Just Off Music Row, Nashville's R&B Scene Thrives

Late on a Wednesday afternoon at Nashville's 3rd and Lindsley Bar and Grill, Emoni Wilkins, Jason Eskridge and Mike Hicks are trying to tack a bit of last-minute rehearsing onto their sound check for the night's show. They're each slated to perform a solo set, before wrapping up with a collective finale. With guidance from Eskridge, who's strumming an acoustic guitar, they ease into sympathetic three-part harmony on the chorus of James Taylor's "Shower the People." Eskridge encourages Wilkins to vamp, and she responds with fluttery, athletic vocal runs. Then Hicks, a mellow presence bent over a keyboard next to them, succumbs to delighted laughter. "You're gonna take me out," he tells Wilkins. "I quit. I'm packing up my stuff and going on home. I'm done. That's some good singin'."

During any given week, these three friends work as musicians for hire, tugged in diverging directions by tour dates and recording sessions with nationally known acts. It's hard enough for Eskridge, Hicks and Wilkins to find a night that they're all available to appear on one bill. Scheduling a separate run-through would be out of the question, and hardly necessary for singers at their level anyhow. But what draws them together on this and other occasions is a shared commitment to helping foster an underground Nashville R&B and soul scene, a music community in which they have a satisfying creative outlet and a real stake.

There was a time when Nashville was actually in the R&B to the period from the mid-1940s up through the '60s when the influence of the R&B programming on local radio station WLAC could be felt throughout the southern U.S., nightclubs on Jefferson Street hosted local and touring acts, labels like Bullet took a chance on talent, a bustling recording scene yielded occasional hits like Robert Knight's "Everlasting Love" and the variety show , a precursor to , beamed performances into living rooms.