Road to Memphis Graceland Clarksdale Distillation Nashville

Saturday, 7 April

I think it is a fair to say Nashville did not put its best foot forward. One indicator of that is that the header picture is the only reasonable picture any of us took all day, and it's a shoe store. The rest of the illustrations I had to drag back out of the reject folder. But going back to my previous lament on the difficulties of photographing bar-b-q in a way that looks remotely interesting or appetizing, it has finally dawned on me that not one of the three goals for this trip—bar-b-q, blues, or booze— is interesting visually, or at the very least its visual appeal is its least relevant feature. So for the first time ever I've been forced to focus on the participants instead, and the occasional roadside attraction that we found to fill in the gaps between appointments with one or more of the major goals. On reflection this seems entirely appropriate, since ultimately the participants on this particular journey were much more important than the actual locations. So kudos to the photographers who did such a great job capturing my favorite moments which did indeed have little or nothing to do with their location. Sometimes the quality might lack a little something, but somehow that just adds to the overwhelming sense of friends having a great time in each other's company. But I digress.

We debated breakfast, and in the end agreed that the 40 minutes required to drive to the top-rated place was less of a problem than the fact that it was still out of town, on the diametrically opposite side of out of town. The last 15 minutes of the drive were pretty, rolling hills, farms, and suddenly we were in a little hamlet where the diner felt like it was half of it. It was a complex of buildings, the diner being surrounded by gift and other unnecessary shops, and a huge flag on the play, the first three parking lots were full. While I parked, the gang went to check in. They took less time than it took me to park. "Two hours" Adam called out as he waved one of those remote tracker things they give you when the wait is so long that they prefer you to leave the building. They can't be serious. We waited an hour and three-quarters for our take-out supper, and breakfast is even longer? Who has that kind of time? We thought about it for about as long as it took to return the stupid tracker.

We were on the same side as town as Belle Meade, a highly rated attraction, so we drifted towards it while the secretary researched a backup breakfast. He found the Bellevue Diner. Perfect. There was a wait we were told, but shouldn't be more than five minutes. A bargain. I think we had the youngest and the oldest waitress, the cutest and the wisest. Rob put in his first order of grits, (the best I've ever had) and I had this skillet thing of eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, salsa, stirred into homefries and melted cheddar. When I handed my completely cleared skillet to the waitress, I told her how terrible it was. "Yeah," she flashed back "Sometimes you hit it and sometimes you don’t".

By this time we'd talked ourselves out of the plantation, and in a spectacular display of our flexibility, we'd agreed instead to visit a Dodge dealership. I kid you not. Nick and Grimmy wanted to buy a car. Another happy hour spent hanging out chatting while they wandered the showroom and the car lot with some hapless sales guy. The weather was slowly getting worse, it actually made a half-hearted attempt to snow.

By now it was after noon, and we still hadn't really been into Nashville. Thirty minutes to take the van back to the hotel, then another thirty to collect an Uber into town. We were wearing everything we had brought. It was probably only in the 40's, nothing bad, but when you were expecting 70's and 80's it felt raw. Not great strolling weather. Every other vehicle seemed to be some sort of contraption designed for wholesale adult beverage consumption. Some were as simple as a farm tractor and trailer, with a kegorator in the middle. Others had a full-blown bar. Many were just a bar but all the bar stools were bike seats and pedals, so fifteen or so patrons were providing the power. In all cases there was a designated driver in the front, and a co-worker operating the bar at the back. Of the dozen or more of these things we saw, I don't remember one of them occupied by men. They all appeared to be hen parties, and the hens had mostly been seriously over-served already, despite it only being mid-late afternoon at this point.

We wandered down Broadway, the main drag, but unlike Memphis where the small main street was crammed with bars leaking music onto the sidewalk, this was a main drag with a challenging amount of traffic making it hard to criss-cross, and the majority of the establishments were stores, including several huge boot stores. We went in to one, where they had a permanent three-for-one sale. I checked with a member of staff and there were no restrictions: they did not have to be the same size or the same sex. You pick three pairs, and pay for the most expensive pair. That's it. Fortunately I couldn't find three pairs that I liked, otherwise I might have gone broke saving money. It was a good job Claudia wasn't there.

We found a hat store, but could not find a hat. In another store Nick found some presents for home which I'm sure was a wonderful thing, but shopping was not exactly what we'd envisioned for the trip in general, and this street in particular. The couple of establishments that were leaking music onto the sidewalk were both playing country and western which, fair play, is what most folks come for, but only seemed to reinforce our realization that we really didn't care for country or western as the Blues Brothers might have observed.

The social secretary had shrewdly found a venue that specialized in bluegrass which was much more likely to appeal, and we agreed to slowly make our way towards it. The main drag away from Broadway reeked of a gag-making mix of human leakage, a stunning concoction at that early hour in the day. There were more (packed) bars, but no more music. We quickened the pace. Before long we were away from the madding crowd, and Adam and Nick diverted through a McDonalds and reappeared moments later with five Big Macs. I say Big Macs, but something had happened to them in the decade or more since I last tried one. No wonder they only cost a buck. I've had bigger sliders. Gone in Sixty Seconds. But a nice touch.

As we approached The Station Inn we were at least half an hour early, yet there was already a line outside the door already. We quickly agreed that we were not keen enough to stand in line, and that the little pub we had just passed was a much more sensible choice. The beers were excellent, though the atmosphere was a little clinical, similar to the stainless steel and polished concrete that seems so popular with microbreweries in New England.

When it was time we walked across the street and sure enough were able to snag tickets, but it was jammed inside. We found a spot in one corner and someone bought a pitcher of beer. Slowly the truth began to dawn. The singer songwriter exhibition or whatever it was called was five guys on stools, each clutching a guitar. This was the one night of the year when the bluegrass place hosted a musical poetry slam. No-thing to do with bluegrass. They didn't even play together. One guy would give a whinny introduction to some song or other and then he played it. Then it was someone else's turn. Then we got bored, then it was the whinny guy's turn again and we were ready to kill someone. Grimmy gave the throat-cutting symbol and made it obvious that he'd wait for us back at our previous location. Robin came by on his way back from the bathrooms and encouraged me to quit too. I was certainly not enjoying it, but I was learning a lot. I learned that the old guy was good enough (and old enough) to have written two Elvis hits. Another, Chas Sandford had (co)written something that I actually recognized: Missing You ("I ain't missing you at all"). I learned one line from one song that I liked enough to write down: "She was a rainbow but he was color blind". So I learned we were in pretty special company—if you were into song-writing. But the most important lesson I learned was that there are excellent reasons why there are song-writers and there are song-singers.

As one door closes, another door opens. A lot had changed back at Hops and Crafts. The place was now hopping. All the small spaces around the edge of the room were occupied, and a larger group occupied the big table in the middle. They squeezed up a little to free one end of the table. Before long the two parties merged. There were about 8 of them, celebrating a 30th birthday. One of them knew enough about the UK's Premier League Football (Soccer) to impress Robin (a high bar) but that's all I remember specifically until suddenly there only seemed to be three of them: the birthday boy Chris, his girl friend Rachel, and her BFF Caroline. Caroline's boyfriend was one of those who had disappeared, apparently to find dinner. "But he didn't ask if you wanted to go? Or tell you he was going?" "Nope." Rachel rolled her eyeballs and we were off. She was a take-no-prisoners kind of gal, snarky, direct, and quick-witted. Chris was none of those things and seemed a bit of a puppy all around. On this showing it was harder to understand why so many of them had come so far (from North Carolina) than it was to understand why everybody had left. Caroline was a sweetheart, not as feisty as her friend but quite comfortable holding her end of a conversation, and of pushing back when required. I think both the women were nurses, which always tells me something about them I feel. I worry when ages are as mismatched as badly as they were here (though in our defense, we did have Adam to even the score a little) that we might be being suffered or tolerated rather than having as much fun as we were, but the fuzzy snapshots suggest that truly everyone was having a good time. We spent a lot of it talking about relationships and friends and trust, for which I don't think they could have found a better example than who we were, what we were, and why from all the bars in all the world we came to be in this one. Call me pompous, but I like to think we represent a beacon of hope for them: they are not peaking already, (I feel terrible for those people who lament that high school was the best time in their life) they have a lifetime of great-better-stuff to come. More importantly, they, like most of the young people I meet, provide me with great comfort that they can, and will, take better care of the planet than our greedy and self-absorbed generation is managing. It is refreshing to be in their company.

Too soon, Robin and I needed to head home to get some shut-eye before the long drive later that night, and we tried to persuade Nick and Grimmy to join us, leaving Adam to enjoy a little quality time with folks from his own generation, but they were having none of it. So that was that. Rob and I left, and the next thing we knew it was 3am, the van was loaded, and the crew was crashed out in the back. One of my absolute favorite Rob characteristics is his ability to hold up both sides of a conversation if one fails to hold up ones own. He had resolved to talk at me the whole trip to make sure I stayed awake. He was, of course, amazing. Grimmy latched on to what he was doing and tag-teamed for a long time. We crossed some sort of mountain (or at least hill) range, because for miles we steamed passed caravans of 18-wheelers and then spent the same number of miles trying to keep them off our bumper on the way back down again. By then it was dawn, and Chattanooga slipped by in the early mist. I don't remember anything else. Good night and good luck.