Will was the designated driver for the stint from Nashville to Memphis, i was a little worse for wear so thought probably best for me to not take control of the car for a while.
We decided as a minor detour to stop off at the jack Daniel distillery (perfect hangover cure i know) and take the tour.
One things for sure and that's the tour is the most professionally and awesomely run museum/attraction i've been to. You get your very own tour guide and then a good hour being taken around having everything explained. Our guide, a guy called Billy, who was clearly mental and continuously went off in all kinds of tangents was as cool as anyone i'd met. He clearly had stories to tell from a very eventful life, and it was nice to let him go on and tell them.
We left there high from the fumes i think, that and the fact we'd had our hands sprayed with undistilled whiskey, this obviously meant that for the next day or so, everytime i scratched my chin or rubbed my eyes it was like pouring pure alcohol on them.
You're not actually allowed to drink any of the Whiskey as [interesting fact time] in Lynchburgh, it's still a dry state therefore no-one can actually drink the whiskey that's brewed there [interesting fact end]
Onwards to Memphis!
If Nashville is the sugar coated, everyone happy, cheque wearing, cowboy boot wearing, music town of choice. Then Memphis is its bitter neighbour, and the music reflects it. This place is just blues through and through. The music here is all about being down and out, struggle and loss. Truthfully it's far more my taste if i had the choice of the two.
In B.B Kings, our hiding place for when the snow started, a guy came on stage , sat behind this old beaten up piano and started to play the most beautiful heartfelt rendition of Ray Charles "Georgia".
The problem with Memphis is as soon as you leave the music and walk even just a street away you see the town for real and understand where the music comes from. I've never been asked for money as much in my life, it's just a derelict homes, rough looking housing estates and empty parking lots, a shell of a town. We did make the walk over to the hotel that Martin Luther king had been shot, which by the way has now been converted into the civil rights museum. It was all done very tastefully and with the up most of respect, 'which for America was something of a surprise'.
Very glad i went anyway..
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