My first stop on my magical mystery tour through America was two weeks in Nashville. They don’t call Nashville “Music City” for nothing. I probably saw more live music during my two weeks here than my whole life up to now combined.
Views of Nashville
Nashville is a pretty town. It absolutely poured down rain for the first several days that I was there. I toured the “Lower Broad” street with all the honky tonks, saw some great public art and tasted some delicious local Tennessee whiskey.
Live Music
Every moment of the day, there is live music playing all over the city. Here are some of the more memorable places I saw it.
Ryman Auditorium
I didn’t want to leave Nashville without seeing a performance at the “Mother Church of Country Music,” the Ryman Auditorium. This is where the Grand Ole Opry started, and just about any famous country musician (and many non-country musicians) have played here. The space is small and intimate and the acoustics are so good that at one point the opener turned off the microphone and just sang out loud using only her voice. I saw a band called Iron and Wine, which I didn’t especially know ahead of time (I recognize the name as a band my friends in high school liked), I just chose randomly. The show ended up being incredible. Unfortunately they are doing construction across the street so I couldn’t get a good picture of the front of the building but you can see a better image here.
Legends Corner HOnky Tonk
No visit to Nashville is complete without seeing a local band play at one of the Broadway honky tonks. The two most famous are Roberts Western World and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. But the party and honky tonk scene in Nashville is so popular that every time I tried to go to either of those places they were so full I could barely get in the door. So I went next door to Legend’s Corner, a place that is just as classic but slightly less famous. I didn’t catch the band’s name but they did some really fun classic country song covers.
Listening Room Cafe
A classic Nashville experience is attending a “listening room,” or a venue that is part concert part fireside chat. At the Listening Room Cafe three artists took the stage and rotated playing their own original songs and chatting about making music, the stories behind their songs, and what is like being a working musician. The three artists I saw were Sammy Arriaga, AJ Kross and Justin Cross (all three of whom are on Spotify).
The Grand Ole Opry
When you Google things you must do in Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry is usually number one or two. I’m not sure what I expected, but it’s much more of a kind of fun variety show than a straight concert. It’s a lot cornier (in a good way) than I thought. One of the performers was actually a straight up comedian who played almost no music at all.
I saw some pretty famous musicians, including the guy from Sawyer Brown (who sang songs like “Some Girls Do”), Terri Clark (who sang “I’ve got better things to do”), Mark Wills (who sang “19 Something”) and Charles Esten (who was the star of the show Nashville). I didn’t think I knew that many country music stars, but apparently I at least know a lot of country music songs because I recognized a lot of them!
Nashville Parthenon
One of the weirder things in Nashville is this full scale replica of the Parthenon. It was built for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in 1897 and they liked it so much they made it permanent.
Country Music Hall of Fame
No visit to Nashville would be complete without a visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. This place is both: museum, and straight up hall of fame. The museum covers the history of country music from its origins in old timey hillbilly music up to a special exhibition on Kacey Musgraves. One of my favorite things about going there was that I could hear half of the people around me saying they didn’t care about the “old” musicians and were looking forward to the Kacey exhibit, and the other half enjoying the old stuff and getting to the Kacey exhibit and saying “who the hell is this?” Truly something there to delight and enrage any country music fan.
The actual hall of fame part is in a rotunda at the far end of the building, and you are funneled there after snaking through the museum. Each member of the hall gets a bronze plaque with what is supposed to be their likeness and a description of their contributions to country music. The space is beautiful, but the bronze portraits are, to a man, absolutely horrifying.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
On one of my only full days off, I left Nashville and drove about 3 hours back east to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I had actually intended to go on my way in to Nashville, but then I got delayed several days by weather and didn’t have time. I’m glad I gave myself a whole day to experience this beautiful park. I saw beautiful vistas, multiple waterfalls and some ruins–really checked all the boxes.
Nashville Predators Game
I was surprised to see how passionate the hockey fans are in Nashville. I did not take Nashville as a hockey town, but I was wrong. I had a great time watching the Predators take on the Carolina Hurricanes, even though the Preds lost in the end.
It’s fascinating to me to see the rituals fans of different teams have. In Nashville they love live music so much that they have a band play during intermission. When the Preds get a power play, everyone cheers and makes a saber tooth shape out of their fingers. When the Preds score a goal, a video of Tim McGraw comes on the big screen singing “I don’t know what it is ’bout the Predators scorin’ but I like it, I love it, I want some more of it.” When the announcer gives the “one minute left in the period” warning, everyone in the arena says all at once, “THANKS, PAUL.” They call themselves “Smashville” (adorable) and their cat mascot is named “Gnash” (even more adorable).
Bridgestone Arena has a small ice rink out front where you can rent skates and go skating and I could not resist the opportunity.
Jack Daniel’s Distillery
On Saturday I left Nashville and headed toward my next destination in New Orleans. While I was in Nashville I tasted a lot of good local whiskey, however I couldn’t leave Tennessee without visiting the most famous Tennessee whiskey of all: Jack Daniel’s in Lynchburg.
As you would expect from the biggest whiskey brand in the whole world, the tour experience was very slick. Our guide was named Ron (he is the big guy in the overalls in the photos) and he had lots of interesting and folksy information about Jack Daniel’s. We also got to see the safe that killed Mr. Jack. He apparently got pissed off when he couldn’t get it open, and he kicked the thing so hard it broke his foot. Rather than get it taken care of he let it get worse until several years later he died of gangrene. I plan on telling this story every time I hear a guy tell me that he isn’t taking basic care of himself.
Alyson Gagne 