JACK DANIEL’S BIRTHDAY BARBECUE
Thomas H Green heads out on a booze-laden promotional beano in Tennessee
On Tuesday I received a phone call asking if I’d like to go to Jack Daniel’s birthday barbecue in Lynchburg, Tennessee, on Thursday. Since I live on the south coast of the UK, this was rather nice but unexpected. Some people I’d heard of were going to play music too. Sounded like fun. Thus it was that I found myself above the Atlantic less then 48 hours later watching Matthew Broderick in a film called ‘Diminished Capacity’, a contender for the naffest flick of recent years (although I’ve since seen ‘Death Sentence’ with Kevin Bacon which is possibly even worse). If the in-flight films are on overhead screens they’re always edits of the naffest ‘family’ fare but who cares – beer, food, reading and bad movies for eight hours is a wonderful break from the normal demands of life.
We stopped over in Atlanta where I sat with the businessmen bar-hounds for a while drinking Sam Adams. These days you’re as likely to find a decent beer in an American bar as you are in Europe, something that wasn’t the case a few years back.
Then it’s on to Nashville, the country music capital. Rather like a package tour, the JD people have an agenda for us. Fortunately it’s not sporting activities or corporate meet’n’greets, it’s simply lots of eating and drinking. They take us to The Stockyard, one of the oldest steak-houses in the land, where they drown us in booze and steaks the size of mattresses, then when everyone’s bloated to the gills, trays of lobsters are brought on, gratis. I ate as much as I could, then a chocolate pudding, then started on the shots. No point in being backward.
Next day the whole coach party of about 30 of journalists were driven to Lynchburg and given a tour of the JD distillery by the laconic, dungaree-wearing, moustachioed guide ‘Ron’ (pictured), followed by a meal in the perfect picket fenced Norman Rockwell town itself. This was, in turn, followed by a whisky tasting session with head distiller Jeff Arnett, including a commemorative bottle to take away. Sure, we were becoming JD brainwashed but we could handle it. In any case, I departed early from the next organized event, a trip to BB King’s restaurant/bar/venue in Nashville where the music turned out to be a truly appalling blues jam. Some weeks ago I’d interviewed Kurt Wagner of Lambchop and he told me about a bar called Springwater where all the alternative bands play, from country to avant-garde noise. It was a great place. I haven’t the faintest who was playing that night – very unprofessional, I know – but games of pool and jugs of beer put it out of my mind in an alt country blur. At some point a return to Nashville’s main drag signalled a change of music, dancing with tourists to a covers band playing Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’. Even that sounded fine in the warm tequila-soaked Nashville night, although I could have done without some bastard stealing my coat when I was having a dance.
A wander round the Country Music Hall of Fame the next morning could not remove an ingrained hangover, despite a wonderful Hank Williams exhibition and the purchase of a snazzy Johnny Cash tee-shirt. Then it was onto a coach to Lynchburg. Fortunately a session of round table interviews with the evening’s performers featured bottles of JD as photographic props. These soon cured all hangovers. Of the performers, Hugh Cornwall was wary but cheery, Thomas Dartnell (AKA House Of Lords from the Young Knives) was self-depreciating, Roisin Murphy was shrewd but closed, and Tim Wheeler of Ash was affable without saying anything much.
The barbecue itself was, appropriately, on Barbacue Hill, attended by a mass of UK competition winners. The hill has a lovely view over surrounding Tennessee countryside while a barn-like structure hosted the concert as free JD mixer drinks, initially loaded, became gradually weaker over the evening (they obviously know what we Brits are like…).
The gig consisted of Tim Dartnell, Roisin Murphy and Tim Wheeler each doing a brief set of their own songs, plus one cover, then Hugh Cornwall joining them to play a Stranglers number, and played the odd number by himself, all backed by the Silver Cornet Band, a collection of Memphis Muscle Shoals session musicians with an illustrious history. Dartnell opened and came off best, very bumbling and English, Roisin’s set was quality but simply too slow to hold a party crowd, and Wheeler’s was punk fun but functional rather than explosive. Cornwall seasoned the whole thing with classics such as ‘Peaches’ and ‘No More Heroes’ before the whole bunch had an entertainingly shambling crack at the Van Morrison classic, ‘Gloria’.
It may not have been the gig of the year, or even the gig of the month, but JD certainly know how to throw a party and look after a crowd which made the whole trip a real occasion. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and didn’t feel put upon by corporate lackeys. I am not under the delusion that JD is other than a massive company, a consumer giant, but every bottle anywhere in the world hails from that Lynchburg distillery and they make a good hash of retaining the atmosphere of a down-home cottage industry blown into something massive. And then they flew us all home via a seven beer stop-over in Cincinnati that made even the dire Kevin Costner flick ‘Swing Vote’ on the return flight bearable. Just.
