The Audition: Bootcamp at Opryland
For an Opryland USA audition, the standard was to perform one Broadway and one country song. Opryland, a musical theme park in Nashville that closed in the 1990s, was home to shows some of you might remember: Country Music USA, I Hear America Singing, Showboat, and For Me and My Gal.
I was 18 years old when my vocal coach took a group of us to audition for the live stage shows. Each of us had just 16 bars to make an impression, and if you were fortunate, you’d be asked for your second selection. I’ll never forget pulling up in my dad’s old Mark IV Lincoln—a car so large, the front seemed to be in Tennessee while the back was in Texas. My sister came along for moral support. We entered the Live Entertainment Building, walked down a long hallway, and waited to be called into one of the rehearsal halls.
The rehearsal hall itself was a large space with floor-to-ceiling mirrors along one wall, a ballet bar, and an upright piano. The accompanist, cigarette in hand (this was 1978), waited for the next hopeful performer. They allowed my sister to come in with me, and I was uncertain how that would go—she could be a little unpredictable. When they called my name— “Diane Williams”—I handed my music to the accompanist. We discussed where the song would be cut, then I took my place and launched into Linda Ronstadt’s version of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” (Sing “This Heart of Mine.”) When I finished, there was silence—dead silence. Two judges talked about the previous performer, three munched on Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the last, Lloyd Wells, finally looked at me and, in his Mississippi drawl, said, “Nice, can you sing your other song for us?” That was victory—I made it to song number two. There I stood in my high-waisted bell-bottom jeans, white puffy-sleeved blouse, high-heeled Candie shoes, and straight hair parted down the middle. The judges continued eating and talking while I gave my best Tammy Wynette impersonation of song. One judge eventually paused to ask, “Great job, can you come back for a dance callback and sing 16 bars of another country tune?”
My sister laughed all the way home. She said, “I’ve heard you sing Stevie Nicks, a little Carole King, maybe some Aretha, but Lord in heaven, never Tammy Wynette. Honestly, I was just grateful she didn’t throw her shoe at the judge eating KFC.
A few weeks later, I returned for the dance audition in a shimmery pink leotard, tights, and baby blue leg warmers—fully playing the part, though I had no idea what to expect. To my surprise, it was a lot of fun, and I was pretty good! After singing 16 bars of “I Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love With you”, the choreographer taught us a jazz routine—about eight sets of eight—and then had us all do runs across the floor. I can still remember the choreographer’s directions: “tip, tip, tip, tip, wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap, grand jeté, grand jeté, and shimmy across the floor.” When they took my measurements at the end, I knew things were looking up. A few weeks later, I got the call: I was cast in Country Music USA.
I share these memories because Opryland became my boot camp for a long career in music. Between 1978 and 1984, I performed in four different shows at the park. Why boot camp? Doing the same show four or five times a day taught me to keep smiling and singing through the flu, shin splints, the heat, the cold, and the humidity. I could sing my part, shake my tambourine, nail some intense choreography, and still mentally plan my grocery list—eggs, bread, ice cream—all at the same time.
That training paid off when I moved into a recording and touring career with the '80s country group Girls Next Door. Instead of four or five shows a day, it became a Groundhog Day routine: leave Franklin at midnight, get on a bus with eight other people, wake up in another city, do radio interviews, soundcheck, perform, then get back on the bus, stop at a convenience store for Doritos and powdered donuts, travel 500 miles to another city—and do it all again.
Like I said, performing at Opryland five days a week, four shows a day was its own kind of boot camp. Not the military kind—though some mornings it sure felt like it—but the kind that trains you through repetition, demands stamina, and shapes you into someone tougher than you realized. You learned to sing through allergies, smile through exhaustion, and keep your energy high even when the Tennessee heat felt like it was melting your mascara. Every day was discipline, muscle memory, teamwork. You and your castmates weren’t just performers—you were a troop, bonded by shared sweat, inside jokes, and the rhythm of doing the same thing so intensely and so often that it became part of you.
And maybe that’s why the last day hit so hard. Because my last day doing the show was also the last day Opryland ever opened its gates. It felt like boot camp graduation and base closure all at once. One chapter of my life—and one chapter of Nashville’s history—was coming to an end in the same breath.That final show felt different. The choreography was the same, the harmonies were the same, the costumes were the same—but everything around it felt heavier, more sacred. The muscle memory was still firing, but the heart memory was waking up too. Every step felt like a goodbye. Every note felt like it carried the weight of something that would never happen again.
And that’s when I realized: life is boot camp too. It trains you with routines that feel endless until suddenly… they stop. A door closes. A season ends. A place that shaped you—disciplined you, sharpened you, stretched you—disappears into memory. And you walk away carrying the strength it built in you, even when the stage itself is gone.
My last day at Opryland wasn’t just the end of a job. It was the end of a world. And like any soldier leaving boot camp, I carried the lessons, the resilience, the friendships, and the grit forward into the next chapters of my life—chapters I didn’t know I was being trained for.
