Viva Nash-Vegas

So I was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago, home to the corporate offices of HCA, getting trained how to use the HR Information System at our hospitals. The training was 8-4:30, Monday - Thursday. My plane got in too late on Sunday night to do anything but check in, have a salad in the hotel restaurant, and go to bed. From my window, I could see the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Gaylord Entertainment Center (the "geck" as the locals called it) and the Symphony center. On the back side of my hotel was a strip of bars on Broadway, including the "famous"(?) Tootsies and the Coyote Ugly bar. Some locals to whom I spoke said there had been so much entertainment development in the last decade that they now, tongue-in-cheek, referred to their hometown as Nash-Vegas.

The training was efficient and useful, but taxing. Monday night a group of us from Houston went to The Tin Angel for dinner, having been promised that it was a favorite spot for local music celebrities (Vince Gill, Amy Grant, Clint Black). When we got there, it dawned on us that no one was a country music fan, so we tried to name all the artists we might actually recognize if they did come in to eat dinner. The three above, Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton were about as far as we got. None of those six dined there that night, so we all went to our rooms full but somewhat let down.

Night two was just plain cool. After dinner at another local spot (forget the name), we went to a concert at The Blue Bird Cafe. This is an unremarkable room of about 3000 square feet, with a bar on one wall and small to medium tables everywhere else. In the center of the room, set in among the tables, were 6 chairs facing each other in a circle, with a keyboard in front of one chair and 3 microphones in front of the others. Two female songwriters, two male songwriters, a keyboard accompanist and a guitar accompanist occupied the chairs.

The Blue Bird Cafe is famous in Nashville for featuring songwriters who have written songs recorded by popular musicians, though I'd never heard of any of the songwriters. But I had heard the songs "It Matters to Me", "Heads Carolina, Tails California", "I Hope You Dance" and "Delta Dawn", each of which had been written by one or the other of these songwriters. Each introduced a song they wrote, told what it meant or how it had been inspired, then performed it, and so on around the circle. While one was performing, though, the others wouldn't just sit there: they'd sing harmony, play lead guitar to their melody, and just basically jam. And for a dingy, no frills room in a strip mall, the acoustics were incredible. Of course, we were about 20 feet from the performers, which didn't hurt.

"Delta Dawn" was co-written by Alex Harvey who performed it that night. It was inspired by his mother, who was a poor, beautiful alcoholic who killed herself when Alex was a teenager. For years - he said - he was ashamed to admit she was the inspiration for the song, and when he sang it that night it was obvious he had written it as a blues number, not a two-stepping dance tune. He was a rough looking older guy with long gray hair and a brown leather cowboy hat, and he made the strongest impression on "the Texans". But they were all remarkable performers who sang incredibly, played perfectly and literally blew us away.

The next day at training, we couldn't bear to stay in that room for lunch one more day, so we went to a local bar called the Wild Horse Saloon. Three stories tall with a stage fit for Broadway facing a huge dance floor, this was no run-of-the-mill saloon. As we were finishing our lunch (BBQ with fried pickles, a specialty of the house), we saw Alex Harvey sitting at the bar talking to a man. So the four of us went over to him, introduced ourselves and told him how fantastic the show had been. And then he hugged me. He hugged all four of us actually, but I was expecting it least, I think. He introduced us to the manager of the saloon, then gave us 2 CDs, one of his songs from "the old days" and one by his new band "Alex Harvey and Galilee", a collection of Christian songs he had written and recorded. He was meeting with the manager to finalize the details of his band's performance that Sunday for brunch. He's a born-again Christian, and when we told him we were from Houston he asked for our email addresses so he could invite us when he would be in town to perform at Lakewood Church (Pastored by Joel Osteen in the former Compaq Center - you know the one).

When we were late getting back to class, the instructors stopped the lesson to hear our excuse, knowing it would be a whopper and not being the least bit disappointed.

Last night in town was a good dinner (more BBQ for some reason), then a couple of beers at "The Stage", with a band which was very talented but not noteworthy. Though it tells you something about the times that the front of the stage had a banner with their web site address on it.

So I have now added "hugged the co-writer of 'Delta Dawn'" to my impressive list of celebrity encounters. But more remarkable than that, I now find myself stopping on the country stations as I channel surf in the car, hoping to hear some good "banjo" music. I think I've even figured out where the Country Music Television station is on our cable...

Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?
And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today
To take you to his mansion in the sky?