You'll find scores of honky-tonks on Nashville's Lower Broadway. Photo / 123RF
You'll find scores of honky-tonks on Nashville's Lower Broadway. Photo / 123RF
Nashville's mix of Southern hospitality and rich creative heritage hits just the right note for Jez Smadja.
There's a reason it's called the Music City. I've just cleared customs at Nashville International and I've already spotted Keith Urban, country music superstar, American Idol judge and husband of Nicole Kidman, wheeling a baggage trolley through the terminal.
He's every bit the chisel-jawed heartthrob in real life as he is on screen. But when I later mention my sighting to local residents, they simply shrug and say that seeing Keith Urban round these parts is #nobigdeal.
Country music star Keith Urban. Photo / AP
What else would you expect in Nashville, this genteel and unhurried yet proudly cosmopolitan city in the middle of the Bible Belt? It's a place where Southern hospitality is doled out in super-sized portions, and where the Tennessee accent, sweet like honey molasses, is strung with phrases like "y'all" and "sure is".
Counting a population of 650,000, Nashville surely has more music professionals per capita than anywhere else in the world: singers, songwriters, guitar pickers, record execs, studio engineers - you name it, and every one has a celebrity tale to tell.
This is, after all, the town that launched the careers of Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, a town where Elvis recorded Are You Lonesome Tonight? in the wood-panelled RCA Studio B. It's where Bob Dylan made Blonde on Blonde, and where countless artists - including Taylor Swift - have slipped their demo tapes to the execs along Music Row, a place that is to country music what Madison Avenue is to advertising.
If you've come here for country music, bluegrass or folk, you won't have to look far.
Seven days a week, the flashing neon lights of Lower Broadway - "Lower Broad" to the yellow taxi drivers - alert you to the honky-tonks where down-on-their-luck pickers once came to make their dreams come true.
On this stretch, you'll find Legend's Corner just a few doors down from locals' favourite, Robert's Western World, with its famous wall of cowboy boots.
And then there's Tootsie's, where stars like Hank Williams and Johnny Cash piled in through the back door after playing the Ryman Auditorium across the alleyway.
But on a Monday night, there's only one place to be, and that's 3rd & Lindsley.
It's a Nashville institution and that's thanks to the Time Jumpers, a loose association of seasoned studio musicians. The band's line-up changes, but tonight, wearing a forest green polo shirt, is country music legend Vince Gill. The audience is made up of professional musicians in ten-gallon hats and country music aficionados - Nina Hagen, singer of pop hit 99 Red Balloons among them - all sipping on beers and Tennessee bourbons.
Nashville is uniquely set up to market its rich country music heritage to tourists. There's a Johnny Cash Museum off Broadway, the astonishing Hatch Show Print, where they're still making posters on hand-cranked letterpress machines a century later, and the restored Ryman Auditorium, former church and home of the legendary Grand Ole Opry radio show.
Yet at the same time, Nashville seems to be on the cusp of something genuinely fresh and exciting, with not a rhinestone or Acme cowboy boot in sight. It's why artists like the Kings of Leon and the Black Keys, as well as top chefs, fashion designers and film-makers, are making Nashville their home.
Shops and Honky Tonk bars on Broadway Street in Nashville. Photo / iStock
The Music City has undergone a creative renaissance. GQ magazine dubbed it Nowville and in the New York Times it's been called "It" City, stealing the limelight from other up-and-coming US destinations like Austin and Portland.
A few blocks south of Broadway is Third Man Records, the record label set up by producer Jack White, of the White Stripes, whose move to Nashville sparked the city's artistic rebirth. The brick warehouse lies in a former industrial district called Sobro, where the Union Pacific freight train rattles on towards Chattanooga. The operation opened its doors in March 2009 and combines a kitschly decorated record shop with a recording studio and a 250-seat venue called the Blue Room. Here, fans have been treated to performances by the Shins, the Kills and even Jerry Lee Lewis. The shows are recorded direct-to-acetate and vinyl copies are then sold to attendees.
Just down the street is Peg-Leg Porker, a relatively recent addition to the neighbourhood but already a solid favourite, thanks to its paprika-rubbed dry barbecue ribs, tender pulled pork and smoky pulled chicken. Peg-Leg Porker also produces its own Tennessee bourbon. Outside, on the sun-strafed terrace, the restaurant owner is talking to a couple deliberating over which car to get Carrie Underwood for her next video - just another typical Nashville pastoral.
The food scene in Nashville is hotter than a poker right now. Although you can eat yourself a belt-buckle larger with Southern staples like fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, and cherry pie, there's also a lot of forward-thinking, homespun cuisine made from locally sourced ingredients.
You can witness this first hand across the Cumberland River in the enclave of East Nashville, around neighbourhoods like Five Points, Historic Edgefield and East End. Unlike the big skyscrapers in Downtown, East Nashville has long avenues of brightly painted bungalows, with clipped lawns and rocking-chair porches, interspersed with Baptist churches, a sign of the historic African-American community. Not surprisingly, artists have moved in en masse.
Five Points, so-called because it sits at the junction of five roads, lines up restaurants like Marche, a market and bistro banking on its farmyard-to-the-table formula, and The Pharmacy, where the burgers are made from Tennessee beef and have been drawing serious critical attention. Fans of Mexican food head for Mas Taco Por Favor, once a food truck, now a bona fide bricks-and-mortar success story.
And over in Marathon City, on the north side of town, a converted car factory now houses boutique fashion marques, a craft whiskey distillery, and The Old Time Pickin Parlor where you can pick up mandos, banjos and custom-made Boo Ray straps.
Outside, in the street, is a huge mural that I've seen in strategic locations all over Nashville. It has red and white vertical stripes, three stars on a blue circle, and in large capital letters the words: I Believe In Nashville. Though I've only been here 48 hours, I can safely say I'm a believer too.
CHECKLIST
Getting there: From December, Air New Zealand flies non-stop Auckland to Houston, with connections to Nashville on partner airlines.
