Tennessee Mountain Trance

Summary

---

Dolly Parton's America, Episode 3: "Tennessee Mountain Trance"

WNYC Studios & OSM Audio | Airdate: October 29, 2019

Overview:

In “Tennessee Mountain Trance,” host Jad Abumrad embarks on a deeply personal journey through Dolly Parton's mythic Tennessee roots. Using Dolly’s iconic song “My Tennessee Mountain Home” as a gateway, the episode explores memory, nostalgia, and the universal longing for home that her music evokes. Along the way, Jad examines both his own outsiderness growing up in Tennessee and Dolly’s uncanny ability to create a mesmerizing “trance” through her storytelling. The episode blends firsthand interviews, visits to Dollywood, and intimate musical moments to unpack how Dolly’s world and music forge powerful connections across generations, cultures, and continents.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Universal Pull of “My Tennessee Mountain Home”

• Personal Resonance:
  • Jad reveals that “My Tennessee Mountain Home” loomed over his childhood in Nashville as a song that seemed to unite Tennesseans while making him, as an Arab-American in a post-Gulf War world, feel like an outsider.
    • “As the scrawny, shy Arab kid that hit high school during Gulf War one, I kind of felt on the outside of all that.” (02:18)
• Dolly’s Perspective on Fans and Generational Shift:
  • Dolly describes her unexpected cross-generational appeal, citing connections from appearing on shows like Hannah Montana and how fans from different eras continue to find her (“All those Hannah Montana fans have grown up and now they’re my fans.” 04:12).

2. The Trance of Storytelling and Music

• Dolly’s Memories Come Flooding Out:

  • Once Jad brings up her Tennessee childhood, Dolly effortlessly launches into stories and music, describing life in a large, rural family, hardship, Pentecostal faith, injury, and her earliest memories of music—all punctuated by impromptu singing.
    • Notable: She sings folk tunes her mother would sing and describes harmonizing with family (05:26–07:22).
  • Dolly embraces her role as a storyteller:
    • “Well, you know me, you just ask and I’ll just tell it as I know it or as I feel it.” (03:07)

• The Interview Turns into a Trance:

  • Jad admits he is so taken by Dolly’s storytelling, he’s unable to stick to his questions or even speak, likening the sensation to being in a video game trance (10:12).

3. Why Do Dolly’s Stories Entrap Listeners?

• Other Fans Fall into the Trance:
  • Listeners like Wandi Pryor describe being enchanted by Dolly’s childhood stories. Wandi, as a child in British Columbia, engineered her entire wardrobe to mimic “child Dolly,” experiencing a kind of immersive, empathetic nostalgia (11:44–12:19).
    • “For the next three years, she only wore clothes that she thought child Dolly would have worn... I called them prairie dresses.” (11:57)

4. Dollywood: A Shrine and Theme Park to the Mythos

• Visiting the Center of the Dollyverse:
  • Jad and Shima visit Dollywood, a site that physically enshrines Dolly’s Appalachian youth with a theme park devotion—roller coasters, a working steam engine (“Appalachia facial” – 14:02), butterfly motifs, and the Chasing Rainbows Museum topped with a Dolly hologram (15:13).
• Nostalgia and Souvenirs:
  • English professor Susan Harlan contextualizes Dollywood as different from other theme parks, calling Dolly a “secular saint” and the park, especially Dolly’s childhood cabin, a quasi-religious space (18:12).
  • Souvenirs, even if mass-produced, become “powerful material memories” binding people to an experience they long to revisit (18:57).

5. The Power and Paradox of Nostalgia

• Dolly’s Replica Cabin:

  • The recreated “Tennessee Mountain Home” cabin is sparse and unsentimentally accurate. Visitors experience an emotional connection, projecting their own childhood or lost home onto the shared symbols of quilts, boots, and a table (20:05–21:52).
    • “That nostalgic cabin, this Tennessee mountain home, that’s what the brand is about… Nostos is home in Greek and algia is pain. So it’s this painful longing for home that I found just really kind of poignant.” - Susan Harlan (21:58)

• Global Resonance: Esther Konkara in Kenya

  • Jad speaks with Kenyan musician Esther Konkara, who emotionally links the song to her own rural upbringing. For her, “My Tennessee Mountain Home” stirs homesickness for a place she was still living in, imagining missing her present before leaving it (24:10–26:27).
    • “For me, my Tennessee was those hills where I come from, where I would just go there and meditate and just think about life and the future.” - Esther Konkara (26:16)

• The Song as a Time Capsule:

  • Jad reflects that the song’s vivid imagery preserves a disappearing moment so powerfully that listeners around the world find their own longing for home reflected back at them (27:46–28:23).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dolly, on Remaining Close to Her Roots:
  • “Well, I never left it. Just like when I left the Porter Wagon show… I said, I’m not leaving country. I’ll take country with me. Wherever I’m at, that is who I am... I long to always stay attached to my home, to my family. That’s a thing, a golden thread that keeps me tied to eternity.” (28:45)
• Susan Harlan on Nostalgia and Brand:
  • “That nostalgic cabin, this Tennessee mountain home, that’s what the brand is about... I think really comes out of this sort of mournful, sad sense of a lost home. Nostos is home in Greek, and algia is pain. So it’s this painful longing for home that I found just really kind of poignant.” (21:58)
• Esther Konkara’s Reflection:
  • “My Tennessee was those hills where I come from... I would go and sit on the rocks and just fantasize about me being far away from here and being somebody who has made it in life, big star somewhere. And then I have not lost ground with where I come from.” (25:31)
• Jad on the Trance of Dolly's Storytelling:
  • “It’s a little bit like that old video game, Legend of Ocarina of Time, where Zelda starts playing the flute, and then all of a sudden your character starts swaying and loses control and there’s nothing you can do.” (10:17)
• Dolly on the Dream/Fantasy of Her Story:
  • “I’m almost like a Cinderella story. People still want to believe that there is magic, that I did sweep the hearth. I do wear the glass slippers.” (30:22)

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:33] – Dolly starts telling stories and singing “My Tennessee Mountain Home”
• [03:37] – Dolly describes cross-generational fan connection and Hannah Montana
• [05:26] – Early music memories, family harmonies, and singing
• [09:04] – Childhood injury and Pentecostal upbringing
• [10:12] – Jad reflects on being entranced by Dolly
• [11:08] – Wandi Pryor describes deep identification with Dolly’s stories
• [14:02] – Walking into Dollywood; amusement park and butterfly motifs
• [18:12] – Susan Harlan on Dollywood’s quasi-religious aura
• [19:27] – Exploring the replica of the Tennessee Mountain Home cabin
• [21:58] – Nostalgia, longing, and the centrality of “home” in Dolly’s mythos
• [23:23] – Esther Konkara in Kenya sings “My Tennessee Mountain Home”
• [25:31] – Esther’s rural Kenyan childhood and the universal resonance of the song
• [27:42] – Jad reflects on nostalgia and the present moment
• [28:45] – Dolly on never really having left her roots
• [30:22] – Dolly frames her story as a “Cinderella” tale
• [34:22–41:39] – Jad, Shima, and Dolly’s nephew Brian visit the actual Tennessee Mountain Home, leading to a magical, reverent tour of Dolly’s real roots

---

Tone & Style

The episode moves with a gentle, hypnotic pace, weaving Dolly’s music and unfiltered storytelling with Jad’s personal and searching narration. There is humor (Appalachia facials, “I’m a pirate” glass eye story), warmth, and deeply felt nostalgia throughout, always shaded by self-awareness about myth-making, commercialism, and the blurring line between fantasy and reality in Dolly’s world.

---

Conclusion

“Tennessee Mountain Trance” is a meditation on memory, longing, and how the simple evocation of a home—whether real, remembered, or imagined—can enthrall millions across cultures. Dolly Parton’s music and myth connect people not by erasing differences, but by making room for everyone’s longing for place and belonging. As the episode closes, listeners are left with “the golden thread” that keeps all of us tied, if only in spirit, to the places and stories that made us.

---

Transcript

[Jad Abumrad]

This is the exclusive table with the view. This is your name on the list. This is three times points on dining.

[Brian Seaver]

With Chase Sapphire Reserve and a $300 dining credit Chase Sapphire Reserve now even more rewarding.

[Jad Abumrad]

Learn [e-mail] Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval. I know every operating system, five years of experience and have worked with several people from your company. I've been recognized for my passion. My team is everything. LinkedIn delivers candidates who rise above the rest with an up to date view into shared connections, skills and interests you won't find anywhere else. See why 86% of small businesses who post a job on LinkedIn get a qualified candidate within a day. Post a job for [e-mail] Pandora LinkedIn. Your next great hire is here. Let's say your small business has a problem. Like maybe one of your doggy daycare customers had an accident. You might say something like doggone it.

[Dolly Parton]

Hi Chihuahua.

[Jad Abumrad]

Holy schnauzers. But if you need someone who can actually help, just say like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And get help filing a claim from your local state farm agent for your small business insurance needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This is Dolly Parton's America. I'm Jad Abumrad. We're at the third of nine trips into the Dollyverse this episode and the next. This is where Dolly's story got kind of personal for me. These two episodes are about a song that really sort of hung over my childhood like a mist.

[Dolly Parton]

Sitting on the front porch on a summer afternoon in a straight back chair on two legs leaned against the wall what's the kids a playin' with June bugs on a strain and chase the glowing fireflies when evening shadows fall.

[Jad Abumrad]

In.

[Dolly Parton]

My Tennessee mountain home life is as peaceful as a baby sigh.

[Jad Abumrad]

I feel like this song was always.

[Dolly Parton]

Playing in Tennessee Midnight Tennessee Mountain Home.

[Jad Abumrad]

I remember it once being sung at a football game. Could be wrong, but certainly Rocky top. You'll hear 100,000 people singing it and I'll be totally up front. Like, you know, as the, as the, as the scrawny, shy Arab kid that hit high school during Gulf War one, I kind of felt on the outside of all that. So for that reason and many other reasons, when I finally got a chance to sit down with Dolly, I didn't plan on making that song and those stories the focus. I mean, there are a billion interesting things you can talk about with Dolly Parton and all the Tennessee Mountain stuff that Was on page seven of my notes. Okay, that was not the top of the list, but then it just kind of happened.

[Dolly Parton]

Well, you know me, you just ask and I'll just tell it as I know it or as I feel it. What I want you to hear.

[Jad Abumrad]

We were talking about demographics, about the fact that her fan base in the last decade or so has totally flipped. It's gone from 80% over the age of 55 to now 80% under the age of 55. And I was asking her, how do you explain that shift? I mean, was it something you guys really went after or did it just happen?

[Dolly Parton]

Well, you don't know that you're doing it when it's going on. I think a lot of it. I've been around a long time. I've been in Nashville, so since 1964. And so I've been in movies and I've been on television a lot. And the fact that I've done different shows with newer generations. Like when, for instance, when Miley Cyrus was doing Hannah Montana, I was on there as her Aunt Dolly, which she actually is my goddaughter. And so that kind of reintroduced me at that moment to a whole new bunch of little kids.

[Jad Abumrad]

Her take was that all those Hannah Montana fans have grown up and now they're her fans, which made sense. But I was like, okay, but that's not the whole explanation. So I was getting ready to sort of follow up, ask some more questions about it, but before I could.

[Dolly Parton]

Well, first of all, I was born in a little log cabin, one room cabin on the banks of the little Pigeon River.

[Jad Abumrad]

We were suddenly in the stories on.

[Dolly Parton]

A farm where my daddy was just a sharecropper. See, I've written a lot of songs about the Smoky Mountains where I grew up in a family of 12. There's a. And so we, because we were growing, we did move over into what is what we call the Tennessee mountain home. In my Tennessee mountain, where a lot of my songs and stories talk about life is as peaceful as a baby inside, Imagine I see mountain ho. We sit down on the porch and just sing.

[Jad Abumrad]

What's your earliest memory of music?

[Dolly Parton]

Oh, my goodness. I remember music always. My mother. My first memory is just hearing mama sing. In yonder town where I was born There was a fair made dwelling Made every young harp swoon her sway and her name was Barbary Mama was always singing to us. And she would sing all those old ballads from the old country. She was on her long way home. She saw the hearse come rolling Singing all Those old songs like in the pines, in the pines in the pines, in the pines in the cold lonesome pines where the sun never shines and you shiver when the cold wind blows Little girl, little girl where'd you stay last night? Simple melodies where you just play and then do those three part harmonies. Family harmonies. So beautiful. Like if We Never Meet Again, which is my favorite song and my dad's favorite song. Like if we never meet again this side of heaven as we struggle through this world and its drive there's another meeting place somewhere in heaven by the side of the river where the charming roses bloom forever and separation comes no more and if we never meet again this side of heaven I will meet you on that beautiful shore Flowing I.

[Jad Abumrad]

Could listen to you sing all day.

[Dolly Parton]

Well, I'm not singing good now, but I'm trying to paint a picture if I was trying to sing. But anyway, with those old songs, mom was like our. We didn't have television. We had an old battery radio at the early, early days that we'd pour. Have to pour water on the ground wire to get the battery to work. Because Daddy liked to try to get the grand old opera stage that used.

[Jad Abumrad]

To be one of the old towny ones here. Way long time ago at the grand old opera.

[Esther Konkara]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

D. Ford Bailey. That's good. That's all right.

[Dolly Parton]

That don't make a difference. And that was in. In those old days. But Mama was like our television.

[Jad Abumrad]

At this point in the interview. All my big plans just kind of went out the window and she just caught a wind.

[Dolly Parton]

I learned to play when I was about 7. And my poor little fingers before we played banjo, you know. And I write a lot of songs.

[Jad Abumrad]

She talked and sang as she talked, conjuring these clouds of memory. Music.

[Dolly Parton]

He's gonna marry me.

[Jad Abumrad]

We're gonna go to town for 90 minutes straight. And I could barely get a question in.

[Dolly Parton]

We lived up in the hills and it was very rural, you know. My daddy used to go in and out of the. Out of the hills where we lived on horseback. We canned our own food. We didn't have running water unless we'd run and get it, which I make jokes about, do our own things. And we all worked fields growing your corn and your beans and your tobacco. Raised some hogs, saying, hi, Rooster. And an old yellow dog. Milk cows and all my brothers used to hunt. Some of us girls used to hunt. We were just part of the woods and the trees and the bees and bear all over the place. Bear just running around everywhere.

[Jad Abumrad]

She told Me one story about how one day when she was 7 or 8, she jumped over the fence, landed on a broken Mason jar, and almost lost her toes.

[Dolly Parton]

Oh, I remember them picking me up. My dad, my brothers, holding me down, Mama pouring kerosene on my toes. Mama got her sewing needled, but they held me down, and Mama sewed them back together enough to where they held. And, you know, it was. They held, and they're fine. But I have scar. I mean, I can see the scar that goes right across all three toes. Then there was another same thing.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Dolly Parton]

If you're gonna.

[Wandi Pryor]

Yeah.

[Dolly Parton]

If you're gonna get any questions in, you ask one question and I talk for two hours.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's great.

[Dolly Parton]

I have a funny story now. I grew up Pentecostal. When you've heard about snake handlers, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

Sure.

[Dolly Parton]

So some of the churches, though, back in those back wards, they did handle those snakes.

[Jad Abumrad]

My daddy was dreadfully sitting in that first Dolly interview. I remember feeling like, whoa, what is hap. Wha. What is happening? Da, da. I couldn't form sentences, like, seriously, like, when I listened back to that tape.

[Dolly Parton]

Yeah. If you're gonna get any questions in, you ask one question. And I'm talking too bad.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's great. I mean, it's embarrassing. I'm like, jad, ask a question. This is what you do. Ask a question. But I couldn't. It's a little bit like that old video game, Legend of Ocarina of Time, where Zelda starts playing the flute, and then all of a sudden your character starts swaying and loses control and there's nothing you can do. Actually, let me revise that analogy. That's not right, because I don't think she was doing anything to me. She had just gone into a state of mind that was very intoxicating to be around. Hello? You there?

[Wandi Pryor]

Hey, I am here.

[Jad Abumrad]

This was not an uncommon experience. My producer Shima Oliai and I, we spoke with a lot of people who have, in various ways, fallen into this dream, usually when they were a kid. Here's just one example. Wandi Pryor grew up in British Columbia, and she told us that when she.

[Wandi Pryor]

Was a girl, my mother started dating my stepfather. And part of what he brought to the relationship was the VHS player. And for Christmas, he gave me Dolly Parton Live in London.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, yes.

[Wandi Pryor]

And I was obsessed.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says the moment she hit play, she immediately fell into the stories she.

[Wandi Pryor]

Would tell about her childhood.

[Dolly Parton]

Before I go into the song, I'd like to tell you a little bit about me. For those of you that don't know. I grew up in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.

[Wandi Pryor]

You know, she was just captivating.

[Jad Abumrad]

And Wandi says from that point, incredibly stunning. That point forward, for the next three years, she only wore clothes that she thought child Dolly would have worn. Like tattered sweaters, tattered dresses.

[Wandi Pryor]

I called them prairie dresses. I also had these penny loafers that I wore until the bottoms scraped off. So there was holes in the bottoms. I was so proud of this because I knew that, you know, in coat of many colors, there's holes in both her shoes. And it felt so great that I would walk around and find feel the gravel.

[Jad Abumrad]

And you wore only those clothes for three straight years?

[Wandi Pryor]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Wandi Pryor]

And my mom, who actually grew up with less, was totally distressed by this. She. I remember her saying to me, like, people are going to think I'm not providing for you. And she actually ended up throwing out my shoes while I was sleeping because I wouldn't let her get rid of them.

[Jad Abumrad]

So stories like Wandi's stories and my own kind of awkward experience that made me wonder what's behind that Tennessee mountain trance. I mean, obviously Dolly is a five alarm fire of charisma and talent. So that's part of the answer. Most of the answer, perhaps, but the dream itself of that Tennessee mountain home. Why does it work so well on so many people? And so we headed east. We drove three hours from Nashville to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to what is arguably the center of the Dolly verse. Welcome to Dollywood, the heart of the Smokies. Amazingly, some of my New York friends had never heard of Dollywood. So for those unfortunate souls, I will simply say it is a theme park devoted entirely to Dolly Parton. Are you guys ready to fly like a bird? I mean, you do have roller coasters, things like that. Got your water rides. You've also got. I think I already played this sound, but it's so cool. An actual working steam engine. It's one of the last in the world that burns actual coal. Blows it right in your face.

[Dolly Parton]

It's an Appalachia facial.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow. What'd you think about that? But mixed in with all that stuff.

[Dolly Parton]

Oh, my God, there's the chapel.

[Jad Abumrad]

The chapel named after the doctor that birthed Dolly. You had all these buildings that are themed after different parts of Dolly's story. For example, there's a replica of the chapel where she was born.

[Dolly Parton]

The day I was born, it was snowing. And we lived way back in the hills and we had this doctor that was also a minister. They had sent for him and my dad didn't have money to pay for him, so I was paid for with a sack of cornmeal.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do you have a giant tree?

[Dolly Parton]

We were climbing all over the trees like monkeys and climbing all over each.

[Jad Abumrad]

Other anytime that's at the center of the park. And I guess based on a tree she used to climb on, I used.

[Dolly Parton]

To always chase butterflies when I was a little kid. Used to trail off and get lost and butterflies.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, my God, there are butterflies everywhere in the park. There are butterfly statues, There are live butterflies that they bring in and release. The whole thing is like a medieval festival of Dali's youth, except also high tech. Like, one of the best moments in the park is when you walk into the Chasing Rainbows Museum. As soon as you walk in. Whoa. Dolly hologram.

[Dolly Parton]

Oh, well, hello, everybody. How are you?

[Jad Abumrad]

A life size dolly hologram pops up right in front of you.

[Dolly Parton]

Welcome to my Chasing Rainbows Museum. There's a hologram.

[Jad Abumrad]

Holy cow.

[Dolly Parton]

It's like she's right there.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hologram technology has gotten really good.

[Brian Seaver]

Side note, all told, just here in Pigeon Forge, we welcome about 4 million total guests in a year. Yes. And we employ about 4,000 people.

[Jad Abumrad]

So the day that we visited Dollywood's marketing director, Pete Owens, he met us at the front of the park and he explained the history. Right.

[Brian Seaver]

So there's been something on.

[Jad Abumrad]

The whole thing got started in the early 80s.

[Brian Seaver]

In about 1982, Dolly went on Barbara Walters.

[Dolly Parton]

I would love to always be able to just be whatever seems to make me happy.

[Brian Seaver]

And she said, hey, I'm gonna build a theme park in my home area.

[Dolly Parton]

I happen to be born and raised in that part of the country. And there will be a new park, a new city actually called Dollywood usa.

[Brian Seaver]

You know, it's something I really want to do, and it will be.

[Dolly Parton]

It's like a mountain fantasy. It's like the Walt Disneyland. It's like Disneyland, only it will be in the Smoky Mountains. And I would say within three to five years that it will be a big, big park. Will have all the fantasy things. And it's something.

[Jad Abumrad]

Apparently some people who already own theme parks saw her do that interview, joined forces with her, and here we are. Now, I have been to Dollywood many times. Growing up in Nashville, it was just a class trip that you did. Like other schools would send kids to see the monuments. Our school would send us to Dollywood. In my memory, it's a bit hazy. I remember those visits being. Well, the crowd was sort of the Tennessee Pride crowd, if you know what I mean, but that was 30 years ago. And this time, I don't know, it all did seem super different.

[Brian Seaver]

Like the people we've started to see a large influx of folks from Florida, from the New York metro area, from Detroit, from Chicago.

[Jad Abumrad]

The areas right around the park are almost nice. 90% white, according to the census. But in the park you saw a diverse set of people wearing coats of many colors and red sparkle shoes.

[Brian Seaver]

You know, I think a lot of it is Dolly's increased notoriety recently.

[Jad Abumrad]

And everyone seemed to have the look like that slightly dazed, far away look in their eyes. Could have been the heat because it was sweltering that day. But it also could have been the Tennessee Mountain Trance, same one that got me in the interview.

[Susan Harlan]

I feel that way when I go to Dollywood. I mean, I feel completely like washed over by the kind of dream of that space.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is writer, professor Susan Harlan, big Dolly fan.

[Susan Harlan]

I think it is different from Disneyland or maybe from any other theme park. Cause Dolly is a kind of. She's a kind of saint to people, like a kind of secular saint. And people want to commune with her son and commune with the place that produced her. So I think it has a kind of quasi religious quality to it, but again, in a kind of theme parkified way.

[Jad Abumrad]

Who. We sort of jumped into the middle here. But who are you when you're not thinking about Dolly Parton?

[Susan Harlan]

Who am I when I'm not thinking about Dolly Parton?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. What do you do?

[Susan Harlan]

So I'm an English professor here at Wake Forest. I teach Renaissance literature, so I teach a lot of Shakespeare.

[Jad Abumrad]

And she does a lot of writing about souvenirs. That's how we got to her souvenir culture.

[Susan Harlan]

Right. I mean, souvenirs can be these sort of powerful things. They're sort of mass produced garbage on one level, Right? Just kind of mass produced made in China objects. But they can also be these really powerful material memories of an experience that once it's over, it's over and you can't really get it back.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, so Tennessee Mountain Home.

[Susan Harlan]

One of the first things you see in the park, which was one of the first things I wrote about, is the replica of her childhood cabin.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's this tiny little structure that's sandwiched between some shops, an outdoor theater and the water ride. This cabin is a replica of the Cardon home place where Lee and Avy Lee, friends, pardon, raised Dolly and her 10 brothers and sisters. Most of the items on display are original family treasures.

[Susan Harlan]

So in the midst of all this spectacle and all this kind of overstimulation. You have this, this replica childhood cabin.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's two rooms. One is a. It's a kitchen. Kitchen table, stove, very small. Newspaper clippings on the walls, wallpaper, dirty rugs, some wood for the stove. In the corner, a little calendar that says January 19, 1946.

[Dolly Parton]

I was born January 19, 1946, in a one room cabin on the banks of the little Pigeon river in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.

[Jad Abumrad]

So I guess that's when Dolly was born. Got 19 circled. I like the radio in the corner.

[Dolly Parton]

We had an old battery radio at that. Early, early days.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. The other room is the bedroom. It's got a little bed.

[Dolly Parton]

Being from the family of 12, eight kids, younger, slept three or four in a bed our whole lives.

[Jad Abumrad]

Dirty work boots next to the bed.

[Susan Harlan]

It's this little two room cabin and there's not really ever anyone in there. Like, I've now been to the park three times and I've gone to the cabin each time. And people pass the through, but it's. There's nothing to buy in there. There's no activity. It tends to be pretty quiet. And you can just kind of sit down in there for a while and kind of commune with the space, which.

[Jad Abumrad]

People did in various ways.

[Brian Seaver]

One guy, I mean, that's just almost identical.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow. Kept pointing at one of the quilts that was on the bed.

[Dolly Parton]

My mother was there, this very creative, special person. She used to do all these quilts, make quilts for our beds and saying.

[Jad Abumrad]

My grandma made me one just like that.

[Brian Seaver]

And the one on the bottom looks like the one my brother got.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Dolly Parton]

That's crazy.

[Brian Seaver]

That is crazy. I never would.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm glad I walked in.

[Brian Seaver]

My brothers, I got to take a picture of it now. They won't believe it. Darlene, can I have my. Or take a.

[Dolly Parton]

Take a picture of this.

[Jad Abumrad]

After they took the picture, they both just kind of stood there quiet for a while.

[Susan Harlan]

That nostalgic cabin, this Tennessee mountain home, that's what the brand is about. Like, I think that is what Dolly's about. This huge empire with all its hotels and Splash Mountain and all this stuff, I think really comes out of this sort of mournful, sad sense of a lost home. I mean, that's the word, nostalgia. Nostos is home in Greek and algia is pain. So it's this painful longing for home that I found just really kind of poignant.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'll admit. I was going back and forth. I mean, standing at the Tennessee mountain home and looking in at the bed and the work boots. It was. It also does hit you that this is a trope. I mean, just four hours north, Loretta Lynn has her childhood cabin. You can visit that. Then there's, of course, the whole Abe Lincoln thing. I was having a little trouble getting past that. But the thing that ultimately helped was going back to the song and hearing it in a completely new context.

[Dolly Parton]

So let's use the hi happened when.

[Jad Abumrad]

Shimon Ay spoke with this woman.

[Dolly Parton]

Okay.

[Esther Konkara]

My name is Esther Konkara, but that is my stage name, not my real name. I'm a musician. I'm in Kenya.

[Jad Abumrad]

Esther lives in Kiambu county just outside of Nairobi. It is a place that is very difficult to get a Skype connection with. Esther is a star in Kenya. She's most well known for singing gospel songs or pop songs like the one you're hearing. But what she is most well known for is performing Dolly Barton, who is huge there, particularly the song My Tennessee Mountain Home, which she sang for us.

[Dolly Parton]

Sitting on a front porch on a song. Summer afternoon on a stray back chair on two lads pinned against the wall I watch the kids are playing With a din bag in the fence and chase the glory fireflies when evening shadows fall in my Tennessee mountain we can singing in the field that's bad. Thank you.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's amazing to hear you sing that song.

[Esther Konkara]

Thank you. I'm so humbled.

[Jad Abumrad]

So I come from Tennessee, so I know the hills that you're singing about. What do you think about when you sing that?

[Esther Konkara]

I think about where I come from because I come from a hilly place as well. So I live in the town right now, but I'm born in the countryside and that's where I was brought up. Quite poor, I should say. It's a semi arid.

[Jad Abumrad]

Were you a farming family?

[Esther Konkara]

Yeah, we were.

[Jad Abumrad]

And what did you grow?

[Esther Konkara]

Amazed? Potatoes, beans. Sometimes we would get famine and drought and we would have, like, relief food sent to us. When I was in primary school, that's the kind of place I grew up from. When I was growing up, I was a very. I was a loner, so to speak. I would write poetry and stuff and then I would go to the mountains. I would go and sit on the rocks and just fantasize about, like me being far away from here and being somebody who has made it in life, big star somewhere. And then I have not lost ground with where I come from.

[Jad Abumrad]

And you would sing that song when you were up there?

[Esther Konkara]

Yeah, for me, my tendency was those hills where I come from, where I would just go there and meditate and just think about life and the future.

[Jad Abumrad]

Something about that image of Esther sitting in the hills singing My Tennessee Mountain Home. It kind of clicked something for me. I mean, it's been well established that country music only became the industry that it is when people no longer lived in the country. And then it went global, Dolly Parton in particular, for much the same reason. You had all this urbanization sweeping the globe. People leaving the countryside, moving to the city. The music became a kind of souvenir of the place they left. But what struck me about Esther is that she was missing the place that she left before she even left it. She was imagining her future self looking back on her present self and missing the moment that she was actually still standing in. And I don't know, something about that kind of nostalgia that makes sense to me. I get that, that realization that you have suddenly throughout the day that all these people, this place, it's gonna disappear and I'm gonna miss it. And of course, I actually did miss it by simply having that thought, you know what I mean? And maybe on the most basic level, what that song is sittin on the.

[Dolly Parton]

Front porch on a summer afternoon, it's.

[Jad Abumrad]

About being exactly where you are in.

[Dolly Parton]

A straight back chair, on two legs in that moment, leaned against the wall.

[Esther Konkara]

Nowhere else in that song. Dolly is very vivid about the place. You know, you can imagine like this is how Tennessee looks like, you know, the birds singing and you know, you can just get that picture to Esther.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's the vividness of the imagery. It locks that moment in place like preserves it in resin. And maybe that's a dream to see a moment that you know has already disappeared, held so vividly in front of you in the present.

[Dolly Parton]

No, nothing's ever wasted, Nothing's ever gone. And like I say, when I think about it, it's all so very real to me that nobody could ever taint it from me.

[Jad Abumrad]

Even though you left it when you were 20 or something and it's been over 50 years since you, since you left. Do you still feel like that close to it?

[Dolly Parton]

Well, I never left it. Just like when I left the Porter Wagon show. People saying you're going to be crucified if you leave country music. I said, I'm not leaving country. I'll take country with me. Wherever I'm at, that is who I am. But I long to always stay attached to my home, to my family. That's a thing golden thread that keeps me tied to eternity. And I'm hoping that through me people can go back and Live it. Because I'm still one of those people that's still active enough and important enough in the world to be able to tell stories that people are longing for. You came to my show. Those people will sit there and just listen so intently of me telling about my childhood and about the church house and my grandpa. Me arguing with my grandpa about wearing makeup to church and saying, well, you know, of course I want to go to heaven, but do I have to look like hell to get there? You know, just stuff like that. And so I love being able to be still home. My life, my memories are my memories, and they are very real.

[Jad Abumrad]

Walking away from Dollywood, high on cotton candy, O was also a little confused. One of the things that makes Dollywood and Dolly in general just a tiny bit hard to pin down is that these stories are hers. They're from her life. But they also have a very overt Disney sheen to them. Like, at one point, she told me.

[Dolly Parton]

I'm almost like a Cinderella story.

[Jad Abumrad]

Cinderella.

[Dolly Parton]

People still want to believe that there is magic, that I did sweep the hearth. I do wear the glass slippers.

[Jad Abumrad]

Except, side note, in Dolly's Cinderella, she's her own prince and her own fairy godmother, unlike Disney. But, you know, just the Disney of it all can make you think, hmm, how am I supposed to hear these stories? Like, when you go to Disneyland and ride Magic Mountain, you don't believe it's real. It's a fantasy. It's not quite as clear where the fantasy begins and ends at Dollywood. But we're here to meet Brian Seaver. Jumping to the final day of our final trip at Dollywood. Shima and I were scheduled to go back to New York later that afternoon. And then we get a call.

[Dolly Parton]

Hey, Brian.

[Jad Abumrad]

From a guy named Brian Seaver, who is Dolly's head of security, her bodyguard, and also her nephew.

[Dolly Parton]

Well, he's my nephew, and he's been with me since he was a baby. And he knows me and the family, and he knows me.

[Jad Abumrad]

He'd canceled on us the day before, but now was saying he had some time. He was the only family member they'd made available. We didn't really know what to ask him, but we were like, okay. We waited for him in the parking lot of the Dreammore Resort, which is right down the street from the theme park. And when he pulls up in a shiny black pickup, first question he asks us is, have you all been to the Tennessee Mountain home yet? The real one?

[Brian Seaver]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

The real one. Like her real home?

[Brian Seaver]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

The room? No. Are you going to take us? Y' all want to go? Oh, my God.

[Dolly Parton]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, my God. Brian.

[Brian Seaver]

Now she. I haven't had anything approved.

[Jad Abumrad]

Coming up, we go up the mountain and fall into an entirely different kind of Tennessee mountain trance. Dolly Parton's America will continue in a moment. If your small business is booming, you might say cha Ching. But you should say, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And we'll help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Lulu Miller]

Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water. Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it. Even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream. Sure thing. Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be Tide.

[Jad Abumrad]

Member week is back at Lowe's with big savings for Pros. Now through October 15th, MyLowes Pro Rewards members get up to 40% off hundreds of items like paint, tools, building materials and more. Plus, get free standard shipping. Shop these exclusive member only savings before they're gone. Not a rewards member. Join for free today. Free standard shipping not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Exclusions and more terms apply. Loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions. [e-mail] Terms subject to change.

[Lulu Miller]

Hey, Lulu here.

[Susan Harlan]

Whether we are romping through science, music, politics, technology or feelings, we seek to.

[Lulu Miller]

Leave you seeing the world anew.

[Jad Abumrad]

Radiolab adventures right on the edge of.

[Lulu Miller]

What we think we know.

[Dolly Parton]

Wherever you get podcasts.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Dolly Parton's America. I'm Jad Abumrad picking back up with the story. Are you gonna take us? Y' all wanna go? Oh, my God. Yes. Oh, my God, Brian.

[Brian Seaver]

Now she. I haven't had anything approved.

[Jad Abumrad]

But I.

[Brian Seaver]

Was just sitting here thinking, I thought, why don't we go somewhere else to sit next to. I smoke and I don't want to sit here and smoke chainsaw cigarettes while I'm talking.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can we record? And then if you.

[Brian Seaver]

You mean video record all you want.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, sweet.

[Brian Seaver]

Yeah, I was just talking about footage of the place.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, just to reiterate, growing up in Tennessee, Dolly's Tennessee mountain home. The place that is in that song like Tennessee Valhalla. And I was like, wait, this is a real place? Or rather, it still exists. So Shima and I pile into the back of Brian's Dodge Ram 2500 Hemi 4x4. I'm thinking, okay, at any Moment, his phone's going to blow up. It's going to be Dolly or her manager, Danny. They're going to shut this whole thing down. He's going to get in trouble. Okay, be cool, be cool.

[Susan Harlan]

Oh, that's not us.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, I can't sit back. So anyhow, we get in the back, we push aside a bunch of wood carvings and paintings that fans have given him to give to Dolly. My gun.

[Brian Seaver]

It's not a guitar case.

[Jad Abumrad]

And we push aside his guitar case, which he tells us is actually filled with guns. All right, all right. Brian, incidentally, is a badass. What did you do in Iraq? What was the day to day? What were you doing day to day?

[Brian Seaver]

I did a lot of different things. I was guarding.

[Jad Abumrad]

As we were pulling out, he explained to us that before working for his.

[Brian Seaver]

Aunt Dolly Parton, I was an intelligence analyst in Iraq. I was a counterintelligence instructor, basically teaching Iraqi police and Iraqi military how to catch spies and infiltrators in their own organization.

[Jad Abumrad]

Other thing that you immediately notice about Brian and I could see this every time he looked at us in the rearview mirror, is that he has a glass eye.

[Brian Seaver]

I got shot in the left eye. Took a ricochet off of a steel plate target from a.357 SIG. And now I'm a pirate.

[Jad Abumrad]

He says all this with kind of a good natured smirk. Kind of reminds you of early Bruce Willis, like Die Hard one. These days, anytime Dolly Parton is in in public, he's in the background organizing the K9 handlers and all the men with guns who protect her.

[Brian Seaver]

You okay?

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm good.

[Brian Seaver]

I forgot to flip the thing up.

[Jad Abumrad]

In any case, Brian drives us out of Dollywood's Dreammore resort, where we met him, and pass Splash country, which is another one of the Dollywood properties, and past the theme park itself, past all the vacation cottages, and around to the back of the mountain. I'll tell you what, let's.

[Brian Seaver]

I'll drive around. I'm just gonna show y' all some spots.

[Jad Abumrad]

It was weird. Same mountain as Dollywood, but the exact opposite side. I'm recording this part, if you don't mind. Okay. Yeah. Sort of like in the shadowlands of Dollywood. I gotta say. This is wherever you're driving us right now. This is.

[Brian Seaver]

This is beautiful right here.

[Jad Abumrad]

Beautiful.

[Brian Seaver]

So this is JL Road, what we're gonna do. I'm taking you on.

[Jad Abumrad]

We drove up the back of the mountain for about 20 minutes. The road started to get a little bit narrower. The trees changed to a Slightly different shade of green. And it really, like, really did start to feel like we were going back in time.

[Brian Seaver]

And I'll stop and I'll show you a couple of the different houses that Mamaw and Papaw used to live in.

[Jad Abumrad]

At one point, we drove through this. This house here kind of clearing and Parton Market. Saw a little store called Parton Market. Brian explained to us that there are Partons all over those hills. Some of them they're related to, some of them not. Wow, this hill.

[Brian Seaver]

We used to run and play up on those, on those hills.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, my God. So pretty.

[Brian Seaver]

It's the real Smoky Mountain.

[Jad Abumrad]

As we kept going up, we started to see these eerie curtains of smoke rising off of the trees. Oh, man, look at that smoke coming off the mountains. That's amazing. They're almost like little thin mosquito nets being pulled up by invisible threads.

[Brian Seaver]

You know, there's a Cherokee word, chicanahe, and it means the land of blue smoke.

[Susan Harlan]

I think Dolly had a song by the name of.

[Brian Seaver]

She's got a song called Chicaneh.

[Dolly Parton]

You see beauty when you see the blue smokes arising. You can feel it when the eagle's flying.

[Jad Abumrad]

Apparently the smoke is the forest exhaling. At the end of a day of converting sunlight into energy, what the trees will do is open these little doors in their leaves to let out the byproducts of photosynthesis. That stuff gets out into the air, water clings to it, resin will cling to it, and then it just creates this blue haze.

[Brian Seaver]

So we're heading up into Locust Ridge. This is. This is the mountain that. That Dolly was born on.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, very famous.

[Brian Seaver]

This is Locust Ridge.

[Jad Abumrad]

About a half hour of driving up the mountain, we get to Locust Ridge. But we keep going up, way high up. Right now we're way high up. And just as the altitude was starting to get real, I was like, air's getting thin. We turned the one lane road we'd been on and onto a dirt road that was unmarked. And we were suddenly in this tunnel of trees. The canopy was super tight over our heads.

[Brian Seaver]

It's like a jungle.

[Jad Abumrad]

It really is.

[Brian Seaver]

I was in the. In the Congo jungle a year and a half ago. One of the things that immediately struck me is, wow, I come from a jungle. This is just like home, you know, we were on the top of the Congales Mountains and it felt just like we were here.

[Jad Abumrad]

So this is your driveway growing up?

[Brian Seaver]

This is the driveway. No, no, I didn't grow up here.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. This is where Dolly goes.

[Brian Seaver]

This is Dolly's place.

[Jad Abumrad]

Eventually, we come out of the tunnel of trees.

[Brian Seaver]

So this is the front entrance here.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this giant wooden gate comes into view. Fairy Game of Thrones. Should we hop out or. Brian gestures for us to stay in the car. He hops out, walks up to the big gate, starts fiddling with the gate for a minute, then three minutes, then five minutes. We're like, okay, what is going on? And then it becomes clear he has forgotten the keys. He forgot the keys. This is as far as we can go. He stands there for a second, scratching his head, then looks up, seems to remember something, bolts back into the car, shoves his hand into the glove box or whatever it was, gets some other key that he had forgotten he had run, runs back out to the gate and oh, wow.

[Brian Seaver]

About to have your mind blown.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is blowing my mind already. This is the moment when the Dolly verse just expanded for me, got way bigger and started to encompass a whole bunch of things that I did not see coming. It's also the moment. Feel this moss.

[Brian Seaver]

It's like carpet. It's so soft.

[Jad Abumrad]

Then it got softer. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This moss is like. The moss is. It's literally like walking on the sponge of the earth. Yeah, that's next time on Dolly Parton's America. Dolly Partons America was produced, written and edited by me and Shima Oliai, brought to you by awesome Audio. That's OSM Audio and WNYC Studios. We had production help from W. Harry Fortuna, original music from Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, Courtney Hartman, Steph Jenkins and Stephanie Coleman. Thanks to the folks at Sony, special thanks to Peter at HarperCollins, Lynn Sacco, Helen Morales, Ali Brewer, Ashley Adams and Pete Owens, David Dotson, Lulu Miller, Susan Glechtenberg, Sam Shahi and Soren Wheeler. And always thanks to my dad. More from him next time. We've partnered with Apple Music to bring you a companion playlist that we'll update each week from music that you hear on the episode, plus some others of our favorites. You can find that on our [e-mail] I'm Chad Abumrad. Thanks for listening. If your small business is booming, you might say cha Ching. But you should say, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And we'll help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Lulu Miller]

Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream. Sure thing. Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be Tide.