A recent trip to Tennessee inspired Virginia City songwriter David John's song, "They don't play country music in Nashville anymore."
Maybe not, but they sure do in Carson City when it's Rendezvous weekend.
And they dress up in period costumes, cook over campfires, pound out horseshoes, shoot each other down with cap-and-ball rifles and parade through the middle of town to show it all off.
The 17th Carson City Rendezvous got into full swing Saturday with opening ceremonies at the Nevada Capitol followed by the event's first parade back to the main site at Mills Park.
The Wells Fargo Bank stage coach gave mayor Ray Masayko a lift to the park, followed by contingents of mountain men, gunfighters, Union and Confederate soldiers (marching separately, of course) and even representatives of the British Empire in the form of St. Gabriel's Order of the Silver State.
The order is a Reno Renaissance group that preserves the history of an era before the West was settled. They represent the ancestors of the American settlers for the Rendezvous and brought a unique competition to the event - the haggis toss.
Haggis, the Scots' national dish, is a food made mainly of beef organs and vegetables stuffed into a beef stomach and cooked, James Wood of Reno explained.
"The haggis toss originated when wives would prepare their husbands' lunches and then might have to toss them across a stream to him where he tended a herd," Sue McClellan explained. "The wife's toss had to be accurate or the stomach burst on the ground and there was no lunch."
For the Rendezvous, the order created a mock haggis that resembled a large brown beanbag.
Sourdough Slim returned to the Rendezvous main stage for the umpteenth time, playing music ranging from the 150-year-old "Sweet Betsy from Pike" to the relatively new "Happy Trails to you."
Slim, who spices his act with vaudevillian humor, proved he is a fully multitasking entertainer - he swung a lariat loop while playing the accordion while dancing a jig and yodeling.
Over in the mountain man encampment, Jack Shipley played a hammered dulcimer and Chris Bayer a concertina as they performed tradition Irish tunes like the Kesh Jig. Holland Harrison, 8, of Reno and Lori Garrison, 6, of Sun Valley kicked off their shoes and jigged to the tunes.
And Sourdough Slim acknowledged the long history of country music by introducing audience member Dallas Turner, 72, of Reno as Nevada Slim, a yodeling cowboy singer of the 1930s-50s.
Showing they still do sing cowboy music, Rosella Nunex, 12, followed up sourdough Slim's performance by singing Pasty Cline's "Walking After Midnight."
Over at the Civil War battle ground, the Union forces of the 72nd Regiment New York combined with the 1st Nevada Volunteers to attack an emplacement of Confederates from the James River Squadron. Despite the rebel's fortifications and cannon, the yankees' fusillades eventually won the skirmish.
Kayden Wasley, 3, of Carson City was scared a bit by the low blast from the black powder arms and the realist manner in which the soldiers "died."
"It's all pretend," mother Gina Wasley assured the boy. "At the end, they'll all get up and take a bow."
At the farriers' camp, three propane-fired forges softened the horseshoes for demonstrations. Back at the mountain man camp, Travis Agee of Sparks fired his forge with coal and fanned it with a hand-cranked blower of a century-old design. The old-time smithing isn't a weekend diversion for Agee.
"I'm trying to make a living this way, by blacksmithing, pouring and sculpting bronzes and woodcarving," he said.
In his second year at the Rendezvous, Agee had some help from John Adan, a Sparks teenager who was stamping personalized messages into the hearts Agee had formed from horseshoes.
The Rendezvous is held annually the second weekend of June by the Carson City Convention and Visitors' Bureau.
