time – and he played “Jesus on a Greyhound” and man, I was just floored. Andrew Combs is probably my favorite artist in town and we write together. First song we ever wrote, I cut it on my record, it’s on his last album too, called “Shine On Rainy Day.” He’s just so good, man, I love that guy. Then of course Matraca wrote “Strawberry Wine.” It’s so cool, I’m just happy to be there. It’s gonna be a great night.”
“I’m just happy to be back with my Carnival family,” Payne says. Payne, the son of guitarist Jody Payne and Grammy-winning Sammi Smith, grew up surrounded by music, eventually making a record out in Los Angeles with Keith Gattis and signing a deal in New York City. The Nashville-born artist has returned to Music City to write, via a stop in Hollywood for film roles including that of Jerry Lee Lewis in Walk The Line, and just tracked a live album.
Cobb, who recently released a song on the much-buzzed Southern Family album, is also gearing up to release new music, ripe with subtle and effective lyrics that are both simple and stunning. “I think a lot of [how I write lyrics] just has to do with the dialect of where I’m from, and mainly my family: my grandpa, the way he talked, and my daddy, he talks real rural, ruralisms,” Cobb says. “Everything has a flow to it, the bounce of the way people talk down there. If I’m writing, I go, ‘Well, how do I say it? If I was just talking to somebody, what would be the way that I would say that?’ and usually if I can do that I can hone in on that dialect, then it’s almost never wrong, it’s what I want it to be. It may not be the way somebody else would say something but I always know it’s right if I can dial that in.”
“I am doing a lot of co-writing these days,” Payne says of his return to Nashville. “I haven’t done a lot of that in my life but I’m doing a lot more of that. There’s a lot of things inside of me and when you get hooked up with other people they bring that out of you. I write about real life, things I’ve gone through, I’m a very personal writer.”
There’s a common thread between tonight’s performers: a penchant for honest lyricism and a commitment to their own artistry. Catch Cobb, Payne, Combs, and Berg tonight at Nashville’s The Country at 9pm.