Those who have experienced Songwriters in Paradise have a difficult time coming up with an elevator pitch to describe it. It’s intimate. There’s great music. There is delicious food, and of course there is premium wine. But there’s more than that.
“It’s magical … it’s a living room experience,” Matraca Berg said. “The settings are so beautiful. It’s warm and funny and moving and all the good stuff.”
Songwriters in Paradise, a.k.a. SIP, is a multi-day music festival held at wineries in Napa Valley (in April) and Healdsburg (this month), and at the beach or poolside in Cabo (in November). Artists take turns performing their own songs and sharing the stories of how those songs came to be. Berg, a singer-songwriter who performed at her first SIP in Napa Valley in 2023, is among the artists who will take the stage at SIP Healdsburg this weekend, July 24-27.
Listed in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, she co-wrote the song Deana Carter made famous, “Strawberry Wine,” which was named Country Music Award Song of the Year in 1997 and nominated for a Grammy, as was her 2007 song, “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today.”
Berg’s name and face may not seem familiar, but she is of the caliber of talent curated by SIP founder Patrick Davis. Davis himself is a singer-songwriter whose credits include songs performed by Jimmy Buffet, Lady Antebellum, Jewel and Guy Clark, with whom he has also co-written songs.
“It’s an amazing confluence of food, wine and music,” Mike Brennan said, of SIP. Brannan, current chair of the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce board of directors, has attended several SIPs. So enamored with SIP are he and his wife that they planned their wedding around it and made SIP their honeymoon.
“SIP is something that people who live in town have to go to at least one night,” Brennan said. “SIP is for everyone.”
Limited to 150 tickets, this exclusive, intimate event knits together singer-songwriters—some are recognizable by name, others by the songs they wrote—and creates experiences that can only be defined by the happenings of that evening.
John Driskell Hopkins, a founding member of the Zac Brown Band, emotionally brought together the entire audience at last year’s SIP Healdsburg when he shared his story about a song he wrote shortly after he was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“It was pretty amazing, pretty powerful,” Brennan said of that moment. “It was unexpected. I brought several people that night as guests and they all said ‘Wow, that was a big deal.’”
Davis started SIP in Hope Town in 2013. For him it was a way to spend some time with his songwriting friends who are often out touring. And some SIP regulars, such as Grammy-winning Kristian Bush of Sugarland, build their tour dates around SIP.
Some SIP newbies are coming to Healdsburg this year, including Shawn Mullins, whose breakthrough song, “Lullaby,” hit No. 1 in 1998 on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart published by Billboard.
Mullins said he loves SIP’s format because it fits his performing style. Over the last few years has cut back the number of concerts he plays each year to about 50 or 60, down from about 250. He also prefers smaller venues now, too.
“What I like about smaller venues is that people are there for the music and the stories about the songs,” he said. “They get that it’s a listening space.”
Berg said she was surprised at how SIP attendees are “very interested in listening to the song” and how they hang on to “every word.”
Davis enforces a “no talking during the performance” rule and is known to shush anyone who breaks it, in the same manner as the Bluebird Café in Nashville. Berg said the Bluebird now exists “more for tourists,” but that it used to be a hangout, a “clubhouse” of sorts, for songwriters.
Other first-time SIPers include Dan Tyminski (whose long list of musical successes include a voice in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?), and Kim Richey, whose songwriting collaborations include Brooks & Dunn, Trisha Yearwood, and the Chicks, to name a few. Her vocal contributions appear on songs with Yearwood, Brooks & Dunn, Jason Isbell, Reba McEntire, Ryan Adams and others.
While SIP is a for-profit event, it always includes a charitable component. Since 2013 it has raised more than $1 million, and Davis likes to include nonprofit organizations local to the venue. Local recipients include the Healdsburg Education Fund and Humane Society of Sonoma County.
This year’s winery venues are A. Rafanelli, Banshee, Robert Young, Bricoleur Vineyards and La Crema.
For the full line-up and tickets, go to songwritersinparadise.com.
