3. Lower Broadway: Robert’s
My honky-tonking in Nashville always ends up in the same honky tonk: Robert’s Western World, a couple doors down from Tootsies on lower Broad. Robert’s is one of the six or eight bars the tourists always hit when they come downtown, Tootsie’s being the most famous, with its stories of Grand Ol’ Opry stars slipping out the back door of the looming Ryman and sliding across the alley for a few drinks. But Robert’s is the best place to have a few cold beers and enjoy some good country & western music. Robert’s has history too: it was once a western-wear store (hence the cowboy boots on the shelves still lining the walls), and when they added a jukebox, folks started coming down to dance, so they started selling beer and having live bands, until finally they mutated into the fine honky-tonk bar they are today and have been for some years (earlier, too, the location housed a guitar repair shop where the owners, Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons, developed and began refining what is today one of the big names in pedal steel guitars, Sho-Bud). There’s no cover and no minimum at Robert’s, and live bands play traditional country music from eleven a.m. until three a.m. seven days a week. There’s a short-order cook, bushy mustache and wire-rimmed glasses, smiling, friendly, and calm through a constant barrage of orders, cooking up burgers and fries. The bartender, a businesslike brunette in jeans and a Robert’s tanktop, covers the long, packed bar with equal calm, moving constantly, fluidly. The waitresses are Nashville’s finest: all nouveau Southern belles from the other side of the tracks, sweet as can be, tough, sober, and efficient, with assorted tattoos of great artistry and interest and piercings and general accoutrements reflecting an independent, eclectic, artistic bent.
Tonight, Saturday night, the place is packed to the gills. Marsha and I are with our two friends who drove down from Kentucky for the book signing and some honky-tonking, and we’re now up to the honky-tonking part. I could never characterize these two Kentucky women as “Southern belles,” which implies too much weakness and artifice, qualities absent from these strong, natural women, although they both have in full measure the charm, graciousness, and hospitality one associates with Southern women. Marsha falls in with them immediately, naturally. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve all been together, but it doesn’t feel that way, although some dark waters have passed under the bridge since our last visit, and some friends are no longer with us.
The Don Kelley Band is about halfway through their four-hour stand on the cramped little front-window stage at Robert’s, and we have a cramped little round table about halfway down the length of the bar, mid-room. Don has all the hot guitar players in Nashville come through his band (it was Johnny Hiland last time we were in town), and the twenty-three-year-old hotshot with the band now, JD, is a mop-haired, greased-lightning-speed Telecaster-picker with more of a rock sensibility than some of Don’s other pickers (Johnny Hiland was at least as fast, cleaner, more subtle, jazz-influenced, an elegant country stylist), an extremely hot, exciting player, with a hot set ongoing, building, and the audience feeding back a frenzied, high-voltage response. Sometime after our third or fourth round of Shiners, around our cramped little round table, the women can’t be subdued any longer, and they begin to dance. There is no dance floor, no possible space for dancing anywhere near the stage, as the room is not only jam-packed but somehow accommodates a constant stream of newcomers in the front door, making their way down the long length of the room, slowly, painstakingly cutting through the dense crowd, finally making it into the back, all packed, no place for them to go, then back out the way they came in, slowly snaking through, heading back out, squeezing past the next line snaking the other way, into the depths. But these three women, now in unspoken solidarity, must dance. So they dance around the cramped little round table, and some of the dark clouds from the hills and hollers of the past couple of years lift for our Kentucky women, and joy is unbridled, if only for a few sets in the crowded honky tonk.
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4. Lower Broadway: Jack’s Bar-B-Que
“Welcome to Jack’s; what can I get you?” The dark, deep-voiced man behind the counter holds a big meat cleaver over the cutting board in front of him. We both order the pork shoulder plate. “Ah, y’all are in luck,” he says. “I’m just going to chop a new shoulder. Y’all are gonna like this.” He pulls a new shoulder out of the huge old smoker behind him and starts chopping it with the cleaver. “Oh, this is gonna be good,” he smiles, chuckling; “Y’all came at the right time.” I suddenly realize that I have a big smile on my face, and we don’t even have our plates yet. He chops the shoulder into coarse, tender chunks and pulls it with his fingers into long pieces that he piles onto the plate. The meat is beautiful, hot, moist, pink-ringed, tender, and our man makes sure to toss some of the good crunchy dark outside part onto our plates. We get our two sides, baked beans and coleslaw for me, collard greens and potato salad for Marsha and some of Jack’s excellent vinegar-based sauce on the side, and I wonder if this is going to live up to the buildup our man has given it. It’s always good at Jack’s, and these two full plates of beautiful barbecue look like a very good bet, and we sit down to eat and it’s perfect, some of the best pork shoulder I’ve ever eaten, perfectly smoked and perfectly simply served with just the right sides and sauce and a slice of lightly toasted white bread. We go back the next night for the ribs, and they are some of the best ribs I’ve ever eaten, lightly dry-rubbed, falling off the bone, perfect. Jack’s knows how to do barbecue real, real good.
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5. Blue Moon of Kentucky
By far the best part of the experience of researching and writing the Townes Van Zandt biography was meeting some special people who have become great friends over the years. Some of those friends live in southwestern Kentucky, a couple of hours from Nashville, and we don’t go to Nashville without going up there to visit for a few days. This time, as always, those few days in the rolling farmlands and hills and back woods of Kentucky are the heart of our trip, though not without sadness, as the dark strains of those back woods tend always to carry some sadness, even tragedy, always likely where you feel deeply enough. This visit turns out to be all about the women, these strong Kentucky women, pioneer stock, hearty and resilient, who through the twisted strains of dark circumstance are cast in the role of survivors. We all miss Jimmie McKinney so much, and we miss Robert Darnall. Shadows seem to be falling in other once-bright corners. Jimmy Gingles, though, is alive and well and holding firm like an anchor, to me the hub of the wheel. And the wheel keeps turning.
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