Why Do Parts of Nashville’s Heart Keep Getting Torn Out?

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By Gregory Crofton

You know how the price of concert tickets keep going up? There’s a reason for that and it’s called Big Music, you know like Big Oil. These companies are so large, and have gobbled up so many smaller companies, that they control the market.

After experiencing the rise of file-sharing and then streaming, music industry executives realized the real money is in live concerts. By 2010 an artist booking company called Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster, long hated by artists and fans, to form the monopoly Live Nation Entertainment.

This past May the U.S. Department of Justice along with 29 states finally took action. They sued the Live Nation/Ticketmaster conglomerate for anti-trust violations, or having a monopoly. The case is on-going but damage has already been done to live music venues across the country including Nashville’s iconic Exit/In.

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Many venues like it were left vulnerable after live music was not an option during the Pandemic. These places had integrity and history and became targets of Big Music and its partners.

Nashville’s Exit/In was such a brand and ended its stretch of 51 years in business after being purchased by AJ Capital Partners in 2022. The venue reopened under the same name last year, but it’s no longer independent.

Since moving to town in 2005 most of the rock bands I wanted to see played the Exit/In — bands like High on Fire, Whores., Sebadoh and The Jesus Lizard.

Not anymore.

“The Day the Music Stopped,” a new documentary directed by Patrick Sheehan, reports how the takeover of Exit/In went down and the Douglas Corner Cafe closed in 2020. The Mercy Lounge complex was sold and shut down in 2022. It is shocking when you see the story told as one piece.

“The Day the Music Stopped” won the Audience Award for a Tennessee Feature at last week’s 55th Nashville Film Festival. It was produced by former local news anchor Demetria Kalodimos and Stephen Thompson.

Not only is the film packed with live concert footage, including Diarrhea Planet playing the final indie show at Exit/In, it does the heavy lifting of telling the story of New Nashville (2014-2024). It captures what it was like for residents to experience a massive wave of development while losing vital pieces of its culture.

Through archival news clips, Sheehan also documents the dark train of disasters that our cash-strapped city had to deal with a decade after it experienced a massive flood in 2010. The tornado came first in 2020, then Covid-19, then a riot outside City Hall, ending with the bombing of Second Avenue on Christmas Day.

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Exit/In was exactly the type of “old’ Nashville we should have able to protect. It was considered part of Nashville’s “soul” because for decades it drew talent like Billy Joel, Etta James, Steve Martin and many more stars. The hundreds of performers who played the club were listed on signs on a wall behind the main bar.

But in 2021 the club became a target of the real estate investment company AJ Capital Partners because the family that owned the Exit/In building was willing to sell. Thankfully Cobb, who actually owned the business of Exit/In, put up a fight.

With long black hair, a strong voice and “Gimme Some Truth” tattooed on his lower leg, Cobb fought hard to retain his ownership. He along with Nashville Councilman Jeff Syracuse rallied members of the community who cared about preserving the Rock Block, a historic neighborhood of which Exit/In was a key part.

Cobb started a crowd-funding campaign that raised more than $200,000 in a few days with the hope they could outbid AJ Capital. It probably wasn’t possible to outbid them, but really about making the process appear fair.

Loss of a club like Exit/In can be a blow to a city’s culture. Corporate ownership of a venue means the loss of control of bookings and all but guarantees ticket sales are handled by Ticketmaster. Companies like Live Nation also take a larger cut of profits from the door and merchandise, which makes it more difficult for a “scene” to develop or for new bands to earn a living.

So how does Nashville prevent the loss of another important venue, like say 3rd and Lindsley, from happening again? After Exit/In closed, Cobb, Syracuse and others continued their work by gathering data to show state lawmakers there is a need for a live music fund. That information became a bill that the Tennessee General Assembly approved in April, with live music funding to be dispersed through the Tennessee Entertainment Commission.

To learn more about “The Day the Music Stopped,” visit the film’s website here. Watch a trailer for the doc below.

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