(This isn’t a travelogue, let’s be fair, a quick glance at Trip Advisor will tell you more about Nashville than I could, but an outline of our time in the city and some observations that appealed to me.)

Thanks to Amex and British Airways we’d acquired some credits to get a cheap low cost flight to Nashville, Tennessee. I’d been here in 2015 but the chance to return here and then to Memphis was not something I was about to pass up. If the original flight was cheap then the chance to upgrade from Economy to Premium Economy was irresistible when asked at Check In and we made the nine hour flight in greater comfort albeit about £668 poorer for the two seats. It was worth it.

We’d booked accommodation in a self catering flat in Downtown and from here we’d see the sights using, mainly shank’s pony. The city or Downtown is ‘party town’ and with nine years elapsing I last cycled here it seemed to have got brighter, louder and, as with all the USA, dramatically more expensive. In most large US cities then sprawl is enormous and the tourist hotspots don’t define the character of the town and in reality as you drive in the suburbs you quickly realise that probably most residents, in Nashville, care little for country music.

They reckon the average American has a wage 40% higher than a Brit. (That may be the average (mean but not the median or mode I suggest) difference but not for all as I explain below.) They need it! I couldn’t say all the prices were 40% higher than the UK but it was getting that way by the time you added on Sales Tax and subsidised the restaurant or bar owner by lobbing the waitress a 20% tip. In fact tipping has progressed to be a further optional sales tax eg. In a coffee shop you’re invited to add up to 30% for someone who stands behind a counter, writes your name and coffee specification on a paper cup, hands it to a co-worker and then smiles at you, mutters something banal and insincere such as ‘Awesome! Have a wonderful day’ and moves onto the person next in the queue. We spent most of our leisure time in Nashville and Memphis in attractions or in areas of hospitality and it became wearing the continual begging from guides or musicians for tips. ‘I don’t get paid to give this talk’ or ‘your generosity will help us pay for dental treatment..’ etc. This latter one came after we paid a door cover charge for the band!

One economy were Uber taxis. This facility is a blessing with the App and they are cheap! Two of our drivers were on vacation from their ‘day’ jobs! Rather than sit at home they clocked on for a few hours. Americans get a paltry holiday allowance and it seems that even when they do have time away from their main job they get out and work. You do feel Americans work a lot harder than Europeans. Another driver, Jennie described herself as ‘big’ yet complained as we shuffled into her SUV, when leaving Walmart, that she hardly knew how her last passenger at ‘500lbs’ (35 stone!) had squeezed himself into the car. Like a lot of Americans Jennie, mid forties, suffered from an over active knife and fork and you’d scratch your head as to why they risk these future mobility and health risks.

Her size, however, might have helped in her main job as a Correction Officer. She worked at a County Jail and was trained in prisoner restraint. For all this she only received $19/hour, whereas on a good Uber day she could make $40/hour. We asked if she ever had troublesome passengers? ‘No, not really’ as she’d only had to use her firearm (nestled in the centre armrest) twice! The biggest problem arose when an aggressive Mexican had taken her phone and purse to suddenly see the error of his ways when he was facing a loaded pistol. She did comment that this Mexican was probably an ‘illegal, like half of them’. (Another vote for Trump there.) Sadly this interview was going well until arriving at our destination, which foreshortened this fascinating discussion.

You might expect a little information on our musical discoveries. On the main drag in Downtown, Lower Broadway, there were numerous bars with live music. By 8pm it was cacophonous walking down the streets with thousands of mainly younger folk parading in T shirts, short skirts, cowboy hats and boots. They were out to party. It was exciting, a bit like moving with a tide of football fans about to enter a stadium for a key match. On one night we visited a bar where the beers were cheap and the music up beat and sweaty. We chose Robert’s. This bar promised honky tonk country music from the house band. On another night at Chief’s we saw a proper concert with an artist whose music I’d collected Julie Roberts (not Julia). I’ve written up the gig – see the preceding post.

However before that we’d spent lunchtime at Third and Lindsley attending a chat and concert by five songwriters (Gary Baker, Billy Montana, Randall Fowler, Greg Barnhill and Jill Colucci. Four of these had written major hits for major artists over the last 40 years.

The artists included Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Sara Evans, Wynonna and Lee Brice. The music was terrific, the setting iconic and the history of the songs and their creation captivating. The Country Music Hall of Fame was another morning’s entertainment: a truly excellent museum in the centre of Downtown.

I’ve been in the States a lot and it’s always pleasing how clean the toilets always are (!), how unfailingly courteous most people are, when you might, say, meet on a narrow stairway the other apologises and gives way immediately. However, it still hits you hard how the concept of recycling or waste hasn’t yet had adoption. We looked around for different bins for plastic or paper waste: no chance. We tutted at noting trucks parked up for hours with their engines running or any fast food meal came with disposable styrofoam plates, plastic cutlery and acres of superfluous greaseproof paper. The world’s resources are finite. They don’t get it do they?

We coveted and were jealous of the space. Their supermarkets had wide aisles. They had free parking spaces (and lots of them). Their suburbs were sprawling with spaces between the offices, factories and residential housing. Somehow this space created a feeling of calm and plentifulness to me.

Nashville was mainly white and even the tourists were white. For the first time, in a long time, I observed there were no ethnic Chinese or Asians tourists: I was used to York. Clearly the magic of Hank Williams, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson had not spread eastwards. If the Downtown streets were white with a handful of African Americans then the retail outlets away from the centre employed many races.

Post Covid there is a scramble for labour in low paid jobs. The working US elderly called it a day, never to return or younger workers moved to jobs that allowed them to keep working remotely. In a Walmart we shopped as the staff chatted to each other in Spanish, not socialising but running the store. I approached a chap for help and asked ‘where can I find sesame bagels please?’ The assistant (Latino?) looked blank but handed me his device to type in what I wanted (to enable a store search) rather than attempt to fathom out what I’d said. A quick practical solution but probably not from a training module he’d attended.

It must be a challenge running a $648 billion business dependent on low wage labour when there’s a chronic shortage. The average Walmart hourly rate is $17.50/hour (£14/hour). The UK’s comparable wage for a supermarket is c£12/hour and the UK cost of living is lower plus the employee benefits are greater. This is a nation where the rich are living on a different planet to hundreds of millions of others who need more than one job to make ends meet. It’ll be interesting to see how this excess of demand over labour supply plays out over the next decade. Can a machine put fruit and veg out or collect all the trolleys spread across a car park?

Nashville exceeded our expectations. With a surfeit of music and sightseeing we took an Uber to the airport to pick up a car for our drive west. I donned my Leeds United shirt as today was the day of the Play Off Final…