Posts Tagged ‘On The Way Home’

The Finest of Showplaces

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

A blog by Opry staffers, Opry members, friends, and others about the flooding of the Opry House, subsequent clean up and refurbishment, and an eventual return home for the show that made country music famous.

The Finest of Showplaces
by Pete Fisher, Grand Ole Opry Vice President and General Manager

Almost two months since floods forced the Grand Ole Opry to temporarily move from the Grand Ole Opry House and to other venues around Music City, reconstruction of the House is truly in full swing. Seven days a week, men and women with hard hats and hammers are hard at work, ensuring that the House we have all come to love will be open by Oct. 1. We are truly in the middle of an historic summer, as we not only restore the Opry House, but make improvements such that it will unquestionably be the finest of showplaces for the show that made country music famous.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll be sharing information about some of the exciting shows and events planned for our return to the Opry House and the Opry’s 85th birthday weekend. We hope to see you in Nashville this summer and again for our triumphant return to the Grand Ole Opry Entertainment Complex.

 

Backstage at the Opry House

Construction crews are working to refurbish the Opry House for re-opening by October

The auditorium of the Grand Ole Opry House

The Opry stage, stripped bare as the construction process begins


Tags: , ,
Posted in On The Way Home | 17 Comments »

And now for the 650 WSM Weather Report: It’s 80 degress… in the studio!

Monday, June 28th, 2010

A blog by Opry staffers, Opry members, friends, and others about the flooding of the Opry House, subsequent clean up and refurbishment, and an eventual return home for the show that made country music famous.

And now for the 650 WSM Weather Report: It’s 80 degress… in the studio!
By Mike Terry

Mike Terry is a 650 WSM air personality, a Grand Ole Opry announcer, and the host of the syndicated show America’s Opry Weekend

Since the May floods, Nashville has been in “reconstruction mode.” If you’ve followed the progress of those repairs at the Opry and The Opryland Hotel, you know we’re well on our way to returning to normal daily operations. And while those of us who spend our days and nights at WSM  are looking forward to that return to normalcy, these days we’re working hard to “sound” as normal as possible.

While most listeners can understand the loss of our studios and offices, there are other hurdles that we’re working to overcome. For example, our “studio” here at our transmitter building south of downtown Nashville is still in the process of being constructed in what would normally be an engineering office. –No sound proofing, no double-pained sound proof glass, no fancy studio monitors. In fact, one of our biggest issues right now is the heat.  Since our new studio/office was never intended to house all of this equipment we have installed we are generating a good deal of addition heat; the cooling system that was designed to serve one person at a desk is working hard to keep up. It’s a cozy 80+ degrees in here these days.

Bill [Cody] no longer has the three computer monitors he has become accustomed to while working in the morning. And Charlie [Mattos], if you haven’t noticed, isn’t Googling as much as he was before the flood.

The good news is this is all temporary and we’re looking forward to our return to renovated studios at some point this fall.

The better news has been that when I’ve spoken with listeners and told them what we’re dealing with, most have responded by saying they had no idea. “It still sounds like it did when you were back in the Opryland Hotel.”

We’ll take that as compliment, thanks!

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in On The Way Home | 7 Comments »

Photos From The Opry House

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

A blog by Opry staffers, Opry members, friends, and others about the flooding of the Opry House, subsequent clean up and refurbishment, and an eventual return home for the show that made country music famous.

Photos From The Opry House
by Dan Rogers, Opry Senior Marketing Manager

“Time is a great healer,” says the much-quoted Italian proverb. In the case of the Grand Ole Opry House, the great healer/cleaner/refurbisher is a virtual army of professionals working almost non-stop with hammers, vacuums, saws, and other tools to ready the Opry House for the moment when country music’s top artists and biggest fans gather to see the Opry staged in its permanent home once again.

While photos of the House taken during last month’s flood spurred emails from around the world noting fans were heartbroken by what they saw, the shots accompanying this blog show a House no doubt on the mend. The pews on the main floor of the auditorium have been removed, as has the stage, such that both can be replaced. We’ve been assured that the iconic circle of wood placed center stage in 1974 is being treated with tender loving care in anticipation of its return. Walls that once divided dressing rooms inside country’s home have been removed such that new ones can take their place.

When the Opry House was under water on Tues., May 4 and the show moved to the War Memorial Auditorium for the evening, Marty Stuart opened the show, saying, “our family, our songs, and our spirit live on.” Looking at the photos from this week, it’s not terribly difficult to imagine that family, those songs, and that spirit once again inhabiting the walls of the Grand Ole Opry House in the not-too-distant future.

Until then, please allow me to once again remind you we’d love to see you in Nashville during this historic Opry summer. The city is alive with more music than you can possible experience in the days in which you’ll visit. In the past week alone, I’ve seen performances by two of my very favorite artists– Mary Chapin Carpenter and Vince Gill–, and within then next couple of weeks, I’ll have the chance to see performances by Carrie Underwood, Josh Turner, The Oak Ridge Boys, Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban, Wynonna, Emmylou Harris, and more.

I couldn’t be happier to live in Nashville this summer, and I swear you’ll leave us feeling you couldn’t be happier you visited.

The Grand Ole Opry stage

The iconic Opry barn backdrop

The Opry House auditorium

Backstage hallway of the Opry House

The backstage offices at the artist entrance of the Opry House

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in On The Way Home | 26 Comments »

The Air Castle of the South

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

A blog by Opry staffers, Opry members, friends, and others about the flooding of the Opry House, subsequent clean up and refurbishment, and an eventual return home for the show that made country music famous.

Chapter 2: The Air Castle of the South
by Joe Limardi, 650 AM WSM Operations Manager

When flood waters inundated the Grand Ole Opry House and the Gaylord Opryland Resort earlier this month, they also made their way into the regular studio home of 650 AM WSM, located in the Magnolia area of the resort. As the waters rose, WSM continued broadcasting at the Resort until the last possible minute it was safe to do so. The most important thing to the staff of WSM that morning was to keep our listeners safe and informed. Even when we were evacuated from the hotel, WSM carried continuous National Weather Service updates, forecasts and warnings over its 50,000 watt signal from the Air Castle of the South and around the world at wsmonline.com. In less than one hour, our crew moved from Opryland to the historic WSM tower site 10 miles south of Nashville, dismantling the hotel studio and reassembling it in the main transmitter room at the tower.

We are grateful we have this facility to continue to provide our listeners with the programming they love so much on WSM.  It’s not home, but it’s becoming a great home away from home. There’s something reassuring about working just a few yards from the tower that has beamed out our signal for so many years. With that tower over us, it’s a little like we’re working in the shadows of all the great broadcasters who have come before us at WSM, not to mention the shadows of voices like Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, and Johnny Cash.

We’ll drop in from time to time from here at the tower to keep you updated on plans to return to Opryland along with everyone else from our WSM and Opry family. See you in Nashville this summer!

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in On The Way Home | 11 Comments »

The Flood and the Follow-Up

Friday, May 14th, 2010

A blog by Opry staffers, Opry members, friends, and others about the flooding of the Opry House, subsequent clean up and refurbishment, and an eventual return home for the show that made country music famous.

Chapter 1: The Flood and the Follow-Up
by Dan Rogers, Opry Senior Marketing Manager

Funny thing about a flood. It can make you desperate one minute, and bring out your greatest strengths the next. It’ll make you question something you’ve always believed to be true one day, then prove that in which you’ve always had faith in the days afterward. It can show mother nature at her ugliest, then reveal the beauty inside friends and neighbors helping one another the next.

All of us at the Opry have ridden a roller coaster of emotions since the Opry House and Complex began taking on water Sunday, May 2. We’ve watched in disbelief as the waters rose to surround and inundate the Opry’s permanent home, then we’ve swollen with pride as we’ve banded together to not only begin the process of cleaning up, but also to continue putting on country music’s most famous show.

Life is a journey, and for those of us who work here and for the Opry’s tremendous fans, our collective journey took a path none of us saw coming when we left the Opry House on Sat., May 1. The days ahead will no doubt be among the most historic in the Opry’s history, as everyone works to ready the Opry House for the Opry’s return. All of us invite you to check in regularly here for this “On the Way Home” blog as well as via email, Facebook, and Twitter updates as we share the story not only of the progress on the Opry Complex, but also the tale of what is happening at Opry shows in a number of venues around Nashville.

I’d also like to personally invite you to come visit us at the Opry this summer. We take our jobs very seriously, and our job is to make sure the fans who visit us have the time of their lives. There has always been a true passion at the Opry and around Nashville for what we do, and that has been magnified 100 times in the days since the flood. A passion for banding together to keep the music playing both now and well into the future, and a passion for making sure everyone who visits us in the next few weeks knows just how much we appreciate their visit to Music City, our home.

Funny thing about a flood. It can bring with it the worst … and it can bring out the very best.

 

Tags: , , ,
Posted in On The Way Home | 24 Comments »