Country music comes from Virginia, neat eh?

For ten days in the summer of 1927 RCA sent a producer with portable recording equipment to Bristol to see if he could find local talent to record. A backwoods family showed up and played a style of music previously unheard of that they had honed in the Appalachian Mountains blending the music of British and Irish immigrants with the music of former slave families who had moved north.

That family were the Carter’s and would from then on be known at the first family of country music, their guitarist Maybelle Carter had a guitar picking style that had not been seen before and was really the first person to showcase the guitar as more than just a background rhythm instrument, this style would become known as the “Carter Scratch” and would influence guitarists from that point on.

I am picky about country music, I really only like the stuff that isn’t crap, the Carter Family however are almost mythical, especially when walking the streets of Bristol myself this morning.

The sore back I developed in New Orleans officially went into the red in Nashville and I’ve spent most of the past 3 days in motel rooms, laying on the floor. Here is some catchup of the things I managed to limp my way to:

BOURBON!

Toured three of my favourite distilleries in Kentucky; Four Roses, Elijah Craig and Maker’s Mark.

Four Roses warehouses, they have ten like the one pictured below (500,000 barrels) and are currently building five more, the global bourbon demand is so great that all of the big producers are currently in the process of doubling capacity, however with at least a ten year lead time this is not easy to do.

Maker’s Mark

The Maker’s Mark grounds are almost unbelievably gorgeous, actually most of what I saw of Kentucky is gorgeous.

More bourbon storage, these warehouses are massive.

I swear they said I could!

It tastes bad, like sour beer and bread.

So if you drink some Maker’s Mark about 7 years from now my bacteria helped!

More of the grounds.

There is a fungus that turns everything within a mile of a bourbon distillery black over time, like this tree.

Maker’s Mark have their own printing shop onsite, here they are printing and cutting bottle labels.

Bourbon!

Hand-dipping each bottle in wax.

The entire time from unboxing a returned bottle to that bottle being washed, labelled, dipped in wax, filled and boxed for shipping is less than 2 minutes.

If you buy a bottle onsite you get to dip if yourself.

“The House That Chet Built”

Chet Atkins was the studio boss here at RCA Studio B and turned it into the most famous recording studio of the 50s and 60s, all the stars that got their start 3 hours down the road at Sun Studios in Memphis came here for the next stage of their careers. Almost all of Elvis’s songs were recorded in this room.

RCA Studio B is the only recording studio listed by the US Park Service in their National Register of Historic Places.

Who recorded here? 

The usual giants, people you would expect, 

Waylon Jennings

Dolly Parton

Hank Snow

Ernest Tubb

Rosemary Clooney

Everly Bros.

Roger Miller

The Monkees

Willie Nelson

Roy Orbison

Carl Perkins

Elvis Presley

Barbra Streisand

but

I’m more interested in the less famous people who recorded stuff I love in this exact room…

My Morning Jacket…

and Ben Folds Five…

And of course Leonard…

The singer’s spot

The tour guide had lots of trivia questions during the tour, the person with the correct answer got a prize…. so if anyone would like a Taylor Swift guitar pic I have lots!

Prizes!

–Steve Earle “Guitar Town”

Spent the morning at the Johnny Cash Museum, teary-eyed the whole time, very high quality museum, unlike Graceland this doesn’t shy away from drug-use and darker stuff so much.

The exact guitars and bass and amps Johnny, Luther and Marshall brought into Sun Records on their first day.

Ha! I love Johnny being described as “droll”.

Johnny’s reading from June’s funeral.

The chair and guitar from the ‘Hurt’ video, his final. 

Watching Johnny look through the windows of his home where I stood last week and seeing a very elderly June comforting a clearly unwell Johnny in the video and knowing they would both be gone less than a year later choked me up and made me flee to the gift shop.

Spent yesterday evening in a pew of the “Mother Church” that is the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, taking part in the 85th birthday celebration for Loretta Lynn.

She was exactly as you would expect, fierce and funny and the songs were awesome, sung by her or various family members or guests like Martina McBride.

 Drove to Muscle Shoals Alabama yesterday, a town of a few thousand people in the Alabama swamp, hours from a major centre.

In the 1970’s two recording studios run out of Muscle Shoals became the unlikely hottest spot in the world to record. The Swampers that Lynyrd Skynyrd are talking about in Sweet Home Alabama? That’s them in the picture below, they were the studio band and played on dozens of records that you’ve heard before.

The Swampers

Me

Cher

Snakes in the swamp

Grand Isle, a couple hours south of New Orleans, way way out on the bywater, all buildings are at least a story off the ground.

Waiting for our swamp tour

Geoff is funny

There is a house, in New Orleans

Oldest bar in the US also has great grape slurpees

Afternoon jazz at the Spotted Cat

Geoff scouts the swamp

Honey Island Swamp

Streetcars running below the balcony at a different bar

Pagoda, mandatory morning coffee stop by our place

I didn’t mean to not post at all this week, really, but New Orleans with great friends kinda took over, I’ll add some photos tomorrow, though I didn’t really think to take that many this week.

Tomorrow my buddies go back home and I continue on alone, just me and supervan, might take a day or two to readjust to solo travel.