Gordon Lightfoot Forums - Nashville wants Lightfoot

http://www.thestar.com/life/travel/2...an-legend.html

By: Owen Roberts Special to the Star, Published on Wed Apr 29 2015

Hey Gordon Lightfoot, the Nashville Cats are howling for your return.
You don’t have to read their minds. Charlie McCoy, your harmonica player on “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and on your Nashville-era hits like “Cotton Jenny,” asked that this message get to you, when we spoke after a brief performance at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame.
“Hey Gordie . . . . we’re having a great event at the Hall of Fame,” he said. “I’m asking everyone to please get you involved in it.”
The event referred to by McCoy, now 74, is the much anticipated new exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame, called “Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City.”

McCoy and fellow ’Cat Charlie Daniels (of The Charlie Daniels Band fame) performed at the installation’s grand opening last month, before 700 Nashville A-listers. Through this exhibit they’re reliving Nashville’s pivotal period in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That’s when they and a host of other hot studio musicians backed-up recording stars such as Lightfoot there, and appreciably furthered their careers.

Now, the hall of fame – and McCoy – wants those stars back, to be recognized for their contributions to country and pop music culture, and hopefully to perform for museum visitors, as McCoy and Daniels did.

“We’ve talked to [his] people and we know he’s busy, but we’d sure like him to come down,” the exhibit’s principal curator Michael Gray says of Lightfoot.

If indeed Lightfoot makes the trek, he’ll be among the many living legends visitors might encounter wandering through the exhibit, which runs until December 2016.

For example, I bumped into McCoy next to the installation’s tribute to fellow ’Cat bassist Norbert Putnam, admiring the latter’s dilapidated Fender Precision that looks like it has been gnawed by beavers. (Putnam is said to have seldom put the bass in a case, going gig to gig with it loosely in his trunk, and it shows.)
McCoy is mostly an unsung star outside of music circles, even though he is often credited with drawing Bob Dylan to Nashville, which led to two of his most acclaimed albums, Nashville Skyline and Blonde on Blonde, on which McCoy played. Other artists and albums followed, including Canadians such as Leonard Cohen (Songs From A Room), Neil Young (Harvest) and Lightfoot (Summer Side of Life), backed by Nashville Cats.

At the exhibit, Johnny Cash is likewise honoured for sparking change in Nashville. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was working to bridge country, folk and pop music together – “uniting hippies and rednecks years before Willie Nelson,” says the Hall of Fame – by hosting the likes of James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and Eric Clapton on his network television show. It was broadcast from the Ryman Auditorium, which itself hosts excellent tours in the city’s core.

I covered a lot of ground during my three-day visit, which is easy to do in this compact city. But when I boarded the plane home, these five destinations stayed with me the most (besides the bars on Broadway and the Country Music Hall of Fame, a given):
1. The new Johnny Cash Museum. It’s a lot cozier than other Nashville shrines, but Cash fans don’t seem to mind rubbing elbows with another one and standing silently shoulder-to-shoulder while watching the video of “Hurt.” Curators are hungry for video footage or stills from Cash’s onstage proposal to June Carter during their February 1968 performance in London, ON. Pick up a striped black-and-while Folsom Prison baby onesie in the gift shop for the grandkids.

2. RCA’s Studio B tour. This is where Elvis recorded more than 250 songs, as did Roy Orbison “(“Only The Lonely”), Dolly Parton (“Jolene”) and Floyd Cramer (“Last Date”). Channel Elvis when the tour goes quiet and the host turns the studio lights green and red – that’s what The King needed for inspiration when recording Christmas music in July.
3. The Grand Ole Opry, especially on star-studded Saturday nights. When I visited, the Oak Ridge Boys were the featured act, the same week it was announced they were new inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame. They were pumped. “Elvira” and “Bobbie Sue” never sounded more inspired.

4. The Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum. You must be a player, not just a crooner, to break into this circle. Some of the artifacts here are more savoury than those in the main hall of fame, such as Joe South’s late 1950s Gretsch 6120, the one he used on “Games People Play.” Its reach goes far beyond country – a new addition is the Fender Rhodes electric piano used from 1972-85 at the Caribou Ranch recording studio on classic pop songs such as Chicago’s “Just You ‘N’ Me.”

5. Carter’s Vintage Guitars. Dubbed “Nashville’s friendliest guitar store,” it’s a bit off the beaten track, on 8th Ave., but well worth the visit. Accommodating staff let me play – unchaperoned – Keith Urban’s 1958 Les Paul Standard, valued at $90,000. Guitars from Janis Ian’s collection were also on the floor for casual picking, including a 1900 Martin 0-28, with a $14,500 price tag.

Note to Gordon Lightfoot: My favourite guitar at Carter’s was a 1968 Fender Telecaster Custom, marked down to $9,500. No one famous owned it as far as I know, but it played like silk and looked sharp. I know you’re an acoustic guitarist, but I left it there for you anyway, if you’re looking for yet another reason to return to Nashville. You’re welcome.

If you go…
Owen Roberts was a guest of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation. Follow him on twitter at @theurbancowboy and at www.urbancowboy.ca .
Stay at the Union Station Hotel. Alison Krauss named her band after this Nashville landmark, the city’s former train station, which is now a gorgeous upscale hotel. It’s on Broadway, a couple of blocks away from the bars, making entertainment accessible but not annoyingly close. Service is exceptional.

Have breakfast at Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant. This is a Nashville institution, day and night. It’s about a 15-minute walk from the Union Station. It offers fried food galore, but whatever you choose, the prices are down home: oatmeal, two eggs, toast and coffee and tip for under $9.
Shop for cowboy boots. Western wear is waning, but cowboy boots still have a lot of cache with shoppers in Nashville. On the Broadway bar strip, deals abound, especially three boots for the price of two. Who can have enough? Who can resist boots with your favourite NFL team or college team crest?

Pull a pint at the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium. It lives up to its reputation as the best craft beer bar in Nashville, with more than 200 different varieties on tap. The Flying Saucer draws its name from the hundreds of saucers affixed to the cavernous ceiling. Become a member of the Ring of Honour club after consuming 200 brews. My favourite was Mayday Evil Octopus, a black IPA brewed nearby in Murfreesboro. Take home a Draft Punk T-shirt.

Queue up for hot chicken. If you see a line up outside a restaurant in the middle of the day, odds are it’s for a food fad called hot chicken. Here, hot means spicy and fried. At Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, intensity ranges from mild to “shut the cluck up,” which has a burn notice with it. Try pimento mac and cheese as a side.

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