Crazy to think, but it’s now been five years since actor-musicians Clare Bowen, Charles Esten, Jonathan Jackson and Sam Palladio — who are all performing together at the Ryman on Sept. 25 — starred in Nashville. What, we’re at reunion tours already?
The show, which ran from 2012 to 2018 on ABC and CMT, showed off right away, armed with both Tinseltown and Music City bona fides: Created by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Callie Khouri and with her husband T Bone Burnett acting as musical producer at the start of the series, Nashville verysuccessfully reintroduced our fair city to an audience eager for all the delightful contradictions of down-home glamour. The fact that a non-sci-fi show can hold a global audience is impressive. But of course, who doesn’t love a sad song dressed up in sequins?
One of the best, most consistent things about Nashville was that it always understood there are two sides to the music business — there’s the music, you see, and then there’s the business. Our Ryman performers Bowen, Esten, Jackson and Palladio all happen to portray the “music” side — for their characters, life is about rehearsals, side hustles and making sure you always carry a notebook. The “business” side? That’s hangdog managers, chaotic-evil label executives, and life on the road to such an extent that a show called Nashville often took place everywhere else.
East Nashville roll call! Bowen was, of course, Scarlett O’Connor, the third female lead and folk-music foil to co-stars Connie Britton as Rayna James, a ’90s country sensation (died in a car crash), and Hayden Panettiere’s Juliette Barnes (survived a plane crash), a pop-country crossover-cum-controversy-courter. (Scarlett was also like if the smell of a sewing basket took human form.) Esten was Deacon Claybourne, Scarlett’s uncle, Rayna’s on-again-off-again soulmate and sideman guitarist extraordinaire. He was an alcoholic who once bought a bar, Cheers-style! Jackson and Palladio were Gunnar Scott and Avery Barkley, respectively, Scarlett’s sometimes-boyfriends who drifted away from performing and toward songwriting and producing. If memory serves, Gunnar had to live with roommates forever and Avery married money. Verisimilitude appears in the strangest places sometimes.
Sadly, viewers never got the chance to see the late Powers Boothe whip out a guitar and go full Matlock on us, but Nashville wasan honest-to-God musical above all else, with every episode utilizing good old-fashioned diegetic singing via live concert, music video shoot, in-studio recording session, practice noodle, onstage rehearsal — there are lots of opportunities to sing your heart out in Nashville — to highlight good old-fashioned character insights with perfectly on-the-nose titles that would make Broadway blush. “No One Will Ever Love You,” a romantic Esten duet with Britton, is a personal favorite, as is “Fade Into You,” a dreamy, mournful ballad from Palladio and Bowen (not to be confused with the Mazzy Star song of the same name). Both songs showcase the bare-bones stories and old-country harmonizing that begat country music in the first place. (Nashville was a soap opera second — the mayor’s wife faking a miscarriage with a tub of pork blood is iconic, sorry not sorry.)
Across the series, some of the very best songs were duets, including “Undermine,” a Season 1 Esten-Panettiere number, co-written by Kacey Musgraves (and Trent Dabbs) just prior to her popping off with 2013’s Same Trailer Different Park. But Nashville was careful to never box itself into one musical genre: There were boot-scooters, of course, but also flirtations with straight-up gospel, country-rock, blues and more; the show’s back catalog is surprisingly dense. Other notable cast contributions came from Lennon and Maisy Stella and Chris Carmack. (Carmack will make a guest appearance at the Ryman in addition to a stop at Chicago’s Rosemont Theatre two days earlier.) There was also a glut of guest stars who recorded for the show — including an extended run from Rhiannon Giddens, who is — as far as I know — the only person to appear in a soap opera nursing a celebrity with a broken spine back to health with the power of music, and then later go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in real life.
The music from the show earned real-life chart success too, with multiple soundtracks (including a Christmas album) landing in country’s top 10. The actors who played characters most in tune — pun intended — with the music have kept the beat going to varying degrees. Most prolific by far is Esten, who has made himself at home, continuing the songwriter grind and clocking in more than 100 performances at The Grand Ole Opry. Post-show, Jackson has still played with his long-running band Enation, and Clare Bowen and her husband Brandon Robert Young have recently recorded and performed together under the moniker BOWEN YOUNG. After the Ryman, the gang’s taking the show on the road — Great Britain beckons with dates in Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, London and Cardiff. Will any of our traveling troubadours drop in at Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry? One can certainly hope.
