Walking down the busy nightlife street of Broadway, you can expect to be pulled into a variety of bars by rousing performers trying to make it in a busy city. 900 miles away from the Big Apple, Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee is a thriving music scene that I was lucky enough to visit for roughly 26 hours, and you can bet I made the most of it. Every restaurant, bar, and coffee shop had a stage for live music with performing hopefuls. Within my first few hours, I saw a guy shredding on a double bass like it was a guitar, swinging around this 20 pound instrument and playing it behind his back. I visited the famous Tootsie’s briefly, which had three floors each with at least one bar and stage. In the 15 minutes I was there, I heard “Sweet Home, Alabama” twice. I missed out on the many party buses that fill the streets (as I was with my parents), but I cannot emphasize enough how many bachelorette parties there were. Every place we walked into there were at least two groups of eight women each trying to test Nashville’s public drunkenness limit.
I visited two museums — the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Johnny Cash Museum. I am a big museum guy but I did not recognize enough of the names from CMHoF, so the Johnny Cash Museum was enjoyable for a former country music hater. I saw Elvis’ 1960 gold-plated Cadillac, painted with diamond dust and fish scales and many of Nudie Cohn’s famous designer suits. Taylor Swift made the largest-ever individual donation to the Country Music Hall of Fame to establish the Taylor Swift Education Center. The $4 million donation went towards three classrooms and a music education program. Behind the futuristic sliding glass doors were three classrooms for the music education program, along with artifacts from Taylor’s career, like her bedazzled guitar or the typewriter from “All Too Well: The Short Film.”
At night was “Opry at the Ryman” with a Dolly Parton themed variety show where a variety of artists played covers and dedicated songs to her for her birthday. The Ryman is an acoustically and historically rich church-turned-concert hall, and sitting in the pews I finally felt at peace being in a room full of people who appreciated Dolly Parton for the saint she is. I’m not sure if a country music hater would be converted by this experience, but I can’t recommend it enough. I signed her birthday card, a stranger kindly took my photo with a cardboard cutout of her, and she recorded a video that they played in the auditorium. I was not able to make it to Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s personal theme park, on this trip; this will require a special pilgrimage.
Be First to Comment