Nashville

Interstate 24 heading toward downtown even at midday was like a race track. Six lanes of traffic were speeding toward the tall buildings on the famous skyline. Barbara Jo’s radio was tuned to the local country music station, WSIX-FM, and she was singing along to all the songs. Six months ago, she had moved here from a small town named Waycross in southern Georgia, where there was never a problem with traffic. She called Nashville her home now, and she realized this was an everyday problem.

The traffic stopped! Barbara Jo thought she knew what was happening a couple of miles ahead and she was right. Construction crews were filling potholes again in the middle lanes. She asked herself, weren’t they supposed to do that at night? All the cars and trucks in front of her put on their brakes. The driver of the automobile behind her blew his horn. She glimpsed in her rearview mirror and started to make an obscene gesture at him. Better not, she decided. People had been shot on these interstates for doing less than that. Instead, she stopped singing and turned off the radio and reached in the glove box for a notepad and a pen. She thought for a moment and then began jotting down the lyrics to a song she had just made up.

Stuck again in my car in the middle of Interstate 24,

Thinking again about how you don’t love me anymore;

I’m wishing you could be right here beside me now,

But I know, because you told me, you don’t love me anyhow.

She laughed at herself. The lyrics were ridiculous and she knew it. She quickly crossed them out and tried to think of something else to write. She had moved here to become a songwriter, and she spent every minute she could trying to come up with songs. So far, she had not written anything that the publishers on Music Row wanted to record. But that did not stop her from trying.

Barbara Jo tried to be patient, but it was becoming difficult, both with writing her songs and with the traffic jam. She was thinking of giving up with the song writing. She glanced in her rearview mirror at herself, her eyes hidden by big dark sunglasses, her teeth straight and white, her long blonde hair tied into a ponytail. She thought she looked like a star, though she might never be one. In the distance, beyond the miles of vehicles, was the iconic AT&T skyscraper, the tallest in the city, which the local people referred to as the Batman Building because its two towers resembled the ears of a bat. In its shadow was the busy downtown that she now knew so well. She had sat in the famed Ryman Auditorium and walked around the Parthenon in Centennial Park and drank beer in the honky-tonks along Lower Broad. She had even asked the bartender at the upstairs bar at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge on a Monday night if she could sing one of her songs and play her guitar and he said yes. She knew Taylor Swift had become famous in Music City, at the Bluebird Cafe located in a strip mall on Hillsboro Pike, so why could she not do it too?

She had come across an advertisement in a weekly newspaper, Nashville Scene, for a house for rent in East Nashville. There were three musicians living there, looking for a fourth person to share the monthly payment. Hank, a guitar player, worked as a barista at the Frothy Monkey, a popular cafe near where they lived; Mandy played the mandolin and was a bartender at the Wildhorse Saloon before Luke Combs bought it and it was closed while they renovated it; and Jennifer, a fiddle player, was a hostess at Puckett’s Restaurant on Church Street. They all drank a lot of beer together and wrote a lot of songs together and laughed together, but none of them had found success yet, but the others, like Barbara Jo, were still trying.

In all, she had sung an impromptu gig at Tootsie’s and played her guitar for tips on a few weekends on a corner of Lower Broad. That was it. So far, she was going nowhere. Still, she practiced, practiced, practiced, and wrote, wrote, wrote. Barbara Jo was determined not to give up. In her dreams, she was going to soon be performing on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.

In the meantime, her roommate Jennifer helped her to get a job working in the kitchen at Puckett’s. Even standing next to the noisy dishwasher, she could hear the musicians playing on the stage in the restaurant and she wished she were there with them instead.

Hank mentioned to her that he was planning to audition to sing on “Today in Nashville,” a live afternoon show on local television station Channel 4. She asked if she could audition with him and she was ecstatic when he said yes. For two weeks, they practiced singing one of his own songs while both played guitars. She thought the song was kind of corny, it was titled “I Love My Truck This Much!” and she told him it was not very original, but, nevertheless, it was a chance to sing and play on television and there was a possibility someone on Music Row would notice them.

Nothing happened after the show. No one called them. Even though Mandy and Jennifer were in the audience and told them that they sounded great, Barbara Jo and Hank felt like failures. Was it because of his stupid song? Whatever the reason, for Barbara Jo, it was devastating. For the first time, she felt like she was not going to be successful. Since arriving here, she had written over a hundred songs. All of them were worthless, she thought.

“I’m thinking about going home,” with tears in her eyes, she told her roommates.

“Homesick?” Mandy asked, because she often missed her family and friends back in Oklahoma.

“You have to be tough to survive in Nashville,” Hank advised her, as he went to the kitchen for another beer.

“Please don’t leave us now,” Jennifer said. “The rent is due next week.”

“I don’t think I’m going to make it,” Barbara Jo tried to explain. “I’ve been here since April. And nothing has happened. Nobody’s contacted me. I’m wasting my time here.”

“Barbara Jo, all of us are going to make. Me, Jennifer, Mandy, even you” and Hank smiled at his own joke, returning from the kitchen, “are going to be successful someday. As soon as Keith Urban hears the song we sang on TV, he’s going to want to record it. I know he will. You’ll be driving a Lexus nest year. We’ll move out of here and get a nice house down in Brentwood. They’ll put our names on a star on the sidewalk in front of the Country Music Hall of Fame.”

“That’s not going to happen to me,” replied Barbara Jo.

Mandy said, “Barbara Jo, I think you’re the most talented one of us.”

“However, I’m not sure about that,” said Hank, still wanting to joke with her.

They had almost convinced her to stay. And she probably would have if she had not been jogging on the East Bank Greenway late one evening. A man jumped out of the trees and tried to attack her. She was able to get away from him, but she was scared now. Besides, she had only $500 in her checking account, and as Jennifer had said, the rent was almost due. There were days when she could not think of anything to write. It was becoming harder and harder for her to think of a reason to stay.

In the middle of September, she decided to start packing her belongings. It had not been an easy decision. There were a lot of questions. She wondered, how could she go back home? It would be so embarrassing for her. She would have to live with her parents again. What would her family and friends think about her? That she had failed and pathetically gone back to Waycross? She had left her boyfriend so she could come to Nashville, and by now, he probably had another girlfriend. What about her dreams of becoming a country music star? Wasn’t she going to be like Carrie and Kelsea and Lainey? Was she just going to throw those dreams away?

Maybe she should, she thought.

So she loaded her Corolla, her suitcase in the trunk, her guitar on the back seat, and prepared to leave. She said good-bye to her roommates.

“This isn’t because of the truck song I wrote, is it?” asked Hank.

Mandy stepped in front of him. “Don’t forget, you can always come back,” she reminded her.

Barbara Jo was certain she would not.

“Keep writing songs,” Jennifer told her.

“I think I’ll write one about you leaving,” said Hank, and he might have already been thinking of the lyrics.

She started her car and backed out of the driveway.

She was driving east through congested traffic on Interstate 24 through the suburb of Smyrna when her phone rang. She remembered that a Tennessee law forbid drivers from talking on phones while driving, so she let it keep ringing. Finally, she could not resist quickly looking at it. She thought it could have been one of her roommates calling to tell her that she had forgotten something. Or it could have been her parents. She had not told them yet that she was returning home. It was going to be a surprise. They could be calling to ask if she had signed a song contract yet. The answer would have to be no, of course.

Barbara Jo did not recognize the number. It was probably a salesperson, she thought. She kept driving and forgot about the neglected call. She knew she was going to miss the green hills of Tennessee as she drove out of Murfreesboro and through Manchester and toward Monteagle Mountain.

Her phone was ringing again as she was stopping over two hours later at a Raceway gas station near Chattanooga. She glanced at her phone. It was the same number again. Barbara Jo hesitated. She really did not want to talk to anyone right now. She just wanted to fill up her car and continue toward home. But something told her to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Barbara Jo Hodges? Is that whom I’m speaking to?”

“Yes.” She wondered, was this a salesman who knew her name?

“This is Carl Scott. I’m a producer with Sony Music in Nashville.”

“Okay.” She had doubts about that.

“Well, this morning several of us were listening to the song you submitted to us recently.”

“Which one?” she asked. She had sent a lot of songs to a lot of music publishers.

“’Isn't Today the Same as Yesterday?’ That’s your song, isn’t it?”

Was she dreaming?

“Yes.”

“Well, we liked it,” he continued.

“I’m glad you did.” She did not know how to answer him. “Really, I’m thrilled. You don’t know how much!”

She was still parked next to a gas pump. The driver in the car behind her was impatient. He blew his horn. Barbara Jo made an obscene gesture at him.

“I thought you would be,” the publisher said. “Are you in Nashville?”

“Almost,” she replied. Well, only two or three hours away, she thought.

“Are you able to come by here, maybe today or tomorrow, so we can talk? We’re at 8 Music Square West.”

She filled up her car and by noon Barbara Jo was back on Interstate 24 driving west into Nashville. Even at midday, it was like a race track. Six lanes of traffic were speeding toward the tall buildings on the famous skyline.