Road to Loudwire Music Festival, Day Four: 600 Miles

The inaugural edition of Loudwire Music Festival is set for June 26-28, 2015, at Grand Junction, Colorado. Ahead of the fest, we’re hitting the road in a 2016 Kia Sorento, traveling the states and finding new adventures as we make our way from New York City to Grand Junction. Where will we go? What will we see? Who will we run into? Follow along right here at Loudwire to find out, and make sure to keep an eye on #RoadToLoudwire on Twitter and Instagram.

Road trips are great, right? You get to visit new cities, eat new food, make new friends ... but sometimes, road trips also involve driving a lot. Today, June 18, our Road to Loudwire road trip involved a 600-mile commute from Richmond, Va., to Nashville.

Steve and I filled up the Sorento and hit the road early this morning, and for the most part, the trip was pretty easy. The scenery between Richmond and Nashville was gorgeous, the music was loud -- and we mean loud! -- and the ride was unbelievably smooth and comfortable. Seriously, the Sorento handled this drive with ease, and the soft leather seats were way too kind to Steve and me.

We hit a bit of an obstacle, though; about 130 miles outside of Nashville, there was a huge accident on I-40. While we still have yet to hear the details of the accident (we hope everyone is okay), we do know this: We sat still for about 90 minutes while things got cleaned up on the highway. Fortunately, we had our daily Spotify playlist to keep us company (check it out below) and we’ve never been so thankful for mobile wifi!

When we finally made it to Nashville -- after some insane thunderstorms -- we set our GPS to Grimey's, one of our favorite record stores in the whole country. If you've never been to the store, you've still likely heard of it: They're famous for their in-store performances as well as their venue, the Basement -- remember the 2010 edition of Record Store Day Black Friday? Metallica released Live at Grimey's, a nine-song concert recorded in '08 in the intimate spot (it fits about 200 people).

We decided to pack in as much vinyl digging as possible, so we hopped over to East Nashville to check out Fond Object and the Groove; Fond Object specializes in vinyl and also has a hip thrift store attached to it and an outdoor concert space in its backyard, and the Groove is a chill spot that not only feels like home, but looks like home.

While I've been lucky enough to frequent Nashville several times, this marked Steve's first experience in Music City, so what better place to have dinner than Hattie B's Hot Chicken? (Sidenote: Unless you can handle spicy food, don't order anything hotter than "medium"; Steve ordered "hot" and cried.)

As we wrap things up tonight, Steve and I are going to walk down the street to Lower Broadway and check out some of the local honky tonks; in the morning, we can't wait to check out Third Man Records and tour United Record Pressing -- if you can't tell, we're both kind of vinyl fanatics.

We won't leave Nashville until late afternoon on Friday, June 19, so if you have any tips, suggestions or warnings, let us know in the comments section below!

Oh, and here's one of the new friends we made today: