Nashville

26 May 2024

I was wandering around Tower Records on the Upper West Side in New York, one hot July evening in 1994. A powerful, female voice, occasionally cracking with perfectly controlled, intoned emotion was playing on the store music system.

A guy putting out the CDs was typical of many who worked there. He had adorned himself with piercings, ink, chains, bags of attitude and was singing along, totally immersed in the music and knew every word of every song.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“This is just the best; I’m going to put it on again; I just love it.” he said and did. He returned with a CD featuring a formidable, handsome woman on the cover with big hair, posing demurely behind some artfully arranged sunflowers. Not the sort of imagery calibrated to attract my demographic at the time and definitely not that of the store worker in question. Everything about the music though, the melody, lyrics, vocals, arrangement and production was mesmerisingly good.

The CD was and is Trisha Yearwood’s ‘The Song Remembers When’. From that point on, I shed all preconceptions of what ‘country music’ is about. I still listen to this CD regularly, 30 years later.

I do take the genre on the individual merits of each song though, rather than certain acts or entire albums even. The traditional, yee-haw track that most artists feel compelled to include on each release holds little appeal for me, but is probably there to reel in other audience segments. And I really don’t need to hear another lyric featuring a girl in a T-shirt and washed-out jeans with her feet on the dash of a pickup truck.

‘Whispering’ Bob Harris has done a sterling job at rooting out the best of this genre. He gives artists otherwise little known in the UK, airtime on his Thursday night Radio 2 show. He has also often mentioned the infinite depth of talent in Nashville, and how you can pitch up in any of the music bars and hear incredible playing.

So, I’m going to put this theory to the test but not until tomorrow. Tonight, I’ve booked a seat on the General Jackson showboat for a three-hour cruise down the Cumberland River at dusk. $130 gets you dinner at the Captain’s Table, a view of the skyline and a revue of country music’s greatest moments performed by an ensemble of singers, dancers and a five-piece live band.

You don’t do the General Jackson for the food but the views are better than expected and the performers' infectious energy, enthusiasm and obvious talent would win over even the hardest hearts.

And to think this is probably the entry-level for talent trying to make it in this city…

27 May 2024

I’m booked on a tour of the Grand Old Opry at 10:45, a purpose-built concert hall on the edge of town. Since 1974, it’s been from where a twice-weekly, live radio show featuring established and emerging country artists is broadcast.

Previously, the Ryman Theatre, eight miles away downtown, was the Opry until a variety of factors, notably popularity, caused it to close. Many still consider the Ryman to be the spiritual home of country music. There’s a sign outside telling you you can’t bring guns in. I don’t remember ever seeing one of these at the Royal Albert Hall.

As you might expect, the tour is perfectly orchestrated. It needs to be as groups of twenty leave every fifteen minutes, throughout the day. Again, and as you might expect for this city, the guides are extremely well-rehearsed and treat what they are doing as a performance. Only the holograms of Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks, that kick things off lack a bit of sheen. The tech looks clunky and clearly ‘last generation’ compared with what Abba has achieved in their Voyage show in London. It needs a reboot to be up to the same standard as the rest of the fifty-minute tour.

Having immersed myself in the traditions of Nashville, I wander over the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge, mid-afternoon, to downtown.

It’s the last Monday in May and Memorial Day, a public holiday in honour and for mourning the US military personnel who have died in service.

The day is also considered the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States. It's this celebratory tone that is more in evidence on Broadway, home to many of the legendary music bars.

Music blasts from them all and making an informed choice is impossible. So I try ‘Legends Corner’ as I’ve been recommended. It delivers exactly what it says on the tin, with a band competently grinding out cover versions of country and rock anthems. I try to get into Kid Rock - another recommendation - but there’s a twenty-minute wait. I move onto one owned by a current top-selling country star, Jason Aldean, for no better reason than it has a dress code: no sleeveless T-shirts. It’s a hot day and Legends did pong a bit as no similar restrictions apply there.

Both bars are good but I’m still not really getting it as I go off in search of ‘etch’ for an early dinner.

It’s one of two restaurants owned by Deb Paquette, well known in Nashville where she’s lived and worked for the last thirty-something years. Ms. Paquette has previously been garlanded by Gourmet Magazine as one of the Top Sixty Restauranteurs in the country.

etch follows a similar approach to Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Not just because both are the work of women of a certain age, but because they follow the principle of minimal intervention on superb produce with inspired combinations of the components that make up each dish. Match that with entertaining, engaging staff and bar-counter service, the perfect spot for a top-end, solo dinner is the result.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. A girl of about ten, sat with her parents, asks the barman if it’s true that Taylor Swift comes here. He confirms it is and points to a discrete corner of the bar where she likes to sit. The roasted cauliflower with truffled pea purée, salted almonds, feta crema, and red bell essence is a particular favourite, apparently.

The barman explains etch is well patronised by many out-of-town, A-list artists, as it’s next door to the Four Seasons Hotel. Rooms start at $525 a night for just-about-affordable luxury.

I go in search of Printers Alley, where I’m told the more authentic music bars are. On the corner with Church Street is a busker picking out a fluent solo acoustic version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t think twice, it’s alright’.

Now mildly euphoric having been well sated with, in order: an aperitif of etch’s signature G&T featuring Bordiga Occitan gin and housemade seasonal tonic; an appetiser of Octopus & Shrimp Bruschetta with bacon, arugula, fennel, roasted tomatoes, capers, garlic oil, Manchego and sunflower seed hummus with a glass of Raeburn, Sonoma County, Californian Chardonnay for company; Za’atar Crusted Lamb, apricot wild rice, black garlic purée, dill feta whip, blackberries, toasted walnuts and lentil hummus, washed down with a St. Francis, Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from Alexander Valley, again in Sonoma, I may also have been a little bit drunk and absent-mindedly start singing along.

The bloke next to me hollers to the busker: “This guy is good!” so I’m invited to take to the mike while he runs through the song again, feeding me the start of each line of a song I thought I knew off-by-heart.

Nearby in the Bourbon Street Blues Bar, I put Bob Harris’ theory to the test: can you walk into any bar and hear incredible musicians play?

A band are finishing setting up and launch into a few blues standards. It feels like watching a rehearsal as they confer, twiddle various knobs on guitars and amplifiers, adjust microphones and stands. Tweaking over, they then really get into their stride, finishing an hour-long set with a coruscating cover of Eric Clapton’s ’Old Love’, complete with multiple extended guitar solos that God himself would be pleased with.

I've seen the Great Man perform this three times along with 3,000 other disciples. Each has been an immense privilege. It's not the same, though, as being less than 10 feet of where the messy, sweaty act of creation takes place. All live music is great but being up close and personal is the best.

As a couple of encores, the band take requests and effortlessly switch styles into “I will survive” complete with slapped bass and high-hat heavy disco drumming. They are not blues musicians but ‘musicians’ and can turn their collective hands to any song in any style at a moment’s notice.

Throughout the performance, members of the audience had gone up to the stage and written on a list by the stage. Judging by their dress, I assumed them to be out-of-town tourists making requests, as I understand is tradition.

At the end of the set, the singer and lead guitarist calls out two names before a final appeal for contributions to the tips bucket, explaining the band can’t afford to buy drugs without our donations. He and the rhythm guitarist then make way for the two replacements who walk out from the audience, plug in their instruments and away they go. Both are virtuoso musicians and utterly comfortable and confident in performing.

A big guy in baggy shorts, replica base-ball shirt and cap is then called and takes to the stage with his bass. The newly constituted group go into a brief huddle, before the rifle-shot crack of the snare drum precedes the new addition growling:

“There must be someway out of here; Said the Joker to the Thief” for an incendiary take of Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’.

A new guitarist joins wearing an ill-advised tye-died T-shirt with matching floppy hat for an equally incandescent, extended plundering of Jimi Hendrix’s 'Hey Joe’ follows when all the musicians can really flex their muscles as time stands still. it's intoxicating.

So it’s true, you can wander into any bar at random and find extraordinary musicians doing their thing. Bob Harris didn’t mention the audience participation though.

The guy I’m sat next to explains that everyone in Nashville is connected with music in some way and these will all be working musicians. The sheer volume of music ‘product’ that this city churns out needs a large, highly-skilled workforce.

But the looks on these performers’ faces when playing - ecstasy mixed with agony - suggest this is far more than a vocation: it's what they exist for. Oh, how I wish I could play something. Literally, everybody in my lineage has demonstrable musical talent but this gene just skipped me by.

Like New Orleans and Las Vegas, Nashville attracts the stag-party and hen-do fraternity. But unlike these cities, there is a creative energy and sense of purpose to accompany the hedonism. And that’s all down to the music.