Photo File - Away Day in Nashville
A new feature where Danny Brams unloads recent pics and tells little stories about them.
I know, I know…this is late. It really should’ve been published on Monday if I wanted to be timely about things, and the fact is that Charlotte FC fans have already moved on to the upcoming home match vs Columbus. We’ve left Nashville in the past, and correctly so.
And to be fair, I surely would have published this on Monday…if I’d been capable of publishing anything at all. The Away Day in Music City knocked me on my ass (in a good way!) and it took me this long to recover.
So for once we’ll say “screw timeliness” and just try to have a little fun for fun’s sake. Please enjoy this selection of snaps from my trip to Tennessee and maybe indulge in a few courtesy laughs at the captions!
In one of the most fortuitous scheduling situations I’ve ever found myself in, my real job sent me to Nashville on assignment from Tuesday-Friday, then I was able to stick around an extra day and a half to attend CLT at NSH. Took this pic from my hotel room as soon as I got to town…had to let em know The Crown was here! I’m a big fan of the Nashville skyline tbh but had to blur out the Batman Building and Bridgestone Arena in the background here to put full focus on my beautiful hat.
Speaking of that real job (and Bridgestone Arena), I don’t talk about it much in this realm but I am one of the proud co-producers of the Paul Finebaum Show, the greatest College Football Show on television if I do say so myself. We produced the show live on location at the SEC Men’s Hoops Tourney all week. It was super cool to see our show’s logo up on all the monitors in the VIP Lounge…but not super cool enough to put a smile on my face, clearly!! Headset Brams is very very serious as opposed to Soccer Hooligan Brams, I guess. Truly a blessed individual to get to combine business and pleasure last week.
Hey, there’s a smile…kind of? I can say I really was a happy guy to get a free morning on Friday and go check out RCA Studios before work. Yes I was that guy wearing the hat & hoodie with the same logo…what of it? Anyway I’m not a massive country music fan but I do adore Willie Nelson; in fact my other favorite hat - the “Shotgun Willie” snapback I sport on the show so often - is a reference to the first album that the Red Headed Stranger recorded in Austin after he left Nashville. But that was half-a-decade after he recorded “Good Times” with its iconic album cover right here at ol’ RCA. As for Dolly, well…who doesn’t love Dolly? It’s a little known fact that not a single American newborn was ever christened “Jolene” after this album dropped.
By late Friday night my work obligations were done and it was time to get rowdy. Thankfully reinforcements had arrived in the form of LevelUp Luke Beadle and the Volaks, three good friends I’ve made in the process of doing this show and supporting this club. It’s really what I was hoping for most when I made the decision to go all in from the ground floor of Charlotte FC and that’s community building, meeting people from different backgrounds with common interests, and all of ‘em with a story to tell. This trio was so fun to hang with on the eve of the big game, and I met even more good folks and good TFOS this past weekend (Shoutout Carmen, Colin, Cole, and many others). Yee-Haw Brewing on 6th Street near the Music City Center was on point, enjoyed the Kolsch!
A small sample of the classic records on the wall at Legends Corner on Broadway (a Jenny Volak recommendation that delivered the goods). I have a great friend named Ron McAfee who’s obsessed with Conway Twitty so I took this picture and sent it to him in Oregon. I’m always lookin’ out!
Posting this is proof I’m not a vain man because I look like trash in this photo, in my humble opinion. But hey I felt like trash too so I guess it fits. Slightly hungover and very pissed off at my hotel for not having an ATM in the lobby, I snapped this as I was walking two blocks over to another hotel to grab some tippin’ cash, and I wasn’t happy at all. Amazingly tho I got yet another lesson in just letting the universe take care of things sometimes, because later on in this same walk I found myself standing on a corner next to Jere Uronen, and got to chat him up for a block and a half back towards my hotel. Gave him a few recs on where to go downtown since he said he was clueless and just wandering around…great guy! I’m not huge on the celeb selfie unless it just feels right, and in this instance it felt way better to just talk to him a bit and not ask for the photo. I’ll hold the conversation we had in my head much more dearly anyway.
Of course celebrity family selfies are another matter altogether, right? Who knows but I did end up going for the photo op during another fortuitous connection I made during my wanderings around town. Andrew Privett’s father Shane caught my eye as I was walking down to check out the Cumberland River then stopped and asked my name…he recognized me from the article I had written about Andrew a few weeks back on this very blog, how cool! I got to meet the whole fam: April, Kim, and Shane (Greg took the photo)…very gracious folks and they were so happy with the way Charlotte fans have embraced their son and brother. All these chance meetings really helped activated my heart for the humanity of our squad and the fact that these players are people first, performers second…great lesson you can’t learn too often, tbh.
Once I got down to the Cumberland, here’s how it looked. I’m always drawn to water especially when playing tourist…couldn’t resist stopping down here to just enjoy the river flowing for a bit. Also a nice strategic break from the daydrinking that was in full swing already by this point on Saturday.
Speaking of daydrinking, here’s where it really kicked into gear. Santa’s Pub is a classic dive bar right across from the stadium…cash only, bottles only, ornery owner with a long flowing beard and an Indiana Jones cap…all the classic dive bar staples. This was a good spot to meet up with some old friends who both drove in from an hour or so away just to hang with lil old me…and a few of the CLT crew showed up as well (not pictured). We had so much fun here I never did make it over to the tailgate. The cranky owner really is a nice guy once you get to know him…I just never figured out why they call him Santa.
And finally, the game itself. Here’s a pic of me from right before kickoff, and another one taken right after the final whistle. Guess which one’s which! Overall I felt I was sold a bill of goods on GEODIS Park. I’d heard so much about how amazingly and fantastically great it was, I was bound to be disappointed I guess. I mean it’s fine…it was fine. A bit cookie cutter for me and we’ve all heard about the issues with how security treated many CLT fans…food was also oversold to me: my “Daddy’s Dog” that was supposed to be utterly terrific turned out to be 65% bun. I’ve said it was my first and last trip to GEODIS and I’ll probably stick by that, but you never know. Ultimately I had a blast in Nashville because I was hanging with good people, and if I could get that crowd of folks together again, I doubt the venue would even matter. We’d have a ball.
Not much better than seeing Danny live his best life. Cheers
Super-interesting CFC/Nashville/SEC weekend in Tennesse. I felt like I was there, DBrams! Keep ‘em comin’!