They screech past at high volume, like flocks of drunken geese, pedalling furiously, these newcomers to the Nashville scene. Seated either side of mobile bars that career through the streets of Downtown, gaggles of hen parties in bridal veils and lurid t-shirts whoop and holler along to deafening chart hits, knocking back cheap cocktails on their Pedal Taverns. It’s not quite the Nashville music scene we were expecting.  

With an ever-expanding roster of clients based out of Music City, Tennessee, Coman and I are over for a series of meetings and performances, plus a bit of background research into the history of Nashville’s rich musical heritage and vibrant contemporary culture. And while I knew that Saturday night “on the strip” would be a hard-partying affair, nothing has fully prepared us for the assault on our jet-lagged senses that comes with Nashville’s new-found status as the number one destination for America’s Bachelorette parties... a female alternative to testosterone-fuelled Las Vegas debauchery.  

It’s 32 degrees and the sun is setting as we’re deposited at the bottom of Broadway, where the throbbing city streets meet the Cumberland river, by the shuttle bus from our hotel. We’re staying at the Clarion Downtown, close to the Nissan Stadium – home to the Tennessee Titans football team – and across the bridge from the raucous nightlife of downtown Nashville. 

It’s 7.30pm, only 90 minutes since the wheels of our BA flight from London touched down, but everyone seems well on their way already. One of the first Wedding Wagons trundles past with its dozen hens loudly belting out a ditty with the chorus ‘Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy’ and ahead of us lies a neon-lit procession of shops, bars and band-toting honky tonks blasting out a deafening aural cacophony, while thousands of tourists crowd the streets. It’s our first taste of the overwhelming barrage of craziness that Broadway thrives on and over the coming days it never lets up, whether it’s 10am or midnight. 

 We walk into the Bootleggers Inn and find a place at the back of the bar to watch the house band performing ‘Black Velvet’ and ‘Summertime Blues’, followed by a bit of Lynyrd Skynyrd then the Dixie Chicks, with a tip bucket being passed around. 

Nashville is obviously, undoubtedly, a drinking town - in fact the T-shirt for sale in our hotel lobby claims “Nashville is a Drinking City with a Music Problem” – but having been almost entirely booze-free for the past four months, we’re not quite ready to throw caution to the wind and hit the hedonistic heights of yore. Nevertheless abstinence is clearly not an option, so we gingerly order a Corona and a G&T, and watch the chaos unfold. 

By God, it’s loud! Years of working in rock music should make me immune to this but the onset of tinnitus has made me ever-more mindful of a deafening din, so without earplugs to protect us we move on, past even more raucous venues, to check out souvenir shops, candy stores and record emporiums such as the legendary Ernest Tubbs, complete with a shrine to Loretta Lynn, and walk past the Johnny Cash & Patsy Cline Museum.  

We briefly check out the hillbilly band in Legends and poke our noses into Tootsies and the Second Fiddle, but by 9pm the jetlag is winning and our sobriety in the face of wasted hordes means we flag down the final shuttle bus back to our hotel and collapse into bed, exhausted by the wildness and  wondering if we’re now officially middle-aged and sensible... after all these years?!