Author – Grant
Based In – Nashville
Today’s Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157613136224680/
I’m proud of us today because we did exactly what you are supposed to do in Nashville. Namely enjoy the nature, eat slow cooked pig, visit the Grand Ole Opry and then see some mighty fine live country music. Let’s break that down a little further.
First up we bashed out what we assumed would be a sprightly 4.
5 mile walk with the four-legged one but the majority of the walk was either 45 degrees uphill or 45 degrees downhill and was conducted in sub zero temperatures. I always thought that Tennessee and it’s neighbouring states that make up The South (Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina etc) were dusty, hot, cactus-filled deserts that rarely strayed below 100 degrees day or night but clearly I am an ignoramus because they are green, lush wetlands that are highly susceptible to weather that you might more readily associate with the Outer Hebrides. Given the terrain and the conditions, we finished the walk completely exhausted and caked in mud but childishly proud of our achievement. Enjoy nature – check.
Such an achievement deserves a reward and, as always, we chose an edible one. Given the number of Christian stores, anti-liberal bumper stickers and churches we have seen, it is clear that worshiping god (the Christian god, not any of those other pretenders to the title belt) is the number one past-time but the number two spot would be a closel
y fought scrap between Country Music, NASCAR and eating Barbeque. Personally I think that NASCAR sucks (they don’t turn right…ever) and I’m pretty ignorant about Country Music but I knows my low & slow meat and I had been looking forward to tasting some in the place of its inception since I was out of nappies. A quick search brought up Famous Dave’s and we recognised the brand from several BBQ shows we had seen on TV as they have won over 200 awards in various competitions. Jenny, our bubbly waitress, brought us an amuse bouche of fat fries in order to try each of the five sauces which she had ingeniously written her name with. Kate liked the sweet first ‘N’ whilst I liked the slightly hotter, smoky second ‘N’. If we’d have known a plate of unordered fries were coming then we wouldn’t have ordered the buffalo shrimp which were exactly how you would expect them to be and did not a lot more than take the edge off my rampant hunger. But all of these bits were simply the inconsequential D-List warm up acts for the U2-esque entrees that were about to arrive. Ever the health conscious girl, Kate ordered a baked potato topped with beef brisket but two things were to transform this into a gazillion weight watchers points. Firstly the potato was the size of an American Football. Secondly, when aske
d “would you like cheese, bacon, sour cream or butter?”, she replied “yes”. I look forward to citing this during the divorce proceedings when I swap her for a thin one. I took a much lower moral highground and ordered a combo which included St Louis Ribs, Beef Brisket, corn on the cob, coleslaw, beans and a cornbread muffin. Quite rightly, the meat stole the show. The brisket fell apart like Tutankhamen’s exhumed loin cloth and the ribs had the perfect fat to meat ration (about 1 to 3) that kept them juicy as all hell and as tender as a teenager girl’s heart (metaphorically, I don’t condone eating human hearts…although…). I got four ribs and offered Kate one out of politeness but when she unexpectedly accepted and stripped an entire rib of its meaty jacket, I honestly felt like I had lost a limb. Eat slow cooked pig – check.
The Grand Ole Opry is the country music version of Wembley but it only has performances on Tuesdays and at the weekend. We’re are pretty miffed to be missing out on both The Killers (not that they are anything to do with country music) and the legendary walking fun-bags, Dolly Parton who are both playing this coming weekend but we have a semi-schedule that we had better stick to else it’s going to take us until we’re 60 to finish this trip. Still, it was good to have a gorp at the venue and tick that off of the list.
Whilst last night’s entertainment was a crawl around the bars of the fairly touristy District area of Nashville, tonight we headed 6 miles out of town to Bluebird
Café. The place is famous for launching the careers of a whole host of stars including Faith Hill and Garth Brooks and it particularly attracts songwriters because of their strict ‘no cover songs’ rule. It’s a tiny venue with a capacity crowd of about 75 huddled around the performers who sit in a circle in the centre of the room like a public séance. Other than recognising one of the performers (Walt Aldridge) as the guy from the bar the previous evening who all the other performers were clambering over to shake the hand of, the rest of the names meant nothing to us so with open minds and open ears (but unfortunately not an open bar) the very informal show began. First up was singer / songwriter / pianist Deanna Bryant with the first of her “I’m over 50, divorced and I’m going to let you know about it” ditties. In fairness, they were all excellent and she has an “in principle” agreement from Willie Nelson to cut one of her songs which must be the holy grail for a country music songwriter. Next was singer Marla Cannon Goodman accompanied by a jolly guitarist whose name I didn’t catch. She seemed to have a famous dad and sister and be very well known locally which isn’t a surprise as she had an excellent voice. Next up, Walt Aldridge who, it quickly became apparent, was clearly a superstar with a bucket load of number one hits. His manner treaded either side of the “too good to be here” / “lovable rogue” throughout the night but there was no doubting his talent. Finally, Dave Berg who provided the highlight of the night for us by playing one of his songs which we actually knew. Turns out that time spent listening to country music radio stations for the past few days was well worth the effort. I can hopefully convey how mesmerised I was by the 2+ hour show by way of the following sentence. After being there about 45 minutes, our food arrived and I completely forgot that we had ordered it. That’s right, I FORGOT that I had ordered food. Having about 2lbs of piggy at lunch probably helped but nevertheless, this is a situation without precedent. A truly fantastic evening.
Off to Memphis tomorrow and I’m already dreading the car journey as Kate has been singing Marc Cohn’s “Walking Memphis” for at least a week…it’s still better than the Cher version though.
Based In – Nashville
Today’s Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157613136224680/
I’m proud of us today because we did exactly what you are supposed to do in Nashville. Namely enjoy the nature, eat slow cooked pig, visit the Grand Ole Opry and then see some mighty fine live country music. Let’s break that down a little further.
First up we bashed out what we assumed would be a sprightly 4.
5 mile walk with the four-legged one but the majority of the walk was either 45 degrees uphill or 45 degrees downhill and was conducted in sub zero temperatures. I always thought that Tennessee and it’s neighbouring states that make up The South (Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina etc) were dusty, hot, cactus-filled deserts that rarely strayed below 100 degrees day or night but clearly I am an ignoramus because they are green, lush wetlands that are highly susceptible to weather that you might more readily associate with the Outer Hebrides. Given the terrain and the conditions, we finished the walk completely exhausted and caked in mud but childishly proud of our achievement. Enjoy nature – check.Such an achievement deserves a reward and, as always, we chose an edible one. Given the number of Christian stores, anti-liberal bumper stickers and churches we have seen, it is clear that worshiping god (the Christian god, not any of those other pretenders to the title belt) is the number one past-time but the number two spot would be a closel
y fought scrap between Country Music, NASCAR and eating Barbeque. Personally I think that NASCAR sucks (they don’t turn right…ever) and I’m pretty ignorant about Country Music but I knows my low & slow meat and I had been looking forward to tasting some in the place of its inception since I was out of nappies. A quick search brought up Famous Dave’s and we recognised the brand from several BBQ shows we had seen on TV as they have won over 200 awards in various competitions. Jenny, our bubbly waitress, brought us an amuse bouche of fat fries in order to try each of the five sauces which she had ingeniously written her name with. Kate liked the sweet first ‘N’ whilst I liked the slightly hotter, smoky second ‘N’. If we’d have known a plate of unordered fries were coming then we wouldn’t have ordered the buffalo shrimp which were exactly how you would expect them to be and did not a lot more than take the edge off my rampant hunger. But all of these bits were simply the inconsequential D-List warm up acts for the U2-esque entrees that were about to arrive. Ever the health conscious girl, Kate ordered a baked potato topped with beef brisket but two things were to transform this into a gazillion weight watchers points. Firstly the potato was the size of an American Football. Secondly, when aske
d “would you like cheese, bacon, sour cream or butter?”, she replied “yes”. I look forward to citing this during the divorce proceedings when I swap her for a thin one. I took a much lower moral highground and ordered a combo which included St Louis Ribs, Beef Brisket, corn on the cob, coleslaw, beans and a cornbread muffin. Quite rightly, the meat stole the show. The brisket fell apart like Tutankhamen’s exhumed loin cloth and the ribs had the perfect fat to meat ration (about 1 to 3) that kept them juicy as all hell and as tender as a teenager girl’s heart (metaphorically, I don’t condone eating human hearts…although…). I got four ribs and offered Kate one out of politeness but when she unexpectedly accepted and stripped an entire rib of its meaty jacket, I honestly felt like I had lost a limb. Eat slow cooked pig – check.The Grand Ole Opry is the country music version of Wembley but it only has performances on Tuesdays and at the weekend. We’re are pretty miffed to be missing out on both The Killers (not that they are anything to do with country music) and the legendary walking fun-bags, Dolly Parton who are both playing this coming weekend but we have a semi-schedule that we had better stick to else it’s going to take us until we’re 60 to finish this trip. Still, it was good to have a gorp at the venue and tick that off of the list.
Whilst last night’s entertainment was a crawl around the bars of the fairly touristy District area of Nashville, tonight we headed 6 miles out of town to Bluebird
Café. The place is famous for launching the careers of a whole host of stars including Faith Hill and Garth Brooks and it particularly attracts songwriters because of their strict ‘no cover songs’ rule. It’s a tiny venue with a capacity crowd of about 75 huddled around the performers who sit in a circle in the centre of the room like a public séance. Other than recognising one of the performers (Walt Aldridge) as the guy from the bar the previous evening who all the other performers were clambering over to shake the hand of, the rest of the names meant nothing to us so with open minds and open ears (but unfortunately not an open bar) the very informal show began. First up was singer / songwriter / pianist Deanna Bryant with the first of her “I’m over 50, divorced and I’m going to let you know about it” ditties. In fairness, they were all excellent and she has an “in principle” agreement from Willie Nelson to cut one of her songs which must be the holy grail for a country music songwriter. Next was singer Marla Cannon Goodman accompanied by a jolly guitarist whose name I didn’t catch. She seemed to have a famous dad and sister and be very well known locally which isn’t a surprise as she had an excellent voice. Next up, Walt Aldridge who, it quickly became apparent, was clearly a superstar with a bucket load of number one hits. His manner treaded either side of the “too good to be here” / “lovable rogue” throughout the night but there was no doubting his talent. Finally, Dave Berg who provided the highlight of the night for us by playing one of his songs which we actually knew. Turns out that time spent listening to country music radio stations for the past few days was well worth the effort. I can hopefully convey how mesmerised I was by the 2+ hour show by way of the following sentence. After being there about 45 minutes, our food arrived and I completely forgot that we had ordered it. That’s right, I FORGOT that I had ordered food. Having about 2lbs of piggy at lunch probably helped but nevertheless, this is a situation without precedent. A truly fantastic evening.Off to Memphis tomorrow and I’m already dreading the car journey as Kate has been singing Marc Cohn’s “Walking Memphis” for at least a week…it’s still better than the Cher version though.
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