I’m slightly late in getting around to writing this….okay, actually more than a year late. Something that Karen and I always try to do is visit a new place each year. That’s been curtailed for the last few years until both of our children reach an age at which we can travel more easily, but I’ve still managed to see some cool U.S. cities for work trips over the last three years. I had always sort of intended to write about the places we’ve visited (and have in some cases), so I wanted to begin chronicling these trips and what struck me about each place.
I’m not sure what I expected from Nashville, but it wasn’t what I experienced. The one type of music of which I’m not really a fan is country. I suppose that I expected to be buried in twang, but was pleasantly surprised. While a lot of local bars and restaurants are named for country music stars and honor the city’s heritage in that way, there’s music of all kinds everywhere. Walk down the street and it greets you – one melody will fade out as another fades in, a sort of encompassing Doppler effect in Nashville’s streets.
Music is the soul of Nashville, and its impossible to not be impacted by that. Everyone there seems to have a musical aspiration – you’ll pass someone carrying a guitar if you hang around long enough. I was sitting in my hotel restaurant one evening, and an old song from my high school days came over the speakers. In a rare moment of having my memory for music history trivia fail me, I downloaded and used Shazam to help me recall the title and artist. I’ve been using Shazam since, adding some of those old musical memories to my collection.
That, I think, is my biggest takeaway from Nashville: it re-ignited my love for music.
I had visited Tennessee before – a close friend lived in Chattanooga for a while – and thought that I knew what to expect. Certainly there are commonalities, but Nashville is very different, even in a different timezone. That confused me at first as I wasn’t aware of this fact, and one of my Lyft drivers confessed that its odd to have part of the state in one time zone and part in another. It’s true, though….plan on landing in CDT if you visit.
Being a rock history aficionado, I always visit the Hard Rock Cafe whenever I visit a city in which I can find one. Nashville’s Hard Rock is one of the better ones I’ve visited. One of Dave Matthew’s guitars was on display.
Something else that stood out to me about Nashville was a sense of celebration, almost of pageantry. The music brings a life with it, a life that flows out into the streets on any night of the week and brings a feeling of euphoria with it. I’m not sure it’s possible to be in Nashville and not have a thoroughly fantastic time.
I had a great time visiting Nashville, and every time I fall in love with a good song again, I feel like it’s still a part of me somehow.