30 OCTOBER: A BOY NAMED JOHN

I was still pretty narked with Chris, and also a little frustrated with myself. Not about punctuation, but about music, specifically my inability to play a note. The only hope of fixing this was to actually buy an instrument, which in turn meant confronting, head-on, a long held prejudice.

I believe that you should never, ever trust a man carrying an acoustic guitar. A man carrying an acoustic guitar is only ever a millisecond away from whipping it out and playing it at you. Another thing that life has taught me is that when said gent pulls out said six-string, the chances are he's about to play some Bob cocking Marley.

Nothing against the man personally, it's just that I've lost count of the number of beaches or hostel fireplaces I've sat around whilst some tool with an educated accent, dust in his ringlets and faux-ethnicity henna'd all over his wiry frame shits on the 'Re-bastard-demption Song'. And the girls sat around, oh how they love it. Why wouldn't they? They're on holiday without Daddy for the first time since they wintered in Klosters and he nipped off to Paris for two days to nail the au pair, and this lad in front of them is actually playing music and singing! So Peter Total-Fucking-Tosh gets laid whilst my friends and I (all right, yes, just me) sit on the periphery of the group, scowling.

Which is the reason that, when we devised this trip and decided that we should sing a song at the end of it, I elected to try and master the ukulele. It was all part of the quest. That and the whole figuring out American music thing.

Somewhere in the world Gavin Rossdale was celebrating his birthday. Singer and guitarist for Bush, Rossdale fronts a band which had the same problem as me, but in reverse. For five years in the mid-ninetie they hurtled around North America selling out arenas and guesting on innumerable TV shows, but in the UK they just didn't connect. Worse, they were held as something of a joke. For a band formed within drumstick-throwing distance of the BBC's Television Centre, their inability to get a slot on British TV must have been painful. Gavin understood the lyrics, the riffs, the poses and the quotes that America wanted, but to his frustration the Brits didn't think much of Bush, if they thought of them at all.

I have nothing whatsoever in common with Gavin Rossdale, but at that moment I could appreciate his predicament. By this point we had travelled two thousand miles, crossed mountains and canyons, rivers and plains and all to a soundtrack that felt like homework. There is an ocean between Britain and America, physically and musically, and there was still seemingly nothing the tufty-lipped man to my right could do to bridge it.

But back to the ukulele, or (phonetically) ooh-koo-lay-lay. That's how it's pronounced you know. It was, oddly, the Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis who corrected me on my pronunciation, citing that it was the only instrument he had managed to master to any significant degree. Having as few strings as it's credibly possible to have, as well as being portable and favoured by the singer in one of my favourite bands, this was clearly the instrument for me.

In my youth, various instruments were foisted upon me by parents eager that my mind and soul be nourished by the healing benefits of music-making. The piano clearly had too many notes and pedals for my eight-year-old mind. Three subsequent years of learning the flute still didn't get me to a level where I could take an exam. (When even your music teacher accepts that after thirty-six months of practice it would be taking the piss to make anyone other than themselves listen to your toils, then you know that this isn't the instrument – and possibly not the art form – for you.)

A couple of years pointlessly learning bass guitar further endorsed my world view of music being a discipline for geeks, nerds and, fundamentally, show-offs. I say the bass was pointless as this was the age at which many are forming bands, jamming, covering their favourite songs and exploiting the rare opportunity of being both parent-tauntingly loud and parent-pleasingly musical.

The key to it was the forming of a band. Sadly, my school year was sorely lacking in the diverse musical skills required to do this. Of one hundred and twenty students, there were but three lead guitarists, one bass player (me), and a particle-physicist-cum-piano-prodigy who knew Bach but not It Bites. So, enamoured as I was of the musical stylings of Iron Maiden, I spent two years practising the playing style of Steve Harris alone in my bedroom. With no one else to rehearse with, my efforts were wasted. When I realised that signing up for design and technology classes meant being able to play for hours with welding equipment and weapons-grade petroleum products, the bass guitar and musical ambitions were consigned to the cupboard.

Fast-forward eighteen years and I resolved to have another bash by buying a ukulele. The plan had been to pick one up in Los Angeles to allow for maximum rehearsal time, but we never made it into a music shop. Same story in Denver; same again in Memphis. So on meeting Jack at the Waffle House, Chris had asked him to recommend somewhere we could purchase a reasonably-priced uke and guitar. When he said 'Guitar Center', I feared another embarrassing replay of yesterday's waffled arrangements – 'What's it called?', 'Just Guitar Center' – but by now we were wise to the naming conventions. We arrived late in the afternoon.

Just as the Waffle House serves up more than waffles, at Guitar Center you can get more – much more – than guitars. From the outside it looked like B&Q. On the inside an infinite world of musical possibility hung on the walls, stood on stands, was stacked and racked in enormous rooms, each dedicated to a particular instrument. In the electric guitar room a colour wheel of Gibsons, Fenders, Gretschs and Washburns covered every available inch of wall. The drum room resembled a percussion laboratory filled with every conceivable size, weight and colour of drum, stand and cymbal.

We were here to buy a ukulele, about which I knew very little, but Chris owned a couple and had enough knowledge, he thought, to tell good from bad. Entering the store, he glided straight past the 'stringed folk instruments' section as though on a tractor-beam and walked to the glass door of a wood-panelled 'Acoustic Room' where… he fell in love.

She was three feet tall with a curvaceous body and perfect complexion, and her name was Martin. She was, with wearisome inevitability, a guitar. Without blinking, he picked her up and started to strum. I apparently was no longer in the room. For the next ninety minutes I tried out a range of fiddly little four-strings on my own before deciding to splash out a whole $100 on a beautiful Mitchell specimen, light tan in colour with pearlescent ivory trim around the body and sound hole. Pleased with my purchase, I flicked through a book of chords while Chris continued to pick and pluck in his soundproof booth. This was a serious infatuation. Or a thinly-disguised ploy to avoid talking to me.

After two hours of strumming, two minutes of negotiation with salesman Dave 'Mad Dog' McGruin, and two thousand dollars later, he left the room. That's five times what I paid for my first car. For about $1,950 less he could have got a blow job. Back at the hotel, several more hours of picking, stroking and cooing ensued, until I prised her from his loving arms and suggested it was time to meet Jack for the Cash Cabin visit.

Ever since I was a child there has been an inextricable connection in my brain between old men, country music and the musty smell of alcohol and grooming products.

When I was a boy, my grandparents would visit often for Sunday lunch. At around midday my granddad would disappear to the pub to play dominoes and drink several gallons of pale ale while my mum prepared a roast. After lunch he would retire to the living room to let it go down. Sitting bolt upright in his favourite armchair, he would open the newspaper, turn to the sports section, and fall asleep. His head would slump backwards, hoisting his capacious nose towards the ceiling to reveal arched, cavernous nostrils above his now gaping mouth like darkened church windows over an open portico. He slept for most of the afternoon until, stirring sometime around 5 p.m., he would wake up with a start and brusquely inform my nan that it was time to go home.

But not without leaving a small gift to remember him by. Over the course of several visits, a thin, shiny layer of hair lacquer would accumulate on the back of the armchair, which combined with the alcoholic sweat to create a musty odour capable of outlasting several hot washes. Each time I sat in that chair to eat my crumpets and watch The Dukes of Hazzard, scenes of law breakin', bonnet slidin' and car chasin' became ever more intimately associated in my mind with the whiff of granddad, the twang of banjo and the saw of fiddle.

I'm convinced I have The Dukes of Hazzard – specifically Daisy Duke, if I'm absolutely honest – to thank for my love of outlaw country. Waylon Jennings narrated the show and sang the theme tune ('The Good Ol' Boys', which told of modern day Robin Hoods out to straighten curves and flatten hills while evadin' the law in the General Lee). The combination of fast cars, exhilarating stunts and Catherine Bach in denim hot pants was impossible to resist. To this day I can sing every word of the theme tune and even now found myself fighting an impulse to slide across the bonnet of the Grievous Angel every time Joe and I switched driving duty.

I had no idea who Waylon Jennings was back then, and didn't find out until well into my twenties; liking country music as a teenager was as likely to attract the girls as a bout of halitosis. But later I learned from classroom music mentors – and they're running record labels now, so they must be right, right? – that it was fine to like country as long as it wasn't Garth Brooks or Billy Ray Cyrus. There was a band of men – Waylon, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson and later Gram among them – being called 'outlaw country', and that sounded fine by me.

But Waylon's Nashville flatmate and partner in crime was the greatest outlaw of them all: Johnny Cash. Johnny's hell raisin' – part real life, part carefully cultivated image (drink, drugs and starting forest fires, yes, prison never) – meant he always had an uneasy relationship with the cosy Nashville establishment. At opposite ends of his career he received both a ban from the Grand Ole Opry and induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, like a stubborn, greasy stain on the back of the Nashville armchair which people eventually came to love. By the time I woke up to him, which wasn't until his reinvention by Rubin as hip, countercultural icon, he was an old man. I have a constant, lingering regret that we didn't have a chance to get better acquainted while he was still alive.

In 1994 Johnny Cash performed at the Glastonbury Festival in what is regularly cited as one of the greatest performances the festival had ever seen. His features were starting to swell and sag as his years of amphetamine use took their toll. In his regulation black he was, even on television, utterly compelling, and if I were granted one wish by the musical genie and allowed to travel in time to see just one performance, it would be that one.

He played classics 'Ring of Fire' and 'Folsom Prison Blues'; he played the greatest comedy song ever written, 'A Boy Named Sue', and a handful of newer songs from his latest album. The next day I went to Parrot Records in Canterbury and bought a copy, entitled American Recordings. Along with subsequent albums Unchained, Solitary Man, The Man Comes Around and A Hundred Highways, it rounds off a canon of albums which are the greatest last act in rock and roll history. They are a triumph of performance, production and song, but most of all they are recordings of soul – and Cash Cabin is not only where it happened, but what made it possible.

Jack had told us to meet him at a gas station on a road leading north out of Nashville towards Hendersonville, the location of the Cash estate. Being as the main road to Hendersonville is called Johnny Cash Parkway, there seems little point in being secretive here. A crisp moon hovered in the graphite-black night sky above the gas station. Jack was already there. We drew up alongside as he wound down the window of his small, battered hatchback.

With a throaty cough from his exhaust, he eased off. After half a mile we turned into a small residential street lined with squat, newly-built houses like the treeless suburbs of Edward Scissorhands. After another few minutes the road dead-ended at a cul-de-sac in front of two enormous, black, wrought-iron gates.

Jack buzzed the intercom. Nothing. Chris and I looked at each other. Maybe this wasn't going to happen after all. In fact, hadn't it been ridiculous to imagine even for a second that it would? Who was this guy we were tailing, and where was he taking us?

He buzzed again. Still nothing. Maybe he was a fantasist or obsessive or con artist or murderer. Perhaps our names were about to be added to a list of recent 'disappearances' in the area. Nashville police would find two dismembered heads in the Hendersonville countryside and wonder why two apparently respectable, otherwise judicious English professionals would grow bad facial hair, meet a large, scary man in a Nashville Waffle House and freely follow him to the scene of their own horrific demise.

A third buzz, then Jack's thumb appeared out of the car window and the gates opened to reveal a narrow tarmac drive leading away with broad sweeps of grass on either side. Veering right, we made out a huge, floodlit castle of a home on the passenger side. That, presumably, would be the Cash family home and Jack, then, was not a serial killer. Double thumbs.

The headlights flashed through tall, densely-packed trees as the road wound through the estate. The house disappeared over our shoulders to the right as we continued into the blackness down a shallow slope. Jack stopped. We were there – wherever there was. We stepped out into stillness and listened to the sounds of the woods all around: the rustle and flutter of wildlife in the nearby nature reserve, the bray of deer, the hoot of owls.

Somewhere off to the left was the faint orange glow of lights behind curtains, which we presumed to be the cabin. Looking back up the hill, we could see the mega-home of the Cash Family, gothic and imposing.

Somewhere in the woods a deer brayed. Up at the house a pair of headlights flicked on. They floated towards us, and a few moments later a silver Mercedes crackled to a halt on the gravel in front of us. Out stepped a sturdily-built man wearing a beaten-up cap and a mustard-coloured corduroy shirt.

Johnny and June built the Cash Cabin in 1978 as a place to get away from it all whilst remaining within the grounds of their 240-acre Hendersonville estate. Big and solid, a little larger than the average terraced house, it was modelled on the home in Poor Valley, Virginia (seriously) in which June Carter was raised. Made of wood and stone masonry, it has a raised front porch of the kind where you might expect to see John Walton relaxing after a day chopping lumber. Recording equipment was installed in 1993, and for the rest of his life Johnny was able to record albums without leaving his own back yard.

It was the smell that hit me when we walked in: musty and lived in. Not an exact match for Eau de Smithwicks, Brylcreem et Crumpets, but not far off. It was the smell of old men and country music, the whiff of granddad and Hazzard County. And what caught my eye first wasn't the guitars, the cabling, microphones or state-of-the-art recording equipment – though they were all there in abundance – but the mug tree on the kitchen table, the chintzy lampshade in the hall, the brush and poker by the fireplace, the kitsch seventies table and chairs. Straight ahead as we entered the main space was a tallboy covered with crocheted linen, on top of which sat a carved wooden mirror and a cluster of family photos including a smiling Johnny and June, both sporting fabulous bouffant hair.

I've spent a lot of time in a lot of studios, some of historical note, most not. For the best part they are large, airless spaces with faders and flashing lights. Cash Cabin made other studios look like caravans. Not because of its size – it was smaller than most – and not because of the equipment; there was no excess of 'outboard' (as hardware is known in production circles, with electricity being known as 'juice', and new equipment being called 'kit').

What set it apart was the atmosphere. The vibe. The feel. There was more magic in the Cash Cabin than in Abbey Road, Air Studios and Rak put together. Stuffed animal heads looked on from the walls, interspersed between tastefully chosen pictures from Johnny's life. In the kitchen he stood with June backstage at a show – her beaming with pride and affection, him still looking dangerous twenty years and forty pounds after he gave up amphetamines and starting forest fires. Above the tallboy a black and white portrait of him as an old man looked stately and ghostly, like he was watching us from down the ages. Y'all behave now.

Johnny had died exactly three years earlier. As there is no book of etiquette on how to behave when being shown around the famous home studio of a recently deceased legend by said legend's only son, Chris and I stood frozen in front of Johnny's portrait, unsure what to say. I'm not sure I was even breathing. John Carter, tall and broad with a splendid auburn goatee and chunky sideburns, a light Tennessee accent and a gentle manner, clearly sensed the nerves.

From the Persian rug on the oak floor of the main performance room, we shuffled through the open-plan, diner-style kitchen into the piano room, not daring to touch the keys of Johnny's 1896 Steinway, guarded by a deer head on the wall above. In a small living space a photograph of Bob Dylan – from the artwork of Nashville Skyline – sat in the fireplace, lit by a deer-antler chandelier. We photographed the carpets, the walls, the ceiling. This was Johnny's special place and there was no detail too trifling for our admiration. Returning to the mixing room we found Jack and John attending to a Mac, mixing desk and twenty-four channel thingummyjigs nestled among the hand-hewn woodwork.

It seemed intrusive to ask about Johnny, but this desk was where five of my favourite artist's best albums were recorded by my favourite producer, and I wanted to hear about it from John.

'Absolutely. Dad spent a lot of time here – that's his chair right there.' He pointed at one of two sumptuous black leather chairs pulled up to the console.

We sat and listened to some of his latest productions, John in his daddy's chair, me in Rick Rubin's, proud as a five-year-old invited to the cockpit of a jumbo jet. And for once in my life, I didn't screw it up. Not like the time I told Damon Albarn he needed to improve his pitch. (I was talking about football, he thought I was talking about his singing.) Or the time I hung up on the lead singer of Wales' biggest heavy rock band Lost Prophets because I didn't think he sounded Welsh enough. Or the time I accidentally told Cher she looked like a witch.

No, this time I held it together. We talked about music, John's fascination with medieval English legends, the books of Julian Cope, his taste for the films of Werner Herzog and how his cold was getting bad.

After a while I left Chris, Jack and John talking and spent a few moments alone in each room, quality time with the memory of the Man in Black. I felt like my team had won. To the right of the kitchen was a vocal booth, fashioned from wood and with bark still peeling in places. Above it John had framed an A3 piece of paper from his dad. Written on it in a shaky hand were the chords for the first verse of 'I Walk the Line', and underneath the words:

If you can read that without welling up then you're tougher than I was that night. I returned to the control room. John thanked us for coming, posed for a photograph and headed back to the house to tend to his cold. We followed Jack in convoy onto the freeway in silence, thrilled and exhausted. Chris held out his hand. We shook. Nothing else needed to be said.