On a pink school bus emblazoned with the words NashTrash Tour departing the Nashville Farmer’s Market parking lot, the Jugg sisters start in on their audience. One of the two sisters, Sheri Lynn begins by singling out one woman holding hands with her husband in the second row of seats.
“Boy, her hair is jacked up to Jesus!,” she says, following the comment by gesturing toward the woman’s low-cut dress. “And those things are pretty perked, too!”
The tour group — made up of mostly tourists from Wisconsin and New York — laughs nervously as Sheri Lynn and Brenda Kay make their way around the bus, finding out everyone’s names, where they’re from and then mimicking their Northern accents.
Before you embark on the tour, they warn that the squeamish and easily offended might sit it out, but it’s clear that its participants take a few minutes to really get what that means: They’re going to get made fun of. As they settle in and realize it’s all part of the show, nervous giggles turn to belly laughs. Sheri Lynn and Brenda Kay keep warning an older man not to turn around and look at the woman from New York.
“Just trust me, everything she’s got going on looks GOOD,” Sheri Lynn says, winking.
In a bit that progressively goes more and more over the line, the sisters choose a couple folks on the bus (typically people who seem to be good sports when they crack their first joke) to really lay into.
On this ride, a good-looking young man named Cory bears the brunt of the abuse, which includes everything from the sisters telling him where to meet them later in the evening to discussing his virility. He’s in Nashville with his parents and brother — who seem to really get a kick out of the sisters picking on him.
But the tour isn’t all about poking fun of the audience. The sisters highlight Nashville attractions on the two-hour long tour, which starts at the Farmers Market, goes past the Ryman Auditorium, makes a quick stop at the Country Music Hall of Fame, goes up and around Music Row and then heads back toward the market. And the act is also a comedy musical. Throughout the tour, the sisters, who both have a background in theater, jump into songs about salacious country romances and Music City drama.
Along the way, in what’s half part of the act and half genuine dismay, the sisters point out all the construction and make note of everything that’s changed since they started doing the tour.
“Well, that used to be the jail right there,” Brenda Kay says, shaking her head and pointing to a pile of rubble on 2nd Avenue. Then Sheri Lynn pipes in: “Yeah, they just told all the prisoners to come back when they was ready to open again.”
Much has changed since the sisters decided to start the tour business in 1997. The tour vehicle has evolved from a 17-passenger bus the sisters bought with a loan from their father into a full-sized school bus that seats upward of 50 passengers. The sisters perform on at least two tours a day, and rarely ever have an open seat on the bus. When they notice two people are missing from the bus when they pull off, Brenda Kay smiles wide and announces, “Ah, fuck ‘em. We’ll just charge their card anyway.”
The two women, who are real sisters outside of the act, came to Nashville hoping the tours would be a success. The city hadn’t quite exploded yet, but tourists were still a big staple of their business when they began. They’ve had to ban bachelorettes (and other rowdy patrons) from their bus, but otherwise they’ve reached a point where their greatest hopes and dreams for the business have come to fruition. Their show accents are more in the way of the Southern yokel, but once the show’s over, any trace of a Southern accent pretty much disappears.
“The whole show — the making fun of the people on the bus and of Nashville — is just an act,” Brenda Kay tells the Scene. “In truth, we love the city and we know the people on our tours understand what we’re doing. I don’t know of another job where I’d get to call somebody names for two hours and then they’d come back and send their mom and dad and sisters and cousins to come see me.”
