Having got the flavour of Nashville over the past 36 hours, and with our bus-tour yesterday giving us a sense of the city, the next two days are focussed on work. An early start ensures the deluge of morning emails is kept under control and we’re deposited back on Broadway by the hotel shuttle bus in time for coffee. It’s already roasting and the bars are in full swing with bands blasting out loud and proud before 11am. This truly is a city that never sleeps.
A twenty-minute walk leads us to a quieter part of town and our first meeting of the day, with the manager of singer Megan Davies. We spend an hour talking shop before walking another couple of blocks to Pinewood Social, a restaurant and bowling alley that’s got more than a little hint of Shoreditch House about it.
Pinewood Social
There we meet Don VanCleve and his colleague Hannahkohl. Don manages the musician Brent Cobb, whose last two albums we’ve worked, and we have a very enjoyable catch up, hearing tales of Nashville, and discussing the next steps for Brent’s music and career.
Next up is a trip to the leafy outer Nashville suburb of Berry Hill to meet with a potential client, New West Records, before we head downtown for more evening explorations. We’re back in Berry Hill on Tuesday morning for a meeting at Triple 8 Management, followed by a cab over to Music Row for lunch at Taco Mamacita, as recommended by the head of international at Big Machine Records, and further meetings with Warner Music Nashville and finally McGhee Entertainment.
It’s all highly productive – plans are made, deals are done, bands are met, faces put to names and we’re given some true Southern hospitality – but all that stays behind closed doors. More relevant to a travel blog are the sights we see along the way... not least of which is the big silver tour bus plonked on the rooftop bar of the revamped Bobby Hotel near Printers Alley.
He’s a singer!
Full of music-themed memorabilia, and with a rooftop pool where some extremely drunk and half naked couples are getting rowdy in the cabanas, it’s the funky younger brother to the more refined grandeur of the Noelle Hotel a couple of doors down.
But the highlight of Nashville’s bar scene has got to be the speakeasy called Attaboy we visit on Monday night in the up-and-coming area of East Nashville. Having had dinner at the highly recommended Israeli restaurant Butcher & Bee – where we try a glorious mezze of whipped feta and honey, sumac almonds and red pepper purée, beetroot, strawberries and pistachios, plus the vegan alternative of “chicken fried” cauliflower and avocado crispy rice – we walk around the corner to a nondescript building and knock on the door.
Our patience is rewarded when after a few minutes it’s opened by a heavily tattooed man and we’re ushered into an old-school cocktail bar where menus don’t exist but the barman talks through our tastes and mood and prepares us something suitable. I get a citrus, rum and tequila cocktail while Coman receives a bourbon affair. It’s rounded off with the house special – their own unique take on a dark and stormy. So much for our new found sobriety!
Butcher & Bee
On Tuesday, our final night in Nashville, we jump in a cab from Music Row out to the legendary Grand Ole Opry to see Brantley Gilbert – an artist we’ve worked with – perform. We’re dropped at the enormous Opry Mills shopping centre, where we grab a desultory veggie burger from the fast food options on offer, before posing with giant guitars and going through the metal detectors (concealed hand-guns not allowed!) to take our seats.
We’d booked tickets a few months ago, and it transpires tonight is now a ‘Salute The Troops’ night, which we’d only become aware of the night before. Slightly concerned we’ll be out of place at some kind of Make America Great Again rally, we’re relieved to find it’s just a regular night at the longest running weekly live radio show in the world; on air since 1925, when it first hit the US airwaves from the Ryman Auditorium
Grand Ole Opry
The show starts bang on 7pm with country star Mark Wills followed by a new young singer called Travis Denning. He’s full of patriotic, military fervour and cranks out a song called ‘Red White & Blue’ to mass applause. Rather more to our taste are guitar-toting four-piece The Wild Feathers, whose rootsy Americana appeals more to British sensibilities than the cheerleading Trump-isms on display.
Next up is a raspy-voiced military vet called Craig Morgan who encourages the servicemen in the audience to join him on stage while he sings an ode to whiskey. He finishes by encouraging everyone to download his songs as he’s just married a young girl from Texas who’s spending all his money “because she hasn’t worked out I’m not Garth Brooks yet”.
After the interval Brantley sings his drinking song ‘Bottoms Up’ then duets on ‘What Happens In A Small Town’ with new Nashville star Lindsey Ell before old school country crooner Lee Greenwood sings ‘A Heroes Walk’ and ‘God Bless The USA’ to a standing ovation.
Brantley & Lindsey
Finally comes the super deep bass voice of headliner Trace Adkins who gets the kind of reception Elton John or Paul McCartney would get back home. We listen to his first song, which seems to be about his pick-up truck, but decide to beat the rush of 3000 people leaving at once and head for the exit as soon he starts his second number, hailing a cab back to downtown Nashville and the peace of our hotel.
It’s been an eye-opening experience, and an intriguing delve into country music, but tomorrow new adventures await. We’re heading further into the Bible Belt, the home of the Blues and the birthplace of Rock’n’Roll. Our Deep South road trip is about to begin...
