Tuesday May 29, 2012

Hello All,

We are having a blast in Nashville!

Today we went to Fontanel the former mansion of Barbra Mandrel... I LOVE Barbara Mandrel and watched her show every week in the 80's! My old garage band played many Barbara songs and I loved singing them. It was so great for me to go there and see her former home. Two record producers own it now and some of her furniture, pictures and memoribilia is still on display and that was really fun for me. Our tour guide was an amazing young man by the name of Steven, a former pretty well known musician from Gatlinburg where he had his own show. He played the guitar for us and sang "I was country when country wasn't cool" in Barbara's living room... Ok I had to ask him why he was a tour guide and not famous like he should be, as he was Fantastic! We had a little heart to heart while the others on the tour took pictures and he told me that he had it all but he wasn't happy so he moved to Nashville, took the tour job two years ago and loved his life now, giving the tour and playing nightly in Nashville. He said so many people find out too late that it is better to be happy than rich... He said he thought he came to it too late as well...He was 30! I told him, Steven, you are blessed to have found this out at such an early age, some never find their happiness. He hugged me and said "You really think I got it early enough?" Yes I do. Lucky guy that Steven... :)

We drove back to our hotel and Gary worked on the car (He will elaborate I'm sure!). Our show was at 7 so we left about 6 and it started to pour, thunder, lightening, oh we had it all as we headed to the show. We of course have no umbrellas, or rain gear... By the time we parked it had gone from a downpour to a sprinkle! The weather changes so fast here! The show was fantastic! Charlie Daniels Band, Gloriana, Restless Heart, Whispering Bill Anderson and 91 year old Little Jimmy Dickens! It was an amazing show and despite our thinking it was going to be corney, it wasn't and we really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow we are off to the Country Music Hall of Fame, The Ryman (where I'm hoping Gar and I will be able to record a song!) and then a songwriters roundtable at the Blue Bird Cafe, I got the last 2 tickets that were available!

See ya on the Road!
Ter :)

"From the driver's seat"..... What a fun couple of days!! Yesterday we wandered around the Grove Arcade, a very early (1920's) shopping center. It was meant to be the base of a fourteen story building but the designer/owner died before it was finished so it's just the three story store/office building but beautiful architecture. Lots of gorgeous artwork and sculpture.

Today we visitede the Nashville store of the 'American Pickers' show....lots of cool, expensive stuff locted in an old automobile manufacturing plant....Marathon cars...never heard of them.
Looking forward to another fun day tomorrow.....

We've travelled 7,000 miles, mostly 'real' problem free...nothing catastrophic, able to be fixed in motel or part store parking lots. I picked Nashville to do some repair and maintenance work. and fortunately the hotel had some nice shade trees to work under. I had two main fixes to do....the electric fans I installed just wouldn't do the job of keeping the car temperature down and the carb has begun leaking fuel while it's parked. I found a nice aluminum fan to install and it bolted right in...instantly brought the temp down, so much so that I need to put a thermostat back in to get it up to temp. I also swapped a 600 cfm economy tuned Edelbrock carb for the 750 cfm performance tuned version I had on it. I though one of the floats had a leak but all was good inside the carb so I chose to replace it and deal with the leaking problem later. It needs a little tuning and it'll be good to go.

Ian that is for you, it says: Chuck Norris! he visited Barbara Mandrels house...



Mr. Charlie Daniels