Within five years, 200,000 people are expected to move to Nashville, the home of country music and Tennessee’s capital. The city welcomes the business boom, but is also coping with gridlock, an overwhelmed entertainment district and steep rents.
Emerging neighbourhoods like the Nations, Madison and the Buchanan Arts District are taking the heat off lower Broadway, the stretch of downtown where the bachelorette parties flock.
The city has a thriving LGBTQ scene in East Nashville, although Tennessee earlier this year passed a law aimed at curbing public drag performances.
Nashville today combines tradition and evolution, where you can visit old-school restaurants and slick cocktail temples, stroll ravishing gardens and trace the impact of Black music at a new interactive museum.
Venture into the heart of Broadway, but also take a chance on newer, smaller performance spaces. They’re everywhere. This is Music City.
5pm | Hand over control
There’s no drink menu at Attaboy, a speakeasy-style cocktail bar in trendy East Nashville, a neighbourhood that is constantly reinventing itself. Here, inside a cinder block building on McFerrin Avenue (simply knock for entry), the bartender asks what flavours or liquor you prefer.
Request “something floral”, for instance, and you may find yourself sipping a mix of lemon, gin, elderflower liqueur, orange bitters and club soda (all drinks are US$17-NZ$27). Attaboy uses large ice and frozen glasses to slow dilution, just like the original Attaboy on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Go when it opens at 5pm to avoid having to wait outside if the bar is full. Or if you show up later, put your name on the list and come back. It’s worth it.
7pm | Dine, drink and toe-tap
Head north a few blocks on Gallatin Avenue to the triple threat that is Jane’s Hideaway, which offers exemplary food, drinks and music in one place. The comfortable space, which opened in 2022, has lavender lighting and walls of tightly arranged photos, paintings and cowgirl-themed art.
Slide into the black tufted booths for dinner and drinks: The beef tenderloin ($36) lives up to the name of its cut (the restaurant’s pasture-raised beef comes from the local Seven Cedars Farm), and banana and mint flavours in the Toyotathon ($12), a rye whiskey cocktail, will awaken a yearning for the tropics. Remain for more cocktails while live music, usually a modern tweak on bluegrass or Americana, entertains nightly from 8 to 11pm. Reservations are recommended.
11pm | Take a dive
Close out the night north of East Nashville on Palestine Avenue in nearby Madison. Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge has little in common with the well-appointed music clubs that have taken over lower Broadway. Small works well here, where the frills run to Christmas lights and gold tinsel draped behind the stage.
Play pool, throw darts or just hang out on the front porch. Dee’s may be slightly obscure, but the talent that shows up is anything but; the great alt-country singer and songwriter Margo Price has come to croon here, as has powerhouse solo artist Jonell Mosser, a Nashville institution.
The music includes blues, country, Americana and bluegrass. A margarita at Dee’s is $8 (and doesn’t skimp on the tequila), and a shot of Maker’s Mark bourbon runs the same. Expect a $5 or $10 cover charge, depending on who’s playing.
10am | Honor Black musicians
The National Museum of African American Music, a 5000sq m space inside downtown’s new Fifth + Broadway multilevel shopping complex, opened in 2021. It’s the first comprehensive museum dedicated to presenting how Black music affected American culture over 400 years (admission for adults, $25).
There are more than 2500 artrfacts, including the guitar Jimi Hendrix smashed during a Memphis concert, and gospel singer Dr Bobby Jones’ Grammy. The interactive museum also gives space to artists like “mother of the blues” Ma Rainey and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a pioneer of the electric guitar. Activate your radio frequency wristband to create your own playlist during the service.
Tip: Swing by the cheery Sun Diner, named after Sun Studio in Memphis, down the street for chicken and waffles ($18) afterwards.
1pm | Stroll the strip
Roughly a mile south of downtown is the 12 South neighbourhood, which includes a walkable corridor of shops, restaurants and cafes; it’s an easy excursion to grab a quick gift, a latte or lunch. Plunder the vintage goods at Savant, at the north end of the strip, and then swing by Draper James — the actor Reese Witherspoon’s brick-and-mortar salute to all that is Southern and genteel — which sells clothes, home goods and Witherspoon’s book club picks.
For lunch, grab a few of Bartaco’s light yet satisfying roasted-cauliflower tacos ($3.25 each). At the corridor’s south end, White’s Mercantile sells a variety of items, such as books, organic dog treats and candlewick trimmers. Finally, Sevier Park, next door, is where you can kick off your shoes and lie on the grass, but be wary of cold noses: This park is dog-friendly.
3pm | Step onstage
You may already know the Ryman Auditorium, former home of the weekly Grand Ole Opry showcase. But you may not know that the iconic performance space was built as a church in the 1890s by the evangelist Thomas Ryman, who thought it would save the soul of Nashville, or that the building was nearly torn down in the late 1970s.
For $35, the Ryman’s self-guided tour lets you explore this history and more by ambling through exhibits on two levels. (Displays include Johnny Cash’s surprising pre-”man in black” white suit.) The tour starts with an immersive video and ends with a photo opportunity to mug with a microphone onstage, which makes for interesting people-watching. More short videos recounting the Ryman’s history are narrated by country stars like Emmylou Harris, Marty Stuart and Ricky Skaggs.
6pm | Indulge old-school style
When Nashville restaurateur Randy Rayburn bought the Midtown Cafe, a longtime fixture near downtown, in 1997, the purchase had to include the recipe for the original restaurant’s lemon artichoke soup. Recessed lighting and dark tablecloths may say business lunch, but the food is certainly more, and members of the seasoned staff nearly salute in their roles as agents of a good meal.
Rayburn refers to his restaurant as “intentionally old-school”, where steaks and seafood are familiar but well-executed choices. Start with the umami-rich lemon artichoke soup ($9), then move on to the sea scallops ($44) that come with lobster mac and cheese; it’s worth a diet fail.
8.30pm | Get Close to the Music
Nashville’s midsize music spaces have a fragile future, as high-rise hotels continue to be more profitable than two-storey music clubs. The double-decker 3rd and Lindsley Bar and Grill is one of the few remaining medium-capacity seated performance spaces in town.
One night you can sidle up to Americana singer-songwriter Darrell Scott and another you’re toe-tapping in the back of the L-shaped club to everyone’s favourite 11-piece western swing band, the Time Jumpers. The club is less than a kilometre southeast of lower Broadway, on a quirky block next to Interstate 40 that some find difficult to navigate, so use your GPS.
Tickets run $10 to $40, and parking is free. If the scheduled talent does not jibe with your vibe, check out City Winery, less than half a mile away, which also brings in great music.
11pm | Enjoy beer and bologna
Robert’s Western World is one of the few remaining real honky-tonks left on “honky tonk highway”, or lower Broadway. The authentic country music bars that attract many to Nashville are dwindling, as new celebrity-backed clubs take their place. (Singer Garth Brooks is preparing to open a multilevel entertainment space downtown, even funding an adjacent police substation.)
At Robert’s, posters, guitars, photos and neon signs line the walls, and the shelves are filled with boots, a throwback to the club’s former life as a clothing store called Rhinestone Western Wear. As for the music, Robert’s leans more traditional country than other Nashville clubs do. If you’re feeling hungry (and frugal), there’s the “recession special” ($6), Robert’s famous fried bologna sandwich with chips and a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Beers are $6 or $7, and there’s no cover.
10am | Have brunch
Replenish your energy at Lou, a restaurant in a white Craftsman bungalow that opened in 2019 on McGavock Pike. Chef Mailea Weger spent time in Southern California and Paris, and her food reflects the two. The decor is French rustic with wood floors and a pastel palette, both inviting and romantic.
Try the chocolate, maple and buckwheat pancake ($14), a nice balance of savoury and sweet. Come back and bring friends for a leisurely communal dinner with the restaurant’s small plates and its selection of natural wines. Reservations are required for brunch (served only on weekends) and dinner, but walk-ins are welcome if there is room at the bar.
Noon | See Tennessee in bloom
Few places in Nashville nourish the soul while easing the strains of modern life like a day at Cheekwood Estate & Gardens, a 1930s mansion with 22 hectares of cultivated gardens and sculpture trails. Cheekwood is considered one of the best examples of the Country Place Era, an American landscape-architecture style that took inspiration from Europe’s grand gardens, and it’s worth the drive across town.
March and April bring the estate’s annual Cheekwood in Bloom, when 250,000 tulips, hyacinths and daffodils erupt in colour. The mansion’s permanent art collection includes sculptor William Edmondson’s zaftig figures and Andy Warhol and Jamie Wyeth’s painted portraits of each other. Adult tickets start at $20.
The National Museum of African American Music, which opened in 2021, covers 400 years of African American music and its impact.
Cheekwood Estate Gardens is a sprawling 1930s mansion with 22 hectares of cultivated, walkable gardens.
Jane’s Hideaway, with stellar food, cocktails and music, is a place to spend an entire evening.
Lou, a small bistro in East Nashville, nods to Southern California and Paris.
Attaboy mixes up cocktails without a safety net: no menu, just good old communication (and skilled bartenders).
Sun Diner, downtown, is inspired by Sun Studio in Memphis, where Elvis Presley and other greats recorded.
Bartaco offers Mexican food with vegan options in the 12 South neighbourhood.
Midtown Cafe is an old-school Southern restaurant near downtown.
The Hermitage Hotel, long considered one of Tennessee’s best hotels, recently renovated its landmark Beaux-Arts building, which has two fine-dining restaurants, a bar and a stunning lobby. Doubles start at $489.
Waymore’s Guest House and Casual Club, a new addition to East Nashville, is pet-friendly and styled with a music theme (the bar fridges look like Marshall amplifiers). Doubles from about $170.
There are ample short-term rental apartments. East Nashville or downtown can be expensive, so consider the Donelson and Hermitage areas, which are experiencing a boom of new cafes and offer easy access to the airport. South Nashville, another option, offers international food options along Nolensville Pike.
Checklist
NASHVILLE
GETTING THERE
Fly to Nashville via San Francisco or Houston, with Air New Zealand and United Airlines.
DETAILS
visitmusiccity.com
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Writer: Colleen Creamer
Photos: William DeShazer
What's it like in the good seats on Air New Zealand's long-haul flight to Vancouver?