Pulling out of Waverly, we headed through rolling wooded roadsides and small towns to the Belle Meade Plantation from which the blood lines of most of the Derby winners can be traced. We toured the house and grounds, once again getting a glimpse of the history of Tennessee. Walking around the grounds we looked in the dairy, the slave quarters, and the cabin in which the people lived while the big house was being built. Every so often, a line of kids with their blue and grey caps would cross our path as they participated in day camp.
We fought the late morning Nashville traffic to our next stop, lunch at Hog Heaven, supposedly Nashville's best bar-be-cue. To describe it as rustic would be an embellishment.
Located near the Centennial Park and Vanderbilt, it was doing a thriving lunch trade. We ate on a bench of a table and chatted with a local woman. After sandwiches, we circled by the Parthenon and found our way to the Upper Room Museum and chapel where we viewed wonderful stained glass depicting Pentecost and a large wood carving covering the front of the sanctuary of Di Vinci's Last Supper.
It was a moving piece of art work.
In the Agape garden is a wonderful sculpture of Jesus and the woman at the well.<
Our next stop was the Country Music Hall of Fame. After we mortgaged the farm to pay the parking fee, we spent a couple of hours enjoying the exhibits and reliving the music of a century of country artists. The museum has three floors and is well done with a good mix of media and memorabilia. We were somewhat bemused by the fact that we remembered most of the artists and things featured in the Hall.
Hotel Indigo, our pricelined choice of accommodations, was next on our itinerary. We unloaded and the valet parked our car. Unfortunately, we could not priceline parking! We accept this as the cost of spending time in a city. Our room is on the ninth floor and is quite comfortable.
Our last activity for the day was The Bluebird Cafe.
Our navigational device took us by way of I-40 and I-440, not something I would recommend during rush hour. What awaited us made the harrowing trip worthwhile. We were treated to two hours of back to back songs sung by the poets who wrote them. Some have been recorded; some, not. But there was not a bad song in the entire evening.
The performance was in the round with Barbara Cloyd (http://barbaracloyd.com) leading off. Her introduction to her first song was, "Good judgement comes from experience which comes from bad judgement." She sang about love gone wrong. Tommy Karlas opened with a song full of good images including the line, "Dream a little dream, sitting by a stream," a slow ballad. Will Nance, who seemed to have had the most songs recorded, opened with "Where Have I Been All My Life" which is on the new George Strait album. Jeremy Spillman opened with a song that began with "I was 14 when my daddy's old man caught me half way through my first beer" whose refrain was "I come from a long line of sinners like me."
These people had their guitars, their voices, and their words. That was more than enough for a wonderful evening. There is such a purity to hear the songs sung by their actual creators. It is so much more pure than what comes out of the studios today.
We drove back to the center of town through busy evening traffic, marveling at the number of people on the streets. The lights of Nashville lit the evening as we closed the drapes and called it a night.
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