I hadn’t been to Tennessee since my move out to LA in 1998. On that trip, I hit a chunk of metal in the road and blew my tire 40 minutes outside of Knoxville. It was after dark and I was stranded. Cell phones were of course a thing in ‘98, but far from ubiquitous and I sure didn’t have one.
I saw some lights on at a house on the top of the hill overlooking the highway, so I scrambled up to see if I could use their phone. A man opened the door with a shotgun in his hand and mumbled something I didn’t understand. I didn’t stick around to ask him to repeat himself.
I returned to the highway and walked a mile and a half to the next exit to find a pay phone. I eventually got a new tire the next day and got back on the road, but the experience left an impression.
I found myself thinking about that night as I left Kentucky and crossed back over into Tennessee. I was hoping this time around would be better.
NASHVILLE
My plan was to stop and see what a Saturday night in Nashville had to offer. My good friend worked on a movie there, I knew a handful of people who had gone to party there, and I had never heard a bad word about it. Nashville is the beating heart of country music, which is not really my jam, but live music can be good, regardless of the genre.
The drive from Bowling Green was just over an hour. The day was bright and hot. The heat was definitely not intensifying The Butter smell, I told myself, because I’d cleaned the back of the car the afternoon before. Nope, no smell at all.
I checked into a hotel in Music Row, and went to find a bar with live music on Demonbraun St. I didn’t have to go far because every bar that was large enough to fit a stage, and some that weren’t, had people performing.
I worked my way down to Broadway, which was a mob scene. I guess any normal Saturday night on Broadway is probably a zoo, but there was also a Bad Bunny concert at the Bridgestone Arena, a block off the main strip.
I stopped into several places, had dinner and a few drinks, and listened to plenty of live music. The food was fine, the drinks were fine, the music was fine. It just all felt bland and homogenous. It was like everyone had come to Nashville to cosplay country. They got their cowboy hats, they got their cowboy boots, and they’re going to go two-steppin’. Every single bar/restaurant along the main drag of Broadway was owned by one country star or another.
“Come drink at Garth Brooks’ Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk, or Blake Shelton’s Ole Red, then dance the night away at Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa or Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky-Tonk & Rock N' Roll Steakhouse.” It sounds like I’m making these up, but I assure you I’m not.
Most of the buildings were new, but made with weathered materials to look worn and "country". Say what you will about Bourbon Street (and you can say a lot), at least it has some funk to it, a little dirt under its fingernails. Broadway was just a cookie-cutter, sanitized, Disneyland version of what I had been expecting. I probably should have gotten away from the touristy area and found the “real” Nashville, but I didn't have time to start over.
Disappointed, I walked back to the hotel, stopping at the excellent Pullman Standard cocktail bar on the way. I hoped that I would like Memphis better.
MEMPHIS
In the morning, I drove the three hours to Memphis. As I pulled off I40 and into the city, a massive pyramid loomed up. It looked like the Las Vegas Luxor in white, but I was 1,500 miles off the Vegas Strip. To make things even stranger, the Bass Pro Shop logo adorned the side of it, 100 feet high.
The tenth tallest pyramid in the world was built in Memphis in 1991 as a 20,000 seat arena with grand plans for additional uses. It hosted the University of Memphis basketball program and the Pharaohs, Memphis’ team in the Arena Football League. For several reasons, most of the big aspirations for other uses never came to fruition.
When the city wooed the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis, they promised the team a new arena as part of the package. The Memphis Grizzlies played at the pyramid until the FedEx Forum was constructed in 2004. In 2005, without a team or income stream, the city signed a 55-year lease with Bass Pro Shops. The structure now houses their massive store, an archery range, hotel, shopping, shooting range, saltwater aquarium, restaurants, a bowling alley, and a laser tag arena.
I made my way downtown and loaded into my Airbnb a few blocks from Beale Street. On the surface, Memphis seemed to be the opposite of Nashville. Everything looked a little dingy and there was barely anyone on the streets. I walked to Beale Street and found it mostly deserted. It then dawned on me that it was an early afternoon on Mothers Day and I should cut the city some slack.
I want to make one thing clear at the outset. Yes, Memphis is poor. Yes, Memphis has high crime. Yes, Memphis is a little run down. I heard all of these things from people I had conversations with in Nashville. But I fucking loved it. Memphis, it seems, gets a bad rep, but I discovered very quickly it has something that I didn’t find in Nashville - authenticity. Memphis bleeds authenticity.
If Nashville is the heart and soul of country music, Memphis is that for the blues. It is also the birthplace of rock & roll. The Blues Hall of Fame Museum is there. Artists such as BB King, Johnny Cash, Otis Redding, Jerry Lee Lewis, and of course Elvis Presley got their starts there. According to some, Memphis is the most name-checked city in music, though there isn't consensus on that.
Every bar on Beale Street and many off it regularly have live blues playing. Some places, I was shocked to learn, still allow smoking inside. My delicate sensibilities offended, I quickly bummed a cig from a stranger. I haven’t been a smoker for many years, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
I had a special treat in store for that week. Liz and Craig, my friends from LA, were coming to Memphis to show me around.
When I moved out to LA to go to school and take a crack at the entertainment industry, Liz and I met at USC and bonded immediately. Her mother, Lupe, became the West Coast mom for me and a handful of other recent transplants. Lupe collected refrigerator magnets, and there was a standing request that whenever I traveled somewhere, I bring a new one back for her. Sadly, she passed away several years ago. One of the reasons I chose to collect a set of state refrigerator magnets on this trip was to honor her.
Liz got together with Craig after college, and he also became a friend immediately. They have been together for 20 years now. Craig is originally from Memphis. I had coordinated with them to schedule my time in Memphis when they were able to join me. I’d heard so much about the city from Craig and I wanted to get his insider’s view.
THE FOOD
What followed for the three of us was a week-long blur of bourbon and barbecue sauce. The closest I got to a vegetable was coleslaw. It was heaven, but I left town two belt holes wider, my cholesterol probably off the charts.
We ate at as many barbecue restaurants as we could manage, and threw in a couple of fried chicken joints for good measure. We ordered ribs and beans at every place so we could run a fair comparison, and kept a running dialogue about our favorites. In the interest of brevity, here are the CliffsNotes:
DRY RUB OR WET RUB?
I like both, but Memphians are partial to their dry rub. Don’t press them on that point.
Consensus Best Ribs and Best Beans. 10/10 would recommend.
This place has a bad rep with locals. They’ll tell you it’s touristy and not the best food. I would disagree, the food was pretty good.
I thought ribs the were good, but Craig was not a fan. We had two of the most intimidating “appetizers” I’ve ever seen. There were pulled pork fries, and what was called a sausage plate, or as Craig lovingly referred to it, "southern charcuterie". Their fried apple dumpling a la mode was heaven, served in a sizzling skillet.
This was the last barbecue place we went to on our penultimate day together. By that time, my throat was coated with pork fat and I had sauce running through my veins. I’m not sure I was able to be objective anymore, but I found their ribs and beans to be unmemorable. We went there because they have a specific dish on the menu - barbecue spaghetti. Liz tried to convince me that it was going to surprise me and be much better than it sounded. It did not, and it was not. Not a fan.
Delicious. Amazing. There’s a reason it’s been featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, and The Best Thing I Ever Ate. Their secret weapon is Uncle Lou's Sweet Spicy Love sauce. I wasn't really sure about the name, but the sauce was on point.
Straight-up classic fried chicken. Simple and delicious. Don’t mess with perfection.
Silky O'Sullivans is a spot on the Beale Street strip fronted by an old building facade propped up with steel girders. The 1800's building, which was known as the Pride of Memphis had a fire in the 1980s that rendered the building unusable. They kept the facade up to preserve that piece of the local history.
Silky O'Sullivans gets an honorable mention not because their food and drink is exceptional (it's not), or because their dueling piano bar is phenomenal (it's not). It's because of what Food Network Magazine awarded the "Most Interesting Drinking Buddies" in 2021. I'm talking, of course, about the goats.
The goats, which have their own pen on the patio, are a fixture at Silky's. They are a nod to the Puck Fair in County Kerry, Ireland. Legend has it that in the 1600's, a goat came to warn the people of Killorglin about approaching pillagers, saving the town. Now every year during the festival a goat is brought down from the mountains and crowned "King Puck".
The bar's owners even went as far as to get local legislation passed that legalized keeping goats within Memphis city limits.
EARNESTINE AND HAZEL'S
Earnestine and Hazel’s deserves its own section because Earnestine and Hazels isn't just a bar, it's a piece of Memphis history. The place is the attraction, not necessarily the menu.
They can order two things to eat at E&H. You can get a Soul Burger, served with a bag of potato chips, and you can get a Double Soul Burger, served with a bag of potato chips. Soul Burgers, according to their website, are a bun, patty, cheese, onion, pickle, and “Soul Sauce”. The soul sauce is a liquid they squirt on the patties with while they're on the griddle. With your Soul Burger, you can order your drink of choice from the bar, which is served to you in a cheap plastic cup.
Earnestine and Hazel’s has been recognized as The Most Haunted Bar in America. 13 people have died there. It is said a girl haunts the upstairs hallway, there are voices you can hear occasionally, and there is lingering bad juju from a grisly murder upstairs. The jukebox is known to start spontaneously playing songs. For example, the day James Brown died, out of the blue it started playing “I Feel Good”.
At one point bones were found in the walls, but it wasn’t clear what or who they may have belonged to. Floating orbs of light and ghostly faces appear in people's pictures. Many, many paranormal investigations have been done there.
The original building was built as a church in the late 1880s. That building burned down and the current one was resurrected in 1918. It first housed Plough Chemical Company, which sold “antiseptic healing oil” in the shop downstairs. Abe Plough rented two bedrooms upstairs to Earnestine Mitchell and Hazel Jones, who ran a beauty salon up there. Abe Plough expanded his offering and built a bajillion dollar company over the rest of his life that includes products such as Coppertone sunscreen.
When Plough moved to a bigger location, he let Earnestine and Hazel use the building. They opened a jazz cafe downstairs, which catered to musicians after they wrapped their sets the nearby Club Paradise, which was run by Earnestine's husband Sunbeam Mitchell. And where the musicians went, the party followed. A who's who of blues, jazz, and soul music walked through those doors over the decades.
To capitalize further on the late night crowds, they opened a brothel in the eight upstairs rooms. It is said that Ray Charles used to shoot heroin and spend time with the ladies on the second floor.
In the 1980s, Earnestine and Hazel retired. Russell George took over, renovating the bar in 1993, and introducing the Soul Burger. In 2013, Russell became the 13th person to die there when he committed suicide upstairs. He had been battling cancer. They still keep the door to his office padlocked shut.
The upstair remains open during business hours for people who wish to explore. There is a very small second bar upstairs which they open on the weekends. When I was there, the whole floor was eerily quiet. The peeling wallpaper in the halls, old graffiti and decrepit furniture gave the place an incredibly creepy vibe.
I can say with the utmost sincerity that I have never been anywhere remotely like Earnestine and Hazel's. I loved it, and would highly recommend it. If those walls could talk…
THE NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM
The National Civil Rights Museum was opened in 1991 at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April, 1968. They have preserved much of the exterior of the museum, even parking vintage cars outside to evoke that era.
Inside, the museum winds you through an expansive series of rooms that take you from the capture and sale of the first African slaves in the colonies all the way up to King's final hours.
Many of the rooms have interactive and multimedia elements to them. The first rooms have African tribal chants playing softly in the background. In another room, there is a 1960s bus you can walk on, sit down in the front next to a sculpture of Rosa Parks, and imagine yourself in her shoes. Being on the bus makes her act of defiance and the subsequent bus boycotts in '55/'56 feel more tangible in the present day.
There is another bus in a different room, this one burned and twisted to look like the Freedom Riders bus that was firebombed in Alabama in 1961. Dozens of people rode buses through the deep south to protest the lack of enforcement of the laws desegregating interstate travel. Many of them, like those on the bus in Anniston, AL, were beaten and imprisoned. The Freedom Rides were the first nationally known interracial Civil Rights demonstrations in the South. The publicity of their acts, and the violence they were subjected to, inspired more to do the same. Eventually the Kennedy administration's hand was forced to uphold those laws.
In the room dedicated to the Selma to Montgomery marches, audio of people angrily shouting evokes feelings of fear and puts you on edge. In another, stoic statues sit at a lunch counter while a film plays on the wall behind them depicting sit-in protests and the arrests and physical altercations that followed.
The final rooms of the museum are those where MLK and his party were staying on that fateful day. They have been staged to recreate exactly how they were at that moment: coffee on the counter, room service dishes resting on an ottoman, a newspaper lying on one of the beds.
I'm unable to do the museum justice, to really capture in words the feelings it evoked and the impressions it made on me. I will humbly claim a certain amount of ignorance when it comes to history - American or otherwise. Some of my ignorance can be traced back to the fact that my mother taught 7th and 8th grade history when I was growing up. Willfully neglecting history was one of my passive aggressive ways of rebelling as an angsty teen. That said, much has been done to whitewash and neglect African American history in public school curriculums. I got a top notch public education and was exposed to more of it than most, but it's not enough. I need to do better and the country needs to do better.
I got a lot of new information going through the museum, and left with a visceral impression of the Civil Rights Movement I couldn't have gotten from any textbook. I had a little better knowledge of what the African American community has been put through. The experience of visiting the museum has made me think a lot about race since. It was heavy to think about how recent so much of that oppression and violent history is. The museum also left me with a new admiration for the persistent and resolute people who fought to bring about change.
Walking out of the museum into Memphis, a majority black city, I couldn’t help but be reminded about the systemic economic disparity, bigotry, and neglect people of color are still subjected to. The civil rights story in the museum is not complete, it continues on around us.
If you ever get a chance to go, please do. You will leave changed.
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BARBECUE COOKING CONTEST
Even though my time in Tennessee had me doubling back from Kentucky, I chose to do it this week for two reasons. First, Liz and Craig were available to join me, and second this was a big week for Memphis in May. The cornerstone event, the Beale Street Music Festival, had been pushed in 2024 after declining attendance. The city was losing money on it, and were looking at different options.
The music festival wasn't happening, but the barbecue contest still was - and it was open to the public. It lasted four days, but we got tickets for the opening day festivities, which included The Lighting of the Grill, and Sauce Wrestling. I did just barely enough googling to determine that yes, sauce wrestling was exactly what it sounded like, and yes, I had to go see it in person. In fact, I was more excited about sauce wrestling than I had been about most things on this trip so far.
When we arrived, the Liberty Park grounds were sparsely populated. We missed the grill lighting, but we did get there in time to watch the referees preparing the wrestling ring with 50 gallons of Cattleman's BBQ Sauce.
As the crowd slowly gathered, it dawned on me that this was going to be a messy event not just for the contestants, but for the audience as well. I was wearing an off-white shirt, so I purchased a dark blue T-Shirt at the merch tent and changed so I could get a front-row view without ruining my shirt.
There were two different types of bouts.
First, there were the real wrestling matches. Members of the various BBQ teams could enter to wrestle each other. Unfortunately there was no option for the public to volunteer because I would have Yes, and-ed the shit out of that.
Each of the contestants had to wear goggles to protect their eyes, although they inevitably slid off 30 seconds into the match every time. They also had to stay on their knees to avoid getting badly hurt. They would wrestle for three minutes and if there was no pin, the audience would determine the winner by cheering.
Second were the “professional” wrestling matches - think less Greco-Roman and more WWE Friday Night Smackdown.
It was all very silly. Their staged fighting was even more ridiculous because it was clear both contestants were trying desperately not to slip in the sauce and actually hurt each other or themselves. It looked more like theatrical partner yoga of the sweet and smokey variety.
The wrestling lasted about an hour, which was just right because the novelty wore off pretty quickly. As suspected, I was hit with my fair share of sauce.
After the crowd had dissipated, I saw my favorite fight of the afternoon. One of the BBQ team wrestlers brought his young son into the saucy ring and proceeded to get pummeled.
Much to my chagrin, the barbecue contest did not have samples available for the public - not even for purchase. They just had rows and rows of BBQ teams with punny names like Boardello's, Serial Grillers, and Meat Drink and Be Merry. They were getting ready for the following days of competition - judged by so-called “experts”, pfft.
The teams had set up trailers RVs, pop-up tents, or even built wooden structures. They were just hanging out at their camps, drinking beer and eating like they were tailgating. It looked like most everyone on the teams were sleeping there. I would be willing to bet you anything that some wild shenanigans were gotten up to that evening.
GRACELAND
No trip to Memphis is complete without visiting Graceland. I appreciate Elvis’ music as much as the next guy, but I’ve never understood why Americans are so obsessed with him. Sure, he was ridiculously good looking. Sure, his dancing was scandalous and lurid at the time. Sure, he brought a new sound to a generation (or “borrowed” it from black musicians and repackaged it for white America), sure he died tragically young before he could become a shriveled, burned out, ex-rock-and-roller. Maybe he’s just got the best PR agency the world has ever known.
The deification of Elvis has always creeped me out. I distrust anything that can “make” a crowd of grown people scream, pull their hair, and rip at their clothes. Oh wait, except for sports, I guess...
The apotheosis of Elvis and other pop-culture icons like Michael Jackson and The Beatles has always puzzled me. And it’s not just musicians, it’s movie and TV stars, it’s athletes and politicians - it’s especially The Royals. I distrust Cults of Personality, or any other cult. They’re just people. Incredibly talented and/or lucky people, but as the saying goes, they put their pants on one leg at a time.
Suffice it to say, I showed up to Graceland with some trepidation. And boy, howdy I was not let down. They have the place decked out with all the rampant commercialism of Disneyland. Just inside the entrance is a large compound with a winding velvet rope leading to ticket windows. You can’t turn around to look for a trashcan without bumping into yet another gift shop selling Elvis’ face on shirts and records and stickers and plates and coasters and key rings and posters and magnets and, and, and... You have to wait in line to catch the shuttle bus that drives you to the actual house.
The house was cool, if somewhat small by the standards of today's rock star mansions. It serves as a curious time capsule for what not to do as an interior decorator. If this is what home opulence looked like in the 60’s and 70’s, I’m glad my first memories are of the 80’s. That’s not to say that the aesthetic of conspicuous consumption of the early 21st century is any better, just that those two decades took garish to a whole new level.
I walked around the house on a very prescriptive path, the rooms cordoned off, and took pictures. I listened to the audio tour which was narrated by John Stamos. The path then led me out the back door to the building he used as an office. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the vast lawn where they still keep horses was a vivid green.
After the office there was a building full of glass cases that housed artifacts from his life. His birth certificate, the original deed to Graceland, a check the William Morris Agency for the USS Potomac, which he donated to St Jude's Children's Hospital. There was every badge he’d received making him an honorary sheriff in dozens of cities and counties across the country, baby pictures, guns, art, you name it.
There was his game room & gym which contained a pinball machine, a pool table, and a full-size racquetball court.
Then the path led me past the kidney-shaped outdoor swimming pool to the family cemetery, where Elvis and his deceased family are laid to rest for all to gawk at.
Then back to the main compound where they had two hanger-sized buildings housing his vast collection of cars. Then to a massive exhibit focused on Elvis’ time in the Army, and finally back outside to walk up into his two personal planes.
I left feeling wholly unmoved - perhaps even disgusted. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, but who enjoys that? According to Google, the simple answer to that question is 500,000 people per year - enough to earn the estate $10M. But that math doesn't pencil. The tickets alone are substantially more than $20 each.
A funny parting anecdote: The week after I was there, a fake company called Naussany Investments claimed that, before she died, Lisa Marie Presley had taken out $3.8M in loans using Graceland as collateral. The filing, which provided forged documents as evidence, claimed that the loans were not paid back before she died, and they were going to take possession of the property.
A judge stopped the proceedings. After some pressure from the courts and the remaining Presley family, Naussany Investments backed down like “our bad, no worries about the money, you can keep Graceland." I shit you not.
The paper trail of Naussany Investments leads back to a grandmother and life-long con woman in Branson, Missouri. The story is wilder than most Hollywood thrillers and worth a read. You would have to have great big brass ones and rocks in your head to try and pull off that stunt.
PEABODY DUCKS
In a country full of silly tourist attractions, the Peabody Ducks has to be one of the silliest - and cutest - there is.
The legend goes that in the 1930s, the owner of the Peabody Hotel, one Mr. Frank Schutt, went duck hunting one day with his friend, Chip Barwick. The pair proceeded to get absolutely shitfaced. When they returned to the hotel to sleep it off, they thought it would be hilarious to create some chaos by letting their live decoy ducks loose in the lobby.
When they woke up the next day, Mr. Schutt's first thought was “oh no, what have we done?”. He rushed downstairs expecting to see the lobby in disarray, but found no such thing. The ducks were peacefully swimming in the fountain, happy as can be. In 1940, the hotel's bellman, Edward Pembroke, who was a former circus animal trainer, offered to train the ducks to come into the hotel lobby every day and swim in the fountain, then leave again in the evening. So, that's what he did.
Fast forward to today, the Peabody Ducks are celebrities who live in a comfortable house on the roof of the hotel. The March of the Ducks now draws people to the hotel from all over the world. Edward Pembroke retired from being the Peabody Duckmaster in 1991, but the tradition lives on.
Every morning at 11am, hundreds of people gather in the lobby. With a lot of pomp, circumstance, and showmanship, the crowd is built up. Children are selected from the crowd to roll out the long red carpet that runs from the elevator to the fountain. They, and other children, are seated along the edges of this carpet for the best views. An adult “Honorary Duckmaster” is selected from the crowd by the permanent Duckmaster. They don a red blazez, then disappear into the elevator.
A few minutes later, the elevator dings, and out waddle the ducks, followed by the Honorary Duckmaster. They walk up the red carpet to the fountain where they climb a small set of stairs and plop into the water. The ducks swim in the fountain all day, then at 5pm everyone does the whole big show in reverse.
ON TO THE NEXT
That afternoon I took Liz and Craig back to the airport. I am tremendously grateful that they took time to come out, show me around, and help me get the most out of my time in Memphis. It was a real pleasure catching up with them, and it was a wonderful to share a small piece of this trip with good friends who know me well. In fact, this had been the first time since my separation that I'd spent time with friends who knew me before I was married. It was a helpful "return to self".
Pound for pound, my week in Tennessee was easily my busiest thus far. And speaking of pounds, I had acquired a few more from all the barbecue, beer, and whiskey, and I was in desperate need of a salad. Too bad for me, I was headed to Indiana next.
Yes, and…
Matt
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