A Song and a Prayer

Here’s what I learned in Divinity School: that Michael Stipe digs tempeh burgers, that Steve Winwood is a loner, and that starving songwriters order cheap but tip well. I learned it takes 50 pounds of carrots to make enough carrot juice for a busy lunch shift, that too much dairy can wreak havoc with your singing voice, and that the dulcimer can save your soul. There may have been a little New Testament exegesis thrown in, but twenty years later, I can’t tell you much at all about the Gospel of Mark, at least not off the top of my head, but I can tell you about the time Mark Knopfler came in for French onion soup one night just before closing.

I paid my way through graduate school by waiting tables at a vegetarian restaurant and bakery called The Slice of Life, just a block off Nashville’s Music Row. Mostly because of its thick, oaty oatmeal raisin cookies (moist with a crunchy edge, lightly sweetened with honey), the Slice was the first and only place I applied for a job after arriving in Nashville. I’d never before, and have never since, worked in a restaurant, but for two and a half years, the Slice was my livelihood, my home base and my independent study in cut-to-the-chase faith. By day I took classes with serious would-be preachers and teachers; at night I served steamed veggies and rice to Rosanne Cash and bussed tables with Bill, the tall, soft-spoken Texan with a ten-gallon voice who’d left wife and kids back in Waco while he pilgrimaged to peddle his songs. My classmates, pasty folks who were a tad too righteous about intramural softball, stayed up late pondering liberation theology; my co-workers were bleary-eyed from all-night jam sessions.

I loved the Slice. I loved its tattered hominess, the buzz of the dining room, the hot, tense hum of the kitchen. At first I was drawn to its groovy tofu ethos—it was the late 80s and “macrobiotic” was hip—but I became more enamored of its potluck cast of characters, a slice of life, indeed. There was Hae Yung Popkin, the smart, no-bullshit owner, a Korean powerhouse married to David, a mousy Jewish math professor—picture Woody Allen with lifts. Hae Yung could cuss you out in a second, but fortunately she liked me. Late at night after closing, I’d drive the day’s earnings to her house (like a fool), and she’d meet me at her back door in her slippers and mumble “thanks.” The pre-dawn bakers and daytime cooks were hyper-efficient Korean women—a couple of them always hunched over buckets of fiery kimchee. The dinner chef, flirty Paul, worked courtesy of a parole-release program, and was arrested for murdering his wife a few months after I left. There was cheerful, skinny Kevin, the drugged-out dishwasher who worked harder than anyone I’ve ever known. And my fellow waiters—Linda, a singer, a siren, really, who had more talent than taste; Geoff, the punk drummer and heartthrob of our Vanderbilt coed customers; sexy Brandt, a bass player as I recall, with his dark hair in a ponytail; and Pam, who was stuck in a lousy marriage and worked exhausting shifts with swollen ankles through her ninth month of pregnancy.

I was the odd gal out, the only one not slipping demo tapes to the record company execs who came in for lunch. The one nibbling oatmeal cookies instead of angling for my big break. Unlike most of my co-workers and customers, I didn’t come to Nashville for the music; I came as an aimless religion nerd, seeking the flimsy validation that I hoped a graduate degree might confer. But what I found was the music—that raw Nashville vibe, resonant with gritty hope and nerves of steel guitar, with a hint of achy-breaky for good measure.

I could make a damn good soundtrack of my Slice career featuring all the artists whose herbal tea I refilled—folks like Pam Tillis, Linda Ronstadt, Bella Fleck and Marshall Chapman; R.E.M., who ate there every night for a month while recording Green across the street; John Jackson, a mean guitar player who eventually toured with Dylan; the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who once placed a large take-out order I got to deliver. The jazz pianist Mose Allison, Elvis Costello and Emmylou would all have a song or two, but the heart of the CD would be those demo tracks by my co-workers, some of them, honestly, not all that great, but who all played with passionate, gutsy optimism. I’d include a twangy tune by Ray Kennedy, my incredibly talented Nashville landlord who recently won a Grammy for producing Steve Earle’s latest (and Lucinda Williams’ before that), but who never got the songwriting and performing acclaim he deserved. The cover image would be a photo of a hand, the immense hand of a local guitar maker who always ate quietly, by himself, and talked in hushed tones about his love of his craft. His hands spoke sermons.

A few years after I graduated and moved away, Hae Yung died in a car wreck and The Slice of Life closed. When I last visited, the building had become some cheesy office. I’ve yet to do anything significant with my theology degree, but my Slice education serves me well. I’m still inspired by my teachers—my friends living on a song and a prayer, scraping by on tips in order to plug their dreams into an amp and turn up the volume.

Stephanie Hunt is a freelance writer in Mt. Pleasant, SC. Her youngest daughter just got a kid-sized olive green Gretsch guitar with cowboys and UFOs painted on it. Music City, here we come.

~Stephanie Hunt