After many months of anticipation, I have finally hit the road on my magical mystery tour across America. My first stop was Nashville, AKA “Music City,” and after two weeks here I can say that I have no confusion whatsoever in my mind how this city got this nickname. There is live music everywhere in this town. You can’t order a glass of beer without a guy with a beard and a tip jar playing a guitar behind you. The Predators NHL team has a live band that plays rink-side during intermission between periods. I swear to God I saw a live band playing in a fucking shoe store.
It is mostly (not all, but probably like 90+%) country music. I spent most of my trip with that line from Blues Brothers running through my head: We got both kinds of music, we got country AND western!
I will admit that I am not that big of a country music fan, in general. But being in Nashville I did discover that I have somewhat of an appreciation for it. I especially enjoy classic country – your Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, even Loretta Lynn style country music.
Despite this, I did genuinely enjoy most or all of the music I heard while in Nashville. It was such a musical experience, in fact, that I felt inspired to create a playlist that captured my time here:
Making the playlist was actually a lot of fun – I’m considering doing again for future stops, although I realize that those stops probably won’t be as music-forward as my time in Nashville was.
My opinions on country music aside, here are some highlights from my trip to Nashville (I go into more detail about a lot of these on my photo page):
- Seeing a concert at the Ryman Auditorium: I wanted to see someone play at the “Mother Church of Country Music,” but didn’t know any of the bands coming while I was there, so I picked one at random. It ended up being a band called Iron and Wine, and the show was incredible. I can’t recommend seeing a show at the Ryman enough.
- Attending the Grand Ole Opry: This is such a classic Nashville experience, and despite being a little corny it was very fun.
- The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum: I loved seeing all the artifacts, from Elvis’s gold-plated Cadillac to Johnny Cash’s black suit, to Hank William’s custom cowboy boots and later Hank Williams Jr’s similar matching custom cowboy boots. My primary complaint is that it is probably the most crowded place I visited while in Nashville, but then again I was there on the Saturday of a long weekend.
- The food!: Nashville is a tough place to be a vegetarian. I am not exaggerating when I say that Nashville literally smells like BBQ, like you drive around and the whole town smells like wood smoke and sweet BBQ sauce. That being said, I had some incredible food here. I had so many delicious biscuits, including a biscuit French toast that almost killed me it was so good. I had one of the best bowls of vegetarian ramen I’ve ever had in my life. I had a lot of fried catfish. And I had a truly breathtaking amount of mac and cheese. I learned that in Tennessee, mac and cheese is a vegetable.
- The whiskey!: While in Nashville I got to sample some local Tennessee whiskey. In town I went on a tour of the Greenbrier Distillery and did a tasting at Corsair Distillery. On my way out I visited the Jack Daniel’s Distillery in Lynchburg. I may or may not be leaving Tennessee with a couple of bottles of whiskey in my trunk…
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park: I intended to visit the Smoky Mountains on my way to Nashville, but I got delayed by weather and ended up driving from Connecticut to Nashville in one long (over 16 hours!!) day. I wanted to visit the park bad enough that on one of my days off I drove the three hours back so that I could spend a day exploring. I’m very glad I did – the park is incredibly beautiful.
I have lots more and of course lots of photos on my Nashville page. Cruise over there to check it out.
In the end, I think spending two weeks in Nashville was both too long and not long enough. Somehow in the last few years Nashville turned into the bachelorette party capital of the world, and all day every day you see bands of roving drunk girls in tiaras, and the street is packed with those pedal pubs and (this is not a joke) John Deere tractors pulling hay wagons full of dancing bachelorette parties. If you want your time in Nashville to be a honky tonk party, a long weekend is more than enough and two weeks would probably kill you.
But in only two weeks I also felt like I was just beginning to scratch the surface of what it’s like to actually live there. I think to fully wrap my head around Nashville I’d have to spend a lot more time there. But, it was time for me to move on.
I am back on the road now to my next stop in New Orleans. I am arriving just in time for Mardi Gras. Until then, peace out y’all!
Alyson Gagne 
