Friends of Byron is pleased to announce the Nashville Songwriter Showcase, a benefit concert to save Byron’s Bar in Pomeroy from being closed down by the city of Pomeroy.

The concert takes place at 7 p.m. Friday at the Historic Phillips Auditorium, 1015 Fifth Ave. N. Tickets are available online at Ticketleap.com. Tickets can also be purchased at the door or reserved at Byron’s. Tickets are $50 per person.

Headliners are Kevin Gordon, whom Rolling Stone has called a “juke-joint professor emeritus,” and has had songs covered by the likes of Keith Richards, and Amelia White, known affectionately as the queen of the East Nashville songwriter community. Featured performers are Oklahoma songstress Carter Sampson, and David G Smith and Robert Deitch, both veterans of the Nashville scene.

Byron’s has been called the “hipness center of the universe” by former Allman Brothers keyboardist Bruce Katz. The venue has been hosting live music for 28 years, mostly on Sundays at 5 p.m. Byron has hosted such national acts as Canned Heat, Todd Snider and Kinky Friedman. All of the performers at the Nashville Songwriter Showcase are multiple-time Byron’s veterans.

Friends of Byron is an ad hoc committee of patrons formed in January to raise funds to assist Byron Stuart, the owner of Byron’s, and to help find a new location if the city determines that the building currently housing the bar must be torn down.