The Nashville Sessions

SATURDAY, MAR 2, 2024

It’s pretty early downtown right now. There’s hardly anybody stirring down on Broadway- maybe just a couple of tourists who have the kids with them. But give it another six hours, and the peeps on the sidewalks will number in the thousands, many of them drunker than Cootie Brown, lovin’ the ambiance of downtown Nashville.

It would be nice to say that the music seeped out of almost every door into the street, but actually, it’s more like the drum kit in the lounge front window, and the amplifiers a little deeper into the shop are blaring into the street, rendering conversation all but impossible.

Almost falling into the category of advertising, only a lot cheaper, this is how some places compete with others for the tourists on the street. Our bipolar city streets echo the mix of several architectures and establishments together into an odd cacophony of musical genres, primarily country, of course.

it’s a bit like writing for Medium. Some Nashvillians are in a studio recording quietly right now. No tourist or Nashvillian can go into every lounge and enjoy all the genres in one visit, but the best you can hope for is to walk past one that sounds good to you and go in to spend a while there. If you are a musician, in addition to being a listener, you are always in competition with the other musicians for the attention of the crowd.