I’m writing as I’m flying out of Nashville, bound for St Louis and onward to San Francisco. It’s been a week of place names I know through songs, literature and film. Yesterday morning, I braved the snow and ice and drove eastside. I was planning on filling the time while waiting for the print shop to call and let me know my Cds were ready.
What, according to the printout the receptionist had given me, should have been a nine minute drive – including my first interstate miles – took me about an hour and a half and, while I found Lanes Motor Museum, I went to my first real American diner instead. The woman who served me could have come strait out of a movie. Black, motherly and very friendly. I even heard her nagging an old boy – looked like a regular customer – to ‘Go to the doctor and get yourself seen too. You men are all alike when it comes to doctors!’. Beautiful.
I had a few other things to do apart from the CD pick up on the West side, return my ‘Chevy’ – surely the reddest car in Nashville – and I was going to see a play reading at the ‘Post Depression Theatre’, somewhere in East Nashville. The play – based on legend, Kinky Friedman was being produced*** by Jaz and Jamie who I met on Thursday at the Commodore.
Having overshot the museum by some miles, I turned around and was heading back when the aforementioned diner beckoned – a Waffle House. After my 4.99 special, a BLT with a bowl of Burt’s chilli and an iced tea, I got a call to say the Cds were ready and figured I’d like to spend more time looking at the cars than I now had so best to head West and pick them up. I’m a really bad tourist – I love everything and particularly the everyday mundane stuff that’s different from my own everyday mundane.
I also got a series of texts from who I don’t know as I don’t even know my US cell number. Getting drunk and ‘making out’ was the desire of the textee. A good idea but not today.
To be sure, to be sure, I asked the motherly waitress for directions to Hillsboro, explaining that I wasn’t the best at following the US road system.
‘Ya take a right outta here – stay on the road and follow signs for Chattenooga till the road divides and follow the Memphis signs a while. Hillsboro’s signed after that and you can’t miss it.’ Poetry, and I didn’t.
When you’re on your first interstate and your phone rings, startling you somewhat, and you notice the caller display is Ralph Murphy – vice president of Membership, ASCAP – you take the call. ‘Hello my good friend, and how are you today?’
‘Scared of crashing my Chevy, Ralph and how’s your stubbed toe?’, followed by, ‘Can I call you back Ralph? I’m about to peel off my first interstate and I’d love to bring the car back in good condition this evening.’
‘You sure can, Sean. I want to give you a number of a very good friend of mine who’s expecting you to call him soon – and he’s “connected”’ – Music to my ears. Thank you Ralph!
Got the discs. Rang Mr Connected and set up a meeting at my home from home, Dan McGuiness’s, for 4 O’Clock, replied to a couple more amorous texts and got back to my hotel – a walk across from Dan’s. Burnt 3 or 4 demo’s onto the beautifully printed discs, dealt with emails – including a response to a rough recording – on the mac – made and emailed to Steve Goodie’s studio, earlier on. Steve said he really liked the song and would work on a track and suggested treatment for me to come on in and put it down on my next visit – in 2 weeks time.
A good meeting at Dan’s and even found Enterprise without getting lost and with Cherry Chevalier in one piece – albeit with way to much fuel in the tank. The kindly dropped me back too.
Six O’Clock – ‘Becoming Kinky’ starts at seven thirty and, as there’s an open mic going on in the hotel’s ‘Hall of Fame’, I got to play a couple of songs while waiting for the taxi – a big mother-f*cker of a truck, and black as the driver. And glimpses of a TV I’d had today were showing all the accidents of the day – ice and snow is big news in Nashville and there must be cameras everywhere. The big 4x4 taxi was, on this occasion very welcome this evening.
*** now on St Louis – San Francisco flight.
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