Billy Block had only been living in Nashville for a few months when he began to miss the spirit of unity he’d seen in the Los Angeles Americana scene in the late 1980s and early ’90s—before there was such a thing as “Americana.”
There, the Texas native had started a weekly show called “Western Beat,” the name copped from the country night at a European festival his friends Jim Lauderdale, Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore had played. The concept itself was borrowed, Block happily admits, from Ronnie Mack’s Barn Dance, a long-running weekly show in L.A.
“There was no cohesive scene in Nashville,” recalls Block, “so I started asking everybody, ‘What do you guys think about starting a Barn Dance here?’ ” Sutler owner Johnny Potts agreed to give him Tuesdays, typically the slowest night of the week, to do with as he wished. “Ten years later,” he says, “here we are.”
In the past decade, Billy Block’s Western Beat has become an emblem of the Americana movement’s growth in Nashville and a rallying point for, as he says, “bringing the margins to the mainstream.” The Tuesday-night gathering, which has been broadcast on Lightning 100 radio since its beginnings, is now webcast, and for one season was featured on CMT. Block’s brand now even extends to a record label.
Still, Block is mindful of the show’s beginnings, and for the first Tuesday of each February tries as much as possible to reunite the debut show’s original lineup: Lauderdale, Kristi Rose, Duane Jarvis and Walter Hyatt, who died in 1996. Kicking off a month of special shows to celebrate the anniversary, Tuesday’s show will feature Rose, as well as a tribute to Hyatt by Buck Jones, Ericson Holt and Victor Anthony. Subsequent Tuesdays in February will feature more special guests, winding up on the 28th at the show’s new home, 12th & Porter, after eight years at the Exit/In.
“The Exit/In has been a great venue for us, but they’ve had some changes in management and I think the direction is different from when we started,” says Block.
Block’s ambitions for Western Beat include a return to TV—and perhaps snaring the one guest he’s never been able to convince to turn up on a Tuesday night. “This is gonna sound funny, but I’d love it if Garth Brooks came,” he says with a chuckle. “Why not? The thing about Western Beat is, everybody’s welcome.”
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