IT ALL BEGINS WITH A SONG

Airports can be so dehumanizing.  If the long lines at check in don’t highlight the cattle call feel, there’s always airport security to add insult to injury.  Strip down to the bare minimum, allow complete strangers access to all your personal belongings and top off the entire experience with a body scan that apparently leaves very little to the imagination. 

And if that’s not enough, just when you settle in at your gate for another hour as part of the masses, the individual in the seat behind you has only one setting when it comes to volume;  mind-numbing loud!  
 
Isn’t travel wonderful? Getting there, not so much; unless getting there involves passing through Nashville’s International Airport.

Jimmy and I spent five hours yesterday at Nashville International Airport.  No long lines at the ticket counter, but alas, the airport security was just as rude and crude as it always is.  But Nashville had something I’ve not experienced in any other airport: good, live music to restore my faith in humanity. 

There's nothing like music to soothe the soul; and a pint or two for most of the audience.

The hills of Tennessee excel at nurturing that part of the soul that yearns for musical expression.  Something about life in those hills; perhaps the poverty, the isolation, the beauty; perhaps the deep family roots or a hard day’s work speaks to the human condition and every emotion known to man.  
 
Which is why, in hindsight, it should have come as no surprise that Nashville’s International Airport was dotted with these vocal visionaries to help restore humanity to this most  dehumanizing of environments.  

We found this sweet songbird, Amy Lewis, in the waiting area just outside airport security.

The gift of their music was the perfect ending to a beautiful Tennessee weekend. 

They wouldn't let me open the window to get a better picture without all the water spots!