Nashvegas

"It used to be that Nashville would work to develop promising artists."
Crystal Gayle


Nashville used to have more integrity than just looking at the bottom line.
Crystal Gayle


Is this it? Is this Music City? Is this the Mecca of Americana music?
Todd, Chris, Ross, and I wander around downtown. Its a Monday night. Every bar is still host to prodigious players...'Robert's' is the only one I really vibe with tonight, much like the other night. The players are at the top of their game. Virtuosos. and crowd-pleasers. I can learn a lot from these guys.


Roy Acuff, Lester Flatt, Bill Monroe, Crystal Gayle, Kitty Wells. I imagine you on that stage, or on some stage across town back when the strip on Broadway here in Nashville was lined with brothels and speakeasies. When country music was the antecdote for the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II. I imagine you pulling up a barstool here next to me and rubbing your tired eyes. If you walk the back-Nashville streets and alleys near the train tracks in west central, you can trick yourself into hearing the static laden radio frequency of the Grand Ole Opry show still buzzing in the night air. Let's order another round, boys, and toast a bygone day and its bygone working-class heroes. This place is not a museum, it is the once fertile soil where our roots still lie. There may be a drought, but tonight I'm praying for rain, and preparing to step foot onto the Cash Estate. If anyone ever understood the complexity...the grandeur, the underbelly, the in-and-outs of this town and its industry...its Johnny and June Carter Cash.