Ryman Auditorium

The Ryman Auditorium stage in Nashville, seen from the balcony over rows of curved wooden pews. Those pews are a clue to its past: it opened in 1892 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle, a church hall, which is why the place is still called the Mother Church of Country Music. The Grand Ole Opry broadcast from here for nearly 31 years, from 1943 to 1974, and Earl Scruggs made his Opry debut on this stage with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in 1945, shaping the bluegrass sound. The room holds a couple of thousand people and sounds like a much smaller one, so any show here, in any genre, is worth catching.