this past weekend I visited Music City...Nashville...for the first time...being 63...without a white dollar store pseudo-veil pasted to my head...and bride tribe in tow...well, I was something of an anomaly...but I like visiting cities in the south...the hello and friendly demeanor from strangers is refreshing to a jaded New Yorker...although, there is always a sense of sins of the fathers hiding in the corners...plantations still on the outskirts and ready for a tour...Mike and I concentrated on the music...not a better place to be for it...Grand Ole Opry...live music all over town...but there was the pesky Jason Aldean "small town" brouhaha popping up in news and social media that weekend...and there was his place front and center on Broadway...right next to Luke Bryan's...by Dierks Bentley's...you get the idea...but for me, and many others, Nashville is Cashville...Johnny Cash...his museum is a must...he was far from a perfect man...but a brilliant artist...and what he tried to do with his fame and voice for prison reform...his performances at Folsom and San Quentin...his writing about the need for change...was so ahead of his time...he found redemption in sobriety...and in the love of the remarkable June Carter...most of the country stars with their names plastered on bars and restaurants along the raucous streets of Broadway...aren't fit to lick his boots...when the endgame is the almighty dollar...and not the love of music...and some Almighty higher power...then don't buy into the dumb cowboy mea culpa act...google is in the palm of that phone in their hands...and so is history...the joke is on the fan who buys into it...then works overtime in his small town to buy the concert ticket...better to download "I Walk the Line"...listen to the gravely gold of Cash's voice...humility will set you free...
