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My father and I left Asheville just after 11 in the morning. We got a late start due to the extra time spent loading the car and enjoying a delicious homemade breakfast. We have decided to spend the bulk of our time on the trip west of the Mississippi River, so we wasted no time in getting to Nashville, arriving just after 4pm local time. On the way, we stopped for lunch in Knoxville at a place called Cafe 4. As we sat eating our dessert in the park outside the restaurant, we got our first taste of the Tennessee music scene from a local Bluegrass band that was holding their own. Once we arrived in Nashville, we found our hotel and settled in for a short bit before hitting the streets.
Our first stop was to grab some dinner at the South Street Restaurant, recommended by my good friend and Vanderbilt graduate Alex. We chit-chatted with our waitress Carly about her songwriting career over crabcakes, ribs, and fried pickles. (Aside: if you’ve never had a fried pickle, they are a must at least once.) From talking with Carly, it was clear that many people in Nashville make a living hoping to be the next great singer/songwriter, similar to movie acting in L.A. and stage acting in NYC.
Afterward, we had a chance to see some of these aspiring writers in action at the Bluebird Cafe’s Writer’s Night. Among the acts were Mark Donham and Clint Alphin, who each sang a tune about the current economic state – which seemed to be a theme of the evening. For me it was a first hand account of how this recession is affecting the broader population outside of the Wall Street environment in which I had been immersed until recently. Clint sang a song “Bail Me Out”, which, predictably, complained about the use of tax dollars on saving Wall Street firms, but he, like many, does not seem to get the bigger picture of how $1 spent on Wall Street can mean several dollars injected into the economy.
As we were leaving, we ran into singer/songwriter Nashville Kat who offered her opinion: that the illegal distribution of music was hurting the rise of new songwriting talent because established artists sought high percentage revenue splits to make up for lost income from stolen songs. Not being in the know, I have no immediate opinion on the subject, but consider this before you decide to download the new The Fray album via BitTorrent.
Nashville is all about music, which is why I will return here someday, though my next visit will most certainly coincide with a music festival.
Day 2: Nashville to St. Louis
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Today we drove through parts of 4 states, the most of any single day of travel for our planned route. Picking up were we left off, we started out of Nashville at about 10am headed northwest. We decided to go off the beaten path today and wander through the Land between the Lakes National Recreation Area. Despite being mostly closed both for the season and due to the recent ice storm that struck the region, we were still able to drive along the main road (The Trace) and even took a detour into the surrounding wilderness. Along the way, we sighted the herd of Bison that inhabit the enclosed range. The inland peninsula formed between the two lakes is a large stretch of land that would be quite beautiful during the other three seasons but less so this winter. The ice storm has clearly devastated the tree population of the park and surrounding areas. As we left the park to the west, we passed through much of far Western Kentucky which was still without power, though many power crews were working to restore it.
We rejoined the interstate and passed through Paducah, KY exiting at US 60. Along 60 we saw more downed power lines, trees torn to shreads, limb from limb, slumped over on the ground with their trunks broken in half as if they were match sticks. The strange thing was that no matter how hard we looked, we could never find evidence of a building that had been damaged due to a wind sheared tree or its debris. These folks are fortunate in that regard.
As we were leaving Kentucky, we approached the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the point where the two mighty rivers merge. The rivers were lined with barges full of cargo and a few tugs to push the loads around. We crossed the expanse of the Ohio River and entered into southern Illinois and the town of Cairo. Cairo is post-apocalyptic America; there is no better way to describe the desolation and abandonment that has occurred in this once sizable county seat. I did not take any pictures of Cairo, finding it to shocking or depressing – I can’t decide. I did find a video that portrays what stands of the town today.
A little ways north of Cairo, we cut over the Mississippi and made our way to I-55. It was getting dark by this point and rain had just started to set in, so we made quick time up to St. Louis, arriving at 7pm. After an unimpressive dinner at St. Louis’ premier Irish pub, the Dubliner, we went to BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soups to take in some Monday night Big Band. The music provided an upbeat and noisy close to an otherwise somber day wandering through the devastation and lonliness of northwest Tennessee, western Kentucky, and southern Illinois. Though we drove two hours in Missouri, I can’t say we have seen much of it, though we will tomorrow as we crawl across the state along the Missouri river.