Day 13: first day off. Nashville, TN

This is our second tour that has taken us across the U.S. so extensively, and second time that we've landed in Nashville on such a tour, and we've yet to play a show in Nashville, although, it once again played host to a pretty epic day off. Due to our adventures the night before -- thus a noon wake up -- and an extremely pleasant early afternoon in Chattanooga where we had a leisurely breakfast at Aretha Frankenstein's with our new friend Jeremy then went and did some good food shopping at a Greenlife market, we didn't roll into Nashville until about 6pm.

We had arranged to visit our long lost buddy, bandmate and schoolmate from Moscow -- Brian Smith -- who now is taking the Nashville music scene by storm. He's a 1st class guy with an incredible tendency toward laughter and generosity, as well as being an incredibly professional drummer, all of which are serving him well in Nashville. He's been doing a lot of studio work, and session work and whatnot, but recently his main project -- pop-country band TelluRide -- signed a pretty major deal with a label there and just recorded a pretty major record at Sony Studios that will be released in a couple of months.

He definitely works in a whole different realm than us, as TelluRide recently reached #8 on the CMT video charts, and is in general putting out a super polished product to speak to an already established audience of pop-country enthusiasts. It's a well-branded product for sure. It was interesting to meet them all and get their perspectives on the whole game. Great guys. Really no different than us, just with different goals i suppose. Definitely different approaches to those goals.

We're psyched for Brian and his wife Angie, though, as he's living his dream and she's hammering out a nursing degree... their definitely living life to its fullest and we had a fantastic time catching up with them. That and Brian kept us super entertained on St. Patrick's Day running us around to all the local hangs and introducing us to folks. We saw some pretty epic coverbands and this amazing venue that Brian has been playing at a bunch recently called the Wildhorse... opening for acts like Foreigner, Sister Hazel, CCR, Hootie & the Blowfish, Richard Marx and other names from the past. Pretty wild. Pretty funny scene in general in Nashville. A world all its own -- it was super cool to get the insider's perspective. He even took us to "music row" where all the studios, labels, management companies, dentists, plastic surgeons, entertainment lawyers, publishers, music business school, etc etc have buildings. All within walking distance of themselves. Craziness.

We cashed in relatively early, then stayed up late sippin the high life and makin veggie sandwiches before finally yielding to a comfy night of sleep and dreams.

Reporting from the Goodyear blimp for all of us Finn Rigginses:::
:::gilbert