As if being a good host is not in itself reward enough, the experience of a Norquay woman shows that sometimes one can reap a huge bounty for just having welcomed and looked after visitors.
Last week Donna Toffan of Norquay was still riding high recalling her trip to Nashville, Tenn., where among other events, she was able to attend the 50th anniversary concert of the Country Music Association’s CMA Awards on November 2, which had been broadcast live on television across North America.
The emotion in the hall was tangible, Toffan said last week as she talked about the trip to Nashville and the Awards program to which she and her husband Steven had been treated.
“I can’t explain it, the emotion in the hall when Randy Travis was on stage and for the tribute to Dolly Parton.
“Absolutely everyone was there,” she said of the program, unable to contain her enthusiasm for the experience.
Toffan who owns and operates The Whistle Stop restaurant in Norquay has long had an affinity for country music. She has sung almost all her life and for about 15 years she was a member of Snake Creek Company, a classic rock and country band. She still sings at various events in the community, especially at the open-mic nights at the restaurant.
How she and her husband got tickets to the CMA Awards goes back a few years, when she met a group of American goose hunters who came to the area.
“They were from the Nashville area and we got to know them,” Toffan said, adding that she and her husband had given them, a group of from five to seven men, permission to hunt on their property about 20 kilometres south of Hyas.
The property is beautiful with lakes and millions of geese, she said. “They told us that they had never had such good luck at hunting geese; that we had helped make their hunting dreams come true.
“We got to be such good friends,” she said, explaining that while staying at a cabin near the property, the hunters would invite them over for goose feasts.
“I played guitar and sang for them,” she said, adding that last spring she received a phone call from them saying that they would help make her dreams come true by inviting her and her hsuband to the CMA Awards.
“They phoned me giggling, saying that they got us tickets.
“I just about dropped the phone,” she said explaining that a sister of one of the hunters, who is a head of a pharmaceutical company, obtained the tickets.
Not only tickets for two to the show, the hunters also bought them a night in a five-star luxury hotel in Nashville.
One would think that country music is the top business in Nashville, but it isn’t, Donna said, adding that she learned that the top business in that city is hospitals, and then in second place are insurance and pharmaceuticals, then publishing in third place because of the publishing of music, and in fourth place is country music and tourism.
Donna and Steven left on their trip on September 29 and after arriving in Nashville spent the next three days touring the city.
There are 80 bars on Broadway, she said. “And there are people playing at all the bars.”
Asked if she had taken her guitar with her in order to find an open-mic in Nashville, and Toffan said she did not.
“It’s very competitive” to perform in Nashville, she said, commenting on the fact that of all the singers that she saw on the small stages in the bars, only three were female, the rest were solo men or duos.
They visited the well-known Tootsies, one of the original bars in the city, and Toffan explained how the back door of Tootsies is across the alley from the back door of the Ryman Auditorium, which was the home of the original Grand Ole Opry. She explained that while they were downstairs at Tootsies, several celebrities, including Carrie Underwood, Dirks Bentley and Brad Paisley had been upstairs doing a promotional gig, and they missed seeing them.
“Jack Owen walked right by me,” she said, explaining that in Nashville country music celebrities are often seen “out and about” but citizens tend not to bother them.
All during the week prior to the Awards show, celebrities were doing promotions, she said. “We got to see Robin Givens of Good Morning America.”
Toffan was enthusiastic about their trip to the current Grand Ole Opry building which is located about 20 miles outside of Nashville where they also visited Opryland and the Opryland Hotel.
“It was all great. I loved every second. And the weather was beautiful,” she said. “We got backstage passes to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and we went down Music Row and Writers’ Alley. We toured the first recording studio, a little white brick building which is kept looking like it was, and there are pictures of the stars, my heroes, like Patsy Cline, on the walls. It was so cool. I started bawling.
“I was so humbled and in awe,” she said. “What an experience! I still get goosebumps thinking about it.”
Toffan was impressed with one of their tour guides who had “so many stories,” including one about the corner of a building. She said that Dolly Parton, with her first royalty cheque, had purchased a new car and, driving it, had hit the corner of the building. She had claimed that the incident had been “her first big hit in Nashville.”
Toffan said she discovered at the Country Music Hall of Fame that Bob Dylan and Joan Baez had been instrumental in helping to create the modern Nashville and that her regard for Taylor Swift grew immensely when she learned that Swift had donated $7 million to the Hall for the development of young musicians.
There was a big exhibit on Alabama, she said.
And then they visited the Bluebird Café, which is off the strip in Nashville and where new songwriters are invited.
“But you need a reservation of about two weeks,” she said. “It’s small, but every great songwriter has walked through those doors.”
They also enjoyed their visit to the Wild Horse Saloon, and then it was time to go to the Bridgestone Arena for the Awards show.
It was a black tie affair and it had very tight security, she said, explaining that the floor of the arena was where the industry people and celebrities were seated, and up only one level is where their seats were located.
“We could see everything,” she said as she talked about the high level of emotion that was evident throughout the building.
There was much more show than what people had seen on television, she said. The show went on while the TV audience watched the commercials.
Asked what the cost was of a seat in the section of the arena that they were in, Toffan said that she was told the seats cost anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 each.
Following the show the couple walked down Broadway Avenue.
The next two days, the Norquay visitors spent time visiting their hunter friends who lived nearby and Donna said she was unsettled seeing all the guns.
“Everyone carries a gun,” she said. “Women have them in their purses; guys have them in the small of their back. That’s not what we’re used to here in Canada.”
“They treated us so well,” she said, adding that she expects to see those hunters back at Norquay for hunting season next autumn.
