“Where else can you hear Shostakovich and then walk to honky tonks?” says Nashville Symphony Music Director Giancarlo Guerraro, getting ready for the Schermerhorn Center’s Free Day of Music. “The other day at Tootsie’s, I saw Cher!”
No city’s more about the song than Nashville. Bands play at the airport, giant guitar picks flag live music venues, streets teem with tune-pumping utility boxes and buskers slinging fiddles, accordions, spoons, anything capable of sound.
A song is a story set to music, Hank Williams once said. He recorded “I Saw the Light,” “Hey Good Lookin’ ” and dozens of other pop, cowboy and gospel hits before dying in 1953 at age 29. Today, his hometown thrums 24/7 with stories sung by troubadours in every genre.
“Hank put more emotion into songs than anyone,” recalled Art Bowman, longtime usher at the Ryman Auditorium. Built 1892 as a tabernacle for wall-quaking revivals with acoustics so fine it’s like being inside a guitar, the “Mother Church of Country Music” along with 50,000-watt WSM radio propelled the Grand Ole Opry nationwide. Ryman’s where Earl Scruggs’ three-finger roll triggered the coining of “bluegrass,” Johnny Cash met June Carter and a young Elvis ignored advice to keep his truck-driving job.
My inner fan awakened, I trot over to the Country Music Hall of Fame, a day’s entertainment with sense-surround exposes about music makers’ successes, excesses and songs embedded in America’s DNA. A half-hourly shuttle runs between the museum and legendary Studio B, where Elvis liked to record around 4 a.m.
The country heritage both eclipses and energizes the rest of the city’s outstanding music scene. Proof resounds at Next Big Nashville, the October micro-alternative to Austin, Texas’ SXSW megafest. At the Cannery Ballroom just south of downtown, Ten Out of Tenn packs the house — and the stage, with 10 singer/songwriter/musicians from 10 local bands. Their set list careens from roots rock to sonic assault as Trent Dabbs, K.S. Rhoads and cohorts perform one another’s songs with a passion that exposes the city’s hook: When it comes to camaraderie, there’s no place like Nashville.
Three nights later, I end Next Big Nashville on a high note at Mercy Lounge. It’s upstairs from the Cannery where tonight, its red door opens only to release several gowned women, suited men and heavy backbeat of another band. Festival VIP party? No, a wedding. It figures. And it definitely rocks.
Reach Robin Tierney at [email protected].
