Wanna hear a cool story?

Well then don’t bother reading on.

Nashville turned out to be quite the struggle. It’s not that it’s a bad place. I wouldn’t call it terrible by any means, but unless you’re into souveneir shopping and country music, the things on offer in Nashville are pretty few and far between.

Broadway St, kinda like the Beale St (Memphis) or 6th St (Austin) of Nashville, except with honky tonk bars playing country all day.

The day I arrived I made it to the hostel by mid afternoon and went for a stroll. It was then I discovered I really didn’t want to spend much time there and headed back to the hostel to nerd it up and find out if there was anything I might be remotely interested in seeing that night, especially since the hostel didn’t have much of a vibe and I knew I wouldn’t be making friends like at other hostels, and just sit around talking the night away or going to some dive bar. By some extreme stroke of luck it turned out Lucero (you might remember the mention of them in the last post) were playing a free show that night. Not that most of you reading this will care, but I was super pumped to try and catch them over here but with the way things were going it didn’t look like I would.

Went to the show and it was everything I’d hoped for, and then some. Two and a quarter hours, virtually without break and all for free. Good way to spend the little time I had in Nashville.

Next morning I was hoping to catch the 10:30am bus to get the hell out of there… I even turned up pretty early (an hour before the bus is early for me!), but got bumped to the 6pm because it was too full. Pretty bummed, did not want to spend any more time than necessary. And to make matters worse, the 6pm bus was to get into St Louis at some ungodly hour.

Though you know my luck, in the end it turned out sweet. Walking around, I saw kids lining up at some arena, so I tried checking out what was going on and whaddya know, Paramore/Tegan & Sara/New Found Glory were playing a show that night. I decided to look into an even later bus, and it turned out there was a Midnight bus (show was to end at 11), and that would arrive in St Louis at about 8:45 am. Seriously, ridiculously good luck.

Trying to fill in the day was difficult, though I did as I usually do when I don’t know what to do, and just went walking. And walking. And walking. Some gnarly blisters and a bitchin’ tan later, I somehow killed a few hours. There was even a torrential downpour at one point. And one thing I learned from that is, you can spray shoes with as much waterproofing as you like, but a storm will come along and be all like “yo, you think you can beat me? HAHAHA, take that, asshole!”. Now my shoes are damp and more of a shade of brown than black. Dammit.

Anyways, a few pics from the show:

From Beale St to Oblivion

Slightly more obscure reference to an album by a band called Clutch.

Memphis has been rad. At least from the perspective of a music nerd, this place has an incredibly rich history and the past 24 hours I’ve spent here have been great. Got in here about 9:30pm and took a brief stroll up Beale St, Memphis’ equivalent of New Orleans’ Bourbon St; touristy and bars loaded bands playing the local musical specialty (in Memphis’ case, the blues).

Today I got up early to head to Sun Studios to catch their free bus to Graceland, but in the process got suckered into doing a tour of the Sun Studios… and I gotta say it was actually a pretty cool experience. It’s a tiny building and honestly there’s not that much to see, but our guide was full of stories, and it was good to get a bit of a history behind Elvis’ rise to stardom and an insight into the importance of the museum. Words are always boring though (except for the captions, so read them), so I leave you with photos to explain the experience.

One of the claims to the 'birthplace of rock n roll' fame... A blown speaker that was 'repaired' and still used during recording despite the distorted sound. Apparently this was the actual inspiration for the distortion effect.

After a tragic accident in which he lost both arms, no-one had the heart to tell Walter the single note he kept playing was not actually a song.

The actual studio room. Everyone from Elvis to Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and even U2 recorded here.

Total goober. Those tips the tour guide was totally expecting would have you believe that was an actual microphone used by Elvis. All the oldies in the room got a little giddy when that was implied.

Graceland was all kinds of weird. I can’t count the number of times I stopped to think about all the things I’d heard about Elvis in the past, and that they were actually true. Things like how Graceland represented everything quintessentially gawdy 70′s, or that he watched 3 television sets at once.

Living room, complete with 15-foot couch on the right side (not fully in shot)

As you may be aware, the King died whilst on the throne. Legend has it, the taco bell he had the night before was doing a real number on him (a number 2, ay! Geddit?!), and the old ticker just couldn’t handle the stress.Well the throne was to be found upstairs.

This is the toilet from my hotel room, for illustrative purposes. But I'm sure the toilet he died on didn't look too different from this.

The legendary 3 sets of TVs

The 'Jungle Room'. Shagpile carpets, also lining the ceiling (not shown) and some walls.

Hall of gold records

This room was originally a racquetball court Elvis had built... Graceland turned it into another gold record/plaque storage facility... I guess it's more interesting to look at than a big white room.

Elvis' grave. Buried next to his grandmother and parents.

One of Elvis' private jets, the Lisa Marie

The gates of Graceland. This and the fence are covered in graffiti, similar to Abbey Rd studios.

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking across the city to 1372 Overton Park. This is what it looks like:

Ok, this is the literal 1372 Overton Park Ave. Again, geeky music nerd thing for me to do, apparently it is the place the singer of Lucero is/was living.

And then I spent about 45 mins getting lost searching for the actual Overton PARK, where there is a band shell which is apparently the place of Elvis’ first ever live performance.

And so concluded a day of indulging in music geekery. Spent the night doing not much aside from swimming and chowing down on some seafood gumbo (it’s a Southern specialty, kinda like a stew with rice). It was really good.

THE END