monday may 9, 2005 – meat & 3, bill & the bluebird in nashville

up late, bbq @ datson’s for “meat & three,” a main course of some sort of meat product and 3 sides (greens, corn, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stewed apples, tomatoes, cornbread, biscuits, etc). this was an incredible meal, al adam and i had fried chicken, absolutely delicious. meander into nashville for some starbucks drinks on credit – nate, who was at all the texas shows, works for starbucks corporate in some capacity and hooked us up with a book full of coupons. at some point during the day adam got on the phone with sprint customer service for a day of frustration as he tried to get them to understand that his text messaging wasn’t working properly or something.
headed over to the bluebird café to try to get on one of the most famous open mic nights in the country, but to no avail – found out too late that we had a connection there and probably could’ve gotten ourselves on. the bluebird has a fascinating system for organizing their nights, involving baskets filled with names, stamps, first 1st and 2nd timers. suffice it to say, i was a first timer, relegated to the audience, watching crazy bird lady and hog man do the south proud.
bill janis, our good friend from the jamie cullum tour last year, met us at the bluebird and took us out for beers at bosco’s. bill is one of the rare people in the world who instantly is at home with almost anyone, and who makes others at home just as quickly with him. he goes out of his way to help me out when i come through town with my parade of rockers, and this time was no different, as he took us out on the town, then furnished us with a place to crash, his girlfriend shannon’s house. to shannon’s, then a random sports bar (at which we were 3 of 5 patrons) to watch phoenix/dallas to check on the san antonio spurs next opponent.
then off to the greasiest of greasy spoons, the hermitage café, classic diner to end all diners with the cheapest menu i’ve ever seen.
of course, the day couldn’t just have been that easy. upon returning to shannon’s apartment (she left it to us and stayed with bill) allen realized that he no longer had the key. frantic searching revealed nothing, so adam went up to the landing and stretched to remove the screen from the kitchen window on the 3rd floor. the indianajonesesque leap and grab from the landing to the window looked a bit too dangerous, however, even with carson/allen as spotters down below. wanting to keep our drummer with all arms and legs intact, we searched for other options, and after an hour and a half of exploring and climbing and bending credit cards and searching for paperclips and neighbors making strange moaning sounds to alert us to their presence we decided to break down and call a locksmith and/or bill. as allen dialed the number adam said “oh, here it is,” bent down in the gravel driveway and picked it up about 5 feet from where we’d all been standing for the majority of the hour and a half. incredible.