Big day out in Nashville

Plan today was to explore Nashville. We drove in (about 30 minutes) to downtown Nashville and parked just across the road from the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Once inside we purchased tickets for the museum and tour of RCA Studio B, where you are taken by bus to the studio. As we were waiting to get on the bus, we struck up a conversation with Jason, from New Plymouth! He's been living in the States for the last 30 years but cool to chat to someone that knew exactly where we were from.

Anyway, RCA Studio B was built in 1957 and became known as the birthplace for the “Nashville Sound,” a style of music characterised by background vocals and strings that helped establish Nashville as an international recording center.

The recording studio became home for many popular music titans such as Elvis, Chet Atkins, Eddy Arnold, and the Everly Brothers. The tour guide was so knowledgeable and covered so much history from within the building. I can't remember the exact details but the current owner of the building purchased it for about $700k and leases it back to the Country Music Hall of Fame "committee" for $1 a year. Nice chap ;-)

As we walked to the Country Music Hall of Fame building (before going on the RCA Studio B tour), we quickly checked out the Country Music Walk of Fame. As you can imaging, KD found the Elvis one!

Once we'd returned from the RCA Studio B tour we then walked around the museum. It's three floors and spans the evolution of music from the early 1800s to current day.

After the museum it was time for a walk along Broadway and check out the sounds. It seemed like every second building was a bar and every bard had live music. Check out one of the videos we took on a street corner with the mash-up of sounds!

We stopped in Legends corner bar for a drink and listen to the bank playing there, checked out Legends store and then the local candy story for some rather expensive fudge!

Lunch was at Kid Rock's Rock n Roll Steakhouse which seemed one of the busiest bars in town, it's 5 floors including a roof top bar! We grabbed a table on the mezzanine floor that opened up to outside. Right across the road was Posty's Bar & Grill which is Post Malone's bar, and just down the road was JBJ (Jon Bon Jovi), lots of bars owned my musicians! Quick pick of a chap we saw asking for money, you have to appreciate his honesty!

After lunch it was back in the car. Parking is expensive! If you approach the museum information desk, you can get your parking validated. That means your 6 hours parking gets a USD30 discount, so instead of USD55 you only have to pay USD25. Without the discount parking would have been about NZD80!

You could be forgiven in thinking Dave took another wrong turn and we ended up in Athens! As it happens, Nashville has a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens, Greece. It was designed by architect William Crawford Smith and built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial celebrations. But why a replica of the Parthenon? Nashville is also known as the "Athens of the South".

Might be a quieter day tomorrow but I'll let you know later...

KD