IBMA

The Doerfel family on the CMT Pickin' Porch

Look at the smallest Doerfel playing the fiddle

Driv learning how to play Bass from one of the Doerfel kids

CMT marketing clan with most of the Doerfel family

The crew - Skip, Driv, Kathleen, John, Gary and me

My first limo ride ever - sadly it's by myself...ha ha

Marissa and me at Paradise Park

IBMA was a two-day event of bluegrass music galore! The CMT Pickin' Porch hosted concerts all day long for two days straight. The stage saw many excellent performers, but my favorite was a family group. Their last name was Doerfel and they had ten kids! The entire family was extremely talented and very comical.

IBMA was a success! At the conclusion of the event, we loaded-out as much of the Pickin' Porch as we could and then John and I grabbed dinner at Boscos before hauling trailer 2, which had been placed outside of the Sommet Center for billboard marketing purposed, back to Broadmoor (the warehouse where the trailers are stored). After all of our hard work that day, I decided to go out. I called the front desk of our hotel to get a cab over to Demonbreun Street to meet my friends, Marissa and Casandra at Longshots. When I got down to the lobby in the hotel I discovered that I would not be riding in a cab to the bar, but in a limo! This was my first time to ever ride in a limo and my driver, Dwight was very nice.

I hadn't seen Marissa in a long time so it was great to see her! After watching the football game at the bar we headed downtown to Paradise Park, another bar in Nashville. I didn't stay out too late though, because I had to be up nice and early the next morning to work for the Titan's game.

On October 9th John asked me to go to the filming of a Crossroads episode with him, Kelli and Amanda. The two artists headlining the event were LeAnn Rimes and Joss Stone. They both have amazing voices and the show was great!

Predator's Game

Jamie hard at work prepping for IBMA

Skip peeking through a log during load-in...clearly this log was very heavy

The Sommet Center

Go Preds!

John and me at the Predator's game

After load-in for the International Bluegrass Music Association event, Jamie and Matt took off for their event in Virginia Beach. I stayed at the Convention Center to help with the finishing details at the CMT Pickin' Porch, which would be the main attraction for CMT at IBMA.

Later that night, John offered me a ticket to the Predator's game. I of course decided to go. It was really fun to watch a hockey game. I could definitely get into hockey when I move back to Nashville. The Preds played Colorado and won easily!

Best of Nashville

Jamie modeling the wonderful CMT swag

Jamie and I at "Best of Nashville"

The marketing crew at "BON"

John and Skip

John and his new friend (oh, and Jamie and Skip:-)

On October 3, before Matt and Jamie left for their event in Virginia Beach, we got to go to the "Best of Nashville" party that was presented by the Nashville Scene at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Bascially, the party was to recognize the Nashville Scene top voted establishments in Nashville. Matt was coming down with an awful cold, so he stayed home, but Jamie and I went with John, Skip, Driv and two of the interns. There was a lot of free food, drinks, entertainment and much socializing!

Connie Smith was the entertainment of the evening and Skip got to intro her. As Jamie and I were waiting in line for drinks, struck up a conversation with a few guys from a band we saw perform earlier in the week at Mercy Lounge. They were from New York, but in town for 8 on 8th. In the meantime, John managed to get stuck in a random conversation with a very drunk girl who awkwardly joined our work clan in mid-conversation.

The Best of Nashville Party was fun and a good way to do something out of the ordinary for us.

Back in Nashville

On October 1, we had the evening off of work and decided to straighten Matt's hair for a second time. His hair is super long now and it had a completely different look when we straightened it this time around. At one point it was styled so that he looked like he could have been a Beatle! Oh the entertainment we create when we have a little down time:-)

Later that night, we went to Mercy Lounge to watch BMI's 8 on 8th. Gotta love the live music in Nashville.

Ft. Smith, Arkansas

KMAG radio DJ, Tommy Street and a karaoke singer

Matt giving away free CMT swag

Matt and I out in Ft. Smith, Arkansas

One of our T-wolf friends, Brad, and I as we were leaving the bar

Matt and I arrived in Arkansas for the Arklahoma State Fair on Sunday September 23. The fair would be our longest event of the whole summer; six straight days. Our trailer was set-up at the entrance of the park and directly across from Timberwolf, a tobacco marketing crew. We quickly made friends with the guys at T-wolf.

We saw a lot of people at the fair and had many people sing karaoke. There were several excellent singers at this event and one by the name of none other then Mandy Moore. Mandy had voice that was equally as beautiful as the famous Mandy Moore.

Each night of the fair there was a main event the fairground stadium. Two of the evenings there were country concerts. One night the performer was Joe Nichols and Trent Tomlinson was the other country singer. A circus and monster truck rally were two of the other main events.

Matt and I didn't have to work until late afternoon each day so we had the mornings and afternoons to ourselves to veg out or do whatever we wanted. Early in the week Matt and I drove to Oklahoma, which was literally about five minutes away, in an attempt to find a good place to eat. We had no such luck with that endeavor, but now I can say that I have been to Oklahoma, a state I had never been to previously.

One afternoon, Matt and I met up with our radio contact, Tommy Street, at the radio station and did a short promo for CMT and got the grand tour of the radio station as well. It's always cool to see the different radio stations that we work with.

On Thursday night, Matt and I went out with the T-Wolf guys. We went to a bar in downtown Ft. Smith called Roosters. It was a great release from the never-ending fair we were working at and our new friends were a lot of fun and hilarious as well.

Our event concluded on Saturday night and we drove back to Nashville on Sunday.

Texarkana Four States Fair and Rodeo

Our setup at the Texarkana Fair

Karaoke singers in Texarkana

The event we were working at in Texarkana was the Four States Fair and Rodeo. The event was on the Arkansas side of the city and our hotel was on the Texas side. We worked in the evenings at the fair so it was nice to have the afternoons off to get things done and relax.


On Friday, Matt's family drove to Texarkana to spend some time with him for his birthday. There were all kinds of birthdays to celebrate that weekend, Matt, Jamie and Matt's mother all had birthdays within just a few days of one another. We were able to go out to dinner after work one evening, which was really nice. It's always good to see family and friends on the road!

That Sunday, Jamie flew out of the tiny Texarkana airport to Nashville. Jamie will be traveling with John to South Carolina for the Sugarland tour! Matt and I had lunch with his family and then began our drive to Fort Smith, Arkansas for our next event.

Dallas, Texas

Matt and Jamie in downtown Dallas

Jamie, me and Matt in Dallas

Matt is loving the huge high definition TV's in downtown Dallas

"Locking" Matt in a phone booth in our hotel

On September 17th, I woke up somewhat early, ran a bunch of errands and then stopped by the office so that John could drop me off at the airport. I flew into Dallas where Jamie and Matt picked me up. We checked into a room at the Fairmont in downtown Dallas and stayed in a suite together. Dallas was pretty dead on a Monday night, but we went out for dinner and then hung out in the hotel.

Tennessee Titans/Indianapolis Colts

John and Hank Williams Jr.

Me and Hank hanging out

Oh Reba!

Writing down e-mail addresses to e-mail fan photos


That's right...4:00AM


Random printouts from the printer at the end of the day


What is going on crazy printer???


John, hard at work



On September 16th, John and I got up before the sun and began our drive back to Nashville at 4:00 in the morning. We pulled into the parking lot at the Titan's stadium just before 8:00 so we had perfect timing. John and I set up the trailer and then realized the printer was being stubborn again. We tried and tried to get the printer to cooperate, but it just wouldn't work. Our resolution tot he problem was to write down everyone's e-mail addresses as they came in to have their picture taken and then we would e-mail the photos to them later.


We had about 125 people come through the trailer and then just after the game started and everyone was finished passing through, the printer began to randomly spit out pictures. It didn't spit them out in the correct order and it printed out about 30 or so pictures just because it felt like it. Bizarre! The game was beginning though, so John and I packed up the trailer and brought it back to Broadmoor.


After a good weekend of work, John and I headed over to Elliston Place and had a big lunch at Logan's Steakhouse. I then checked into my hotel room at our favorite Hampton Inn. Later that night I met some of my Nashville friends at the Cheesecake Factory in Green Hills for dinner. It was great to see them again and it makes me really excited to be back in Nashville!


After dinner, I headed back to the hotel, got my things organized and then began e-mailing photos to everyone that passed throught the trailer that day. It didn't take long, which was good because I was tired!

Darryl Worley Tennessee River Run

John and me at the concert

Jason Michael Carroll

The Charlie Daniel's Band

Darryl Worley

Mason and me taking pictures

View of the stage from our trailer

Me entertaining at the River Run

John's "album cover"

Never done this before

John playing on the train in Iuka
Me in the dunk tank in Iuka

John in the dunk tank outside the Police/Fire Department in Iuka, Mississippi

An abandoned truck that looked like a crime scene

Check out all those boats...

...and our brand new truck:-)

This one's for Jamie..."Taste of Chicago"

On Friday, September 14th, John and I headed from Nashville to Pickwick Dam, TN where we would be working for the Darryl Worley Tennessee River Run. When John and I got there we got everything settled and then went out exploring a bit. We decided to drive to Mississippi since we were so close to the border and ended up in a really small town named Iuka. We got out of the truck for a brief photo op and then headed back to Tennessee:-)

John and I watched the premiere to the show "Nashville" at the hotel and then headed out for dinner. We went to a local place called Jon's Pier. We were such fast eaters, we were out of the restaurant in about 50 minutes and we each ordered a steak. We just chilled out for the rest of the night because load-in the next morning was super early.

On Saturday we got up early to load the trailer in and then headed to the hotel briefly before coming back for the remainder of the day to work. We had to set the trailer up on a huge slope. It was on such an incline that the ramp wasn't even a ramp, it was more of a plank straight into the trailer. After setting up the trailer, we had printer problems. The printer just didn't want to work for us and then randomly started working. We were lucky it started working because we had a large crowd come through the trailer during the day. We also had a very large crowd for karaoke, probably the biggest crowd I have seen for karaoke thus far.

The performers of the day were Jason Michael Carroll, The Charlie Daniels' Band and of course Darryl Worley. John let me watch Jason's performance and I was so excited because I really like his music. Shortly after his performance we closed down the trailer for the night and then headed up to our seats for the rest of the concert. The show was great, but it got really cold that night so we ended up leaving before it was over. It was probably a good idea to leave early though, because the traffic getting out of the park would have been awful.

John and I were super hungry so we went food hunting in Pickwick Dam and hardly anything was open. There weren't even any fast food places around that were open. Finally we found a little pizza place that was staying open late for the night. The pizza was great! After dinner we headed straight to bed because in order to be back in Nashville on time for the Titan's game on Sunday, we had to leave at 4:00 in the morning.