Don’t think I’ve mentioned this here yet, but I started working for an amazing company in February called Emma. They are a permission based email marketing company based here in Nashville, and they are probably the coolest thing going. If you need a way to reach folks by email, let me know.

Anyway, Emma is sponsoring an Arbor Day campaign called “Vote For Trees.” It’s a simple concept: go to this website, and vote for trees. For every vote cast, Emma will donate a seedling to be planted, up to 5,000 trees. Plus, you can learn everything about trees that you were always afraid to ask (are they dangerous?) and learn some awesome tree facts as well (they can’t balance your checkbook).

The site is hilarious, and it’s a quick and easy way to do something good for our environment. Please take a second and click this link so you can vote! And if you’re a fellow blogger, please feel free to post about this. Let’s see how fast we can get to 5,000 trees!

PS-Be sure you get your thank you email, it’s almost the best part.

Hi! Hello, woefully underused blog!

Tonight, at the 12 South Arts Venue, Improv Nashville is performing a comedy improv show as a part of Laughing Stock 2007, a benefit for Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital. St. Jude is a hospital that does very great things, and is dear to me because of my brother John, who was a patient there when we were children.

So, come! All proceeds from the show go to benefit St. Jude. Tickets are 12 dollars and can be purchased in advance from Improv Nashville’s fancy new online ticketing system! The show starts at 8 PM.

If you bring two extra dollars, you can purchase a delicious cupcake, as I will be distributing megatons of cupcakery at the show. All cupcake dollars earned will also go to Saint Jude. Tonight’s flavor: Devil’s Food!

love, celine

Well, it’s been awhile, but after a long winter hiatus, we’re ready to open up shop and rejoin the land o’ blogs! That’s right, Muse: Nashville is ready for a relaunch, and honestly, we’re ready for a bit of an overhaul.

After losing our passion for this site, Celine and I started questioning why we weren’t really interested in posting anymore. The answer was very simple. First, we were extremely busy. And second, Muse: Nashville had become a “local events blog,” and we never wanted to be an events blog. Don’t get me wrong, we certainly wanted to talk about local events that interested us, but we had initially envisioned a more random blog, a mix of .mp3 posts, reviews and commentary, and events. In that order, if at all possible.

So with this return to blogging, there are going to be some changes around here. Our scope is going to widen a bit. We are basically going to write about whatever we want. That might include music, movies, TV, books, sports, local shows, theater, comedy, our cats…you get the idea. We’ll still be focused on culture, but not so much on listing the week’s happenings. After all, there are many other outlets that already do that for us.

Our promise to you: Less facts, more opinions! Fewer lists, more substance! More music, less talk! We will still be doing our mp3 posts (that was Celine’s vision for our blog all along, so that will always be part of what we do), and if we’re excited about something going on in town, we’ll be sure to let you know. But we intend to have more fun with this, and we hope you’ll keep reading as we figure ourselves out a bit.

If you’re still out there reading us, thanks for hanging in there! We’re excited to be back!!

Matt

Scott posted this today in our comments section, and we thought it might be useful to someone:

I have four tickets to see Adrienne Young that I (unfortunately) won’t be using. Anyone who is reading this and interested in free tickets is welcome to e-mail me: scott at loserfish.org. (take out the “at”, replace with @).

Celine mentioned these yesterday, but I wanted to say once again that we have two FREE Del McCoury tickets for his show tonight at the Hall Of Fame. You can’t buy tickets to this, folks, you have to win them from WSM, and that’s what we did. We can’t go, so they are yours if you want them. First commenter on this entry is the winner.

Here are my picks for the rest of the week. Check these out if you know what’s good for you:

-Guy Clark plays again tonight at the Country Music Hall Of Fame. Check out my previous post about it here. The bill says he has “friends” with him, and tonight that means Rodney Crowell, Will Kimbrough, and Verlon Thompson. This guy (haha, guy, get it??) has some pretty amazing friends. There’s a fantastic interview with Guy on WPLN today. You can listen to it here.

-Zane Williams is playing at the Christopher Pizza Company on Thursday night at 8PM. Zane is definitely one of my favorites and I’m going to do my best to make it to this show. See my previous Zane post here.

-Matthew Ryan is playing at 3rd and Lindsley on Thursday night too. Matthew Ryan is so good that I’ve even forgiven him for stealing my name. You can check out a few tracks over at his myspace. Show starts at 8PM.

-And finally, the show I missed because I thought it was this Saturday instead of last Saturday (hi, I’m a college graduate!). Beth Nielsen Chapman played a benefit concert for PeaceJam, an international education program that encourgages Nobel Peace Laureates to work with youth around the world. The show was at the Scarritt-Bennett Center, and I stupidly mixed up my weekends. If anyone went to see this show, please send us a report about it. In the meantime, here’s a song of Beth’s for you. Beth tragically lost her husband at an early age, and she wrote an amazing record about grief and loss called “Sand And Water.” This is the title track from that album.

Sand And Water from the album Sand And Water

Beth is one of my favorite writers in town, and I’m sorry I missed the chance to see her play. I promise I’ll post about her next show BEFORE the actual performance.

-Oh yeah, and don’t forget about The Features, Friday night at Mercy Lounge. Show starts at 9PM, $10 cover. But you already knew that, right?

-Matt

I know this isn’t exactly about Nashville, but I am excited to say that HQ, The “Official” Unofficial Source For All Things 24 (aka “the best show ever”) has posted an article I wrote! It’s about the premiere of I Trust You To Kill Me here at the Nashville Film Festival.

Make sure you click over, show them some love, and tell them how cool I am.

-Matt