Chi McClean

After getting to know a few folks around the “compound”, as I’m calling it, here at my buddy’s place in Nashville, TN yesterday, we took a little tour around town and checked out Music Row, a number of cool spots on 2nd Avenue and on Broadway, and cruised by some of the areas that were previously under water. It’s amazing to see how quickly (and how well) Nashville cleaned up and recovered from the flood. If you dig deeper, you can still see evidence of the damage and how high the water actually got, but at a glance, it seems as though the city really pulled together and got things back on track pretty quickly.

After driving around for a while, we ended up at this diner called Noshville, which was a cross between my favorite New York deli counters and souther hospitality. My host, Keith, and I both ordered up some French dip sandwiches, some fries, some potato salad, and some ‘slaw partnered with a few icy cold Cokes and went to town. Unbelievable…

When we wrapped up, we headed over to the legendary songwriter venue just outside of downtown Nashville known as The Bluebird Cafe. Adorning the walls of this place are photos of songwriters and performers that have graced the four walls of this cozy little music venue and, it’s funny… pretty much every single one has made it big as a writer or a performer. All of them are autographed (a couple now have a few ink mustachios) and it’s a pretty neat piece of music history to survey.

Tim Bupper on drums going nuts!

In any case, one of Keith’s buddies Tim Buppert was playing with his quartet that night, so we reserved a four top and got to check out all of the action. Pretty much every person in his act was a professional songwriter and we heard a ton of great music. Not only was it well written, but these guys could seriously play. Very cool…

Now completely inspired, it’s up and at ‘em for a quick run and then off to make some calls and write some tunes.