Why does your page look like this?

by Jewly Hight

It doesn’t seem to matter much that 3^rd & Lindsley Bar and Grill is a bit oddly shaped, like an elbow with a stage situated at its point. Or that the club occupies the corner of a drab business complex in the middle of an industrial area—not exactly what you’d envision as a popular entertainment destination. Still, it’s thrived there for 17 years and some 12,000 shows—long enough for the children of people who used to play there to come of age and do their own shows—and that’s no small feat for a Nashville club.

Constant activity has a lot to do with that success. Between the business lunch crowd, short-and-sweet 6 o’clock showcases and early and late shows seven nights a week, there’s not an idle moment from 11 a.m. on. The club offers something for both the early-to-bed crowd and more youthful night-owl types, plus, the parking’s free and fairly easy to come by, and that kind of convenience goes a long way with us.

There are also precious few seated venues in town, but 3^rd & Lindsley’s got almost every available inch of space populated with tables. In fact, anybody who’s the diehard standing sort finds few places to do it, except just inside the door or in the line for the bathroom. (They’ve added about 100 seats to the original 180 over the years by expanding the balcony and moving the back wall.) Not many Nashville venues transcend bottom-of-the-barrel bar food (i.e. stale nachos and hot dogs) either, but 3^rd & Lindsley gives us a simple, solid restaurant menu developed by a veteran kitchen manager who’s been there since the place opened.

From the start, founder and manager Ron Brice has been taking some of his cues from Lightning 100’s approach (the station hit the airwaves only a year or so before 3^rd & Lindsley opened its doors), booking progressive yet roots-oriented music and paying attention to local acts needing a boost and proven touring acts. (For years, Lightning 100 has broadcast its Nashville Sunday Night shows from the 3^rd & Lindsley stage.) The featured acts are—broadly speaking—anything AAA-friendly, from this week’s blues-jam-Southern rock trio North Mississippi Allstars to hometown indie-pop singer and songwriter Landon Pigg the week before.

But the most important thing Brice has done for the club is to establish a musical niche that’s defined just clearly enough without getting monotonous. He calls it a “groove room,” and since he handles almost all the booking himself, show lineups tend to be colored by his own tastes. On any given night, “groove” can mean blues, R&B, country, Americana, rock, soul or something along those lines. Some names appear on the bill pretty frequently—Jonell Mosser, Jeffrey Steele and Joanna Cotten, to name a few—but the only thing remotely close to a house band is the long-running Wednesday night Wooten Brothers gig, and even that’s peppered with surprise guests.

So thanks, 3^rd & Lindsley, for always letting us take a load off and giving us extra choices on the menu and the nightly schedule. Here’s to your last year as a minor.