friday june 22, 2007

after getting to spend a couple of "down" days in the absolutely beautiful city of nashville meeting with record store owners and doing live interviews on radio stations, we spent out final day there in absolute style!!!

friday morning, we were up and out of our hotel rooms by 9am and off on our search of starbucks for the caffeine addicts before we headed to an absolute treat. tom zutaut and andy were able to get us invites to be given a private tour of the custom gibson factory just outside of town. this isn't where they make the run of the mill gibson guitars that end up on most music store showrooms and only a select few get the honor of seeing this. this is the factory where they make the pieces of art that end up in glass cases out of reach of the masses and where they make the painstakingly perfect remakes of the classics and custom guitars for the legends of music!

the first thing we were shown was the finished guitars that were either waiting to ship out to their owners or waiting to be sent to higher end stores for showcase & sale. some of the most amazing and breathe-taking guitars you could ever hope to see in one room. instruments ranging from $5000 to $50,000 and up. we were even shown guitars that are not for sale that were made for historical purposes, including the "elvis" guitar, the "christmas" guitar and the "20th century" guitar which is inlaid with real diamonds and tells the story of the entire century from top to bottom and is worth upwards of a million dollars.

we were also taken into the actual factory where we were taken past all the machines and the process of making a custom guitar from how the wood is chosen right through to the finishing details. we also had the chance to go around the rooms and meet the people who put their blood, sweat and time into carefully crafting these instruments with care. we were all in awe at both the process and the people who make it happen. we could tell this is no ordinary job to them, this is a way of life and they are making a difference in music.

the entire 2 hours we were in the building, there were very few times when our jaws were not dropping and our eyes were not wide with amazement. it felt very spiritual being there and made us all appreciate the other aspects of music that we don't always think of doing what we do. it made me wanna just pick up a guitar and start riffing and creating music and i can't even play guitar that well!

at the end of it all, i was so taken by the whole experience that i didn't feel right not walking out with a physical memory of all that we'd seen. i walked around the room and picked up any guitar that seemed to stand out to me and found a perfect SG, got the seal of approval from domo on how well it played and traded some plastic for some history and became a proud dad just like that!

we left the gibson factory speechless and went to lunch with tom & andy at tony roma's a few miles away. we stuffed ourselves while listening to many historical rock & rolls stories told by a man who was there for it all in the 80's & 90's and then headed over to the ryman auditorium for soundcheck.

now, for those of you who don't know the history of the ryman, this is the place that was once the "grand ol' opry" and is a venue that any artist only dreams of being able to play. there's so much music history inside those walls that you can feel it the second you enter its' threshold. walking onto the stage and looking out, it is lined from top to bottom with church-like pews and stained glass windows and, in retrospect, it really was like being in church. many people's blood has been shed and hearts & souls have been poured out on that stage and we were destined to do the same later that night!

our green rooms were lined with black & white framed picures of many of the people who have graced the stage there in previous years and it was really humbling to walk the halls there.

needless to say, we won the crowd over quickly and gave the people a show they hadn't expected to see from an opening band! the lines of people who wanted to meet us and have us sign their new cd's & t-shirts afterward seemed endless! we met some of the nicest people in nashville that night and didn't want it to end.

when tesla took the stage, we went back to our green rooms for a bit to relax and ended up having a full party up there including some of the coolest radio personalities in rock & roll and some of our myspace friends who drove from all over the state to show us true love. no one wanted to leave the ryman friday night, including us. after we were all packed up and ready for our impending 14 hour journey to norfolk overnight, we held out as long as possible, standing outside the venue by the van continuing to hang with our poets friends and family until we could wait no longer.

tired and physically exhausted, we finally crawled into our beds and set off across america for the next show just a few hours off at that point.

there's probably a million little details that i could add to what i've said already and i'm sure sally & domo have a few cool stories of their walk down nashville's main country music bar strip, but a blog is a blog not a novel ;o) please feel free to hit any of us up in a myspace message if you wanna know more about what we did and saw on friday in nashville cause there's just so much to say and so much we did and saw!

needless to say, we can't wait for our next trip to nashville to rock the town and chill with some of the best people on earth once again!

randy