TPAC

I LOVE MUSIC. That won’t surprise anyone who listens to the podcast or knows that I live in Nashville, aka Music City, USA. (And, FYI, if you’re gonna call our town by a nickname, stick with Music City over NashVegas. NOBODY here likes NashVegas. I will put it in writing and speak for the millions of people who live here. We don’t like it. Amen.)

I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. I got a church hymnal in third grade and bought a tiny three-octave keyboard and a beginner’s book for playing piano at Jennings, the local music store. I went to a public middle school where everyone who wants to be in the band or the orchestra gets a chance to do so. I remember struggling to decide between trying the French horn in the band or the cello in the orchestra. (Honestly, though, they both kind of play the same role in a performance or a piece of music.) In the end, I chose the French horn. More of my friends were in the band and being with them sounded fun to me, so French horn it was.

I dove all in—I’m sure that shocks you—and I loved it immediately. I practiced at home, which drove my family absolutely crazy. I took private lessons across town in a woman’s tiny house sitting on a piano bench, always nervous because I had never practiced as much as she wanted me to. I worked incredibly hard to be the best player in my band class. I “challenged” the players who got ahead of me in seating. I spent three years of my life playing that instrument and absolutely loved it.

But I quit when I went from middle school to high school for what I now consider the world’s dumbest reason: my friends said it wasn’t cool. I remember where we were sitting when two girls told me I should pick another activity in high school because playing the French horn wouldn’t be cool.

After all that practice, all that love, all those concerts and rehearsals and hours spent with that instrument, I never held one again. It still makes me sad. I made the wrong decision.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN a fan of live theater. I grew up getting to see shows at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. It is extraordinary. The inside looks like the most royal scenes from Aladdin—the ceiling reflects the Middle Eastern sky with sparkling stars across a stretch of navy blue, the carpet is beautifully bright red, and the room is full of gold. The stage is big and bright and bordered in gold as well. It’s probably one of the most elegant rooms I’ve ever been in. Gold lanterns and gold tassels decorate the whole place from front to back. We went a few times as a field trip with my public school. We would see movies played on the big screen after singing along with the antique organ, and every now and then, I would get to see a musical with my family.

At the start of the intermission of every show we saw, I would ask my parents if I could walk down to the orchestra pit. They always said yes, and I would rush down there, lean over the edge, and scan the orchestra to find the French horn players. I would try to look at their sheets of music, see what type of mouthpiece they used, and watch them warm up or practice.

A FEW YEARS into my life in Nashville, I realized some of my friends were season ticket holders to our theater, Tennessee Performing Arts Center. I didn’t even realize we had a theater, that we had Broadway shows come through town, or that we had a room that held the same shows that I could see at the Fox. I didn’t have a full-time job for my first few years here, so things like being a season ticket holder at TPAC were way low on my list of financial priorities. But once things settled in my professional life, I jumped in.

My single season ticket is up in the balcony in the center of the second row. The couple of friends who have tickets the same night are down on the floor in the fancy seats, the kind of seats that include a pass to the fancy preshow party. But not me.

I prefer to sit in the balcony because I want to watch the orchestra. Specifically, I want to watch the French horn players. It brings something back for me to see the acting and singing on stage but also to look down and see the French hornists making magic and making music. It stirs two things in me at the same time, almost like oil and water. It stirs up joy and it also stirs up regret. If I would have stuck with it, would I be playing French horn professionally? I always wondered, back as a twelve-year-old, if I could do it as a job. So I watch the ones who didn’t quit. I watch the ones who started playing one day when they were kids, just like me, and took private lessons, just like me, but kept playing because it’s what they wanted. They didn’t quit because some other middle schooler told them to.

WHATEVER YOU THINK is most fun, barring something illegal or enslaving or sinful, is the most fun for you and what you should put your time toward. You can like what you like. I wish someone would have said that to me in eighth grade. Maybe they did and I just didn’t listen. But I think there was a deeper thing at play.

I cared most about being liked versus liking myself. I believed that if I did what everyone else wanted me to do, if I made choices that fell in line with what was believed to be cool, I would then feel like I was cool and therefore love being me. I had it absolutely all backward. I’ve learned that my favorite adults, my favorite kids, and my favorite friends are the ones who are so settled into who they are that they love what they love unashamedly. When you stop picking your hobbies or making decisions based on what others tell you is worth your time and effort, and you start listening to your own heart and your own wants, life gets so much richer.

I’m known for loving a few things in particular. Soccer. Glitter. Dolly Parton. Reba McEntire. Boiled peanuts. Nashville. Wicked. Kids. The French horn, obviously. And fun. I’m known for loving fun. Yet there was a time that isn’t so far back in my history when I wasn’t very public about what I loved. I’ve loved Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire since I was a child, but there was totally a time where I wouldn’t have talked about that love as publicly as I do now, because I would worry about what you, whoever the “you” is, would think. Because how I felt about me was determined by how you felt about me.

I thought this was mostly a female problem until some of my close male friends started saying similar things. Body and self-hate issues and questions about what others think of them. They experience the same insecurities I feel on a daily basis, but theirs are wrapped up with some masculinity questions that I am not asking in my life. These things are a problem for all of us. We all question if we are enough, or if we are too much, or if what we have to offer the world is what the world really wants.

I REALLY LOVE nineties country. I’ve loved country music my whole life. My parents often tell a story of tiny Annie, small enough to still be in a car seat, with my headphones on and Dolly Parton music in my ears, singing “Workin’ 9 to 5” at the top of my lungs. My teenage years were spent at the family lake house, laying out on the dock, with country music playing from 101.5 FM on our radio. I’ve been a country music fan as long as I’ve been an Annie. My parents raised me right.

And I’ve often said that if I could pick any time to be an adult in Nashville, I would have picked the late nineties. Having peak songs from Alan Jackson and The Chicks (formerly known as the Dixie Chicks) and Shania Twain and Garth Brooks and Clay Walker and bootcut jeans and barely any internet feels like a dream.

So when my friend Annie Parsons sent a text to our crew of girlfriends, Jennifer and Kelley and me, inviting us to a nineties country concert with a bunch of our favorite artists? WHAT AN EASY YES.

When the night of the show arrived, a Monday night in the fall, it had been a long few days. The week before had been full of stress and loss. It was one of those weeks that felt LONG. And like when I saw the Downton Abbey movie in the middle of the day with Heather, I needed to escape again. I wanted to fall back into something fun that I knew and something that reminded me of back then and back there. I wanted a glimpse of Eden.

So when Dave Barnes and his friends decided to do an entire show of nineties country, it felt like it could be that again—a return to something I missed about my childhood, songs that raised me and taught me and of which I knew every word.

Other Annie, who had bought the tickets and reserved a table, had gotten us the VERY FRONT and CENTER table below the stage at one of our favorite venues: 3rd & Lindsley. This was hilarious to me because it meant Dave could literally look down from stage and I was right there. So many of the musicians performing that night were our friends, and to see us right there, front and center, made everyone laugh. But the funny thing is the whole room was full of our friends because every single person in our friend group had been looking forward to this night.

We sang a million favorites—“Goodbye Earl,” “Neon Moon,” “How Do I Live without You,” “Just to See You Smile.” The list went on and on for a couple of hours. And the whole crowd, your Annie included, sang along at the top of our lungs. I didn’t even consider what other people were thinking about my singing or my tearing up or my huge every-tooth-visible smile. And when all the artists came out at the end, Claire Dunn leading the way, to sing “Strawberry Wine,” it was like we were transported somewhere else—exactly where we wanted to be. And for just a couple of minutes, we got to rest there, laugh there, and sing at the top of our lungs. I had the best time.

I got what I went there for because I allowed myself to be myself: fully me, sing-along me. It’s taken me almost four decades, but hopefully that leaves five more decades at the minimum for me to love what I love, sing along to the songs that remind me of a simpler time, and like the lyrics from Rascal Flatts’s song “Mayberry.” I hope it also gives me plenty of time to get good at playing the French horn again. Because, you know what? That sounds fun.