We started off at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Wow. I could go over and over and still learn more. To start off, the building is beautiful from the outside. It looks like my favorite instrument!
The outside had panels with some awesome quotations about Country Music.
The first exhibit was on Reba McEntire. I totally forgot I Love her! Not to mention what an amazing person she is. We learned that she was successful in several areas growing up, including rodeo, basketball and school. Pretty neat. What was amazing to realize is the scope of her career over the years and her lack of public scandal. Amazing these days.
They had a loop video and we walked in just as she was talking about a plane crash in 1991 were half her crew and band were killed. It was really something, so we hung out to see it again. The message was
"Don't go a day without telling people you love them, Do act like this day could be your last one. So do what you want to do, hanging out with your family, do things that are important, don't put it off till tomorrow."
This really struck a cord, especially with the journey I’m on.
There was so much I just soaked it up, and quickly spent a small fortune in my mind expanding my music collection. This is definitely a must in Nashville.
My favorite part is easy. I walked down to the 2nd floor display and as soon as I walked in here's what I saw:
That's right. Route 66 was a major part of the Country Music Hall of Fame. The display was about the Bakersfield sound, which was earthier than the smooth country coming out of Nashville at the time. Some of the major leaders were Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Don Rich.
It has me doing a little extra research to see if I should add Bakersfield to the list...
We had planned to go take a tour of the Ryman theatre, but time got away from us. This is where the Grand Ole Opry lived until the 70s.
Instead, we went in search of food. And we found it. We ate at this little place call Mas Tacos, and I loved it! It is a tiny place with mismatched furniture, one window wall where you order, and nothing more on the table than a large jar of hot sauce and a roll of paper towels. A place where you can be a bit loud and inappropriate. My kind of place. And the food was AMAZING!!!
We feasted on Fish tacos, Roasted corn, Tortilla soup, and at the last minute, the Barbicoa tacos were available. YUMMY!!!
We had a little time before the evening's activities, so we played in the Gaylord Opryland hotel, which looked a lot like a Vegas hotel. There was an entire arboretum inside. It was pretty cool. But it soon came time for the main event...
The Grand Ole Opry!!!! I have been dreaming of attending since I first heard of it. I was kind of sad it was no longer downtown in the old Ryman theatre, so we did a little research.
The Opry stared in 1925 and moved around a bit. In 1943 it moved to a permanent home in the Ryman Auditorium. After a time, the Ryman began to show the effects of age. It also had become too small a venue, and lacked parking and air conditioning.
This led to the building of the current, permanent home where it moved to in 1974. There is a circle of oak in the front center of the stage where performers stand during their performance. This represents the circle of singers and how it is never to be broken. The original circle from the Ryman was brought to the new home. They were even able to save this when the new Theatre was flooded in 2010.
Fun Fact…On opening night of the new theatre, President Richard Nixon opened the night playing 3 songs on the Piano: God Bless
The show was fabulous. It was broken up into four 30 minute segments. There was a host for each segment, and 1 to 2 acts. There was also a commercial ad for each, which was really entertaining! Boot barn gave us historical times and stories, and how those would have been so much easier with a boot barn nearby!
Dollar General had a yo-yo competition and told of how messy incidents could be so much better with Dollar General Purchases!
The last segment consisted of 2 acts, Riders in the Sky was the first. They were a group of 4 men, and I truly loved when they played their faces. That’s right, they played their faces. They even did a rendition of Dueling Banjos. It was awesome!!!
They were hosting the segment, and introduced the 2nd band, the Charlie Daniels band. Oh boy what a show! I was really hoping they would play Devil went down to
The Riders then closed the night with this little gem:
“Never take a laxative and sleeping pill at the same time, and always drink upstream from the heard!”
Of course it was too early to call it a night, so we headed to theIt was too good a night to even be sad about having to leave the next morning…
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