Rainsville, Alabama

Today is the first day of Big Daddy Weave’s What Life Would Be Like Tour. The first stop is here in Rainsville, Alabama. Rainsville is in northeast Alabama at the crossing of State Route 35 and State Route 75, just thirty miles west of the Alabama-Georgia state line. We don’t get to see a lot of the town, but we meet a lot of nice people. Besides our great hosts, we meet Davy, owner of BodyVision fitness here. Davy treats us to a free workout in his nicely equipped gym. Keith, who is running video operations for tonight’s show, offers to get us tapes and DVD’s of tonight’s performance. Barry, owner of Barry’s BBQ, cooks up one amazing dinner. Barry has a fascinating story of success. He started his restaurant literally in his backyard. You find his restaurant by knowing the crossroads. It’s not actually in a town. The restaurant became a big success, and now he provides BBQ nationwide through a national distributor. His mother, now in her eighties, still makes all of the cobblers.

Speaking of BBQ, this is BBQ country. I admire any town where you can find BBQ at 6:00 a.m.:

Tonight’s venue. Attendance is 3,300 with 500 people who couldn’t get in since the room was at capacity. Rick Burgess of the syndicated radio program Rick & Bubba is also on the bill. It’s always great seeing Rick.

Parked in front of the venue:

The venue is a basketball gym. Basketball history goes way back here judging by this photo on the wall inside: