The drive to Nashville is long and pretty hairy. It rains so hard it completely neutralises the windscreen wipers.  Most traffic takes the sensible option and slows to a crawl, except of course, the small cocked, brain dead truck drivers who would presumably view slowing down because they can't actually see, as some kind of threat to their manhood or infringment of their constitutional rights to be pricks.  Wearing their t shirts with the legend "When you come for mine" {Picture of an assault rifle}......"Bring yours!" {another assault rifle} they barrel along at god knows what speed kicking uo so much spray as to make it impossible to drive safely anywhere near them.

Anyway, we make our way to our nashville hotel.  Here I have to mention that cost per hour for hotel rooms in the US has to be among the worst deals anywhere.  It's virtually impossible to find anywhere which will check you in prior to 3pm and check out is always 11am! bloody ridiculous.  We get to the hotel around 4:30 and despite the prominently displayed "check out by 11am" our room still isn't ready, I mean what have they been doing for the last 5 and a half hours?  We take our laundry to the machines and by 5:30 our room is finally ready and we can go out squeaky clean.

The hotel runs a free downtown shuttle which is useful as it's still absolutely pissing down.  We get dropped at the end of honky tonk row and I have to say the place is absolutley wired! It's a little after 6 and the road is flanked both sides with bars each of which has at least one band.  Some operate on 3 floors with a different act playing on each! The street is heaving, there are "Cyclebars" pedalling up and down.  Don't know if you've seen these but it's basicaly a bar well with bar on all 4 sides and the barstools are equiped with pedals.  So about a dozen of you sit up to the bar and pedal around while drinking beers and cocktails.  Looks fun, sounds noisy.

We walk all the way up the street just to get a feel of the place.  Each bar has a window backing out onto the street from which the barstaff can remove the glass so punters outside can be encouraged in by goodtimes inside.  Of course, drummers being the loud bastards they are they're always shoved to the back, and while some have perspex shields to protect the punters' shell likes inside the bar, this doesn't help matters outside!  It sounds like a B&Q shed building convention as maybe 50 or so drummers pound  away remorselessly on different tunes. I have some experience of this as I spent what felt like a hundred years in a band with a drummer who sounded like 50 drummers, and he always seemed to be playing a different tune.

The only way to escape is to actually go in somewhere, which we do and we're rewarded with a simply amazing band. Upright bass, fiddle telecaster drums and a singer who not only had a fantastic voice but looked good in a stetson.  I'm not a huge C&W fan but they played the stuff so beautifully and managed to pick a set list that avoided the more cliched stuff.

Convinced we'd seen the best nashville had to offer I didn't want to leave, but bugger me straight across the road a western swing band "The Western Boys" have ages ranging from a 20 year old upright bass player to an 89 year old fiddle player (Pappy) another stetson wearing cowboy singer who had a voice like chocolate and a peddle steel player who was simply mind boggling.  Now, here it gets really beeeeezar boy!  The drummer comes over during a break collecting tips, he hears our accents.

"Waar Y'all from?"

"Portsmouth in England"

"Oh, you ever here of a place called Havant?"

"Only lived their most of my life"

"Thars a place thar called Leigh Park"

Honest, no bullshit, this guy knows leigh Park!  Turns out he did a UK tour with Doctor Hook and played at "That thar town hall" and befriended a couple from Leigh Park with whom he still swaps mail etc.

Playing Hank Williams style music him and his band simply tore the place up, what a stunning night of music!

The Wrecking Crew were a collective of  session musicians based in LA, it's estimated they played on many hundreds of hit records, more than the total output of the beatles the rolling stones and the beach boys combined.  Here in Nashville they have a collection of the musical instruments used by the band in a recreation of the "pit" in which they used to record.  Anecdotes from the band members are relayed all around on screens.  To stand next to the kit used on everything from Strangers in the night by Sinatra to river deep mountain high is just extraordinary. It doesn't stop there, the musicians hall of fame here in Nashville is, for me, the best time you can have without a pound of seedless grapes, a frogmans outfit, two live squid, some swarfega, custard and a mini bus full of schoolgirls.

The stones, to hendrix, a wonderful paul mcartney exhibit, The Birds, Sun records, a mind bending Jerry Lee lewis exhibition, some Paul Simon memorabelia including hand written crib notes for the session musicians on Take me to the Mardi Gras.  I can't put it all down.  If you are in anyway interested in popular music you will adore this place.

We can't improve on last nights live music can we?  We have now started to notice that while the lead guys tend to be different some of the key players turn up in bands up and down the strip for different sessions.  What we now see is that these guys all tend to congregate in a couple of bars at the top of the strip for the early 5-6pm slot.  Each has a cellphone which they presumably use for charts/lyrics as they'll play whatever you request.  The standard of the musicianship and quality of the vocal work is humbling.

After an hour of just sublimely played stuff we wander out into the streets and turn into a bar and a mealstrom! The band are The Eskimo Brothers.  A trio of upright Bass, drums, and a well flayed telecaster.  Definately at the rockier end of the strasse they have the place whipped to a fine frenzy and pull out all the stops with bass being ridden, played behind the head, the works.  The guitar player/singer is 60% quiff, 20% grease and 20% tattoo and he's really very very good. Another amazing night. 

We take a turn right around the City and visit the Acropolis, Vanderbilt uni, music row where all the studios are.  We drop off in "The Gulch" where we spot an "English Pub".  They have a fiendish pale ale brewed in Jack Daniels barrels, we have a taste, I fall in love with it, "How strong is it" we ask. "9%" we're told.  I have a speckled Hen, the bar owner asks how we like it as we're from Britain. "It's a little too cold", "Here have this to make up for it" a half of really nice IPA.

Wew spend part of the day on a hop on hop off.  In part because it's pissing down, but also because it seems a good way to learn about the City.  Our host/narrator is the improbably named "Starlene" (I kid you not)  Starlene is really very knowledgable but for me the most intersting snippet was how Nashville came to be called Music City.  In my mind I'd assumed Hank Williams or the like had suggested

"We'll all be back to this here music city y'all if'n the crick don't rise"

The real storey's a little less likley.  It seems that a gospel choir was formed in Nashville to raise money for education in the city.  The singers became popular locally, then Nationally and gfinally internationally.  In fact, the visited London and sang for Queen Victoria.  So impressed (amused?) was Queen Vic that she wrote to the then Govenor of Nashville to thank him for the concert and suggested that if the Gospel Choir was representative of Nashville it.................

"Must indeed be Music City"

The great thing about Nashville as our friends in Gatlinburg pointed out is that the live music starts at 11am and runs until 3am next morning.  This means music is happening when you want it.

"you don't have to hang around in a bar until 9 or 10 pm for the damn band to start....man oh man, arm drunker 'n' hay-all ba 10 pm, gimme the damn music at 6 when I gits thar".

So now we have this nashville music thing locked off.  4:30 we're in Laylas Honky Tonk listening to a band of presumably session guys that virtually reduce me to tears with a note perfect rendition of Witchitaw Linesman. When they quit we follow the pedal steel player (He's simply amazing!) to his next gig and some more western swing, then into another place where a band is rocking the joint.  It's the same bass player and drummer from the Eskimo Brothers.  As we walk in they start a break and approach us for a tip.

"We didn't hear you yet, are you any good?"

"Ard larke to thank so sir"

They have probably the best guitar player I can remember seeing, he plays stuff on a simple Tele, straight into a beat up old fender amp that defies description. I nspent some time yesterday looking at an exhibit which featured Albert Lee, one of my heroes, this guy is up there, sickeningly, I doubt he's older than 22.

So decision day, it's still peeing down when we make our way to the breakfast room. The plan has been to head from here toward New Orleans but it looks as if it'll be raining there all week so we consider side stepping the rain and going instead to Memphis.  There's a town mid way called Tuscaloosa where we stayed last time we were here, nice place, we decide to go there the make the last minute decision.  Actually we thought it would be nice to rest up a couple of days and as we motor into Alabama and the road becomes lined with cotton fields which stretch white to the horizon

it feels like a nice idea to pitch up here.

We find a motel, tonite will be around $70,

"tomorrow? thet will be $265 sir"

"sweet jesus, why? I mean Whaar?"

"Football, this town has a 100,000 population, the football ground holds 101,000, they gotta stay somewhar"

One Night it is then.