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If You Need Another Reason To Avoid Broadway In Nashville, “Country House” EDM Music Is Now Taking Over Music City’s Iconic Strip
I don’t think Hank done it that way…
Nashville has changed quite a bit over the past few years. And it’s nearly unrecognizable from the time decades ago when names like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and Waylon Jennings walked the streets of Broadway, gathering in iconic bars like Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge after sneaking out the back of the Ryman Auditorium.
Not so long ago, Broadway was a place in Nashville that most tourists avoided. After the Grand Ole Opry moved from the Ryman to their new home in the 1970s, the downtown strip turned into a seedy, run-down part of town with sketchy bars and adult stores.
The revitalization of Broadway can be traced back to the 1990s, when Bridgestone Arena opened and the Nashville Predators began drawing people back to the downtown area. And over the last decade and a half, downtown Nashville has become a tourist hotspot and a destination for bachelorette parties, visitors in town on business, and pretty much anybody looking to get shitfaced drunk.
But in 2017, the first artist-owned bar popped up on Broadway when Alan Jackson bought famed honky tonk The Wheel and turned it into AJ’s Good Time Bar. As you would expect from a traditional country legend like AJ, he kept the true honky tonk character of the bar – but other artists quickly followed, and they had other ideas for the growing downtown strip.
As more and more artists opened bars on Broadway, the venues went from small honky tonks playing exclusively country music to massive multi-story venues and rooftop bars where the band would play everything from Blink-182 and Bon Jovi to Luke Bryan and Hank Williams Jr.
And eventually, as a younger and more diverse crowd began flocking to Nashville as a tourist destination, the sound of Broadway began to change altogether.
These days, it seems like country music is the exception on Broadway rather than the rule. At first it was rock music, with bands playing covers of “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and Journey. But then, in these big venues, they eventually turned to DJs to provide the entertainment for the younger – and rapidly growing – crowds.
That’s led us to where we are today, with a new genre of music taking over Broadway: Country house music.
If you’re not familiar with “house” music, it’s a genre of electronic dance music that became popular in nightclubs in Chicago decades ago and eventually influenced much of the pop music, leading to artists like Diplo and Avicii becoming household names.
Country house music really began to take off on TikTok a few years ago, but it started as DJs remixing popular country songs. But now, as the popularity of the genre has grown, we’re starting to see artists creating entirely original “country house” music that sounds right at home on playlists with superstars like Morgan Wallen and Sam Hunt.
We’ve not only seen artists like Diplo team up with major country names like Sturgill Simpson, Zach Brown Band, and of course, Morgan Wallen, but now the bars on Broadway that used to serve as stages for country music up and comers are becoming a proving ground for country house DJs.
Logan Garrett is just one of the producers and DJs who is creating original country house music and entertaining crowds on Broadway. The Nashville native regularly performs at bars like Barstool Nashville and Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row, just another example of the changing sound of Broadway – and how far it’s strayed from traditional country honky tonks.
Garrett’s latest single, “Move,” features vocals from “country” artist Anella, who was also featured on Diplo’s latest country project. But if you heard it on Broadway, you’d have to wonder if you were in Nashville or Las Vegas?
And listen, I don’t know a lot about house music so I’m not an expert here by any means. But if you’re walking down Broadway expecting to hear “Family Tradition” and instead hear the driving beats of house music and see the flashing lights of the crowd dancing together, you’re probably going to question what the hell has happened to Nashville.
But artists like Garrett have turned country house music from a TikTok trend to a massive draw to downtown Music City. It’s the next step in the unfortunate progression from traditional country music with the fiddle and steel to bro country to the hip hop sounds that dominate mainstream country today.
The thing that’s going to upset traditionalists (including myself) is that it seems to be working. Nashville is more popular as a tourist destination than ever, and bars like Barstool, Friends in Low Places and Whiskey Row that have ditched the traditional country band for electronic DJs and producers on popular nights are packed shoulder-to-shoulder on weekends.
Is that a good thing? I’m sure that depends on who you ask. But are artists like Logan Garrett just proving that downtown Nashville is far from the traditional country stronghold that it once was? Absolutely.
The post If You Need Another Reason To Avoid Broadway In Nashville, “Country House” EDM Music Is Now Taking Over Music City’s Iconic Strip first appeared on Whiskey Riff.
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