Garth Brooks is the latest country music superstar to open a bar in Nashville’s famed Lower Broadway section. Brooks joins Miranda Lambert, Dierks Bentley, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Florida-Georgia Line, Alan Jackson, and others in a quest for his share of the pot of gold known as Lower Broadway.
However, Garth is breaking ranks with two of the most popular watering holes on the strip by insisting he will sell Bud Light and doesn’t care if anyone gets mad at him.
John Rich, one half of Big and Rich and a successful writer and solo artist, operates the Redneck Riviera, and Kid Rock is a partner in Kid Rock’s Bis Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse. Both are hugely popular and have taken issue with Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney.
While Rich has stated that it is a business decision since no one is buying the beer, Kid Rock simply pulled the product from his lineup. Both places still sell Budweiser, but not Bud Light.
Garth Brooks was recently talking about his soon-to-open bar and took the opportunity to throw shade at Kid Rock and John Rich. Brooks said: “Yes, we’re going to serve every brand of beer,” Brooks said. “We just are. It’s not our decision to make.”
Brooks clarified that if any customers opposed Bud Light being offered, “there are plenty of other places.”
The truth is, there is room for both sides of the argument on Lower Broadway. Garth’s bar will do huge business because he is Garth Brooks. If it fails to deliver as some high-profile bars like Florida/Georgia Line’s FGL House or Blake Shelton’s Ole Red, then people will stop coming.
John Rich’s Redneck Riviera offers a completely different, very pro-American vibe. His customers like what he has to offer and support his decision to stop selling a product no one wants.
Rich said
Continuing, he then added, “But in the past several days, you’re hard-pressed to find anyone ordering one. So as a business owner, I go, ‘Hey, if you aren’t ordering it, we got to put something else in here.’ At the end of the day, that’s capitalism. … That’s how it works.”
Brooks is aiming for a completely different vibe with his establishment. He described his vision: “If you come into this house, love one another,” he added. “If you’re an a**hole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway.”
“In my existence, one a**hole can turn the whole tide down there. My thing is, let’s create a place that you feel safe in,” Brooks said. “I want the Chick-fil-A of honky tonks I want a place you go in where you feel good, you feel safe. Everybody’s got good manners,”
he concluded.
Whether or not thirsty tourists and bachelorette parties on Lower Broadway want the Chik-fil-A of bars remains to be seen. Part of the appeal of Nashville is the history and the mythos behind the ‘honky tonk.”
The high-dollar bars from big-name celebrities that are crowding out the older, more authentic honky tonk bars are taking over the famed strip, and with it comes the feeling of corporate-run places with little charm and color.
Garth Brooks is too big to fail, even if he kicks out the “a” holes and gives away Bud Light for free, but John Rich and Kid Rock will always have their pro-American, flag-waving, anti-Bud Light fans. Is Broadway big enough for both? We are about to find out.
