Today we talk with the wonderful Carlene Carter. This is not an official installment of Music City Tales from the 1980s, though it’s strongly related. Let’s say that it’s a companion episode.

Carlene Carter is a legendary singer with a career that spans over four decades. She has released a doze...

In March of 1983, WSM launched The Nashville Network, TNN for short. It was an entire television network devoted to country music and programming, and largely produced at Gaslight Studios at Opryland USA. Today we look at how televisions show like Hee Haw, and a phenomenon called “The Rural Purge...

This week we embark on a two part look at Lower Broad; starting with how the area went from being the sort of place most folks didn’t engage with after dark to becoming a budding tourist destination.

We are in the middle of a miniseries called Music City Tales From the 1980s, and this is a companion episode that goes deeper into some of the stuff we covered in last week’s exploration of Lower Broad. Next week we’ll run part two of that episode, but for now we’re going to talk a bit about sex ...

By the second half of the Reagan Decade, Lower Broad was on its way to becoming a tourist destination. An impressive ascent, considering it was more or less a war zone. How did it do it? It replaced “low class” drunks with “high class” ones through investment, selective enforcement, and heavy pol...

In the first of a three part arch about the 1998 Nashville tornadoes, we meet Tom Colletta and Kevin Longinotti — men who were pinned by two of the 20,000 trees stripped, uprooted or blown over on April 16, 1998. We also talk about the time I — a 15-year-old juvenile delinquent from Maine — got K...

The second in our three episode arch about the 1998 tornados is about the day of the tornado itself. K-Ci & JoJo were huge and the winds were catastrophic. We also revisit last week’s episodes about casualties, and learn a bit more about Tom Colletta.

If you have stories to share about the torna...

It’s been a week. It’s been a month. It’s been a year. And it’s only April. So I took a break from heavy stuff this week to talk sex in the isolation age with Tessa Lowe of Primrose Path Boutique.

There’s also a super-long introduction about COVID-19 and, if you’re interested at all, where I’m a...

I was going to do an episode about Spanish Flu in Nashville—I very well might at some other time—but instead I decided to look at what life was like in the city, and the country at large, in 1918. The two big stories of that year, in retrospect at least, is the end of what we now know at the Firs...

An episode in two parts, an Interview and an Essay.

Our interview is with Marlene Twitty-Fargo, the drag persona of Tim White. Marlene is the leader of a bad called The Twat Biscuits and is a ton of fun. Tim has lived in Nashville since 1988.

Our essay comes from Jack Evan Johnson, a writer and...

Tony Alamo — his church Alamo Christian Ministries, his store The Alamo, or the Al-ah-mo, and his wife Susan’s dead body — were one of the first phenomena I heard about upon arriving to Nashville. In this episode we get to the bottom of all things Tony Alamo with author Debby Schriver. Debby is t...

In this bonus episode, we talk with Tristen Gaspadarek about the Please Vote Nashville voter guide. We dive into the origins of the organization, democratic participation generally, and how the skills one develops as a musician / DIY artist are transferable to civic engagement.

Early voting for ...

I’ve long been a fan of Berman’s music and prose, but I think Menthol Mountains (his blog) is my favorite of all of his outputs. It speaks to me as a person who considers himself thoughtful and big hearted and is profoundly confused by what it is to be a person In These Times. By way of the vario...

Today we’re going to spend some time getting to better know the late Christine “Teeny” Jarret — professional wrestling’s grand dame — by way of talking with her grandson and biographer Brennon Martin.

Christine “Teeny” Jarrett—by all accounts—lived a true Nashville rags to riches story.

Over th...

Today we talk with author Steve Haruch. We discuss his wonderful new book—which was published by Vanderbilt Press—called Greetings from New Nashville. Steve edited the Greetings, and two of his essays are featured amount a number of others by some of my very favorite writers in the city. By looki...