Best of Today: Nashville!!

A week ago we got the chance to visit Nashville for a few days, just the two of us. It was a little bit of business and a lot of fun! Be warned, this is gonna be a long post, I want to be able to look back and remember the details :) Plane ride to Nashville we sat next to a worship pastor from Fort Worth, headed out to a conference - he used to tour musically. He was such a nice guy, great to talk to, and took some of Josh's business cards since he works with musicians. Cool. Landed in Nashville Thursday evening, drove from the airport to meet Josh's producer friend Pete at an irish pub, McCreary's, in Franklin. Met a few other people there, got lots of tips on what to do in the city. Friday was business day, so we hit the ground running - first up we met with Royce, senior VP of national promotions at Universal/MCA Records, up on the 11th floor of the SunTrust building in Downtown - his office had the most amazing view of the strip downtown, wish I had taken a picture. Josh brought his latest guitar with him, plus picked up a guitar from Pete (whom he had left a guitar with months ago). Royce loved his guitars and said Josh could leave one with him to display in his office, knowing that many popular country artists stop by and hang out there often, and they will most likely pick up the guitar and play it - awesome. Next we drove around trying to find a guitar shop which we never found, so instead headed over to Gruhn Guitars, right back where we were in downtown earlier :) Such a cool shop - picture doesn't do it justice - wall to wall guitars, specializing in vintage guitars - in fact George Gruhn, the owner, is said to be the go-to guy in appraising vintage guitars, countrywide if not worldwide. After showing one of the floor managers josh's guitar, he showed us up to george himself on the third floor. Even more amazing vintage guitars and mandolins - josh got to play a $225,000 mandolin - insane! George absolutely loved Josh's guitars, he couldn't believe that the guitar in his hands, Josh's latest guitar, is only his 12th one. What a compliment!! He wanted to help Josh's business in any way that he could, so he started by asking us to go to lunch and we talked business. Lots of insight.

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He then let us know he was going to the Opry that night to see his good friend, country legend Ricky Skaggs, and asked if he could bring Josh's guitar with him to get it into their hands - and he did!!! Not only Ricky, but Ricky's guitar player, the house band, and maybe others. Josh ended up leaving his other guitar with George, who will get it into any artists hands he can, and even sell it on consignment if that's what ends up happening.

We weren't able to go to a show at the Grand Ole Opry ourselves, but we did visit it the next day, hoping we get to see a show next time we're in town :)

Really made some great connections out there. Besides business, we got to do lots of touristy and other fun stuff. Josh knows a guy who lives out there, so we met up with him for dinner one night and hopped around to a few bars/saloons to listen to live music which was cool. I didn't realize I had two friends from college (Point Loma), Tim & Jamie, living out there - so we got to go to breakfast with them one morning, it was a lot of fun to catch up with friends while on vacation.

Turns out Tim works for the Country Music Hall of Fame, so Monday we headed over there and Tim was able to get us in and showed us around the newest exhibit, Bakersfield sound, which he headed up, wrote all the text for, etc - it was pretty cool! Then he took us back into the archives, which is where they keep everything that isn't on display, tons of stuff - we signed a guest book, only 6 guests have been back there this year :) When we were pulling up to the Hall of Fame, we just missed getting to meet Tim McGraw - saw him getting back into his black Range Rover with his body guards. On our final day, we got to go to breakfast with Josh's producer friend Pete and his wife and a son, it was fun to feel like we had friends out there - we met them for breakfast in Franklin, I absolutely love Franklin - such a cute/beautiful city outside of Nashville, I would love to go back there. If we moved there, that is where we'd move :) Franklin Pike, one of the main roads to Franklin, is where many of the country stars used to (and might currently) build their homes, so driving down it you see many mansions splayed out on beautiful rolling green hills. So nice. Plane ride home we sat next to a woman named Charity and her 4 month old son. Turns out she's the significant other of Derrick Morgan, Tennessee Titans football player - she was a lot of fun to talk to, and her little boy just loved Josh, haha. She used to work for Universal/MCA Records out in LA and has several connections there, so she took several of Josh's business cards and said she;ll give them out. Such a small world, really felt God's hands throughout the whole trip. What made the trip so cool was I really felt like we were more part of the scene than tourists - got so many behind the scenes opportunities, and had more friends and connections out there than we realized, it was great - we'll be going back!