Arriving into Nashville just as the sun was setting, I met up my host for the night, Mike. I met Mike via the Couch Surfing website a while ago. He'd never actually hosted a traveller before, but being a bit of a jet-setter himself as well as having friends crash at his on a weekly basis, he decided to sign up to meet new people. Having already visited Australia, Mike stupidly invited me to stay with him in his cool-as-fuck apartment in one of the tallest buildings in the city.
That night we hit the town. And then some. Tootsies was the best -- every wall in the place was covered in hanging photos of musicians who had visited and played there. Most of the main wall had fading sepia photos signed in calligraphy. The girl was singing as she walked atop the bar. The guitarist was name-checking cities where everyone was from, and Mike shouted Melbourne, Australia! and pointed at me. I waved my baseball cap and got some cheers. One young guy pulled me aside and told me he was heading to Australia in two weeks. He told me to give him one place in Australia that he absolutely had to visit that wasn't a normal tourist spot. After thinking for a minute, I wrote down in his phone 'the water fall to the east of Byron Bay.'
A pulled-pork sandwich and another couple of bars later, he insisted that I have a Bush Whack, which is basically a thickshake made with Bacardi 151. A message to a friend and we were in a taxi across to the other side of town to a songwriters' night. The girl who was singing up on stage came down and a mutual friend introduced us and we were chatting for a time. Her name is Audra Mae, and she's worth wiki'ing. Keep an ear out for her on two tracks of Avicii's upcoming album.
After we got back to his apartment, Mike pulled out his Desert Eagle. The .50 calibre handgun is basically a cannon, with the bullets as big as big-game rifle rounds. All of the handling of guns I've had have been around very responsible people who taught me proper gun safety, so the first thing I did was check that the chamber was cleared and the magazine was empty, and then double-checked the safety. Then we went out onto the balcony and took a bunch of photos of me holding it like a gangster.
Mike left early for work the next morning, and I nursed my hangover. I packed and headed for Third Man Records, as instructed by my recently acquired sister-in-law. The building is in a blue-collar industrial-cum-residential area, and is pretty big. The shop itself is basically two small rooms in the corner of the complex. The street was completely dead when I arrived on Monday morning, but inside there were quite a few people. Most with interesting haircuts and tattoos, standing around and looking awkward because there's not a lot to do there but nobody wants to leave. Mike told me to meet him for lunch at Arnold's, which is a Nashville institution and is just around the corner.
There was a line outside of Arnold's at 11am. We lined up half an hour later and got our "meat 'n' three" as well as some pecan pie, which was extraordinarily good. The meal was perfect for a hangover. We said our goodbyes and I headed towards Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of the Jack Daniel's Distillery. Our tour guide was a big guy in worn denim overalls and a weathered JD hat, named Ron. Ron spoke like John Goodman and his performance was just as entertaining. Interestingly, Lynchburg is a dry county, with no alcohol allowed to be sold. The distillery has an exemption for short run, special edition batches, but I left empty handed, still a bit dusty from the night before.
I pointed the car towards New Orleans and made haste. I'd spent all day driving with my window down, and the air was getting very thick and very sticky. My jeans had the consistency of when you take them off the line and put them on just a few hours before they're completely dry, purely because of the humidity. The F150 has dual fuel tanks and no dash lights, and about six hours later I was almost running on empty with 20 miles to go, but I arrived at my hotel in one piece.
Today I drove around N'Awleans and the French Quarter for a time before finding a park. Bourbon St is a lot smaller than I was expecting. The architecture in the French Quarter is so so so beautiful. Rustic and quaint and historic and beautiful. The place seems to have turned a bit touristy and fake, and I've already heard Oh When The Saints more times than anyone should on a Tuesday afternoon. I'd had images in my head of walking down Bourbon St at night, drinking Southern Comfort and listening to jazz the way Kerouac described it. For various reasons that didn't end up happening, so tonight I write this from my hotel room before another big drive tomorrow.
