Four guys. Four ordinary guys. Our band arrived at the Oxford Performing Arts Center theater early for soundcheck.

The theater production crew was waiting for us. The soundmen were huddled onstage for a pre-show briefing. The ushers were looking over seating charts. The ladies in the ticket booth were smiling. The beverage vendors were icing down the Mick Ultra.

The first band members to arrive were me and Aaron. We arrived in a 20-year-old Ford. Our instruments, in the bed of the truck.

We must have looked like quite a pair. I wore flip flops, carried a banjo, and a plastic tumbler of iced tea. Aaron carried a fiddle and a spit cup.

We knocked on the backstage door. The stage manager gave us an appraising look and said, “You sure you two are in the right place?”

“Yessir,” I replied.

Aaron spit.

The rest of our little band arrived. We had a guitar (GEE-tarr), an upright bass (doghouse fiddle), a violin (fiddle), and a five-string banjo (birth control).

We all played around a single microphone, like they did in the old days. Four guys. Four painfully average middle-aged males.

Four guys, having a good time. Four guys who—hard as this is to believe—played at the Grand Ole Opry together.

Four regular guys who once congregated in an Opry dressing room, a few doors down from Ricky Skaggs and the boys, and kept saying things to each other like, “Are you nervous? Because I’m not.”

Four guys with families from wide-spot-in-the-road townships. Towns with names like Chelsea, Slocomb, and Freeport. Four normal guys, four dads and uncles, four guys with mortgages, guys who never quite figured out how to operate the revolving door in their Nashville hotel lobby.

Showtime.

We took the stage in Oxford. Aaron and I played twin fiddles. Each man took a solo by stepping toward the old-fashioned microphone.

When any man played particularly well, we all slapped his back and offered a blessing upon his family and his children’s children. When any man made a musical mistake, we did what all responsible band members do and blamed the banjo player.

We played old music. Ancient songs. Our father’s music. Our mother’s hymns. The old Martha White self-rising flour radio jingle. Songs of childhood.

Dwayne picked a guitar like he was attempting to tear off the strings. Todd played bass, steady as the five-o’clock mail train. Aaron played his fiddle like his mom was in the front row.

And I found myself feeling grateful for the gift of friendship. I do not know where the miracle of friendship comes from. But I cannot think of a greater gift in this life. I cannot think of a better salve for life’s wounds. And I wouldn’t want to.

Four guys. Four guys who you’ll probably never hear about unless one of us goes to jail and gets our picture in the paper. Four guys. One of whom cried a little just before taking the stage last night.

I won’t tell you which guy it was.