Page 13 of What Would Dolly Do?

I t was strange to experience my first live Tom Coltrane gig from inside the back office, just peeping out through a chink in the door after wriggling out of my Dolly Parton outfit and back into my jeans and t-shirt.

The crowd was loving Tom running through a few of his well-known hits.

He was relaxed and playing acoustic guitar to accompany himself on some laid-back versions of songs everybody remembered from when they were in the charts a few years ago.

It was clear we were being treated to something pretty special; to see a star as big as Tom outside a huge arena or enormous stadium is rare.

Here he had no backing singers or stage pyrotechnics, it was just a man, a guitar and a whole load of talent.

My spine was tingling with the thrill of witnessing someone so incredible on Sonny’s tiny little stage, even if I didn’t have the best view from my position tucked out of sight.

I knew I could have just gone out there and joined in with the audience clapping and singing along but something made me stay put.

Before pulling up a stool and starting his impromptu set Tom had given me a public vote of thanks for inviting him to come along as a surprise guest. He instantly had the crowd in the palm of his hand and I doubted even Stella or Donald remembered I’d had my name pulled out of the hat to perform now that everyone had been wowed by such a famous professional appearing like a musical magic trick right in front of them.

Tom seemed to be having as much fun as the audience and it made me wonder what on earth he was doing performing in our humble little basement club?

Wouldn’t he rather be playing to vast crowds of screaming fans?

Before I knew what I was doing, I reached for my phone and started googling.

Tom’s last hit record was further back than I thought, a good five years ago.

I hadn’t realised he hadn’t been troubling the charts for that long.

Maybe he was finding it hard to keep the hit records coming; it must be difficult to keep coming up with new stuff to keep the fans interested.

Or maybe he was bucking against the executives that ran record companies nowadays and was having ‘creative differences’ about which path his career should take.

There wasn’t anything about that online but a few other titbits of information came up as I popped his name into the search; the main one being pictures of his uber-glamorous girlfriend, Hollywood actress Juliana Ripon.

She was an absolute stunner, that was for sure, her dark hair cropped into a pixie cut made her eyes look enormous next to her chiselled cheek bones and pouty red lips in the shot that filled my phone screen.

I wondered why she wasn’t with him? Maybe she was away filming or maybe she was waiting for him at some fancy hotel across town.

Either way, I was glad she hadn’t come along tonight, only because it would have been even more embarrassing to have my Dolly meltdown in the presence of a goddess like Juliana.

I bet Juliana Ripon had never worn a pair of false foam boobies in her life and if she did she certainly wouldn’t have yanked them out right in front of poor Tom.

I spent some time flicking through endless photos of Tom and Juliana online – in some of the shots he wore a Stetson cowboy hat which ramped up his macho image considerably.

He was pictured with Juliana on red carpets, at awards ceremonies, snapped in downtown Nashville and shopping on L.A.

’s Rodeo Drive – good grief, the woman was so photogenic it was ridiculous.

I was just thinking what a gorgeous couple they made when the noise coming from the other side of the office door suddenly went up a level.

I stuck my head out to see what was going on but there was very little risk that anyone would notice me.

Most people were on their feet, whooping and cheering.

I couldn’t even see Tom at first but then I realised he wasn’t in the centre of the stage anymore with his guitar slung around his neck, he’d moved over to where our old upright piano stood at the side and he was playing a mean boogie-woogie.

I had no idea Tom was such a great piano player: was the piano stuff on his records played by him?

He wasn’t playing his own music now though, he was playing some crowd-pleasing cover versions and the place was rocking.

Tom eventually wrapped up the set and sent away so many happy punters I sat in the office wondering how on earth I would ever be able to thank him.

He even signed some autographs and posed for a few pictures with people as they made their way out of the basement.

As they passed the office door I could hear them raving about Tom, the whole night and the club.

Quite a few had been filming on their phones earlier on and had uploaded clips onto social media.

The whole night was going to be a huge publicity coup for Sonny’s Bar. It was beyond my wildest dreams.

As the crowd dispersed I was about to go out and help with the clear-up but Tom’s head suddenly appeared around the door. He looked flushed but his tone was determined.

‘Just sit tight and I’ll be right back,’ was his instruction.

My face possibly showed I was a little surprised to be given orders, I was the manager of the place after all. Tom didn’t appear aware of that fact as his eyes darted around the room as though he was looking for something, then he looked back at me with a mischievous look on his face.

‘What did y’all do with Dolly?’ he asked. ‘I was lookin’ forward to getting better acquainted with her!’

Back in my jeans and sweater minus the wig and stage make-up I knew I looked radically different to how he’d seen me at the start of the night.

He wasn’t the first guy to be disappointed with the off-stage version of me, but I still had some of Dolly’s spirit lurking in me somewhere so I couldn’t resist reaching for a previously discarded foam boob and lobbing it directly at Tom’s grinning head as he ducked back out through the door.

It landed with a soft thud on the closed door after he disappeared, adding to the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

I wasn’t sure whether or not to follow Tom’s advice to ‘stay put’. Why was I obeying a guy I hardly knew? But I also didn’t fancy answering tricky questions from Donald or Stella or bumping into Jack Tinker, in or out of his ‘Dolly Partly’ character.

So I busied myself straightening up the office, even answering a couple of emails and was rewarded twenty minutes later when Tom reappeared telling me the club was empty, the bar secured, tables wiped down and Stella had given him the keys to lock up now she and Donald had headed home.

‘Stella said she’d see you Tuesday,’ Tom reassured me after seeing my expression when he brandished the keys.

He seemed to be a guy comfortable with taking care of things; I was struck by how unusual it was to encounter a man who appeared so capable and helpful but managed to avoid being condescending.

Maybe it was the cross of his Scottish down to earth charm all polished up by his Deep South manners. It was quite a combo.

‘Right, okay, thanks.’ I stood awkwardly in front of Tom wondering what I had been waiting for, what was supposed to happen now?

‘Well, thanks for everything, I’d best lock up now then.

’ I held my hand out for the keys but Tom didn’t hand them over straight away, instead he stood there and smiled at me.

‘D’ya fancy a drink?’

As he spoke I suddenly realised I could absolutely murder a scotch on the rocks.

‘Abso – bloody – lutely!’

Out in the deserted bar the wall lights gave off a soft warm glow, softening the rough edges of the stone walls and battered wooden tables and chairs. It was nice to have the place to ourselves, it felt familiar and friendly. Tom pulled two chairs up to a table while I fixed us a couple of whiskys.

All at once, sitting in a pool of golden light, sipping scotch with a famous musician felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Tom was easy to chat to. I learned that his sweet Southern manners weren’t an affectation, although he’d been brought up near Edinburgh and his father was Scottish, his mother Ellie-Mae was from Birmingham.

Not the one down the motorway in the Midlands …

the one in Alabama. That explained a lot.

He was a curious mix of Scottish ruggedness and Deep South gentleman.

He was also a very good listener. I forgot all about his musical prowess, chart-topping success and even his glamour-puss girlfriend as I told him the story of how I came to be running Sonny’s Bar; my terrible ex-boss at Grayson’s jewellery shop; being dumped by my own Kenny Rogers and how it all led to tonight, trying to make it on my own in the clubs as a solo Dolly.

The whole thing wound up sounding like a country music tale of woe.

‘You’ll be telling me next you’ve got four hungry children and a crop in the field,’ joked Tom as we realised my story could rival Kenny’s ‘Lucille’ as a good ole country story singalong.

It had everything required; a villain, some drama, lost love, good times and bad.

I’d never thought of my own story in quite that way before but I joked with Tom that I’d been brought up on songs full of heartache and hope performed by my own singing parents.

We talked about the skill of country songwriters who took a crazy situation and distilled it into memorable lyrics, and then we speculated about what Dolly could do with a tale of a girl falsely accused of stealing jewellery.

‘Oh Ru – by,’ I sang, ‘just put those diamonds down.’