Central City back to Nashville - Grand Ole Opry

Day 11 - Saturday, September 20

Before we left Central City we went downtown - not far, it's only a small place - because This is where the Everly Brothers are from and we wanted to see the monument.

We crossed Everly Brothers Boulevard on the way.

There's not a lot else in Central City, Ky so we headed back to Nashville.

In the afternoon we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame not far from Broadway. It's a huge building, with lots of interesting exhibits exploring the origins and development of country music. There are instruments, costumes, narratives and the history of many of the more famous people. A number of them were unknown to us but we enjoyed it nevertheless.

A memorable moment was seeing these....

The Hall of Fame itself is a light and airy large circular room with plaques on the wall honouring anyone who's anyone in the business. 

The phrase "Will the circle be unbroken" is one we came across elsewhere. It relates to a very well-known (although not to us) country song, with strong religious connections, but the phrase seems to have been acquired by the business to refer to the continuation of the traditions of the genre.

After our visit we had lunch at the rooftop bar of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge on Broadway.

Tasteful and discreet, isn't it ?

We went in through the main door on Broadway and made our way through 3 floors to get to the roof terrace - it was mid-afternoon on Saturday and the place was rammed, with a different band playing on each level. We managed to get a table at the front corner and could hear live music coming from all directions - and on another rooftop across the street there was a wedding going on.

Early evening we drove about 20 minutes east to get to the Grand Ole Opry - we'd booked tickets months earlier. It's the longest running live radio show in the world and moved some time ago from the Ryman Theatre just off Broadway to its current huge venue.

A main feature is that they cut out a circle of wood from the centre of the Ryman stage and incorporated it into the new stage, so that current artists would be able to stand on the exact same floor that all their predecessors had. A nice idea and fits in with the "unbroken circle" concept I mentioned earlier.

The format is four half-hour segments each hosted by a different artist who sings one song and then introduces a couple of guests. The MC/announcer also doubles as the reader of frequent sponsor commercials.

The show was a mixture of old and new performers - Little Wille Dickens is 93 years old but still able to put on a good performance, wearing something that looked a bit like a mariachi suit.

Two singers who are in the TV series Nashville performed well - we loved the first series but somehow missed the second so we didn't know them. Apparently the third series is imminent so we'll need to catch up.

There was also a great bluegrass band from North Carolina who had a virtuoso fiddle player.

A guy called Bill Anderson, familiar to most but not to us, sang an entertaining song called Bubba Garcia's about the son of a redneck mother and mexican father opening a bar/restaurant.

In the final segment Ricky Skaggs introduced Ry Cooder but they only performed together - no RC alone - which was disappointing.

Altogether it was a great slice of American tradition which we enjoyed.

After dropping the car back at the hotel we got a cab back to Broadway. Started off with margaritas at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville bar - named after his famous song - and then on to the Wheel bar to see frenetic punk rockabilly outfit, which reminded us a lot of a band called the Cats who we'd seen a couple of times at the Colne Festival.