As Winnie the Pooh would say, it was a rather biscuity day. Well, Pooh was actually talking about a blustery day, but close enough. In almost Pooh fashion, we began the day with biscuits and honey butter and not much of a plan. It had rained heavily the night before, knocking out the spider webs and ushering in some much welcomed cooler weather. Shortly after we got up, the skies began to clear and we could tell it would be a beautiful early fall day.

We gathered the rest of the batch of biscuits to deliver to the father of a friend – visiting from Scotland. He said he had never had biscuits before – not American “biscuits” anyway – and that was a situation that had to be rectified.

After the delivery across town, we did a little window shopping and ran into some friends we had not seen much of lately. It was a lovely little impromptu visit.

“What now?” said M.

“Hmmm,” I said, as I opened up the Nashville food truck app on my phone, “it looks like Smoke et Al is at Grimey’s. Some kind of special event for the Americana festival.”

“Smoke Et Al?” he asked.

“Yes, they have biscuits,” and I clicked through to the description….  “Fiddler’s Biscuits – Shredded, smoked chicken, green onions, Bourbon Peach BBQ, on a Sour Cream Basil biscuit.”

“What are we waiting for?” he said, and we were off!

Grimey’s New and Preloved Music is a local record shop (yes, those do still exist), known for carrying vinyl and second-hand CDs and getting some of the best bands that come through Nashville to play in their store. They expanded recently and this was the first time we had been to an event since then. Behind the shop, there was an open lot where the food truck was parked. There were also many tables full of bargain-basement priced records. Across the alley, a live performance was in progress. A band we later learned is called Daughter. Beautiful stuff.

The crowd enjoying the music.

We made a beeline for the truck and got our biscuits. What a nice surprise they were. There were large scoops of smoky sweet spicy barbeque chicken piled up on a couple of biscuits, with a smattering of green onions and a side of potato salad overflowing it’s cup. Just looking at it was satisfying.

The biscuit was peppery, with flaky layers and a density that held up well against the BBQ chicken. It really was not something you could eat with your hands. We had to use a fork to pile BBQ onto a corner of biscuit, then repeat. This meal disappeared quickly.

We made our way over to the live music and checked out the afternoon’s lineup. Billy Bragg was due to play shortly. M. was, I think I can say, beside himself about this. While we waited for that set to start, we wandered through the sunshine to the bins of albums spread out on the tables, looking for nothing in particular and finding treasures galore. You know, if I had looked for this album, I’m sure I never would have found it. A 12″ HotBiscuit. We looked at it and laughed. A friend and fellow music lover glanced over and said, “Oh, that’s a really good album!” “Really?” we said. “Yeah.” So we got it. I think it cost $1.

Before long, Billy Bragg came out on stage and gave an epic performance. He performed his whole first album (from 30 years ago) to an appreciative crowd.

Billy Bragg

To summarize: biscuits, friends, BBQ, biscuits, sunshine, a biscuit record album, and a happy crowd listening to fantastic music. This is what I love about Nashville.