Rendering of the exterior, Ole Red, Nashville
Country singer and The Voice star Blake Shelton and Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. have unveiled plans for a chain of Shelton-branded live music venues called Ole Red, to be anchored by Ole Red Nashville, located in the heart of Music City’s famed, historic Lower Broadway. Ole Red Tishomingo, Okla., is also planned for Shelton’s hometown.
Ole Red, which stems from Shelton’s hit “Ol’ Red” is conceived as a lifestyle brand that celebrates the country lifestyle. The flagship Nashville location is expected to cost $20 million to build and will hold 1,500 people at full capacity.
Rendering of the first floor of Ole Red, Nashville.
“Our strategy is to create live music, restaurant, bar and retail spaces that will resonate with country music’s consumer base of more than 100 million people across the United States,” said Colin Reed, Ryman Hospitality Partners. “We hope to embody Blake’s clever, irreverent image.”
“As a company, we do a lot of research, and we determined that Blake’s appeal is universal,” he said. “He has 20 million Twitter followers and 10 million Facebook followers. He communicates outside the country-genre because of The Voice. He has an appeal that only a small percentage of performers have, and we are convinced he will be a great partner and will bring his fans to the venues.”
“I have known Blake for almost 10 years,” said Reed. “We go hunting and fishing together. About a year ago, we were talking about the tremendous success he’s had on The Voice and how it’s stimulated ‘brand Blake.' I suggested a venue around his persona. Blake came back to us three months later and said, ‘Let’s do it’.”
The financial capital will come from Ryman and the intellectual capital from Shelton.
“Blake will be contractually obligated to be there at certain times,” he said. “But we expect Blake to hang out and be there because he wants to be there, not just because he’s obligated to be there.”
Ryman Hospitality bought the building at 300 Broadway in 2014 and has been using it as a retail space. “Blake instantly fell in love with the building,” said Reed.
Tuck-Hinton Architects are designing the Nashville venue, Anderson Design Studio will be working on the interior design and Turner Construction will serve as the general contractor for Ole Red Nashville.
Ole Red Nashville will be a multilevel 26,000-sq.-ft., five-level entertainment venue. The first and second floor, a combined 10,000 sq.-ft., will house a two-story bar and restaurant, retail area, performance space, dance floor and private VIP booths for small groups. Reed expects to have 300 seats with room for another 300 people standing. “We’ll have huge screens in that space and, wherever Blake is on the planet, he can communicate into that space,” said Reed.
The third floor will be a 6,000 sq.-ft. private event space with 200 seats and room for 250 standing. “We want to create a great honky-tonk where people can come together and have fun.”
The fourth floor will hold the kitchen and back-of-house operations, with dumb waiters installed to move the food to the other floors.
Rendering of the rooftop terrace, Ole Red Nashville.
A rooftop terrace will cap the venue, featuring an indoor/outdoor bar and restaurant with panoramic views of Lower Broadway. “This is the highest of all the old buildings on Broadway and the views are going to be spectacular,” said Reed. The roof is expected to hold up to 440 people.
Seab Tuck, founder, Tuck-Hinton Architects, got involved in the project a year and a half ago. One of the challenges Tuck faced was converting a designated historic building into a modern venue without destroying its historical heritage. “The building used to be an old American National Bank,” said Tuck. “You have to be very careful in how you change the exterior as well as look at the buildings that are adjacent to it. I needed to maintain the fabric of the whole area.”
“We got drawings from 1948 when they last updated the building,” he said. “We also got photographs of the historic exterior, and we tried to restore it back to its period.”
The largest change will be moving the entrance from the center of the building back to the corner where it used to be. The interior will be all new. “We are literally gutting the entire inside and rebuilding a steel building inside,” said Tuck. “The floors were not the right height; they were not designed for a multipurpose venue. It’s expensive and time-consuming but necessary.”
The Nashville location is slated to open April 2018, and Ole Red Tishomingo is set to open in late 2017. “The Nashville location will be the best-of-the-best on Broadway,” he said. “The Tishomingo location is one level and will be much easier to build and therefore quicker to put up and open.”
The performance space at Ole Red Nashville will be equipped with a state-of-the-art sound system and acoustics tailor-made for the event programming that will take place there, including intimate concerts, live band karaoke, showcases for up-and-coming talent and more to be announced as the complex nears completion.
“It’s amazing to me to see a song that’s been such a big part of my career come to life in the plans for Ole Red,” said Blake Shelton at a press conference. “Nashville and Tishomingo are both places that are important to me, and it’s great that each location is going to have its own personality inspired by one of my favorite songs. It’s always been a dream of mine to create something like this where people know they’re going to have a good time as soon as they walk in the door, and I couldn’t be more excited that my friends at the Opry and Ryman Hospitality Properties are making it happen.”
Ryman will program the venue. “We’re going to do live-band karaoke; we’re going to rotate in new artists, and we think there is an opportunity to make Ole Red an artist discovery opportunity,” said Reed. "We’re seeing a surge in the affluent country-lifestyle consumer and we want to provide those folks an opportunity that will be hard for them to find anywhere else on Broadway.”
Interviewed for this story: Colin Reed, (615) 316 6000; Seab Tuck, (615) 254-4100