The Guitar Town

Description of a Nashville street musician.

The Guitar Town


It would be hard to call it “country” music, despite the locale in which he plays it. It would be difficult to label it as any particular genre of music, but it is undoubtedly music, and good music at that. Greasy fingers skip casually across spent strings like a pebble across water, or bend those strings into unusual shapes and sounds that no one has heard before, so that those who do bother to listen can not even begin to judge its proficiency. Now and then a passer-by lingers, someone who understands music, someone understanding that they are hearing something unique, something unusual. Those who stop know that it is in the unusual that greatness may be found. A small few of those who stop drop a pitiful coin into the upside-down hat before continuing on. Every so often a bill is dropped in, a token of acknowledged respect, a small bit for a person who possesses talent, but who will never achieve greatness in a day and age of mass media. None of the bills or coins are placed inside the hat, but are instead dropped, as no one wants to touch the filthy hat itself. The money is hardly enough to buy new strings when one breaks, but that is a small worry. Strings can be had, just as clothing can, and just as food can. A man of the street will get what he needs.

Filth stains the Music City sidewalks, filth and the man who strums upon them. Man and sidewalk share the smells of perspiration, alcohol, and garbage. They have been together for so long that they have taken on the same dingy color and appearance. The sidewalks camouflage the man, blending him into their urban-ness, protecting him. The Nashville sidewalks collect sun and sound like a solar panel through the summer, radiating them back to the guitar man at night, warming him and rocking him to sleep. The guitar man plays for these sidewalks. In turn, they soften for him.


Between songs he rests. Flip-flops and cowboy boots pass by at eye level, giving him a wide berth. Honky-tonk guitars amplify the night, their songs always the same, the songs of acceptance and cowardice. If nothing else the guitar man plays music that is his. He will never be rich, but he is original. No one else plays as he plays. No one can.


Hungry smells of hot chicken and stale beer waft by like high lonesome notes on the MiddleTennessee breeze. A pedal-tavern screams past, young women in short-shorts giving the city life even as they clog its arteries at the heart.


He picks up his guitar, re-entering the parade. He starts slowly, but is soon inside himself, inside his guitar, inside Nashville, giving it all he has for those few who might listen.


He is not homeless. He is not hopeless.


He is "the guitar man", a slave to the dream that made “The Guitar Town”.

Author's Note

Beat it up if you feel the need.

Reviews

[Amara of SOLA]

This was so wonderful and eye-opening to read. Your description is beautiful even though the subject isn't. You put together a very clear and expansive image that conveys perfectly. I feel like I have learned a lot about this world and this setting from what you've told me about the man and his guitar and sidewalk, which is a truly commendable success in writing. I'm going to take some notes on how to do this in my own work and you keep it up

[Relic]

Didn't Steve Earl write a song called Guitar Town?

A short story but interesting. I think it has elements of Robert Johnson and others. The determination, the conviction and dedication are there. Within the crowd he's one that stands out. A street musician but one that cares not for opposition or road blocks. He knows somehow he'll get to where he's going.

Good story.

[Samuel Dickens]

Though I've never been there, you present a picture of the place and inhabitants that's easy to believe. This "guitar man", like countless others, may be a Django Reinhart or Robert Johnson kind of player whose music never finds the right ears. (Only after he's gone) Makes me think of Nick Drake, also. An interesting piece, this is, and well-written.