July 6th - Nashville

​Angie awoke with a sore wrist. It was the one she had fallen on while cycling at Cade's Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains. She decided she had better get an x-ray and treatment. While she was out, Hank and the dogs went paddleboarding on the reservoir.

When Angie returned with a brace for her sprained wrist, we eschewed more paddleboarding in favor of a nap before another night on the town. In the meantime, we had a hard rain, which gave us a chance to check whether our window repair was effective. Our ugly caulking repair turned out to be effective and we stayed dry. Whew!

We drove to town and started at Kid Rock's Honky Tonk where we found a packed room around the main stage on the first floor. There were four floors with three bands. We quickly understood why the crowd was so big. There was a kick-ass band playing behind lead man John Stone (#johnstonecountry). Requests and tips were rolling in their 5 gallon bucket. People didn't hesitate to fill the bucket because these guys were so good.  The couple behind us paid $100 for them to play "I'm in a Hurry" by Alabama. The lead singer John Stone was charasmatic and had a great voice. His brother on lead guitar, totally nailed a Stevie Ray Vaughn number later. They also had an excellent sax player. We stayed quite a while until Hank got sort of claustrophobic from the growing crowd, which kept nudging us on our bar stools.

For a change if pace, we explored a few clubs on a quiet side street off Broadway. We found a sparsely populated bar with an excellent cowboy singer, Kyle Austin (kyleaustinmusic.com) with a mediocre band behind him. He did a very nice version of "Dixieland Delight" for Angie.

Back on Broadway, we discovered a trio (Kelley's Heros) at Robert's Western World that knocked our socks off. The lead guitarist was a prodigy whose facial expression implied that he as in a trance like the banjo player in the film "Deliverance".  He burned it up! He even played the guitar behind his head and with with his teeth during their finale. There was a stand-up acoustic bass player who was an incredible showman. At one point he played while standing on the side of his bass, which was tilted 45 degrees from the floor. We had never seen anything like these guys. They play there four nights a week and we resolved to return to catch more of their show.