Hunky-Tonk Angels: Nashville’s Male-Revue Landscape

Few people are more qualified to be a Ranch Hand than Patrick Tanski. 

By day, Tanski is a ranch hand who works on a farm outside Nashville rescuing and taming wild mustangs and Western pleasure horses. By night, he takes the stage with Ranch Hands Cowboylesque — a twice-weekly show at Cannery Hall — as a Ranch Hand of the male-revue variety. 

He wears the same outfit for all of it: a cutoff flannel and jeans. 

A former Chippendales performer, Tanski found the gig while searching for “ranch hand jobs in Nashville.” It was kismet. 

While tourists aren’t exceedingly likely to find a man who works in agriculture for a living while they’re out for a night in downtown Nashville, the Ranch Hands fulfill the fantasy. 

“When girls come to Nashville, they want to see cowboys, because that’s the whole aura of the city,” Tanski tells the Scene. “They’re thinking country music and cowboys.” 

That’s why the Chippendales had one of its dancers ride a horse down Broadway in June (with the help of a family of horse trainers) to signal the 1979-founded male revue’s grand entrance to Music City — and its first residency outside Las Vegas. Chippendales’ “Nashville Experience” has set up shop at the Hard Rock Cafe on Lower Broad.

Very “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.”

Local male revue Music City Gents, on the other hand, is a little more Ginuwine’s “Pony.”

Music City Gents operates out of a building on Trimble Street in Chestnut Hill. And for founder Adam Visbeen — who first entered the male-revue scene back in 2017 — the cowboy trope is limiting. 

“I never wanted to be full cowboy,” he explains. “I don’t think Nashville is cowboy. I don’t think we’re very much that cowboy culture at all. But I do understand that these girls think it is.”

The serial entrepreneur previously ran transpotainment company Nashville Party Barge. He also ran a now-defunct scooter tour business. When Visbeen left active military duty in 2017, he bought a house in Germantown. He lived in the garage, showered at the local YMCA and used his new house as a short-term rental. With the money he saved, he launched Music City Gents. 

“I stuffed flyers in my back pockets, put my cowboy hat in the back of my shirt, and I rode down to Broadway after work on Friday [on a scooter] and handed flyers out till, I don’t know, midnight,” Visbeen says. “Then Saturday morning, I knew exactly where every party bus, pedal tavern, party anything was happening, and I would just walk Broadway like Terminator, looking for girls in bachelorette attire and talking to them.” 

Visbeen says that by his fourth year in business, he did $1 million in sales thanks to word-of-mouth marketing. 

Visbeen has applied the work ethic he developed while in the military to grow his business — so much so that his dancers can rely on Music City Gents for full-time income. But he’s also a retired dancer himself. He was an extra in 2015’s Magic Mike XXL, and during filming he befriended dancers from famous Dallas strip club LaBare. For a time, he even flew in from Fort Campbell, where he was stationed, to dance at LaBare on weekends. (At one point he learned to juggle fire, but the Nashville Fire Department put a stop to that when he tried it at Music City Gents.)

These days, Visbeen manages the business — running his Airbnb, managing party buses and even driving a shuttle bus. Even so, during a recent show, a joke about Visbeen coming out of dance retirement garnered some of the loudest screams of the night.

Joining the scene in 2021, Lexy Burke’s operation Ranch Hands is the PG-13, pants-stay-on answer to the Gents’ raunchy shadow-humping and mild flogging. 

“I wanted to do something that was more Nashville and more approachable,” says Burke. “We have 90th birthdays at the Ranch and things that get sexy, but not like where you’re scared.”

Burke’s journey also began with an Airbnb aimed at bachelorette groups — bachelorettes who often asked her what to do in town. Inspired by the success of Paramount’s popular neo-Western Yellowstone and using her background in film and theater, Burke wrote the Ranch Hands script. And yes, there is a script — and a plot, singing and comedy, unlike what you’ll find at most male-revue offerings. She used the money from her rental property to start the show, and later used the profits from Ranch Hands to found White Velvet Wedding Chapel.  

Burke does something relatively new in the male-revue space — offering some body diversity. 

“This is just a part-time gig for these guys,” she points out. “Just having them be able to keep up stamina-wise was all I really cared about. I don’t want it to be having all these meatheads on stage. That’s not relatable.” 

The host of the show, Blake Rackley, describes himself as more of a “Chris Farley doing Chippendales”  offering. And he gets as many or more dollars stuffed in his pockets as the rest of the cast. 

Tanski, the former Chippendale now at Ranch Hands, loves that he’s able to keep a beard and his chest hair, leave a few weeks between haircuts and even sport a slight farmer’s tan. It adds to the character. 

“I’m Italian, I’m a hairy guy — me taking the time out of my week to shave my chest is a lot of time, and just having to keep up with the maintenance is a lot of work,” Tanski says of Chippendales’ rigorous grooming requirements. “Honestly, in my experience, I get the same reaction here now, looking the way that I do, as I did when I was smooth as a dolphin and just had to be jacked and ripped.” 

Unlike the homegrown shows that can make their own rules and forge their own path, Chippendales has a 40-plus-year legacy to uphold. That rigidity translates to polish onstage. And that’s not to mention the real working onstage shower, a motorcycle that’s brought into the act and a bevy of coordinating themed outfits.

Childhood best friends Jon Jones and Zac Trautman, now Nashville Chippendales, previously worked together in the elevator repair business. 

“We both came in thinking, ‘Oh, we’re just going to get up onstage and have some fun and shake it all around,’” Trautman tells the Scene. “It’s not like that at all. It’s a full-blown production, down to the lights, making sure your hand is placed in a certain area. You get constant corrections, sometimes 40 hours of rehearsals per week. It’s the real deal. It was humbling, for sure.”

Dance captain Teddy Zervoulakos, a Chippendale since 2011, says he can teach anyone to dance — even guys like Jones and Trautman who don’t have a lick of experience.  

“These guys were troupers,” he says.

“You can move your upper chest,” says Jones. “You can move your hips by themselves. You can isolate that. Before, I’m just like a board. I’m stiff. Watching old videos, it’s honestly hilarious.” 

Zervoulakos’ favorite number in the show is one he choreographed and Jones stars in — a bathtub routine.

“You have to have a certain confidence, a certain air about you, but I don’t feel like there’s any type of tension between us,” Zervoulakos says. “When I’m onstage with these guys, I want them to do their best, and I trust them that they’re going to do shower, tub, all of it.” 

Most of the Chippendales performers moved to Nashville specifically for the gig. There’s no Chippendales house for the transplants, but if there were, “They’d have meal prep down,” jokes Zervoulakos.

Ranch Hands dance captain Anthony LaGuardia formerly performed as a dancer on Broadway (the one in New York City) and in touring musicals. He tells the Scene he loves being part of the residency because he gets to go home to his fiancé most nights. On the night the Scene visits Ranch Hands, the two are dancing side by side. 

LaGuardia met his fiancé, a former cheerleader, when LaGuardia pulled him onstage during a performance. While LaGuardia says he doesn’t like to mix work and personal life, in a pinch one night, his then-boyfriend — who knew the Ranch Hands choreography by heart — filled in for a missing performer. 

LaGuardia says when casting Ranch Hands, he goes by attitude over skill set. 

“What I’m looking at is how everybody’s treating each other in the room,” he says. “People can get better. I have trained many a dancer in my life. People will always get better, and there’s nothing that a little bit of practice won’t be able to fix. What I can’t fix is poor personalities and people who don’t treat each other with respect.” 

Over at Music City Gents, it’s all about teamwork. The guys set up and tear down the show. They also check in and seat guests. It builds a rapport between the guests and the Gents, Visbeen says, and allows the Gents to take ownership of the show. He says it’s rare for a Gent to leave the show, and the core group leans on each other during times of struggle — like when one of the Gents died during off-season, or when Visbeen’s father died on a show night. 

“I just know that at the end of my life, I will always be so proud of what we built here as a team, even if I don’t make as much money as the next person,” Visbeen says, “because I would be so proud to know that I built a team that gave a shit about each other.”

Visbeen has something most other male-revue proprietors don’t — his own building. He owns the Music City Gents space at 69 Trimble St. (Yes, that’s really the address.) Each of the male revues mentioned in this story has dealt with venue uncertainty. Nashville has a limited number of midsize venues that can accommodate a male revue on weekend nights, so the groups often fight over the same few stages.

In 2024, Chippendales sued downtown Nashville’s Woolworth Theatre, alleging that the venue negotiated an agreement to host the show before ultimately choosing Thunder From Down Under for an (albeit short) residency there. Thunder, an Australian-born male revue, lasted from September 2024 to May 2025 in the historic space. 

Ranch Hands was caught in the crossfire of that deal. The local troupe began performing at Woolworth’s in 2023. After a year in the space, they were given three weeks’ notice to find a new venue. Before Woolworth, Ranch Hands had hosted brunch shows at Nashville Palace; after, they ultimately landed at Cannery Hall. 

In their seven-year tenure, Music City Gents have performed at six different venues: the now-defunct Piranha’s, Bowie’s, The Valentine, Nashville Underground and Hard Rock, before finding their permanent home in The Trimble. Seeking to put money down on a permanent home, Visbeen was met with banks that conflated the male-revue business with strip clubs. He wasn’t able to get the loan to purchase the building, so he began renting — and the owner eventually allowed him to  purchase it. 

“I’ve called a few bank executives, I played hardball,” Visbeen says. “It’s like, ‘Show me in your policies where it says anything against what I do,’ and they couldn’t prove it to me. It was just their perception of what they didn’t want to have involvement with.” 

A bit of context: A male strip show is defined by its setting — a strip club. Visbeen says male revues also differ in that they’re during a set time block. Both Ranch Hands and Music City Gents borrow the tipping tradition from the strip-club world, encouraging guests to shove dollars in performers’ pants and pockets. Chippendales distances itself by banning tipping, but performers with both Chippendales and Music City Gents strip down to their briefs. 

Visbeen says he put $750,000 into renovating the building, which was slated to be completed in January 2023. But then he says he encountered problems with a contractor that eventually resulted in a lawsuit. And earlier this year, several inches of water flooded the space. Despite the challenges, Music City Gents officially opened in May. 

“I always knew competition was going to come,” Visbeen says. “Kind of sucks, financially, but at the same point, I have the number one thing that nobody else has, and I will bank on that all day — because at any moment, any one of those shows can get the boot to the street.” 

Meanwhile, Ranch Hands is expanding, adding another residency in Scottsdale, Ariz. — another popular bachelorette destination — after a successful pop-up in the fall. They signed with a talent agency and booked more gigs, including at CMA Fest. The group is planning a tour, and a brunch offering is returning. 

Turns out, cowboys play well with just about everyone — Ranch Hands has toured in locales as far-flung as South Dakota, Connecticut and Canada, and has seen Irish visitors at their Nashville shows.

Burke credits her success to her own female gaze. 

“I am the audience — I’m in bachelorette parties,” she says. “I think that that has been what’s made it so successful — all of our clientele walking through the door are girls I hang out with.” 

Over the past decade, the male-revue landscape has seemingly evolved to de-center men in power — none of the performers on the stages that the Scene patronized were wearing police or military uniforms. Music City Gents have gone so far as to theme a performer, Valentino, as the “romance” guy. His entrance involves giving a rose to one lucky audience member. 

Visbeen wants to make sure his performers understand from their very first interview with him that the show is not about them.  

 “I want you to be able to be humble enough to know that all these girls are loving the show, but it ain’t about you,” he tells the Scene. “It’s about the experience for these girls.” 

He adds: “You got all these women coming through here every weekend, and this is their one weekend with their best friends, and they’ll never forget this for the rest of their life. So you better go out there and perform like that. You have this one moment in these people’s lives they’ll never forget. So what level of ‘give a shit’ are you going to bring to this?” 

Each group the Scene spoke to for this story echoed some version of that same sentiment: Male revues are about helping the audience escape. 

“We just want to make sure they feel seen,” Chippendales’ Zervoulakos says. “They feel like they’re part of the show, because that’s essentially what we want them to do, just distract them from what’s going on and make them feel wanted. Because I think that’s all anyone really wants, is just to feel accepted.”

The new-to-town Chippendales were not aware of the term “woo girls” or the vitriol that is sometimes aimed at Nashville’s influx of bachelorette parties.  

“Woo girls welcome,” they say.