The single greatest attraction in Nashville, Tennessee is the Grand Ole Opry, a radio show turned concert that has been active since 1925.
Given that it’s Nashville most of the Opry’s music is country.
We got tickets to the concert for our first day in Nashville. The headliners were Rascal Flats and Frankie Ballard. The other acts were The Gatlin Brothers, LOCASH, Parker Milsap, and someone else I can’t remember.
The concert hall is a big place that seats over four thousand people.
There’s a concession stand and they let you bring the food into the actual venue which was new for me. Rarely do I get to bring food into a theater-type venue.
The actual music was quite nice. My favorite was Parker Milsap and my wife enjoyed LOCASH, buying their new album after we left. We both liked Rascal Flats and Frankie Ballard (the names that brought us to the concert).
The Opry is also a radio show on 650AM in Tennessee and maybe in other places.
The Opry typically plays twice a night. They repeated the concert, so as we drove to the hotel we got to listen to everything again!
We liked the experience so much that we went back for a tour.
We got to go backstage and see the musician’s entrance, the dressing rooms, and the enormous green room that felt more like a living room.
Each of the dressing rooms was themed for different country music stereotypes (old dude, young cowboy, up-and-coming girl, comedic woman, etc.).
We got to go on the stage and get our picture taken standing on “The Circle.”
The Circle is a cutout of the Opry’s previous longtime venue, the Ryman Auditorium.
The Ryman eventually became a bit small for the audiences that wanted to attend an Opry show so the new concert hall was built specifically for the Opry show.
The Grand Ole Opry House holds twice as many people as the Ryman and still routinely fills up nearly all the seats!
After the tour there was a July 4th weekend concert as well.
Before the official concert there was an opening act outside by Fifty Shades of Hey who did a bunch of covers of famous songs.
The second concert was great too, but the first one was definitely more to my preferences and my wife’s.
A great experience and one of the most important parts of Nashville. I’d say if you’re only there for one night going to an Opry show is what you should be doing!
-GoCorral
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