Hangin' Out in The Basement

We headed into Nashville last night for an evening of good food and regional rock-n-roll courtesy of Rumba Restaurant and The Dirty Guv'nahs. Rumba is one of our favorite restaurants in Nashville. It's located on West End Avenue and was already busy when we arrived for our 7:30 PM reservations. Their menu is always one of the most diverse and eclectic in the area and seems to be constantly changing. Their small-plate/tapas style of serving also allows for a lot of variety in flavors at every sitting. Of the four selections we ordered, our hands-down winner was a flat-bread with the interesting (and delicious) combination of bacon, blue cheese. grapes and honey. Thanks to a Groupon (groupon.com) we had, our final bill was extremely reasonable.

After dinner we hooked up with our friend, Emily, and headed over to The Basement on 8th Avenue to catch a set by The Dirty Guv'nahs, an up-and-coming young band out of Knoxville who we recently saw at The Bele Chere Festival in Asheville (see previous blog) that really impressed us. The Basement is a tiny music venue that is literally the basement of a huge 3-story house. The second floor houses Grimey's Used CDs & Records. We had never been here before but have been wanting to check it out since they always seem to have a fairly impressive line-up of new artists gracing their stage. The place is cramped and short of space...hey, it's a basement, but the sight lines and acoustics are actually pretty good...much better than the oft bally-hooed 3rd & Lindsley venue which we despise.

There weren't too many people there when we arrived at the start of the short set of opening act, Patrick Sweany, but by the time he had finished a solid half-hour of good blues and rock, the crowd was thick in anticipation of the Guv'nahs who seem to have a pretty loyal grass-roots following. They were just as good as we remembered them from their Asheville performance. Their energy and musicianship on stage is exhilarating. We were almost as sweat-soaked as they were after an hour in the packed room, but it was well worth the effort. We are already looking for another opportunity to see them perform.