Nashville: Music City

FILG: The man with a laser-like vision

Much to the dismay of Father-in-law Galore's daughter, wife, and niece, 4th of July this year brought with it a quest of male bonding through shared hobbies of music, food, & drink. Obviously, all inherently male activities.

After some initial ideas of spanning Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Memphis, and Nashville, we settled upon a trip focused on Nashville. It was fantastic. I dream of a return to visit some of the sights we couldn't squeeze in this round.

The opportunity to develop deeper relationships with those I rarely see and spend time with is something I'll appreciate forever. Sadly, we never thought to take a group photo -- evidently, pursuing improved collective common sense is not an inherently male activity -- but photographer Chris got the following of our firework outing along the Cumberland River:

Three Generations of Patriots

With a name like Music City, Nashville has a reputation to uphold. As a music enthusiast, I was there to see how it compared. Seattle is unquestionably a music powerhouse, but in Nashville you can see that music runs deep in the core. It's maybe a bit commercialized and touristy, but the standard house bands we saw in restaurants and pubs were surprisingly talented (as were the buskers) and the scene for singer-songwriters at the Bluebird Cafe puts off the belief that the town contains an overabundance of great writers and artists waiting for a break. Highlights were the Don Kelley Band & Brazilbilly at Robert's Western World and two straight sets at the fantastic Bluebird Cafe.









Chris and Ken also did some food research and recommended we try out the Loveless Cafe and Prince's Hot Chicken.


Because Chris got short shrift on the group photo above, I'll let him talk us through our order at Prince's:

Despite my vegetarian status, I'm always up for a challenge and thus temporarily modified my dietary restrictions so I could get a sense for the heat. Oddly, my mouth feels a tingle of heat just thinking about it. We eventually completed the above order and returned for their Extra Hot rendition just because you have to.

Before leaving, Don demanded I take the following picture just so. I'm not really sure why:

Sober assessment

The Loveless Cafe is famed for it's homemade biscuits and biscuit-lady:

Artist	Craft
Ham >= Plate

Lastly, we took a moment to honor those that could not be with us:

Now that this debrief is out, I can begin adequately looking forward to a trip to Austin for our next tour of a musically influential city.

(For those craving more, Matthew and Chris posted pics here and here.)