He was Nashville’s ever-present and year-long version of Santa Claus, and his haunt Santa’s Pub is like the North Pole of the South. His real name was Elmer Denzel Irwin.
Hate on Lower Broadway all you want. But if you really want to make a difference about how that area is evolving, steer people to the places down there that are still doing it right, that act like beacons of true artistic expression.
The trend of pop projects being pushed to the country market that started in earnest with Beyoncé is beginning to look less like a short-lived trend for 2024, and now becoming endemic.
Originally from California, Emily felt the calling towards old school country music so resolutely, she dropped everything and moved to Nashville where she didn’t know a soul. Gifted in singing and writing songs though, she fell in with the right crowd around Nashville’s true country institutions.
Amid the rubble of what Nashville once was, lurking in the shadows of the condominium high rises and prefabricated mixed use block developments spanning across the city like a contagion, there is a thriving and vibrant honky tonk movement doing what it can to keep the old style of country music alive.