Something Grand

Originally written September 2019, published in honor of Jack’s official Grand Ole Opry debut.

Driving down the 440 on Saturday, August 31, the Tennessee sky arcs in dull neon over the highway—a borderline-tacky but nonetheless moving sunset. We are in the car, Jack Schneider and I, cruising the outskirts of Nashville on our way to the Grand Ole Opry. I’ve never been before; Jack, my longtime friend from college, who has recently moved from New York to Nashville, has been over a hundred times, but makes a point to tell me that he has never seen the show from the house. Tonight won’t be any different—we’ll be watching from backstage, Jack tells me, just like he did his first time (and every other). Though he’s been making the trip south from Manhattan for years before settling down here in June, Jack is adamant that the skyline in the distance still affects him as much as it did when it was a far-off dream: “It’s not that I don’t get inspired in other places,” he says, looking out at the silhouetted buildings of downtown, “but whenever I’m here, I feel like anything is truly possible.”

For someone like Jack, who has lived and breathed country music since he was three years old, the musical revue known as the Grand Ole Opry is an emblem of country music greatness. Beginning in 1925 as a radio show, the Opry has since occupied various stages, including the historic Ryman Auditorium in Downtown Nashville. In its current iteration, the Opry takes place in a 4,300-capacity auditorium on the grounds of the Gaylord’s Opryland Resort, where Jack and I are now heading. Despite its location at the heart of a booming capitalist enterprise, the Opry itself is still considered the throne of country nobility, and continues to be broadcast nightly on WSM Radio.

When we arrive at the backstage entrance to the auditorium, at least three security guards recognize Jack. The first greets us with a smile and “Back again, huh?” When Jack courteously offers up his ID to the guard at the front desk, the old man only laughs and says, “I know who you are.” We proceed through the artist entrance and into a long hard- wood-floored hallway lined with black-and-white photographs of various young men and their guitars. We’re in.

At the first open dressing room door we come to, Jack turns and walks right in. “Gary! It’s so good to see you,” he says. I gather that the man inside is Gary Mule Deer, a comedian-musician who once lived with Steve Martin and now frequents the Opry stage. “Took you long enough to come back,” he says to Jack (who, it is clear by now, was here just the previous night). Gary is an old man but holds himself upright. He isn’t tall, but any height he might lack is made up for by his whiff of dark grey hair, which shoots four or five inches up above his forehead, straining towards the ceiling (his first joke every time he walks on stage: “Boy, is it windy out there!”). Immediately upon entering the room, Jack and Gary open up their instrument cases, sit down across from each other, and begin to play as though it were scripted. Gary starts in with a Merle Haggard song I’ve never heard. When Jack offers up another, Gary shakes his head. “Does it have more than two chords? You’ll lose me, kid.”

A few songs and improvised solos later, a seemingly ancient man walks in, bald-headed with a grey beard and thick round gold-rimmed glasses, wearing what appears to be a khaki short-sleeved safari outfit. He emanates a wise silence, and is introduced to me as George Gruhn—owner of the famous Nashvillian Gruhn Guitars, where the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Taylor Swift are known to purchase their instruments. I’ve heard Jack talk about this man for years; during nearly every college break, Jack spent his days working at Gruhn Guitars, meeting various circles of Nashville celebrities. It is through George that Jack originally met his friend and mentor Vince Gill, who will be headlining the Opry double show tonight.

After exchanging a few humorous remarks with George and Gary, Jack tells the older men that we’ll be heading off to wander around backstage. As we’re leaving, Gary turns to me with a smile. “Sorry you had to listen to all that,” he says quietly. “We’re just showing off ‘cause there’s a girl in the room.”

As a matter of fact, I do seem to be one of the few women in any room backstage that night. At every dressing room I peer into, groups of old, white male musicians sit lounging around, shooting the breeze over guitar necks and fiddle bows. In one such dressing room close to the stage, Jack introduces me to his longtime hero, Vince Gill. Vince is quiet, with kind eyes behind glasses, and he sits in an armchair playing guitar while Jack, across from him, picks up a ukulele. George Gruhn silently materializes to occupy the chair next to Vince. Jack plucks the tune to “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” and Vince does a line in his best Tiny Tim impersonation before telling Jack to take over. Jack refuses, laughing. With a glance at me and a twinkle in his eye, Vince chuckles, “don’t worry, chicks dig it.”

At this point, it is clear from the dressing room monitors that the show has started: two small Asian boys (their race notable only for its rarity in the room) are prodigiously sawing and picking away at a fiddle and a mandolin to the beat of a roaring crowd. Jack leads me first to one side of the stage and then the other; we stand with small groups of other spectators in jeans and button-down shirts, watching the performers from behind, separated from them by a black rope that blocks off the performance area. “Artists Only Beyond This Point,” it says. The sequence goes by quickly: the Oak Ridge Boys sing a couple of gospel tunes, Gary Mule Deer does his bit, a group of square dancers shuffle smilingly on and off stage, and then Vince Gill closes out the first show of the evening. Tonight, Saturday night, is a double show; when Vince walks offstage, the performers gather in the lounges and dressing rooms behind the stage to wait for it all to start over again.

In the brief bustle of the break between shows, backstage is a happening relic of what many would consider bygone musical times. Someone tries to sell Jack an old country- western suit designed by the famous Nudie Cohn for $1,200. Bobby Osbourne trades his white planter’s hat with the red-sequined band for a worn-out baseball cap. A young man comments on the quality of the free sweet tea being offered backstage (“the best in the world”). In truth, Jack and I had meant to leave after the first performance. But the night dragged us on blindly.

At some point in this intermission I leave Jack to wander on my own, and while I’m away the second show starts. I wander through the now-empty hallways in search of Jack and find him standing in the doorway of Vince’s dressing room, where Vince is sitting on the arm of a chair picking his guitar. When I nervously say hello, the pair glances up at me in silence. An intimacy hangs in the air, the sense of some moment passing from that beige- toned room and being crystalized into memory—only not mine. Jack and I wander off again to watch the rest of the show.

Eventually it is Vince’s turn to play again: the grand finale of the night. As he did in the first performance, Vince invites Gary Mule Deer on stage for a number; the song is “Folsom Prison Blues,” and the audience eats it up. The band is on fire. Gary’s smile is infectious as he walks back toward us in the wings.

And then Vince begins speaking. The backstage experience at the Opry, despite its many thrills, has one major downside: the sound isn’t great. Because backstage spectators are positioned behind the performers, the main source of sound for these VIP listeners is not the fully mixed balance that the audience hears, but rather a muddled blend of bleed from the house and the various performers’ monitors. In general, the music sounds fine. Speech, on the other hand, is barely intelligible.

For this reason, it takes a moment for Jack to glance over at me when Vince, following “Folsom Prison,” begins a short monologue about how he believes that the stage is meant to be shared. For a moment I’m unsure if Jack is being presumptuous, but as Vince continues to describe the mentee he’d like to bring up to the spotlight, eyes begin to turn toward Jack from the shadows of the wings. Jack freezes; almost imperceptibly, he reaches a hand up to button his sport coat. His gaze unflinching and a barely perceptible tremble in his voice, he leans over to me and whispers three words: “Go get George.”

When I return to the wings with Mr. Gruhn in tow, Jack is standing center stage, telling a story I know by heart. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to do a song to honor a dear mentor of mine who I met when I was at college in New York,” he begins. “Her name is Nora York, and she was just one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met... she passed away of cancer a few years ago, but before she passed she told all of the students that no matter what happens in life, remember to smile, and remember to dance.”

In actuality, this message was the ending to an email our beloved professor sent at the end of our fall freshman semester: “I hope you all have a wonderful, restful, healthy, yummy and joyous holiday break. Remember to breathe and dance A LOT!” When Nora York passed away during our sophomore year, it was this sentiment that Jack and his co-writer, Khaya Cohen, referenced while working on an assignment for our songwriting class. And so the song, “Remember to Dance”—which Jack and Khaya once performed at the memorial service of its muse—has made its way to the Opry stage.

Vince Gill passes his guitar to Jack, then takes a seat with the band directly behind center stage to watch. Jack cradles the guitar as if it were his own, and taking a deep breath, he begins to sing. There is a clarity in his voice that, if he has any nerves, does not divulge them. The room is silent until the end of the first chorus, when Vince visibly raises his hands to clap, and the rest of the band and audience follow suit; for a moment I think the older man has signaled an ending. But Jack continues, and the room hovers in stillness around him. The momentousness in the air is tangible—it’s a sense of something remarkable. Something grand.

As Jack hums the last note of Nora’s message, the Opry is silent, a collective breath being held. Gradually, audience members begin to stand, until the whole room has risen in thunderous applause. Vince hugs Jack; the guitar is returned to its rightful owner. Jack clasps his hands together and bows in thanks as he exits. Just beyond the wing, Gary Mule Deer is waiting with a hug, followed by every other being with a pair of arms available. When it’s finally my turn for an embrace, there are tears in Jack’s eyes above his smile. A slew of congratulations and photo opportunities ensue.

In the car ride on the way home, after shoveling Opry popcorn into his mouth and nearly driving off of the road several times as he relayed the experience to his half-asleep mother over speakerphone, Jack finally has a moment to talk. Curious about the only moment of the night I wasn’t witness to, I ask him what he and Vince had been talking about in the dressing room backstage when I walked in on their silent exchange.

Vince Gill, it turns out, had been in the midst of telling Jack a story of his own youth: how, many years ago, when Vince was first invited to make his Opry debut, he didn’t know what song to play. Unable to decide, he went with his most recent composition, a song called “When I Call Your Name”—at the time, it was just any old song. The week after it hit the Opry stage, however, Vince recorded the song. It went on to become his breakthrough single as a solo artist.

The story seems plausible, but I can’t shake the memory of the nervous tension in the air when I stepped into the dressing room a few hours earlier. I ask Jack how the story ended.

Still shaking, he replies: “Vince asked me what song I would sing if I ever got to play the Grand Ole Opry.”