A slew of Nashville's songwriting elite also made the trip, mingling with aspiring writers and fans and showcasing the voices and stories behind contemporary hits. Troubadours including Bobby Pinson (Sugarland's "Want To," his own "Don't Ask Me How I Know"), Jon Randall (Brad Paisley & Alison Krauss's "Whiskey Lullabye"), Stephony Smith (Tim McGraw & Faith Hill's "It's Your Love," Kenny Chesney's "Big Star," Reba McEntyre's "How Was I To Know"), Billy Montana (Sara Evans' "Suds In the Bucket," Jo Dee Messina's "Bring On the Rain," Garth Brooks' "More Than A Memory"), Tim Nichols (Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying," Terri Clark's "Girls Lie Too" and Jo Dee Messina's "Heads Carolina, Tails California"), John Wiggins (Joe Nichols' "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off"), and Chuck Jones (Diamond Rio's "Love A Little Stronger," Deana Carter's "Count Me In," John Berry's "Your Love Amazes Me"), Woody Mullis and Mike Geiger (co-writers of George Strait's "Adalida," Sawyer Brown's "This Missin' You Heart of Mine," and Neil McCoy's "City Put The Country Back In Me"), along with singer/songwriters Connie Harrington, Jessi Alexander and Shelly Fairchild, and CMT Can You Duet show standouts The Coppolas (Kate and Kasey) performed in intimate venues throughout the festival. BMI executives also took advantage of the scenic locale and stout concentration of hit-makers, presenting BMI Million-Air certificates to the writers whose songs have generated more than one million performances.

Photos by Alan Mayor

In addition to BMI, sponsors include the Florida House Inn, WQIK-FM, Folio Weekly, WRJY the WAVE and Amelia Island Tourism Development Council.

For lodging, schedule, venues and ticket information, please visit www.songwriterfestival.org.

In addition to BMI, sponsors include the Florida House Inn, WQIK-FM, Folio Weekly, WRJY the WAVE and Amelia Island Tourism Development Council.

For lodging, schedule, venues and ticket information, please visit www.songwriterfestival.org.

In addition to BMI, sponsors include the Florida House Inn, WQIK-FM, Folio Weekly, WRJY the WAVE and Amelia Island Tourism Development Council.

For lodging, schedule, venues and ticket information, please visit www.songwriterfestival.org.

In addition to BMI, sponsors include the Florida House Inn, WQIK-FM, Folio Weekly, WRJY the WAVE and Amelia Island Tourism Development Council.

For lodging, schedule, venues and ticket information, please visit www.songwriterfestival.org.

In addition to BMI, sponsors include the Florida House Inn, WQIK-FM, Folio Weekly, WRJY the WAVE and Amelia Island Tourism Development Council.

For lodging, schedule, venues and ticket information, please visit www.songwriterfestival.org.

Hit troubadours including Bobby Pinson (Sugarland’s “Want To,” his own “Don’t Ask Me How I Know”), Jon Randall (Brad Paisley & Alison Krauss’s “Whiskey Lullabye”), Stephony Smith (Tim McGraw & Faith Hill’s “It’s Your Love,” Kenny Chesney’s “Big Star,” Reba McEntire’s “How Was I To Know”), Billy Montana (Sara Evans’ “Suds In the Bucket,” Jo Dee Messina’s “Bring On the Rain,” Garth Brooks’ “More Than A Memory”), John Wiggins (Joe Nichols’ “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off”), and Chuck Jones (Diamond Rio’s “Love A Little Stronger,” Deana Carter’s “Count Me In,” John Berry’s “Your Love Amazes Me”), Woody Mullis and Mike Geiger (co-writers of George Strait’s “Adalida,” Sawyer Brown’s “This Missin’ You Heart of Mine,” and Neil McCoy’s “City Put The Country Back In Me”), along with smoldering singer/songwriters Jessi Alexander and Shelly Fairchild, and CMT Can You Duet show standouts The Coppolas (Kate and Kasey) will mingle with music industry executives and ambitious up-and-comers.

In addition to BMI, sponsors include the Florida House Inn, WQIK-FM, Folio Weekly, WRJY the WAVE and Amelia Island Tourism Development Council. For lodging, schedule, venues and ticket information, please visit www.songwriterfestival.org.

He wrote his first hit song 50 years ago. It was a Ray Price hit called “City Lights,” and he wrote it when he was a disc jockey at a Georgia radio station. He had his first Top 10 record as a solo artist 47 years ago and he joined the Grand Ole Opry 46 years ago.

And he had his last big cut . . . well, what time is it? Anderson continues to be an in-demand songwriter, writing for Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley and a slew of other new millennium favorites. His co-written “Give It Away” was a rarity: a No. 1 hit that was co-written by a Country Music Hall of Famer (Anderson) and sung by another Hall of Famer (George Strait). And in 2005, his “Whiskey Lullaby” (written with Jon Randall and sung by Paisley and Alison Krauss) won the Country Music Association’s song of the year prize. BMI’s first country Icon is, as retired former Sony/ATV President Donna Hilley once noted, both an elder statesman and a contemporary talent.

“He’s young for his age,” Randall said. “I think he can go on indefinitely. I want to be Bill Anderson when I grow up.”

For the record, Anderson was born on Nov. 1, 1937. Writing top hits at his age is like Sandy Koufax pitching a no-hitter against a modern-day New York Yankees team. Anderson never figured it would work out this way, exactly, though he also never planned on retiring and fading away.

“I just knew that this is what I wanted to do for my life’s work,” he said. “But I do remember telling people I’d stop if it wasn’t working out.”

It worked out, in spades. He wrote “City Lights” when he was 19, entering the hit parade and launching a remarkable career in music. The songwriting success preceded his triumphs as an idiosyncratic solo artist: Though he didn’t have a classically superior voice, Anderson developed a signature vocal style that led folks to call him “Whispering Bill Anderson.” His breathy, intimate singing helped him to score smashes including “Mama Sang A Song,” “Still,” “I Get The Fever” and “Wild Week-End.”

“In the days when I came along, the style was the thing,” he said. “If you weren’t different, you didn’t stand much of a chance.”

Anderson’s career as a top-draw solo artist cooled in the late 1970s, though he remained a popular fixture on the Opry. He quit writing songs in the 1980s, figuring that his writing well was dry and that it was better to concentrate on other things (such as hosting game shows on ABC and The Nashville Network). But Steve Wariner’s version of Anderson’s “The Tips of My Fingers” became a radio hit in 1992, proving that a classic country song could resonate through the decades, and Wariner and Vince Gill kept pushing him to co-write.

“That’s when the writing thing started to bubble again, and that’s when I got happier than I ever had been in my life,” Anderson said.

And so Bill Anderson’s career entered unprecedented territory. Never before had someone been to the top of an industry as a songwriter in one decade, as a performer in another and then re-emerged as a top songwriter again decades later. His works have been sung at the Opry, at county fairs and at Carnegie Hall. And his longevity and versatility helped Anderson become a common denominator in the careers of a seemingly disparate group of artists: Ernest Tubb, James Brown, Loretta Lynn, Trini Lopez, Aretha Franklin, The Louvin Brothers, Elvis Costello, Merle Haggard, Dean Martin and Waylon Jennings have all recorded his songs.

A friend recently sent Anderson a 50th birthday card, which surprised him since he has long passed 50 and it wasn’t his birthday. But the date was August 27, 2007, and it was the 50th anniversary of the day he wrote “City Lights.” Ray Price recorded it the next year, and a small town disc jockey became a professional songwriter. The day Price recorded “City Lights,” Anderson received a congratulatory call from Roger Miller and then another congratulatory call from a publisher. Later that afternoon, he got a call from a second publisher who said, “If you’ll sign with us, I think I can talk Ray Price into cutting ‘City Lights’.”

“In four hours, I got a good lesson into the realities of the music business,” Anderson said.

In those days, Bill Anderson was still learning lessons. These days, he could teach them.

CITR MC Tom Gross; BMI VP Writer/Publisher Relations Paul Corbin; Dr. Hal Moses, Director Emeritus of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center; Frances Preston, President, T.J. Martell Foundation; Raymond DuBois, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center; Peter Quinn, CEO/National Executive Director for T.J. Martell

Musical highlights of the week included concerts by Steve Cropper, Clint Black, Little Big Town, John Corbett, Blue County, Hanna-McEuen, and many of Nashville's hottest songwriters including Matraca Berg, Jeff Hanna, Jessi Alexander, Jon Randall, Tim Rushlow, Chuck Cannon, Doug Johnson, Wayne Kirkpatrick and Chas Sanford.

Front row: Gary Chapman, Jennifer Chapman, Equity Music Group President Mike Kraski, Equity Chief Creative Officer Tim Wipperman, Kimberly Roads (LBT), Clint Black, Frances Preston, Karen Fairchild (LBT), Jimi Westbrook (LBT); Back Row: BMI's Paul Corbin, and Phillip Sweet (LBT)

"Country in the Rockies is a magical event filled with music, fun, friendships and most importantly, the mission of raising vital funds to support cutting-edge research for leukemia, cancer and AIDS through the Frances Williams Preston Laboratories at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center," stated Laura Heatherly, Executive Director of the T.J. Martell Foundation.

Clint Black

The inaugural "Music for Life Concert & Auction" held at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts raised $65,000. The event was spearheaded by a committee of local citizens and presented by Redden Group Realty of Crested Butte. Performers included Blue County, Suzy Boggus, Dean Dillon, Aaron Barker, Hanna-McEuen and Gary Morris.

Clint Black and Little Big Town

Since 1993, the Martell Foundation has enabled physicians and scientists of the Frances Williams Preston Laboratories at VICC to conduct cutting-edge research and quickly transition promising new findings from laboratory benches to patient bedsides. To date, the Nashville division has raised $14 million in support of the VICC's pilot projects. In turn, these contributions have been leveraged to obtain additional funding - totaling more than $100 million - from public and private sources to further advance ongoing efforts to alleviate suffering from cancer.

Jaime Hanna and Jonathan McEuen "busk" on the top of Mt. Crested Butte

The Frances Williams Preston Labs of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center are named in honor of former BMI President and CEO Frances Preston. Preston is the founder of Country in the Rockies and also serves as President of the Martell board and as a VICC board member.