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Published: January 25th 2007
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I lie, we start this journey in Louisville, Kentucky but most of it takes place in Tennessee. Louisville was originally planned to be an overnight stop off on the way to Nashville but we found two cool places there that play a major part in the sporting culture of the USA. The first was the factory and birthplace of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat which is used by a lot of the best players in the world. The factory has a huge 120 ft bat out the front and is in downtown Louisville. We had a look inside and Ian had a go at the batting cages with a genuine Louisville Slugger. He had a few swings and misses at first but once he got into the “swing” of it (excuse the pun) he had some good connections. After seeing the Louisville Slugger building we headed to the second attraction of Louisville, Churchill Downs. This is where the Kentucky Derby is raced each year and is a massive race track with huge grandstands. It really puts Belmont and Ascot to shame. Due to our time constraints we didn’t go on the tour but we did get some photos.
Our first
sight in Nashville was the Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame. It is a very impressive building with three floors of pure country music goodness. The walls were lined with records from some of the great musicians such as Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Chet Atkins, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams and Keith Urban. Yes that’s right Keith Urban, they love him over here and he even has his own exhibit in the museum. The hall of fame was also really cool with the plaques all over the walls from all the artists who have been inducted. And thankfully not Keith Urban. Next on the agenda was the Ryman Auditorium which is the original home to the Grand Ole Opry that has since moved to its own place just out of Nashville. The Ryman is home to a lot of concerts that come to Nashville and is a landmark of the city. We had some dinner before hitting the nightlife in Nashville for some hootin’ country and western music and beer. The main strip in Nashville houses 5 bars situated next to each other with a further 5 or 6 bars a couple of blocks down the street. We started off
in Legends Corner which has its first band go on stage at 10am and the last band at around midnight. When we were there the band were less than impressive and thought that comedy would cover up the fact that they couldn’t play instruments or sing. They were also terrible comedians. We moved on from there to Tootsies next door. This was really cool with a cover band downstairs in a room about 10m by 3m and about 200 people packed in. There were also girls dancing on the bar which always rates well in my book. We stayed there for a few more drinks before heading along the line to the Second Fiddle which was a lot like Legends Corner so I’ll move on. After seeing the last two bars on this strip (names I can’t remember) we headed to the Wild Horse Saloon. This place is huge with a massive dancefloor for boot scootin’ and an equally as massive stage for the band. It has three floors of seating as well. The reason we were there was for the giant 45oz cocktails and the souvenir glass. Talk about a big cocktail. We had a Lynchburg Lemonade that took
the three of us about 30mins to drink. Emma got to keep the glass (or fishbowl) but is struggling to fit it in her luggage for the flight home. Following that cocktail extravaganza we stumbled our way back to our motel and crashed out.
Today we made our way to Hicksville USA and specifically to Lynchburg and the Jack Daniel Distillery. This is the only place in the world where they make Jack Daniels and believe it or not the county where it is situated is a dry county. That means no alcohol is allowed to be sold or consumed. Well I lie again the only place that can sell alcohol is the Jack Daniel Distillery who sells bottles of the stuff. This did however completely stuff our tour because we didn’t get any free tasters but at least the tour was free and very insightful. We saw all of the processes including mellowing, distilling, the famous ‘sour mash’, bottling and barrel storage. We had a couple of hicks on our tour who probably married their sisters but at least they entertained us with their hick babble. After the tour we headed for downtown Lynchburg which turned out to
be a couple of stores and a town square. We found a shirt at one store with the slogan “Possum: The Other White Meat”. Right then we knew we were in country USA. After the metropolis of Lynchburg we made our way to Memphis via the back roads which added on about 2 hrs to our journey.
Memphis is another city based around the emergence of music but this time instead of country and western it is blues and rock and roll. We started our tour of Memphis downtown where we hopped on the trolley and got a tour around the main street and the riverfront. After this we headed to the main drag on Beale Street where all the pubs, clubs and restaurants are. This was really cool with neon signs and old style blues clubs which weren’t open until the night. After this we had a look at the place where Martin Luther King Jr was shot which is a major event in the history of the USA before Emma went in for a look at the National Civil Rights Museum and Ian and Nick headed off for a walk uptown. This is where the Pyramid Arena
is located. We met back up and headed towards Sun Studio which is the birthplace of rock and roll. This is a record label run by Sam Phillips who discovered such great artists as Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison. It was cool to stand in the same studio as these great singers as well as see some of the artefacts which were left over from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. We returned back to Beale Street after dark to sample some of the blues bars and found ourselves in Club 152 where there was a live band and reasonable priced beer. There was also some non-musical entertainment including a middle aged white guy who thought he was Michael Jackson and did some sort of crazy dance involving all the appendages on his body. Some more great entertainment involved a middle aged woman who had the most perfectly manicured femullet (female mullet) any of us had ever seen. It was definitely business on top and party behind. The last piece of entertainment involved a girl who dropped her pants to reveal a g-banger and a big bloke stuffing it with a dollar bill. It
was very funny for us, not so for the girl who got escorted out of the building. After a reasonable amount of tasteless American beer we headed back ready to see Graceland tomorrow.
Graceland is the fortress of a man who had too much money and even more will to spend it. The house is spectacular from the basement with three tv’s and a mirror roof to the jungle room upstairs and the racquetball court out the back. The house is packed with Elvis memorabilia including outfits he wore in his prime, gold, silver and platinum records, different pieces of furniture and the colonel’s office. Elvis’ grave is also located here after his father moved it from its original location following security fears. An interesting point is that Elvis’ grandmother outlived her grandson and her son. They are all located at Graceland. After touring the mansion we looked at his car collection which included and MG, a Ferrari, a Sturtz Blackbird, a Rolls Royce and his famous pink Cadillac. Following this we looked at the Lisa Marie which is his private jet complete with three tv’s and gold plated seat belt buckles and his smaller jet which is firmly
stuck in the 70’d with its décor.
After Graceland we got in the tortoise and headed toward our next destination, Mississippi.
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