News came down the pike on July 9 that Luke Bryan will be the next country star to open a venue on Nashville’s Lower Broadway.
The eventual opening of Luke’s 32 Bridge Kitchen + Drink will follow a number of established artist-invested venues, including Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row, Florida Georgia Line’s FGL House, John Rich’s Redneck Riviera, Blake Shelton’s Ole Red and Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar.
However, trendsetter Alan Jackson really got the ball rolling in 2014 when he became the majority owner of Acme Feed & Seed.
“I always wanted a bar to call home, especially on Lower Broadway after it became a place to go and after all of the clean up down there,” says Alan. “It’s a good place to go and hear good country music. I just love that part of Nashville and its history and how that was some of the ground work for country music in Nashville—like backstage at the Ryman and those places and Tootsies, other places like that. I saw it changing and growing with the tourists, and I didn’t want it to lose that quality that it had of where real country music was played.”
In 2016, Alan opened another Lower Broadway venue, AJ’s Good Time Bar, which is the only venue 100 percent owned by an artist on Lower Broadway. The four-level building boasts more than 6,000-square-feet of good timin’ fun, including a honky-tonk on the first floor, a man cave on the second floor, a fishing-themed third level (the bar is a replica of AJ’s Hullbilly boat from his “5 O’clock Somewhere” video) and a rooftop bar. The venue also sports wall-to-wall memorabilia from throughout Alan’s career, televisions for watching the big games, stages for live performances and a karaoke bar.
“My goal and motive was just to do what George Jones had always told me, and that’s just to keep it country,” Alan says. “That’s keeping it country down on Broadway and some of the history of where it all started.”
Take a look inside AJ’s Good Time Bar below (click the link if the gallery doesn’t appear below).
