{"id":174,"date":"2012-10-28T14:37:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-28T13:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/?p=174"},"modified":"2012-11-02T08:20:25","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T07:20:25","slug":"nashville-the-capital-of-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/2012\/10\/28\/nashville-the-capital-of-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Nashville: The Capital of Country (travelog entry 10)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we have wended our way through the Deep South, the food has been getting sweeter and sweeter and the drawl thicker and thicker. Many dishes we order taste like dessert and we are afraid to even try dessert, certain that it will instantly shock our systems into diabetic comas. (The Dairy Queen has some kind of giant ice cream concoction called the Blizzard and there is a sign reading, \u201cOur promise to you: If We Don\u2019t Flip Your Blizzard Upside Down, it\u2019s FREE!\u201d Don\u2019t ask me what this means.)<\/p>\n

The barbecue sauce on the pork is thick with molasses and the crust on the deep fried food is like crumble cake. In one of the motels, wanting to try a new cereal for breakfast, Egon accidentally discovers Froot Loops, a breakfast cereal sweeter than any candy sold in Norway. He throws them out after one bite. At one point, in a gas station, Egon is searching twelve meters of six rows of shelves of candy in vain for some licorice or salty candy like they have in Norway. Everything is sweet. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s all bad, but the level of sweetness is startling. In Asheville, a bizarre hippy enclave in the middle of hillbillyland, we get the best scones I\u2019ve ever had (Egon says his mother\u2019s are just as good, but I haven\u2019t had the pleasure of their aquaintance). Asheville reminds me of a little northern California town in the 1980\u2019s. On every street corner, barefoot free spirits are selling some kind of handcrafted crystal necklace with cosmic energy or playing the digeridoo. I would never have expected to see this in Tennessee.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Apart from the anomaly of Asheville, we\u2019re deep in Redneck Country. Every bar has TV sets on every wall, every diner and fast-food joint serves grits, pick-up trucks outnumber sedans on the road, and anti-Obama bumper stickers abound (there seems to be more to say against Obama than for Romney).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By the light of the setting sun we see a city skyline and pull off the freeway into Nashville.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Nashville\"<\/a>

Nashville, the capital of Country<\/p><\/div>\n

Nashville has more musicians per capita than any other city in the world. The main street of downtown is preposterously wide for the architecture, three lanes in each direction plus space for parking, traffic lights at the intersections. All this asphalt between two sidewalks full of bar-hoppers is like a lit stage making cruising irresistable to all walks of motorhead and showboat, from greasers in restored antique muscle cars to farmboys in pick-up trucks to black dudes on tricked out Harleys with lights on the spokes and engines. Down each side of this slowly moving parade is a line of slightly run-down two-story brick bars with garish neon signs. Every single one of them for block after block has a band playing live on a stage and a bar serving Coors in bottles. I haven\u2019t seen such a concentration of live music performances since New Orleans in the nineties. But in New Orleans, it\u2019s all jazz, whereas here, country dominates.<\/p>\n

\"Cruising<\/a>

Cruising Broadway in Nashville<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For Nashville\u2019s resident army of musical talent, the drill is very simple. A band gets a time slot at a bar, they play on stage while people drink their beers at the bar, and then when the set is over they pass the hat for tips and move on so the next act can take the stage. There is no cover charge, and customers can walk in and out at any time, and the next act is right next door, all the way down the street. A good place will try to book acts with a certain level of talent or a certain profile, but there are a lot of bars and chance plays a huge role in what you might encounter. The bands take home only what they collect in tips. Occasionally a great musician like Jack White or Dwight Yoakim does a show in these very bars and you never know when JD Wilkes from the Legendary Shack Shakers might turn up playing the harmonica.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark Robertson, the bass player from the Legendary Shack Shakers, tips us off that Chris Casello, the best slap bass player on the planet is playing with a guy named Don Kelly at a bar called Mark\u2019s Western World so we go there and grab some bar stools just as they are starting. The band is great. They have a guitar player who looks like he\u2019s fifteen but plays incredibly well \u2013 I thought he\u2019s going to be famous some day and I\u2019ll be able to say I saw him live in 2012. I asked him his name and it was something like David Denito, but since I can\u2019t remember for sure, whatever young guitar player becomes really famous in the next few years, I\u2019m going to say oh yeah, I saw him in 2012. It will be like I did, anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Mark's<\/a>

Don Kelly playing at Mark’s Western World<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m feeling very happy that I let Egon convert me to country, because not so very long ago I wouldn\u2019t have even come in this place. But it\u2019s not all country, either: Mark tells us that Mike Watt (from the Minute Men, now playing with the Stooges) is playing down the street. After a little more bar hopping Mark takes us to his haunts across the bridge, sort of the Brooklyn of Nashville, to a bar where the music is played by a DJ (they\u2019re playing Turboneger!) and you can smoke indoors. Mark knows everybody and introduces us to some of the locals. We have a great time discussing music and politics and whatnot late into the night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we have wended our way through the Deep South, the food has been getting sweeter and sweeter and the drawl thicker and thicker. Many dishes we order taste like dessert and we are afraid to even try dessert, certain that it will instantly shock our systems into diabetic comas. (The Dairy Queen has some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travelog"],"featured_image_src":"","featured_image_src_square":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Svenonius","author_link":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/author\/peter-arne-svenonius\/"},"rbea_author_info":{"display_name":"Svenonius","author_link":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/author\/peter-arne-svenonius\/"},"rbea_excerpt_info":"As we have wended our way through the Deep South, the food has been getting sweeter and sweeter and the drawl thicker and thicker. Many dishes we order taste like dessert and we are afraid to even try dessert, certain that it will instantly shock our systems into diabetic comas. (The Dairy Queen has some […]","category_list":"Travelog<\/a>","comments_num":"0 comments","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/psv000\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}