Hi, it’s Michael McRay.

In 2012, I moved from Nashville to Belfast for graduate school in conflict resolution. I didn’t know anyone in the city, so before I left, I reached out to someone in town who I knew lived in Belfast years before. He gave me three names to contact.

The first person said they’d be happy to get together sometime; just holler when I arrived.

The second person scheduled a coffee with me for my first week so I had something to look forward to.

The third person was named Pádraig Ó Tuama, and he messaged back, “Who’s picking you up from the airport?”

Pádraig was the first person I met when I got off the plane. He declined my offer to pay him back for gas, and instead invited me to a storytelling night he’d started with a fella named Paul Doran. “It’s called Tenx9,” he said.

I’d always loved stories—I’d even written my autobiography at age twelve entitled A Dozen Years Count for Something—but Tenx9 was the first time I’d heard personal stories told live on stage. Vulnerable, hilarious, tender, strange. I was hooked in an instant. Every month I lived in Belfast, I went to Tenx9.

When I returned to Nashville the next year, I asked Pádraig and Paul if I could bring Tenx9 with me. They said yes. We became the first satellite of Tenx9.

Twelve years later, save only for the Covid hiatus, Tenx9 has hosted a live night of storytelling every month since September 2013. 12 years. 1100+ stories. 10,000 listeners.

And yet, despite all that, people are still shocked when they discover us. “How have I never heard of this before?” they ask. Some call it Nashville’s best-kept secret.

And maybe that’s part of the magic. I’ve never spent a dollar on advertising Tenx9. No flyers, no promos, no targeted social ads. Just stories—and the people who love them. Tenx9 will last as long as people keep showing up and telling each other about it. Because stories don’t always need a marketing campaign. They just need a room and someone to listen.

Tenx9 has never been about performance. It’s about presence. It’s about offering a gift to the city: a space for real people to tell their real stories to one another—for strange people to tell their strange stories to strangers.

And it’s changed the course of my life.

Storytelling has become my vocation. And it all started with a stranger in Ireland who offer to pick me up from the airport.

—Michael McRay

Founding Host, Tenx9 Nashville