[East Nashville]

(Tell us a story!)

Thank you. Alright, I will. I will, you want me to?

(Yeah!)

This is a true story, it’s right off the song I wanted to play anyway

There’s a part of Nashville called East Nashville. I’ve been talking about it for years. After there was a tornado, this one side of town, East Nashville, got returned around and it was still cheap and there was this new music coming called Americana or some people call it unsuccessful country music

And all those of us who make that kind of music were starting to congregate on this one side of town. And there was about four places you could play music and onе right in the middle was called thе Radio Café. And it was, the sound was run by this guy Skip Blitz and he also sold pot and then he ran sound

He’d been a roadie for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show at one point. And he was the person because he had so much gear at the radio, people on their way out of town would stop, he’d have picks or strings or if you needed some little thing, he usually had it. And he became the person that made it so everyone who was a singer in the area, we all found out from him that we lived so close

And he would have these things that we called guitar pulls, where you only bring one guitar cos it’s just gonna play, you pass it around and one person plays their song and everybody just listens, you know. And he had some of the best ones I’d ever been to. And he was famous in our town for yelling out for a train song when he would come into, yeah

He would come into one of those bars where there was music and he would yell, it was a tradition or inside joke, I guess in our neighbourhood that when he came in, he’d come in and go, “Play a fucking train song”. And the band or if you were solo or whatever, you stopped what you were playing and you played a train song. And it’d freak the tourists out, they’d want a picture made with him, you know

Then he told me towards the end, he said he knew didn’t long. He wanted to go on the road one more time so he came out with me, we went almost everywhere. And then I was going to pick him up to go on this run, I think toward Virginia. And I got there and in the house he was gone but he looked like he’d been laughing. He had his fist for a pillow and he was watching TV. The TV had gone to that fuzz, you know. And I thought, oh fuck

I called the police, right, and I told them and they came over and when he came in and saw my friend, he also and I also noticed for the first time, that my friend had like a duffel bag full of marijuana on the floor. And that’s in Tennessee where it’s a different thing

And he looks at me and says, “What’s this?” And I wanted to say so many smart ass things. Cos we all knew what it was. And I said pot, I guess, right. And he said, “What’s he do with this?” And I said, “he sells it”. Like you got him. Take him away, fella

After he passed, there was a lot of train songs in our neighbourhood and this one is the one I came up for