A Nashville Story

It was a cold night by the Parthenon in 1969. Nashville could sometimes be nasty that way.

That did not stop me from heading down to the local folky coffeehouse, the Marketplace, to hear some gen-u-ine folk music; performed by real folk animals.

I had been going to high school at Father Ryan and was living on my own up the street, renting a room from the very old Mrs. Griswold.

It was a good life. I was a senior in high school, making good marks, working at a Vanderbilt University cafeteria, and hoping some day or somehow I’d be able to play or be involved with music. I didn’t know anybody and that was the way I liked it. My dad, George, had died a few years ago and my mechanism was to become a bit of a loner.

Ever the social outlier, I still couldn’t wait to hear music that night. It was something in me stronger than loss.

I had already been experienced. I’d been to many shows, a few festivals, and coffehouse hootenanies galore. It was probably one of the reasons my mom shipped me off to Nashville, Father Ryan, and the care of my brother Bart, a marine seargant attending Vanderbilt.

Early on, after I got settled in at old Mrs. Griswold’s, I was surprised to discover there was very little live music in Music City, U.S.A. That made the Marketplace my first and only choice for live sounds.

Montage-y flashback here: The day I got to Nashville, I had to wait for my brother to finish classes. Father Ryan was a block from the University so I checked it out. It was old school all the way, brick building, chain link fence, old neighborhood — a real city school.

All that took fifteen minutes so I decided to walk toward the river and downtown. It was there, on this walk, that I had the “you’re on your own now” talk. As I walked by the Jack Daniels store, Minnie Pearl’s Chicken, Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, Hassler’s Barber College, Sho-Bud Steel Guitars, and the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, and finally down to the Cumberland River I thought to myself, ”This is not Music City, U.S.A., this is wierd, redneck, snaggle-tooth snuff queen City, U.S.A. Lord, why have you abandoned me!

Okay, it wasn’t that bad and I grew to really like Nashville a lot, but this is why a trip to see some folk music became such a little treat.

Standing outside the gig, it was super chilly and I couldn’t wait to get inside. There was a little entryway with a curtain and after paying the twenty-five cent admission, it was through the curtain and into a smallish, dark reservoir of folkiness.

There were hairpin chairs, round tables, red candles, the faint aroma of chai, and a little stage with a lady singing beautifully of her love into this dark night.

I was smitten by the scene. It was honest. The music, though, simple and plain, was very good. Another feature of this and other coffeehouses was that almost everybody played the acoustic guitar, my favorite instrument.

After buying a cup of tea, I had a seat as the beautiful lady exited the stage. The next guy up was a bearded fellow with glasses and a flannel shirt. He seemed a little older than some performers. He definitely had his rap down.

I figured I was staring a some sort of professional folksinger when all of a sudden he started talking about this song. He said it was a song a friend of his had written … or maybe it was an aquaintance.

He caught my attention with this rap somehow and after listening, became enraptured by the piece which followed.

He told a story with this song. That was something I hadn’t heard before; and he was using contemporary speech in the lyrics.

It was the story of a man and woman, young, but not fully grown. As a matter of reference, it seemed the events in the song were, in some way, their coming of age.

It spoke of time spent together, traveling the country, singing music, making song, and connecting; all the while not knowing what’s around the next bend or across the state line.

It was a song of happiness and survival; loneliness and loss; discovery and love.

I don’t know who that singer was. I wish I did. Because I would thank him every day for opening my eyes that night. He gave me the chance to see something that I loved in a different and new way. He inspired me to write and write well.

Dang, I wish I could think of that guy’s name.

I reckon his name is lost in my mind somewhere but I’ll never forget the first line of that song.

”Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train, feeling nearly faded as my jeans. Bobbie flagged a diesel down just before it rained, took all the way to New Orleans.”

Thank you to that unknown singer and friend of the writer.

May God bless you, Kris Kristofferson, you are a hell of a songwriter.