Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum was my first stop on my first full day in Music City. The museum highlights the music that built Nashville: country.

The museum is beautiful both inside and out. I started by sketching the exterior from the park across the street (featured sketch).

The sweep of the concrete wall is interspersed with long narrow windows in twos and threes, imitating the pattern of a keyboard.

I have an old school view of country music which can be summed up by a song by Austin’s Asylum Street Spankers, “I’m Starting to Hate Country but I Still Love Cowboy Songs”.

When I was young so much country music crossed into the national consciousness. Kenny Rogers, Willie, and Dolly were all over the airwaves. Popular television shows such as the Waltons and the Dukes of Hazzard were set in the country. The Dukes of Hazzard was narrated by a country outlaw himself, Waylon Jennings, who also sang the theme song, “Good Ole Boys”.

While I’m not of fan of new country, there was plenty in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to hold my attention.

The Museum has an impressive collection of the instruments that were played, the clothes that were worn, and the paper on which classic hits were written.

Johnny Cash wrote in his autobiography, “the greatest public honor I ever received. . . was being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980. I was the first living person to be so honored. I’ve been given all kinds of awards in my career, before, and after 1980, including some big ones – Grammies, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame – but nothing beats the Country Music Hall of Fame, or ever will.”