Nashville, Tennessee

Visited April 19 - May 2, 2022

By Marty

After three weeks in Red Bay, Alabama with side trips to Memphis, TN and Birmingham, AL our next destination was Nashville, TN.

  

The Natchez Trace Parkway was not far from our corner of Alabama so we jumped on it to take the scenic route to Nashville.  The Parkway is 444 miles long, running from Natchez, MS in a northeast direction to Nashville, TN. Think of it as the red headed stepchild of the Blue Ridge Parkway. "The Trace" is lightly traveled (commercial vehicles are not allowed) as it winds through woods and meadows with practically no outside world (homes or businesses) visible for it's entire length.

The Parkway roughly follows the "Old Natchez Trace" a historic travel corridor used by American Indians, "Kaintucks", European settlers, slave traders, soldiers, and future presidents. 

We were on the Trace for about 150 miles of our drive to the Nashville KOA Resort. Faithful readers of this blog may recall that we drove from Red Bay, AL to Natchez, MS in Dec, 2020 mostly on the Trace.  Between these two drives we have driven the lion's share of the 444 miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway.

 

 

 

 

 

Nashville is the capital city of Tennessee. We started our Nashville activities by roaming the corridors of Tennessee power...

 

Davy Crockett is well known as the "King of the Wild Frontier" and for having died at the Alamo, but lesser known to most for having served in both the Tennessee and U.S. House of Representatives.

 

The Tennessee House of Representatives was not meeting on this day, but the Senate was. We went into the Senate gallery during their session but did not take any photos.

 

 

The Hermitage Hotel is Nashville's swanky historic hotel.

And known far and wide for it's damned impressive art deco men's restroom! It was voted American's Best Restroom in 2008 by Cintas Corporation (Cintas provides restroom hygiene products and services).

 

We walked around Vanderbilt University where the prominent architectural feature is Nicholas S. Zeppos tower, part of the residential college.  Pretty sweet dorm if you ask me!

 

We were joined for four nights in Nashville by my sisters Mary and Liz and their husbands Rick and Brian.

 

 

 

The Parthenon in Centennial Park near Vanderbilt University serves as the Nashville Art Museum.

From Nashvilleparthenon.com:

The Parthenon in Nashville is the world’s only exact-size and detail replica of the original temple in Athens, Greece.  When Tennessee celebrated its 100th year of statehood with the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville took advantage of its nickname “Athens of the South” and built the Fine Art Building as a copy of Athens’ most famous building and the epitome of Greek classical architecture.

If you want to read more about the Nashville Parthenon (creation, restoration, etc.) knock yourself out:

The Nashville Parthenon

The Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument in Centennial Park. 

Tennessee played a pivotal role in the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in 1920. By that summer, 35 of the 36 states necessary had ratified the amendment. Suffragists saw Tennessee as their last, best hope for ratification before the 1920 presidential election.

An intense summer of pro and anti-suffrage activity in Nashville ended after a young congressman, Harry T. Burn, changed his vote to support ratification. Burn broke a tie in the House of Representatives and made history. Local lore says that Burn's mother strong armed him into changing his vote. Way to go mom!

We visited Andrew Jackson's Hermitage, his home for 41 years until his death in 1845. The Hermitage is the third most visited presidential museum after Mt. Vernon and Monticello.

We had Meryl Streep AND Harry Potter (in a poorly executed witness protection program) for tour guides!  

I'd show you more pictures, but they wouldn't let us take any inside! And they have clear acrylic panels covering the doorways into each room (you have to keep this in mind when you try to poke your head in for a better look...)  Frankly, I think they are a little over the top in their preservation related rules.  We've toured a good number of historic homes, including Monticello, and never encountered these restrictions.

 

Can you tell me where we can get some good BBQ in Nashville?  Martin's it is, and was!

 

 

Nashville has a pretty popular and successful NFL team

 

 

 

 

Most of us have heard of Nashville's "Music City" nickname. I learned on our visit that a newer moniker for Nashville is "Nash Vegas".  I totally get it!

Lower Broadway is the Honky Tonk neighborhood with bar after bar after bar.  ALL of the bars have live music, many with different bands playing at the same time on multiple floors. For the most part there is no cover charge. We speculated on how many bands would be playing at any given time in this part of Nashville and decided it was at least 30 and could even be 50!  It's a scene!

 

 

We only went to a couple of places and the one that was pretty awesome (too small and too old school for the Bachelorette party crowd) was Robert's Western World.  Kelley's Heroes plays an awesome version of "Ghost Riders in the Sky".  Yes, the lead guitar player is standing on top of the stand up bass guitar while both he and the bass player are playing their instruments.

Here is a snippet of Kelly's Heroes playing Ghost Riders in the Sky:

No, this is not a strip club on Broadway. 

 

Nuta Kotlyarenko, known professionally as Nudie Cohn, was a Ukranian American tailor who earned fame with his rhinestone covered suits. His suits were known popularly as "Nudie Suits" and were created for some of the most famous celebrities of his era. Think Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, George Jones, ZZ Top, and, of course. Elvis!  Country singer Porter Wagoner admitted acquiring 52 Nudie suits, each costing between $11,000 and $18,000.

 

You-know-who . . . sporting a Nudie Suit in The Electric Horseman

 

We got the stink eye from the Geico gecko while visiting a street fair on historic main street in Franklin, about 30 minutes south of Nashville.

 

 

The Listening Room is an intimate venue that serves dinner while songwriters play their songs.  The venue has been voted Best Singer/Songwriter venue in Nashville. We listened to Kent Blazy (on the right) and friends.  Kent has written seven number one hits for artists such as Garth Brooks, Diamond Rio, and Patty Loveless.  You probably know this Garth Brooks hit song, co-written by Blazy:

I've seen this photo of Willie before and really liked it. I saw it again in the lounge of The Listening Room. The bar reflected in the left center of the photo was an accidental yet nice effect.

Lower Broadway on mid-morning Sunday.  We came downtown for a walking tour. By 11:00 a.m. the sidewalks were full again (not as full as they are in the evening mind you) with music wafting (or blaring) out of the honky tonks.

Our walking tour was conducted by Ryan. It was one of the best tours we've ever taken. Ryan was really informative, humorous, and, as you can see above, animated.  That's Chet Atkins playing the guitar behind Ryan.

The tour wound up in front of Tootsie's Orchid lounge, the historic watering hole and prototypical honky-tonk located across the alley from the Ryman Auditorium.  More about the Ryman below. 

The Tennessee Titans stadium sits directly across the river from downtown and the honky tonk district. 

 

This photo is taken from the pedestrian bridge that crosses the Cumberland River.

After our Sunday walking tour we returned to our favorite honky tonk, Robert's Western World, to hear John England and the Western Swingers.

Fried bologna sandwiches are the house specialty at Roberts!

We toured Belmont Mansion

And took in a show at the Ryman Auditorium

Gladys Knight (sans Pips) still has it! Gladys performed her biggest hit (about inclement evening weather in a southern state known for peaches).  Listen to a short snippet:

 

The Grand Ole Opry has been showcasing country music since 1925. The show gained it's fame performing in the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville. In 1975 the Opry moved to a new venue east of downtown. You can't visit Nashville without taking in the Opry, so we did!  

 

The format is multiple artists playing just a few songs each. The show is two hours long. Above is Clay Walker, and a brief part of one of his hit songs below.

Let me HIGHLY recommend to you the Ken Burns Country Music documentary, released in 2019. It was recommended to me by two of my brothers-in-law.  We started watching it (eight episodes of two hours each) just before our Nashville visit and completed it after our visit. It's a great documentary and Nashville really does stand out as the epicenter of country music. Here is the trailer: