It’s a good start to the holiday – the attendant at the immigration queue welcomes us to Nashville with a smile and a chat, and the immigration officer is unusually friendly and considerate. This arrival in the US is the best it’s ever been. We don’t have to queue for a taxi and we have a pleasant conversation with the driver. More welcoming greetings follow at the hotel and then it’s up to the rooftop bar for some local beer. A lovely warm evening, a great view of the city and, you guessed it, friendly and helpful waitresses looking after us. It’s re-confirmed over the following days – this is a very friendly place, perhaps the friendliest city in the USA, and the many immigrant taxi drivers we meet think so too.
It’s also an interesting city. The following morning we take a hop-on, hop-off bus to get our bearings. The driver gives what would normally be a helpful commentary, but this guy rattles off his standard spiel as if training to be an auctioneer. It’s exhausting trying to listen to him and we soon hop off his bus, skipping the tip, and hop on the next one, where we get a driver giving a more relaxing and informative ride.
There’s the old Marathon Motorworks, the Frist Art Museum, the State Capital building, any number of music ‘halls of fame’, the Ryman auditorium, and they even have a reproduction of the Parthenon in Greece.
But my favourite is the old Union Railway Station. I like visiting railway stations and this one is a particular beauty. It’s no longer a railway station but the building has been magnificently restored to its Railway Age glory and is now a hotel. We spend an hour in the hotel, marvelling at the stained glass ceiling, the crystal chandeliers, Italian marble floors, the huge limestone fireplaces and beautiful artwork. What it must have been like with passengers taking trains to all those great American cities. The only thing that’s missing is the pool in the hotel lobby where alligators were brought in from Florida for the entertainment of the waiting travellers.
But how sad that it’s no longer a railway station. America seems to have virtually abandoned the concept of inter-city rail travel. The last train – a southbound ‘Floridian’ from Chicago to Miami, left Nashville station on October 9th 1979, ending over 120 years of intercity rail service in Nashville. By comparison – nowhere in Europe is there a sizeable city that does not have a main line railway station. (At least I think that’s correct. Go on, prove me wrong. OK, there’s Reykjavik, but that’s because there’s nowhere else to take a train to in Iceland).
I did meet someone later in our trip who was about to take the train from Memphis to New Orleans but it takes almost 9 hours to make the 358 mile journey. I’d like to have known how it went. I understand that the service is unreliable, partly because freight is given priority on the US rail network.
Next to the railway station is the old post office, now the Frist Art Museum. Well, if you are a quilt nerd – if quilts hold a fascination for you – then this is the place. Quilts of all shapes, sizes and designs brought together in one place. The exhibition “celebrates the American quilt – a living, vibrant art form ….representing centuries of human creativity and ingenuity. “…according to the brochure. Actually, after we’d got over the initial pre-judgement boredom, the designs did hold some fascination, and every quilt told a story – in some cases a political one. (I’d never considered that quilts could be used as a political weapon!)
A visit to the ‘Ryman Auditorium’ also sounds pretty boring but was actually fascinating. It was built by an unlikely partnership between a hard-headed businessman called Tom Ryman, a wealthy riverboat captain who spent his time partying in downtown Nashville and making his money from both sides in the civil war, and Reverend Sam Jones, a revivalist from Geogia who convinced Ryman to turn his life over to God. So they built a grand tabernacle for religious gatherings in the city. But after a while practicalities set in and they had to open up the tabernacle for other, less religious congregations, to raise some cash. Following on from this it became the home of the Grand Ole Opry. (More of this later). The whole fascinating history of the Ryman Auditorium was told to us in a wall-to-wall immersive presentation which had us captivated.
In the evening we head for Broadway, where the music action is. We have only a minute or two to wait for our Uber and it’s a $6 journey for the four of us – probably the best value purchase of the whole holiday. Tootsies Orchid Lounge is our first call – live country music playing and all we need do is buy a round of beers and toss a few dollars into the hat when it comes round. And we even get a seat. There’s a cowboy playing guitar with his gal (actually, could have been his mum) on violin. He’s singing Kenny Rogers “You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille, with four hungry children and crops in the field, …….you picked a fine time to leave me Lucille”. The cowboy’s mum is fiddling fast and furious, and we drinkers are all singing along passionately. Yes, this is the genuine country stuff!
But you can’t hang around in only one bar in this place, you’ve got to taste the others so we move on to Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’Roll Steakhouse. Quite a name eh? The place is heaving – it’s big, but there’s not a square inch of space to be had on the ground floor so we take the lift to the mezzanine balcony. We are joined in the lift by a posse of girls dressed (almost) for a Good Nashville Night Out. They are on a hen night – or a ‘Bachelorette party’ as it’s known in the USA. Upstairs a friendly guy obligingly offers us his table and we move in for the night. No homespun country music here – this is rock and roll and the punters – of all ages – are loving it. We get waitress service for drinks, and no pressure. We even have to seek out the tips hat to make a contribution for the band. The atmosphere is great and the music energising. What great value entertainment they do here – there’s a real feeling that they’re all loving doing it.
The next evening we take an Uber out to the Grand Ole Opry. This used to be held at the Ryman Auditorium in the centre of Nashville but it became so popular that they built a specialist theatre and theme park a few miles outside of the city. As is the norm in this friendly place, we have a nice chat to the Uber driver. When we are nearing the Opry I ask him about getting a taxi back to the hotel after the show. “No”, he says, “you’ll need an Uber”. “Yes, that’s right – a taxi” I say. “No, you’ll need an Uber” he says. And we carry on like this for a while. Clearly in his world, an Uber isn’t a taxi, and in the end I submit. “OK, we’ll want an Uber, not a taxi”.
We just have time for a schnitzel and sauerkraut washed down with Berlin Rosé Cider at the Bavarian Bierhaus, and we are off to the Opry.
The Grand Ole Opry started in 1925 and is the longest-running radio show, ever. The ‘National Life and Accident Insurance Company’ started the radio station ‘WSM’ (“We Shield Millions”) and created a country music radio show to promote it. Originally the show was called the ‘WSM Barn Dance’. The show on the radio immediately before the ‘Barn Dance’ was classical music from the New York Symphony Orchestra, so there was a huge contrast between the two shows. On December 10th 1927 to prepare the audience for the change, the announcer said: . “Friends, for the past hour, we have been listening to music taken from grand opera. From now on, we will present the Grand Ole Opry.” The name stuck, and listening to it became a Saturday night tradition with families across the US, launching the careers of country legends including Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and Dolly Parton.
The Grand Ole Opry is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, so it’s a fitting time to visit. The auditorium is packed out – still attracting a big following, even after 100 years. We thought we knew something about country music but in this show, to our surprise, we didn’t know any of the songs and we didn’t know any of the artists. We were also surprised that there was quite a large gospel content to the music. The host (I can’t remember his name – Richard, I think you have my memory bank in your head – what was his name?) claimed to know every gospel song ever written and challenges the audience to shout gospel requests.
The other surprise was that the audience was about 98% white. So is Country Music exclusively white? Well, no – there’s Charley Pride, Darius Rucker, Mickey Guyton, and no doubt lots of others. DeFord Bailey was the first black country performer at the Grand Ole Opry and a significant figure in the history of country music.
When we booked for the Grand Ole Opry we were naively over-enthusiastic and booked a Backstage Tour for after the show. We regretted it immediately after the introduction. We were told that we might very well bump into a ‘Celebrity’ backstage, and if we did, if they spoke to us it was OK to answer, but that it doesn’t work the other way around. The tour was very Celebrity-Focussed. We were allowed to peep into each of the celebrity dressing rooms and imagine the stars in-situ. We were taken onto the stage and handed a microphone for the inevitable photo-shoot (photos to be collected and paid for on the way out). We were shown the special entrance to the Opry – only for the celebs – and the plaques screwed to the wall for each one.
It’s explained that the very special people who are accepted as members of the Opry are allowed to screw their own name plaques on the celebrity wall of fame. One member – clearly well-versed in marketing – screwed his plaque on upside down – and therefore it gets noticed. Interestingly, I couldn’t remember who this celeb was and so in my post-visit research, I asked AI. AI told me that this was fake news and there was no-one with an upside-down plaque at the Opry, while Facebook showed me the photo – exactly as I remember it! So let this be a warning about our Artificial Intelligence future – don’t believe everything AI tells you. (My dad, if he were still alive, would be very confused by all this reference to ‘AI’. He was a farmer, and when the ‘AI’ man was coming, it meant the cows were due for their Artificial Insemination.)`
It’s late when we finally escape the tour (leaving our photo behind) and it’s a relief to find a random Uber waiting. Richard negotiates a direct deal with the driver, cutting out the usual 50% to Uber – it’s a win-win deal, and we arrive back at our hotel.
Next morning and it’s the final Nashville morning for us. It’s into a taxi – sorry, an Uber – and back to the airport to pick up our hire car. A Dodge Durango – officially guzzling gas at a rate somewhere between 10.5 and 23 miles per gallon. (Not quite as bad as it sounds since a US gallon is smaller than the gallon we know). And we need not have worried about the car holding all our luggage – this is a beast built for Americans!
And we’re on the way to our next city – Memphis.
Y’all ready for the next episode?