Through his Louisville-based LEE Initiative, celebrity chef Edward Lee created a new program in select cities — including Nashville — to help those who work in the on-hold touring music industry. The program, called Touring Professionals Relief Kitchen, started in December and is serving 3,200 free meals every week to music industry pros in four cities. (The other three cities are Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.)
“This is definitely an effort where chefs and musicians are uniting for a common cause, and that is special,” Lee said in an email interview with the Scene. “Music and food have always had a special bond. We have had so many musicians come to my restaurants over the years. Now it is our turn to help the people who are the backbone of the live music industry.”
In Nashville, the meals are being created and distributed at Sean Brock’s not-yet-open Audrey and Maneet Chauhan’s Chaatable — each offering free food on a roughly weekly schedule. The full schedule is online; upcoming dates include Wednesday, Dec. 30, and Thursday, Jan. 7, from 4-6 p.m. at Chaatable on the West Side, and Tuesday, Jan. 5, and Tuesday, Jan. 12, at Audrey from noon-4 p.m. on the East Side. Touring crew members can pick up the hot meals, take them home to their families, and get a little bit of relief as the moratorium on touring live music stretches on. And on.
Maneet Chauhan
“Both are chefs who care about their community and both have strong ties to the music industry,” said Lee of Brock and Chauhan, adding that he has had the pleasure of cooking with both of them over the years. “They have been involved in the local food economy and they both have such a passion for Nashville, it felt right. When we activate restaurants to do relief, we are also helping the farms that they buy from, the employees that work in their company.”
“Chef Edward Lee is such a respected person in our industry, so when he reached out about his initiative and said this is something he was planning to do in Nashville, I said ‘I want to be involved,’ without hesitation,” Chauhan says. “This is an important program because people who set up concerts, from tour managers, lighting technicians, audio engineers, and more are out of a job because concerts won’t be back to normal until at least 2022, so we are doing what we can do to help and what we can do is cook.”
Lee feels that the “massive struggle” of those who work in the music industry hasn’t gotten as much national attention as some other hard-hit industries, and notes that there is not currently a timeline for touring to restart.
“It’s a privilege to be able to contribute some relief to an industry and people that have provided so many wonderful memories for all of us over the years. The music industry has been hit harder than just about any of us and if anyone has the ability to contribute to this initiative I strongly encourage them to,” adds Brock. Indeed, if you don’t need a meal, but want to support those who do, there’s a donation link on the LEE Initiative site.
