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Playing songs to empty chairs
Taking bows when no ones there
We're on the road to famous town
But, no one really cares

House parties, and the legions
Around town and the region
We're on the road to famous town
But, no one knows we're there

One day we'll make it to the top of the mountain
They'll know our name and all will know our songs
It takes a while but we all have the vision
To be the best, so we will sing our songs
Our fans all scream for us to sing them for 'em
We'll reach our hall of fame one day
We'll play Ryman Auditorium
And when we do ....just listen to us play

Years of clubs and small time tours
Opening for kids half our age
We've walked a million miles
Just walking out on stage

A chance comes down the turnpike
Get recorded at a show
The Nashville people hear it
We're on the radio

Requests to sing our single
Come so fast, we take them all
We're no longer the shows opener
We're the top bill at the hall

More music and more albums
Larger tours and tv shows
We don't sing to empty bars no more
We're the name everyone knows

One day we'll make it to the top of the mountain
They'll know our name and all will know our songs
It takes a while but we all have the vision
To be the best, so we will sing our songs
Our fans all scream for us to sing them for 'em
We'll reach our hall of fame one day
We'll play Ryman Auditorium
And when we do ....just listen to us play




It's been twenty years in coming
We're an overnight success
We've climbed on up the mountain
You know where we go next...

An invitation to the Ryman
The Country Music Hall of Fame
A show where greats are thought of
And everybody knows your name

But, now...we still are playing
To our fans in bars, saloons
But, one day we will be famous
The Ryman...we'll be there soon
Kyle Kulseth Mar 2015
Checkered choices rise some nights,
play chess with all my frightful failings.
Queen's Pawn to Rook 5.
          Nail my footsteps
          to the concrete season.
          I'm losing pieces it seems.

I'm a sardonic grinner
     and under these eyebrows, it's nuclear winter.
Wending my way through the last
three years, I find no release valve.
The pressure will build and place
its long arm along my shoulder,
pull me far from my friends.
One.
                                         Two.
One.
                                         Two.
                   Step
                 by step
      by hammer blow step
a story is crafted, installed with a lock
          in a circular book.

Queen's Pawn to Ryman Street
                  1:45 a.m.
simmering skin over ice armored innards,
the freezing rain sends up my curses
                                               like steam
                                  clouding off of my shoulders
and into the skyline.

I've castled my way out of checkmate questions.
Not my move to make,
                     so I won't life a finger.
Queen's Pawn to front doorstep,
          then straight on to bed.
At first, I was pretty stoked on this one. Now...eeeh, not so sure.
The iris of your eye
Is the iris of the field
Ticking to the tock of the tire swing’s
Strawberry lemonade hypnosis

The pupil of your eye
Is a pupil of the universe
Breathing in all the wisdom and the heartbreak
Like a little black hole sponge

The sclera of your eye
Is the blinking white lights of the Ryman
Illuminating Hartford’s most exquisite fiddle solo yet
Projected down from the great riverboat in the sky

The lashes of your eye
Own the sliding boards at dusk
After all the children have heeded the dinner bell
And the rains roll in from the west

The tears of your eye
Remember your dancing days
Before the war took its toll
And youthful drops of dew still rested upon the irises
CT Bailey Apr 2011
By nine, trucks old and new
line the street, spilling into the yard.
Jim Beam and George Dickel
lubricate the chord progression.  
Drinks go down, volume goes up.
I’ll be reading in the backroom
as Pap raises a glass to Hank Sr.
When the last burning drop of homage
trickles down his chin,
he gyrates across the floor,
flat-top in hand, looking for Jim.
Some other picker takes his spot
by the fireplace and bellows
about a cheatin’ heart.  
One Saturday, I rescue Huck Finn
from under the pale, bearded face
of a picker who stumbles into my room,
collapsing across the bed.
His dreams of Ryman Auditorium
go without interruption.
I slip to the floor,
settling down on the raft.
A slow, steady current carries
us downstream to another shaded
swimming hole.


© 2011 C.T. Bailey
I heard a man
In cowboy clothes
Singing songs
Of life and love

His dazzling sequins and heartbroken stanzas
Boasted mythical tales
Of peyote drifters, hickory winds
And moon-studded shrines

Shrines in the woods around Waycross
Where the words of Flannery and Faulkner
Still drift through the purple swamps
And offer up penance to the moss at midnight

Shrines in the neon river
Of blinking Broadway lights
And the way Hank’s ghost
Yet graces the Ryman stage every dusk

Shrines deep in the desert
Spiraling up in the smoke
Of the cowboy’s last lament
Toward that great gig in the sky

(His ashes sinking like broken glass
Into a horizon
Illuminated by the City of Angels
One hundred miles to the west)

I heard a man in cowboy clothes
Back in my younger days
He stirred to life an old time sound
Within my homesick soul
Ken Pepiton Aug 2020
singer sang, from some open mic on Broadway,
in Nashville, or any remnant city,
you may remember witnessing at night,

looking out on rain slicked pavement,
reflecting stoplights and neon,

before the advent of mega-light emitting diodic
messages
urging any eye to pay a glance,
take chance
adventure into ignorance of the street

glistening in August rain, unaware the
singer singing

I imagine I imagined singin' in this bar.
Across the street from Pinkies,
which was just behind the
Ryman, temple of
my working class
spirit that won
the west, when we paved paradise,
and left yesterday in the dust,
or so we was told,

So some unknown singer sang
to an empty room,
but for the barkeep, there,
and me, listening from floor four of the empty
old furniture store at the corner of fourth
and
Broadway,
in Nashville, or any remnant city,
with an empty building available to bums, in 1973.
Where singers at open mics sang on Tuesday nights.

Singer sang,

I imagined I was all I imagine that I am,
and it seems I can be
if I make up my mind.
or so it seems so
It seems
I can be a singer in the spotlight,
on any given night,
when nothin' matters any where
when nothin' matters any where
when nothin' matters any where, and I don't care.

-- a remnant of a moment in any remnant city
still haunting my / thy
coulda beens, had we agreed it worth the effort
to realize
in time.
What if why not has nothing to say in the matter. We make do,
duty bound to imagine being a link to no problem at all, in terms of reality after ever begins where you are.
Qualyxian Quest Jun 2023
If only If only, Hector Zeroni
The wolf, the lion, the lamb
Seattle ferry boats
Santa Rosa, Cam I am

My father in California
Tonight I'm on my own
Sympathy for the Devil
Rio, Rolling Stones

Basketball once more
Walk the Empty Diamond
Ry and Jenn and Rowan
Elvis at the Ryman

2025
Politics portends
The Cost of Discipleship
Germany, my friends

             Tres bien
Qualyxian Quest Feb 2023
Ambivalent about 1776
Hopeful for 2037
Joanne in Charlotte
At Villanova Kevin

Kick *** Preamble
Deeply flawed Declaration
Dr. Thomas at JMU
Confucius at Mason Nation

Basketball is hope
I still walk the Empty Diamond
Dylan in DC
Elvis at the Ryman

Anguish for the animals
Prayers of Father Greeley
The Fall of the Empire
The nation forming freely

              Nitnoy Joy!

— The End —