Nathan Belt
Music City Bar and Grill
Nashville
Dec. 30, 2023
“It’s music from outer space,” my show-going companion Will Johnson said to me. It’s difficult to convey the accuracy of this assessment, as I’m sure the music sounds pretty standard relayed via iPhone video, but what happens at Music City Bar and Grill is always tinged with a sense of having stepped into another world, another timeline. This was not my first foray into this other realm — perhaps it was my fourth — but every visit, without fail, has resulted in an inspiration and excitement about music that you just don’t come across very easily.
Music City Bar and Grill is set in the parking lot across from the Nashville Palace and Scoreboard, two somewhat better known old-Nashville bars with live music. This cluster of bars, adjacent to the Opryland zone, is known as Music Valley, and under the gleaming light of the Cracker Barrel sign on Saturday night, Music City Bar and Grill offered a taste of what the honky tonks across town on Broadway ought to be. Singer Nathan Belt and his band were at the helm, where they’ll continue to be every Saturday until Feb. 10.
A key part of the Music Valley experience is that as you approach, you are greeted by the sound of live country music coming from all three bars at once, and it’s only as you step right in front of the door to Music City Bar and Grill that it becomes clear what you’ll be hearing that evening. As I approached on Saturday, it was what can only be described as a ripping fiddle solo. The band then proceeded to trade solos over changes while lead singer Belt walked around with the tip jar. This went on for maybe one or two more numbers — which was actually the perfect way to settle in, because another given at Music City Bar and Grill is that the band will be made up of the unsung heroes of country music, seasoned side musicians that have backed legends. I took the opportunity to get a feel for each of the instrumentalists’ playing (drums, electric bass, Telecaster, pedal steel, and fiddle).
The three lead players had pretty drastically different, though complimentary, styles. The fiddler (Kevin Moore) took a very riffy and scalar approach, likely informed by swing fiddling, and while this is not always my personal favorite style, he was such a seasoned player that it was a delight. He was always deep in the pocket, never took away from the song, and he played off the band. Tyler Hall, the pedal steel player, played confident classic licks, while the tele player (Jake Bradley) was the ultimate cool guy — never too flashy but somehow still keeping the energy up. Texan native Belt then got on stage and delivered country standards the rest of the night, backed by a rhythm section that, once its members (Jared Manzo on bass and Jon Radford on drums) locked in, was an absolute train. Belt’s vocal ease and mastery of country crooning swept up the listener and allowed you to relax into the songs.
Music City Bar and Grill fills with dancers and drinkers. Not the tourists from Broadway or the hipsters of East Nashville, but women with salon-styled hair and pearls and men in very sincere cowboy and trucker hats. I was probably one of the youngest people in attendance. The flavor is true locals, surely still mixed with tourists, but there’s a feeling of permanence. There’s a similar thread in the music as well, whereas a lot of Nashville feels precariously fluid and transient these days.
I’m a young professional musician myself, and as I listened and watched the dancers, I asked myself what made the Music City Bar and Grill experience so different from watching my very talented peers play at other places around town. It’s difficult to understand why magic gets stirred up in one place and not another, but one easy explanation is maybe the same for both the musicians and the dancers: time and experience, resulting in a feeling of being grounded. A lot of the younger folks around town, myself included, are still students of country music and music in general, not fully steeped. But at Music City Bar and Grill every band I’ve seen, including Nathan Belt’s, consists of players with a full and original voice in the style. They’re talking through the music so that even when they’re making mistakes — and there are honestly a lot of delightful mistakes being made on that stage — you hear decades of confidence and character.
Music City Bar and Grill is not bringing you country standards with a twist or an old sound presented through a new lens. That’s a different and equally interesting story that very much exists in Nashville. At Music City, the country standards are laid down by absolute professionals in a setting that feels like it endures the test of time and will always be there, when you need a little extra grounding and a trip to another world.
