Keeping Quiet in Nashville

"It's not about you." That is the amazing message reinforced everywhere you look in Nashville's Bluebird Cafe. "Shhh!" It's their trademark. It's not only posted everywhere around the room, we learned it the moment we walked in the door of this haven for singer/songwriters who audition for the chance to try out their material. We started to tell the hostess we didn't have a reservation when she put her finger to her lips and hissed, "Shhhh!." She motioned us to follow her to a couple of seats and an evening of charades ensued to order , to ask for a refill -- anything that happened to come up. Sign language. Pointing. Nodding. Anything that would work. Because it wasn't about us.

What's "going on" is the music, and patrons -- while obviously welcome -- are there to listen. This, according to their own description, is a listening room," where "quiet is requested at all times during a performance - which is why our slogan has become "Shhh!" You are welcome to drink and eat with us at any time, but if you are looking for an evening of conversation there are more appropriate places in Nashville."

It's almost shocking in this self-serving, self-absorbed culture that such a place could survive. Everything, after all, is always about us. Me, my needs, my desires, my convenience, my rights. If I want to talk on my cell phone while standing in line behind you, get used to it. If I want to change lanes where you happen to be driving, move over. If I want to talk...

...well, not at the Bluebird Cafe. This is about music and those who make it -- or at least trying to. Some, over the course of the two evenings we left our conversation at the door, were better than others. Some I can't wait to follow their careers. Others are not quite ready to give up their day job. But all of them deserved -- and received -- our listening ears. They are what it is all about: imagination and emotions and poetic turns of phrase; putting ideas together and melding them into melody, threading the mixture through a voice and a guitar and finessing what comes out. I envied their courage, their determination, their lack of inhibition, and their discipline.

And if I didn't enjoy every song, I nonetheless stayed quiet. It wasn't, after all, about me. It was about music and dreams in the making. And if we had had another night to spend in Nashville, this is where I would choose to be quiet.

A Moment of Musical Magic

We should have known that the “famous” place was not really what we were looking for when we saw the tour buses parked out front, the large gift shop inside, and the various groups of young teenagers from out of town with their parents or sponsors. This was a bit more “Disney-like” than we were after. So, after a little line-dancing to pre-recorded music, and sampling the overly slick live act that followed, we headed down the street to the “legendary” hole-in-the-wall we had heard mentioned by several. The night before when we had passed by it was too crowded to make it past the threshold, but tonight only a half-dozen patrons joined us in the space that only slightly bested an average walk-in closet. On the tiny stage near the entrance a drummer and a guitarist were lazily adjusting this and tuning that. The place, to put it gently, was dead.

After awhile, a few more patrons trickled in, and still the pair of musicians on stage aimlessly slow-motioned their way through a few more set-up routines. It was almost like they were killing time.

We had been there perhaps 30 minutes when a thin, guitar-case carrying man hidden beneath an acreage of black cowboy hat strolled in. A cheer went up from the crowd that had almost instantly swelled to choking proportions, and within minutes his instrument was strapped around his neck and music pounded the tiny space. Suddenly, joining the three musicians on the tiny stage, a thick-waisted young man in a brown dress suit with short, moussed hair who looked every bit like a game show host, stepped onto the stage with a fiddle that erupted in lightning bolts of sound. Fingers and bow scorched along the neck and strings with such ferocity I didn’t see how they could survive. It was breathtaking.

And he, it turns out, was simply a guest – someone connected with a reality TV show that was filming up and down the street. Perhaps he was something of a game show host, after all. Whatever else he is, he was last night a serendipitous spark that quickly caught flame. And in that cramped and smoky room, woven through the music and the magical moment and the captivated crowd, was something powerfully, creatively, electrically holy.

It was time to leave, but we couldn’t. The sleepy little space into whose back stools we had leisurely settled was now squeezed airlessly, impassably tight – packed with people, cemented with music. And it was good – indescribably good. Ah! Nashville.

Dancing for the Pure and Delightful Obligation of It

We danced last night, at least in part to keep a promise. On the way out of church yesterday Lori told a friend – newly widowed after 65 years of marriage – that we were headed to Nashville for a conference related to Lori’s work, and that she hoped we would get to hear some music and do a little dancing.

Dancing, after all, has been one of our commitments ever since our dating days when Lori’s grandmother called to recommend that she, “dump the preacher.” Among the reasons – and there were multiple – was the sad and numbing prediction that, should we marry, her “dancing days would be over.” Ever since, and in her honor, we have made it a point to take a turn or two on the floor. We aren’t very good; it’s primarily a matter of principle.

Hearing this story after church, along with our Nashville plans – and no doubt deafeningly mindful of her own closeted dancing shoes – our saintly friend elicited from Lori a promise to not simply dance, but to dance every night. In our first foray, then, into downtown’s historic honky tonk corridor last night, we picked one, and danced.

We enjoyed it – immensely – but that wasn’t so much the point. No matter how much we laughed, no matter how many times we apologized for misplaced feet, no matter how far from our awareness receded the presence of others in the room leaving only the radiant joy of each other’s face in view, it was all about obligation. We were keeping a promise…

…to dance. Every night.

One down; two to go.

Thanks, Grandma Roose. Thanks, Irma.

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