After a while – and especially when I know I'm just hanging around waiting to go to the airport – I start to get bored with everything that's going on here in "Nash Vegas" as an Uber driver told me it's known. It is, like Vegas, he said, a party town, but it caters mainly to women or, as he put it, 'bachelorettes'. By that he meant women in denim skirts and cowboy boots, drunk, yelling out Shania Twain songs from a boogie bus travelling a proscribed route around the city. It's the last thing you want to see, believe me, let alone hear. "A-woo-hoo-hoo!"
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| Inside Biscuit Love, which made the trip! |
I wandered up Broadway to escape the downtown razzamatazz, the grating sound of too many bands playing different songs next door to each other and simply making a racket as a result. All the good bands were playing in the Bridgestone Stadium, Pearl Jam last night. I met two fans in the elevator back at the Moxy. "I love that song Debaser," said I, but they didn't know what I was talking about. How can you be a Pearl Jam fan and not know about Debaser?
It's hot out there, the weather that is, and as I crossed from Broadway on to Demonbreun Street – with a view to paying one last visit to the Gibson Garage before attempting to walk back to the Moxy (with whom I've made my peace) – I spotted a Starbuck's in the red-bricked Cummings building (it used to be a railway freight terminal). Decaffeinated black coffee, it's awful, but drinkable – just – so I'm sitting here writing this and because I have no idea how to save a draft of what I'm writing, I'll finish it before I head to the guitar Mecca next door.
The look here for women is definitely denim skirts and cowboy boots. The men wear what the hell they want, which is normally tee-shirts and knee-length shorts with trainers. I'm quite happy in my new Carhartt jacket and black chinos, but I wouldn't say I was the height of fashion, never have been.
The worst thing about knowing you're going home is, ahem, knowing you're going home, not because you don't want to, but because you know that to get there you've got to endure the hassle of airports and, in my case, a nine-hour flight across the Atlantic. But that hasn't really sunk in yet. At present I'm trying to work out how I made such a pig's ear of trying to find East Nashville. It started yesterday when I keyed into my Uber app "East Nashville" and got nowhere fast. Today I figured the best way to find it would be to go on Google and key in "lunch in East Nashville". This would bring up a list of restaurants in this supposedly magical area of the city (where I might find enchanted book shops and places that sell wind chimes). I found a place called The Wash and took a chance. It seemed to take ages to get there, even the Interstate was involved, and when I was dropped off I found what used to be a car wash turned into around half a dozen ethnic food kiosks selling everything from Mexican food to Peruvian food, Vietnamese street food and Cuban food. I settled for the latter, a chicken dish with plantin, rice and black beans and it was very very good, but that was all there was, no bookshops, no nothing apart from a vintage clothes shop across the street selling stuff from American yesteryear, mainly hippy garb, belts and Zippo lighters, you know the rap. So I left, ordered an Uber to take me downtown and here I am, escaping the marauding drunks and the women singing Shania Twain on 'boogie buses'.
I tell you what is making me smile, something so miniscule you'll think me a fool – and perhaps I am. Back in 2017 or 2018, I can't remember the year without looking it up, I was here in Nashville for the same reason I'm here now, AISTech, arguably the best event in the steel industry's global calendar. I love it, pure and simple and always enjoy the Town Hall Forum on the last day. The last time I was here I paid a visit to the Hard Rock Café but forgot to pick up a fridge magnet. Well, I nipped in there and bought one for my fridge door, which is creaking under the weight of too many fridge magnets from around the world. It was something that needed to be ticked off.
You know what? I could walk straight into the Gibson Garage and buy that guitar. It's tempting, but I just know that British Airways will charge me big for it, so I guess the sensible voice inside my head will stop me. It's probably for the best as I dread to think what my wife will say as I bowl through the front door with all the bravado of American game show host and tell her I still need to buy an amp. Actually, it's probably worth doing just to see what she would say!
Nashville is a nice place, on the outskirts of town, but as I'm often criticised by those who know me for saying of every place I visit that "I could live here!" I won't say it now, although, let's face it, I could live here. Doh!
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