Day 15 was our day to visit Jack Daniels. Logan had been looking forward to this for a while. It was an early start as we had to be in town before 9am to get our tour bus. It started off with and hour and a half deive to a little town called Lynchburg. I dont know if it even really qualifies as a town.....it had a population of 675 people and the distillery employs around 600 people. The town centre is literally a square (1 block) and half of those shops are dedicated to selling Jack Daniels merchandise. We had prebooked our tour of the actual distillery so we did that ahead of looking around town. It tales around an hour and a half for the tour and it is very thorough! There are areas you are not allowed to photograph (mainly the parts of the process that make Jack specifically a 'Tennessee Whiskey'. The thing that sets it apart is the mellowing process where they filter the raw alcohol (moonshine) through Sugar Maple charcoal. This process apparently makes it easier to drink. They have not synthesized this process, it is still done manually at the distillery. They have huge fires onsite to burn sugar maple and make their own charcoal 3 days a week, and we happened to be there on one of those days. They mill their own sugar maple as well and trim it into lengths and stack it to weather in the yard for several months before burning (you can see these in the photos). The heat from the fire was incredible, we were probably 50m away and could stil feel the heat!
You can also see in the photos everything is a little bit black..including the trees. This is caused by the fumes that come from the whiskey making process!
Jack Daniel's actually purchased the distillery feom the preacher that taught him how to make whiskey at the age of 13. He left home when he was 6!
The barrel houses were pretty impressive. They are each 3 stories high and each level ages the whiskey in a different way because of the difference in temperature. They have 89 of these barrel houses on the property. They also make their own barrels, they use a brand new barrel every time as the theory is that new barrel gives the best flavour, and they sell the used barrels to other distilleries that reuse them. At the end of the tour you do a whiskey tasting session. They have converted an old barrel room into a tasting room so it is a very cool setting and you taste 5 of their top shelf whiskeys. One of them is the Sinatra whiskey which was created for Frank Sinatra and was all he used to drink (it's worth 150USD per bottle). That one was a round 90 proof, one of the others we tried was 129.9 proof.....pretty much rocket fuel!
After the distillery we headed into town for lunch and a spot of shopping. We ate at a quaint little cafe called the Bar-B-Que Caboose. It was an eclectic mixture of decor....kind of like a diner but the walls and ceilings were covered in all sorts of niknaks. No beers with lunch as Lynchburg (and the distillery) are in a dry county!
The 'Events Centre' was a little gazebo attached to a small marquee (probably 5x5).
We headed back to town and spent a few hours on Broadway listening to some more fantastic music and then made our way to the mall around the corner from where were were staying in the Hope's of being able to find some more 'normal' food. We settled on a German Bier Haus, and even that they had managed to Americanise, but it made a nice change from burgers and bbq 😒
Day 16 was our last day in Nashville and we spent a chunk of it sleeping...oops. after a few early mornings and late nights it was nice to feel refreshed! It meant we didn't get into town till 1.30pm so we skipped the sightseeing bus as we wouldn't have enough time to get around everything and instead opted for more music and a couple of othe bars we wanted to go to. It was also a rainy day so not the best for being out in the open anyway. We explored The Gulch which is a little boutique area with shops and bars...not really anything very exciting, so we walked back into town as the weather was settling.
Our first stop was Skulls Rainbow Room. This was on my list from the beginning as it is a speakeasy burlesque bar. It's down a little alley way behind Broadway called Printers Alley. When we initially went in we were struck by the authenticity of the bar and on getting chatting with the bar tender we found out it is a genuine speakeasy feom the 40s! Our bar tender gave us and the people next to us a fascinating history lesson on the bar and the area (something she has a clear passion for!). The bar was opened in 1948 during prohibition. Printers Alley was named for the fact that they ran the biggest bible printing factory and distribution centre in the midwest. All of the pipes running along the ceilings in the bar used to carry the ink for the printing. So during the day they printed bibles and at night it housed all of the speakeasies and ladies of the night. It was one of those places where politicians and mobsters would drink together. He was personal friends with many musicians through the years that drank in his club and performed on his stage including Etta James, Patsy Kline, Willy Nelson, Elvis Presley and many more. There is a network of underground tunnels under the alley running from Skulls to the Cumberland River that they used to get the booze in and out. Everything was done in cash so that there was no trace of what was going on. From habit David Schulman (the owner) continued to operate that way even after prohibition in Tennessee ended in 1968. Every night at the end of the night he would empty all of the cash from the cash register into his front pocket. In 1998 an ex-employee that knew his routine teamed up with someone else and planned to rob him (by this time he was in his 80s). They came in before a shift started and stabbed him taking off with his money. Because it was at the beginning of the night they only got $50 as all the money was in the register, but he died from the stab wounds. From shock the club was closed down immediately and was only reopened 3 years ago! They run everything in the same format including the live music and burlesque.
We also learned that the work Hooker also originated from Printers Alley. When the confederates came through and made time with the ladies of the night because they were away from their wives, one had a particular infinity with them...his last name was Hooker. Because he was such a regular the girls named themselves Hookers girls, and so the name stuck!
We mad enquiries into booking a table for the burlesque show but the only allow that for dinner reservations which were all booked out so we had to take our chances later on for a seat at the bar.
We called into Dicks Last Resort...Logan was dissappointed in their lack of interaction, but when we chatted to the bar tender she confirmed what we thought about them having to be careful because it is so conservative in the south! We moved on to Wildhorse Saloon to try and see some linedancing. This was the place to go, and they run free linedancing lessons every hour or so. We jumped up at lesson time and joined in to learn a basic dance with around 100 other people. They play a few well know line dancing songs which everyone knows the moves to and you just follow along. It was pretty fun! When the band comes on everyone just keeps linedancing, someone will start off a routine and everyone else follows.
We checked out a few more rooftop bars and then headed back to try our luck with getting a cancellation for the burlesque show. We never managed to get seats but perched on a ledge right in front of the stage (be at view in the house!) to watch the band and show. The jazz band was fantastic (lots of videos in the link) and the burlesque show was great. It's an odd thing to have in such a conservative place but was full of mainly tourists.
We had an amazing time in Nashville, next time we would probably make sure we are there over a weekend as well....not that the day of the week or time of day has any impact on entertainment! It doesn't matter where you are, or whether it is breakfast or dinner there will be a live band playing! We are sad to be leaving Nashville as anyone who loves music would be, but looking forward to our Alaskan adventure and some slightly cooler weather!
Photos/Videos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AsbHvsl8mGaZgd886vHnLVlc3wlwNA
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