Blame it on the rhinestones.
When Connie Britton arrived at the Grand Ole Opry to sing her big number in the pilot of “Nashville,” she showed up at 5 a.m. for a costume fitting. She put on a white silk bugle beaded tank top. Snakeskin black skinny jeans with a rhinestone-studded black belt. A black sequined motorcycle jacket. And, best of all, black rhinestone-studded high heels. Suddenly, everything — doing another network series after the cancellation of the beloved “Friday Night Lights,” scaring herself half to death by taking a role where she would have to sing in front of an audience — fell into place.
“I put on my outfit to perform. I looked in the mirror and said, ‘This is why I did the show,’” says Britton, 45. “It was the rhinestones on my shoes. It actually really was.”
Britton is the central figure in ABC’s new drama about the legendary country music capital. As Rayna James, the undisputed queen of Nashville, Britton stands on one side of the street. With a stripped-down elegance reminiscent of Emmylou Harris, she embodies the integrity of “pure storytelling” that one associates with traditional country music.
As Juliette Barnes, Nashville’s “No. 1 crossover artist,” Hayden Panettiere stands on the other, shiny side of the street. A beneficiary of the pitch correction device known as Auto-Tune, Juliette is a pop confection, a sequinned shark, swimming under and around Rayna. Ready to chew a hole in her career.
Their first meeting, backstage at that Opry concert, is pure animosity. Upon being introduced to Rayna, Juliette says, “My mother said she would listen to you while I was still in her belly.” Rayna’s retort? “Well, bless your heart. That is a charming story.” Looking at the breasts that are spilling out of Juliette’s dress, she adds, “You’re about to go on. You want to make sure you’ve got those girls tucked in there real good.”
“Nashville” is “All About Eve” with a pedal-steel guitar. Instead of Bette Davis’s Margo Channing knocking back a martini and warning her party guests, “It’s going to be a bumpy night,” we have Britton listening to Panettiere sing and screaming, “Why do people listen to that adolescent crap? It sounds like feral cats.” Meow.
Trouble is, the undisputed queen of country music finds herself the underdog. Rayna’s latest tour isn’t selling and her latest CD is a turkey, while Juliette is burning up the charts. “The way everyone talks about this business now just makes me feel old,” Rayna tells her lead guitarist, Deacon (Charles Esten). “It wasn’t that long ago that I was the future of country music.”
Created by Callie Khouri, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Thelma & Louise,” “Nashville” examines the conflict between age and youth, art and commerce, integrity and corruption in fresh and entertaining ways.
“It’s about waking up and realizing the fight’s going to be just as hard today as it was when you started,” says Khouri, 54. “Everyone in my business knows that. Do you stay true to your art and find a way to survive?”
Khouri lives in Nashville and has soaked up stories about the business from her friends, who were musicians and songwriters, and boyfriends, who worked in publishing companies. When she first moved there, she worked in the clubs and was in love with the music of Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Gram Parsons and his muse, Harris. And Bonnie Raitt. Eventually, she married the legendary T Bone Burnett, who won a Grammy Award for soundtrack for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
He must have entertained her with countless stories about backstage divas, drunks and derelicts. No, says Khouri. “T Bone lives in his own universe where there’s plenty of room for everyone. He doesn’t care about the marketplace,” she says.
Burnett is the executive music producer on “Nashville” and gives tutorials to Britton, who also works with vocal coach Valerie Morehouse, on the kind of music Rayna would have listened to along the way.
“He made a playlist,” Britton says. “It included the most obscure singers from ’30s and ’40s. Johnny Cash. Emmylou. Judy Collins. Bob Dylan. He would play guitar and sing harmonies with me. We’ve gotten into song recording. He’ll sit in the booth with me. For moral support.”
Most of the music on the show is original, supplied by Nashville musicians. From the pilot: “If I Knew Better” was written by John Paul White and Arum Rae. “Back Home,” sung by Esten, was written by Kyle Jacobs, Lee Brice and Joy Yetton. Says Khouri, “If you go to Nashville right now, you will hear the greatest songs you will ever hear. Country radio has always defined things in a very narrow way. If one thing hits, everybody becomes that.”
“Nashville” also exposes the use of Auto-Tune in contemporary music in a scene where the engineers use it to sweeten one of Juliette’s vocal tracks. Laughing, Khouri reveals, “We had to detune Hayden for that scene. She actually is an extremely good singer. She’s a little mad at us.”
Panettiere says she wasn’t mad, but only concerned that the show might portray her character as a bad singer. “Juliette can’t have nothing to back up her attitude,” she says.
The 23-year-old actress studied music when she was a child and considered a career in country music before turning to acting. Khouri says that it’s funny to be on the set and see her make the transition from her charming self to the hellcat we see in the show.
“Hayden shocks me every day. Such a good actor. She’s as sweet a person as you could want to meet. It’s almost hilarious when you see her turn into this other thing,” she says.
As the battle between Rayna and Juliette plays out over the season, Rayna will have to fight to keep her place, but Britton says she will do it with dignity.
“That’s the story we’re going to tell. How somebody who comes up based on values of pure storytelling versus this sleek superficial pop-culture thing. I think she’s going to prevail based on her own integrity.”
Or as Rayna puts it, “I’m not ready to hang up my rhinestones just yet.”
NASHVILLE
Wednesday, 10 p.m., ABC