4 Years in Nashville, Right time, Right Place
Just a little more about me.
Everyone was into music the summer I graduated high school, and somehow it was easy to find amazing music without trying. I happened to be in NYC the weekend Woodstock happened, but backed out because the traffic was impossible from the city. I just tossed off that decision not knowing what I was missing til later. (Mud, and more mud, I know) I saw Hair on Broadway that weekend, and all the music and shocking dayglo boobs and penis' therein. That summer Mountain and Quicksilver did a show at the Jacksonville Beach Coliseum, a podunky beach town back then, about a 20 minute drive from my house. An amazing show. I also started college in Nashville, where you could not escape the music business if you tried.
Vanderbilt was a great place to see some of the best bands in the world right on our own campus. Everyone came through Nashville to record and do the biz, so we had our pick for our concert series. Nearly all the students on the concert committees went into the music biz after school. We watched Grateful Dead on the Quadrangle, Fleetwood Mac in the stadium, Waylon, Willie and Johnny in the tiny chapel, small as a club in town, those few lucky students. Johnny Cash taped a show at the Ryman and gave away free tickets for Vandy students to sit on bleachers at the back of the stage. Emmylou Harris was there, and Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young and maybe James Taylor? I've looked in the You Tube archives and found a show that looks like it and I'm somewhere to the left of stage on the top row. The clip starts with Cash talking about drugs and he is on the Vandy campus surrounded by students.
Johnny Cash also frequently played on the student center patio on nice days. He'd pull up a chair and sit with his guitar and play while all of us sat at his feet and frankly worshipped.
Road trips happened, to Alabama to see Jethro Tull, to Durham to see Leon Russell and the Funkadelics, to Miami to see Wet Willie and the Allmans. Sleep on someone's couch, drive back to school in the morning. It all seemed like normal life.
Bob Dylan was holed up somewhere outside town during those 4 years, writing Nashville Skyline. Willis Allen Ramsey and lots of other Austin musicians played at the Exit/In, just next door to Friday's where I worked after class. I dated musicians. My roommates dated musicians and sound engineers. I got to see Leon Russell record with JJ Cale because my roomie's boyfriend worked the board there. I was backstage for several Allman Brothers concerts because their sound guy, another Vandy student, was sweet on me.
So yeah, without trying.
And seriously, I have no musical talent. I still can't read music, I sing off-key, and cannot make my fingers do what's necessary. But I was thrown in there anyway.
After college, the music went away, and I listened to jazz and crossed paths with David Byrne without knowing it. I caught some great concerts here and there, ELP, the Stones, Springsteen, Dylan. But the music business receded, and I did other things.
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