So true, frogman. All the good professional songwriters are in Nashville now. When Al Anderson left NRBQ to be a full-time songwriter, he moved there. The studio musicians who played on all the singer/songwriter albums coming out of Los Angeles in the late 60’s and 70’s are in the Nashville studios now. Bassist Leland Sklar, who was on Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and Carole King albums, is now in Nashville. His drummer/partner on all those albums, Russ Kunkel, is in Lyle Lovett’s band. Los Angeles still has a very healthy underground musical community and scenes (a Brian Wilson-obsessed Pop one, an Americana/Hard Country one, a Blues one, a Surf one, a Punk one), but it is just that---underground, invisible to all but the dedicated, hardcore music lovers.
