My First Impressions of the USA

My first impressions over the past two weeks are based on the cities I’ve visited in the states of Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia. Though I have found there to be more similarities between Australian and USA culture, there are certainly some interesting points of difference. Overall, I’ve found the North Americans very friendly and hospitable, often keen to know more about Australia.

My first stop in the USA was in Nashville. What a crazy nightlife they have there. The culture of live music is most certainly alive and well. Though I hear that life, working as a local musician, is probably quite tricky because of low wages, I’ve never seen so many working musicians in one place. There are countless bars along “Broadway”, the main drag in Nashville. Each bar has at least one or two bands; some have three levels with three different bands playing at any given time. Michael Barker and I ended up staying in one bar on the first night, treated to a great show of more obscure country music hits that I’d never heard before. Despite having my accommodation and some catering covered as part of the tour, I began to feel the pinch quickly, as the prices of food and drink added up.

As we headed further south-east into North Carolina and Florida, the incredible earning power of the locals really started to amaze me. The USA is an incredibly wealthy and powerful country. Speaking with a few locals, I began to realise that even workers in basic hospitality or in Uber driving roles are making what would be considered very high salaries by Australian standards. Even before I arrived here, I’d heard about the difficulties of waiters and waitresses relying on tips to get by. And while it might be true that their fixed hourly rate is very low, what they appear to make in tips seems to me to be quite a substantial amount. I try to keep in mind that the exchange rate makes it difficult for me to understand what day-to-day living costs are like here, but just in terms of their earning power on an international scale, the people in the USA are extremely well off.

Having visited Guinea again at the beginning of this year for five weeks, I have the images fresh in my mind about the infrastructure and living standards of people over there. So it was almost comical to me to hear one particular driver tell me that the government was neglecting the roads in America. It was almost like proof to me that people will complain about the same things all over the world regardless of where they stand on a relative basis. In Guinea, they complain about the roads too, but over there, the roads are often basically non-existent; sometimes it is difficult to tell that the road is even a road to begin with! My impressions of the transport infrastructure here so far are that I’m incredibly impressed with how clean, well maintained and efficient everything seems to be.

Driver courtesy with pedestrians is extremely cautious here in comparison to Australia. If you so much as look as though you’re about to cross the roads, the cars will stop for you and insist that you cross immediately. Some explanations of this that I’ve heard are that people are concerned about insurance claims and firearms in road rage situations. I’m not sure what the reason is, but I have found the courtesy of drivers here to be almost unnerving.

My experience so far in these states has left me the impression of a very polite and “eager to please” culture. The common phrases that come immediately with any request, “I got you” and “Of course!” are automatic. There were certainly moments, especially in Tennessee, where I simply could not understand people because I found the accent so foreign. It seemed like almost every phrase began with “Y’all” and every conversation ends with “I appreciate you”.

Traveling with the John Butler tour entourage is an awesome catering company. So we are lucky to have some amazing home-cooked meals provided every day that we are doing a show. On days off, I’ve had a chance to taste some excellent local food, although there is certainly a lot of it that is not very healthy at all. I had my first real American fried chicken experience last week. It was certainly one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten, but yes, I’ve probably put on a few kilos already having eaten a fair few salty, fatty, and sugary meals like this. There is fairly obviously a health crisis in this country, largely, I would say, due to the food.

As far as music appreciation goes, I recently read an article criticising Australians for their lack of enthusiasm for live music artists. While I was a bit sceptical, over the past few weeks, I can see why this criticism may have been raised, considering I have consistently been surprised at how the people here love music and will bend over backwards to express their appreciation for it. When standing outside the venue for each of the shows, fans have come up and approached us to say hello, get photos and autographs, etc., very frequently. You don’t see this so much in Australia!

I look forward to learning more about this amazing place over the next couple of months and hope to give some more updates as I go.

Thanks for following.

Michael