Read about our visit to Third Man Records and The Loveless Cafe
A new phase today. We needed to go to the rental firm on Lafayette St to pick up our hire car. Trips to Muscle Shoals Alabama, Music City Roots in Franklin, Opry Mills and The Grand Ole Opry all require motor transport. We decided to walk to our rental location via Jack White’s Third Man Records, taking a few shortcuts before our path was blocked by a slow-moving and very long Union Pacific freight train. It’s snail pace actually slowed until reaching a dead stop, stymeing us completely.
“Freight train, freight train going nowhere”
So, back tracking was required for an alternate route. We eventually arrived at Third Man Records which was small, but quirkily interesting.
The rental pick up went relatively smoothly and we immediately set the GPS, heading to the cafe Fido in the Hillsboro Village. We parked just behind the nearby Hillsboro Theatre, home of the Grand Ole Opry for a little while.
Highly recommended was Fido and highly patronised as it turns out, very busy but the best coffee of the trip so far.
Next was a visit it to Grimey’s Record Store and Grimey’s Too (Howlin’ Books) next door for some much-needed music supplies, before setting off for a thirty minute drive on Highway 100 to the famed Loveless Cafe. Famous for me at any rate, on account of the fat that it used to be at the same location as Music City Roots, a renowned live roots music venue.* The Loveless is a long-standing eatery, sort of in the middle of nowhere (although the sprawl of Nashville has made it less isolated since its beginnings) which led to the addition of a motel (since closed) and now a series of souvenir shops.
Lunch. And what a lunch. The fried chicken, country ham and biscuits (Australians would call them scones) are the specialty dishes and I decided to try two out of three (the ham didn’t look that appealing), along with screamed corn, turnip greens and red beans. When the waiter indicated that the serves weren’t small, the alarm bells rang and Trish and I shared a single meal – see below.
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After that big meal and a series of late nights, fatigue was setting in so we headed home for a rest before an evening walk to Robert’s Western World, one of the more authentic honky tonks on Broadway (Robert Ellis played there a few nights ago) to catch John England and The Western Swingers. We had seen them last year as well and they are a lot of fun.
Hunger beckoned us to Puckett’s Restaurant for a supper serve before retiring early – we have a big day planned big day in Muscle Shoals Alabama tomorrow.
So it’s goodnight from Chet Atkins.
*Music City Roots moved to the town of Franklin, not far south of Nashville, recently – we are heading there in a couple of days.
Read about our visit to Third Man Records and The Loveless Cafe
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