Tour Jimmy Rankin’s Nashville
If it’s 2:30 p.m. on Thursday and you’re on your second $2.50 Miller High Life while listening to a Johnny Cash cover band whose guitar player is a cross between Chet Atkins and Jimi Hendrix and there’s not a big smile on your face, well, maybe Nashville isn’t the place for you.
For seven and a half years, Nashville was the place for Jimmy Rankin, who knows something about being on stage with a guitar while people have a great time.
Music City is a far cry from Mabou, where he first got his musical inspiration, but Rankin moved there in 2010 to take advantage of the incredible writing, recording and performing scene. He sat down for an interview to talk about his life in Nashville and to make recommendations for a visit there.
“I love Nashville, I’ve been going there since the mid-90s to make records,” he said. “We just decided we wanted to have a change … and we were trying to think of a place that’s a music place, so Nashville or Austin were the two places.”
“It was still old Nashville then and within that seven years the city transformed into something totally different. I liked both, the old Nashville was slow, old fashioned. When it started changing, all these new restaurants started popping up and there was an incredible influx of energy and youth, a hundred people moving there a day.”
You’re obviously a music fan if you’re planning a visit to Nashville, where there are even live performances at the airport.
Downtown, along a few blocks of Broadway, are the honkytonks, defined in Nashville as a bar with live music. Performances start at 11 a.m. and last until 2 a.m. On a recent visit, I tried to count how many bands were performing at once, and 50 or 60 is my best guess. It’s raucous all day and night on Broadway, and the honkytonks are filled with people of all ages.
“Broadway has become touristy but any night of the week it’s flat out, and there’s all these cover bands along the street that play cover music all day and all night,” Rankin said. “It’s a fun place to go as a tourist to hang out, it’s famous for its bachelorette parties now.”
At Robert’s Boot Bar, named for the cowboy boot décor, you can order the Recession Special: a baloney sandwich, bag of chips and a PBR for $6.
“It was still kind of gritty when I moved there,” said Rankin. “It’s certainly more polished now, but the music business is music business, it’s always gritty.”
A more refined experience is to attend a performance of the Grand Ole Opry, which isn’t named for a building, but for a radio show that began in 1925. Most of the year, Opry performances are at Opryland, on the outskirts of the city. But in the winter, the Opry returns to its traditional home at the Ryman Auditorium, where most every country music legend you can think of has performed. The Rankin Family was on stage there in the mid ‘90s.
The Ryman, a former tabernacle, has great sightlines and sound, and was a bucket list destination for me, but after two hours on a church pew I was happy to walk around a bit.
“If I was going there, I would definitely go hear music at the Ryman,” agreed Rankin. “And there’s a great little place in the Gulch, we used to go hear bluegrass, The Station Inn, a great place for bluegrass and acoustic. I’ve seen the Time Jumpers there many times with Vince Gill, it’s like a supper club, nothing fancy, it’s like an old warehouse, a great place to hear music. The Exit In is (another) place.”
Of course, to keep up one’s stores of energy, one requires sustenance. Nashville is not as renowned for barbecue as is Memphis, a few hours away, but Rankin recommends Martin’s or Edley’s, mini chains with three locations each.
Nashville is famous for hot chicken, and there is great debate about which dive serves the best version. My group went to Bolton’s, where the counter woman shouts things like “two turnip greens and a side of pickles” in a thick Tennessee accent, and where the floor is so sticky it’s a bit of a workout to walk across it. At the same time, another group of guys from Halifax chose the very popular Hattie B’s, which we scorned as “the Smitty’s of hot chicken” and for which we heaped abuse upon them.
A word of warning, though. The young guys who ordered their chicken “hot hot” suffered mightily the next day from a condition named for a well known Johnny Cash song.
You can figure that out for yourself.
For breakfast, go to either the Pancake Pantry or the Loveless Café or Monell’s, and be sure to have country ham and biscuits. Nashville is justifiably proud of its biscuits.
“There’s a good burger place there called Burger Up and a good taco place, a hip kind of place called Bar Taco, great margaritas there, a good patio hang,” said Rankin. You see a lot of musicians at these places, having lunch and writing songs. Brown’s Diner is a Nashville institution. You see a lot of writers go in there for an inexpensive burger, grilled cheese, cheap beer. Kris Kristofferson and John Prine used to hang out there, it’s basically a trailer.”
“What’s wonderful about Nashville is there’s so many musicians there, and it’s hyper-competitive, but everybody seems to be in the same line of work. You go somewhere and there’s Faith Hill having lunch. I’ve seen Lyle Lovett there in restaurants, everybody seems to be there, a lot of energy there. It’s very inspiring in that way. You can be making a record, and you need a mandolin player for a certain part, and there’s 15 guys who play that style who you can call, and they’ll come down. Bruce Springsteen’s bass player was living there one time, I called him and he came down and played bass on my record.”
“Nashville’s a drinking town with a songwriting problem, as they say.”
Other Jimmy Rankin suggestions during a visit to Nashville:
Record shopping: Grimey’s New and Pre-loved Music
Guitar browsing: Gruhn Guitars (“You go in there and you’ll probably see Vince Gill, he’s a guitar nut, a Martin guy.”)
Doughnuts: Doughnut Den on Hillsborough Pike.
Museums: “I’d go to the Country Music Museum, that’s pretty amazing. The Johnny Cash is good, the George Jones.”
With the kids: Nashville Zoo, Cheatwood Park, Frist Art Museum, hiking at Radner Lake, Cumberland River trail, Mexican popsicles at Las Paletas.