I never watched the TV show Nashville when it first came out. At the time, I was living in the city itself, working at Vanderbilt, and taking classes at Nashville State in photography and digital illustration. My weekends were spent in East Nashville, tucked into dimly lit venues like The 5 Spot, listening to indie rock and math rock bands, singing karaoke at bars, and soaking in a different version of Music City than the one people usually imagine.
Back then, the idea of watching a TV drama about Nashville felt… off. Country music, at least the kind being celebrated on the radio at that time, didn’t feel like my roots. I grew up in the ’80s with older country that had a different honesty to it, one that sounded more like home. The newer wave felt cliché—songs about tractors, beer, and “checkin’ for ticks.” It leaned into stereotypes of the South that I knew didn’t match the reality I had grown up with.
The rural Tennessee I knew wasn’t simple. Families struggled to keep food on the table, to put gas in their cars, to fight addiction. So when country music tried to package southern life as lighthearted knee-slapping fun, it felt exploitative at worst and shallow at best. I wasn’t necessarily afraid of watching Nashville—I was afraid I’d cringe at seeing the city I loved being glamorized and given that Hollywood sparkle.
But the truth is, Nashville has always been more than cowboy boots and honky-tonks. While I lived there, my second husband’s family played in local bands, and I often found myself in the crowd at venues that later showed up in the TV series. Those nights, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, listening to guitars cut through the air, I felt a different kind of music city—one that was raw, independent, and alive.
And sometimes, it was my own voice in the mix. Singing karaoke at The 5 Spot or other little bars, I felt transported. For a few minutes, it was like stepping onto the stage I’d dreamed about as a kid. I used to tell my mom I wanted to be a singer like Sheryl Crow, though I joked I’d have to go to bars to do it. She encouraged me, but life took me down a different road.
There were detours I never planned for—an abusive first marriage that left me shaken, losing my mom far too soon. When I met my second husband, there was relief in simply not living in fear. Music became joy again, even if that chapter didn’t last. I’m still grateful for those years of leaning against bar walls, listening, singing, and belonging to that scene.
Now, sitting on my couch years later, watching Nashville for the first time, I see The 5 Spot flash across the screen and laugh. I didn’t even know they featured it. The show stirs up a mix of emotions: memories of what I lived, what I lost, and what I dreamed of becoming.
Looking back, I don’t think it was fame or fortune I wanted. What I really longed for was to be heard. That’s what music gave me, even in the smallest ways—through a karaoke mic, through watching bands with friends, through the pulse of indie shows that carried me out of myself for a while.
And maybe that’s why I create art now. My paintings, like songs, are places where memory and feeling live on. They’re my stage, my microphone, my chance to take what once only existed in fleeting nights at The 5 Spot and let it be seen, let it be heard.
Because whether through music or brushstrokes, what we really want is for our voice to echo.
