Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood Open Nashville Honky Tonk As Amazon Streams Docuseries On Building It

It was back in November when Garth Brooks marked the partial opening of his not-yet-completed Nashville bar with a live concert on Amazon. Now, four months later, his Friends In Low Places honky tonk is fully operational and open for business.

“A lot of love has gone into this building,” he says. “And a lot of people have come together to make this happen.”

Located in the middle of the city’s bustling Lower Broadway, Friends offers four floors of entertainment and event space.

The first and second floor serve as a honky tonk where customers can eat, drink, and listen to live music. Those on the second floor can look down and enjoy the band on the floor below.)

The third floor houses the membership-only Sevens Club, along with a collection of beautifully designed rooms that will be available for private rental. One of them is Trisha’s Studio Kitchen. Yearwood says down the road the space might be used for a live cooking show or perhaps even cooking classes.

The fourth floor is the rooftop bar called the “Oasis.” Like so many other notable bits and pieces throughout the honky tonk, the name ties back to Garth Brooks through his songs, personal interests, and career history.

Brooks worked with Max and Ben Goldberg, and others at Strategic Hospitality to design and create his bar and honky tonk. Strategic Hospitality is the company behind some of Nashville’s most celebrated restaurants. (They include The Patterson House, The Catbird Seat, Henrietta Red, Locust, and others.) Strategic Hospitality owned 411 Broadway before selling it to Brooks. The location once housed the popular Paradise Park Trailer Resort before Strategic bought it and turned it into the Downtown Sporting Club.

Designing and creating his new Friends honky tonk has taken more than two years and Brooks allowed cameras to film the entire process. Now that it’s officially open, Amazon is streaming a docuseries that tells the behind-the-scenes story of bringing it all together.

Brooks sees Friends in Low Places as his way of giving back to the city of Nashville, as well as his fans, in return for his incredible career. And while a number of country artists now have their names on establishments in downtown Nashville, many are joint ventures with other business owners. Brooks designed Friends to have a distinctly personal feel. Devoted fans will see glimpses of Brooks everywhere.

“They’ll notice the minute they step in here, oh that, that, that,” Brooks says, “because they’re me and I’m them. ‘Oh, Garth had to do that.’ Or they’ll say ‘taste this food! Have you seen the size of Garth; I know he loves this!’ They know me inside and out.”

And when it comes to the food, what’s served at Friends In LowPlaces definitely has Brooks approval. Everything was carefully by Yearwood who hosted her own cooking show on the Food Network for years.

“The goal here was to keep it simple which is what I talk about all the time,” says Yearwood. “That’s what we’re going for here. If you come in and you’re hungry you want to have something that sustains you. So, you want a good burger. Then, there’s chicken tenders and french fries, like steak fries. We made the food we liked. And we have a meat-and-three option because we’re in Nashville, we’re in the South and that’s how we grew up. So, you can get my mom’s fried chicken and white gravy, you can get meatloaf, you can get cooked-to-death green beans, and really good corn bread.”

For dessert there’s caramel-bottom apple pie or a piece of Garth & Trisha’s wedding cake just like the one Yearwood’s mother made all those years ago.

Brooks says his honky tonk will offer a positive place where people can come together, enjoy county music, and “love one another.” Safety, too, is a top priority. Brooks funded a Police substation right next door and has worked to implement other measures to ensure customer safety.

“The police came in and said, ‘Hey, if you have a medical emergency, we’d like to launch a system where you hit one button, all the lights come up, and the music shuts down,’” Brooks says. “So, we’re the first bar that’s going to have that system.”

He hopes other establishments along Lower Broadway will follow suit.

Brooks wants Friends in Low Places to be a welcoming place for people visiting Nashville not just now, but for decades to come.

“Every decision you make, you try to go twenty years ahead of yourself and you look back and think what does it do? If this is, hopefully, what I want it to be, then this place will be ‘love. That’s it.”