USA road trip, Post 3: Keeping it country in Nashville

When we arrived in Nashville on Wednesday night, we quickly checked into our Howard Johnson motel room, then headed to the home of a couple we'd been in contact with so they could take us to their meeting. Back at Earl and Dolores' home after the meeting, we enjoyed ice cream and cookies and a tour of their amazing house!



The next day we set out to explore Nashville, the home of American country music! First we headed to the Grand Ole Opry House. This is a huge concert theatre that seats 4400 and is home to the oldest continuous radio program in the United States. The Grand Ole Opry has been broadcasting live country music concerts since 1925. Country music stars become Opry members by achieving particular success in their career and by agreeing to do a certain number of live performances at the Opry House each year. It's a very prestigious thing to be invited by the show's management to be an Opry member, and currently there are only about 60 members – including Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks and Carrie Underwood.

Anyway, it was a very chilly morning and the area around the Opry House was almost deserted. We took some photos around the outside, discovered that the nearby Opry Museum was closed for Christmas, and then did a “front of house” tour inside the the Opry House. The tour guide was a sweet old lady who seemed to have worked at the Opry for a very long time. The stage was set up for the New York City Rockettes' Christmas show, which is being performed at the Opry House while the Opry is being broadcast from another of its venues, the Ryman Auditorium, until January. Anyway, it was an interesting tour and one of the essential Opry-related Nashville experiences! And I got two Opry guitar picks from the Opry Shop. :)



We also took the art of tourist photography to a whole new level of committment... :P



Next we went to Broadway, which is the street where it all happens – live music, shops selling western boots and hats, and lots of neon signs! Just like Beale Street in Memphis, only it's mostly country music instead of blues. We only had about an hour there, but we tried on lots of Stetson hats, saw lots of fringed cowboy boots and shirts (in the shops, not on people!), and even encountered an Elvis or two. :)



The highlight of the day for me was going to the Bluebird Café for dinner and the 6pm show. This is a café I had read about on tripadvisor.com and in our Lonely Planet guide, where local singers and songwriters perform nightly. The late shows incur a cover charge, but the 6pm slot is free if you sit at the bars or in the “pews” (where we were) – you're just requested to spend a minimum of $7 pp on food. The cafe's slogan is “Shhhh!” as you're not meant to talk during the songs - it's an intimate concert rather than just background music. Many now-famous stars played at the Bluebird Café early in their careers – the walls were covered with their signed photos.

On this Thursday night there were four young singer-songwriters in the show – they sat on four stools with their guitars and just took it in turn to play songs. Their names were Jenn Schott, Mallory Pike, Paul Sikes and Adam Wheeler. They are all professional songwriters working for studios in Nashville, and between them they had even written songs for a few country singers/ bands I have heard of – Jenn wrote Little Town for Lonestar and Adam wrote A Few Questions for Clay Walker! Anyway, they were BRILLIANT!! Great voices, great original songs (even one written the day before!), great spontaneous harmonies with each other... it was a fantastic show! Mallory is actually Universal Records' most recently signed-on star-to-be, and all of them have MySpace websites with samples of their songs if you're interested. :)



Anyhow, that was our day in Nashville! I thoroughly enjoyed it... Ben, well, endured it. :P Next stop – Washington DC!

USA road trip, Post 2: Walking in Memphis

At 9am on Tuesday the 16th, the day after our visit to NASA, we set off on the first leg of our Texas-to-New-York road trip: the 1000 kms (600 miles) from Marvin and Carolyn's house in Pearland, Texas, to the motel room we had booked in Memphis, Tennessee.

We had decided the previous night to go via Shreveport in Louisiana, as we were told we would encounter better traffic that way - and this route offered the additional bonus of being able to stop in and visit some of our dining companions from the cruise! So we called Dave and Barb en route and stopped in to visit them for a couple of hours. They took us out for a delicious late lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant. It was a really nice visit! The clock below was on their wall ("because we're backwards in the South")... what do you think the time is?? :)



After a very big day of driving, we arrived in Memphis at 10pm - the home of Elvis Presley!!! Our accommodation was at an Extended Stay America chain, which was exceptional value and had very fast WiFi - which we've encountered all week, actually, and that explains why this is my 10th blog entry in a week!!

We had only planned on having an evening in Memphis, but as we arrived so late on Tuesday, we spent a few hours in town before we left the next day. We decided to check out Beale Street, which had been recommended by Dave and Barb and our Lonely Planet guide. Beale Street is pretty much all about blues music, and is also tied in with the history of the region's civil rights movement - click here to read more about it. Since we were there around the middle of the day, it was mostly deserted - I imagine it gets hopping at night though! It was mostly neon signs, blues bars, and souvenir shops - pretty tacky but still interesting!



The most fun we had on Beale Street was exploring A. Schwab's, a real timewarp of a store selling everything you can think of. Especially hats!!! A. Schwab's was also mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. Their motto is "If you can't find it at A. Schwab's, you're probably better off without it!" We ended up buying a bottle of A. Schwab brand "Squeal BBQ sauce" for Liesl and Ken, and a Very Big Hat for me (last photo below). :)



After leaving Beale Street in the early afternoon, we had to set off for Nashville pretty soon to make it in time to meet up with some folk who had arranged to take us to their meeting that night, but we managed to fit in a Graceland drive-by first. :) It wasn't situated at all how I would have imagined (i.e. outside town in a huge gated property) - it was just beside a normal-looking main road (called Elvis Presley Boulevard) in town! We couldn't actually see Elvis's house from the road or driveway, but we did catch a glimpse of his private jet (the "Lisa Marie"). They've even built a "Heartbreak Hotel" at the end of "Lonely St" right next door...



Anyway, that was about it for Memphis - it would have been good to have more time so we could see the city at night and visit Graceland properly. But that was the trade-off for choosing to hire a car rather than getting more sightseeing time in by travelling overnight by Greyhound bus. With the weather as cold as it has been (from about 3°C upwards - no snow yet), and the wonderful convenience of having our own transport, we have no regrets!! Well, I'll tell you all about Nashville next time. :D Goodnight!