Road Trip: Day Four

Nashville, TN to Hot Springs, AR

Nashville is known locally for two things. Firstly, the publishing and printing of bibles and theological books. Secondly, its substantial number of "Gentleman’s Clubs." Straddling this contradiction between the pulpit and the pole dance is the phenomenon which has made Nashville world famous, country music. From just a brief walk on the sultry streets it’s easy to see how feverish passions, both devotional and lustful can quickly take hold. Nashville air is humid, even at the beginning of autumn.

Cat and Adam, recently-weds originally from Courtney’s home town in New York, have made Nashville their home. Cat did her MA at Vanderbilt, one of the five universities in town, and became a school counsellor. Adam teaches Maths. Seeing their charming, eclectically furnished home makes Courtney and I excited about the apartment which is waiting for us in Davis.

Last night we arrived late, due to traffic jams in the interstate. “The trouble with Nashville,” says Adam on the way to the "Weird Al" Yankovic concert, “is that no-one here knows how to drive.” People start waving at us and flashing their lights. Cat says “Isn’t this a one-way street?” and Adam pulls a u-turn.

Most entertainment venues in downtown Nashville, says Cat, are owned by a company called Gaylord. The two music halls in town that host the venerable country music radio show The Grand Ole Opry are Gaylord’s. "Weird Al" is at the Gaylord Entertainment Centre, on the ice rink where the Nashville Predators play. It’s plush for a sports stadium, with carpets and cinema seats. I suspect such surroundings promote a more sedate, less participatory form of spectating than football (soccer) stadia back home, but I can’t prove that theory.

At first we’re seated far to the right of the stage. The stand-up comedian brought on to warm up the audience is incomprehensible. We don’t know whether it’s the reverb or his thick Southern accent. I can make out the end of an occasional sentence, like "hose him down!" and "inflatable!"

"Weird Al" arrives on stage with his band and his accordion. The sound is still awful. We move to a more central location, much better. Al looks much younger than I’d expected. I’m perplexed, is this the real Al or a tribute act? The screens above the stage start showing clips from his old videos and suddenly I realise; in the 80’s when he was peddling his parodies of Michael Jackson (Fat instead of Bad, Eat It instead of Beat It) he wore the most awful spectacles and sported the worst moustache imaginable. Twenty years later, both are gone and only the long frizzy hair remains. Some of his newer spoofs aim too low and miss the mark, such as Avril Lavigne’s Complicated, which in his hands becomes Constipated. At other times he’s spot on. Turning Gangsta’s Paradise into Amish Paradise made me laugh the first time I saw it, and it makes me laugh now. The most inspired thing he does all night, though, is a mash-up – the music from Money for Nothing with the words from The Beverly Hillbillies – which made me grin like a loon. The general rule with "Weird Al" seems to be the better the original song, the better the parody.

This morning, as we drove through its lush, misty neighbourhoods, I decided one day we’d come back for a second helping of Nashville.

7.46am
The first leg of today’s journey is west-south-west out of Nashville down I-40 to Memphis. We pass several signs promoting Loretta Lynn’s ranch. If we had more time I’d be interested to see it, but the last detour I instigated was a massive eighty miles through the Kentucky countryside.

We’ve also seen a proliferation of disturbingly cheap motels. $26 (15ukp) per night appears to get you a room in a tin-roof shack with a colour TV and a prime view of the freeway. One of them also flaunted Bob’s Bar, a lean-to shed with a neon Budweiser sign. The camp site in Delaware cost only four dollars less. Still, for a trucker it’s got to be more comfortable than your cab, surely?

10.05am
We stop on the outskirts of Memphis at the visitor centre to pick up a map of town. Outside, an enormous swarm of bees is crawling over a fire hydrant.

11.02am
Graceland sits off to one side of Memphis’ Elvis Presley boulevard on the outer crust of Memphis. It’s a tacky thoroughfare, full of low-rent fast food eateries and dead shells of low-rent fast food eateries. The first thing you see in Graceland is an enormous parking lot. In our case, it’s pretty much the only thing we see.

Above a high fence the tops of two of Elvis’ private jets are visible. To one side is the main ticket office. You can take several tours of Graceland, one of the mansion, one of his planes, one of his cars, and a more general museum of artifacts and photos. There’s an all-in-one ticket which gives you all of this for $27. To see the mansion, which is all we really want to do, costs $18 per person. The only thing Courtney really wants is to get a photo of us outside the mansion, but that’s impossible. The only way to get close is to cough up your cash and take the shuttle bus. We don’t have enough time in Memphis to get our money’s worth, so we jump back in the car and head for downtown.

Memphis is primarily a working-class city with a sizeable black population. Riding on the old trams it’s instantly apparent that there isn’t the degree of racial segregation I’ve noticed in many other parts of the States. It’s clear how this town was the melting pot which produced so much rock and soul music. Isaac Hayes lives here, and his bar is in the Peabody centre, adjacent to the elegant hotel of the same name. However, the ritz is reserved for a few blocks of downtown a stretch of the riverfront. Stax and Sun, the two studios that recorded Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Booker T and the MG’s, et al. are sit several blocks away, on streets where we don’t feel comfortable leaving a car loaded with all our possessions. All the blues clubs, including B.B. King’s place, sit on a four-block stretch of Beale Street.

The tram ride we took around the city centre not only confirmed that this is a surprisingly mixed community for the American South, but also that there are few buildings of note here. All of Memphis’ reputation is founded on deeds done in small dark rooms. The real rock’n’roll has no need for marble pillars and sweeping staircases, although these feature prominently at Memphis’ best hotel, the Peabody.

Most people go to the Peabody, not for a room, or a meal, or a drink, but to see the ducks. In the early thirties a couple of managers from the hotel went on a hunting trip. After many whiskies they decided hit upon a fabulous scheme. On their return they took their live decoy ducks (such things being legal in those days) and placed them in the fountain in the lobby. The prank became a tradition, and every morning at 11am a red carpet is rolled out and the ducks (actually four ducks and a drake) process regally to the fountain. There they stay, bobbing about, for six hours, at which point they process back along the carpet. People flock (ha!) to see the ducks, and they’re so popular that a knock-off Peabody with knock-off ducks has been built in Florida.

Despite, or more likely because of it’s rough around the edges, I like Memphis. It feels like a genuine town. We’ve failed to see any of the big places of musical pilgrimage on this visit, but I know that I’d be happy to return with just a backpack full of clothes and an appetite for beer and blues to see where Johnny Cash recorded Folsom Prison Blues and where Booker T and the MG’s cut Green Onions.

14.30pm
Out of Memphis, across the Mississippi, and into Arkansas. We didn’t manage to snap the sign.

15.45pm
First impressions of Arkansas are not good. Endlessly flat and featureless. We turn on the radio to find out what people listen to here. We’re assaulted by evangelical country music; we hit search. The radio scans and scans the wavelengths before bringing us right back to the same station. Apparently the only thing you can hear in Arkansas is clumsy lovesongs to God rendered in nasally whines and twangs. This state looks grim and sounds worse. It’s at least another two hours to Hot Springs.