WE came in search of Nashville beyond the twang and the bro-country, and it didn't take us long to find it.
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A drag performer named China, in a fuchsia dress, belts out "I Will Always Love You" — lip-syncing the Whitney Houston version of this Dolly Parton original — to applause and tips, including from little old ladies. It's our first morning in town, and we've landed at Suzy Wong's House of Yum. The restaurant's chef and owner, Arnold Myint, was a Top Chef contestant. Suzy Wong is the main character of a 1957 novel and a campy 1960 movie, a Chinese lady of the night who takes up with a US diplomat — and Myint's drag persona.
It's only midmorning, but women sit around giant fishbowls of booze and let out high-pitched screams at some hazy memory of weekend hijinks.
We feast on the "Hong Kong Millionaire" — french fries, an egg and pulled-pork scramble helped along by cheese, tomato confit, scallions and sriracha.
In walk Brian Copeland and Greg Bullard. They are white. Their adorable toddlers are black-American.
"It's a welcoming, loving place," says Bullard of Nashville, where he's a pastor at Covenant of the Cross Church.
Did you know it's a powerhouse in book publishing? Or that it has the largest Kurdish population in the United States?
We did not. (Just as Copeland and Bullard didn't realise it was Sunday drag brunch at Suzy Wong's.)
My wife and I have lived and travelled all over the country, keeping an open mind about all regions and peoples, but preconceived notions of the South seeped into our perceptions like a misty pollutant. Tennessee is the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. Nashville, Bullard and Copeland remind us, is considered the buckle of the Bible Belt.
The city is also the home of country music, where the Grand Ole Opry got its start 90 years ago and visitors drink up the Disney-esque Country Music Hall of Fame or stray no further than downtown's touristic music road, Broadway.
But as we learned during our trip, Nashville is more than all that. For every slicked-up country star, there's a singer-songwriter waiting for her turn on stage.
Our first music in Nashville? Opera. If you're there in summer, do what we did: drive to Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory for "Opera on the Mountain," featuring some of the finest, lesser known opera singers in a casual, outdoor venue. There's something great about hearing artistic director John Hoomes tell you about the finer points of Turandot in his Southern lilt. And the singing? Superb.
What's the difference between a fiddle and a violin? I learnt the answer in Nashville: you don't spill beer on a violin.
Although well-known to locals and music aficionados for years, the Bluebird Cafe now draws massive crowds due in part to the TV show Nashville.
Unless you really need to see the Bluebird, check out any number of other killer open-mic nights around the city, many in out-of-the-way bars.
Another strip mall in an industrial area, and another great music venue: 3rd and Lindsley. Are you detecting a pattern here? You'll want a car. By one measure — residents per square mile — Nashville in recent years ranked as one of the most sprawling cities in the country.
We sit in the balcony, sip RC Cola and rum and listen to Haas Kowert Tice, a talented young trio. Later the main event takes the stage: The Lonesome Trio — an acoustic band featuring Ed Helms and two pals — hits the stage with mandolin, guitar, banjo and bass.
Grub. The South's pre-eminence of the prandial has lately been threatened by the American food revolution: you can now go to almost any US city and get a great meal. But for flavour and simplicity, people staffing the stoves in Nashville know what they're doing because their great-grandmothers did it and passed it on.
We'll start at the high end, Husk, where the wines are categorised not by red or white but by soil type.
We drink craft cocktails and share rice cakes with pimento cheese, and shrimp and grits with a wonderful earthiness by way of 'shrooms I have to guess are local.
But we enjoy "meat plus 3" at Arnold's just as much. That's roast beef or fried chicken plus three choices from the list of sides: green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, collard greens and banana pudding.
"Is mac 'n' cheese a vegetable?"
"At Arnold's, it is."
You'll also want to spend some time in 12 South. That's where we resided in a lovely Airbnb hosted by Emily and Marshall, who spoke enthusiastically about their changing city and the rebirth of old country.
The neighbourhood was in a bad way not too long ago, but now is a hotbed of restaurants, bars, coffee shops and boutiques. TNS
