Life's a trip!: Eastward Bound: UT to NC - Day Five - Nashville, TN. On the Music Highway

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Eastward Bound: UT to NC - Day Five - Nashville, TN. On the Music Highway

This is the sixth entry of a multi-entry series.

First installment: On the Road Again: Going East Intro (http://wander-world.blogspot.com/2017/10/on-road-again-going-east-intro.html)
Second installment: Eastward Bound: UT to NC – Day One – Moab, UT. Red Rocks (http://wander-world.blogspot.com/2017/10/eastward-bound-ut-to-nc-day-one-moab-ut.html)
Third installment: Eastward Bound: UT to NC – Day Two – Albuquerque, NM. High and Winding Roads (http://wander-world.blogspot.com/2017/10/eastward-bound-ut-to-nc-day-two.html)
Fourth installment: Eastward Bound: UT to NC – Day Three – Elk City, OK. Get Your Kicks on ... the Windy High Plains (https://wander-world.blogspot.com/2017/10/eastward-bound-ut-to-nc-day-three-elk.html)
Fifth installment: Eastward Bound: UT to NC – Day Four– Little Rock, AR. Trees! Trees! Trees! (http://wander-world.blogspot.com/2017/10/eastward-bound-ut-to-nc-day-four-little.html)

Before I moved to America, almost 20 years ago, I grew up on American music, especially rock 'n' roll, blues, and of course country. Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, Willie, Dolly, Elvis, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles are all childhood memories that later became obsessions.

With that heritage, driving the Music Highway between Memphis and Nashville, TN listening to Old Country or Oldies radio stations gives you an eerie feeling of deja-vu, and a melancholy about times when your now old former DJ dad taught you about such treasures. I wished dad was in the car with me today about fifty times, so we can listen to all this music while driving the places it was created in, at least part of it, together, and we can understand how it came about. How and why these hills and these towns caused it to happen.

One of the stations even had a Beatles history on, and that made me miss dad even more.

Would you believe that I lived in The Carolinas for 12 years before and I never once stepped foot in Tennessee?! Well, I didn't, but I vow to remedy such a sin just as soon as I settle back down in my old Carolina state! I just have to come back and experience Nashville and Memphis both, go to a couple of concerts and try out the food. Cannot wait to be back!

Tennessee is much like any other Southern state: green, lush, mellow, kind of a rambling, long and steady road cutting through its heart, carrying you places, through farmlands, kudzu covered forests, cotton fields, wide rivers and large lakes. But the music landmarks give it its unique personality.

Leaving Little Rock, AR you run into this immense church right on the highway. Looks like a palace. It is a Pentecostal church, and today, being Sunday, it looked packed and full of life.

The road between Memphis and Nashville is littered with music mementos like these.

We slept through a thunderstorm in Little Rock, last night. The skies were still crazy lookin' when we left this morning.

Rushed and overcast Memphis skyline.

Every other billboard has a Southernism in it. A 'y'all', 'ole', or 'yonder'. We even saw a sign to pull over for 'whiskey and shine'. Yeah, we're home, all right!