I drove up to Bloomington, Indiana last week, and I did a radio spot in the afternoon.

I had a gig that night, but I did a radio spot at WFHB and saw my old buddy Jim Mannion and had a nice chat with him

it was fun to get to catch up a little bit and I went over to the gig and it was at Deer Park

something or other music series a really really fun gig and nice folks and a whole lot of folks

showed up from Indianapolis a lot of people from

southern Indiana had some folks drive in from as far away as St. Louis and I appreciate that.

But afterwards the promoters were nice enough to put me up in a three-bedroom apartment all by myself,

two baths and I felt kind of lonesome there but I got up real early in the

morning and went over to Hogi Carmichael's grave he was born there in

Bloomington Indiana and he's a one of the Hoosiers that we're most proud of if

you don't know who Hogi Carmichael is he wrote songs like Stardust

Georgia on my mind and just a great songwriter. And,

you know, one of the, like I said, one of the Hoosiers that we're most proud of. And I went

ahead and just started a slow drive back to Nashville and drove around southern Indiana,

just hanging out. And I was just north of Bedford, Indiana, and went to Ulytic.

They mine all of this limestone in the area. Just a ton of limestone comes out of there.

And there's a hole in the ground that I visited. It's a rock quarry.

And all of the limestone that was used to build the Empire State Building in New York

was taken from that hole in the ground in

southern Indiana. And I had a nice walk around there. It was really cold, but it was fun. And I thought

about the brain drain that I've heard of my entire life, about how our best and brightest in Indiana

just always seemed to leave. And when I was a kid, they would talk about

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