Nurse the Hate: Hate Nashville Hipsters

I watched an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” on Nashville last night.  Bourdain made the observation that many people make when going to Nashville after not having been there for many years.  Who are all these hipsters and when are they going to stop?  Allegedly 100 people a day move to Nashville.  No one from Nashville is actually from Nashville at this point.  This reminds me of the previous Seattle and Austin phenomenon which turned artistically inclined medium sized cities into expensive overrun post-hipster enclaves.  Already traffic in Nashville has gotten out of control with a snarl of illogical highways and pikes tangled in confused crawling motorists.  Rents have gone from “affordable for a struggling musician” to “I can’t afford the taxes here much less the rent”.  The good news is for the hipster entrepreneur? Since only upper income residents are moving in, they can theoretically afford the things the hipster entrepreneur sells like basil-infused-martini-free range-vegan bacon-fair trade-organic-hemp-brunch dresses.

I will admit a tinge of envy though.  The TV show showed a house party where the woman that sings for The Kills hosted this total Cool Kid party at her enormous Southern Plantation digs catered by her hip chef brother.  Jack White saunters by as smaller local luminaries enjoy short rib crostinis washed down by ironic low end beer.  Everyone is really good looking and cooler than me.  Then they all rocked out and because they are all so goddamn talented it was really great.  It was so great they all celebrated by getting new tattoos in a back room and then probably fucked each other into an orgasmic heap.  Meanwhile I drank a carbonated water and set my alarm for a morning commute to go to a meeting which was designed to let us know about a meeting the following day.  Dammit.  What did I do wrong?

How hard would it have been for me to shuffle off to a little bungalow down there, grow an unkempt beard, and fall in with some like-minded drifters like myself?  That could be me getting a bad scorpion tattoo on my arm at a house party and chumming around with The Dead Weather.  I can still fit into slim jeans, though I suspect my days of skinny jeans may well be over.  I know I can sit around a backyard fire pit just a pickin’ and a grinnin’.  I don’t know any George Jones songs start to finish now, but I could probably just mumble through some of the verses and all the people there that are better singers than me (read: all of them) could get me through it.  After that we could all get high and talk reverentially about The Band and Willie Nelson.  I could have done it I tell you!

Oh well.  We will just keep toiling in the relative obscurity of NE Ohio.  We have a new album coming out on November 22^nd called The Good Fight.  We have another six or seven new songs written on top of that.  They’re good too.  We will just have to let the TV cameras and glossy magazines trick all the moths to the bright lights of Nashville while we keep doing what we do here.  Eventually the rent will get too high, the roads too crowded, and the hipsters will need to find a new place to live where they can afford.  Cleveland is pretty good for that.  We will be here.  And I can’t wait.  I need a good place to buy a handmade-in-the-USA-waxed mustache-microbrew-underground-farm to table-fixed gear bike.