Day 16. Wrought iron balconies on Rue Demaine, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

As seen from the 22nd-floor observation deck of the New Capitol in Tallahassee, Florida. October 11, 2017.

FLORIDA STATE CAPITOL – NEW || The New Capitol building as seen from the steps of the Historic Capitol in Tallahassee, Florida. October, 11 2017.
While Tallahassee is admittedly short on attractions, it does, and unlike the other 49 state capital cities, boast two capitol buildings. Go Florida! The old one, a.k.a. the Historic Capital, was spared from the wrecking ball when the new 22-story capitol, the Executive Office Building, a.k.a. the New Capitol, seen here, a much uglier & boxier affair built in the 1970s (it looks like it was airlifted in from Soviet-era Russia). Both now live happily side-by-side, the Historic Capitol essentially a museum and the New Capitol the somewhat sterile administrative centre for the Sunshine State.

NEW CAPITOL VIEWS || A road junction as seen from the 22nd-floor observation deck of the New Capitol building in Tallahassee, Florida. October 11, 2017.
At least the towering New Capitol building has an observation deck. 22 storeys up, it offers nice views down over the relatively quiet city.

FLORIDA STATE CAPITOL – OLD – The Historic Capitol as seen from behind the pillars of the New Capitol building in Tallahassee, Florida. October, 11 2017.
Tallahassee’s Historic Capital was built in 1845 to replace a structure built in 1826 with the preset-day dome and wings added as part of a 1902 expansion. Surviving the wrecking ball means the Historic Capitol has now assumed the role of the historical centrepiece of the multi-building Florida State Capitol Complex. Restored in 1982 to its 1902 appearance both inside and out, today the building, officially the Florida Historic Capitol Museum, exhibits Florida’s political history by preserving & displaying the old Governor’s Suite, Supreme Court, House of Representatives and Senate chambers (all three branches of the government) exactly as they would have appeared in the early 1900’s. And to say it was scheduled to be knocked. I’m glad someone saw sense before it was too late.

HELLO GOODBYE FLORIDA || At the Florida/Alabama state line on Interstate 10, Cantonment, Florida. October 11, 2017
It’s a little over 200 miles of Interstate 10 driving west from Tallahassee to the state line with Alabama, just north of the so-called Florida Redneck Riviera city of Pensacola. We arrived at the state line late in the evening with unfinished business to tend to – having missed capturing the Florida state line photograph entering the state from Georgia yesterday, we made sure to capture it today when exiting the state (just as we expected, the state line signs have been a lot tougher to tick off this trip, the eastern seaboard proving a different, much busier beast). This took a bit of work, but it was worth it – between this and last year, we’ve now given the thumbs up in front of 40+ state line signs and Florida gets our vote for the most impressive state sign of the lot.

This was to (Sweet Home) Alabama. Late in the day by the side of Interstate 10 passing over the Perdido River on the Florida/Alabama state line, Cantonment, Florida. October 11, 2017.

On the corner of Burgundy & St. Ann streets in the French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

USS Alabama. Battleship Memorial Park, Mobile, Alabama. October 12, 2017.

C-47D Skytrain, Battleship Memorial Park, Mobile, Alabama. October 12, 2017.

USS ALABAMA || USS Alabama, Battleship Memorial Park, Mobile, Alabama. October 12, 2017.
Battleship park’s star attraction is the 210-metre-long (690 feet) USS Alabama, the third such World War II remnant we’ve spotted in 4 days following USS North Carolina in Wilmington, North Carolina (Day 13) & Charleston’s USS Yorktown (Day 14). Laid down in 1940 and launched in 1942, she was saved from the smelter in May 1962 by a group of concerned state citizens, towed here in mid-1964 and opened as a museum ship in early 1965. Awarded US National Historic Landmark stats in 1986, Lucky A is famous for escaping unscathed from 9 major World War II dutsups. However, she wasn’t so impervious to Mother Nature, the aforementioned Hurricane Katrina in 2005 causing her to list eight degrees to port and shifting at her permanent anchorage.

The poignant memorial to the men of Alabama who ‘could not return’ from the Vietnam War in Battleship Memorial Park, Mobile, Alabama. October 12, 2017.

Thumbs up at the Mississippi/Louisiana State Line on the Stephen E Ambrose Memorial Parkway/Interstate 10, Pearlington, Mississippi. October 12, 2017.

Chartres Street, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

Funky Pirate Blues Club, Bourbon Street, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

Royal Street, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

OLD URSULINE CONVENT || A carriage ride outside the mid-16th Century Old Ursuline Convent, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
Despite the fires of the late 1700s and the steady decline of French influence post 1803, there can still be found in New Orleans today a remnant from the French period of rule. The Old Ursuline Convent was the home of the Ursuline Nuns who came to New Orleans from France in 1728 in a noble bid to ‘relieve the poor, sick and provide education for young girls.’ Built between 1749 & 1753 next to the site of a first building erected in 1734 and today housing a museum, apart from being the only remaining French-era building to be found in the city of New Orleans, the Old Ursuline Convent is also the oldest structure in the entire Mississippi River Valley of the southern US.

Kerlerec Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

FRENCH MARKET || French Market, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
A tourist magnet, New Orleans’ French Market is a good bet for regional staples like crawfish, Cajun food & Creole cooking (the Flea Market, seen here at the northern end of the market, is especially popular at weekends although I’d imagine the tourist tat stalls are busy every day of the week). Stretching for 6 blocks along the aforementioned crescent of the Mississippi River, this series of breezy commercial buildings predate European colonisation (it was founded as a Native American trading post) making its present-day iteration the oldest public market in the US.

FRENCH MARKET – CAFE DU MONDE || Café du Monde, Decatur Street, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
At the southern end of the French Market and on the edge of Jackson Square, the renowned open-air Café du Monde is a New Orleans institution. Established in 1862 and open 24/7, there are probably better and way less crowded places to enjoy a café au lait & beignet (a French fritter, a deep-fried, yeast-raised doughnut dusted with confectioners’ sugar & the only food item on the French Market’s Café du Monde menu), but there are very few establishments, if any, as iconic or better located.

JACKSON SQUARE & ST LOUIS CATHEDRAL || The Andrew Jackson statue in the centre of Jackson Square fronting the Renaissance-style St Louis Cathedral, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
The historic site of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the French Quarter (Vieux Carré) grew around central Jackson Square, and, almost 3 centuries on, it still anchors the district today. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and open year round except during Mardi Gras, the square’s centre is dominated by a mounted state of Andrew Jackson, hero of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. The park is overlooked by the unmissable St Louis Cathedral, the square’s Renaissance-style masterpiece. Completed in 1851 and built over the foundations of a colonial 1727 church, it is both the oldest active cathedral & one of the finest examples of French ecumenical (church) architecture in the US.

JACKSON SQUARE || Art for sale on the railings of Jackson Square, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
It’s impressive how the small two and a half acre green space that is Jackson Square manages to block out the melange that surrounds it. Fortune tellers/Psychics, street performers, sketch artists & wackadoo vendors abound (although enticed, I passed on the purchase of a Trump Voodoo Doll), the art hanging for sale on a section of the square’s 1851 perimeter iron fence one of the more refined (& photogenic) aspects of the square’s immediate surrounds.

MARIGNY & FRENCHMEN STREET || Frenchmen Street, Marigny, New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
Grunge hits its height in the Marigny neighbourhood of New Orleans, just beyond the northern reaches of the French Quarter and the first suburb to be established outside its boundaries when it was created in 1805. Looking every bit as dated as it is, Marigny is the heart of the local gay scene. It’s also a happening live-music hub – virtually every establishment lining the district’s gritty main drag of Frenchmen Street is a bohemian bar and/or live music club.

TREME, JAZZ & LOUIS ARMSTRONG || The Mardi Gras Arch at the entrance to Louis Armstrong Park off N Rampart Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
New Orleans is synonymous with jazz, the musical genre that originated in the city around 1900 and developed thereafter through increasingly complex styles. One of the city’s most famous native sons, pioneering jazz trumpeter and bandleader Louis Armstrong, was born in New Orleans on July 4 1900, his unique gravelly singing style and personality bringing him worldwide fame as one of the most beloved entertainers of his time. Armstrong died in 1971, 9 years before the April 1980 dedication of the park honouring his name in the Tremé district of the city to the west of the French Quarter, the oldest African American neighbourhood in New Orleans.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG PARK & CONGO SQUARE || Hanging out in Congo Square, Louis Armstrong Park, Tremé, New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
Featuring lagoons, fountains, bridges & performance pavilions, the 32-acre Louis Armstrong Park is also the location for the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park, a US National Historical Park created in 1994 to celebrate the origins and evolution of jazz. However, the symbolic, if not geographical centre of the park is Congo Square, formerly known as Beauregard Square. A brick open space that is today an American cultural landmark, this was the one place where enslaved people were allowed to congregate and play the music they had carried with them over the seas, a practice outlawed in most other slave-holding societies. The preservation of this musical heritage helped lay the groundwork for the rhythms that would eventually become the musical form we now know as jazz.

What A Wonderful World. Satchmo. For sale in the French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

MISFITS || Down on his luck. French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.
One man and his dog (& banjo & possibly all his earthly possessions).

Bourbon Street, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

Bourbonfaced on Shit Street. Bourbon Street, French Quarter (Vieux Carré), New Orleans, Louisiana. October 12, 2017.

Watermelons for sale in Meridian, Mississippi. October 13, 2017.

LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN CAUSEWAY || The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, Louisiana. October 13, 2017.
Traversing north to south the 1,600 km² oval-shaped lake and opened in the mid-50s as a single bridge (another parallel bridge/causeway was added in the late 60’s, the present north bound carriageway we drove today), the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is supported by 9,500 concrete pilings and measures an impressive 23.8 miles (38.5 kilometres in proper units of length). It was for decades the longest bridge over water in the world. The spoilsport Chinese (who else?) have recently built many more many times longer so the good folk at the Guinness World Records have since shifted the goal posts as it were, changing the wording/fabricating criteria to ensure this is still, as I type, the longest ‘continuous’ bridge over water on earth. Neat, and a great drive, especially going north; there’s a toll payable when driving the southbound carriageway.

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge. The world’s longest? It depends on who you reference. Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana. October 13, 2017.

By the mid-1920’s Moorish Revival Temple Theater in Meridian, Mississippi. October 13, 2017.

JIMMIE RODGERS || Outside the no-pictures-allowed-inside Jimmie Rodgers Museum, Meridian, Mississippi. October 13, 2017.
Meridian boy, musician and lyricist Jimmie Rodgers, and in the span of a career that lasted only some 5 years before his untimely death from tuberculosis in 1933 at the age of 35, sang of real life & the common man in a way that placed a defining stamp on what would later become country music – The Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, established in 1961 with Rodgers as one of the first three inductees, simply refer to him as ‘The Man Who Started It All.’ The small intimate museum honouring him, full of historical artifacts & instruments, is located in Meridian’s Highland Park off Jimmie Rodgers Drive, for now that is – The Jimmie Rodgers Foundation that maintains the museum has plans to move it to a bigger site in downtown Meridian, the move scheduled for April 2018. We got the lowdown on the museum and the move from Bob, an affable southern old-timer and war vet who was manning the museum & who was only too happy to show us around, himself a memorable highlight of the visit.

JIMMIE RODGERS GRAVE || At the Jimmie Rodgers grave in Oak Grove Baptist Church Cemetery, Meridian, Mississippi. October 13, 2017.
Bob’s DIY map of how to get from the museum to Meridian’s Oak Grove Baptist Church Cemetery did the trick, albeit after a few missed turns. It was a beautiful evening in a peaceful setting, perfect therapy prior to resuming the drive north.

Edifices of Bockman Way, Sparta, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.

Enjoying the bluegrass in Liberty Square, Sparta, Tennessee, a.k.a. Bluegrass USA! October 14, 2017.

At the Lester Flatt Memorial on Bockman Way, Sparta, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.

LESTER FLATT || The grave of Lester Flatt in Oaklawn Memorial Cemetery outside Sparta, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.
It took a bit of searching out (we almost gave up looking) but we eventually found the small bronze plaque that marks the final resting place of Lester Raymond Flatt (1914-1979) in the peaceful Oaklawn Memorial Cemetery 3 miles from Liberty Square in central Sparta. The Sparta native and bluegrass pioneer played a central role in defining the musical genre as a member of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys before going on to form one of the most successful & influential bands of its era by joining forces, in 1948, with banjo maestro Earl Scruggs; their ground-breaking collaborations as Flatt & Scruggs & the Foggy Mountain Boys, whose fame spread thanks to Grand Ole Opry radio & national television broadcasts, still define the genre & influence its protagonists today.

A LESTER FLATT CELEBRATION || Flatt Lonesome performing in front of the Oldham Theater to close the 2017 A Lester Flatt Celebration in Liberty Square, Sparta, Tennessee. October 14, 2017.
The annual one-day celebration of all things bluegrass honouring Sparta’s favourite son is probably the town’s blue-ribboned event. The free bluegrass performances fronting Sparta’s picturesque Oldham Theatre is obviously the main event, but craft stalls, food vendors, a classic car show and a farewell fireworks display supplement the music.

OLDHAM THEATRE || The Oldham Theatre, Liberty Square, Sparta, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.
Somewhat surprisingly, information on Sparta’s most striking edifice is hard to come by. A true neighborhhod cinema house, the Oldham Theatre appears to have been constructed around the late 1930’s and is today one of the last remaining such structures in the US. Converted in 2005 for use as the Sparta Visitors Center, today it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose (although its awesome facade lighting still works to great & photogenic effect) save for providing both a backdrop & a dressing room for the performers of the annual A Lester Flatt Celebration.

Nashvegas. Lower Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.

The next big thing? Performing in Music City. Nashville, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.

It’s fall y’all! Fronting the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tennessee. October 17, 2017.

LEGENDS CORNER || Legends Corner, Lower Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.
I’m assuming that the small stage of Lower Broadway’s Legends Corner, one of Nashville’s original honky-tonks, did once play host to many a legend of the C & W genre. It just doesn’t these days. Today it’s a music bar like all the rest, albeit one with a legendary status & name, and on this particular Sunday Funday afternoon its patrons were being entertained by Legends resident Buck McCoy, seen here.

ERNEST TUBB RECORD STORE || Bluegrass CDs in the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, Lower Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.
Unlike its many bars & honky-tonks, about the only place where you’ll find real country music on Lower Broadway these days is in the racks & bins of the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, about as iconic a Nashville music store as there is (& where they sell bluegrass, too).

Lower Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee. October 15, 2017.

Ending Day 20. The Station Inn. 12 Avenue South, The Gulch, Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.

Intermission. No music here. Shadows at The Parthenon in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.

WOODLAWN MEMORIAL PARK CEMETERY || Shrine. The final resting place of Tammy Wynette in the Cross Mausoleum of Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
Twice today we visited Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, the evening lighting as bad as the morning lighting that necessitated the second visit (never did I think I’d find myself disgruntled with lighting in a graveyard). Snoop around in here long enough & you’ll eventually stumble across the grave of many a country music heavy-hitter (Eddy Arnold, Porter Wagoner, Marty Robbins & Webb Pierce, among others, are all buried here), although having a map as provided by the staff in the cemetery’s impressive, maze-esque funeral home would speed up the search (it’s a big place). We came here to view the grave of George Jones (see below), eventually ending up in the cemetery’s cross-shaped mausoleum, the preferred resting place for those who didn’t want to be buried outside or underground. You’ll find more former country A-Listers in here (Little Jimmy Dickens, Jim Ed Brown & Lynn ‘(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden’ Anderson to name but a few), not to mention a rather bizarre replica of Christ’s Tomb, but the mausoleum’s biggest attraction is surely the final resting place of one Tammy Wynette. ‘The First Lady Of Country Music’ who was blighted by health problems throughout her adult life before her untimely death in 1998 at the age of 55. One of country music’s best-known and biggest-selling female artists, her signature song Stand By Your Man, just 1 of Wynette’s 20 chart-topping hits, is also one of the most recorded songs in the history of the genre and the one that also crossed over into the pop charts thus catapulting her in the process to superstar status.

(THE) GEORGE JONES || Performing in The George Jones, 2nd Avenue North, Downtown Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
With a long list of hit records (he had more songs on the Billboard chart and more top 40 hits than any country artist in history) & a distinctive, unmatched voice, Texan George Jones was, for the decades prior to his death in 2013 at the age of 81, frequently referred to, by other country singers no less, as the greatest living country singer, one who, and unlike some of his contemporaries, stuck with real country music with a vengeance by showing unabashed loyalty to strictly country arrangements. It’s no surprise then that present-day Downtown Nashville has a shrine to ‘The Possum’, as he was affectionately known. The George Jones is a multi-level commercial juggernaut boasting a smokehouse, an event space, a museum & a rooftop bar, the small stage of which is seen here, with views across the Cumberland River towards the hulking Nissan Stadium, home to the Tennessee Titans of the NFL. No longer part of the wider Jones estate following a late-2016 sale, it remains to be seen if the new ownership group will show respect for the legacy of one of country music’s most iconic figures, or slap his name and face on whatever they feel can make them the most money (while purchasing the property, the group also acquired the rights to use Jones’ name & image).

PARTHENON || The Parthenon. Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
The original 70-metre-long by 31-metre-wide (230 x 98 feet) Classical-style Parthenon temple was built in the 5th Century BC on a sacred site in ancient Greece, the crest of the Acropolis, the famous hill overlooking Athens. Dedicated to Athena, Greek Goddess of Wisdom & benevolent protector of the city of Athens, the temple, now mostly in ruin & what’s left perennially covered by an unsightly skin of scaffolding, was built to house the long-lost 12.8-metre-tall (42 feet) ivory & gold statue of Athena, the most renowned cult image of Athens & considered one of the greatest achievements of Phidias, the acclaimed sculptor of ancient Greece. The replica of The Parthenon that presently stands pride of place in Nashville’s Centennial Park is, not surprisingly, the world’s only full-size reproduction of what is considered the epitome of ancient Greek culture. Built as the centrepiece of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition of May to October 1897, it was envisioned to serve as the Exposition’s gallery of fine arts that ‘would inspire a love of beauty and a spirit of excellence’, so said the Nashville Mayor of the time Eugene C. Lewis. The success of the Centennial and the public’s favourable response to the temporary Parthenon (built of brick, wood & plaster) meant the post-Expo’s plan to destroy it was shelved in favour of its total reconstruction using more permanent materials, this carried out in phases between 1921 and 1931 – it opened to the public in its present form on May 20, 1931. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in February 1972 & in receipt of a full makeover in 2002, today its vast gallery space serves not only as an art museum but, and just like the ancient Athenian original, also as a shrine to Athena, albeit only of late – Nashville’s Parthenon only received its Athena statue, Athena Parthenos, in May 1990, unveiled to much fanfare on the anniversary of the Parthenon opening to the public. A modern fill-size copy by Nashville native Alan LeQuire, it took 8 years to complete and today, at 12.75 metres (41 ft 10 in) tall, is the largest piece of indoor sculpture in the Western Hemisphere. Plain white for twelve years, in 2002 Parthenon volunteers gilded Athena under the supervision of master gilder Lou Reed to accurately reflect what was thought to be her original Athens Parthenon appearance, doing no harm in the process to Nashville’s long-standing reputation as ‘The Athens of The South’.

RYMAN AUDITORIUM || The external facade of the Ryman Auditorium, The Mother Church of Country Music, in Downtown Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
A much venerated Nashville landmark, the redbrick Union Gospel Tabernacle opened in 1892 as a house of worship and was renamed The Ryman Auditorium in 1904 following the death of Thomas Green Ryman (1841-1904), a prominent riverboat captain and Nashville businessman who was the central figure in devoting generous contributions of both time and money to the building’s construction. Put to use as a venue for a wide variety of events, the auditorium gained a reputation as the region’s preeminent performance hall, unintentionally given the fact that it wasn’t designed as such – it only received its first stage in 1901, almost 2 decades after its opening. However, it was as the venue for the Grand Ole Opry, the popular live radio show that had outgrown several local venues since its inception in 1925, that really put the Ryman on the map, the building gaining national recognition as the ‘Mother Church of Country Music’ by playing to packed audiences every week of the Opry‘s 1943-1974 Ryman residence. Included in the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 (& designated a National Historic Landmark in 2001), it sat largely abandoned for 2 decades following the Opry‘s 1974 departure to a new, custom-built venue, before opening once again in 1994 as a performance venue following major renovations. Another $14M restoration followed in 2015, ushering in a new commercial-driven campaign to market the historic auditorium to visitors as ‘The Soul of Nashville’ and somewhere that has been ‘Historically Cool Since 1892’.

BIRTHPLACE OF BLUEGRASS || A statue to Bill Monroe, a.k.a. The Father of Bluegrass, outside the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
It was upon the Rynam stage in December 1945 that the ‘Father of Bluegrass’ Bill Monroe found the sound of a new musical genre. When Monroe’s rapid-fire mandolin and ‘high lonesome’ vocals were joined by Earl Scruggs’ virtuosic & innovative signature three-finger style of banjo playing, Lester Flatt’s guitar and vocals, Chubby Wise’s fiddle, and Howard Watts’ bass, ‘bluegrass’ was born. Today, bluegrass remains a staple on the stage where it started.

RYMAN TOUR – THE SOUL OF NASHVILLE || Inside the Ryman Auditorium in Downtown Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
Undoubtedly looking all the better for the extensive 2015 renovation (the shaded interior still evokes that of a church thanks to the reproduced stained glass windows & pews), but the experience of visiting the Ryman today is a vastly different, less intimate experience to one I got while undertaking the DIY tour back in 2003 when I recall being the only person poking around the auditorium’s innards. Visually not much about the Ryman seems to have changed in the intervening 15 years, but it’s a much busier place these days, the present-day Ryman’s The Soul of Nashville experience that visitors buy into both popular & seemingly hellbent on recouping as much as possible of the $14M spent on the aforementioned renovation. The tour is still self-guided, there’s plenty to read on the history of the building and The Soul of Nashville theater experience video that begins every tour is brilliantly conceived & innovatively presented, but it’s still all a bit too commercialised for my liking – you have to pay extra on top of the already expensive entrance fee to have your photo taken on the hallowed Ryman stage, just one step too far for me.

THE STATION INN || Carl Jackson & Friends performing at The Station Inn, 12 Avenue South, The Gulch, Nashville, Tennessee. October 16, 2017.
Something of a bluegrass mecca, the dark and intimate first come, first served, cash-on-the-door-only venue that is Nashville’s Station Inn has been ‘Forever Bluegrass’ since its opening in 1974 (it’s also a roots & Americana music venue). Based in the trendy & hip Gulch district of the city, originally home to the downtown railroad terminal, the simple venue has hosted some pickin’ masters over the years & many a legend has graced its stage, one of which, Grammy award-winning Carl Jackson (wearing the cap), we got to meet tonight.

Blame It On My Country Roots. In the gift shop of the Grand Ole Opry House, Nashville, Tennessee. October 17, 2017.

OPRY TOUR || Dressing Room 5, ‘Stars and Stripes’. Backstage at the Grand Ole Opry House, Nashville, Tennessee. October 17, 2017.
For such a large venue, I was struck by how compact the immediate back-of-stage environment of the Grand Ole Opry House is, the Artists’ Entrance, the bronze plaques & personal mailboxes of invite-only Opry Members, the palatial Family/Green Room where artists & VIP guests hang out, and a peak into some of the 18 themed & lavishly-decorated dressing rooms (this one decorated as a tribute to America’s service men & women) taking up the bulk of the popular 1-hour Backstage Tour itinerary.

2010 NASHVILLE FLOODS – THE SHOW MUST GO ON || Hallowed ground. The stage of the Grand Ole Opry House, Nashville, Tennessee. October 17, 2017.
Of course the Opry Backstage Tour includes a walk across the stage for the requisite – ching! ching! – optional-purchase-at-the-end-of-tour photo op standing in the famous ‘Circle’, a six-foot circle of wood that sits center stage & that was removed from the Ryman stage to be set into the stage here when the show moved to its present location 1974. The stage backdrop reflects the Opry‘s origin as the 650AM WSM Barn Dance, broadcast on Opry nights since its inception in 1925 & today the longest continuously running live radio program in the world, a run it managed to sustain even during the May 2010 floods that crippled Nashville and closed the Opry House for 5+ months. Despite damage that included a ruined stage, pews, curtains, floor and the walls, the music or the broadcasts never stopped as the Opry continued to venue-hop during the summer of 2010. After undergoing $20 million in renovations – the venue’s entire ground floor, including the stage, was submerged & had to be rebuilt – the Opry House reopened in October 2010, a preserved marker on the wall in the backstage Family/Green Room showing the level of the flood waters the only sign of the floods that caused more than $2 billion in private property damage & left 11 in the immediate Nashville area dead.