Handmade reconstructed jeans from Nashville. The Imogene and Willie shop is an old service station with no signage. They have great reconditioned leather cafe jackets, as well.

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Of all the Nashville bands that are ‘bursting onto the National scene’ right now, PUJOL is probably one of the only ones I would still care about were he not from my town. With catchy as hell choruses, a gritty sonic aesthetic, and the lyrics to support it all, my only complaint is that he hasn’t released a full album yet.

Nashville artist Tim Hooper, aka Mr. Hooper, loves pipe smoking robots, black bears that look a little tweaky blowing bubbles, and brooding solitary rabbits. Many of his pieces are done on vintage postcards and wood. Gene Autry and Elvis lurk on his psyche, too.

In case you didn’t know, artisanal ice cream is so last year; gourmet popsicles are the new epicurean treat for summer. But Las Paletas in Nashville, Tennessee has been wise to this trend all along.

For several years, Las Paletas has been Nashville’s best-kept secret, quietly turning out Latin American-inspired ice pops from a modest storefront without so much as a sign to indicate its presence. Despite the lack of pretence, exotic knock-out flavors are listed daily on an old-school chalkboard under two headings; creamy paletas and fruity paletas. From these two varieties, you will find such flavours as chocolate wasabi, pineapple chili, Mexican caramel, hibiscus, and avocado. If these flavours delight your palate, forget the cone and try a paleta.

Despite their many layers and instruments — three guitars, bass, violin, viola, cello, piano, percussion, and multiple vocals — Nashville’s The Ascent of Everest never get weighed down by over-wrought compositions. Rather, they make sparse, evocative, and sweeping songs that stretch out like horizons, every element simple and elegant enough to interweave with another without overwhelming it.

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Magic Wands are a burgeoning young duo playing some really fun music these days, and the most recent remix of Warrior sounds especially sweet to my ears this week. Uh, maybe because I just saw them live the other night, and they exceeded the expectations of an opening act. We love it when that happens. Don’t we?

Chris and Dexy have their roots in Nashville, Tennessee but seem keen to take their sound as far as it’ll take them. Granted they have a bit of that ’80s flare going on — dare we call it a trend — it’s not too surprising to see that they have some real British appeal as of this last tour in the U.K. The upside to this is that the sound is totally susceptible to some pretty great remixing. Like stuff that really makes you want to get up and get down.

Draped in a charming rustic veneer, the Meow Cottage at the Old Marshall House in Franklin, Tennessee, is a self-contained cottage situated on the grounds of a sprawling — and quite beautiful — B&B. On a nice day, with the sun shining down and the trees in full bloom, it all looks — from the outside at least — like a childhood fairytale — elegant and enchanting — framed by a small pond to one side and an expanse of well-manicured grass to the other. Oh, and there’s a pool too. It was, unfortunately, ‘temporarily’ out of service during our stay. But it looked tempting enough, especially with a fierce Nashville sun pounding down relentlessly during the middle of the day. Such is life. And such is life in Franklin, where the mornings are interrupted only by the gentle purr of a wayward kitten (it is the Meow house after all) and the somewhat subdued rush of Nashville, the country music capital of the world, is just a short Garth Brooks song away. But back to the Cottage itself. It really is like a miniature doll house for adults. Even the trimmings – the furniture, the blinds, and the crockery – seem small. Yet they’re not. It’s merely a trick on the eye. And like many things in Franklin, you need to look well beneath the surface to get a real sense for what’s going on. For daytime discoveries and inner-city detoxing, the Meow Cottage was a wonderfully serene base from which to conduct our Franklin and Nashville explorations. [photo by Alison Whittington]

I spent time recently in the heart of Nashville, Tennessee, enjoying fine Southern cuisine, gracious hospitality [’y'all come back now!’] and the warmth of a sun beating down like a semi-gnarled blanket. It was interesting to see the cultural values of the city; the social graces of its people which permeate every conversation. It felt a bit like the American Airlines flight from New York was more like a time capsule to another time and place. Not that I was complaining. Nashville and its surrounds were beautiful, with majestic colours punctuating the stately urban facade.

We name-checked them as having one of the top five albums of 2007, and with good reason. I speak of Nashville band, The Silver Seas. We caught up with guitarist and vocalist Daniel Tashian. Your music’s like a chronology of the last 60 years of music, taking in old rock n roll, with some 60’s/70’s folk and right through to 2008’s brand of catchy, feel-good indie-rock. A band of all ages then? ‘I don’t know. I feel it’s a strength and also a weakness. Like, not many people can put on their record, and someone will say: “That sounds like the Lovin Spoonful!”, because that’s a very hard thing to do, but then again, nobody really cares how hard something is, really, so, you have to ultimately go with what feels and sings good. Some songs want more modern lyrics, others seem to beg for cliches’. Hailing from Nashville, you’re clearly well pitched to capture middle America in an album. Do you draw heavily on the sights and sounds around you? ‘Well. I suppose it’s impossible not to. But as a kid, I was surrounded by country music, and I thought it wasn’t cool, so I kept the psychedelic furs on in my walkman all the time, sort of like a buffer against all the steel guitars, you know, but now, I have grown to love it, and so maybe if there’s a bit of country in the music, I don’t mind so much’. There seems to be a theme of escapism running through a lot of your lyrics – quite common for bands hailing from your area. Why the need to leave? ‘I don’t know. Maybe when you’re writing a song, you need to have somewhere to go, other than: “Here we are, isn’t this great?” That song would get boring in 2 seconds, and trust me, I have a song like that. No, I think the idea of a song is: “Wouldn’t it be nice!”, you know, like you’re sort of after something, yearning a bit, you know?’

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Late on a Tuesday night, it’s hard to know what to expect arriving at a new destination. While other cities were sleepily shutting the doors and awaiting the new day, Nashville, Tennessee was just coming into full swing. Stages in bars along Broadway were being rocked by blues, rockabilly, country and rock ‘n’ roll bands, and the standard of live music was true to its pedigree. In a town that lives for music, the talent shone amongst the smoke, grit and fluorescent lights of bars ignited by centuries of exceptional musicians. It’s quite a place — there’s an incessant buzz through the air, passion within hearts and rhythmic tapping of boots. Music is in the blood in Nashville, and as an outsider looking in it feels like nothing will ever change that.

The Loveless Cafe, a little oasis on the outskirts of Nashville, is like a refuge for the disenfranchised, serving up good ol’ southern cooking to a legion of America’s finest. Yessir, you could stack those bikes up to the tip of the Stars and Stripes flag that hangs nearby like a testament to the sense of liberation and manifold destiny that the long, winding roads of Tennessee offers. [photo by Alison Whittington]