Nashville: Recap

My dad and I were talking last night and we started reminiscing about how perfect our Nashville trip was—and how quickly it went by. I wrote posts specifically celebrating Nashville's signage and the legendary Hatch Show Print, but we did so much more in the three short days we were there.

My dad had been to Nashville before, but it was my first time so I of course had a small list of things I'd like to see. Studio B wasn't on that list but it definitely should have been because the tour was a definite highlight. Studio B hosted Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, the Everly Brothers, and of course Elvis, who is everywhere you look in some for or another.

As far as silly attractions go, my dad might not have exactly understood the purpose of the Parthenon ("I drove past it once and thought, 'Who would ever want to see this?'") but I was beyond thrilled to finally see it in person. It's a full-size replica of the actual Parthenon, built for the Tennessee Centennial Exhibition in 1897, which is enough like a World's Fair to make it on my must-see list.

While it currently houses an art museum (which was closed when we went) it also basically falls under the "just-for-fancy" category of things that don't really exist for any reason other than because they can, which of course means I love it.

The food in Nashville was pretty incredible. We had the most delicious pulled pork, green beans, corn bread and mac n' cheese from Jack's BBQ, where mac n' cheese is considered a vegetable so I liked the place before I even took a bite. While I'm definitely no stranger to lines, the one that wraps around the Pancake Pantry every morning is no joke. Neither are their pancakes or breakfast meats, and months later my dad and I are still talking about that breakfast.

We also discovered the dangerously good Goo Goo Cluster, most of which I gave away as souvenirs but now I'm thinking I should have hoarded more for myself. My only real regret, however, is that we didn't get to eat at Arnold's, the famous "meat and three" place because they were closed all weekend (next time!).

We also somehow fit in trips to the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame, Printers' Alley and the Johnny Cash museum, where we saw Roy Orbison's glasses and the blue suede shoes in addition to some really iconic pieces from Cash's amazing life and career.

Nashville is small and pretty walkable—or you could always take a pedal tavern if that's your thing. Also of note: I've never seen so many bachelorette parties in my entire life in one place—seriously half the town belonged to one or another. Even so, it was definitely the perfect place for my dad and I to meet, containing plenty of the things that each of us are interested in, with enough overlap to keep us both happy.

Oh, and Dolly Carton and Johnny Trash say hi!

Nashville: Hatch Show Print

The first thing my dad and I planned when we decided to go to Nashville was to take a tour of Hatch Show Print. Started in 1879 by the Hatch brothers, Hatch Show Print is a letterpress shop most famous for its concert posters for Johnny Cash, Elvis, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and pretty much everyone that has ever performed at the Grand Ole Opry or the Ryman Auditorium.

I have known about Hatch about as long as I have been interested in graphic design and I adore their style. They emphasize "preservation through production," which means that they do not add to their wood type collection and they use everything they have in their collection to create all of their posters. None of the design is done digitally—from a hand sketch, to the final letterpressed poster, computers are never a part of the process.

The tour wasn't much of a tour in the traditional sense, since you can see most of their one-room, glass-walled shop just by walking by. Hatch moved to its current space in 2013 when a custom shop was built specifically for them in the same building as the Country Music Hall of Fame (which Hatch has been a part of since 1992).

Pretty much everything in the shop is part of their collection and moved with them, including the shelves that hold the wood type (some of which are made of discarded printing blocks). The guides were informative and I learned a lot about the shop's history, which I find endlessly fascinating.

We then got to actually print our own poster (the orange type portion—everything else was pre-printed and each ink color takes 24-hrs to dry) which was unexpected and a great souvenir. Of course they also have a gift shop with actual souvenirs like posters, cards, t-shirts and mugs, in which I tried my best to restrain myself but still left with four posters, a t-shirt, a few postcards and—the holy grail of all souvenirs—a squished penny.

Nashville: Signage

My favorite part of any city is usually the signage, and Nashville was no exception. My dad and I met in Nashville for a Memorial Day/dad's birthday father-daughter weekend trip, and we had a great time. The first store we went in was the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, which had an incredible sign that not only rotated, but included neon and a replaceable-letter marquee.

It was impossible not to be enamored with all of the neon signs downtown—cowboy boots, cowgirls, guitars, flying pigs. It's really hard to pick a favorite, but the flying pigs and the Hats/Boots cowboy were ones that had me majorly swooning. As with any proper sign, they looked great in the daytime as well as when they were lit up at night—the pigs even flashed in sequence to make it look as if they were really flying.

The signs aren't exclusively limited to downtown, of course, and there were great ones wherever we went in the city. Printer's Alley had a few really wonderful ones—neon and hand-painted. I'm not sure how many of the signs are original/vintage and how many are new, but even the ones that I suspect are new were still really beautiful.

I loved all of the western-style typography, but my very favorite sign was the one for the Dejà Vu Showgirls Gentleman's club. We drove by it a few times and when we finally walked by it I was so happy that I was able to get a picture of it in all of its neon-pink, fishnet-ed, classic-script glory.