TRAVEL: How the Grand Ole Opry Made this California Liberal Listen Again

The Nashville music scene is as American as fireworks on the Fourth. Here’s what we heard there — and what it reawakened about my own past.

Grand Ole Opry performers: (from left) Darryl Worley, Riders in the Sky, The Isaacs.

“But, but but… It’s “Music City.” Live music is everywhere and you make no mention of it…”

—comment on my “3 Tips for Seeing Nashville, TN”

The tsk-tsk-tsk-shame-on-you would have been well deserved. Instead it was premature. I wrote that post upon arrival and before we dove into the oh-so-abundant waters of Nashville’s music scene.

We did — and right up to our ear lobes

Is there anywhere else where music is so alive, accessible, and ubiquitous? Honky Tonk Highway alone features band after band, one after the other, performing all day and into the night, 365 days a year, in nearly each and every one of the dozens of bars that line Lower Broadway — all of them playing their hearts out for tips only. Ah, innocence, hope, sacrifice. Bless ‘em.

We popped into Blake Shelton’s Ole Reds, Robert’s Western World, Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, and AJs (Alan Jackson) Good Time Bar — recommended to us as the best of the rest. At Nudie’s Honky Tonk (no, not a topless bar), different bands played simultaneously on three of the bar’s four levels.

We spent a delightful afternoon getting up close and personal with four aspiring songwriters-singers at the Listening Room, one of several showcase venues here. For $10 a ticket, its small, intimate setting provided us with a better experience than did anything amid the throngs and neon lights of the Highway.

We were so enthralled we went back for a second show two days later, headlined by three established singer-songwriters all with No. 1 hits to their credit, including Phil Barton who performed his “Cowboy’s Duty” which starred in 2015’s drug-war thriller Sacario. (“It’s a cowboy’s duty to be checking out your booty.” Hey, I didn’t write it, Barton did!)

By far my favorite Nashville music experience was attending a live Friday night showing of the Grand Ole Opry. It’s an American original. It’s on stage, but it’s also live radio. Started in a Nashville insurance company’s tiny radio studio in 1925, every new episode that airs sets a new record for longest running radio show.

We saw old-time acts like the cowboy band Riders in the Sky reminiscent of Gene Autry and childhood hero Roy Rogers. We got gospel music by The Isaacs, and saw new young crossover country stars Maggie Rose and self-professed “suburban cowgirl” Lauren Alaina.

The “moment” for me, however, came when established country star Darryl Worley unveiled a new version of his 2003 hit about 9/11, “Have You Forgotten.” The new lyrics are a lament to the nation’s disunity and, get this, a call to renewed appreciation to how great the United States has been because we’ve been together. Like every elementary kid learns, united we stand, divided we fall. Have we forgotten?

I swear I heard some cultural ice break in the Opry that night. It did inside me.

I’m from Northern California. I’m a progressive liberal, as you might assume. But what not many of you know about me is this: I come from people who immigrated from Europe before World War I. They worked in the mines and mills of Pennsylvania. I started my career as newspaper reporter in the hills and hollows of West Virginia. I spent years as a magazine correspondent covering the ore mines of Minnesota, Michigan, and Arizona, and the corn, wheat, and hog farmers of the America’s breadbasket.

These are people now largely from red states. And living as I have in the effete bubbles of San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I’ve allowed myself to become far too distant from them.

I’ll never agree with book bans, replacement theory, or anti-whatever-you-are legislation. I remain committed to diversity, equality, and inclusiveness — but no longer at the expense of giving due to those who are also my people and the enduring commonalities that still connect us such as the sounds of Music City.