The rough, tough tales of Brent Cunningham are hard to swallow.
His girlfriend died, he lost his three-nights-a-week guitar gig, and he has no place to call home. Unless you consider his favorite spot at 4th and Broadway home. He has played his acoustic guitar there for passersby for almost a decade.
But sitting in Robert's Western World, a bar he claims he built, it's best to wash his stories down with a beer. Thursday night, Cunningham kept his hand wrapped around a Busch light as he debated braving the chilly midnight air to perform.
With his hazel eyes dead set on the performing band and his back turned to his autographed photograph hanging on the bar's brick wall, he reminisced about his rocky past and troubling present.
Earlier in the day, he spoke about his troubles with Nashville police and the development pushing his outdoor gig south on Broadway.
"I got pushed down this far, about as far as I want to go," he said.
Cunningham might have been speaking literally, but it isn't a stretch to take it metaphorically.