A Bittersweet Ballad for a Bygone Music City Mash-up
My mom and dad were fun-loving lounge singers with endless energy and outrageous perms to match. Then they became parents, Nashville became “cool,” and we all started to wonder what might have been.
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Illustration by Ayun Halliday
I was in a bathroom stall at a bar when I read an ad on the back of the door: “Nashville is…cowboys with smart phones, southern belles with tattoos, southern hospitality and culture with a SoHo flair.”
I went back and sat at the bar and peeled the label off my beer while I wondered who the hell really believed that. Someone had to have thought it was brilliant. Someone had to have okayed it, proofread it and sent it off to be printed. A cowboy with a smart phone is just a Billboard country songwriter, churning out lines like sit on my tailgate, you look good in that skirt — trash that somehow makes a lot of money. A southern belle with a tattoo is just a sorority girl who got too drunk in Panama City. Southern hospitality with a SoHo flair is just a restaurant where a historic home used to be, with a middle-aged chef from somewhere else, who thinks that cheese grits are the essence of southern cuisine.
Glossy magazines drunk on a post-recession lust for Amer…
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