Even if you’ve never been to Nashville, you probably have an idea of it in your head. A romantic notion of songwriters in Stetsons shopping songs of heartbreak door-to-door to the companies on Music Row, who then farm them out to country artists ready and willing to debut them at the Grand Ole Opry later that night.

If that was ever true, today’s reality is sadly rather more prosaic. But Nashville, Tennessee remains a town where the song and the ...