Nashville, Tennessee…
I am still in a friend’s guest room in Nashville, and I can smell the coffee he is brewing as we get ready for what is sure to be another interesting day.
Why are you in Nashville? Well, it starts with the fact that Winnipeg is cold for about two months too long in winter so right around the middle of February we start to get antsy. So Naomi and I drove down to see a friend I made in Japan long ago.
We played in a band together about 20 years ago when we both were living in Japan. He’s among the best guitar players I know and just an all-around top-notch transplanted Texan. So he and his wife have been taking us around to see the sights of Music City USA.
On the way… somewhere in Minnesota
Jason and Laura, the best the south has to offer
So we spent the afternoon at a place Jason knew we would love: Gruhn Guitars. Endless rows of guitars and guitar-like stringed instruments had our eyes popping. The owner, the legendary George Gruhn, has a “holy of holies” guitar space on the second floor where the really rare specimens reside. And those rare specimens include a room full of reptiles that demonstrate Mr. Gruhn’s competing passions.
It seems right now that there were endless highlights to the day, but one of the big ones was a fascinating conversation with Mr. Gruhn himself. He was interested in and engaging with these funny-talking Canadians who drove over 1000 miles to end up at the coolest guitar shop on the planet. The guitar he is handing to us in the picture is from his own line that he has just opened up a new factory to manufacture. Combine those ones with literally hundreds of aged classic guitars, mandolins, and instruments I had never seen before, and that special second floor ends up being a musical experience like I have never had before.
Of course in the evening we headed downtown to experience all of that, and if it wasn’t for the cowboy hats and the country music, it would have all felt very similar to the busiest tourist scenes that I have been to in places like Japan and Thailand. SO much going on. When I first suggested going downtown Jason responded that downtown was “A LOT” and the fact that the South Eastern Conference NCAA basketball tournament was on made it even crazier.
We will be heading back out on the town today, so next week’s email will have lots more. And then, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we just so happened to, somewhat coincidentally, connect with a friendly producer from RCA Studio B, a historic studio that you will be familiar with if you ever got into the TV show, Nashville. So we will go check that out tomorrow.
The boys would have loved to come along as well, but the Jetta is too small for all of us to fit. So this is more of a scouting mission. Eventually we will be back with voices and guitars at the ready…
