I don’t try to make friends everywhere I go, I just do. Bristol, Tennessee is no different. Penny and I visited the Bristol Caverns as part of our abbreviated tour of the southeast, then she prodded me to go back the next day to play harmonica down in the caves while she gambled at the Hard Rock. I didn’t have a harmonica with me on the trip, because that’s the kind of harmonica player I am, but there’s a Guitar Center in Johnson City, so I just picked up a spare Marine Band in the key of C and went back the next day. Bristol Caverns sent me down with Jada and Haley, two superstars of their social media team, and we recorded a handful of storytelling and musical reels for my Instagram feed.
Zach, the social media team leader, declined my offer to officiate his upcoming wedding, as he’d already pegged his dad to do the honors, but we stayed in touch, and soon I was offered a job any time I could convince Penny to move to Bristol. I may have mentioned before that I want to live where storytelling lives, which is Tennessee, while Penny wants to live where our daughter lives, which is Oregon. And so we remain in Boise, where nobody lives.
Zach doesn’t give up easily, so he offered me a plum role as The Beast in his upcoming series, Over the Cavern Wall. It’s a sendup of Over the Garden Wall, which if you haven’t seen, you should. Not only that, he offered to pay me, which is highly unusual in acting. I said yes, of course, and the first episode in which I appear just dropped less than an hour ago.
You should watch it and tell me if Zach got his money’s worth.