Stop 3 – Nashville, Tennessee - “Blind Busking” Live Stream Music Tour

Documenting a huge adventure in public.

Nov 29, 2020

Overview:

“It’s unplayable!” Anthony yelled out to me in the middle of our campsite in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. He had just taken out his guitar to play a few notes by the fire. “Unplayable?” I asked very skeptically of the term Anthony decided to use to describe the state of his guitar. “Unplayable! See this note here? It’s DEAD!” After a passionate explanation as to why the guitar was dead and needed to be fixed before he could play it next, we agreed to find a shop in Nashville that would hopefully make his guitar “playable” again.

The next morning after leaving the national park and heading west through Tennessee, we stopped off to get gas at the town just past the park exit. The smell of fried chicken filled the air. Was this really a gas station? I ran outside to tell Anthony about the incredible aroma of our favorite meal. Without hesitation, we headed back inside and agreed to get only one chicken leg each and a biscuit. It was of course 11:20 am… All I can say was that was the top 3 best-fried chicken of our lives. “Best chicken in the county” as said by the worker at the station. We were ruined in the best way possible.

3 hours and one podcast recording later, Anthony and I pull into Nashville, Tennessee. We immediately headed to a music center to diagnose the guitar. The first place wasn’t able to help, but Anthony had a backup in mind, and we ran it down the road to East Side Music Supply. We dropped off the guitar and headed to check in to our Airbnb.

Exhausted from the camping experience the night before we opted to order in for dinner and pass out early. The next morning, after an extremely heavy breakfast of biscuits and gravy, we picked up Anthony’s guitar that ended up only costing 70% less than what they originally quoted. Greenlight!

After dropping the guitar off at our place we ventured downtown to see what Nashville had to offer in terms of sights. We made a wrong turn that landed us directly in front of a gated entrance to the Titans stadium right as they were scoring a touchdown. It was AWSOME to just show up and be in the moment of the big game. We laughed at our fate and took a bunch of Go Pro selfies before getting back in the car to head to Broadway.

It was evident within seconds of stepping out of our car that Broadway in Nashville was not a place to be – maybe ever? Especially during COVID - so we quickly left the area and headed up to the walking bridge to see the city views. Exhausted from the day we sat on the bench and took in the views of Nashville and the river below. Giving ourselves one last push of energy fueled by the thought of fried chicken, we made our way to Music Row and figured out that is a much better part of Nashville to potentially visit longer and stay in next time.

We ate some awesome fried chicken at Hattie B’s and headed back to our Airbnb just before sunset. In true Nashville style, we did the live stream from our back porch that evening as the sun went down. The next morning we packed up our things and made our way to Memphis, Tennessee on “Music Highway” aka i40 West.

All in all, Nashville was overhyped and did not live up to our expectations. Maybe it was because of COVID or maybe it was the vibe. Regardless both Anthony and I decided we need to visit again in the future so stay tuned ;)