Bear Island Adventures
The Bad Buoys of Broadway present….Bear Island Adventures! An entirely unique experience in the heart of Music City. Tired of spending the same vacation days in drunken debauchery down on Lower Broadway? Neither are we! But we also know a thing or two about making new memories that will last a lifetime. Percy Priest Lake, located just 10 miles from downtown, is Nashville’s finest and most underutilized natural resource. Book a trip with Bear Island Adventures based on our fully customizable package plans, and you’ll find you and your friends: set up on your own island campsite; rippin’ lips off of Captain Benny’s brand new center-console fishing boat; witnessing wildlife and wild times; viewing a true Tennessee sunset while eating a world class campfire dinner prepared by our resident cook, Chef Slim; and belly laughing around a fire all night long while your own personal Bad Buoys Band, our resident island band of Broadway’s finest musicians, plays over a bed of chirping crickets and rummaging raccoons. Click on Plan My Adventure now to view our basic packages and follow to the contact page to begin tailoring the good times to you!
Plan My Adventure
Meet the Crew
Capt. Benny Carl
Captain Benny Carl grew up in The Land of 10,000 Lakes and has spent his entire life carving wake through the top water and pulling beasts out of its depths. Finding his way to Tennessee over a decade ago, he’s grown to love Southern freshwater and its wild creatures. Benny doesn’t live by the four seasons but by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency’s hunting and fishing regulations. He plants his seeds after the crappie run and buys his Christmas presents between deer sits. When he’s not out scrapping with nature, you can find Benny rocking out with Fish On! at Bowie’s in downtown Nashville, blowing on the harmonica and slinging rock and roll all night long. Whether it’s music or fishing or kicking back on the islands, Captain Benny Carl has always found the utmost satisfaction in showing other’s a hell of a good time.
John Stone
The Big Dog from Dogtown, Alabama, John Stone! John has had a prolific career on Lower Broadway. For the last 15 years, his band, John Stone and the Trailer Park All-Stars, has packed the halls of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. You can now find him four nights a week at Kid Rock’s bar filling the corner of 3rd Ave and Broadway with rowdy all around low down good-timin’ music. You can even hear his voice over the major radio waves on his show Nashvegas Cafe on 99.7fm.
John is a master hunter, skilled angler, and seasoned trapper. It’s been regaled that John Stone once rode a full-grown wild boar across state lines, steering it by the ears, just to get out of paying a parking ticket, claiming the car wasn’t his and that he always parked his hog lawfully. I can’t vouch for that story, but can say, without a doubt, that John Stone knows how to have a good time. A night around the fire with John and a guitar and friends is a night guaranteed to be filled with big laughs and good memories.
Myles Baker
Myles made his way south from Effingham, Illinois back in 2010 to chase the music to its namesake city. Corn fed and well bred, he’s that tall drink of water on a perfect Bear Island summer day. Myles started dropping lines in Percy Priest with Benny back when they met slinging fried bologna’s and PBR at Robert’s Western World, downtown’s classic country hub. Three bands, four boats, and seven years later, the two are teaming up yet again with Bear Island Adventures. If John Stone is a little bit country, and Benny Carl is a little bit rock and roll, then Myles Baker is a little bit of both and a whole lotta soul. His voice is like butter, his guitar plays like jam, just wait till you get him on a roll, people!
Chef Slim
Chef Slim hails from the heart of Kentucky, and he’s got the greens to prove it. We never know what this Southern troubadour of the blues will cook up when we unleash him on the pots and pans, but we know damn sure well it’s always good eatin’. That’s right! A personal chef on the island to cook up the daily catch and a whole lot more. Filleted, fried, or friggin’ flambéed, Chef Slim will make sure that at the end of the night you’re a happy camper with a belly so full you’ll be glued to your campfire chair with your life jacket on so to keep your head afloat from the food coma. Oh, and did we mention he plays guitar and sings better than he cooks? At this point it should come as no surprise.
