At the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., it is not uncommon for the crisp, clean, soothing sound of an acoustic guitar to echo down the hallway.

Patients, their families, and medical staff members alike light up when musicians come in to sing. Patients’ smiles grow, their eyes widen, and they sometimes dance along to the beat of the songs from their hospital beds.

Courtney Butcher, a 17-year-old patient suffering from chronic stomach pain, was particularly excited about her personal musical performance because, she admitted, “I like all music.”

It’s all part of a program called Musicians on Call, whose mission is to bring music to the bedsides of patients too sick to leave their hospital beds. The program exists in numerous health care facilities in six different cities: New York, Philadelphia, Miami, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Nashville.

The program relies heavily on local musicians. There is, however, a handful of more famous, celebrity musicians who are active participants.

Darius Rucker, of Hootie & the Blowfish fame, is one such volunteer.

Having recently embraced the country music world, he performs mostly in the “music city” of Nashville.

"The singing stuff, that’s cool and it’s my job, but I really enjoy when … Musicians on Call, or the children’s hospital down in Vanderbilt or Charleston [calls]," Rucker said. “I love doing that stuff.”

Rucker says his success in the country music world fits perfectly into Musicians on Call because “the storyline of country music…it's such…emotion filled music. The storyline's always about kids and families and stuff like that.”

Thirteen-year-old Brooke Kreger, who has been in and out of the hospital since Christmas, thought Rucker was “awesome” and that his performance was “really good.” Her father, Tony, was thankful because Rucker’s performance broke up the “monotony of the day.”

To learn more about Musicians on Call, click here to visit the website.

The performances have physiological benefits for patients, too, including “pain control, lowering blood pressure, and lowering stress,” said Leslie Faerstein, the executive director of Musicians on Call.

The emotional benefits are evident, too, in boosting the morale of patients, their families, hospital staff, and even the volunteer performers.

A faithful believer in music therapy, country musician Randy Houser is also a Musicians on Call volunteer in Nashville.

“It doesn’t surprise me that there’s healing power in music,” said Houser. “Music has always been very therapeutic for me.”

Faerstein continues to see the benefits of the program as it expands.

“Once somebody does it, and they hear about it from another musician, they realize what an incredible experience it is, not just for the patient, but for the musician, him or herself,” Faerstein said. “It really affects everyone.”

Rucker does admit it can be difficult sometimes.

“I've been in a couple rooms where the kids were real sick,” Rucker said. “I've walked out of rooms where…you really have to stop for a second … so you don't go in the next room crying.”

Nevertheless, he and many other talented musicians across the country, continue to go back and share the joy of music with the patients.

“It’s one of those things that when you do it…it’s amazing,” Rucker said. “And when you’ve done it – you can’t – you don’t say no.”

Updated at 9 p.m. ET: Severe thunderstorms continued to threaten Wednesday night along a multi-state line stretching from the Southeast to as far north as the nation's capital, according to The Weather Channel.

The National Weather Service issued tornado watches across large swaths of Georgia, as well as parts of Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, the Carolinas and northwest Florida, through Wednesday night. The Weather Channel warned of thunderstorms with spotty, damaging gusts and low chance of tornado in northeastern Florida and on the east side of the Florida panhandle.   

Thirteen tornadoes were confirmed to have blown through the South on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to The Weather Channel -- they touched down in Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi and Illinois on Tuesday and Indiana, Tennessee and Georgia on Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, a violent tornado that ripped through Adairsville, Ga., killed at least one person, overturned cars, littered Interstate 75 with debris and forced officials to shut down a 10-mile stretch of the road, officials said.

Read more at weather.com

Numerous buildings in nearby Bartow, Ga., some with people inside, were also damaged in the powerful storm, and police have received multiple calls of injuries and trauma, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

A man was killed in the state when the tornado hit his mobile home, Bartow County officials said.

Eight people went to the hospital with injuries following the storm, officials at Gordon Hospital in Calhoun, Ga., said. The storm also left at least 12,400 without power statewide, utilities providers said.

That twister was only one of a handful that touched down in the South and the Midwest Wednesday, as storms throughout the region caused widespread power outages, structural damages and were blamed for another death in the region.

The National Weather Service also confirmed another twister touched down in Sardis, Miss., heavily damaging homes in Solsberry, Ind.

Earlier, a 47-year-old man in Nashville, Tenn., was killed when a tree fell on a shed he was in, according to local fire department officials.

Meanwhile, in Monticello, Ark., a woman was struck by lightning late Tuesday but only had minor injuries, according to police, and a 32-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were treated for minor injuries in Marion County, Ky., the emergency management division reported.

Packing quarter-size hail and powerful winds, the storms also knocked out power to thousands of people throughout the region early Wednesday.

In Memphis, Tenn., more than 13,000 customers lost power as high winds tore down power lines and at least two tornado warnings were issued in the area, but later expired, according to the National Weather Service.

And more than 7,300 Nashville customers were without power, according to Nashville Electric. Utilities reported another 8,000 outages in Arkansas, 7,000 in Mississippi, and nearly 12,000 in Indiana.

In Arlington, Tenn., downed power lines sparked a fast-spreading grass fire that caused the evacuation of a small mental-health facility, Arlington Fire Department Lt. Chad Wiseman said.

"The wind was pushing everything really fast," Wiseman said, adding that gusts reached 50 mph as the fire was burning. "The wind feeds everything. The wind will turn a little grass fire into something that was shooting 15- or 20-foot flames in the air. It looked pretty scary."

The fire was brought under control within an hour, officials said.

A number of factors have helped build the storm system, according to meteorologists. Unseasonably warm, wet air has been pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico by southerly winds, and that is being met by cold air coming in from the Plains via Canada, The Weather Channel’s Chad Burke said, adding that the cold air is being driven eastward by unusually high winds.

"It's not a normal pattern for this time of year," said Burke. "The warm air has changed the dynamic. On the back end of the storm, you have high temperatures in the 50s and 60s in places like Chicago. By tomorrow night, they'll be at 11 (degrees)."

NBC staff writers Vignesh Ramachandran and Isolde Raftery contributed reporting.

A Tennessee café owner died of inhaling fumes from dry ice within minutes after he was accidentally locked inside his restaurant’s cooler on Sunday, an autopsy has determined.

Germantown East Café in East Nashville had closed on Friday because of a planned power outage in the building, NBC station WSMV-TV reported. Because of the outage, dry ice was being used in the cooler to keep food from spoiling.

Co-owner Jay Luther, 47, went to the popular eatery on Sunday night to check on the cooler. He then became locked inside, police said.

On Sunday night, police responded to a robbery alarm at 8:29 p.m., but officers left after they concluded power surges caused a false alarm.

Watch video, read about the case on wsmv.com

On Monday, Luther's body was found in the freezer by the other co-owner, Chris Lowry. 

Police later found out that the mechanism to unlock the cooler door from the inside was broken. Part of the device was sitting on a shelf outside the cooler.

According to the medical examiner in Nashville, Luther would have been overcome by carbon dioxide gas from the dry ice found in the enclosed cooler.

“I think it’s just a tragic accident, an unfortunate coming together of circumstances for this poor gentleman that got trapped inside the freezer, at a time there was carbon dioxide there, and he was overwhelmed by the vapors,” Adele Lewis, deputy chief medical examiner for Nashville, told the Tennessean on Tuesday.

Police said they would review their response to the Sunday night call.

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Occupy protesters Anthony Gales, left, Ben Grady, center, and James Martin, right, eat dinner at the campsite on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012, in Nashville, Tenn.

Legislation passed by Tennessee lawmakers, apparently aimed at shutting the Occupy Nashville camp, could have a chilling effect on free speech and perhaps even criminalize the homeless, housing and civil liberties activists say.

The state's House of Representatives on Monday approved the Senate version of a bill -- the "Equal Access to Public Property Act of 2012" -- which prohibits unauthorized camping -- including sleeping and storing of personal belongings -- on public grounds, and the governor says he will sign it. Violators would face up to 11 months and 29 days in jail and/or a fine of $2,500.

The measure follows an unsuccessful attempt by the state to evict the Occupy protesters from Nashville’s Legislative Plaza in October.

“It chills the spirit of freedom of speech and assembly by targeting a particular form of expression,” said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. “When you recognize that the Occupy folks were choosing to camp and put up tents as the very means by which they were expressing their frustration with the government -- to have that then be identified as criminal, challenges their right to political speech.”

The legislation does not specifically refer to the plaza where Occupy protesters have gathered, instead describing public property in one section as "a state park, recreation area, wildlife refuge, historic building, educational institution or natural green space." It notes the legislation is "specifically intended to protect state interests jeopardized by the activity of camping on state property that is not compatible to or designated for such activity."

The broad language poses a major problem for the homeless, said Charles Strobel, founding director of Room in the Inn and its Campus for Human Development, a religious nonprofit that provides services to the homeless in central Tennessee.

“I think it’s what they might refer to as unintended consequences,” he said. "… It’s criminalizing the right to exist as a human being. It’s outlawing homelessness."

Strobel, who has worked with the homeless community for 34 years, described the legislation as "cruel and mean.” He said it will join a number of measures, such as "quality of life" offenses, that the homeless already have to contend with.

"So this is just one of a number of situations that you’re constantly facing with the homeless, that they are being shuffled around and, of course, in this case, they just have to keep walking … God forbid that they stop and rest," he said late Tuesday.

Related story: Tale of a Southern 'Occupy': Nashville aims to bridge political divides

Some homeless had sheltered at Legislative Plaza before the Occupy protesters arrived, since there were only about 1,500 beds available to the city’s estimated more than 4,000 people who need them, Strobel said.

As many as 50 homeless people lived in the Occupy camp at the height of the protest, but that number has dropped to about 10, said Lindsey Krinks, a 27-year-old student at Vanderbilt Divinity School and a homeless advocate who is also an Occupy member.

“A lot of people have cleared off the plaza because they’re so concerned about getting jail time and fines that they can’t pay and having all of their belongings confiscated ... which is really problematic when you are looking at people who have so little to begin with," she said. 

Among those is Nathan Rice, 32, who said he has lived on the streets since 13 and recycles cans for money. He arrived at the Occupy camp in mid-November and said he is "pretty much committed" to the movement.

“It was just a safe place to sleep and people treated me fairly nice,” Rice said of the Occupy camp. "They didn’t look at you as just homeless ... they looked at us as equals.”

One of the legislation's sponsors, Republican Rep. Eric Watson, said in an email that the legislation “does nothing to impact the homeless population” and did not elaborate. He directed msnbc.com to the text of the legislation regarding questions about the bill's intent. 

The other sponsor, Republican Sen. Dolores R. Gresham, did not respond to an email and phone calls from msnbc.com seeking comment by early Wednesday afternoon.

But in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, she said the purpose was to make the grounds around the Capitol available to all visitors.

AP Photo/Erik Schelzig

Sen. Dolores Gresham introduces her bill seeking to ban unauthorized camping on public property on the Senate floor in Nashville, Tenn., on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012.

"Certainly that was never the intent that the homeless would be in any way impacted by this bill," the Somerville Republican said.

Health concerns and preservation of state resources are cited in the bill among the reasons to impose the changes.

"It is in the state’s interests to be a good steward of public land and manage and protect it in such a manner as to ensure that future generations of Tennesseans are able to continue to enjoy the natural treasures and rich beauty of this state," the bill said.

While many other Occupy camps have been shuttered across the country using similar regulations since Occupy Wall Street began in September, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Winmill in Idaho issued a temporary order on Monday allowing Occupy protesters in Boise to keep their tents.

The judge wrote that the camp was in a public place that is "highly visible and physically close to the seat of government, making it a natural forum for political protests." He has not allowed sleeping but said an argument could be made for it as a protected freedom of expression, according to KBOI2.com.

The order was issued in response to a new law signed last week by Idaho's governor intended to remove the protesters from the property surrounding a vacant courthouse where they've camped out since early November, The Associated Press reported.

Criminalization of the homeless in jurisdictions around the country “has become progressively worse over the last couple of years,” said Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

“A number of communities are passing ordinances like this to push back against the Occupy movement and when you look at communities, some do it more artfully than others, and this is certainly not in that camp,” he said. “It’s quite apparent that they are constructing this to limit … very distinct behavior and actions.”

Donovan said it was a “flagrant targeting” of a group of individuals and said he thought it was unlikely to stand up in court. When asked how the legislation compared to others on the books, he said it was among "those ordinances that violate people's rights" and was "part of a collective movement" to restrict the rights of those who engage in "reasonable activities."

“Anytime that a state engages in this type of behavior it opens the door and creates a path for other ordinances and other laws that will affect the homeless so we would strongly object to this” kind of legislation, he added.

A separate process is also under way in Tennessee to write new procedures for the use of the plaza amid an ongoing federal lawsuit, filed by the local ACLU, which alleges that the state illegally revised the rules controlling the site last October when it tried to evict the Occupy protesters.

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Samantha Blanchard works in the Occupy Nashville protest camp on Monday.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Compared to “Occupy” protests on the coasts, the rebel encampment tucked between Tennessee’s War Memorial Plaza and the Statehouse – a few dozen tents adorned with American flags and even a libertarian one – has a decidedly Southern feel.

While protesters in New York, California and elsewhere may often pass their downtime playing drums, meditating or knitting, their Tennessee counterparts could be playing football, hosting a square dance, flying kites, skateboarding or welcoming opponents with cookies. 

And if conversations on the coasts tend toward left-wing political theory, such as anarchy, Marxism and socialism, protesters here work on bridging a different divide: uniting the “blue” and “red” factions in their local audience.

"We do have a lot of conservative voices in this camp and the thing that is really appealing to all of us is we believe in the common ties that bind us,” said Samantha Blanchard, a 30-year-old office administrator who was sheltering in a tent as rain poured down on a frosty, grey Sunday afternoon. 

“This is a place where if people were really going to come together and form that 'purple' (combination of blue and red political affiliations) that everybody lusts for, it’s going to probably happen in this camp.” 

• More than 200 arrested as police raid Occupy camps

While occupiers in several other cities have been forced to retreat, Nashville’s protest -- a core group of about 90 and a looser support network of 400 part-timers -- has survived two attempted evictions on Oct. 28-29.  Fifty-five people were arrested on misdemeanor charges of criminal trespassing that were eventually dismissed, said William P. York II, one of the attorneys who represented them. 

Among them was 64-year-old Bill Howell, regional organizer for the Tennesseans for Fair Taxation.

'I've been treated like a rock star'
Howell, who said he had never been arrested before, had planned for the moment, leading other protesters in a reading of the Declaration of Independence before he was taken into custody.

Christopher Berkey for MSNBC

Bill Howell, 64, a regional organizer of Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, at the Occupy Nashville protest camp on Monday, Nov. 28. The "23" tag signifies that he was the 23rd protestor arrested in Nashville.

Reaction to the “Occupy Nashville” protest has been varied, he said, with “some people going by honking and hollering, ‘Get a job!’ and you know all the usual stuff. In my community, in some circles, I’ve been treated like a rock star,” he said chuckling, as a train horn blared in the background.

A preliminary injunction has allowed the camp to remain for now, but a status conference will be held with a federal judge on Feb. 3. However, protesters say “side attacks” have continued, with city inspectors warning about food preparation safety standards and the state attempting to deny them port-a-potties, which was revealed in emails obtained under Tennessee's open records law, said another one of the Occupy Nashville attorneys, William W. Hunt III.

But efforts to squelch the movement only served to fire up “couch occupiers,” said Jason Steen, 32, an office administrator.

“We had a good number of people here, but it suddenly turned into a First Amendment issue when Governor (Bill) Haslam started evicting everyone for curfew rights,” he said, estimating that the camp size has more than doubled to about 60 tents in the wake of the arrests.

Though Steen has a home, he spends most of his time at the camp and sometimes sleeps there.

“I just feel that strong about it because if we don’t have people down here for when all the legislators are in session and looking out their windows … what kind of impact are we going to have?”

One of those drawn in over First Amendment concerns was Jon Louis, who describes himself as a right-winger with some liberal social tendencies. He said he grew "irritated" as he watched state troopers arrest protesters.

Christopher Berkey for msnbc.com

Samantha Blanchard, Matthew Hamill and Jon Louis spend time in the Occupy Nashville protest camp on Monday.

Louis, who said some on the right have cast him as a “plant” in the movement while friends have taken to calling him a "hippie," noted that he does not agree with all of the views put forward at the camp and that it took him a while learning about it before he joined.  

"There’s some like minds here and there’s also, you know, a melting pot of different opinions," he said, noting he was “trying to get to the more right conservative South … mindsets and try to explain it to them, that we aren’t just a bunch of lefties (because) I’m most certainly not a lefty."

Three goals
Despite the range of political beliefs represented in the camp – and  Nashville’s reputation as a liberal bastion in the state -- the protesters have winnowed their “goals” down to three, which are printed on a blue index card and handed out to visitors. They are: ending corporate personhood, getting money out of politics and supporting Occupy Wall Street.

“It’s a lot more conservative here so we definitely have to tailor our approach and our message,” said Elli Whiteway, a 21-year-old college student. “… We kind of pride ourselves on being a common denominator movement … that’s been our approach, just trying to be, not exactly centrist, but applicable to both sides of the political spectrum.”

That approach hasn’t won over all conservatives.

The Vanderbilt College Republicans organized a protest at the camp on Nov. 3 – which the occupiers said they welcomed with cookies and open dialogue.

"We wanted to make known that not all the youths are with the movement, as is perceived by many. Their demands will do nothing but add to the burgeoning debt already on our shoulders," Stephen Siao, the group's president, wrote to msnbc.com in an email. "We think the Occupy Nashville movement is misguided -- they should be protesting at the White House, not at the State Capitol or Wall Street. It's this administration's policies that are prolonging this dreadful economy."

He also said that while Occupy Nashville "might have one or two members who claim to be conservative," the "core of conservatism is personal responsibility, and that is completely the opposite of their demands. We don't believe prosperity should be punished."

At a General Assembly meeting on Sunday, the protesters shivered, stamped their feet and huddled together to keep warm in 45-degree temperatures while outlining upcoming protests, addressing financial donations and discussing a planned two-day meeting of all the state’s occupations – about a dozen total from towns and cities – for this weekend.

On the sidelines, Michael Custer, a 47-year-old father of four and self-described rabble-rouser, said that Nashville brings a "unique perspective" to the global movement but also has some additional challenges.

Christopher Berkey for MSNBC

Michael Custer shakes his hands in approval during the General Assembly at the Occupy Nashville protest camp on Monday, Nov. 28.

"We’re the incubation place for Martin Luther King’s nonviolent struggles. This is his test kitchen. … So we have some unique perspective on the nonviolent aspect of these types of struggles,” he said. “The South is generally a lot more laidback and a lot more difficult to motivate. But as you can see … we are out here in the cold and rain so obviously there are quite a few of us that are motivated.”

Custer said he will always be "vocal," but others are not as willing to express their opinions.

“People are terrified of government, they are terrified to the point that they won’t speak out. They’ll tell you what they think behind closed doors,” he said. “I think a lot of that’s held over from the old Klan days where when you spoke out, they came and beat you up, or tried to kill you.”

'Express yourself'
With other camps across the country shut down by authorities in recent weeks or facing the threat of eviction, “it really gives us an opportunity to step in and just become one of the most action-oriented occupations,” said Matt Hamill, 26, a self-described political conservative who works for Radio Free Nashville and hosts a weekly radio show on the movement.

Those actions include even lighter fare, such as a square dancing event with a live band held recently in the plaza.

“(It) really kind of hit home … (that) this is what occupying is about,” Hamill said of the livestream of the event, which garnered positive feedback from supporters around the country. “… You should be allowed to express yourself however you want to and not have to worry about anybody coming in and trying to silence your voice or shut you down.”

Blanchard also noted that people in the chat were saying they needed to see such a lighthearted event, that it was “so cathartic to see a camp having fun.”

“I feel like in a lot of ways … Nashville is starting to become maybe a bit of a tender spot or a hearthstone for other occupiers,” she added. “We’re like the little heartbeat, the little southern hospitality of the movement.”

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