Concert Venues

Nashville, Live Music, Free For Your Enjoyment-Most people who enjoy seeing live music acts take for granted that live entertainment don’t come cheap. Music festivals usually have a high price tag, but are generally well worth the cost. If you attend local shows at concert halls the ticket price can be twice as much as one would pay for say, dinner and a movie. Even clubs that specialize in local or regional acts have cover charges. You would expect large tourist towns like Branson, Missouri to charge a hefty price for name acts and elaborate shows, and they do. Entertainment is something we all expect to pay a price for. Free live music is not a common experience.

One place where you can go see major national acts in concert for a price and also see much free entertainment as well is Nashville Tennessee. Nashville has an advantage over many other music oriented tourist towns. It is a working music city. Folks go there to make it big in the music business. The place is full of musicians. And, since there is so much competition in town, many of them are quite good at their craft.

On Broadway street downtown Nashville, you will find club after club with the sound of live music pouring from their interiors. All you got to do is step in, have a drink or two, enjoy the show, and then mosey on down to the next bar. You can do this all day if you want because many of these clubs have live acts starting early in the day.

With so much recording being done in town and so many musicians making their home there, Nashville is one place where almost anyone you pass on the street could be a musical star of some kind. And, even though Country music is what the town is known for, many other styles are practiced all around town as well. There is a heavy Americana scene as well as Bluegrass clubs and even Blues bars.

Nashville is a center of music production, management, and business in general. This offers many potential opportunities for folks to catch great live music. I’ll give an example of something that happened to me that proves that the most unexpected things can happen in a city so centered in the music industry.

During the time of a recent Americana Music Conference I was hanging around town for a couple of days. I was checking out as many clubs as I could and had tickets to the awards show on Saturday night. On Friday afternoon I was looking for CD’s in a south 8th avenue record store called Grimey’s. I saw a poster on the wall saying that Tony Joe White was going to be there the next afternoon. I’d been a big fan of the Swamp Fox for many years and thought it would be great to get him to sign his latest disc for me. I was there early the next day.

The record store was full of folks as I expected. They had pushed some of the CD bins back a bit to make some room. I was surprised to see a drum kit set up. There were some amps too. Some guys wandered in and started giving out free beers. Somebody said they were part of his crew. Tony Joe walked in with his guitar, and sat down about ten feet from me and plugged in. He did an hour set. I was amazed. I’d have been glad to part with a hundred big ones to get a chance to see the Swamp Blues King. Here he was, close enough to touch, playing for free and he bought me a beer as well. This never happens where I come from.

The whole story was that Tony Joe had offices in the same building and was friends with the store owner. That’s just Nashville, folks. That kind of thing is possible in a town overflowing with music. Maybe you will not have the same kind of luck but when you are in Nashville, the possibilities are always there.