Broadway at sundown. No, not that Broadway – I mean the one screaming through the centre of downtown Nashville, Tennessee. I’m standing on the second-floor balcony of the bombastic, three-level Honky Tonk Central bar on Broadway. The sky is turning increasingly inky, with neon signs in Quality Street colours of pink, yellow, blue, and buildings in birthday-cake colours of purple, red and orange. If it sounds peaceful – well, it’s not. This strip of downtown Nashville is thronged with honky-tonk bars, dive bars, hot-chicken joints... and quite a lot of stag dos bumping buckets of Corona beers at each other. And the NOISE. Earbud-ruining music is inching out of the corner of every bar. Some live, some not, all of it electric. Add to that the stratospheric hum of a city that knows it’s on the up.