Nashville: Where Everybody Sings Along
Tedeschi Trucks Band, Wilderado, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, and how to become a Nashvillian
Oh, but I miss the birds and the music that they make
And the feel of the earth beneath my feet in early May
And the magnolia leaves as they fall out of place
Even they know when to fly away, oh I think it’s time to fly away
—Joy Oladokun, I’d Miss the Birds
Joy wrote this goodbye song to Nashville. She’s not the only one to do it. There’s love and there’s hate toward the Music City. This week’s Bonus Track, from someone who met Johnny Cash but didn’t know it, argues that you can love Nashville if you’re willing to sing along.
Before you read that, Adam, Kody, and Mat have a few songs for you to sing along to this weekend.
Shame by Tedeschi Trucks Band (Adam)
Now I’ve tried
Oh, to let it all fall away
Oh, but somehow, I'd love to see him in pain
Tonight I will be seeing Tedeschi Trucks Band at Bourbon and Beyond in Louisville, KY. Been listening a bit heavy to prepare for the short festival set and this song has really stood out. Looking forward to seeing other bands like JJ Grey & Mofro, The Head and the Heart, and Dave Matthews. It’s a real shame if this is the first time you’ve listened to Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks do their thing. Enjoy!
Bad Luck by Wilderado (Kody)
My boys from Oklahoma have a new album out today!!! I saw them perform a few songs from “Talker” at a summer concert. In between songs, they talked about how hard it was to write their second album. After listening to a few tracks, I’d say they did just fine.
Check out Bad Luck, and the rest of the album, and remember Adam’s rule - you have to listen five times through before you leave a review.
Tennessee by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors (Mat)
I can relate to Drew Holcomb. He says about Tennesee that “It’s not just geography, it’s a part of me…” I feel that way about my home, Alabama. Drew Holcomb says “No matter where I make my bed I long for you Tennessee.” Our namesake troubadours from Fort Payne say, “My home’s in Alabama no matter where I lay my head.” I love this song because, even though it’s about another state, it reminds me of how much I love Alabama. However, Devin’s Bonus Track had me singing along to this incredibly catchy chorus: “Tennessee.”
Bonus Track: How to Become A Nashvillian by Devin Maddox
“Oh you’re from Nashville? I’ve never met one of you before.” I didn’t know being from Nashville was all that rare when I was growing up in Crieve Hall. Like most places in the South, Nashville was not immune to the small-town mentality:
“One day, when I grow up, I’m going to get out of this town and go some place better.”
“Some place better,” to us, was really just two places in particular: New York or LA. Maybe Chicago? The difference between 1980s Nashville and every other small town in the South, though, is Nashville was also the place everybody in a small town was moving to. Today, everybody is moving to Nashville from New York or LA because we have all of the big city amenities, but less of the societal baggage. But back then, when I was growing up, everybody was moving here for the Country and Christian music industry boom.
I came from a place nobody’s from.
Nobody is really from-from Nashville. At least nobody I know besides everybody on my mom’s side of the family and me. And when I say everybody, I mean I met my great-grandmother Nannie and great-grandfather Poppie before they passed away at 96 years old and they said they can’t remember anyone in their families that weren’t from Nashville. They met on the railroad downtown where all the bachelorettes shriek on their pedal taverns (I. Loathe. Pedal Taverns.) and sing country music karaoke Nannie and Poppie wouldn’t recognize.
My dad, on the other hand, who is the most Nashvillianist person I have ever known, was from Georgia. He was one of “those people” who moved to Nashville for the music business. He wasn’t a singer or a songwriter. David Lamar Maddox J.D. (SAG/AFTRA, Maddox & Hicks, David L. Maddox & Assoc. LLC) grew up in North Atlanta, Georgia. He attended the University of Georgia Law School in Athens, and when he asked a mentor for advice about what type of law he should practice, his mentor said, “Pick an area of the law you care something about.” And my dad loved music. So, David Maddox packed up his briefcase and headed to 17th Ave South where he practiced entertainment law somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 years.
Dad would meet people on Music Row from other cities who were moving to this place where nobody’s from. He helped his fair share of long shots (songwriters would live on our couch in the den if they needed to) and wannabes, but he also helped future Country Music Hall of Fame legends get their start. See below.
Just recently, years after Dad passed away, Steven Curtis Chapman told me, “Your dad helped save my career before it even got started.”
I had no idea.
I can still vividly remember playing tag with Steven’s sons (now called Colony House) at his RIAA gold record celebration. It was inappropriate; I am ashamed of my behavior at such a prestigious event. Steven presented Dad with a gold record plaque (which proudly hangs in my office today), but I was really focused on a rambunctious game of tag. What a rascal. I was in elementary school, and there were other boys at this boring, dumb work thing, and I wasn’t going to lose tag.
The first concerts I attended at Starwood Amphitheater or the Ryman Auditorium were backstage. I wasn’t really all that interested in the music, but I was Dad’s tagalong when he needed to shake hands and kiss babies. He had been the Nashville director of SAG/AFTRA, before starting his own law practice (Maddox & Hicks), and so school nights and weekends we kept up with Dad by accompanying him on the road or in town when he visited Alabama (who was performing in Alabama), or when he had to be in court to sue Delta Airlines on behalf of Reba McIntyre’s band who tragically crashed into a mountain, or when he had to defend Joe Diffie for copyright infringement. We would head right backstage past security with nothing but a wave when we arrived at the Grand Ole Opry. After Dad passed away I found out it was because he had been taken to jail for holding a picket line defending Grand Old Opry musicians before I was born. Maddoxes were always welcome after that—just call ahead. My dad brought a family that was already from Nashville into this emerging version of Nashville that was exciting and new.
I came from a place that is now long gone.
Today, everybody is moving to Nashville from New York or LA. But it wasn’t like that back then. Why would they? Nashville was a sleepy town by comparison.
When you grow up in Nashville as a little kid, you don’t see “Music City.” You see the neighborhoods around you that either have a pool or don’t. You see the suburb that either has laser tag or doesn’t. You see the ice cream shops, Harding Mall, and the Blockbuster Video next door to the H.G. Hills grocery store. You just see everything through kid-eyes. I saw a small town and didn’t realize there was something special all around me. None of my friends did either. Was it special?
To be fair, Nashville really was different back in the 80’s and 90’s when I was growing up. Nobody remembers Opryland theme park, nor the Wabash Cannonball, nor Chaos indoor rollercoaster. But other than these cultural treasures, Nashville was significantly less impressive than it is now. If you look at old pictures of the city skyline, you can see somewhere unrecognizable by today’s standards. You will not see cranes erected all along Broadway or Demonbreun. There won’t be those God-forsaken pedal taverns (I hate them so much), the Tennessee Titan’s Nissan stadium, or the Nashville Predator’s Bridgestone Arena. Sure, there were always honky tonks. But I have literally never been in a honky tonk. Only Canadian tourists visit honky tonks.
A very specific memory haunted me when Johnny Cash died. I was in high school. The entire world was mourning the death of yet another Nashville legend—another person who wasn’t from here but wanted to “make it” here. One Saturday afternoon my mom and dad agreed to take me to DZ (Discovery Zone)—basically a Chick-fil-A play place on steroids. “We’ve got to make a stop first.” We pulled into a driveway and an older gentleman waddled up to our brown Astro van and leaned his forearms on the driver’s side window jam. The conversation lingered on, and on, and on. All that was on my mind was, “They are never going to shut up; I’m never going to get to DZ.” Of course, the man was Johnny Cash. And I couldn’t have cared less. I couldn’t have cared at all until it dawned on me in High School: maybe this place is somewhere special. Holy cow—that is the man in black.
There was greatness hidden beneath a thick veil of normalcy. Your neighbor is Dolly Parton or Tammy Wynette (whose house my church bought so we could have Sunday School in her marble Roman bathtub). The guy at the post office in line ahead of you headlined last night at The Exit Inn. I heard last night at a party that my friend’s friend Gabe found out he lived in a house Bob Dylan shacked up in the 70’s with a baker and wrote Nobel Prize winning songs in the attic. My friend said that the house should have a plaque on it—he’s not wrong.
You get the point.
The thing is all of this was just “the neighbors”, “the church”, and “a trip to the post office to mail some stuff.” Life carries on. So what.
The only rule was and is: we don’t bother anybody in public. Because it’s not only normal to be around entertainers in Music City, it’s also the way everybody wants it to be. That’s the thing that makes Nashville such an attractive place to come and create.
I’m from a place that is going somewhere.
Nashville is more like the other coastal elite, sister entertainment cities today than it was back then. Today, Nashville has a major automotive industry (Nissan HQ), major healthcare (HCA), and major tech (Amazon, Oracle). Nashville has successful pro sports franchises (NFL, MLS, NHL, and soon to be MLB, we think). Nashville has some of the best restaurants in the world (Audrey, Catbird Seat, Locust, Margot, and on and on), as well as a fast food industry (Cracker Barrel HQ, In-N-Out East Coast operations) and rich local culinary history (Prince’s Hot Chicken, Loveless Cafe, and Arnold’s Country Kitchen). And in addition to Country and Christian music, we have rock and roll (Jack White’s Third Man Records, the Black Keys, Ben Folds) and a world-class Grammy award-winning Symphony. Anybody heard of Taylor Swift? Nashville doesn’t have the film industry cornered like Atlanta yet, but even that is subject to change.
Nashville is a place that is going somewhere.
All of this evolution has brought with it more than a few challenges. My friends who have moved away don’t recognize Nashville when they visit. Some of them aren’t sure they like it anymore. The ones that have stayed are worried what made Nashville special will be lost amidst explosive social change. But Nashville’s most well-known features have never been what we loved about it in the first place. All of these features were the backdrop of life lived in a community of special people.
Nashville is certainly going somewhere new, but I hope the best things will stay the same. When the Cumberland River flooded Nashville in 2010, Andrew Peterson became “from here.” Andrew grew up in Florida, but when Nashville was buried under 51 feet of river water, he wrote this song:
Oh, I love this city, everybody's got a song
It's like a secret we will always meant to share
From the church on every corner to the Broadway honky tonks
We've got a million songs that mingle in the air
And, oh, I love this city
Well, the bus rolled in in Nashville, it parked on holy ground
Beside the red brick of the Mother church of country
For a hundred years the heart would hear, it's been socking up the sound
In other states it feels a secret as a Sunday
And, oh, I love this city
Everybody's got a song
Everybody's got a song
And, oh, it sounds so pretty
When everybody sings along
We've been gone a couple of weeks now and I've playing for the crowd
Sometimes they're looking back as if they knowing well
But tonight I know my family and my friends are in the house
And I just need the story only you can tell
And, oh, I love this city
Everybody's got a song
Everybody's got a song
And, oh, it sounds so pretty
When everybody sings along
But here's a dark night in the skyline, we've got cattle in the field
And we've got ..., puppet shows and poets
And when the river is in flood with all the sorrow that you feel
Well, we've got just the song you need and I think you know it
It's a song that came before us, it's gonna be here when we're gone
Sometimes I think I hear it drifting on the wind
And it tells me there is a city where the band plays on and on
And every soul is gonna sing the last 'Amen'
New neighbors ask me a question that is something like, “When can I officially say I’m from Nashville?” They love Nashville so much that they didn’t want to prematurely award themselves with an honorific they feel they don’t deserve. I thought about it, and considered various timelines: maybe it’s after 5 years? Or 10 years, or 15? But there are so many neighbors that I can’t imagine Nashville without that have been here for far less time. So I thought about it a different way. I thought about it like an ex-Floridian.
I decided the only criterion to be a Nashvillian is that you love this city.
There are lots of reasons to love Nashville. It’s not primarily for having the Mother Church or having the honky Tonks, having famous neighbors, or even having all these special songs that make Nashville worthy of our love.
It’s that this is the place where the rules are we all sing along.
Disasters in Nashville’s history like the flood or the tornadoes or even school shootings bear that out again and again. It’s that we strive together for a community of peace. It’s that we embrace the spirit that nurtures loving people for who they are before what they do. The only thing Nashville can’t afford to lose, as it becomes somewhere new, is being a place where lonely artists have a chance to harmonize public success with being just one of the neighbors, because everyone’s got a song.
It doesn’t matter if you have a Nannie and a Poppie that’s from here— you can be the Nannie or the Poppie if you’re willing to sing along.
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Devin Maddox (PhD) is a Christian book publisher (B&H Publishing Group) in Nashville, TN. He graduated with a BA in Christian ethics from Union University, MDiv from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a PhD in applied theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, focusing his research on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and writing. Devin is married to his college sweetheart, Cara; they have three boys and live in Tennessee. His favorite band is Nickel Creek. The first dance song at his wedding was Martin Sexton’s Digging Me.
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Wow! May all Nashville’s bands stay together!!!
-TheMusicSwap
From one Nashvillian to another, well said friend 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼