Nutmeg Listening Room Featuring Drew Ryder Smith & Melissa Capezio

Join us for the first ever Nutmeg Listening Room - and intimate evening spent listening to the area's finest songwriting talent.
About this Event

Drew Ryder Smith is a country music singer and award winning professional songwriter. Born and raised between “Music City” (Nashville, TN) and “The Hit Making Capital of the World” (Muscle Shoals, AL), his career in music was probably inevitable.

Drew toured coast to coast for several years in his early career and has shared the stage with Merle Haggard, Don Williams, Big & Rich, Lee Brice, Lady A and many others. He describes opening for Merle Haggard at the Ryman Auditorium with only a stool and his acoustic guitar as one of the highlights of his career. Opening for one of his heroes with the likes of John Prine, Tim and Faith, Keith Urban and top industry executives in the audience, and his mother in the wings, is a story he rarely tells but that is close to his heart.

Drew's long songwriting career has also afforded him the opportunity to write with Don Schlitz (“The Gambler,” “When You Say Nothing At All”), Rob Snyder (“She Got The Best Of Me” - Luke Combs), Driver Williams ("Smoke A Little Smoke” - Eric Church), Bobby Pinson (“Some Of It” - Eric Church) and he continues to work with some of the brightest talent in Nashville. His first gold record hangs on his mother’s/father’s wall.

Drew is a proud member of the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association as well as NSAI (the Nashville Songwriters Association International).

Raised on traditional bluegrass and classic rock, singing harmony was as second nature to Melissa Faith Capezio as walking and breathing. At 16, she asked her dad to show her three chords on the guitar & learned every song in her Tracy Chapman songbook and then started writing songs of her own. She hasn’t stopped writing since. She has recorded two full length studio albums, both available on all streaming platforms. She has also sung background vocals on a number of friends projects, something she truly loves doing and would love to do more of.

Melissa is a mom to an 11- and 9-year-old, both of whom are musical in their own ways. Playing music took a big backseat until the arrival of Covid and she needed the outlet that songwriting had always provided. She started recording songs in her closet and posting them on Instagram. Recently, Melissa got back out there and took to the stage again. She says “Only took me 44 years to get here - right on time!”