Mars to Me

Day One of the Country Music Festival has me in a blogging tailspin.

It's like I started the day on cozy earth and hyper spaced to foreign Mars by noon.

Nashville is filled with things I don't recognize as normal but am throwing myself at its mercy to learn from its leader. Its friendly-down-to-earth-honkey-tonkin'-cowboy-boots-with-everything leader.

The only way to accurately describe this planet for you is to show you. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll forget to mention the Riverrfront concerts where people are lawn jammed together yet say, "Excuse me ma'am" or "Sorry, Sir" if they step on your sandal tip by accident. It's like everyone was "raised right" by their mama here.

Or the way the girls wearing tossy skirts with yellow daisy hair look born to sling a guitar over their shoulder and sang. Not sing. I mean sang to the souls of the locals raising their beer high in the air as witness to the unrelenting raw character that is country music. Their lyrics might fool you into thinking it's all about tractors, cheatin', or alcohol here but if you listen with your heart wide open you will hear flawless voices grown and sewn from the core of their earth, even if their earth is Mars to you too.