Nashville Music Blog

Photo by Steve Cross

More photos: Lambchop, Cortney Tidwell; The Features.

So, uh, we missed Lambchop and Cortney Tidwell at the super-secret hipster show because we were hanging out with Heather Byrd at the Nashville Nightlife Awards. We made the mistake of thinking that the awards were actually going to be starting early and that we could just show up say our hellos and then roll on over to the house party which would actually get started late. Unsurprisingly, we were wrong on both accounts. When we got to the Mercy Lounge at 8 o'clock, the crowd consisted of The Spin, Ms. Byrd, The 5 Spot's Todd Sherwood and a smattering of Martina McBride super-fans in town for a Wal-Mart promotional show downstairs at the Cannery.

Oh lord, the hair on those out-of-towners! It was like a "Best of Lower Broad" but with longer mullets and more turquoise jewelry verging on a cattle call audition for What Not to Wear. By the time the awards kicked off, we had found the cooler full of free beer and we were feeling randy enough to accept the award for best blogger that we didn't win but we, uh, won because The Spin is like a really verbose, white-belt wearing hydra, and if you cut off one head two more pop up in its place.

As our buzz approached mythological proporptions, we realized that we were actually supposed to be somewhere else, so we hopped a cab over to the awesome indie-rock insider party that you weren't invited to.

When we arrived we were surprised to see that, somehow, Nashville's hipster set actually kept this secret show a relative secret, and the show had started on time--which is not the way things work. We're guessing that sometime between leaving the office on Friday afternoon and leaving the house on Friday night, we had been transported to Bizzaro World Nashville. That would at least explain why our underwear was on backwards.

Luckily, we showed up in time to scarf down some hot chicken, mistakenly rub our eyes with Prince's grease all over our hands and catch the best set from The Features we had seen in a long time. OK, our eyes were welded shut with delicious hot chicken-y pain, so we didn't really see the show, but we can't remember the last time they sounded so fucking killer. It's easy to take Pelham and crew for granted, but it was even easier to well with pride as they peeled the faces of America's indie record store owners.

We're so proud that The Features have taken the reins of their own destiny and are actually succeeding on their own terms. It inspires us to do better, gives us hope that we can and makes us proud of our little hard-working rock scene. Even if our underwear is on backwards.