Discovery Park

Like most people in Nashville, The WannaBeatles had never heard of Union City, Tennessee. But thanks to the industrious efforts of our resident genius Dennis, we had a gig there August 6. 

That morning, we loaded our trailer and headed west on I-40, turning north to go through Martin. It was another half hour before we discovered a fantastic place called Discovery Park. 

We were impressed with the sign as we entered.

The fancy sign at Discovery Park

Our name in lights...

Discovery Park is an elaborate tourist destination containing educational displays, historic buildings, dinosaur bones, full-scale aircraft, restaurants, and other activities, all centered around a space age architectural marvel that reminded us of the Wizard of Oz.

Welcome to the Land of Oz

We drove around to a tent covered outdoor stage, where a friendly crew introduced themselves and helped us carry our gear to the stage.

This was another outdoor summer gig where rain clouds entered into the equation. It was sunny when we arrived, and set up went like a normal gig.

Unloading the trailer

Dennis and guys sound check

Moving the drum riser: putting some muscle into it

Setting up amps onstage

In the distance we could see a rain cloud heading our way. It ended up hitting us around 5 pm. As it approached, we put tarps over all our gear, then took golf carts to the central building where we had dressing rooms and dinner waiting.

Dennis and Nathan cover keyboard

Pulling the tarp over the drums

Speakers under tarps

Leaving a wet stage

Here comes the rain

On the golf cart ride back and forth between the stage and the magic castle, we saw other features of the park. 

Riding in the golf cart

Passing the log cabins, demonstrating life in the 1800's

Plane on display

Approaching the magic castle, 

also known as Discovery Center

Nathan and David in motion

Dennis during ride, featuring a rare glimpse of his forehead

We learned that a local businessman, Robert Kirkland, had donated the 50 acres and $80 million to create Discovery Park, fulfilling his vision of inspiring and educating children and adults, along with putting Obion County on the map, so to speak. Discovery Park, located along the still being constructed I-69, has attracted a million visitors in its first three years of existence.

Once inside the magic castle, we discovered a multi-story atrium with full scale dinosaur skeletons. 

Dinosaur bones in lobby

More dinosaur bones

Another view of dinosaur

We were served a nice supper by some nice folks at the center, and changed into our stage clothes. Then we took the golf cart back to the stage. 

There was rainwater to remove from the stage. Our sound crew used window washing tools to scrape it off.

Sweeping water off stage

More sweeping water

Sweeping water once more

The rain had come and gone, and a crowd began to show up, bringing their own folding chairs.

Dennis onstage with view of crowd

Dennis and assistant at merch table display

There was still time before the show for a walk around the grounds. 

Just a hint of rainbow

Life-size poster for our show

The staff of Discovery Park helped warm up the crowd with announcements, and by shooting tee shirts into the crowd with an air powered howitzer made from a large plastic cylinder.

Preparing to launch a tee shirt

Shooting another tee shirt into the crowd

This creative use of a plastic cannon reminded us of the verse about beating swords into plowshares.

We had a great time playing for the crowd, and discovering Discovery Park. 

The Land of Oz after the rain

One final gesture of the evening was our signing a barbecue pit with permanent silver markers. It's normal for us to sign CDs and other souvenirs at the end of each show, but this was the first time we had signed a huge metal drum.

Signing the barbecue pit

So one Saturday afternoon, we discovered Discovery Park. We were impressed with what it is, and the people who run it.  We were blessed by the experience. 

We returned to Nashville a little wiser and happier than we were when we woke up that day.

Bloggin’ Bryan 18october2016

Puckett's and Friends

Puckett’s Grocery is about as close as we get to a regular home town gig. We’ve been playing the Franklin Puckett’s for almost as long as we’ve been The WannaBeatles.

That means that our shows there are largely social events. At least that’s the way it appears from the cell phone photos taken at our most recent show there, Friday August 5.

So here are the results: a few shots of us getting ready to play, and a few more of our friends who came out to see us that night.

Nathan and David getting ready

Dennis acts up

Dennis and guys onstage as we're announced

Our banner, inserted behind drums

Our sound man Allan Waugh, our friend Carol 

(occasionally known to get up on the dance floor) and David

Jeff and Joann Seligman at table, Nathan in background

Holly (aka Good Yoko) and her fun sister Dana, who was visiting from Savannah. This was Holly's first night out since having hip replacement surgery three weeks before. Thanks, Dana, for making it possible, and such fun!

Everybody had a good time.

It’s always good to see our friends, and Puckett’s is just about the friendliest place we play.

-Bloggin’ Bryan 12October2016

Portland: A Train Runs Through It

In our years of performing in small town theaters and outdoor stages, The WannaBeatles are getting to know America. 

In every town we play, we encounter the big picture, from the sound crews and promoters doing their work in the entertainment industry to the local crowd comprising our audience. We get a feel for what it’s like to live in that place, as we spend time with people in the towns and cities where they live.

In Portland, Tennessee, on July 14, we played a show on an outdoor stage set up on their main street. It was summer, so we faced the question of whether it would rain, and whether we would have a show at all. We watched the clouds passing overhead, and assessed the weather maps on our phones. As the sky gradually cleared, people brought their folding chairs to set up in the street to listen to our show. 

For us it was all part of a normal summer night in a small town, except for the extra surprise which appeared, loudly and briefly, as a guest star during our rendition of “Yesterday,” thundering along the tracks that run through the middle of town. 

WannaBeatle David enjoying the "backing tracks" 

during our show

Yes, the train still runs through Portland, only a few yards behind the stage that was set up on Main Street where we we played that night.

The people of Portland, assembled in front of us on the street, live with the train, so they’re totally accustomed to it. For us, professional performers coming to town and setting up a show for maximum impact, it was a sublimely ridiculous surprise, a comic reminder that we are only part of the passing scenery. 

We experienced the physical power of a train. We were humbled to realize, after spending hours setting up a sound system with hundreds of watts of electrical power harnessed to project our voices and instruments to the crowd, that one passing train swallows up all other nearby sounds without even trying. 

Even in its massive physicality, the train is a mystery: on its way past us, it rumbles and forcefully shakes the ground. But on either side of that appearance, it comes from a silent distance, and disappears into a silent horizon. In musical terms, the train has extreme dynamics.

The Train: A Mythic Symbol

Our encounter led to questions. Why would a train run through downtown Portland? How did trains become such an essential presence in the American landscape? We realize that the train, beyond its historic usefulness in transportation and commerce, has also become a an enduring mythic symbol.

American songs are loaded with references to trains: the lonesome whistle, the tearful goodbye at the station, the hobo riding the rails, the clickety clack takin’ me back, the Chattanooga Choo Choo. From the idealistic hippie days, we have the Love Train, The Peace Train. Country music gives us The Wabash Cannonball and The Long Black Train. Other iconic examples include Elvis singing Mystery Train, Dylan’s Slow Train Coming, Curtis Mayfield’s “People get ready, there’s a train a-coming.” 

American songs tell us that the train is loaded with spiritual implications.

Looking back on our American story, cities and towns were built around people traveling, by water, and horseback, on roads built over natural paths originally made by animals. Not until the1840’s did machinery enter the picture in a big way, with the “iron horse” that belched smoke as it roared down the tracks that criss-crossed the continent as our first interstate.  

The WannaBeatles never gave it much thought until we shared the stage with that train on July 14, 2016, in Portland, Tennessee.

Otherwise, it was a normal gig, documented with normal photos. 

Band vehicles parking at stage

Nathan at his van

Sound man Larry and David at stage

David and Larry loading drums on stage

Nathan and Larry setting up

Larry and guitars onstage

View of stage and monitors

Nathan and Dennis sound check

Dennis onstage as crowd assembles

It was good to work with our friend Larry Gregory again. He’s a very hard working man who really does his best to make the show go well. 

Larry and Bryan selfie

We ate dinner at El Azteca, which was on Main Street, about fifty feet from the stage. 

Dennis and Nathan study menu

Dennis gets silly

Beautiful shrimp enchiladas

The crowd had a good time, and we always appreciate that.

Happy crowd

Dennis and view of crowd from stage 

(with part of Railroad Crossing letters visible on pavement)

Crowd dancing

Crowd standing during show

Music fan with beagle

But the most memorable part of the show was the part we didn’t expect at all: a freight train running through its usual downtown route, while we were singing one of the softest songs in our show, “Yesterday.”

David smiles while drumming with train running

David had the alertness to document the moment as a video, which he captured on his cellphone.

We posted it on Facebook.Dennis, with comic understatement called it a “poignant moment.”

Here’s the link:

https://www.facebook.com/thewannabeatles/videos/10153560858286805/

We’ll never forget our encounter with that Mystery Train that roared through downtown Portland, Tennessee that night, connecting us, in one surprising moment, to the soul of America.

-Bloggin’ Bryan, 11 October 2016

Radio Lightning

Years ago, before this blog started, The WannaBeatles rehearsed on Monday nights. I remember one of those nights driving home from Dennis’s house around 11 pm, turning on the radio, and catching this cool show on FM 100. It was an interview show, with the guy who produced Taylor Swift’s records talking about his experience in the studio.

This was my introduction to Music Business Radio. It was a breath of fresh air, a special program for and about musicians. Their on-air tag line is “your backstage pass to the music business.”

Maybe it was just a matter of time. Maybe after interviewing hundreds of guests, they ran out of more worthy candidates. Maybe our local reputation finally crept into their radar. Whatever the reason, this year The WannaBeatles were invited onto the show.

July 12 was the first day they offered where we were available. I was teaching at Jam Camp by then, which meant I had to ask for permission to leave early to make it to the Radio Lightning studio by 4 pm.

After arriving at their office in the Marathon Village complex downtown, we crammed into a small room, where our host David Hooper sat at a mic, and three WannaBeatles (David was unavailable) occupied chairs, sharing two other mics, while an engineer running Protools recorded us for the next two hours.

 David Hooper at mic

 Nathan and Dennis observe screen with engineer

David Hooper is a very alert interviewer. Everyone in the music business has a unique story, and David knows how to dig for details that make it interesting. 

We enjoyed working with David and talking about the business of being The WannaBeatles. Dennis got to tell about his Sesame Street work in New York that led him to Nashville. I recalled my own years in New York, and L.A., before moving to Nashville. Nathan talked about studying classical organ at Northwestern and living in Vermont before moving to Nashville in 1986. 

After we finished, we posed in their lobby with David and the engineer for a group shot.

Three WannaBeatles with David Hooper and our engineer

The show we taped was broadcast a few weeks later, and we heard from friends that they heard us on the radio. I didn’t find out about it until after it was over; I still haven’t heard it.

There’s a Music Business Radio website where the archived interviews are stored on Soundcloud, but ours hasn’t been posted yet.

But we are grateful to David Hooper and Radio Lightining for having us on Music Business Radio.

-Bloggin’ Bryan 30september2016

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White House

Saturday July 9 was still close enough to the Fourth to justify a patriotic title for the show we played that night in White House, Tennessee, which they called their "Americana Celebration."

The event was produced by the White House Area Chamber of Commerce, at the White House Soccer complex, where they had constructed a stage in the middle of the field, with a tent to protect from heat or rain. 

In this particular case, the stage was not accessible by car, so we parked on the edge of the field, then depended on our carts and the golf carts provided by the event to get our gear to the stage.

Nathan demonstrates his New England character, 

working hard, doing what needs to be done without complaining. We love Nathan.

Dennis had the services of a camo-covered

Kubota golf cart

Shaina and Alice Toledo helping to load dad's drums. The building in the background shows the distance 

we had to haul our gear 

Nathan among instruments backstage

David setting up drums backstage

And here's Bloggin' Bryan, marking up his set list
on his cornet case, photo by Nathan

We were among several bands each playing an hour. That required each band to get on and off stage quickly, which meant getting most of our gear set up backstage, ready for the quick change.

Merch table, tent and banner in summer sunlight

Dennis celebrates another sale

The opening act under the tent

And a closer view of American Idol contestant Brandy Neely

Our sound man that day was Larry Gregory, whom we've known for years, since we played the Whippoorwill up in Gallatin. Larry also runs sound for lots of other local shows on that part of town. You'll see some better photos of Larry in action when we post the blog about Portland, which came a week after White House.

Our set was at 6:30, pretty early in the evening. We played our allotted hour, delivering Beatles favorites to the local crowd, then had to get off quickly to make room for the featured act for the evening, American Idol finalist Clark Beckham. 

We discovered that the bass player in his band we had met before, as a sound tech in Alcoa, TN, back in January, when we had played a corporate party for Clayton Homes. 

So The WannaBeatles played another Fourth of July event, carrying our gear back to the parking lot before Clark finished his set, so this time we didn't see and hear the fireworks until we were driving south on I-65. Working in the summer sun takes energy, but we felt gratified to have played another fun show.

-Bloggin' Bryan 24September2016