There’s a lot of neon along Broadway in downtown Nashville.
From Ernest Tubbs’ record shop along the four or five blocks to the Cumberland
River, neon shines like some sort of mini-Las Vegas. Some is garish and some
fairly tasteful, and not totally unexpected for the capital of country music.
The rainy night seemed to make the neon glow that much brighter
as vivid reds, greens and purples reflected off the wet asphalt and puddles
that rippled haphazardly along the curbs and street corners. My feet slipped
across the sidewalk grates slick with rain and whatever amalgam of grease and
dirt had been knocked loose from the concrete by steady downpours.
The rain let up long enough for me to take a walk around the
Ryman Theater where some of the best country music stars shone their brightest.
I’ve been lucky enough to see a show or two at the Ryman but have never
darkened the door of the new and oh so completely faux home to the Grand Ole
Opry.
The new theater is stuck out in characterless suburban Nashville and
surrounded by the most butt-ugly expanse of parking lot filled with buses that routinely
disgorge masses of tour groups. No doubt these people will be entertained, since
the Opry still is a wonderful showcase of musical talent. But for me, I prefer
the feel and tradition of the Ryman. Several years back, I expressed these
opinions to the group sales manager from Opryland, and his reply to me: “You
and Roy Acuff would get along famously.” High praise indeed.
After splashing and slipping a bit around the Ryman, I wandered
over to Printers’ Alley—home to Nashville’s most famous and in some cases
infamous honky tonks. Outside one joint, a sandwich board advertised “Nude
Karaoke.” While intriguing to say the least, I hurried past while a street
barker did his best to entice me to step inside. I’ve learned through the years
that when someone tries so hard to get you to spend money that it’s definitely
not worth it.
I hurried past, ignoring the barker’s hard sell and went
into the bar a few doors down. It was much more my speed, dark and dank. A faded
wooden bar with brass rails lined one side of the barroom. A mismatched
assortment of barstools most with torn leather seats were scattered about. The
black paint on the walls and ceiling was faded, worn and infused with 40-plus
years of dust. I ordered bourbon on the rocks and settled in to observe the
clientele. The bar’s house band was setting up, and I figured that a bar band
in Nashville might be pretty damned good—I was not disappointed.
The bar was filled with mostly local types. You can tell a
tourist in a situation like that from miles away—they positively glow with
naïveté. Plus everyone in the bar seemed to know each other. I was definitely the
odd man out, and I hoped that my own naïve glow wasn’t too obvious.
Most of the patrons had a hard and sun-faded look to
them—pale and tan at the same time with tobacco drenched wrinkles lining their
foreheads and crinkling around their eyes. Tattoos of skulls, snakes, lizards entwined with flowers
covered arms, necks and legs, and it was the first time I ever saw someone actually
hobbling along using an orthopedic cane fully festooned with skull and
crossbones.
The crowd grew larger as the band took an inordinately long
time to tune up. “Check-check one-two, one-two” blaring for 15 minutes can be a
bit tedious. Still, the band was excellent once they got all the checking out
of their system. In most towns other than Nashville, these guys would’ve filled
the bar to capacity.
The audience listened some, but mostly they just talked over
the music. It was all so familiar to me. While I had never been there before, the
cast of characters was the same. Barmaids looking bit a tired and much older
than their 20-something years. An assortment of guys some with ponytails and
hairstyles most men left behind in the 1970s. An attractive young blonde with
knee-high leather boots, tight jeans and a flowing lacy top flitted among the men
with mullets and shoulder-length hair. Before the band started, the lead singer gave her a hug and
climbed back on stage.
I couldn’t help but wonder how many like her had stood in
the same spot and dreamed of a big break in the Nashville music scene. Some
people can stomach a lifetime of that kind of scene, and many in the bar
obviously had.
No comments:
Post a Comment