MONDAY, 15 MAR 2010: NASHVILLE-ATLANTA
Posted on March 15, 2010
Before leaving Nashville I had two meetings. The first was with Ralph Murphy at ASCAP. Ralph was a bit late (he’d had a phone call from a different Sarah cancelling their meeting, and thought it was me), so we had ample time to gaze open-mouthed at the very grand lobby. Comparing notes the next day, Martin and I discovered that we’d both been so impressed by splendour of the toilets that we’d each taken photographs -- so here are my pic of the ladies’ together with Martin’s of the gents’; also one of the aforementioned lobby.
Ralph eventually arrived, full of apologies for the mixup, and we had an extremely pleasant and hugely useful chat during which I took vast quantities of notes -- just hope I get time one of these days to go though those notes and follow up on all the advice and contact information he was kind enough to give me!
Afterwards, Ralph gave us a quick tour. There are writing rooms in the ASCAP building that are available free of charge to members (and also to me as a member of IMRO, which is linked with ASCAP), equipped with pianos, WIFI, tea and coffee making equipment -- everything a writer could want! Heading up in the lift to have a look at them, we met up with Leilah (http://www.myspace.com/leilah) -- the daughter of Melanie “I’ve Got A Brand New Pair of Rollerskates” Safka. Ralph also showed us ASCAP’s ProTools studio, which again is available for members’ use. Here are photos of the studio, one of the writing rooms, and myself and Ralph in his office (there’s a significance to the giant Minnie Mouse doll, but I forget what it is).
Our next stop was at Gary Paczosa’s studio, built for him by Alison Krauss so that she could have a pleasant place to record. Pleasant it is indeed, with subdued lighting and a disco ball casting starry reflections on the walls. Gary is Vice President of A&R for Sugar Hill Records, and has produced and engineered albums for the likes of Alison Krauss, Tim O’Brien, Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Nickel Creek, Sarah Jarosz, Maura O’Connell and too many more stellar names to mention. It was a great privilege to be able to meet and talk with him. Here’s a photo of Gary and Martin.
We needed a lunch break after all that conversation, so a few miles down the road from Nashville towards Atlanta we pulled in for this tour’s final instalment of:
Martin’s Chainspotting Corner!
No. 12: Sonic
Sonic bills itself as a classic American drive-in burger joint, with 50s-style bays where you park and order your meal through an intercom, but Martin was gutted by the absence of a tray hooking onto the window. I had a burger and a vanilla malt; Martin had a burger, tater tots and a corn dog (which last item caused him to complain that there was a sausage inside his doughnut). The whole experience was disappointing in every way.
Martin says ... “I don’t like it. This shouting through the window to order your food, I don’t like it. I feel sick now.”
Stopping later that afternoon to use the public convenience in a petrol station, I was intrigued by a vending machine offering not the usual female paraphernalia, but rather, for the bargain price of 50 cents, “Pandora’s Box: A Grab Bag of Sexy Surprises - 6 DIFFERENT NOVELTIES”. The mind boggles. What sort of novelties could possibly be packed into a container the approximate size of a box of matches? I was tempted to go ahead and put two quarters in just to find out, but frugality won out over curiosity.Eventually we arrived at the home of house concert hosts extraordinaire Seth Tepfer and Pam Eidson. Seth and Pam live in Decatur, Georgia, although the house just next door to theirs is in Atlanta. They gave us a very warm welcome, and the concert was a lovely note on which to finish the tour.
John Falstaff, who hosts The Celtic Show on Atlanta’s WRFG, was the master of ceremonies and gave an eloquent opening speech in which he compared the house concert movement to the glory days of céilithe in the kitchen on the auld sod. I had a wonderful choir to sing the canon with me -- pictured from left to right are Thomas Vinton, Andrea Nettleton, Elise Witt and myself. One of the guests, Jim Crawford, filmed the event, so I hope to have a video of the canon up on the website before too long.
My encore rendition of ‘Mr Bojangles’ elicited squeals of delight from Pam, who told me afterwards that she and Seth had waltzed barefoot to that very song in a hotel ballroom in Bermuda back in 2001 -- barefoot because they’d just walked a marathon (finishing hand in hand!) and Pam’s feet were too blistered for shoes. “We’ve been asking for it ever since,” she said, “but haven’t found any band who knew it!”
Seth and Pam and one other couple got up and waltzed in the hall, and I got so wrapped up in watching them that I nearly forgot to sing. It was a lovely, lovely note on which to finish my first US tour. Many thanks to everyone who made it as wonderful as it was!
