Nashville Beyond Broadway: Press Preview

​12 Oct 2026

Advance excerpts for the December 4 book and album launch

Subject to final editorial changes.

Publishing substantial extracts requires Thyra & Magnolia Road's approval.

Excerpt 1:

The Guitars Were Waiting for Us

How a Missed Flight, a Brand-New Song and a Stranger by a Pool Made Nashville Home

 

Home is not an address. It is the moment you stop watching and start belonging.What makes a place home? For us, it's simple. A place becomes home when you stop visiting it. When you have friends there. When you're part of something, not just watching it from the side. For us, that started with a row of lucky coincidences.

We were flying to Nashville to play the CMA Global Artist Party with Jill Johnson. We landed in Chicago super late and missed our connection, so we had to wait for the next flight. When we finally got to Nashville, they told us our luggage hadn't made the plane. All our guitars. All our stuff. So we walked out of the airport, back then it was a small, quiet airport. And there they were. Our guitars. Not on a belt. Just standing there by the entrance, right in front of us, waiting. We looked at each other. So you can leave your guitars at the entrance of the Nashville airport, with no one watching them, and hours later they're still there?

 

We jumped in a cab, and we saw a missed call from Jill. We called her back. "Hey guys," she said. "I need you to come and play a song with me down on Broadway. In about 45 minutes.""Okay," we said. "What's the song?""It's a song I just wrote."So we went straight from the airport to Broadway. The taxi dropped us at Legends Corner, near the Ryman. We walked in with our guitars and our suitcases. We said hi to Jill, her co writer Lisa and to the guys in the band. Someone threw some chords at us, Jill sang us the chorus in the back of the room, and then we walked on stage and sang a brand-new song.

 

Jill and Lisa had written it for Kristian Gidlund, for Jill's TV show, Jills Veranda. The show wasn't supposed to be filmed until the fall, but what later became part of the first episode was happening right there and then. That's not our story to tell, so we'll leave it to Jill. For us, it was one of those moments when you feel like you've been dropped into something bigger than you. You just roll with it, and everything falls into place. The 16 year old girl who once stood at a high-top table, with a fake drink, during a Tv-recording in Nashville in 1989 was now on a stage on Broadway.

 

After some intense days, with Jill's record label putting us up in a nice hotel in Vanderbilt, we were supposed to go on to California. But something had changed. We decided to stay on. I had heard of a "new thing" called Airbnb. I found a pool house in East Nashville. Everyone we told raised their eyebrows. "East Nashville? You can't go there. You're going to get shot."We remember a dinner after a show, when Jill's dear friend and long time co-writer said, "I never cross the river." That stayed with us. What if we had never crossed the river? Crossing it was the start of the next chapter of our lives, and it shaped us from that moment on.

 

We arrived after dark, with our guitars and our suitcases. The key was hidden. We let ourselves in through the back gate. The place was called Disgraceland. The next morning we walked out to the pool. A man was sitting there. His name was Patton James. He became, and still is, one of our dearest friends in Nashville. We are so grateful for everything he has done for us. We laugh when we say, "We got adopted into a very eclectic family." But there's truth to it. We were accepted. We were included in a community of people who had known each other for years. That is when a place becomes home.

 

Excerpt 2:

From the Back of the Room

A Fake Drink and a Red-Haired Woman: My First Nashville

 

The first time I came to Nashville, I was in the audience. It took more than 20 years to get on the other side of the stage. The first time I came to Nashville, I was 16. I was on a road trip across the States with my parents, and Nashville was one stop on the way. It was a real adventure of a trip. Our car was broken into. Then the car was stolen, and our camera with it. So I don't have many photos, and I honestly don't remember much from that first visit to Nashville. But I remember one thing. We ended up in the audience of a TV show. I stood at a high-top table holding a fake drink. I had never seen anything like it. The highball glass had colored plastic inside to make it look like a real drink. Mine was blue, and someone from the studio switched it to pink. Because who enjoys a blue drink? On stage was a woman with red hair. I had never heard of her. Later I found out who she was. It was Reba McEntire. Years after that, I learned that Reba once guest-hosted the TV show Nashville Now, with Garth Brooks, Vince Gill and Alan Jackson as her guests. All three were about to become legends. Was that my night? I like to think so. But I honestly can't be sure. What I do know is this. Back then, Nashville was something I watched. Something that happened on a stage while I stood at the back of the room with a pretend drink in my hand. More than 20 years later, Göran and I landed at Nashville airport together, with our guitars. This time, we didn't stay at the back of the room.

 

Excerpt 3:

The Moment We Stopped Being Tourists

When people ask why we think of Nashville as our second home, the answer starts with two small things.The first was an invitation. A phone call in a taxi from the airport: can you come and play a song with me on Broadway, in 45 minutes? We had just missed a flight and almost lost our guitars. We said yes.The second was a decision. When the work was done, we could have moved on. Instead, we decided to stay a little longer. And the next morning, we met a friend for life by a pool. An invitation, and a decision to stay. Everything else came from those two. But the moment we really stopped being tourists didn't happen on a stage, and it didn't happen in a honky-tonk. It happened because of people.

It was when Bil took us to the American Legion for Honky Tonk Tuesday. We didn't find it ourselves. Someone who knew us thought we'd love it, and brought us along.It was when we had to work, and a friend took our son to his soccer game so he didn't miss it.It was when we were renting a house on Fatherland Street, and friends dropped by out of the blue, and we asked them in for a beer.It was when the barista at our corner coffee shop knew our names (and Göran is a tough one) and asked how the kids were doing.It was when our son came back to town and his jersey was already waiting for him on his East Nashville soccer team. That summer, Göran became "Coach Eriksson." Because who doesn't want a Swedish soccer coach? No one really needed to know that Göran's coaching skills from home stretched to setting out cones and handing out the balls.And it was on the side of that soccer field, when a mom called out after our son because she thought he was hers. We laughed, we started talking, and that little mix-up turned into a friendship for life.None of these things were planned. You can't book them, and you won't find them on a map. They happen when you stay long enough, and slow down enough, for a place to find you.This is why we don't feel like "visitors" in Nashville. We have people there. We have a support system. We have dear, dear friends.Nashville didn't open up because we found the right venue. It opened up because we stopped moving fast enough to let it find us. This book is built around that lesson.Excerpt 4 for travel media: How to Survive BroadwayNeon, cover bands, a bologna sandwich and an exit plan. How to do Broadway right.Lower Broadway is probably the most famous street in Nashville. And yes, it's also the biggest tourist trap in town. Neon lights, live music on every floor, cover bands playing non-stop, and a noise level that means after an hour you can hardly hear your own thoughts. It's a bit like a festival, an après-ski bar and Las Vegas all in one. With cowboy hats.But Broadway is also part of the soul of Nashville.Musicians play in the middle of the day like it's the most important gig of their life (and sometimes it is). You can walk past ten bars, and then suddenly stop for a voice that cuts straight through all the noise.So yes, you should go. Absolutely. Take in the energy. Just go with the right expectations. And maybe most important of all, have an exit plan. Because it's when you leave Broadway that you find the Nashville that really stays with you.Robert's Western WorldRight in the heart of Music City, in the historic Lower Broadway district, Robert's Western World is the home of traditional country music in Nashville. If you love the sound of the classic honky-tonk singers, like Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Little Jimmy Dickens, Hank Snow, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Webb Pierce, Carl Smith, Carl Perkins and Johnny Horton, you'll feel like you've stepped straight back in time.It's always full! At 3 pm or at 2 am. We usually go on a Wednesday afternoon around 3. It's the perfect warm-up before a concert at the Ryman or Bridgestone Arena.Order the legendary Recession Special: a fried bologna sandwich, a bag of chips, a MoonPie and a PBR, all for just a few dollars.Where: 416B Broadway. Good to know: Robert's is 21+ from 6 pm.Get around like a proSkip the lines:    •    Come 30 minutes before the band changes (around 6 pm and 10 pm).    •    Take the back way into Tootsie's, through the alley by the Ryman.    •    If the ground floor is full, go upstairs!Transport:    •    Parking: the 5th & Broad garage. But Uber or Lyft is better.    •    Get dropped off at Legends Corner or the Omni Hotel.    •    Leaving? Walk up past the new shopping block, one block past Bridgestone Arena. Stand on the right side of the street for an easier pick-up.Your Broadway survival kit    •    Venmo ready    •    Cash for the bands' tip jar    •    Good shoes (stairs and lots of walking)    •    Sunglasses and sunscreen if you're heading for a rooftop    •    Every other drink a water    •    Patience    •    Your ID. Bring your passport.Bringing the family? Many bars on Broadway go 21+ in the evening, often from 6 pm. On weekdays and during the day, it usually works fine to bring the kids.About Thyra & Magnolia RoadThyra & Magnolia Road is Karin Thyr Eriksson and Göran Eriksson, a Swedish Americana duo. They call their sound Swedicana: Scandinavian melody and harmonies, mixed with the steel, fiddle and banjo of American roots music.For close to 15 years they have gone back and forth between their island home outside Stockholm and Nashville, where they write, play and have built a second family of friends and co-writers. Their albums include Nashville Songs & Stories (2020) and Stockholm Tennessee (2022).Nashville Beyond Broadway is their personal guide to the city: the stories, the people and the places they take their own friends. It is released on December 4, together with their new album, Roots Deep Down.Confirm before sending: that Roots Deep Down is the final album title, the release year for both, and where the book and album can be bought or streamed.Still to add before this goes out    •    Book cover preview    •    Album artwork    •    Release information and links: date, where to buy the book, where to stream the album    •    5 to 8 approved photos, each with a photo credit and the right to use it in press    •    Check the practical details in Excerpt 4 (band change times, the 5th & Broad garage) before travel media use it    •    Check with co-writers or your publisher before press reprints lyrics (the Stockholm Tennessee line in Excerpt 1)    •    Jill Johnson, Lisa Carver, Liz Rose and Patton James are named: decide if they should see it before it goes outPhoto ideas, taken from the book's design notes:    •    The two of you on a Nashville stage    •    Two guitar cases at an airport entrance    •    The pool at Disgraceland, or a quiet pool at dawn with string lights    •    An East Nashville soccer field, or two cups in a corner coffee shop    •    Robert's Western World, or Broadway at night in full neon    •    A Swedish lake at dusk next to Broadway neon (Sweden and Nashville side by side)    •    The Swedicana T-shirtNot included yet: Part Seven, the songs and their Nashville places. That becomes its own brief once it is written.