Grand Ole Opry: OPRY 100 with Steve Earle

The Read

Earle came up in Nashville as a songwriter, made a hard-country record that mattered in Guitar Town, then spent the following decades refusing to behave in any of the ways the industry preferred. The songs held up anyway. “Copperhead Road” is now closer to folklore than to a single, and the writing underneath the persona has always been the real argument. Putting him in the circle cut from the Ryman floor, the day after Christmas, with the usual rotating Opry bill around him, is the format at its most interesting: short sets, generational whiplash, an outsider standing in the most institutional room in country music. Expect him to be gracious about it and pointed anyway. That combination is the whole reason to go.

The Room

Grand Ole Opry House

2804 Opryland Dr

The Opry left the Ryman on March 15, 1974. President Nixon played piano on opening night. Roy Acuff supervised the installation of the circle of wood cut from the Ryman stage.