Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Downtown Nashville has become one big Cheers, that '80s TV sitcom about a Boston bar where everybody knows your name.

Lower Broadway Nashville has become a Bourbon Street meets Epcot. Modern but old-fashioned cluster of bars and branded restaurants. No one really planned this because it sort of just happened.

This week it was time to talk about Jason Aldean's Kitchen and Rooftop bar. Between 3rd and 4th on Lower Broadway ... 27,000 square feet of restaurant and bar rooms ...With a big tractor and a huge patio. Items to eat such as a Hicktown Bison Burger and Big Green Tractor Tacos. Six bars and seating in restaurant for 250. New folks playing on stages and peach cobbler from Mom's recipe.

How much fun would it be to have your own watering hole? Fun if you can afford it.

Food and Country music are no strangers. Kenny Rogers told me he made more money on chicken than he ever did on record sales. PoFolks, Minnie Pearl's Chicken, in modern times Kenny Chesney's Blue Chair liquor brand.

Branding is huge these days and from Blake to Dierks, Country music lives and breathes branding.

Look at the names now in a four-or-so block cluster downtown: Alan Jackson, Fla Ga Line, Jimmy Buffet, Dierks Bentley, Blake Shelton, George Jones and Johnny Cash brands, too. Hard Rock and Tootsie's in that mix as well.

This cluster will be in full bloom CMA Music Festival week next month. Is this a trend that will burn fast or last a long time?

The Wildhorse has been around as has The Hard Rock and Tootsie's for years. Parking, prices, safety are among the unknowns and challenges.

Country artists have been endorsing products for decades ... Yes, artists have put their names on buildings, too. Ray Stevens most recently in West Nashville and Alabama on music halls in East Tennessee and Myrtle Beach and of course, there's Branson.

This is amazing to watch as it unfolds! Bourbon Street, Beale Street have nothing on this new downtown Music City.

And furthermore ... Reba is selling the Colonel's chicken and others are on TV selling toothpaste and insurance. Nationwide is on your side...

The Pop Queens of Country are on the road. Taylor Swift and Shania Twain have big productions spanning North America, with Taylor adding Japan this week to her itinerary.

Taylor has a show with a Godzilla-size snake rearing up and Shania has five hydraulic risers and dancers and more dancers.

Taylor may gross $300 million this tour ... some writers want to play up the lack of total ticket sellouts ... Fake news ... both are cleaning up ... The live music business seems like it's in very good shape.

This weekend Aldean starts his tour and Brad Paisley and Ellen are raising money for the Montecito fire and mudslide victims...

Mother's Day and Nashville's Steeplechase ... Hot weather and volcanoes shooting out lava fountains ... Things are just getting started in the Summer of 2018.