[Day One] East Texas is just as Weird as Arkansas + I’m quitting my job to be the 4th Dixie Chick

Mar 23, 2010 by Monica Danna    6 Comments    Posted under: music, travel

So we’ve arrived in Nashville! After a full day of driving, we are staying here in East Nashville with my good friends Lisa + Mark, who have awesomely created a “Nashville in a Day” itinerary for us. Can’t wait to explore the city. For updates along the way follow on Twitter or Facebook.

The drive up was pretty uneventful. We left Houston about 6:30am, and headed up 59 to Lufkin. I drove until lunch, then Andrew took over and brought us through Arkansas, Tennessee, and finally to Nashville about 7:00pm.

I’ve posted our road trip playlist below (with notes), or as best I could keep up with it. Once we hit Tennessee, it was country all the way to Nashville. Natch.

East Texas brought us some interesting rest stop retail items, with which we held a Facebook photo caption contest for the one below. Yes, that is a clock. And, oh yes, those are 2 lions. And of course that is the Last Supper. Don’t miss the FOUR crucified Jesus’ in the corners. The jury’s still out on the best photo caption, leave yours in the comments and we’ll pick a winner. No, you don’t win the clock.

We were pretty sure we couldn’t top the weirdness of East Texas…until we got to Hope, Arkansas. Yep, home to President Bill Clinton. Many, many jokes ensued. “I HOPE you don’t live here anymore.”, “HOPEFULLY there’s more than the Country Fare to eat at here.” Well there wasn’t, and I ended up eating (or not eating) the most indistinquishable meat I’ve ever seen. We named it Hamurkey. It was supposed to be Turkey. It was the color of Ham. And looked like Olive loaf. I’m still sick thinking about it.

However, more disturbing than the Hamurkey, we discovered while in AK, was at a rest stop near Little Rock. Yes, the picture below is exactly what it looks like. “Perfect Pets” as they were called. Yes, those are FAKE animals. Please draw your attention to the sign on the top left “Look we’re breathing!” and please notice the one pet wrapped in PLASTIC. I was so crepped out I didn’t even buy a Diet Coke. I know, right?

We were never so happy as to see this sign once we left the Arkansas border:

Exploring through Nashville today. More updates later.

NO SLEEP TIL BROOKLYN! (<— ok, come on, I couldn’t resist that)

Day One Roadtrip Playlist:

JTim + Timbalake – “Carryout” (duh.)
Bone & Biggie – “Notorious Thugs” (for Andrew)
Little Wayne + Robin Thicke – “Shooter” (for me.)
tom tom club – “Genius of Love”
Neko Case
ghostland observatory
temple of the dog (doing our best chris cornell impressions)
beck – velvet underground tribute album (as andrew slept)
ray lamontagne (great east texas driving music)
joey kneiser (excellent new solo album)
new mgmt (live streamed it from NPR and AUXed into the speaker. nerds. we didn’t care for it)
glossary (we agreed that we like joey’s oslo stuff better, but still good stuff)
joshua james (david gray-ish, thanks everson for the rec)
cory chisel ( OF COURSE we had to come into Tennessee on this)
justin timberlake (while in Memphis. duh.)
justin townes earle
son volt
whiskeytown
miranda lambert
mason proper
dixie chicks (from Memphis to Nashville played the entire DC catagolue. poor andrew. I sang at the top of my lung to EVERY song.)

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