Location: Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Woo! WOO! I’m back out into the world! I flew into Vancouver last night and rushed downtown to meet Katisse at our hotel. It’s been over a year since we saw each other so we immediately started excitedly chattering on our way out the door, heading right to a Kacey Musgraves concert. Just diving right in to the trip! No time to sit! Only go! The concert was a beautiful, ethereal, boho country kicking good time. Kacey sounded even lovelier in person than she does on her records, which is impressive considering it’s usually the opposite. But man… does live music make me feel old.

Exhibit A: I was yawning before the concert even started at 9:30 PM (the horror).

Exhibit B: Kinda wish I brought earplugs?

Exhibit C: one of the opening singers that we thought was kinda cute turned out to be in his late 40’s???

But age won’t slow us down ho ho no! Onward!! A super restful 5 hours of sleep later and we were back on a plane tooooo… Nashville! A lot of people have asked me why Nashville and here’s what I can say: Katisse and I bonded as young teens over our shared love of country music, that I used to download on my aunt Sharon and uncle Kelly’s computer, rip onto CD’s and colour with rainbow sharpies. We used to scream sing the songs outside at school and talk about how one day we’d see it for ourselves.

Is there literally a better place than Nashville for this? No! It’s like the Mecca of country music!

I originally imagined getting off the plane to a warm fall day… and was greeted instead with 34 degrees Celsius and high humidity. Why did I think Nashville was in a desert?! Where are we?!

Tennessee, as it turns out, is all lush green farmland and low rolling hills, landlocked in the south between Alabama and Kentucky and Mississippi. ‘Big tornados and great BBQ’ our cab driver eagerly told us. And music, so much music. Just driving into the city everything is all music notes and guitar themed. ‘The Music City’ nickname is right.

I was absolutely starving from the day of travel, so we decided to check my number one food item off the list first thing: Nashville hot chicken. Droooool.

Now listen. I did a fair amount of research trying to find the best place for this famed fried chicken, and just trust me when I say there are a ton of places. It was a lot of work looking. And guys, I think I found the holy grail.

I excitedly pulled Kat all the way to Brave Idiot, a chicken food truck parked behind a pinball machine bar on the eastern side of the city. We’re sitting in a dusty alley in the sun, ivy growing on the building next to us, loud motocycles rushing past while faint pinball machine sounds float out of the bar.

Perfection. Utter perfection. Somehow it’s nothing like what I imagined and exactly what I wanted at the same time. Plus the chicken was otherwordly. I’m a spicy food kinda gal (if I’m crying during a meal it’s a good thing) but I decided to play it safe with a 6/10 called the cluck if you buck. Kat went with the classic southern fried chicken with no spice. I had a good laugh at the difference in colour between our chickens…

I can’t decide if they called the place Brave Idiot because the guy opening the truck was brave for doing so, or because I’m an idiot for trying this chicken. It was everything I wanted but like… I didn’t know I could sweat from my forearms.

Mark my words, I’m gonna try again while we’re here.

We had one more thing on the docket of an already packed day, and it was high up on both our lists (remember the aforementioned shared love of country music?).

The Grand Ole Opry!!

We’ve always wanted to go and it couldn’t wait for even a day. The Opry is like a rite of passage for country musicians so it feels momentous for us to step into this place. We had no idea who was actually playing but that’s not the point! Gardens surrounded the brick and wood building on all sides, but we scurried past to the will call to grab our tickets and get inside, smiling ear to ear.

The walls inside were covered in murals of greats like Reba Macintyre, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Elvis, and Garth Brooks, just to name a few. The steep auditorium was packed with red upholstered benches surrounding a wooden stage. Red velvet curtains hung down with two ‘on air’ signs placed to either side. It turns out that the Opry was originally a radio show from the 1920’s and is now the longest standing radio show in history at 99 years old! You can watch/listen to the show live every single time it plays! Who knew?

The curtains lifted and we were greeted with a night of talent we’d mostly never heard of but absolutely loved. A mix of 70’s and 80’s country blended seamlessly with songs released literally today. We heard acts from T Graham Brown, Hannah Ellis, Donovan Frankenreiter, The Isaacs, Connie Smith, and Old Crow Medicine Show, among others. Each act played a few songs in the famed ‘wooden circle’, which is literally a circle of wood on stage taken from the first auditorium the Opry radio show ever had. Every artist remarked on how incredible it was to be in that circle, and it was clear just how impactful a moment it was for all of them whether this was their first or hundredth time playing there.

We meandered home, stopping for ice cream along the way and reliving our favourite parts of the show (which may or may not have involved some poor renditions of the songs we heard!)

Oh my god it’s been like a few hours and somehow it feels like we’ve been travelling for days! I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Sav