my favorite song when I was 3 as I'm 23 now so like dude

2 Step

A blue-collar ballad about distance, duty, and the grind of love under pressure. Grit meets grace on the long road home.

The Long Road Home

The Lights Don’t Shine in Nashville Anymore
Lyrics By: Thomas W. Peterson AKA RedHeart 
 ©COPYRIGHT 10–21-2025 All Rights Reserved ©

(Verse 1)
The neon out at The Rusty Spur, it bleeds a tired red,
Just like the engine of the Ford I drove down here instead.
Thirty years ago, my voice was loud, my dreams were bigger still,
A hundred miles of open road from that back Tennessee hill.
They said I was "one song away," I came too close to count,
Then the steel guitars went out of style, and the waters dried the fount.

(Chorus)
Oh, the lights don't shine in Nashville anymore,
They swapped out truth for glitter on the floor.
Yeah, the music changed and left me standin' by the door,
But I'm still standin' here, with a story and a worn-out Martin score.
I guess the kind of gold I'm chasin' ain't the kind they keep in store,
The lights don't shine in Nashville anymore.

(Verse 2)
By day I haul a recliner, strapped down with chain and rope,
Drivin’ furniture down gravel roads and runnin' on just hope.
But I keep a coffee-stained notebook in the passenger’s seat,
For the poetry that finds you on the back of a receipt.
I write about the hard work, the heartbreak, and the dust,
The three things that a man can always learn to trust.
Every Friday night, the regulars know the cue,
“Sing us one of your own, Clay,” and I always see it through.

(Chorus)
Oh, the lights don't shine in Nashville anymore,
They swapped out truth for glitter on the floor.
Yeah, the music changed and left me standin' by the door,
But I'm still standin' here, with a story and a worn-out Martin score.
I guess the kind of gold I'm chasin' ain't the kind they keep in store,
The lights don't shine in Nashville anymore.

(Bridge)
Then a girl in the shadows, she came walkin' up to me,
Said, “That song hit me harder than anything on CMT.”
I told her I wrote it on a Tuesday, deliverin' a new fridge,
With George Jones playing soft and low beneath a concrete bridge.
She said, “Everyone tells me to give up, that it’s too hard to win,”
“But listenin’ to you, Clay, I think I’m gonna try again.”
I watched her walk out in the rain, and I softly tuned the strings,
And whispered to the shadows the comfort that freedom brings.

(Guitar Solo - Features a heavy, lonesome steel guitar)

(Chorus)
Oh, the lights don't shine in Nashville anymore,
They swapped out truth for glitter on the floor.
Yeah, the music changed and left me standin' by the door,
But I'm still standin' here, with a story and a worn-out Martin score.
I guess the kind of gold I'm chasin' ain't the kind they keep in store,
The lights don't shine in Nashville anymore.

(Outro)
I may never play the Opry stage, no, that ship is long gone by,
But I reckon I'll die with a song in my hands, beneath a Tennessee sky.
Yeah, I sat down this morning, and the pen began to tap,
Chasin' not the spotlight, but the truth upon the map.
(Fade out with guitar picking the melody)
The lights don't shine in Nashville anymore...

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