The most incredible moments you can only have in Nashville, Tennessee

It pierces the Tennessee night. In the distance, a train horn sounds, long and mournful, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. The clatter and clank of freight cars fires the imagination.

The train. Coming and going. Rocking and rolling. The rhythm of a nation forever on the move. It's a distinctly American sound - a five-note chord - and the perfect welcome to Nashville, where so much of the story of America is told in song.

The sound fades but my mind is awake, fevered by the long haul across the Pacific and then the United States, confused by the 16-hour time zone change. The earworms burrow. Mystery Train by Elvis Presley, with its beat that mimics so perfectly the rhythm of steel wheels on tracks. Bruce Springsteen's feverish I'm On Fire: "At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet, and a freight train running through the middle of my head." Johnny Cash's train a'rolling round the bend while he's stuck in Folsom Prison, since he don't know when.

There's no getting back to sleep. Dawn can't come soon enough. This is a quick visit, just a week to sneak a peek behind the stage curtain of the Nashville legend. I'm here not just for the music but for the whiskey and the chicken and a dose of Americana. But more of that later.

Outside, the day is crisp and cool. It's the beginning of October, pumpkin season. The leaves are just starting to turn, the summer rains have passed and so, too, the Tennessee humidity. The sun is warm but not too hot and there's celebration in the air as Halloween approaches. It's the perfect time to visit.

Nashville has a population of just over 2 million people and it's growing fast. It's said 99 people a day arrive from other parts of the US to settle here. That explains the forest of cranes on the skyline. People are drawn by the climate, the easy topography, the opportunities and the warm informality of the place.

Among the cast of thousands who made it their home are Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus, Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman and, of course, Taylor Swift, who established herself here. Lesser known but just as important are people like Australian songwriter Phil Barton, who came to Nashville eight years ago and stayed, chalking up numerous chart successes.

"You never know who you'll bump into here," a local explains. "We're so used to seeing celebrities, we don't make a fuss."

The city is located on the Cumberland River in central Tennessee, an important trade artery before the arrival of the motor car, the truck and the interstate highway system. It's home to numerous universities, including Vanderbilt and Belmont College.

Long before radio made its debut and popularised music, Nashville's principal source of pride was education. It was known as the Athens of the South for its love of learning. An expression of this pride is the full-size replica of the Parthenon, built in 1897 as a centrepiece for the city's centenary expo, which sits in Centennial Park and now doubles as an art gallery.

Nashville's biggest employer is not, as you might imagine, the music industry. It's health care. An entire precinct is filled with hospitals and specialist clinics.

But music is what the city is best known for and it oozes from every pore. It greets you at the airport, where walkways lined with posters and cabinets displaying guitars make it feel more like a museum than a terminal.

It's reflected in the architecture. Stand back a little and you see the facade of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum resembles the keyboard of a giant piano. Look up from the entrance of the National Museum of African American Music and you see a stylised mixing desk. Once the scoreboard at the now demolished Hershel Greer Stadium but now a beloved landmark in its own right is the giant guitar opposite the Academy of Country Music. Alongside it run the tracks that carried the train which woke me on the first night.

Music plays night and day. In the foyer of the Hutton Hotel as I check in, where a young hopeful with a honey-sweet voice serenades guests in the lobby. In the party buses full of revellers - many of them celebrating bachelorette or hen's nights - that ply the city streets. In every bar along the neon blaze known as the Honky Tonk highway.

While central to the Nashville legend, it's not all country twang. My musical immersion begins with a visit to the National Museum of African American Music, where the stories of the blues, gospel, soul, Motown, R&B, rap and hip hop are told in interactive displays, audio family trees which trace lines from original artists and those they influenced who came later.

Visitors are provided a wristband onto which links to songs are downloaded and can be played back on Spotify. A giant screen plays a live performance by Prince of Purple Rain, which summons a lump in the throat and a misty eye. Hours could be spent in this audio trove.

A short walk away is the mother church of country music, the Ryman Auditorium. For decades it played host to America's most famous, and the world's longest-running, commercial radio show Grand Ole Opry. A tour takes us backstage, into the dressing room used by Johnny Cash, a pinch-myself moment trying to imagine the master of sorrow and redemption limbering up for his performance. We're also told the backstory of the auditorium, itself a multilayered tale of redemption.

Thomas Ryman was an influential Nashville businessman who owned a string of saloons and a fleet of riverboats. He was angered by the temperance movement spearheaded by a revivalist preacher and in 1885 attended one of his tent sermons, intending to disrupt proceedings. Instead, he was so taken he was converted and became a devout man of faith, pledging to build a tabernacle so congregations could meet indoors. The Union Gospel Tabernacle was opened in 1892.

To help pay for its upkeep, the auditorium was hired out for other events but it was as host to Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974 that it became most famous. When the show found other quarters, the auditorium gradually slipped into disrepair and almost fell victim to the developers' wrecking ball. But history and heritage won out and in 1989, work began to revive the building. Redemption.

Sitting on its hard wooden pews a few days later to watch a fundraiser concert in honour of prolific Nashville songwriter the late John Prine, eyes mist up again. This time, it's a rendition of Prine's Angel from Montgomery that tugs on the heartstrings of nostalgia.

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At the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, the curtain is pulled back to honour the work of the producers and session musicians behind the big names. It's time travel back to a rich analogue world where humans, not software, polished and gave substance to the soundtrack of last century.

Gazing at the instruments and equipment used by some of the biggest names - Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart included - can soak up hours. So, too, the interviews with some of the artists. I found myself fascinated by Keith Richards musing on the Rolling Stones' landmark album Exile on Main Street and the production involved in making it.

Oddly, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum it's a car that soaks up my time and attention. Webb Pierce's customised Pontiac Bonneville convertible is a sight to behold, with its six guns for door handles, a centre console fashioned from a saddle and a Winchester trunk ornament. I could have stared at it forever but Historic RCA Studio B was calling.

There's little clue about what awaits you inside the low slung, nondescript building in the Music Row district. Once inside, however, and it comes alive with history. Built by RCA in 1957, Studio B was where Elvis Presley recorded some of his biggest hits. Led past the old reception area and into the studio itself, there's a hush. "That little blue cross on the floor," explains the guide, "that's where Elvis stood because it was the sweet spot acoustically. And that piano in the corner belonged to Fats Domino, who refused to sell it to Elvis." I sit for a few seconds at that very piano, the moment captured on my smartphone for future bragging rights.

All this history whets the appetite for live music and the craving is more than satisfied in the first honky tonk bar into which we venture. Robert's Western World feels like stepping into a movie. The customary neon advertising Budweiser and Busch is there. In one corner, sweating under a cowboy hat, the short order cook is busy at the grill. Lined up along the opposite wall is a collection of cowboy boots. And on the stage, a band complete with a pedal steel guitar belts out country tunes. The place is packed, the crowd friendly and intent on having fun.

I watch the dancers drawn to their feet by the music. Fond memories of my own misspent rockabilly revival youth flood back - inner-city nights jiving to Jimmy Jessop and the Wildcat Tamers, hair greased into a quiff, winklepickers and stovepipe pants swishing over the dance floor. And here it is, decades later, rockabilly swinging and twirling in front of me.

Keeping the musical tradition alive is, of course, Grand Ole Opry. It now has its own home some distance from the centre of Nashville. Another backstage tour gives us a glimpse behind the stage curtain. In one dressing room, we're introduced to the Riders in the Sky, veteran country and western performers who've performed thousands of times for the Opry, as well as touring the world. And from backstage, we watch as a nervous young woman makes her debut.

As the show nears the end, Jim Peterik is introduced. I have no idea who he is until he reveals he's the person who wrote Eye of the Tiger for Sylvester Stallone's Rocky III, a 1980s anthem and a staple for cover bands around the world.

All the music works up an appetite and Nashville is no slouch when it comes to food. At the high end are places like the Twelve Thirty Club, part owned by Justin Timberlake, which offers mouth-watering fare at eye-watering prices - although these are made up for by the live music and great views across the city.

At the other end, there's hot chicken, a Nashville specialty and one I took on a little foolishly. "Oh, I'm getting mild," said our guide, Matt, to which I scoffed, certain my travels through Asia and love of chilli would have fortified me sufficiently. I was wrong. "Hot" by Nashville standards is in a whole other league to "hot" as I've come to understand it in Asia. You have been warned.

For Americana, it's hard to top Elliston Place Soda Shop, a classic diner with red vinyl banquettes with their own mini jukeboxes (for show anyway) and a lovely old soda fountain. Reopened after renovation in 2019, it's a favourite for local and visiting musicians. Behind a red rope on the wall are some of their autographs. "Oh, and that one is Robert Plant's," we're told. There's a bustle in my mind's hedgerow.

The quieter Tennessee of my imagining calls. I'd glimpsed it from the plane as we came in to land. Verdant hills and meadows bordered by trees, stately homes and barns, the country that spawned the music. A day trip to Lynchburg via Shelbyville delivers southern charm on a plate - and in tasting glasses.

At Shelbyville, we pull into the Nearest Green distillery. It's a newcomer on the whiskey scene but is steeped in history, established in honour of Nathan "Nearest" Green. He was a slave thought to have developed Tennessee's unique distilling process, which involves filtering whiskey through sugar maple charcoal, which gives it its smoothness. Time seems to slow as we are shown through the grounds and the barrel house, where the whiskey sits for years before being bottled.

Time slows further still a little down the road at Lynchburg, where a lavish lunch is presented at Miss Mary Bobo's, a period styled restaurant in an elegant two-storey building which once served as a boarding house. Guests are seated in different dining rooms, each assigned a host for the meal.

"Now, y'all don't worry," says our host in her lilting southern drawl. "You eat as much as you want because there's plenty more in the kitchen." It feels like a meal in someone's home as she asks where we're all from. "Oh my good Lord, Australia? That's so far away," she exclaims, kicking off a conversation. A procession of dishes is laid out on a lazy Susan: chicken in pastry, stuffed peppers, deep-fried okra, cornbread and seasoned greens, followed by pie and washed down with sweet tea.

There's so much food, we're thankful for the walk that follows up to the Jack Daniel's distillery. After the buzz of Nashville, Lynchburg is unhurried and quiet - the embodiment of the rural south. A helmetless couple on a huge Indian motorcycle cruise up the main street, completing the scene.

The distillery is more industrial in scale than Nearest Green but somehow it still retains its relaxed, leafy campus feel. Some of the original buildings, their timbers blackened by smoke from the charcoal pits, are preserved. An old fire truck, bright red and brassy, bears the REO Speedwagon marque on its chrome radiator. We stop by the spring from which Jack Daniel's draws its water and visit the lovingly maintained office from which Daniel oversaw his enterprise, now known the world over.

"Everyone in Lynchburg has worked or still works at Jack Daniel's," explains our guide, who grew up here, moved away and returned.

We take a detour on the way back to Nashville, through a bucolic countryside. There on the porches of the old farmhouses we pass are swing chairs, pots of flowers and, of course, pumpkins. It's easy to imagine families gathered there, guitars, banjos and fiddles in hand, playing the music that's made the place famous.

Getting there: United flies daily from Sydney or Melbourne to San Francisco, with two nonstop flights from San Francisco to Nashville each day. united.com

Staying there: The Hutton Hotel, downtown Nashville, has rooms from $US289 ($440) per night. The Thompson Nashville in the Gulch has rooms from $US349-$US899 per night. Fairfield by Marriott (Fairfield Inn and Suites Nashville Downtown/the Gulch) has rooms from $US389 per night. huttonhotel.com; hyatt.com/thompson-hotels; fairfield.marriott.com

While you're there: Be sure to take in the up and coming Nashville neighbourhoods. At the Gulch, you'll find boutiques and cafes, including Biscuit Love. Its specialty is biscuits, a light pastry made with buttermilk and served with eggs or gravy. At 12 South, you'll find vintage stores, boutiques and homewares stores. Make sure to pop into the Butter Milk Ranch, which serves the best pastries you'll find this side of Paris. If scents are your thing, a stop at Ranger Station is essential. Every time I light the tobacco and musk candle from there, I make plans to return to Nashville. explorethegulch.com; visitmusiccity.com

Also, even if you're not into sport, catch an ice hockey match if you can. It's lightning fast, sometimes incomprehensible but a spectacle you won't forget in a hurry. Keep your eyes peeled for that moment someone in the crowd hurls a catfish onto the rink - it's a Nashville tradition. nhl.com/predators/schedule

Explore more: visitmusiccity.com; tnvacation.com

The writer was a guest of Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp.

Pictures: John Hanscombe; Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp