who-oo-o-oo-ewh!!! or however you spell it. we got lost going over to the botanical gardens, so we went downtown to eat first. driving down broadway in nashville i was attracted to a really clever neon sign featuring pigs with wings…after parking we walked down to jack’s bbq. the sign on the door said something like “the only thing smoking in jack’s had better be the meat” and upon stepping into the place i was high on the smell of the smoking pork shoulder that permeated the wood floors and ceilings.

i am sorry to report that i did not try all of the sauces, but can testify that the vinegar-based pepper-spiced sauce brought me to tears. we went to the botanical gardens after eating, but i will wait for another post with that story.

we ended up downtown around 6:pm and made our way beer-by-beer through dives such as bluegrass inn, second fiddle, the stage, and finally landed at Robert’s Western World.

Sadly, I don’t remember the name of this band, but they were inspiring. they evoked images of my daddy with their menu of 1960’s to 1980’s country music: merle haggard, ray price, buck owens, johnny paycheck songs; titles like “goin’ down the road feeling bad” “is it cold in here, or is that you?”, “rollin in my sweet baby’s arms”, “the only daddy that’ll walk the line”, and an instrumental of “ghost riders in the sky” that left me convinced that there are fourteenhundredandthirtyfour guitar pickers in nashville that can play better than any other guitar picker anywhere. after an hour and a half of them, the opry was pretty tame, but Emmylou hosted her half-hour and included “get up, john”, one of my favorite bill monroe numbers. it’s a mandolin-dominated song and she couldn’t help but dance, but my picture of her dancing was distorted. she introduced vince gill, he played one song and she came back and sang with him an old gospel song…sweet harmony.