Maggie Parsons & the Nashville Slam
Could you write and perform an original song for a live audience — in one hour?Seventeen-year-old Maggie Parsons heads to Nashville determined to prove she belongs in music. What she doesn’t expect is an unlikely friendship with a forgotten blues musician who changes the way she sees music — and herself.Now available in paperback and Kindle.
I was about eighteen in that photo, and I had absolutely no idea where any of this was going.I wanted to play music, so I did what seemed logical at the time: I got a job unloading trucks at a liquor store. Clubs would come in to pick up their orders, and I could hand them publicity pictures of the band. It wasn’t exactly a master plan, but it worked well enough to keep me moving.I got married too young, got divorced, found an agent in Jamestown, New York, and spent years on the road. I played in about thirty states, worked the hotel circuit, and even spent three months performing in Bermuda.Eventually I got tired of the road and had another highly sophisticated career thought: “I like TV.”So I started Henry J. Productions. It took a long time to build, but it became a successful video production business and kept me busy for years. Then COVID changed everything.Fortunately, music was still there.More than twelve years ago, somewhere along the way, I started writing a screenplay called Open Mic. I never finished it, but the characters stayed with me. Maggie, Cal, and the rest of that world kept hanging around until they finally became Maggie Parsons and the Nashville Slam.Looking back, I guess most of my stories started the same way my life did: without much of a plan, but with plenty of interesting detours.