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Here are all the places I cried in Nashville:
• At the Grand Ole Opry, during a video montage — hosted by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood — talking about the significance of this hallowed hall, and all the country music legends who have been invited into The Circle.
Inside the Opry. (Jen Zoratti photo)
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• At the FirstBank Ampitheater in Franklin, Tenn., where I saw pop femininomenon Chappell Roan in concert. I actually cried there twice: once when I was just overcome by how utterly alive and in the moment I felt at that show and two when Roan, herself a queer artist from Missouri, told her queer Southern fans that they are cherished and loved.
Chappell Roan (Charles Sykes/Invision/Associated Press file photo)
• At the Johnny Cash Museum (which is excellent, by the way). The museum concludes with a whole exhibit dedicated to Cash’s remarkable cover of the Nine Inch Nails song Hurt — a cover so haunting it eclipses the original. Walking through his whole life, and then watching a music video featuring Cash as an old man singing, What have I become?/My sweetest friend/Everyone I know goes away/In the end? Come on. I never had a chance.
• At a listening room called The Station Inn, the kind of joint that has bingo hall tables and a community club-style letterboard menu — “only beer, no wine, no liquor not ever!” — and is, I expect, packed every night. Eddie Pennington, a nationally renowned bluegrass picker, performed a bluegrass instrumental rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow with his grandson that left me in a puddle.
Try making it through the Johnny Cash Museum without shedding a tear. (Jen Zoratti photo)
Nashville! What a town! I was not expecting to have so many moving moments in a fun city that has leaned all the way into the kitsch, the camp, and the rhinestones — as evidenced both by our bachelorette-bait Airbnb (which had a neon Let’s Go Girls sign, a working disco light and a furry pink cowboy hat feature wall) and all the gangs of woo-hooing women teetering down Broadway in unbroken-in cowboy boots.
To be fair, it’s very hard to leave Nashville without a whole new wardrobe and personal style: I didn’t buy cowboy boots but I am now the proud owner of a fringed suede jacket from Miranda Lambert’s clothing label.
Shania Twain would be proud. (Jen Zoratti photo)
Nashville is the kind of place where you can get cultured — it is Music City, after all — and also eat at an establishment called Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse. I love it so much.
I’ve been to Austin, but that city feels as though Portland was seconded to Texas. This was my first time in the South. And Southern hospitality is real. I couldn’t believe how helpful, friendly and genuine everyone was. Even on a bad day.
On the way home from Dollywood, which is about a four-hour drive east of Nashville, my friend Emily and I stopped for dinner at a Cracker Barrel — continuing our Greatest Hits tour of Southern-comfort institutions, which included breakfast at Waffle House and two stops at Buc-ee’s, which I guess is technically a gas station but is also so much more. There’s a brisket counter, a fudge counter and, the chain’s claim to fame, the world’s cleanest bathrooms (can confirm).
Our waitress at Cracker Barrel was in a bit of a flap.
“Y’all, I am so sorry, but your food might take a long time,” she breathlessly apologized when we ordered. Apparently, a large tour had come through and neglected to call the restaurant to say they would be half an hour late. “I’ll bring some biscuits to munch on in the meantime.”
Then she was flustered about the fact she had to serve said biscuits on napkins because all the side plates were dirty.
“And you know what?” she sputtered. “This just isn’t my dream!”
I shot Emily eyes that said, oh, wow, is this fed-up Cracker Barrel waitress about to quit on the spot?!
“What is your dream?” Emily asked. Emily is wonderful.
Turns out, she’s a criminology student. She used to watch Law & Order SVU with her grandmother, and her dream is to become Olivia Benson. “I just want to make my three kids proud,” she said.
She talked a bit more and, after a while, was visibly calmer. “Thanks for chattin’ — y’all are so cute,” she said. I wish I had caught her name. The food, for the record, came out promptly and was delicious.
I thought about that interaction at Cracker Barrel a lot over the rest of the trip. I thought about how people come to Nashville, specifically, to make a certain dream come true — a record deal, an invitation to the Opry, their name in lights (or on a Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse).
The neon lights of Music City’s Broadway. (Jen Zoratti photo)
I thought about Dolly Parton’s tiny family shack in the Great Smoky Mountains and her improbable success, and how much she gives back and pays forward.
I thought a lot, too, about the American dream, and how out-of-reach it is for so many people and how hard people have to work just to get by.
I hope that young criminology student and mother-of-three realizes her dream. But I bet her kids are already mighty proud.
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