Up in my room listening to Little Big Town on my iPod before I head off to this club Fuel, for a showcase starring Doc McGhee’s new act. Supposedly one that’s half bluegrass and half rock, but really neither. Or maybe it’s a different one. This one Alex Hodges told me about it, said it was really good. But it’s so hard to break a record today with such narrow radio ghettos.

But before this all took place, I went to the IEBA awards show. Probably my favorite part was the Lifetime Achievement award for this guy who ran the Big E, a fair in New England. He was introduced by Barbara Mandrell, who was reading boringly off the prepared script, but just when we thought she was done, she looked up and started TESTIFYING! How this guy booked her year after year, until she made it to the main stage. Told her where to buy fresh vegetables at the fair. Helped her along. It’s these people who make a difference, who aren’t doing it for the glory, but because they love show business, even if it’s in a small tent in a town most people have never heard of, because they love the PEOPLE! I was truly convinced that without Wayne McCary, Barbara never would have made it.

And right before Barbara took the stage, a strange smell permeated the ballroom. It was Alice Cooper’s dinner. He didn’t want to eat the steak. He ordered White Castle! Boxes and boxes! I gripped Danny Zelisko by the shoulders and made him fork over a few…he ended up passing over a whole box, with seemingly hundreds of the little burgers.

And Alice got an award. And was just as cool as I thought he was back in ’72, when I saw him at Boston’s Music Hall, during the "Killer" tour. The way he’s just slightly removed, off in his own world. I think we call this charisma. As he spoke I couldn’t help thinking of "School’s Out", with the panties encasing the record, and the semen stained box containing "Muscle Of Love". Did you know that Shep Gordon was a probation officer when he signed Alice? Neither did I.

And before the whole shebang began, Charlie Brusco introduced me to Tommy Shaw. Who was so nice! He told me of telling Van the Man about listening to "Tupelo Honey" on his way to Nashville. I asked him what Van said, since the Irish bard is so prickly and recalcitrant. Tommy said it didn’t matter. It was HIS story!

They’re all our stories. That’s what the artists provide us.

And then we started discussing the plane ride here. Didn’t I see Emmylou Harris? She was RIGHT BEHIND ME! And Carnie Wilson, on the other side of the aisle? Tommy may have been on AOR stations all across America, on MTV, even VH1’s "Behind The Music", but at the heart, he’s no different from me and you, he’s a FAN!

So the Little Big Town song I’m listening to is "Evangeline".

You know how we used to listen to albums? Before they were seventy five minutes long and full of crap? When we’d buy them for $3.99 and play them, not to get our money’s worth, but to uncover their truth? That’s what I’m doing with Little Big Town’s new album "A Place To Land". Not as an assignment, but because every time through I hear another song that didn’t reach me the first time through that I now LOVE! And I’m sure I’ll love more over the next months, and new songs will become my favorites. That’s how we fall in love with bands.

We don’t fall in love seeing them on TV. Certainly not reading about them on TMZ. But listening to them, almost always alone. At first, anyway. Then, memories are built around the tracks. And we MUST go to see them in concert, to hear our favorites live, creating a whole new memory.

They call this the music business.

It’s not the agent business. Or the manager business. And although radio and television can help, it’s really all about listening. By ourselves. Letting the music enrich and complete our lives. Suddenly, we share something with the performers, a bond. We’ll follow them anywhere, give them all our money, because they gave us this music, because they gave us this LIFE!

I won’t say I have stage fright, but if you’re paying me, I want to DELIVER! I’ve got my headphones around my neck, I’m about to fire up some Little Big Town on my iPod, get the adrenaline flowing, and I walk into the green room and THERE THEY ARE!

I don’t think the band gets it. This is a dream. I listened to that damn record over and over again. In Vancouver, when I was deathly sick. Real people weren’t supposed to make that record. Artists aren’t really human, they’re iconic characters that live far from my neighborhood. But HERE THEY ARE! What do you say?

I told them I’d been listening to their new album. And that its third track, "That’s Where I’ll Be", is closer to the classic Eagles sound than anything on "Long Road Out Of Eden". It’s got that "Lyin’ Eyes", "Tequila Sunrise", "Peaceful, Easy Feeling" sound NAILED!

Then they introduced me. By singing a SONG! A CAPPELLA! Which they had to restart, since Karen began it too low. But that’s what I loved most about the whole thing, this moment of imperfection. Our imperfections make us lovable. They evidence our humanity.

And after my speech, I got into a conversation with Troy Blakely. About Boston. I told him how "More Than A Feeling" might have been the hit, but I couldn’t get enough of "Foreplay/Long Time" and "Hitch A Ride" is one of my top five iTunes tracks EVER! I sing it to myself EVERY DAY!

And I’m listening to "Hitch A Ride" on my PowerBook right now, to extend the euphoria. Of my adventure with John McBride to his Blackbird Studio.

Everybody in New York and L.A. is slick. They’ll point to their C.V., where they came from. John McBride came from Kansas. And with his new love in tow, arrived in Nashville to make it in the music business. He started off working for Garth Brooks, but eventually his wife Martina got a deal with RCA, and the rest is history.

Well, not completely. Johnny MacB was restless. He needed to be even closer to the music. He needed to own a STUDIO!

So he took everything he and Martina had, all their savings, in excess of eight figures, borrowed an equal amount, and built an EMPIRE! A meandering haven on a street in the Berry, a few miles from downtown, where the endless cracker box houses all contain studios.

He named it after the Beatles song. And there’s Beatle memorabilia strewn throughout. Like a blow-up of the NME cover wherein they won the poll for band of the year, with PETE BEST ON DRUMS!

John said he had eight million in vintage gear. He showed me this Neumann mic. Not the U47, something weirder, and older. A giant tube, with a little lollipop on top. He’d cornered the market. He’d just sold one to Sheryl Crow.

And then a storage room with shelf after shelf of legendary outboard gear. The kind you used to see in studios in the seventies, before everything went digital, and everybody started working in their home.

John would rather have them working at his place. In one of his $500 a day Pro Tools suites. But the big draw is the big rooms. Like the one Jimmy Buffett was working in today.

First, we ran into Mac McAnally in the hallway. I told him how I’d been trying for years to steal the unavailable on CD title track from his early eighties Geffen album, "Nothin’ But The Truth". I even sang him a line, "On the night of the last election…" John Kalodner sent the vinyl. I’ve got it on cassette. But I need a file.

And then, in the big room we found Tony Brown and Mr. Buffett himself. Recording a singer Jimmy had discovered in Africa.

And after bullshitting with the boys, we went into the endless supply of recording rooms attached to this ONE STUDIO! A room with a vaulted ceiling, and panel walls that could be changed from reflecting to absorbing, from wood to carpet. And in the corner, an echo chamber/reverb room with a ceiling that you raised with the push of a button, for different effects, for different delay.

Then there were the vintage guitars on every wall. John said he wanted the musicians to just pull ’em down and pick ’em.

Then, after walking past the ping-pong table requested by the Raconteurs, Tony’s AMG MBZ and the wall the Kings Of Leon played handball on, we got to another giant studio. With this special wood, of all different depths. To insure a clean sound. Kind of like the two transformers and endless electrical gear making sure the power is clean.

Then we went into George Massenburg’s room. Yes, George has an office at Blackbird. And he commissioned this room. With over a MILLION pieces of wood, ALL of different lengths, to insure NO reflection. For an outside feel. And, John sat me down behind the console and he fired up Queen’s "Night At The Opera" in 5.1. Sure, Freddie Mercury’s vocals were spectacular, but you should have heard Roger Taylor’s DRUMS!

Then it hit me. They’re making state of the art music, but no one’s HEARING IT THIS WAY! We’re listening on two dollar earbuds as they’re making million dollar recordings. And believe me, those recordings sound good. John’s got everything you want. From old Studers to the two and four tracks used on "Sgt. Pepper", never mind state of the art digital stuff. They’re getting it right, but the audience isn’t.

The perfect sound used to be a quest. We bought ridiculously expensive stereo equipment, to get closer to the sound, to try and hear it as the people MADE IT! You’d drop the needle and go inside. Like I felt listening to "The Chain", which I had John fire up on the system. John McVie’s bass? That’s exactly how it sounded LIVE! And Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar…reminded me of seeing Fleetwood Mac at Staples, not that long ago. But MP3s don’t remind me of gigs, they’re too far removed.

It’s like the musicians and the listeners are on two different trajectories. The musicians are using ever-improving sound equipment in a quest for aural nirvana, and we’re arguing over iTunes and iTunes Plus, 128 AACs versus 256. The concept of sitting in front of the stereo and reveling in the output…that’s gone. Don’t blame video games or DVDs, blame a business that had the customer in the palm of its hand, but rather than respecting him, turned him around and fucked him in the ass.

Don’t tell me about licensing Xbox tunes. Put a fifteen year old in Massenburg’s room, listening to "Dark Side Of The Moon", and they’ll forget about the controller. THAT’S the power of music.

Turned out Keith Urban and Garth were not back today. They finished up yesterday. But you could feel the vibes in the walls. This is where it happened. Where Jack White cut his last album. Where creativity erupted. A special place far away from the deafening input of reality, where artistic minds could run free.

As we sat in one of the multiple lounges, drinking Dr. Pepper in Sonic cups with crushed ice from John’s birthday gift machine, I strummed a forty five year old Les Paul and a sixty plus year old D28 as I heard about the status of Martina’s career.

She owes one more record to RCA. Where’s the business gonna be three odd years from now, when she’s ready to record the one after that? Didn’t "BusinessWeek" say country music sales were off almost 30%? Will FM retain a stranglehold on the country audience?

It’s murky out there. No one has the answers. If you don’t get fired, you’re looking for alternatives, you’re ready to get out. You don’t want to end up fifty, broke down and busted on the side of the road, without a career.

But not John McBride. When the business started to go into the toilet, he doubled down. Not to make money, but to live his dream. To be that close to the music.

I was that close to the music today. I could feel it. It was just like living in paradise, and I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME!

Blackbird Studio

Turns out Jack’s closes at 8, contrary to what my driver said. So I asked for a recommendation. And despite telling me the ‘que wouldn’t be as good, the cook pointed out Rippy’s, across the street.

They tell me Hollywood’s been revitalized. On Friday and Saturday night twentysomethings in their finery go to clubs where skinny guys spin records, the lights flash and bodies bump. I didn’t like the disco scene the first time around, back in the late seventies. But feeling old and out of it, I found Nashville identical to the way I remembered the early seventies, only with MORE DEPTH!

Walk down Broadway and there’s club after club after club featuring live music. Didn’t they get the memo? IT’S MONDAY NIGHT! And unlike in NYC, they’re not waiting until the hoi polloi are in bed. They’re picking now. Before the clock even strikes nine.

In one club they’re playing Mellencamp. In another, there’s an alta kacher on pedal steel, an equally aged man on fiddle, and a barely wet behind the ears twentysomething picking his Gibson, leaning into the mic and singing. And in Rippy’s there are two guys on acoustics, belting songs that seem directly connected to the singer-songwriter scene of yore.

I tore into the ‘que like a savage. As you know, they don’t serve food in coach anymore. And I find it hard to eat in the morning. So, a salad purchased in the airport had sustained me all day. And as I’m pouring the hot sauce over the red meat, picking at it like a man with a lifetime supply of dental floss, I’m thinking how fucking great it is to be alive. Funny how music is the grease.

And speaking of grease, after that meal I needed a shower. The wet naps barely made a dent in the stickiness. And in retrospect I should have stuck around, let the sound continue to wash over me. But I wanted to do more exploring.

The Ernest Tubb Record Shop made me cry on the inside. I used to live to go to the record shop. But CDs don’t have a dramatic visual presence. And the sound sucks, they lack the warmth of vinyl. However there were some curios there. Like Mr. Tubb’s performance suit, complete with stains. And Pete Drake’s pedal steel. Still, music lives online now. Not that that’s such a bad thing. Since everything’s available, and it’s free. You can wallow in the tunes. Whereas we used to have to save our pennies and we could never have everything we wanted. Oh how we looked forward to the new releases. We played them again and again until we loved them. We had to, that’s all we could afford.

At another club, where a band was playing the Bloodhound Gang’s Discovery Channel song, there was a full-blown Camaro in the window. Decrepit.

And eventually I made my way down to the water. I’d passed all types of people. No one appearing rich and famous. Some overweight. But everybody out for a good time.

And the thing about going out for a good time is you don’t often find it. How many evenings did I spend back in the seventies drinking beer after beer looking for the night of my life but ending up only with a hangover? Maybe it’s the human condition. To be lonely.

I popped in a few more bars. The ones without the TVs, the ones with the bands on the tiny little stages, they brought the euphoria back. I didn’t see the desperation in the faces I see in L.A. That the musicians have to make it to justify themselves. Playing was fun. And sans trickery. Yup, that guy peeling the notes from his double bass, that was really him.

They say we live in a hip-hop nation. But that’s hard for me to believe when Nickelback is the biggest band in the land.

But Nickelback has songs, with hooks, that make you feel good. Well, maybe not you. You’re too jaded. But the people working for a living, looking for a little hope…to them Nickelback sounds just fine.

And it’s the songs that are the essence of country music. And these songs are closer to the rock music that blew up this business than what we hear on Top Forty radio today. And the anointed few, who are the priorities of record labels, who get airplay, who claw their way to the top…they tour to monstrous crowds. Because in the acts, the patrons see something of themselves.

So I’m sitting in the Hilton in downtown Nashville listening to Kenny Chesney on my iPod. His live album, "Live Those Songs Again". And now I’ve got "Anything But Mine" on endless repeat. It’s sentimental. I’m sentimental, are you?

There’s a local band playing at the seaside pavilion
And I got just enough cash to get us in
And as we’re dancin’ Mary’s wrapping her arms around me
And I can feel the sting of summer on my skin
In the midst of the music I tell her I love her
We both laugh ’cause we know it isn’t true
Ah, but Mary there’s a summer drawing to an end tonight
And there’s so much that I long to do to you

And in the morning I’m leaving, making my way back to Cleveland
So tonight I hope that I will do just fine
And I don’t see how you could ever be anything but mine

Britney and Kenny are trying to do the same thing. But from a different place. They both are trying to scare away the loneliness. But whereas Britney is trying to do it by being fabulous, by drawing attention to herself, turning herself into a spectacle, Kenny’s speaking truth. We all want to believe. We want the future to be better than the past, pregnant with opportunity. We call that the human condition.

Wednesday, I will be going back to Los Angeles. Nashville will be my late summer dream. And I’ll be happy to see my girlfriend, and have my loneliness end. But when I’ve got more questions than answers, I’ll turn to music. And recently, the music that has gotten me through is country.

This ain’t your daddy’s country, this is OUR country. Rockin’, with electric guitars and amplifiers. Turn it up loud enough, and it drowns out all the bad elements of your life. Every night in Nashville they turn it up and do their best to rid themselves of the bad feelings. They want to believe their lives will work out.

And it’s nice if you’re famous. Not bad if you’re rich. But neither makes a life. Life is about struggle. Life is about victories and losses. But what we love most about life is joy. And I saw that joy on players’ faces this evening. Doing it not to be famous, but to hold the black at bay, to show not only resilience, but power.

I think that was Tommy Shaw on the plane. You know, the blond guy from Damn Yankees and Styx. Would have been hard to believe just a few years ago, but rockers in music city? De rigueur!

And it is music city. My limo driver, who was not an Angeleno, as in this was his real job, DRIVING THE LIMO, not trying to make it as an entertainer…all the tourist sites he pointed out were music-related. Well, except for the ‘que palace. He said to drop in at Jack’s…and I’m gonna DO THAT!

It’s over eighty here. Which is hard to believe. Flying east from L.A., it’s always COLDER! And the land is flat. And there are clouds. Not quite like a Michelangelo painting, but the kind that set your imagination free anyway.

The tallest building in town is inhabited by Nissan. Albeit temporarily. Yup, they moved their HQ from Southern California. And while my driver wasn’t quite up on the city’s history, when I saw the bridge I knew Nashville was here because of the river. Which turned out to be the CUMBERLAND! Remember fifth grade social studies? When we moved slowly across the country? From my home in New England to the truck farms in Pennsylvania to the CUMBERLAND GAP?

There’s a stadium… The Titans moved here. Can they survive in a city of 650,000? Oh yeah, that’s right, the NFL has got revenue sharing. And giant TV contracts and now its own cable network. Turns out the music business shouldn’t be run by Doug Morris, but PAUL TAGLIABUE!

There’s a giant Gibson painted on a downtown wall. And tourists on Second Street, where a Hard Rock sits on the corner, where I’m thinking all the memorabilia is country. My driver told me everything was right here, in walking distance of the Hilton. Oh, they’d moved the Grand Ole Opry out to the sticks, by a shopping mall. And the Bluebird is fifteen minutes away. But the old Opry, and Ernest Tubbs’ record shop, are right here downtown.

And what a downtown… Kind of an eastern version of "Last Picture Show". There’s one main boulevard, with a rise in it. In New York City you see the pulse, as soon as you enter Manhattan. There is no pulse in L.A. It’s just like the suburbs you left. Nashville is old school. You can’t see the pulse, but you feel it. With the old-style buildings, the neon. It’s not bright and sunny. And I’m sure super-hot in the summer. But here’s where you go if you want to make it in the country music game.

The main drag’s not inviting. It’s broad, if not quite bleak. The city isn’t gonna make you… This is where you come with your self-confidence, your talent, to show the world what you’ve got. In L.A. it’s your looks. In New York it’s your money and who you know. In Nashville it’s strap on your guitar and show me what you’ve got. It’s not inviting, but if you’ve got the talent, the city is with you.

P.S.

I wanted to hit send on this about twenty minutes ago, but I had a connection problem. Well, first of all, the ethernet cable in the room was broken. And, they asked for so much credit card information on the login page, after I whipped out my own cable, which I don’t travel without, I figured I’d call up and see if I could have it charged to my room.

NO PROBLEM!

I forgot I was in the south. The people here have a mildly stronger accent than Al Gore. Which is just a fraction of the drawl of my old girlfriend from Tallahassee. And FRIENDLY! God, you wonder why there’s still a war between the north and the south. The southerners just can’t understand what all the huff and puff and rudeness is about.

The dude didn’t come up to connect me as quickly as he said, which had me burning in my seat, as I wanted to hit send, but when he knocked on my door and came in, it was like we were NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS! Like he’d dropped by with a cup of sugar, and since he was over might as well give me a couple of cake tips.

Anyway, he said many guests break the ethernet plug so it won’t pull the laptop off the table if it’s stretched by accident. I told him there’d be no accidents in my room. I’m the only one here!

God, I guess if I could be the one to have accidents, I wouldn’t have to go for psychotherapy! Then again, Elvis Costello sang that accidents will happen. And after that, didn’t he do an album "Almost Blue", all country tunes? Funny how the English have a fascination with country. And the Canadians too. Whereas we have a divide in the U.S. If you’re into hip-hop, you’re not going to listen to country, and vice versa. But just like hip-hop used to be the sound of the streets, of a generation, and some underground stuff still is, country is the sound of the American family. Of heartbreak, loneliness and perseverance. As well as some rowdy, liquored up good times. I guess our country will be whole when we can appreciate each other’s music. Then again, Big & Rich have a black rapper, Cowboy Troy!