There are mixologists who can tell you where they gathered the bergamot that infuses their artisanal tisanes. Lee Parrish is a bartender. Stationed behind the sturdy bar at legendary Old Nashville steakhouse Jimmy Kelly's, a galleon anchored amid tides of change, the quick-witted, unflappable Parrish is a barkeep in the Frank Sinatra sense: a guy who pours the good stuff neat, leaves you alone if you so desire, but stands by discreetly if you need a sympathetic ear.
"He listens," says proprietor Mike Kelly, whose family has run the Centennial Park-area restaurant for 81 years, 15 of them with Parrish behind the bar. "Bartending is a second level of psychiatry. Sometimes people just want to talk to you about what's happening in their world."
Parrish honed that skill working at a defunct nightspot in Murfreesboro. He learned lots of useful skills there: how to mix drinks, how to cut people off, what to do when the 7-foot dude you just served a shot turns out to be a hellfire-preaching VA patient on a Thorazine bender. (The short answer: One Diet Coke, coming right up.)
That talent really isn't needed at Jimmy Kelly's, whose clientele ranges from families to Tennessee kingmakers to Neil Young. Many years ago Parrish considered giving up bartending, he recalls, sitting at the same corner table that's hosted everyone from Eddy Arnold to James Gandolfini. But after one too many 2 a.m. runs down Kentucky's Pennyrile Parkway delivering lost luggage for the airport — "I just heard a voice in my head saying, 'And he was never heard from again ...' " — he took the Jimmy Kelly's gig and never looked back. He hasn't had New Year's off since Y2K.
And no wonder. He upends a gleaming martini glass, fills it in a practiced gesture with a mix of ice and soda water. "It chills faster," he says. He empties it and pours a libation of Hendrick's gin, adding the merest whiff of olive juice. It's hard to imagine something so cold could deliver such delicious warmth.
And yet he's not in the least pretentious about what he does. Asked his favorite drink to make, he says, "It's a job, like sacking groceries. It's not like I love sacking these groceries more than I like sacking these other groceries." Shots are great, he says when pressed. Shots pour faster.
Kelly calls Parrish "one of the finest people I've ever worked with in hospitality," but he's just as quick to return Parrish's salvos of unsentimental wit. Especially when asked if he remembers what led him to hire the Murfreesboro native.
"Yeah," Kelly says. "I needed a bartender."
Parrish isn't long for a comeback: "Don't worry, Mike, I'll tell 'em I work at Sperry's."
Watch Parrish make one of his expertly crafted martinis:
More From the 2015 People Issue
The Textile Designer: Andra Eggleston / The Transformer: Bill Schleicher / The Chief: Steve Anderson / The Bookseller: Yusef Harris / The Producer: Dave Cobb / The Rookie: Filip Forsberg / The Pedal Steel-Playing Pilot: Joshua Motohashi / The Weathermen: David Drobny & Will Minkoff / The Punk Neuroscientist: Kale Edmiston / The Kitchen Artist: Karla Ruiz / The Metalhead: Kayla Phillips / The Image Master: kogonada / The Bartender: Lee Parrish / The Professor: Lisa Guenther / The Advocate: Marisa Richmond / The Captains: Kellie Hurst & Regina Durkan / The Painter: Michael Shane Neal / The Tunesmith: Shane McAnally
