on the stage of the Ryman after Bobby had played
“Marie Laveau” and “That’s How I Got to Memphis”
and “Detroit City” and my friend who’s a music manager
whispered to me that Bobby Bare was the sweetest man
in Nashville and his voice was pitch perfect at age 78
and he still wore washed out jeans and a white hat
and a sloppy overshirt and no shit or horsing around
on stage just straight ahead music so that by the time
it was over and he kissed Marty Stuart goodbye
I was crying but I was on the verge anyway being
at the Ryman where my parents stopped
on their honeymoon one October night in 1952
and saw Ernest Tubb and Little Jimmy Dickens
and Minnie Pearl and I didn’t know the Ryman stage
was so small but the Grand Ole Opry Square
Dancers had just clogged in a corner of that little
stage in their red checkered outfits and white tap
shoes and I felt the same homesickness I felt the first
time I saw Coal Miner’s Daughter and Ted says
to Clary Get up Mommy do your dance and she does
and I’m the only one in the theatre weeping
at what most people thought was hokey and hillbilly
but it made me miss the old TV shows that broadcast
into my parents’ den every Saturday afternoon and we
all quit what we were doing to watch Lester & Earl
and Teddy & Doyle & Loretta and Porter & Pretty Miss
Norma Jean & later Dolly and my daddy would holler
into the kitchen for my mother to come out to the den
and look here at Ole Possum or Charley Pride or
Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper singing “Walking
My Lord up Calvary’s Hill” and when the credits
rolled on The Wilburn Brothers Show Loretta kicked
off her shoes and danced her Mommy’s dance
in her stocking feet and I tell you I lived
for that on Saturdays until one time in 1973 Daddy
stood up from his TV watching chair and yelled
for all of us to come running quick and look here
at this little feller picking the mandolin with Lester
Flatt’s new band on Porter Wagoner’s show and we
grouped around the Zenith and gaped at Marty Stuart’s
wizardry and I fell dead in love with him
that very moment and now here we are forty years
later and he’s reinvented that template of old country
music TV shows with an opening hit, a comic, a guest
or two, the girl singer, and hymn time and invites all
his old friends and shepherds the young unknowns
the way Lester still shepherds him and they all play
at his annual late night jam and fireworks blazed
above the Ryman before we went into the show
and Marty stood on stage three straight hours
in his black frock coat nodding his wild shock
of hair back and forth and tapping his boot
and then he brought out his mommy and made
her tell all about her new book of photographs
and before we knew it the Mavericks were burning
down the house with “All You Ever Do Is Bring
Me Down” then Marty asks Raul Malo to sing
a birthday song to Manuel the glitter tailor
who is also on stage because Marty honors all parts
of country music even costumes and Raul sings
Don Gibson’s “I’d Be a Legend in My Time” and I cry
even harder because once when I was a kid we saw
Don Gibson in the K-Mart when he lived in Knoxville
in a beat up trailer on Clinton Highway and had seen
better days but Mother had all his records and then
when I think I can’t cry any more Marty says
they are all going upstairs after the show to shake
and howdy with anyone who wants to meet them
and have their picture made and sometimes it’s 4 a.m.
before they can leave the Ryman but I am
too embarrassed to admit how much I love
Marty and his wife Connie Smith and now Hilda
his mommy and don’t want to make a fan fool
of myself so we step out into the late night and watch
the crowd leave and listen to people converse
in German and Spanish and maybe Bengali and I
realize they too love this exceptionally long musical
that crosses decades and languages and has carried
us to Nashville where the noisy streets are still
teeming with girls in Western boots and boys
in Western shirts and music blares out of every bar
we pass on Broadway and lifts us into the night’s
cacophony and even when we get back home
and even now I can’t stop crying