So after leaving Memphis a little disappointed, Charlotte and I headed east to Nashville.
Renowned for its music scene, I was looking forward with anticipation. I’m not really sure why, but I had always imagined Nashville as a type of Old West town, with saloons everywhere. I suspect I thought there would plenty of buskers on street corners, and hordes of line dancers shuffling along to the Electric Slide.
Well that was flat out wrong.
Nashville is a modern city, and is actually the capital of Tennessee (I didn’t know that). Despite Memphis and Nashville having similar sized populations (near enough to 700 thusand), Nashville immediately felt modern, vibrant and full of life.
Along with it’s music industry, it’s home to a healthy brewing culture, and I’d been recommended a number of places to check out by the many people I’d met on the road.
I think this trip is sounding like the Craft beer and Walmart carpark tour of the USA, which it’s not. It’s just that sitting at a bar chatting to locals is the best way to get to know a place. Given my home is also a vehicle, I have to be careful with my alcohol intake , despite most states generous .08 limit. A DUI would send me home and cost me anywhere up to 10 K, so I nurse my beers except when I’ve already found a place for the night
So over the course of my stay here, I visited the following:
Blackstone – more a pub with their beers being produced at a different site
Black Abbey – home of some of the best dark beers I’ve tasted. Also home to the single best beer flight I’ve ever seen – all 9 of the tap beers plus one seasonal (if available) for the princely sum of $10
Fat Bottom – who make great seasonal and specialty beers.
And I met some fantastic people.
Ken – who approached me as I was sitting in Charlotte feet up door open, and who I brushed off as someone looking for a handout, which he wasn’t. My bad, but I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked to help a person out with spare change or a dollar. Luckily Ken took no offence – he was actually interested in Charlotte. We got talking, (he might even buy Charlotte from me at the end of this trip) and soon enough he invited to show me around music row, and to join him and his friends at trivia that night. We finished second (after leading all night, when I mistakenly answered the final question incorrectly (it was about a virus that had been in the news lately so I was adamant it was Zika having heard it on NPR for weeks, but it was actually HPV, whihc all the teams new). Still 2nd place prize money bought us a round so…..
Ken took me into the offices of Renegade Radio, where we met the fabulous Lexi Carter, host of the weekly 12-3 slot who’d popped in for some reason or other. She came out partying with us (despite it being a Monday night) and stayed until stumps, which was around 2 am. She still managed to get into do the show on Tuesday, even gracing me with a shout out to me, even if she unknowingly called me by “that name no-one is allowed to call me anymore”. I suspect she was a little seedy (I was) but was ever the professional on air.
Ken also invited me to an NHL game that Tuesday night, but I was in no position to accept even if I wanted to. An opportunity wasted I’m sure, but sometimes discretion is the better courts
A visit to Nashville requires some honky tonk, and after visiting a few including the hyped but ridiculously overcrowded Tootises, I slipped quietly into one a few doors down that was a little quieter – The second fiddle. It was a great find and i was lucky enough to be able to listen to the wonderfully talented sounds of Amanda Daughtry. At the end of their last set they asked for requests. When everyone else was silent, I blurted out “Creep”. I know, I’m in a honky tonk bar, but as I don’t know the names of any, I just called out the first song I thought of, and let’s face it Creep is a ripper of a song. Now Amanda didnt’t know it, though her band did, so she excused herself to go listen to it for the first time on her iphone, and came back maybe 10 mins later, and sang it PERFECTLY. That’s just plain ridiculous and more than anything demonstrates how good an artist she is. She even had the good grace to sit and chat with me for a decent while after the gig.
Now you’ll probably notice that I haven’t posted a lot of photos this time – I was just having so much fun that I never thought to pull my camera out. And I’ve just discovered that I broken the lens/cover on my Samsung, so the quality of pics might be a little worse than usual until I get a replacement posted from China and fix it.
All up I spent just short of a week in Nashville, and really could have stayed longer. It, with New Orleans, is one of the coolest places in the states. Maybe I was lucky to meet great locals who showed me around, but I think that’s generally the Nashville friendly way.
Now I’ve left a lot of stuff out – the many bars on music row, like Winners and it’s sister bar, Losers, dive bars like Santas and Dino’s, the many watering holes and cool bars, like Beer Sellar and Pinewood Social (which comes complete with it’s own bowling alley), but if I included everything, you’d still be reading this post tomorrow. Not to mention the Country Music Hall of Fame, which I didn’t get to (sorry Lexi).
Next Stop – Lynchburg, Tennessee – and you all know why.
