Nashville beyond Broadway: the bars and rooms musicians go to

I played bass on Lower Broadway for six years, four-hour shifts for tips, three or four shifts a week. It is a great place to learn your trade and a fun place to spend an evening. But when we had a night off, almost nobody I knew went to Broadway. Here is where we went instead.

The Station Inn

A plain stone building in the Gulch, now surrounded by glass towers, with folding chairs, pizza and some of the best bluegrass players in the world. Sunday nights there is an open jam, and you will hear people who play on big records sitting in with teenagers. Arrive early; it holds fewer than two hundred people and there are no reservations.

Songwriter rounds

Nashville runs on songs, and the people who write them are mostly unknown outside the business. A round puts three or four writers on stools in a circle, taking turns, and telling you which star turned their song into a hit. The Bluebird Cafe, in a strip mall on Hillsboro Pike, is the famous one. Its seats are released online a week ahead and go in minutes, so have a plan B: several bars and hotels downtown run rounds most nights, with less fuss.

Printers Alley

One block north of Broadway, Printers Alley was the city's nightclub strip in the 1940s and 1950s, when the newspapers and printers worked by day. Today it has a handful of bars with blues and older country, smaller and quieter than Broadway, and a few with a smoky charm that the big new places do not have.

Monday nights on the east side

East Nashville, across the river, is where many working musicians live. On Monday nights, when the session players have no gigs, some bars there book bands of studio aces playing for fun: Western swing, old soul, whatever they like. Ask your tour leader which room has the best one that week.

Studio B, by day

For history, the best hour in Nashville is the RCA Studio B tour, booked through the Country Music Hall of Fame. The room is small, the console is original, and the guide plays Elvis or Dolly Parton back to you in the space where they were recorded. It is the closest you will come to the Nashville Sound without a time machine.

Then go to Broadway anyway

I am not against Broadway. Go once, early in the evening, to Robert's Western World or Tootsie's, and tip the band. Those players are working hard. Just know that the city has more to give, and the best of it is a few blocks away.