Nashville, Live Music, Free For Your pleasure
Many people who enjoy seeing live music acts take for granted that live entertainment don’t come cheap. Music festivals frequently have a high price tag, but are generally well benefit the cost. If you attend Regional shows at concert clubs the ticket price can be twice as much as one would pay for say, dinner and a movie. Even clubs that specialize in Regional or Regional acts have cover charges. You would expect large tourist towns like Branson, Missouri to charge a hefty price for name acts and elaborate shows, and they do. Entertainment is something we all expect to pay a price for. Free live music isn’t a common experience.
One place where you might go see major national acts in performance for a price and likewise see much free entertainment as well is Nashville Tennessee. Nashville has an advantage over many other music oriented tourist towns. It is a working music city. Folks go there to make it large in the music business. The place is full of performers. Additionally,since there is so much competition in town, many of them are quite nice at their craft.
On Broadway street downtown Nashville, you will find venue after venue with the sound of live music pouring from their interiors. All you got to do is step in, have a drink or two, enjoy the show, and then mosey on down to the next bar. You could do this all day if you want because a lot of of these venues have live acts starting early in the day.
With so much recording being done in town and so a lot of performers making their home there, Nashville is one place where al the majority anybody at all you pass on the street can be a musical star of some kind. Additionally,even though Country music is what the town is known for, a lot of other styles are practiced all around town as well. There’s a heavy Americana scene as well as Bluegrass clubs and even Blues bars.
Nashville is a center of music production, management, and business in general. This provides many potential opportunities for folks to catch great live music. I willgive an example of something that happened to me that proves that the the majority unexpected things may happen in a city so centered in the music industry.
During the time of a recent Americana Music Conference I was hanging around town for a couple of days. I was checking out as a lot of venues as I may and had tickets to the awards show on Saturday night. On Friday after noon I was looking for CD’s in a south 8th a Club record retailer called Grimey’s. I saw a poster on the wall saying that Tony Joe White was going to be there the next after noon. I’d been a extensive fan of the Swamp Fox for a lot of years and thought it would be great to get him to sign his latest disc for me. I was there early the next day.
The record retailer has been full of folks as I expected. They’d pushed some of the CDÂ bins back a bit to make some room. I has been surprised to see a drum kit session up. There were some amps too. Some guys wandered in and started giving out free beers. Somebody said they were part of his crew. Tony Joe walked in with his guitar, and sat down about ten feet from me and plugged in. He did an hour session. I has been amazed. I’d have been glad to part with a hundred large ones to get a occasion to see the Swamp Blues King. Here he has been, close enough to touch, playing for free and he bought me a beer as well. This never happens where I come from.
The whole story was that Tony Joe had offices in the same building and was companions with the store owner. That is just Nashville, folks. That type of thing is possible in a town overflowing with music. could be you won’t have the same type of luck but when you are in Nashville, the possibilities are always there.