Garth wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted his bar to be the Chick-fil-A of honky tonks, because like the famous restaurant, it sounds like Friends In Low Places is going to have some odd hours.
Garth Brooks is gearing up to open his downtown Nashville bar, Friends In Low Places, this coming Friday. The country music superstar will join a long list of artists who have their own bars on Broadway, alongside names like Alan Jackson, Blake Shelton, John Rich, Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan, Kid Rock and soon, Eric Church.
But Garth has said that he wants his bar to be a little different from the others.
He’s spoken before about wanting Friends In Low Places to be the “Chick-fil-A of honky tonks,” whatever that means. And he’s also building a police substation right next to the bar, to help Metro Nashville Police better work to keep Broadway safe during peak business hours (and probably to throw them off his trail…we see you Garth).
And during a recent interview with The Tennessean, Garth also revealed that he’d like his bar to have different hours than the rest of the honky tonks on Broadway.
Garth says that he would like for his bar to close at 2 AM on most nights, as opposed to the 3 AM closing time observed by the rest of the surrounding bars. And he also wants live music in his bar to stop at midnight, instead of going on until closing time like it does at most venues.
The “no music past midnight” rule is apparently to cut down on noise on Broadway, which has been a hot topic in recent months after officers on Broadway have complained of not being able to hear their radios over the music coming from all of the bars.
The Nashville city council recently passed ordinances requiring bars to face their speakers inward, as opposed to out towards the street, in an attempt to reduce the noise on the street.
And honestly, I get it. When I used to work downtown, I could hear the music from Kid Rock’s from my 11th floor window a block away. And when I say hear the music, I mean I could hear the words and tell you what song was playing, not just hear the beat.
But I’m not sure that shutting down music in one bar, at a time when Broadway generally starts to die down anyway, is really going to make much difference.
Of course maybe the real reason is that Garth can’t stay up past midnight these days. He’s not getting any younger, after all. But hey, we already knew this bar was going to be different than the others, especially when he revealed a tiki-style logo for his “honky tonk.”
I guess we won’t have to wait much longer to check out Friends In Low Places for ourselves. The bar (or, the first two floors of it at least) opens this Friday with a special concert from Garth himself, which will be livestreamed on Amazon Prime after the first ever Black Friday NFL game.
Let’s just hope the game doesn’t go into overtime, because the music has to shut down by midnight.
