From a Brooklyn Basement

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Day 13: Tennessee Blues

Sunday morning I hit Route 40, headed for Nashville. Saw more highway patrol officers than I’ve ever seen anywhere, including on the Central Coast section of 101. I’ll put it this way: In a really gross Exxon station bathroom an hour or so east of Memphis, someone had scrawled on the back of the door, “Watch your speed. Pigs galore from here to Memphis.” Somehow, I didn’t get a speeding ticket.

Reached Nashville in the early afternoon, driving through the rocky hills of the suburbs and sitting in some traffic that I’ll never know why there was traffic there, because after ten minutes I flipped a bitch and took an alternate route. Checked into my motel, an Extended Stay place where the computer at the front desk went on the fritz with a half dozen people trying to check in, making all the travelers as well as the clerk just utterly miserable. After almost an hour, I got into my room and crashed out for a couple hours.

That evening I went down to the Gulch, a trendy part of Nashville just south of downtown, where I ended up eating a chicken sandwich at an upscale bar/restaurant on the first floor of a condo complex (food wasn’t bad, really cool and friendly bartenders, but you know exactly the kind of place I’m taking about. I could have been in Walnut Creek), where I watched the first half of the NBA All-Star Game (brief interlude: one of the ways you know Blake Griffin is an all-time great dunker is that in the All-Star game, the other players all want to throw him alley-oops). I then went over to the Station Inn, a small but famous live music venue (my friend Stan says he saw Doc Watson play there back in the 70s) that was hosting a free bluegrass jam. There was a sign on the door saying, “We are full, try back at 10 p.m. Please respect this.” Needless to say, I did not respect this. There was nowhere to sit, but I stood in the back of the room and watched across the picnic tables (which, incidentally, were populated with a ton of good-looking woman: this is, happily, a common circumstance in Nashville) while between 15 and 20 musicians (including a little girl who looked to be about 10-years old who was just crazy good on the fiddle) jammed away on bluegrass tunes.

Cruddy picture, but it kinda gives you an idea of the Station Inn.

I drank a Yazoo Pale Ale (locally-brewed, and tasty!) and watched for about an hour before I got sick of standing by myself at the back of the room and went back to my motel.

I should mention that this is the day I got sick of myself. You know how when you travel with another person, after a couple of weeks, no matter how well you get along with that person under normal circumstances, that person will inevitably get on your nerves? Well, I’d been on the road for nearly two weeks, hadn’t seen anyone I knew in ten days, and had covered more than 3,000 miles, spending all that time in the car living in my own head. This was fun early in the trip, when I was excited about the adventure and looking forward to starting the next chapter of my life in Brooklyn. But as the days passed, the positive thoughts started to melt away, and as always when I’m alone, I started to get down on myself, thinking I was making a mistake, I was just wasting my life, I was never going to get anywhere as a writer, I’d never be even a mediocre musician, and on and on and on until I hit the point where, without a travel partner, I was just sick of the road, sick of myself, and ready to get home.

Day 14: Music Geekery

I woke up late, having slept poorly because I kept hearing shady-sounding dudes talking outside my room (which was right next to the stairs) at all hours of the night; I also noticed that the deadbolt on my door was hanging on loose screws, a bad sign in case someone decide to break in and relieve me of my laptop and guitars—you know, the only possessions of value that I have in this world. Anyway, there was no B&E action, and that afternoon I went into downtown Nashville, where I took a tour of the Ryman Auditorium, the famous home of the Grand Ol’ Opry from 1943 to 1974, where Hank Williams performed, where Johnny Cash met June Carter, where bluegrass music was born, the grand cathedral of country music.

Seriously, where bluegrass music was born.

I wanna sing at the Opry

After the Ryman I went next door to Gruhn Guitars, one of the best vintage guitar shops (along with Mandolin Brothers in Staten Island) where I’ve ever spent time pawing deliriously at instruments I couldn’t possibly afford.

Snapped this one for my uncle, who’s obsessed with mandolins

The staff here is borderline hostile—those instruments are worth a lot of money, and I think they get a lot of tourists wandering over from the Ryman who play with them with no intention of buying anything (like me!). It’s not too often I wish I was a dot-com millionaire (that’s a fucking lie; I wish I was a dot-com millionaire everyday), but this was one of those times.

Afterward I walked briefly up Honky-Tonk Row, going into a couple of cowboy boot shops, including one that advertised: “Buy One Pair of Boots, Get Two Free.” (You have no idea how tempting this was, but at $400 a pop, paying for even one pair was out of a question.) With my outrageously expensive parking space ($15 for two hours) about to expire, I picked my car back up and did a plantation tour, as recommended by my friend Kara. The most famous historic plantation in Nashville was not a cotton or tobacco farm, but rather the late nineteenth century’s premiere thoroughbred racehorse farm, Belle Meade. I’ll spare you too much of a history lesson, but Tennessee was once the center of American thoroughbred racing, until the temperance movement took hold, chasing the drinking and gambling north to Kentucky. I took the mansion tour (no interior photos allowed) and wandered the grounds, including having that really awkward moment where the white lady who sold me tickets (who was very nice) told me where the slave quarters (even typing the words “slave quarters” gives me the heebie-jeebies) were located.

Mansion at Belle Meade

Slave quarters

After the plantation tour I went over to the Bluebird Café, a restaurant/performance space that has been the premier venue for up-and-coming songwriters in Nashville for more than thirty years. I showed up a half hour early for the show, and took my spot about 200 people from the front of the line. (It turns out that that new TV show Nashville, which I’ve never seen, has filmed at the Bluebird, making it even more famous and difficult to get into than it was before. I tried to get a good photo of the line, but it was just too massive.) I knew I wasn’t getting in, but the girl in front of me in line, a songwriter from Canada named Stacey who spends a week a month in Nashville, told me that if we stayed in line we could get a stamp that guaranteed us entry the next time. I waited a half hour, maybe 45 minutes, got my stamp (I’ll come back and use it in like, five years, once I’ve actually written some songs), and then asked Stacey, who in addition to being really nice and friendly was also just scorching hot, if she had any recommendations on where to go. She told me to check out the Time Jumpers, a sort of all-star group of Nashville session musicians fronted by Vince Gill. It turns out they have a regular Monday night gig at a bar on the south side of downtown, so there I went.

I didn’t want to go back to my hotel, and after my experience at the Bluebird I was worried about the show being sold out, so I went straight to 3^rd and Lindsley, paid my $15 cover, and sat at the bar. I killed a couple of hours eating a burger, drinking a couple of Yazoos, and chatting with a tourist couple in town from Honolulu.

The Time Jumpers style themselves as a Western Swing Band. The best description I can come up with is a country Brian Setzer orchestra. Now, as much as I love me some country music, this isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but the musicians (even with a couple of them out sick there were nine or ten in the band) were just incredible. They played so tightly, and with such mastery of their instruments, that even though I was really tired at this point, I ate it up.

The Time Jumpers. Lighting was obviously not good for photos, but that’s Vince Gill in the middle with the guitar.

Also, during intermission, the musicians wandered through the crowd saying hi to the audience, not in a bless-you-with-my-presence kind of way, but in a really genuinely friendly manner. After the show I drove back to my hotel through a torrential downpour, happy to find upon my return that all my valuables were still safe and sound in the room.

Next Time: A whiskey for the road.

Previous Posts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Day 12: Music and MLK

Saturday was another big sightseeing day. My first stop was the Gibson guitar factory (after being harassed by a homeless guy when I parked my car), where I realized I’d made a crucial mistake: I could take the factory tour, but since it was the weekend, there was nobody actually working that day. I cursed myself for not thinking of this and visiting the day before, and passed on the tour, consoling myself with an hour of noodling in the Gibson showroom.

I like guitars. This is news to everyone, I’m sure.

I then went to the Lorraine Motel, the sight of the National Civil Rights Museum and the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I have to say, with the caveat that it’s under renovation and that I don’t know what the exhibits are like normally, the museum was a bit of a disappointment. Understand, I am a pretty big Civil Rights Movement nerd: I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X for the first time when I was like 12 years old; I scored a perfect 100 on the midterm in Otis Madison’s Black Studies 6 class, an exam that is infamous on the UCSB campus. I know my shit. And the museum really only offered a cursory look at the broader Civil Rights Movement, with very little about Malcolm, about the sit-ins and boycotts, Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, the Freedom Rides, etc. There’s just so much rich material on this history, and I saw hardly any of it. The biggest exhibit is dedicated to the conspiracy theories surrounding MLK’s assassination, and come on, everybody knows the CIA killed him. There were a few nice panels about how the city of Memphis has changed in the last 50 or 60 years, but overall, I was underwhelmed. I mean, this is the NATIONAL Civil Rights Museum.

With all that said, there is an undeniable power in standing up on the balcony where MLK was shot, looking into the room where he stayed. It’s an experience I’d sort of compare to looking at the Vietnam Wall, or the gates of Auschwitz. Obviously, the scale is smaller here, but MLK is so huge a symbol for us today that it ends up feeling similar.

Early morning, April Fourth, shot rings out, in a Memphis sky…

It also left me feeling sad. Not only for the loss of such an obviously great man, but also because, for all that he accomplished in his life, and as far as we’ve come from the early twentieth century, I think if MLK saw what our society looks like today, he’d be disappointed. Our cities and our schools are still de facto segregated. White kids go to Piedmont High, black kids go to Oakland Tech. Black males in America are more likely to go to prison than to graduate from college. We may not have ridiculous laws like “Separate but Equal” or black and white drinking fountains, and sure there’s Obama, but the fact is that we live in a country that is still profoundly, systematically racist (and then there’s the whole Prop 8 thing, which I won’t even go into here). I could go on and on about this, but really, for the love of all that’s holy, just go watch The Wire.

The point I’m getting at is, sure we have a museum and a once-a-year holiday to commemorate MLK, but if you really want to honor the man and his sacrifices, then make some sacrifices of your own, do something in your own life to try to make our society more just. I’ll get off my soapbox now, since it’s not like I’m leading any marches on Washington myself.

After the Lorraine Motel I went over to the Memphis Rock ’n’ Soul Museum, which is a block off Beale Street, right next to the arena where the Memphis Grizzlies play. The museum is small, an outgrowth of a Smithsonian exhibit, but if you’re a music nerd I really highly recommend it. There’s a great audio tour that takes you back to the field hollers and Saturday night porch picking songs of turn-of-the-century sharecroppers, both black and white, and shows how this music became the blues, country, bluegrass, and later rock ’n’ roll. There are dozens of iconic songs you can listen to on the audio tour, from Robert Johnson to Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family to Big Bill Broonzy, up through Elvis and B.B. King. When you get to the early 60s, the exhibit switches to talk about soul music; this was about the time of the British invasion, when Memphis saw its influence on rock music began to wane, but at the same time became home to Stax Records, Otis Redding, and many famous soul artists. There’s nothing at all on post-1970 music, but it’s still a wonderful, informative experience.

I’d worked up quite an appetite walking the museums, so I headed over to a famous dive bar a few blocks away, Earnestine & Hazel’s, which is known for a classic greasy cheeseburger they call the Soul Burger (sorry, no picture, I devoured the thing). I had a Budweiser and chatted with the bartender, who told me the bar had been featured in a Justin Timberlake video, and that Timberlake spends a lot of time in Memphis, as he’s apparently now a part owner of the Grizzlies. I gotta say, the more I hear about him, the more I think Timberlake is just a legitimately cool dude. Especially since he ripped on Joe Buck during the MLB All-Star game.

The other cool thing about the bar is that the upstairs used to be a brothel, and they let you go up there and wander around. I dug this place, and I’d say it’s a must-visit for anyone who comes to Memphis.

It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy…

Home of the Soul Burger

Leaving Earnestine & Hazel’s, I realized I was still pretty hungry (the Soul Burger is tasty, but it’s not huge—like the size of an In-N-Out burger). So I drove a few blocks over to Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken (seen on Man vs. Food here), which the guy working the register at Sun Studios the day before had told me was the best food in Memphis. I’d driven by it a few hours earlier, but had seen the line out the door and said “fuck that.” (I really hate standing on line.) But I reconsidered, because who knew when I’d be back in Memphis, and decided to give it a shot. There was still a pretty hefty line, but again being alone worked in my favor, because I was immediately seated at a small table next to the register. I ordered a sweet tea (ye gods, the sweet tea again) and a wing/breast combo with baked beans and slaw. And let me tell you, I may have only eaten at like three restaurants in Memphis, but the guy at Sun Studios was right: This is the best food in Memphis. The chicken was the perfect combination of crispy, spicy, greasy, and moist. I’m pretty sure they could fry a homeless guy’s shoe in that batter and it’d be one of the best things you’d ever eat.

Once again, I started eating before I took the picture.

It was at this point in the trip that I swore off fried food forever, both because a) I’d had nothing but fried food for weeks on end, and b) because I would never eat any fried food as good as this again. I almost immediately broke this vow, but it oughta give you some idea of where my mind was at.

One more thing on Gus’s: This was where I kinda fell for Memphis. Aside from the delicious food, I really loved the vibe of the place. Growing up in liberal enclaves, I brought a certain preconceived notion of the south with me, in particular in the way I expected people of different races to interact with each other. At Gus’s, the staff (who wear t-shirts that state, absolutely truly, that “If you haven’t eaten at Gus’s, you haven’t eaten fried chicken”) is mostly white, and the diners, at least when I was there, were at least close to a majority black. And I didn’t see any tension at all. Everyone was in a good mood, joking around with each other, totally comfortable. I can’t tell you at all if this is indicative of the rest of the culture in Memphis, or how much the food being so good makes a difference in this kind of thing, but I thought it was great, and it exceeded my expectations. Is this indicative of the New South people talk about? Or is it a Memphis thing? If anyone has thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

After a short break back at the hotel, where I watched Kyrie Irving win the NBA All-Star 3-point shooting contest (that guy is the motherfucking truth) I went out to check out the music on Beale Street. Renowned for being both the birthplace of the blues and the onetime “Main Street of Black America,” it’s now kind of a tourist trap, a few blocks cordoned off from traffic where you can walk around, drink a 32-ounce beer, and go to B.B. King’s supper club.

Beale Street. That’s B.B. King’s joint on the right.

It wasn’t a busy night, probably at least partly due to being 35-degrees outside, but I went in a couple of bars and spent a couple of hours watching music, the best experience being at Mr. Handy’s Blues Hall, where I saw the Brandon Santini blues band

Brandon Santini

These guys were GREAT. Really good guitar player, and just kickass vocals and harmonica by Santini. They played til midnight, and then I headed back to the hotel, not wanting to have any more beers and drift into DUI territory.

Next Time: Fear and Self-Loathing in Nashville