Songwriters go to work just like the rest of us. If you can’t imagine a group of musicians huddled around a coffee table in a small office or recording studio, acoustic guitars on laps, working through different melodies and lyrics, then you might not be aware such a scene is vital to any productive music community—especially Nashville.
That sort of collaboration has evolved into songwriter rounds, live performances where artists get together onstage to perform their work and share the stories of each song’s creation, at homey venues like the Bluebird Café. Something similar has been going on for years on the Las Vegas Strip at Mandalay Bay’s Nashville Unplugged shows at the Rhythm & Riffs lounge.
Now, that show format and the craft of songwriting has evolved into something bigger at Mandalay Bay, the inaugural Las Vegas Songwriters Festival. Over the course of the August 21-24 weekend, hundreds of top hits across multiple genres will be performed during dozens of mini-concerts by 50 renowned songwriters at venues spread across the resort, including Rhythm & Riffs and the House of Blues.
“We’ve been professional songwriters for 25 years and get the pleasure of sitting around these rooms in Nashville watching these people work, how great they write and sing, and we’ve played festivals with them in other places,” says Rob Hatch, event founder. “This is the epicenter of entertainment, so we felt like this festival has to be here.”
Matt Warren, who serves as the festival’s host and has written songs with Darius Rucker, Gary Allan and many more, has been a key cog in the Nashville Unplugged shows as well. He’s also married to the daughter of former Mandalay Bay executive Chuck Bowling, and says this festival has been in the works for some time now.
“Rob and I wanted to put something together but we weren’t sure if it was a corporate event, an industry event, or something else,” Warren says. “Rob and Chuck and I came up with this concept for Las Vegas, but it’s at Mandalay Bay because of that connection.”
Considering the south Strip’s proximity to the former Route 91 Harvest Festival and the fact that a major country music festival hasn’t returned to the city since the tragedy there in 2017, it seems like a notable site for the festival, which isn’t limited to country but certainly will pack in plenty of tunes from that genre.
“It’s almost like being able to come back here and start this thing could almost redeem what people may have of their last memory of any sort of country festival … we wanted to turn that around,” Warren says.
It all kicks off with an intimate concert by multi-platinum country singer and songwriter Lee Brice (August 21, House of Blues, axs.com), who will be performing many of his nine No. 1 singles along with the writers who helped compose them: Billy Montana, Bobby Pinson, Brian Davis, Jerrod Niemann, Liz Rose, Phil Barton, and Hatch, among others.
“We’re a fun bunch, we’re all really close, and the way the venues are lined up here, you’re going to have access to all these songwriters,” Warren says. “It won’t be like a typical concert.”
LAS VEGAS SONGWRITERS FESTIVAL August 21-24, times vary, $63 single day. Mandalay Bay, vegassongwriters.com.
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