Roadways, thoroughfares, streets, highways, freeways, turnpikes, avenues, boulevards, and passageways, on September 20 in Nashville, Tennessee, they all dumped into the Interstate emblazoned with a pair of 8s. Clubs, if you’re keeping track, we’ll be sending you our new address.
Each beginning of Fall, in the third week of September, tens of thousands of music fans, industry hobnobbers, Eastside hipsters, and late-night vampires gather for a week of ubers, hors d’oeuvres, caffeine, glad-handing, and Pabst blue ribbon. The event is christened AmericanaFest, though the music comes from every axis of the Earth to celebrate all that is pure, all that is America.
All across Nashville and beyond its perimeter, 200 artists showcase at venues, hotels, cafes, and studios throughout the city while nearly a hundred agencies, labels, production companies, and brands host day parties, including every afternoon at The 5 Spot, a well-appointed oasis in Five Points.
In the world of horticulture, a fivespot (Nemophila maculata) is named for the five purple spots that adorn each flower petal tip, it’s a cute and cheerful annual that’s native to California’s Sierra foothills. In this instance, it was the hub to a cheerful annual that grew, bloomed, and flourished over the course of five sunshine and frosting-filled hours.
The aura of angel number 555 was at play, a spiritual signpost that’s said to represent change, good luck, transformation, freedom, and personal growth, five pedals to accelerate your world and downshift the predetermined.
And so it happened, in the pilgrimage of all things cinq, patrons and purveyors, prognosticators and soothsayers joined together for cold brew, cold brews, crudités and jackpot shots, a wheel of fortune spinning slots in search of a triple diamond because Mr. Mojo Risin’.
Be still our beating heart.
With a splash of attention-deficit adjectives flowering the drink list inflating the tire pressure of a Dead Land Bourbon, a Prince or Princess Paisley Park, a Living Thing Martini, a Scotch on the Rocks with a Ghost on the Porch or a Vampire Bloody Mary, the etymological inebriation was deafening.
And in the words of Michael Ende, “Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place,” but we were safe, in the auspices of the mage as intoxicating sets were on display. Humbird, Twisted Pine, Hannah Fairlight, Afton Wolfe, and Ask Carol, an indie rock duo from the remote mountain town of Auma in Norway, traversed every plane while Malena Cadiz, Hannah Connolly, Anna Tivel, Jim Patton & Sherry Brokus, and Nick Taylor regaled with compelling tales.
Brokers of magic and magnetism, a royal flush filled to the brim, the hills were alive with the sound of music amidst waves of cupcakes and syncopation, triple sec and triple eighths, crochets and quavers, Angostura Bitters and Daddy-O, Madeleines and Manhattans, it was so American.
Photos by Adrienne Pacheco and Tammie Valer
