Junkies for Butch Walker

Wednesday, April 25, 2012:  Trying to catch two different concerts on the same weeknight in Nashville doesn't sound like a good idea in theory...unless it works.  And it did for us tonight as we were able to swing over an hour of performance at two different Nashville venues by two drastically different artists.   What can we say, we like to embrace the moniker "Music City" as much as we can.



Margot Timmins and little brother, Michael , one half of the subtly brilliant
and long-admired Canadian indie rock band, Cowboy Junkies,
slow it down a notch in the first set of their show at The Belcourt Theatre.

VIDEO below:  In a drastically different style, Butch Walker (left) and
and Black Widow band-mate and bassist, Jake Sinclair, take it deep into the
night at 12th & Porter.   This last-minute-scheduled performance was
following the premiere of the documentary focusing on
Butch the previous night at the Nashville Film Festival
(see previous blog for more on that).

 

oFF to the NaFF

We attended some of the 2012 Nashville Film Festival (NaFF) this year by taking in three different films all with the same focus:  music.  Kind of makes sense in "The Music City"...

Thursday, April 19 - We went on the opening night of the film festival and caught a showing of "Music City Underground": a documentary focusing on eleven different independent, unsigned artists in Nashville including one band we are growing to really like, The Apache Relay.  The theater was fairly full for this entertaining film despite it not being one of the designated "openers" for the festival.    Several members of the different bands were in the audience as well.   The festival itself was very busy on opening night despite the fact that no really big celebrities were in attendance (at least that we saw) as was the case in the last few years we have attended this film festival.  It was reported the next day it was the biggest opening night in festival history with over 2,000 people in  attendance.



Tuesday, April 24 - We got back from our Chicago trip just in time to catch the premiere showing of Butch Walker: Out of Focus, a documentary on one our favorite (and one of the most underrated in our opinion)  live performers out there.   This showing sold out extremely fast.  Butch himself was in attendance for the film.  The two young directors said this was actually the first time even they had seen it on the big screen.  It was a pretty good film and a lot more personal in regards to Butch's private life than we were anticipating.  There was a brief Q&A with the directors afterwards, but Butch slipped out kind of quick after the credits rolled, possibly due to the personal nature of the film and not wanting to take the spotlight away from the filmmakers..  We were hoping to get a picture with him and even went over to the post-film party (free entry and free beer!) at the nearby Greenhouse Bar which is a neat place.  It literally is a bar in a greenhouse.  We waited an hour and a half to see if Butch would show but he didn't.  We would have to settle for seeing him again the next night in concert over at 12th & Porter (see next blog entry for more on that).

Thursday, April 26 - The co-headlining film to close the 2012 NaFF was Big Easy Express, a documentary that followed three great bands (2 of which we are familiar with and one - Mumford & Sons- that we absolutely  love) across the U.S. from Oakland, California, to New Orleans aboard a train playing shows at stops along the way as well as having impromptu jam sessions while aboard.  It was a very good film with terrific performances captured from all three bands.  Our friends, Ryan and Dawn, joined us for this showing as well.  There was a Q & A session following the film with none other than Nashville's own and 1/3 of the headlining "stars" of the movie, Old Crow Medicine Show.  The guys answered several questions and were quite witty, honest and sincere with their answers, setting a great rapport with the audience and wrapping another great NaFF experience for us.

Predator Playoff Win Drought Quelled!

More Nashville Predator redemption for us!!  We recently broke our curse of only attending losing games in the regular season and now we have also broken the spell for playoff games as well!



April 11, 2012 - We finally got to see an exciting 3-2 playoff WIN for the Nashville Predators in Game 1 of the Quarterfinals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs vs. the Detroit Red Wings.  We had great seats in the lower bowl of Bridgestone Arena and even NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettman, was in the house and evidently sitting in our section.  Thanks to our good friend, Wayne, for attending with us.  Before the game, Ashlee even got to hob-nob with Preds mascot, Gnash, outside the arena.

  


After the game Ashlee got to meet another minor Preds Celebrity, Big Ben, who's beer-belly messages are always flashed on the big screen to fire up the crowd during the games.

  

Unfortunately Friday, April the 13th, was bad luck for the Preds as we also attended  Game 2 of the series, only to see them lose to the Red Wings 3-2.  Oh well, our streak of three winning games in a row came to and end, but we had  great, affordable seats again in the lower bowl, hung out with our good friends, Wayne, Chris and Tarryn during the game, and, of course, there is always the fact that the Wings still suck!

EDITOR'S NOTE:  The Preds did go on to win the series against Detroit in six games and moved on to the semi-finals vs. Phoenix.

Dances with Wolves and Sings in a Band

April 14, 2012 - While we didn't know any of his music, the thought of seeing one of our favorite actors, Kevin Costner, front his band, Modern West, at one of our favorite small music venues in Nashville, The Exit/In, was just too interesting to pass up.  That was also the case of seven of our friends who tagged along to check it out as well.  Thanks to Brenda, Danny, Chris, Tarryn, John, Monique and Wayne for going with us to this unique experience.



We met for dinner next door to The Exit/In at a ho-hum Mexican restaurant beforehand, and were surprised to already see people lined up at the door two hours before it even opened.  The show had sold out a few weeks prior, so we knew it would be a packed house, but didn't expect this kind of response. We were also surprised at the number of much older people who were going to the show.  It was probably the first time any of them had ever been to or even heard of this mostly-college-oriented venue.  We lounged around the restaurant's patio until the doors opened, even spotting a glimpse or two of Costner himself preparing for the show next door behind the venue.  When we got inside we were still able to find a good area to watch the show about 20' from the stage.



Kevin and his band did not disappoint.  The band's music style is best described as country-rock and you can tell he's doing it for the love of music and not as just some gimmick.  Costner, whose voice is just so-so, has wisely surrounded himself with some top-notch musicians (his fiddle player was on fire!) and good vocal accompaniment. They put on a lively hour and half set of original music that the crowd loved.  His opening act, Sara Beck, was great and also joined the band on stage for a couple songs as well as Costner's daughter, Lilly, who has a lovely singing voice herself. Everyone in our group had a great time and agreed that what started out to be just a curiosity and a chance to do a little star-gazing turned into a pretty darn good night of music.  Costner was very interactive with the crowd and seemed to really be enjoying himself up on stage.  At the age of 57 himself, he's actually a pretty good inspiration since he looks great for his age and has been doing this traveling band gig for several years now which isn't easy for people who are much younger.



A real bonus of the night was being able to zip over to The Mercy Lounge after the Costner show to catch the last half-hour of the conflicting show by one of our favorite bands, Augustana.  Thanks to Chris, Tarryn and Wayne for sticking with us and attending this late night affair as well.  It was worth it as lead singer, Dan Layus (photo above), along with some new band members, sounded great in the the small, but packed, venue.



Blasts from the Past

We "relived" a few things from our past this weekend that are worth a mention:



April 7. 2012 - We were in Chattanooga for the weekend to celebrate Ashlee's Mom's birthday and for the Easter holiday.  The weather was perfect on Saturday morning, so we took an hour's drive north to just outside Spring City, TN, to the Stinging Fork Falls State Natural Area' and hiked the mile-long trail down into the narrow canyon that holds this beautiful cataract.  Ashlee had never been here before, and I hadn't since way back around 1990.  Thanks to Ashlee for snapping this picture with her IPhone since my camera battery was dead.  Thanks to our nephew, Matt, and his (and our) friend, Jeff, who was visiting from Florida for tagging along with us.



That same night we flashed back to 1997 and caught the new 3D re-release version of Titanic along with our friends, Mike, Elizabeth, Lavonda and Tim.  The new 3-D effects weren't all that much, but seeing this epic on the big screen again reminded us of just what a good film it is, and what a ground-breaking triumph it was in filmmaking.  We had a great dinner of delicious fried chicken beforehand at Champy's downtown on MLK Street.  

Fun & Free

We had a couple of notable excursions this past week that didn't cost us a dime (other than some gas and some concessions):

April 1, 2012
We took a nice hike in Taylorsville Hollow up in Sumner County today.
It's about a half hour from our house.  The wildflowers in this little
cove that is owned and protected by The Nature Conservancy
were in their full and gorgeous display.  The little creek running
the length of the small canyon was fairly low in terms of water level,
and the waterfall at the head of the hollow was dry.  We hope to return
sometime during wetter weather for a look at it in its full glory.
We were alone in our exploration of this beautiful  area expect for a lady
doing some landscape painting along the creek bed.

April 3, 2012
The curse is broken!!  We finally got to see a Predators win in person this season! 
Thanks to some free tickets to the Nashville Predators hockey game vs. the Minnesota Wild
from our friend, Sarah, we not only got to see a victory, but we also witnessed our first-ever overtime
shoot-out in person.    Back-up Preds goalie, Anders Lindback, turned in a whale of a game allowing
only one goal in regulation, none in overtime and then stopped three one-on-one attempts by
Minnesota during the shootout.  Recent Preds (re)acquisition, Alexander Radulov, put the Preds in
the W-column with his shoot-out goal.  They were great seats in the lower bowl.  Thanks again to
Sarah for hooking us up. (NOTE: Sarah also got us a deal on some good club-level seats at a low
price for the final regular season game on Thursday, April 5 vs. the Dallas Stars.  It was another
2-0 win for the Preds and revenge for an earlier loss to them back in January that we attended. 
Thanks to our long-time friend, Wayne, for going with us to the game, and thanks to The
BridgstoneArena for providing the delicious mac-n-cheese with buffalo chicken.  Yummm!!

A Frenetic Fortnight: Reggae, NPR Nerd Worship, Hockey & Soccer

Over the last couple weeks, we have attended several events, some of which we have done before, but all of which are worth a mention:

Wednesday, March 15:
We attended a show by the unique musical artist, Trevor Hall, at Exit/In in  Nashville tonight.  We learned about Trevor last year on one of the music cruises that we did.  The surprisingly-powerful voice and reggae-influenced songs coming out this small-framed Caucasian are hard to forget.   There was a surprisingly large crowd at the venue given that it was mid-week show and the fact that Trevor's music isn't widely known (we thought).  The shows we saw by Trevor on the cruise were acoustic, but this plugged-in performance was very good, and our vantage point at the front left-side of the stage gave us an up-close look at Trevor's amazing lead guitarist, Aaron Dugan, as he performed some real magic with his instrument (see video below for some brief proof).  There was also a good opener named Cas Haley.  He also has a nice reggae sound for a "white guy" but he's a total opposite of Trevor since he's a rather large-framed dude.

Monday, March 19: 
We got to see one of our favorite National Public Radio hosts and public television star, Rick Steves, tonight talking about his and one our favorite subjects -travel - over at Vanderbilt University.  The two-hour lecture was entitled "Travel as a Political Act" of which Steves has a new book out of the same title.  There was a large crowd in attendance for the free lecture which turned out to be very interesting, entertaining (we weren't expecting the soft-spoken NPR host to use such terms as "balls" and "horny" in his lecture) and informative.  Thanks to our friend, Caroline, for joining us for the lecture and for going to dinner with us before at the always-great Bosco's.  EDITOR'S NOTE: (5/28/12).  We bought a copy of the book at the lecture and I got a chance to read it on a recent trip we took to Europe.  It was great and actually pretty informative in helping with our visit to Amsterdam.

Tuesday, March 20:
We attended the pro hockey game of the Nashville Predators vs. the Edmonton Oilers tonight with awesome seats on the glass.  We had done this for the first time back in January with four of our friends and loved it.   These were the same seats, but this time we attended with our friends, Chris and Tarryn, who missed out on the chance to get seats the last time we bought them since only six seats are available from the ticket broker we use: Ticketsnow.com.  Another one of the six seats came open and our friend, Wayne, joined us again also.  For future reference, these seats are Section 106, Aisle CC, Seats 15 - 20.  We had a great time as before with the action so close to us and the opponent's penalty box right in front of our seats.  I had brought some funny signs to put up when an Edmonton player was in the box and the best response was a hearty laugh by their center and captain, Shawn Horcoff, when he read the sign "Never Heard of You???"  Unfortunately, as back in January when we had these seats, the Preds were again soundly defeated by a score of 6-3.  Chris says good-naturedly that  I am bad luck to the team since they have only one once when I am in attendance of a game (that is true) and I am starting to believe him!!

Monday, March 26:
Tonight we attended the U.S. Under-23 Men's Soccer Team game vs. El Salvador at LP Field in Nashville.  This was actually the third of three Olympic-qualifying tournament games for the U.S.team here that I saw, but the first for Ashlee since she was out of town on business during the first two games the previous week vs.Cuba (a 6-0 throttling by the U.S.) and Canada (a tough 0-2 loss).  With one win and one loss, this game became very pivotal in the chances of the U.S. moving on to qualify for the Olympics this summer in London, since only the top 2 teams from this tournament advance to the next round.  It came down to a gut-wrenching 3-3 tie that knocked the U.S. out of contention.  The hardest thing to accept was the 3-2 U.S. lead that was blown in the fourth minute of stoppage time (i.e. there was only about 30 seconds left in the game).  Still, it was a beautiful night for a game and it was a thrilling contest from start to finish.  There was a large contingent of fans for El Salvador in attendance and they couldn't have been more gracious in the jubilation of the win.  Thanks to our friends, John and Monique, for attending the game with us, as well as meeting for an excellent dinner beforehand at The Yellow Porch Restaurant over in the Berry Hill community.