I thought you were living in Nashville now. Nashville is growing and getting less redneck. People like Nashville as it is a fast growing Sun Belt US city.
It’s preppy weekend warrior type try hard redneck. Especially the carpet baggers that try hard to fit in.
It's likely that Nashville is getting from many places across the USA.
I'm sure Nashville gets people from nearby states like Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, and North Carolina. They probably split the Alabama migrants with Atlanta. The North Carolina migrants from smaller North Carolina towns are likely a small percentage, as most of them are focused on going to Charlotte and Raleigh.
Nashville gets a lot of transplants from the Northeast, Chicago/Upper Midwest areas, and some from California. Ex-Californians are going everywhere. Arizona, Metro Las Vegas, Colorado, big Texas cities, Utah, Idaho, and Montana get them as well.
I can imagine many carpet bagger transplants trying to fit in to what they think Nashville would be.
I don’t even consider Nashville southern because it tries too hard to be southern.
Your description of Nashville seems relatable to Dallas as well.
Dallas isn't really Southern at all. In the past, Texan was somewhat different than Southern. The closest to Southern in Texas has always been East Texas. East Texas has been east of Dallas-Fort Worth, east of Metro Houston, and generally east of Interstate 45 in more rural areas in between Dallas and Houston.
A lot of East Texans who don't pair off earlier in life end up in Dallas, Austin, Houston, or San Antonio as an attempt to find more mating prospects and even employment prospects. These have been mainly Whites and Blacks. Hispanics are growing in some areas of East Texas, such as the areas near Tyler.
There's more of a Southern/Texan type feel on the edges of Dallas-Fort Worth but that's not the majority of the area.
Fort Worth feels more Texan than Dallas does. The Fort Worth side of the DFW Metroplex feels different than the Dallas side. I consider Fort Worth a different mating environment and I mentioned that in the first post of the Dallas Scene thread. Dallas and the Collin County suburbs don't have much of a feel because of a lot of adult transplanting.