Today we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame. Neither of us are huge country music fans,
some of it I enjoy and some of it makes my teeth curl. But Nashville is the heart of country music,
so you have to do the tourist thing. We
booked the full tour (and I’m going to add up how much we have spent on museum
entry fees, this was $40 each – yikes !!) which included audio commentary plus
a visit to Studio B, which was/is the famous studio where all the greats made
their recordings.
We had a pleasant wander through the museum, starting on the
3rd floor, lots of exhibits but I must admit, not much of interest at the
beginning of the country music story as I hardly knew anyone. On to the 2nd floor and things got
more interesting. Elvis’s gold plated
car, his gold leaf piano, some Jim Reeves stuff, plus some even more recent
artists like Dolly Parton, John Denver, Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain and the
like. Then it was time for our 11.30am
studio tour, and it turned out by some fluke of chance, that one of Roy
Orbison’s sons was also on the tour, as a paying customer, with his Swedish
wife, her family, and their baby son, who is also called Roy (the 3rd). I should probably have been impressed by
this, but he turned out to be a bit of a doofus, and kept interrupting the
guide with comments and “inside information” about his father that were not
particularly interesting or relevant.
Anyway, we did get to visit the studio that was used by a whole much of
legends, Elvis, Roy Orbison, Jim Reeves, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings to name
a few.
Then it was back to the Hall of Fame for a bite of lunch
before wandering through the rest of the museum. Not much worth noting in the blog really,
lots of exhibits, all well laid out and well worth visiting, despite the high
entry fee, even if you’re not that big a fan of country.
Once we’d finished here, we went back to the motel to drop
off some of the loot purchased at the gift shop, and headed to The Gulch, which
is the new trendy suburb of Nashville that is apparently THE place to be. There were a couple of interesting shops, but
nothing to get too excited about, except a boot shop with some VERY expensive
but awesome boots – up to $3k per pair J. No, there were no purchases, I remain
bootless thus far !
Wandered back to our motel to rest our weary pins, change
and head back to the Tequila Cowboy for dinner (black and blue burger for me –
angus beef with blue cheese – yummo, and steak quesadilla for J) and then it
was back to the Whiskey Bent Saloon for more people watching and a different
band from the previous night. These guys
were pretty good too, probably better musically than the previous night’s band,
and we spent a passed a pleasant evening, helped along by a Rare Eagle.
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