Day 6: Nashville, Tennessee
Nau mai
Yesterday we played in Nashville, Tennessee.
We awoke in a familiar setting with Lavonda parked on a quiet street about a mile north of Nashville’s downtown. The brick façade of the Brooklyn Bowl towered over us on one side, and out the other window we could gaze out across a selection of parking lots and low-rise buildings in the distance. It was 2023 when we last played at this venue and aside from the different coloured bus the day already felt very similar.
There were still a few bagels left in Izy’s care package so for breakfast I sliced and toasted one, topping it with cream cheese and cucumber which I salted, peppered, cumined, and chili powdered. Our driver Scott came aboard the bus as I was assembling this masterpiece and immediately assumed the character of Gordon Ramsey to issue his critique. “The cucumbers are not cut to the same width, and rustic means lazy!”
Music City had a couple of attractions that were of interest to certain members of the band. In particular the Nelson Drum Shop was deserving of a visit, and I was very surprised when Tristan returned after a couple of hours without any new cymbals to add to his collection.
Jon visited the Gibson Garage, a factory showroom that had every type of Gibson guitar on display in case you needed to try one. This was a useful service for our lead guitarist who is still on the hunt for an instrument to replace the stolen Gold Top Les Paul. The intention was not to find an instrument here in Nashville (far too expensive) but to find the style of Les Paul neck that most closely resembles Jon’s 70s Les Paul that lives back home in Aotearoa. He can then try and find a second hand instrument in a small town guitar shop that has this neck.
For those of you who are still with me, and interested, the most desirable neck is 1968 Medium C-Shape.
At 2pm we began loading into the familiar room that was the Brooklyn Bowl, an easy push from the trailer through an open roller door, up a ramp with only the gentlest of gradients, and onto a comfortably large stage. The afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the coloured glass panels at the back of the room and the vibes were good. We set up quickly and smashed through our soundcheck so we could get into bowling.
When you play at the Bowl you are allocated two lanes for the duration of the day. We made full use of these lanes from the end of soundcheck up until dinner time, doing a balanced job of menacing both the pins and the gutters. It was not a competitive game that we played, more a chance to practise affirmations and hi-fives.
This was the scorecard of a game I played against myself. I was annoyed to lose to my nemesis Trista.
Jon had decided to restring his new 12 string electric guitar before the show. It was a fiddly instrument to interact with and there was a moment as we approached our set time where it looked like he was going to have to perform with a reduced complement of strings. Thankfully there were a couple of visitors to our green room that arrived an opportune moment, one of whom was an extremely well regarded Nashville guitar tech who lent his expertise as well as a second set of hands to the complicated business of rapidly setting this instrument up for immediate action.
The show felt just as good as we had expected. We were playing in a room designed to accept the performance of loud rock music augmented with solid sound reinforcement. Phoebe rings set came across with an abundance of clarity, every detail audible in their carefully crafted arrangements. All members of The Beths came off the stage feeling happy and satisfied after our time spent with this lovely Nashville crowd.
I wanted to feature this incredible set of fingernails which I was embarrassed to ruin with an attempt at a tiny autograph.
