When "Nashville" Came to Nashville

In 2012, my late roommate, Joanna Spock Dean, pictured above, and I were both working at Whole Foods Market in Green Hills. Because it was a big deal locally, and for ABC-TV, we knew about the forthcoming television series, NASHVILLE, a music-forward project by Callie Khouri (best known for having written Thelma and Louise, which won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar she absolutely deserved). Khouri coincidentally is married to musician and producer T. Bone Burnett, so no one here in town was worried that the series would get things wrong.

In the beginning, they got things so very right.

And that’s why you can’t get into the Bluebird Cafe now at all for any show - still, eight years after the series ended (with an unceremonious whimper). In true postmodern form, the visibility of a network television series eclipsed the imprimatur of a local (but internationally known) music room. Locals can’t gain entry with the same ease of walking up on the day of even the open-mic nights because it is a MUST-SEE for tourists. They visit the Bluebird (if only to buy the swag) without a preference as to who is playing.

While scenes were filmed in the Bluebird itself, it was meticulously duplicated inside and out on a soundstage. Local working musicians were always cast - including Nashville’s favorite son, Buddy Miller, who worked with Burnett on the music supervision and all other music-related efforts on the series. In the beginning, it was so exciting to watch this series to see your friends, your local musical heroes, and your local streets and neighborhoods on one of the BIG 3 broadcast television networks.

In the beginning, the production floated a lot of boats. Not only were local musicians and actors getting work, the ancillary business were booming: hotels, restaurants, night clubs, any place (restaurant, venue, tourist site) that ended up on the TV screen had its profile raised, and tourists came to look. The catering team for the series production engaged Whole Foods for catering their breakfasts. Every night, the catering department would receive a fax or email with the order and would set it up/prepare for the NASHVILLE series runner to pick it up in the morning, usually before the store opened to the public.

Back then, I was the overnight baker (I also taught in the cooking school, SALUD).

The catering order for NASHVILLE included almost all the same items I had to prepare for the morning rush. When things proceeded per plan, the team that received the order would set up the raw materials for the items I needed to make for NASHVILLE so they were ready for me to finish in the morning.

Now, here’s the secret behind volume bakeries such as the ones in grocery stores like Whole Foods, Publix, Sprouts or other full-service grocer…. There is a central or regional bake house. That bake house provides each store’s bakery with ready to heat or ready to finish food. All that bread in the photo above comes in as “par baked.” The loaves are flash frozen and each store must thaw the loaves overnight and then finish them to make them ready for the customer. This takes 5-6 minutes at 500 degrees. The oven is as big as a walk-in closet, and holds two baking racks that each have 20 shelves. These racks hang on a rotating hanging rack so the goods on the baking rack receive even heat and anything like cakes layers are even, because floors never are.

The store I worked in offered about 10 varieties of hearth bread1, and when the store opened, we had to have at minimum, 10 loaves of each variety ready to purchase, and had to have about 50 baguettes ready as well. And then there’s the pastry. The croissants and Danish came in raw and frozen. They absolutely had be thawed overnight, and when the morning baker came in (between midnight and 4 AM, depending on whether it was me, or Will, the punk/ska band trombonist who was the other morning baker), the pastries would be shaped and then put into the proofer and then baked. Whole Foods also sells about 25 varieties of cookies individually. I STILL have an aversion to chocolate chip cookies because I had to bake off 720 chocolate chip cookies throughout my shift every.single.day. The cookies came in frozen, in 2-ounce balls of dough, so you didn’t have to make the dough and scoop it. (I did that at another artisanal bakery, though. Also made croissants and bread from scratch at that place.). What you did have to scoop, however, were the muffins. Every morning, before 8 AM, the morning baker had to finish hundreds of pieces of bread and pastry. Once that was done, you had to prepare everything for your shift the next day. Oh, and we had an artisanal bread program - made from scratch artisanal loaves using sourdough starter - a different variety every day.

With that as an existing workload, it’s easy to see that any special order that came in for first-thing-in-the-morning pick up HAD to be prepped before the morning baker came in. Well, that almost NEVER happened.

NASHVILLE, the television series was the camel that broke my straw back! I left Whole Foods for a local artisanal bakery in 2016, which is when the show moved from ABC to cable’s CMT (Country Music Television). I didn’t plan it that way - it’s just how it happened. There was no way you could keep up when your work is only as efficient as the weakest link - and that link is a part-time employee who works til the store closing time and can’t wait to go home and doesn’t check for things like catering orders the morning crew needs to fulfill.

But I am a punk rock girl. I know how to put out fires!

Another annoying thing, and anyone reading this who has worked a job in retail knows this customer - the one who comes in 10-15 minutes before closing and wants to do. comprehensive shop. It’s WORSE when you know the customer.

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