wihtout a trace...

So, 25 years ago I first came to the United States. It was to attend the Country Music Fanfair event in Nashville, a place perversely romanticised in my head by Robert Altman’s film of the same name, Of course, it was nothing like that.
I was looking for Geraldine Chaplin, but only found a reporter from Time magazine who was staying at the Grand Ol’ Opry Hotel which had rivers running through it. I was billeted at an out of town Days Inn which still seemed impossibly romantic, and, well, frankly, American.
My tenuous purpose for being there free and gratis was chaperoning a bunch of listeners to Radio Forth’s Barrie Country on an annual pilgrimage to the source of all things C & W.
Nashville was their Lourdes, and the sub postmistress from Fife, registered epileptic boy in his early 20’s and at least 3 visually impaired punters sought salvation through the country nation.
They craved Conway Twitty City and I desperately sought Jason Ringenberger & His Scorchers, but made do with Rodney Crowell playing for free in the city’s pedestrianised central square.
A quarter of a century later and I am watching Trace Adkins and a mightily impressive band rip up Universal Studios using what looks and sounds like a full festival sound and lighting rig.
Adkins is the latest big name turn to light up the theme park’s entertainments schedule, with MC Hammer and Pat Benatar among the recent old school attractions to get the nostalgic nods from the cognoscenti. Actually nobody seemed to care too much for Hammer’s panto routine, but thought old Pat was holding up well, giving it her well known best shot.
Trace is of a similar vintage but far more current, enjoying crossover Top 20 hits in the Billboard singles chart as well as enormously successful albums, including 2 best of compilations.
Live the music sounds like rock-lite, designed for the masses swilling Bud, Miller or Coors low calorie excuses for beer. But hell, this is a man who has been sentenced to jail (for drink driving) but never had to do the time. A 48-year-old Lousiana man who was shot flush in the chest by his second wife and lived to tell the tale. Whose drinking has got him in to tight scrapes and less than jolly japes. Yet he still sets the ladies’ hearts aflutter, and whisper it, maybe some of the men’s too.
The speakers in Monster Square are like sniper’s rifles, picking off their targets from long range.
Marie Duipuise, a French Canadian single mom relocated to Florida with her 9-year-old son Daniel, is very keen and knows the words to every song.
Her companions, John and Juan, the latter being from Panama City, are equally enthusiastic. They are charming middle aged men who look like they have line danced in the past, and make La Cage Aux Folle look like a gritty prison drama.
Trace is moving on to films now, and last year made the final of American Celebrity Apprentice. He lost out to that great British export Piers Morgan. The US equivalent of Alan Sugar? Donald Trump.
Yup. Trace Adkins – he ain’t Steve Earle but he does not appear to be Randy Travis either.