The venue opens next week with a Dive Bar concert
Garth Brooks is the best-selling male solo artist of all time, with 157 million albums and counting. So it’s only natural, Brooks says, that his first bar and honkytonk be located on Nashville’s famed Lower Broadway. The venue, opening next week, will serve everyone and every beer, Brooks tells Jane Pauley in an interview for CBS News Sunday Morning to be broadcast Sunday, November 19th at 9 am ET on the CBS Television Network and streaming on Paramount+.
Brooks caused a minor kerfuffle earlier this year when he said his Friends in Low Places Bar and Honky Tonk would serve all beers, including Bud Light, then at the center of an inclusion debate.
“I think if you want division on this planet at this time, talk about unity, talk about love … What’s our other option, right?” Brooks tells Pauley. “I’m with love. You come on this ship or not. But love is big enough for all of us. They say the hardest question on the planet is why are we down here? That’s the easiest one. We’re down here for each other. That’s why there’s more than just one of us down here. So I love that … And I kind of love the differences because that’s the fun part of it.”
Brooks tells Pauley there is room in Nashville for one more bar and honky tonk, especially one named after his 1990 hit “Friends in Low Places.”
“Don’t want to be egotistical. ‘Friends in Low Places,’ for me, is a chapter in country music, so I think it needs to be here,” Brooks says.
“If you’re lucky enough to get to sell some records in this town, you owe this town. And so I’m sitting there going, ‘How can I pay back?’ Well, if you come down here on Lower Broadway and there’s not a Friends in Low Places, are you kidding me?” Brooks says.
“What’s the difference between a bar and a honky tonk?” Pauley asks.
“Well, a bar’s a place usually where just locals come, like you saw in ‘Cheers,’” Brooks says. “That’s a bar. A honky tonk’s probably got a dance floor, a little bigger, right? And it’s modeled like a dance hall.”
Brooks is set to open the new venue on Black Friday, November 24th with the first-ever Black Friday Amazon Music Live (AML) special of his famed “Dive Bar” concerts. Livestreamed from the grand opening, the AML special will give Brooks’ millions of fans around the globe a front-row seat for the highly-anticipated show.
Last year, it was announced that Brooks teamed with the city of Nashville for a police substation that will be adjacent to the bar at 411 Broadway. Nashville Mayor John Cooper says the agreement will bring additional safety measures and traffic control tools to Lower Broadway. The new substation will be developed by Brooks at no cost to Metro taxpayers and will add critical resources to both departments’ efforts to reduce traffic congestion and keep the city’s busiest few blocks secure.
Last week, Brooks released “Rodeo Man,” a duet with Ronnie Dunn to country radio and Amazon Music. The song appears on Time Traveler, which was released last week as well as part of Brooks’ new seven-disc boxed set, The Limited Series, available exclusively through Bass Pro Shops.
