US trip coming up, HELP ME OUT PLEASE! :)

[DaveCave]

Hello everyone!

I'm a professional guitarist living in Stockholm, Sweden.

This fall I'm going on my first trip to the U.S. I'm going to be there for about 11 weeks, from late september to mid december.
For the first 4 weeks me and a good friend of mine (a really, really great drummer) is going for a road trip and our plan is to spend most of our time in New Orleans, Memphis and Nashville. What we want from this trip is to enjoy a lot of good live music, meet, talk to and jam with other musicians and get a lot of inspiration.

All advices are mostly welcome.
Where should we go?
Can we meet up with any of you guys here from the forum?
Any tips on cheap motels etc?
Anyone having an couch/extra bed we can sleep on? (We'll buy you beer, or dinner, or whatever...)

We would be more than happy to join a band for a gig for free! We are professional musicians, but we're not going to the U.S. to make money. In late october my friend will be heading back to Sweden, but another friend (fantastic pedal steel, dobro, banjo player) will join me for 1-2 weeks in Nashville. So if anyone wanna meet up for a jam, or want us to join a gig or recording session for free, just write me here on tgp.

Then I'll continue on my own, as it seems now at least. For this part of the trip, my plan is to take greyhound buses or fly to the cities I wanna experience. Probably I'm going to Austin, maybe Chicago and LA before flying home to Stockholm from New York.
But I'm more than happy for other suggestions too.

As I wrote above, all advices are more than welcome!

Cheers, David

[rockeroo]

I am near LA if you come this direction.

Cheers!