"Throughout its legendary 26 years The Bluebird Cafe has hosted some of the most respected songwriters in the business," said Erika Wollam Nichols, General Manager of the Venue. "Americana Music Association's ‘Live at The Bluebird Cafe' series continues that tradition."

Series passes are priced $125 for all six shows and available through February 11 at 5pm CST from the Americana Music Association by calling 615-386-6936. Reservations for individual shows are priced $25 per show, subject to availability, and may be made one week in advance of each show at www.bluebirdcafe.com.

Showtime for all performances will be 9pm. Doors will open each night at 8:30pm. As has become tradition with Americana performances, expect surprises and special guest performers. Seating for all shows will be general admission. March 12 and March 19 artists will be announced as soon as possible. For more information, please visit www.AmericanaMusic.org or www.BlueBirdCafe.com.

About the Artists

JIM LAUDERDALE on FEBRUARY 19. A multi-talented artist who has enjoyed successes in country, bluegrass, and Americana music, Jim Lauderdale won the Americana Music Association's first Artist of the Year and Song of the Year awards. He is among Nashville's "A List" songwriters, penning hits for artists such as Patty Loveless, Dixie Chicks, Vince Gill, Gary Allan, Blake Shelton, and George Strait. As a performer he has released more than a dozen albums and his credits include two Grammy wins, one for the collaboration Lost in the Lonesome Pines with Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys and another for his own The Bluegrass Diaries. Lauderdale says: "I love that I can play the Opry one weekend, a jam band festival the next and a bluegrass festival the following week. That's really inspiring to me and I think there's a real thread there. The roots are the same for all of them and that's the music I'm interested in."

SAM BUSH on FEBRUARY 26. Mandolin virtuoso Sam Bush grew up in a Kentucky family where music was loved and encouraged. His father was a farmer who played the fiddle and the mandolin. Young Bush was a fine fiddler himself and a national champion by age 15. Leader of both bluegrass and rock bands by his mid-teens, he used his prodigious skills and eclectic tastes to fuel his career-long search for "something different." As cofounder and leader of the seminal progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival, Bush led the charge into a new musical territory where boundaries were blurred and new hybrid sounds were explored. His dynamic and inventive playing, his captivating, high-energy performances earned him the moniker "King of Newgrass." When not heading his own band, Bush has spent the past 15 years as a supersideman with the like of Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, and the Flecktones; spearheaded evolutionary collaborations with Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor and David Grisman; and driven nearly every "bluegrass supergroup" imaginable with his inimitable mandolin playing.

NANCI GRIFFITH on MARCH 5. Whether performing her own poetically evocative material or the compositions of her influences, friends, and peers, Nanci Griffith possesses a powerful gift for inhabiting the songs she sings – for communicating unspoken intimacy and heartache through her tender voice and lilting, delicate phrasing. Rolling Stone magazine once described her as a unique form of "folkabilly" music. Yet Griffith emerged as more than just a bright star in a new genre. In a career that has now spanned nearly three decades, her awards are appropriately numerous and include a Grammy for Other Voices, Other Rooms and two more for her dazzling performances on albums by The Chieftains. And now in 2009, Nanci's career continues to trail blaze that path as she prepares to release a new album, entitled The Loving Kind, later this year.

FOSTER & LLOYD on MARCH 26. Rolling Stone magazine said: "If the Byrds and the Beatles were to have lunch at the Everly Brothers house and listen to Hank Williams records the music would sound like Foster & Lloyd." Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd were pioneers in the Americana movement before it had a name. Foster & Lloyd stood out from the contemporary country pack in the 1980s thanks to Radney Foster's intelligent, literate lyrics; Bill Lloyd's flair for memorable pop melodies; and the duo's Everly Brothers-style close harmony singing. It was an influential mix that paved the way for Americana as a genre.

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