Twang (3 page)

As I stepped outside, my eyes were drawn to the tallest building, the most familiar, what I would come to think of as my compass as I settled into my city. Later I’d hear the BellSouth building referred to as the “Batman Building” and would discover that no matter where you were in the downtown area or where you came into Nashville—interstates, Hillsboro Road, or any of the old Pikes that lead into downtown, almost every view showed this iconic building on the skyline. That night, to see the spires in a clear sky amid a bunch of twinkling stars made me feel bold.

I stood in the parking lot, a map in one hand and my guitar case in the other. Deep in the front pocket of my blue jeans was my hotel key card and a twenty, the rest of the cash hidden in a Tampax box in my room.

There was a steady stream of cars on Division Street, and I looked down at the map, imagining all the streets as arteries and veins leading to the heart of a city pulsing with excitement. As I was leaving, Roy reminded me to be careful, that any city was dangerous for a single girl. But oddly, I had no fear. I’d begun to feel as if—I don’t know how to put it—I had some kind of immunity to danger, to anything that might thwart
my destiny. Anyway, I fancied myself a strong person, and if there were risks that went along with achieving my dream, they were worth taking.

An impulse to go toward what was called Music Row kicked in and I took a left and started up a slight hill, going along beside a brick wall, passing several large buildings. There were no other pedestrians, and I realized this part of town was quiet in the way a business section is after dark, and I was just about to make a U-turn when up ahead I glimpsed what appeared to be a bunch of people dancing naked in the moonlight. I went closer and saw that it was nine bronze men and women, each more than twice life-sized, up on a piece of limestone in the middle of a traffic roundabout where Division Street meets Seventeenth Avenue. A female at the pinnacle held a tambourine aloft. I stood and stared, scarcely breathing. Was this the controversial sculpture called “Musica” I’d been hearing about? I thought it very tasteful, full of a deep creative energy that captured the spirit of inspiration perfectly.

At last, I turned my head and saw a little park to one side with another statue, this one of a man sitting at a piano. Curious, I made my way over to read the sign. Owen Bradley had been a record producer, architect of the “Nashville Sound,” and a man who helped create Music Row. He’d produced songs for many great country music artists, from Patsy Cline to Ernest Tubb. I had that feeling of walking inside of a dream as I sat down beside Mr. Bradley’s erect figure on the piano bench to drape my arm over his shoulder. I looked at his face. Depths of wisdom seemed to lie behind those eyes that stared out unblinkingly toward Music Square, that fertile field of record labels and recording studios.

“Anything you want to say to me?” I said in a playful voice before kissing his cheek, then hopping up. Something made
me pause at one of the large stones around the edge of the brick courtyard. I bent over to read what it said by moonlight: “You’ve Never Been This Far Before”—Conway Twitty.

“You’re darn right,” I called to Mr. Bradley. “But here I am, and ain’t nothing gonna stop me now.”

This crazy dialogue made me remember where I actually needed to be: up on a stage. Since no record label or studio would be open for business on a Thursday night at 9:30, I looked at my map and decided to follow Demonbreun Street from the roundabout until I came to Fifth Avenue, which would take me to Broadway, to the honky-tonks. The nightlife.

Gradually the dark storefronts gave way to lit windows of restaurants and nightclubs. When I reached the corner of Fifth and Broadway, I paused, glancing in one direction at a humongous building that said Nashville Convention Center, and in the other direction to what looked like a gigantic street party. Six lanes wide, Broadway was full of people. Streams of folks were going in and out of doorways, clustering around storefronts, drinking, talking, eating, smoking, and laughing. Twinkling lights wound around tree branches put me in mind of Christmas, and from where I stood I could see a horse-drawn carriage and two statues of Elvis Presley.

Stars were in my eyes as I headed into the thick of it, passing various businesses: Cadillac Ranch, Whiskey Bent Saloon, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, Wanna B’s Karaoke, Rippy’s Ribs, Big River Grille, Robert’s Western World, and one I knew I’d have to visit: the Ernest Tubb Record Shop. Nothing had prepared me for the energy I saw and felt in every square foot. This place was worlds away from the life I knew of quiet hills, trees, and rivers. I’d come from a mountain town peopled with working folk whose idea of nightlife was a jug of whiskey and a poker game in a back room. Quickly, I reminded myself not to
let the shadows cast by the past follow me to Music City. Music City . . . now I understood. A name so perfect for this place pulsing with melody and harmony and soul!

It was a pleasant temperature, and I wandered a while soaking it all in. Finally, I set my Washburn down to rest my arm, leaned back against a solid brick wall, and waited to see where I might go first, what called to me. After a good ten minutes, I walked a ways and stood at the doorway of a place, which judging from the crowd, was very popular. It was one of those rowdy honky-tonks you hear about in a million country songs—a line of folks at the bar holding foaming beers, crowds wearing cowboy hats and boots and moving to a band.

I remained just outside, feeling a bit uncertain of how to do what I’d come to do. Everybody looked so relaxed. Hipster girls with chic hair and lots of jewelry and fancy jeans, the guys with that confident swagger, that backslapping good-ol’-boy ease. I felt a little frumpy and out of it until I put my hand in my pocket to kind of huddle into myself and touched my guitar pick. And that was when I stood up tall, the siren call of the stage loud and clear. I needed to feel the love of the crowd inside. I needed to feel the music filling every cell as I sang.

I started to walk through the doorway, but a man held out his arm like a gate. “Hold on just a minute there. Gotta pay the cover charge.”

I peered inside and didn’t see any covers in the whole place. For a moment my mind went blank, then something I can only call my stage presence took over, and I said, “Well, covers or not, I’d really like to sing tonight.”

He eyed me like I was out of my mind. “This ain’t no karaoke lounge.”

“Um, I know. Of course it’s not. Who’s that?” I nodded toward the stage.

“That’s our house band.”

“Can I sing when they take a break?”

He squinted his eyes at me. “I don’t know what planet you come from, but like I said, we ain’t no karaoke bar. There’s some places around here, on certain nights, you might could sing, but you can’t just wander in here and say, ‘I’d like to sing.’ ” The last four words he said in a high voice that made me cringe.

“Please. I promise. Mr. Anglin said Nashville would
die
when they heard me, and I’ve got this song I wrote called—”

“What is it you don’t understand? Do you know how many desperate gals come to Nashville thinking they’re God’s gift to country music? Think they got the voice that’ll make them a star?” He guffawed and slapped his thigh. “I’ll tell you what happens to most of ’em. Most of ’em end up dancing at the gentlemen’s clubs. Yep,
they’re
the reason there’s a half-dozen of those bars down next to the interstate! All them females who didn’t make it in country music still got to put food in their stomachs.” Sizing me up, he smiled like a hungry wolf. “You look like you got the right equipment to make some good money dancing.” He reached out toward me with his beefy hand.

“Don’t touch me!” I backed away, tripping over my own feet. I can’t say I was shocked at the disrespect in his eyes. I’d witnessed this in scenes from my former life, and as if to prove it, from the back room of my subconscious I heard a slight knocking sound. I clenched my teeth, terrified I was fixing to be the involuntary audience of some sleazy little documentary from my past. But something inside me snapped, and this surge of anger eclipsed the memory so that the film just beginning to roll in my head went mercifully blank.

When I got down the sidewalk a ways, I could feel tears of fury just under the surface, but I willed them away, thinking,
I will sing tonight! I’m here and no leering man with slimy paws is gonna stop me again
.

Before I knew it, I was at the entrance to a place that said World Famous Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. I stood and let the beat of the drums and the bass guitar wash over me, restore me. Finally I craned my neck to peer into the main room. Like all the others, the place was packed. I noticed a picture of Willie Nelson with a paper beneath it that said he got his first songwriting job after singing at Tootsie’s. A thrill raced through me! I fancied I could actually feel the presence of greatness, and I was glad to see there was a woman at the entrance. She was skinny, perched up on a stool with her legs crossed, wearing a red gingham blouse and hair much too black and shiny for her age. I pointed to the poster. “Do you know Willie?”

“Not personally.” She smiled with yellow teeth. “Feel like I do, though, the way he sits there looking at me all the time.”

“Does a person have to buy covers to come in here?”

She had a smoker’s husky laugh. “Nope. Don’t gotta buy covers to come into Tootsie’s.”

“Do y’all let regular folks sing here?”

“Sometimes, but not tonight.”

She looked like one of those world-weary women who’ve seen it all, glittery blue eye shadow and black lines drawn in for her eyebrows. But she had a warm smile, and I decided to take my chances that she’d be kind. “Do you know anywhere I
can
sing tonight?”

“Hmm . . . let me think,” she said, her silver chandelier earrings swinging as she tilted her head. “Believe it’s open jam night at the Station Inn.”

“At a hotel?”

“The Station Inn’s a bar on Twelfth Avenue, darlin’.” She made a gesture over one sharp shoulder. “That a way. In the Gulch.”

“Can I walk there?”

“I reckon. Twelfth Avenue’s right off Broadway.”

I thanked her and left, quickly passing half a dozen more nightclubs, feeling drunk just listening to all that music streaming out of their doorways, some sounding sad, with sweet, plaintive fiddle notes, and some lively, with a beat you couldn’t help moving some body part along with.

Twelfth Avenue was not a hop, skip, and a jump away, and I had to slow my pace after passing several huge, ornate churches, the courthouse, a high school, and a really big building that said Frist Center for the Visual Arts. As I walked on, I began to see a number of dark areas and hulking gray dumpsters, and I decided “gulch” sure fit the way things were looking. I went a while longer and decided that even if they did charge you for covers at this place, I was definitely going to pay.

I turned down Twelfth, panting hard, my legs getting really tired, until finally, past Demonbreun Street, I saw the Station Inn, an old nondescript concrete block building with a few windows.

Inside was a plain, low-ceilinged place with plywood floors. Red-and-white-checked tablecloths covered the tables, and church pews situated along the sides and the rear were full of folks holding bottles of beer. There was a stage with no one on it, and I got a rush just picturing myself there.

A big man in a big white cowboy hat was leaning near the door with his feet splayed out in sharp-toed boots. He smiled at me and said, “Evening, ma’am. Welcome to the Station Inn.”

“Cover?” I asked, raising my eyebrows in a vague, world-wise manner, recalling the last man I’d spoken to with a flinch of anxiety.

“Ten tonight.”

I held out the twenty and waited for my change before I asked. “Can regular folks sing here?”

“Absolutely. And every mandolin, banjo, or fiddle player who’s anybody can play here.” He smiled. “We
are
Bluegrass and Roots.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by roots, but I shifted from leg to leg, thinking of endless late Saturday nights listening to
Bluegrass Time
on the radio; of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, Lester Flatt with his acoustic guitar, and Earl Scruggs with his banjo. Lester and Earl had themselves a band called the Foggy Mountain Boys. Even Dolly Parton and Patty Loveless sang some bluegrass, and Alison Krauss sure could do that high, lonesome sound. My particular sound wasn’t actually bluegrass, but it was acoustic, which is what bluegrass is all about, and it did tell a good story the way bluegrass songs generally do. I knew I could strum my Washburn and sing my song, “Walking the Wildwood,” an octave above my usual. Everything inside me was jumping around and getting all excited as I smiled, lifted my guitar case, and said so clear and strong, “I’d like to sing a bluegrass tune I wrote called ‘Walking the Wildwood.’ It’s a song that comes straight from my heart.”

The man looked like maybe he could see how much this meant to me, and he must’ve known how much it was gonna crush me when he cocked his big head, gentled up his voice, and said, “Well, that sure sounds nice. You come back on Sunday, when we have our open jam.”

My heart fell down to my feet.

He chuckled in a kind way and said, “Hey, hey, now. Chin up. Sunday’ll be here ’fore you know it, and tonight we got Raul Malo. He’s doing ‘Crying Time,’ and everybody loves him. Come on in and give a listen.”

I could hardly believe I’d hit another brick wall! Part of me wanted to go back to the Best Western, turn on my radio, climb into a hot tub, and sulk. But the man’s voice was so kind, and I’d already told myself I absolutely could not fall apart.

Crowds make me nervous unless I’m singing, so I walked in, ordered a Coke, and sat in an out-of-the-way corner to watch as Raul took the stage. People started whistling, calling out, and clapping while he tested the microphone and situated his guitar. There was no dance floor so when he began playing and singing, folks were moving their hips and shoulders right where they were, a sea of bodies rippling. Raul’s music was alive, thumping against the walls, pulsing up through the floor. I sat on the edge of my seat through an entire set, thinking
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll go strut my stuff on Music Row. I’ll be living the dream
.