Nashville – Home of the Honky Tonks

Nashville, Tennessee.

Over the years, I’ve visited Nashville for both work and vacations. This year, I will have the opportunity to visit the home city of the Grand Old Opry twice, once on our way to the Steiner Family Reunion in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and once for my volunteer job with Civil Air Patrol. The photos from the next few travel Tuesday were all captured in June when we stayed overnight on our way to the Steiner Family Reunion.

No visit to Nashville would be complete without walking Broadway Street, the home of the honky tonks. For several blocks, intermixed with souvenir shops and music museums there are honky tonks aplenty. You are free to walk into any of them, sample the music, and if you like what you hear and can find a seat (or not) have a beer and sit a spell. The image above was captured during a short rain squall that hit the city just after sunset.

As you might imagine, the music has a country flair and the musicians are mostly unknowns who wish to “make it big” on the Nashville music scene. Our first stop was recommended by our hotel desk clerk, not for the music but for the food. Rippy’s Ribs on the corner of 5th and Broadway provided great barbeque and accompanying music. There were actually two groups performing in two sections of the building. We were early, so we got seated immediately. Since this isn’t a restaurant review, we’ll move on.

Walking down the street, on our next stop we were greeted by a larger than life statue of Ernest Tubb standing at the entrance to his record shop on Broadway. A large collection of records, CDs and other memorabilia is available for purchase or just for browsing.

For those so inclined, you can tour Broadway and Nashville. Several carriage services are available. Or you can do what we did, a Nashville tour by golf cart. That city tour will be featured in an upcoming post.

Nashville is a modern city with lots of construction and even a few skyscrapers dot the skyline. In the gallery of images below, you will see some of the tall buildings in the background. Click on an image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery. All of the images in this post were captured via my cell phone. I wanted to explore the capabilities of using my cell camera instead of the Nikon that I usually use.