Another honky tonk down.
Over the past decade or so, lower Broadway in downtown Nashville has gone from small honky tonks playing country music to massive six-story entertainment venues named after various country artists that offer bottle service, DJs, and play far less country than they do rock, pop and EDM.
It’s an unfortunate side effect of the growth of music city – unless you happened to own a bar on Broadway as things exploded.
Property values downtown have absolutely skyrocketed in recent years, with Jelly Roll’s Goodnight Nashville recently being listed for sale for a staggering $100 MILLION, while Jon Bon Jovi’s JBJ’s is also on the market for $130 million. (Both bars are remaining open after their buildings are sold).
In fact, Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves recently bought the building that houses Margaritaville in downtown Nashville for $75 million, which set a record for price per square foot for lower Broadway real estate at $2,870/sq ft.
With prices soaring and business booming, it’s no wonder that so many are eager to move into lower Broadway. But unfortunately, it appears that one longtime honky tonk will be moving out.
According to several employees at Second Fiddle, the bar will be closing on January 1, 2026. The honky tonk is located at 420 Broadway, sandwiched between Tootsie’s and Layla’s, and is one of the few bars left downtown that isn’t owned by a giant hospitality company.
Employees were told that the final day of operation for Second Fiddle will be New Year’s Eve.
The bar is owned by Ruble and Brenda Sanderson, who also own two other nearby bars on Broadway with Legend’s Corner and The Stage. There’s no word on whether the other bars will also be closing, but so far there’s been no word that Legend’s and The Stage will be affected by the news.
We also don’t know whether the building is being sold or will be rebranded by Sanderson into something else. We reached out to Second Fiddle for comment, but haven’t heard back.
Of course online, the common sentiment seems to be that everyone expects Second Fiddle will be turning into an artist-owned bar. We’ve seen it happen time and time again, with some of the best honky tonks on Broadway being closed and turned into nightclub-like environments that are branded after some country singer. (RIP Paradise Park).
Several bartenders and staff of Second Fiddle have posted online that they’re looking for new jobs, so it doesn’t sound like this is just a temporary closure for a rebrand with new owners but instead a permanent closure and likely sale of the property.
It really sucks to see these independently-owned bars slowly going the way of the dinosaur in downtown Nashville. There are fewer and fewer of these honky tonks left, and obviously for economic reasons I get it, but I moved to Nashville 10 years ago and most of the bars that were on Broadway when I got here have closed and been replaced by soulless artist bars.
Luckily there are still a few good ones left, like Robert’s Western World, which recently announced that they had bought Jack’s Bar-B-Que and would be expanding their iconic honky tonk. There’s clearly still a place for these smaller family-owned bars in a world of corporately-owned monstrosities. But real estate is finite in downtown Nashville: The pie isn’t getting any bigger, and people are willing to pay more and more to get their piece.
Once we find out what’s going to replace Second Fiddle we’ll be sure to let you know, but in the meantime if you want to visit one more time before it closes, you only have a couple of weeks.
