Well then don’t bother reading on.

Nashville turned out to be quite the struggle. It’s not that it’s a bad place. I wouldn’t call it terrible by any means, but unless you’re into souveneir shopping and country music, the things on offer in Nashville are pretty few and far between.

Broadway St, kinda like the Beale St (Memphis) or 6th St (Austin) of Nashville, except with honky tonk bars playing country all day.

The day I arrived I made it to the hostel by mid afternoon and went for a stroll. It was then I discovered I really didn’t want to spend much time there and headed back to the hostel to nerd it up and find out if there was anything I might be remotely interested in seeing that night, especially since the hostel didn’t have much of a vibe and I knew I wouldn’t be making friends like at other hostels, and just sit around talking the night away or going to some dive bar. By some extreme stroke of luck it turned out Lucero (you might remember the mention of them in the last post) were playing a free show that night. Not that most of you reading this will care, but I was super pumped to try and catch them over here but with the way things were going it didn’t look like I would.

Went to the show and it was everything I’d hoped for, and then some. Two and a quarter hours, virtually without break and all for free. Good way to spend the little time I had in Nashville.

Next morning I was hoping to catch the 10:30am bus to get the hell out of there… I even turned up pretty early (an hour before the bus is early for me!), but got bumped to the 6pm because it was too full. Pretty bummed, did not want to spend any more time than necessary. And to make matters worse, the 6pm bus was to get into St Louis at some ungodly hour.

Though you know my luck, in the end it turned out sweet. Walking around, I saw kids lining up at some arena, so I tried checking out what was going on and whaddya know, Paramore/Tegan & Sara/New Found Glory were playing a show that night. I decided to look into an even later bus, and it turned out there was a Midnight bus (show was to end at 11), and that would arrive in St Louis at about 8:45 am. Seriously, ridiculously good luck.

Trying to fill in the day was difficult, though I did as I usually do when I don’t know what to do, and just went walking. And walking. And walking. Some gnarly blisters and a bitchin’ tan later, I somehow killed a few hours. There was even a torrential downpour at one point. And one thing I learned from that is, you can spray shoes with as much waterproofing as you like, but a storm will come along and be all like “yo, you think you can beat me? HAHAHA, take that, asshole!”. Now my shoes are damp and more of a shade of brown than black. Dammit.

Anyways, a few pics from the show: