by Mark Jordan
onsidering how geographically close they are to each other – separated
by only a few hundred miles and a single strand of interstate
– there may be no two American cities that are further apart than
Memphis and Nashville. And nowhere is this contradiction more
acutely expressed than in their respective music scenes, which
are rooted in many of the same Southern folk traditions but have
grown in wildly different directions, as one city became a poor,
independent-minded musical innovator and the other a rich, by-the-book
industry player.
“Whatever Memphis is, Nashville is the opposite,” says Memphis-born musician Peter Hyrka, who now calls Nashville home for professional reasons. “Memphis is a very organic place to work and live; Nashville is a rich, corporate music town with no soul.”
Hyrka moved to Nashville seven years ago with singer/multi-instrumentalist Ross Rice and the other members of their band, Human Radio. The whole group had moved to be closer to the industry, but as time went on, the band found itself out of its element in country-dominated Nashville. The different members started taking outside jobs to make ends meet and eventually the group just broke up.
After Human Radio’s demise, all the band members tried to stick it out on the Nashville scene, joining a host of Memphis musicians making a living in Nashville, from award-winning songwriter Stephony Smith to drummers Steve Ebe, Chuck Fields, and Greg Morrow. (“They love our drummers up there for some reason,” Rice says.)
Today Hyrka and most of his fellow Human Radio bandmates still make a living playing music in Nashville. But for Rice the Nashville rat race just became too much.
“I just got tired of how cutthroat it is,” says Rice, who moved back to Memphis two years ago. “And I got tired of having to follow the formula. There’s a formula to how you make music in Nashville and everyone follows it to a ‘t.’ Here’s the drum sound everyone’s using and here’s this year’s keyboard sound and everybody’s using this vocal effect now. It’s all very mechanical; it’s certainly not music the way I think of it.”
In particular, Rice was frustrated by the live music scene in Nashville, a notorious “pay-to-play” town.
“I can make a lot more money playing out in Memphis than I can in Nashville,” Rice says. “The only thing that makes it tolerable is the studio work.”
Which is why Hyrka stays. He agrees with Rice about the Nashville live scene, which is why he mainly only plays out with side projects like the jazz group Gypsy Hombres and Memphis In Orbit, a group made up of other former Memphians that performs ditties like a hybrid of Booker T. and the MGs’ “Green Onions” and the theme from the TV show Green Acres. But as a violin player, Hyrka’s prospects are much better in Nashville’s studios than in Memphis, where audiences have only recently developed a taste for the instrument.
“I don’t like it here, but here is where I can make a living,” he says. “Memphis has all the soul and all the raw creative talent, but there’s no industry to take it anywhere. Nashville, on the other hand, is where you take it.”
Early in this century, Nashville discovered its niche in the music world and stuck with it. When the Grand Ole Opry started in 1925, it was just one of a handful of such popular radio shows. But in the ’30s, the Opry was fortunate enough to find itself in the hub of one of the biggest public works projects the country has ever seen, as Roosevelt’s New Deal worked to create the Tennessee Valley Authority, a project that would wire the entire region and put Roy Acuff and his parade of country stars into millions of homes. As the reach and popularity of the Opry spread, related businesses started springing up around it. Roy Acuff’s Acuff-Rose Publishing company was the first to set up shop on Nashville’s 17th Street, today known as Music Row.
Modern Nashville is now one of the three centers of the American recording industry, along with New York and Los Angeles. All the major record labels have offices there. (In contrast, no major labels have a presence in Memphis.) And the recording infrastructure the city built up as the country-music capital is now paying off, as thousands of California music-industry professionals – fed up with the earthquakes and fires and riots – have picked up stakes and moved to Nashville.
The Memphis music “industry,” on the other hand, is and always has been built around independent operators. Sun, Stax, and Hi were essentially all indie labels, locally owned, run, and operated. And it’s a trend that continues today; before signing with Sony’s Relativity Records, the rap group Three 6 Mafia – the biggest act to come out of Memphis in recent years – racked up six-figure sales on its own with distribution help from Memphis-based regional distributor Select-o-Hits.
Three 6 Mafia have used their new clout with Sony to record other Memphis rap artists and recently set up a production office in town. But the odds, and history, are against this new activity becoming the foundation for a lasting corporate music community.
“Maybe what we need is a super-fast train running back and forth between Memphis and Nashville,” Ross suggests. “That way we could run up there and make a little money but then run back here and recharge our creative batteries. … Ultimately, though, I wish we could combine the best qualities of both cities. I’d like to see a little Memphis soul in what Nashville is doing. And of course I’d like to see a little of Nashville’s money come Memphis’ way.” n