(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Roll over, Loretta Lynn. Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium has moved from the “Coal Miner’s Daughter” to a stone-cold debater.
The venue’s beloved Grand Ole Opry broadcast, which has helped launch many legendary music careers (including Lynn’s), featured a recent cameo performance by Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway.
The frequent Fox News pundit joined Texas-based singer Monte Warden onstage singing backup Saturday—along with Warden’s wife, Brandi, and son, Brooks—for a jazz-infused country performance.
“I feel like I’ve been floating for days,” Hemingway wrote in an X post Thursday.
Hemingway said she and her husband, Mark, were longtime fans of Warden’s bands, The Wagoneers and The Dangerous Few. The D.C. power couple was able to go backstage at a concert last year. (Coincidentally, Mark Hemingway also declared The Dangerous Few’s Jackpot! to be 2024’s “Most Compelling Album of the Year” in a Federalist review.)
This review from @Heminator Mark Hemingway. 'The Most Compelling Album Of The Year'. Wow. Just…wow! Heady stuff.https://t.co/3JOPQR0Ulz
— Monte Warden (@MonteWarden1) May 16, 2024
But standing on the Opry stage was a different story altogether, Mollie Hemingway noted.
“It’s weird to have an inanimate object give off such an energy as the Opry stage does,” she wrote. “Everyone who matters has sung from there and you can totally feel that.”
That included prepping for the show in Porter Wagoner’s old dressing room, which was adorned with photos and memorabilia from Dolly Parton’s original duet partner.
Hemingway said the vibe from the audience likewise helped to power her along.
“The crowd on Saturday night was AWESOME,” she wrote. “They were there to have fun and be entertained and had a great energy also.”
The Aug. 16 show came on the 48th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, whose Memphis estate, Graceland, is one of the few places in Tennessee more famous than the Opry stage.
Warden paid tribute to “The King” with covers of two songs Presley performed during a 1954 Opry visit, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “That’s All Right.”
“As he left the stage, one guy told him he should probably just go back to Memphis and keep driving a truck,” Hemingway said of the Elvis show. “He would never perform there again.”
Hemingway did not immediately respond to a message from Headline USA inquiring as to whether her own Opry debut might lead to a new career path—but for the sake of the conservative movement and its need expose corruption in the Swamp, many may hope that she won’t quit her day job.
Hemingway also may need to use her prominent platform to defend Presley, who was recently targeted by race-baiting ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid.
VIDEO: Former MSNBC anchor Joy Reid, who was fired for her unhinged rhetoric, "doubled down on stupid" by claiming that “mediocre white men” – like Elvis Presley and Donald Trump -stole everything from black culture, asserting white people “can’t originally invent anything,” and… pic.twitter.com/p8IofPf6ZA
— The Western Journal (@WesternJournalX) August 20, 2025
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
