Nashville’s not just where tours start anymore. It’s become a major performance destination.
Nashville has become the main hub of music touring in the U.S. The metro area offers everything from the lights and the LD and the sound systems and the system techs to the buses and the drivers. Oh, yeah, and there are a few guitar players, too. Ironically, what it wasn’t for the longest time, was a place where touring acts came to perform. As the local weekly put it, “There was a time — and not all that long ago — when it seemed like almost every big tour or vanguard emerging artist skipped Nashville.”
As the city built itself into a touring-vendor powerhouse, its own venue infrastructure had grown creaky. There were a few gems: The Ryman Auditorium has been the city’s anchor for theater-sized shows since it was restored as a music venue in 1998 after nearly a quarter-century of neglect and near dormancy. Meanwhile, the Exit/In club has survived more assassination attempts than Tupac since it was opened in 1971. But for every one of those, there were three or four that didn’t make it. Some came and went, like trendy ‘80s discos and ‘90s dance clubs. Others offered hope of a renaissance: Before flaming out, Café Milano’s broad slate of jazz, R&B and ethnic artists in the late ‘90s briefly gave the city hope that downtown wouldn’t be relegated to what were then some pretty dingy honky-tonks along Lower Broadway.
But something changed. Actually, a lot of things changed.
Live music became the economic basis for the music business as recorded music sales sank, and the culture of entertainment shifted from the joy of ownership to the thrill of the experience. Nashville itself changed. Dubbed the “It” city in 2013 by The New York Times, the town has been transformed by an influx of affluent hipsters and a burgeoning professional class — at a rate of 85 new citizens a day, according to CNN — that have created demand for a higher level of everything, from restaurants to entertainment venues.
This recent upswing has produced a slew of new and upgraded music venues across the entire spectrum, even as legendary Music Row’s mix of recording studios, record labels and music publishers are subsumed by encroaching glass-and-steel condo towers. New clubs like the lounge-y 5 Spot are occasionally featured in the television show Nashville. The industrial setting of Marathon Music Works recalls the building’s past incarnation as Marathon Motor Works, which built cars between 1911 and 1914 and underscores how even the dodgiest neighborhoods of the city have become homes to classy new venues. The upscale City Winery opened an outpost there in 2014 — next door to the city’s biggest homeless mission.
Two new amphitheaters have opened: the newly renamed Carl Black Chevy Woods Amphitheater at Fontanel holds 4,500 and the Ascend Amphitheater, which is operated by Live Nation, accommodates up to 7,000. Located in a reclaimed rock quarry, the 5,000-capacity Graystone Quarry Amphitheater is scheduled to debut in 2017.
These partial outdoor venues also underscore the paradox that urban growth and more live music has set up in Nashville, The Ascend brought the city Phish and Janet Jackson in the weeks after it opened last July, yet drew noise complaints from the same people who bought into the shimmering condo towers that surround it. (Ironically, the city’s 2009 downtown noise ordinance, which limits prerecorded music in Nashville’s downtown to a modest 85 decibels, also exempts live music from that restriction.)
Existing Clubs Up Their Game
There’s even more activity in existing clubs and halls as they jockey to compete with the newcomers and meet enhanced consumer expectations. The imposing War Memorial Auditorium recently had a new Meyer Sound MICA system installed. The Mercy Lounge’s M32 feeds four Meyer Sound MSL-4 boxes and four Meyer 700HP subs. At the nearby 1,500 capacity Cannery Ballroom, a PRO 2 and Soundcraft Compaq Si handle FOH and monitor duties, respectively, in conjunction with a new Meyer LEOPARD sound system, installed late last year, with three Meyer 700-HP ground-stacked subs per side and two Meyer MINA front fills. The NEXO sound system at 3rd & Lindsley, where Vince Gill’s Time Jumpers hold court most Monday nights, was installed in 2011, but the club recently added additional capacity and rehearsal studios.
Chris Bailey, the production manager at the 500-capacity Mercy Lounge and its smaller 250 capacity sibling, the High Watt, says the exploding live music scene in Nashville quickly hit a tipping point, creating an AVL systems arms race of sorts, with clubs looking to outdo each other with better sound, as well as brighter lights and bigger video screens.
“Competition is driving it now,” Bailey says, as he contemplates upgrades to the Mercy Lounge including new lighting and truss that was slated to take place over the Christmas holiday. “That’s the only down time we’re going to have because it’s gotten so busy,” he adds, noting that a new P.A. is also under consideration. “It seems like there’s a new venue popping up every week, and when that happens everyone has to see what they need to do to stay in the game.” He says that when Marathon opened in 2011, it compelled the similarly sized Cannery to reconfigure its interior to improve audience sightlines.
They’re competing with each other both for patrons and for the performers, many of whom are local — Nashville’s become the literal home not only to country artists but a seemingly endless migration of rock and pop acts, old and new, including Jack White, Ed Sheeran, Sheryl Crow and Steven Tyler. (Locally cultivated Taylor Swift, on the other hand, moved in the other direction, to New York City.)
This is also changing the dynamic in the city. The Cannery group of venues is serviced by Mid-Coast Sound (a 2015 FRONT of HOUSE Hometown Hero winner in the Southeast region). Owner Bruce Bossert says the proliferation of mid-sized venues in Nashville and the concurrent emphasis on high-end pro-audio brands has helped what he calls boutique SR businesses like his. “It’s become a place where a mid-sized company like ours can go upscale, with over 100 Meyer boxes in the inventory and the first LEOPARD system in the region,” he says. Bossert adds that a live-sound climate like Nashville both supports investment in higher-end gear and that, in turn, provides additional leverage.
“Keeping a premium inventory, like the Meyer 1100 series subs we have, lets us interact with the bigger players in town and in the region,” he says, adding that Mid-Coast and Clair Brothers trade equipment at times. “The way Nashville is turning out has forced us to become early adopters. The investment is bigger, but the payoff is, too.”
New Venues
Acme Feed & Seed, a four-story entertainment hub at the foot of Lower Broadway overlooking the Cumberland River that opened in July 2014, is emblematic of Nashville’s hectic music-venue evolution. What was once a feed and agricultural supply house now houses several music venues and a rooftop DJ roost, to accommodate a wide range of genres and experiences. The Nashville office of tour-sound provider Sound Image has outfitted Acme’s music venues with QSC Wideline line arrays and Sound Image G5 carbon-fiber subs, with a pair of Sound Image Series 2 trapezoid boxes atop two JBL 4880 subs on the roof. If Nashville has become the live-music equivalent of an outlet mall, with scores of choices, then Acme is a department store, offering an array of music types on its floors.
Venue management sees sound systems as the central point in building a brand. “The musicians and the customers know P.A. brand names now,” says Michelle Miller, Acme’s production manager. “If the sound quality isn’t on a par with the rest of the city, bands and patrons have lots of other places to go.”
Hugh Johnson, the account exec at Sound Image’s Nashville office that’s been handling Acme’s audio needs (when he’s not mixing Vince Gill on the road as he’s done for 27 years), agrees that competition is what’s driving the city’s entertainment infrastructure. “It’s become like New Orleans here now,” he says. “But not at the expense of sound quality. Club owners have realized that the customers and the musicians have a much higher set of expectations when it comes to the sound of the music.”
That’s made Nashville that much more of a target market for pro audio manufacturers, many of which, such as Shure, Meyer Sound, Yamaha, MikTek, Harrison, Blackhawk Audio, Gibson and Peavey have long had outposts in the city to cater to its touring trade (more than a few of them inside the huge Soundcheck rehearsal and tour-services complex). Now, as more music venues appear, Nashville is also a bigger market for installed sound, which locally based SR companies including Sound Image and Clair Global now offer. (Installed audio got its foot in the door there years earlier with the rise of the mega-church, many of which sound as good or better than many similarly sized secular venues and often have the same musicians playing in them as the Broadway bars do.)
Kevin Ezzell, regional account manager at South Central A/V in Nashville, says the 70-volt background music systems were always steady work in the city’s restaurants and clubs, but the last few years have seen burst of demand for small and mid-sized line arrays to accommodate more and larger music acts.
“The emphasis has really been on quality,” says Ezzell. “They’re looking for known brands that they and their customers recognize.”
Live music is literally everywhere now. The Stillery, opened in 2015, is representative of the many downtown restaurants that incorporate live music as part of their business plans. Reflecting Ezzell’s comment — his company did the Stillery’s audio systems — the choice of a Bose RoomMatch/PowerMatch speaker and amplifier combination came about in part because of the manufacturer’s name recognition factor among consumers. An upstairs music room is connected to the street-level restaurant seating area, which has its own small stage, and the audio in both can be controlled using a Mackie DL1608 mixer with a removable wireless iPad GUI, through a network connection that also involves a Bose ControlSpace ESP-00 processor and a Technicolor MediaTune matrix. Diners can watch the band play upstairs on LCD screens fed from a Marshall Electronics IP camera mounted on the wall opposite the upstairs stage.
Studio Sensibilities
Competition between venues has reached the point where a larger, albeit narrower trend is beginning to take root in business there. Several small Nashville clubs — including indie fav The Family Wash and Belcourt Taps, a destination for the singer/songwriter cognoscenti — have turned to recording studio designers and builders in pursuit of better sound. Steve Durr, who designed the systems and acoustics for Sear Sound in New York and the new Austin City Limits complex in the Texas capital city, was called on to design The Family Wash’s new location in trendy East Nashville. The 200-seater has Bose RoomMatch speakers that Durr camouflaged behind acoustical treatments, in an effort to make the sound system itself invisible even as it enveloped the small venue. “The way the music venues here sounded for so long was part of why touring artists weren’t coming here for so long,” he says. “They’re figuring that out now.”
Michael Cronin, a builder whose studio portfolio recently includes a private studio for Ryan Tedder of One Republic and producer Paul Epworth’s (Adele, Florence and the Machine, Coldplay) re-imagining of The Church Studios in London, applied that same hammer and plumb to Belcourt Taps’ tiny but popular room in the Hillsboro Village neighborhood, with a Bose L1 system and extensive trapping throughout the ceiling comprised of two layers of 5/8th-inch drywall on the ceiling to reinforce the low frequencies and a two-inch-deep Whisper Wall ceiling system.
Nashville Live? Lookin’ Up!
Nashville gets music touring going and coming these days. Its Lower Broadway alley of honky-tonks has created an organic urban entertainment district, a phenomenon that other cities have been cultivating, with live music the draw to bring in crowds that spend money on hospitality, shopping and dining.
In a culture that’s putting live music everywhere, from hotel lobbies to airports — Austin-Bergstrom International Airport has a total of six music venues, including the Asleep At the Wheel Stage at the Ray Benson Roadhouse restaurant — live music has become the grout of the American cultural and commercial mosaic. But at a time when more Americans shop with music than for it, will the ubiquity of live music reach a saturation point of sorts, especially in places like Nashville? The existential questions don’t require immediate answers, however. In the meantime, head downtown — the sound is just fine.
Here’s look at what some of Nashville’s more iconic music venues have in the way of speakers and consoles.
The Ryman Auditorium — P.A.: Left-right cluster each consisting of six 4888 JBL VerTec speakers; center cluster with four 4880 JBL VerTec subs. FOH: Yamaha PM 5D/rh Version 2 including a MY8-ADDA96 Slot card and the Wave effects.
- Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge — Nashville’s ur-honky-tonk is a QSC house on all three of its levels, with KLAs on the main floor and in the newest room upstairs joined by KW subs, and K12s in the back room. The main room FOH uses a Venice F24, and when you walk into the back room you’ll see an A&H Mix Wizard running sound in a room that’s barely changed since George and Floyd and Merle were passing a bottle around.
- The Wildhorse Saloon — Twenty JBL VerTec VT4888 and six 4880 cabinets, with two 6315s as front fills, all powered by Crown amps. Current FOH console is a Yamaha PM5D but imminent renovation will see installation of either a DiGiCo SD5 or Avid S6L desk.
- The Sutler Saloon — Bose RoomMatch RM284520, RM286040, RM452820 and RM602840 modules, plus a single RoomMatch RMS218 subwoofer, all powered by four Bose PowerMatch PM8500N networked amplifiers. FOH is a 32-channel Allen & Heath GL2800.
- Honky Tonk Central — QSC Audio KLA line arrays in its first-floor performance space, along with QSC K12 loudspeakers for monitors; two systems comprising K12 loudspeakers as mains and K10 loudspeakers as monitors for smaller stages on the second and third floors. Allen & Heath MixWizard consoles on the two floors upstairs and an analog Venice F 24 console on the main floor.
