Before a song gets cut, before it climbs the charts or wins awards, it starts somewhere small — one writer, a guitar, a feeling that won’t let go. That creative intimacy is exactly what the Blue Ridge School Education Foundation’s 20th Annual Nashville Songwriters’ Round delivers, returning to the Keller Pavilion at the Boys & Girls Club of the Plateau in Cashiers on Saturday, August 22.
Doors open and dinner begins at 6:00 P.M.; the music follows at 7:30 P.M. and runs until around 10:00 P.M. This year’s format is deliberately more intimate — 45 tables, 450 guests — and the evening once again centers on the format that makes the Songwriters’ Round unlike anything else on the Plateau’s event calendar: a loose circle of Nashville professionals, guitars in hand, trading songs and the stories behind them.
Annual headliner Rivers Rutherford returns for the occasion — and not just out of professional loyalty. His mother-in-law, Margaret McRae, was a longtime educator and Jackson County School Board member who taught countless students across the Cashiers community, and it’s that personal tie to the Plateau that first brought Rutherford to the event. A Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee with more than 20 ASCAP awards to his name, Rutherford has written hits for Brooks & Dunn, Gretchen Wilson and Montgomery Gentry, among dozens of others.
Joining him this year are Tim James, whose credits include “My List” for Toby Keith along with songs recorded by George Strait, Kenny Chesney and Chris Stapleton; Kelley Lovelace, the prolific Brad Paisley collaborator behind “He Didn’t Have to Be,” “Ticks,” “Online,” and “Remind Me”; and Dave Turnbull, whose songwriting credits include Kenny Chesney’s “The Boys of Fall” and Luke Combs’ “Where the Wild Things Are.” There’s also the possibility that Rivers’ son Rhys may join the circle — exactly the sort of unscripted moment that has become part of the evening’s appeal.
“It’s always on the fly,” says Ali Moody, the Foundation’s vice president and production coordinator for the event. “That’s what makes it so unique and entertaining every year.”
Moody, who is also co-founder of Caliber Fine Properties in Cashiers, says the chemistry among the writers is impossible to manufacture. These are longtime Nashville collaborators who know one another well, and what unfolds between songs — the stories, jokes, improvisations and recollections about how a lyric came together — often becomes as memorable as the music itself.
The evening includes a buffet dinner catered by The Local in Glenville along with a cash bar and silent auction featuring golf rounds, restaurant certificates and collectibles. Last year’s event drew approximately 470 attendees and netted roughly $124,000 to support Blue Ridge School, a Title I institution in Jackson County. Funds help provide educational travel opportunities, college tours, classroom resources and scholarships not otherwise possible through county funding alone.
Tickets are $250 per person, sold in tables of ten. Sponsorship opportunities remain available through mid-July, including Spotlight Sponsorships at $5,000 and Harmony Sponsorships at $3,000. Headline Sponsorships at $10,000 have already sold out.
For tickets, sponsorship information and updates, visit brsfoundation.com/songwriters-round.
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