We landed in Nashville just before midnight after about 29 hours of travel, going from Sydney to San Francisco to Chicago to Nashville. This was quite an experience on its own, having never been out of Australia before.
I was travelling with my one of the members of my management team, Gill Robert, from Vital Entertainment Solutions, and we did our first drive through Nashville. We passed all the famous venues along Broadway such as Tootsies, The Stage and Legends corner, then found our motel for the night.
Today's main problem was trying to sort out our mobile phones. Apparently my phone company, who shall remain nameless, have my phone locked to their service, so I had to buy a new one… The other thing that I found very interesting about being over in the U.S is that nobody knew what we were talking about when we were talking about replacement sim cards for our phones. Only a single phone shop understood.
Gill had a few early meetings, so I went walking around Nashville, and quite by accident stumbled on the Ryman Auditorium, which is an incredible building, and for those who don't know, it was also the original Grand Ole Opry. Once the meetings were finished Gill and myself headed out to catch up with a couple of Gill's friends, out where Gill was to stay for the week, Paul and Pam Lovelace. They are the nicest couple and are both in the music business. Paul sends out the American equivalent of the NFS compilation, and Pam manages an up and coming artist in Nashville by the name of Kyle Wyley. We then headed out to Catherine Britt's house to catch up with her, and also because this is where I was staying. Catherine is doing extremely well over there, and really kicking some goals!
We went out to check out the new Grand Ole Opry out at Opryland, it is an absolutely huge building. Also whilst out there we checked out the Gibson guitar shop, where you can actually watch some builders making the guitars, banjos and dobros. We then went and checked out a few of the venues down on Broadway, where you can sit and listen to live country music any day, and there are some incredibly talented people playing as well I must say.