I woke up at 9am on Friday morning with a strange sense of comfort and relaxation, as if I had found a place to call home for a while.

Which is really saying something, considering I woke up curled up and alone in my Ford Focus, sweating profusely from the 95 degree Texas summer heat, in a grocery store parking lot, located somewhere in the outskirts of Austin. I guess I was just happy to make it here safely.

I drove from Nashville to Austin the day before, a total of 860 miles, or a little over 12 hours of driving time. I would consider my first time in Nashville to be a great learning experience. During my day-long stay in Nashville, I had busked for about 2 hours collectively and spent the majority of my time walking the streets and talking to other street musicians and learning their stories. I made ~$15 by the end of the day and my voice was hoarse, but I wasn’t really playing for the money, more the experience. To be honest, that 15 bucks didn’t even cover my parking for the day. As I’m told, the best time to make money is to perform from the hours of ~6-10ish. That's when people are getting drinks at dinner and have ears (and pockets) more accepting for the guy singing songs on the street corner. I had played earlier in the afternoon and only started getting a dollar here and there towards the end of my playing time around 4pm. The songs recorded in the video were both filmed on the 5th Ave. parking garage rooftop in Nashville. After paying $25 for the 24 hour parking, I figured I’d try and get my money’s worth by filming a video.

By chance, my old friend and fellow Waynesboro native Seth Lourdon invited me to meet up with him after he saw that I was in Nashville from an Instagram post. We went to check out yet another Waynesborian and friend from back home, Tim Pasley, play lead guitar for a Nashville band that goes under the name of it’s front woman, Jenny Leigh.

I would describe Tim’s playing style as free-flowing Americana rock lead guitar with a keen ear to melodic grooves. It nicely compliments Jenny Leigh’s vocals and the style of the band. The band consisted of drums, bass guitar, an excellent keyboard/backing vocalist, Tim’s lead guitar and it’s leader, miss Jenny Leigh. Altogether, the band was very tight and grooved nicely, slightly reminiscent of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. It was inspiring to see a guy from Waynesboro with some success in the music biz.

The song’s recorded in the video were both filmed on a the 5th Ave. parking garage rooftop in Nashville. After paying $25 for 24 hour parking, I figured I’d try and get my money’s worth by filming a video.

The first song, "Blackbird", is a song written by Paul McCartney of the Beatles off of the White Album. Anytime I play it, it’s automatically dedicated to my mom. When I was first interested in playing guitar around the age of 13 I had about two songs in my repertoire (Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” and Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”) when I asked my mom what I should learn. She suggested Blackbird and after listening to it a few songs it instantly became and remains one of my all time favorite songs. I’ve even considered getting my first tattoo of a blackbird to symbolize it’s significance in my life. A great song!

The second song, "So I’ll Go”, is an original I chose to play because it mentions Nashville in the first verse and I figured it was an appropriate song with the backdrop.

I only did one take for both songs because I didn’t want to waste Seth’s time getting the “perfect” take, so I know there are some mistakes here and there. Thanks again to Seth for filming, he did a great job.

Thanks for reading, sharing, and commenting as always. As a side note, I really appreciated the hometown support for the last video I made. It was shared 12 times on Facebook from mostly people in Waynesboro and I can’t express how much that means to me. I also see that my Facebook music page gained 20 more likes after the video. I genuinely appreciate the positive feedback, so thanks again.

Until next time, keep it real.