Empire of Dirt

We woke up early the morning after our trip to the Five Spot and set out into the city to take in some of the Nashville culture.

The place is first and foremost a music town. All along Broadway, and many of its side streets, you can find live music being played at pretty much any time of day on any day of the week. I was pretty amazed to discover this as we walked past a few small bars on an early Wednesday afternoon and each one of them had an acoustic act performing inside.

I kept thinking to myself how I’d like to get up there and play a few tunes. I then imagined that I’d have to find something to play that a Tennessee crowd might enjoy.

Dead Flowers by The Stones, I thought to myself.

The Rolling Stones performing 'Dead Flowers' live in Texas, 1972. 'Dead Flowers' is a track from the 1971 album Sticky Fingers. Composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, this version of the song features Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards and Mick Taylor on guitar, Charlie Watts on drums, Bill Wyman on bass, Nick Hopkins on piano, Bobby Keys on saxophone, and Jim Price on horns.

One of my favorite tunes to play on acoustic and easily the most country-sounding one I’ve got in my bag. Then, maybe five minutes later, we round a corner and there was a dude playing the final chorus of none other than Dead Flowers by The Stones. It sort of blew my mind, but Gabby didn’t find it the least bit fascinating.

 What do synchronous moments like that mean? It could be some shining message from a higher power calling me to find the courage to pursue my dreams or it could just be pure silly coincidence. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoy them.

I shouldn’t even have to mention that country is the most prominent genre of music in Nashville. It is, however, worth mentioning that Gabby and I have no particular taste for country music at all. Still, we are great music lovers and we’re also red-blooded god damn Americans, so of course we love Johnny Cash.

 The Johnny Cash museum. A beautiful and powerful monument to a towering legend of American music. From his childhood knick-knacks to the guitars he played and the lyrics he wrote and the suits he wore, this place was absolutely filled with a million and one incredible artifacts from the life of the Man in Black.

Now that’s some hardware, baby.

Now, of course Johnny Cash’s life was wild and glamorous and befitting of Hollywood films, but I really think you could make a museum like this for any one of us and with the proper curation it would be an unbelievably moving experience. The human story being told through all of the objects you left behind, the images captured of you, the words you’d written, the people you’d affected, your achievements and your failures. To see this man, Mr. Cash, through the years was to watch the inevitable trajectory of all of our lives, no matter how blessed or cursed. You saw images of him young and handsome and on top of the world and then, slowly but surely, you saw him fade into this.

 The final portion of the museum was an entire area dedicated to Cash’s legendary cover of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt.”

Props from the music video, the gold record the song’s corresponding album achieved, a written description of Trent Reznor’s experience when first hearing Johnny’s version (he compared it to losing a girlfriend, the song was longer his) all set before a screen that constantly looped the video in all of its harrowing glory.

If you’ve never seen the video for Johnny’s cover of “Hurt” then I implore you to do so.

"Hurt" official music video performed by Johnny Cash. This song is about realizing consequence and regret. It sends a powerful message that we should all proceed through life wisely, because there is nothing worse than being stuck with a label, a pain, a sickness, or a death, that we know beforehand will leave us only wishing things had been different and that we could change the choices we made.

It’s everything I’ve said about the museum compiled into a four minute film set to a song about alienation and pain and deep depression. The entire life of the Man in Black flashing before his eyes as sits alone with his guitar; tired, old, body failing. Both Gabby and I had seen it many times before, but now with it contextualized so vividly for us it gave us pure chills.

 Later that evening we stopped back at the Air BnB for a brief moment and we ran into our hosts, Jeannie and Duncan. We sat down in the living room with them and started to tell them the story of journey. They could relate: they’d spent an entire year traveling the west in an Airstream a few years back. It was amazing how many experiences we’d shared. We could almost finish each other’s sentences. They were old enough to be our parents but they were hip and kind and we felt a strange connection with them. We bullshitted for hours there on the living room couches, Otis and Penny and Coco hanging by our sides. It was a beautiful little human moment, a connection we’d rarely felt along the way on this trip. So much moving forward, it makes it hard to stop and chat.

After a long while of wonderfully rambling conversation, we decided we needed to eat some dinner. Jeannie recommended a place named Pinewood Social. It was a trendy joint that had a retro-looking bowling alley in the back and Motown on the radio.

I love very few things in this world more than I love Motown. The food and the beer were great and Gabby and I continued on with the cheerful conversation started by Jeannie and Duncan. We were fascinated by the connection we felt with them and we decided we’d love to come back to Nashville someday soon to continue our talks. For now though, the time had come to start making our way home. Next stop: Cincinnatti.