How a Free Weekly Metal Night Brings ’70s Rock Legends to Music Row

To the tourists and Tin Roof bros walking down Demonbreun near the Music Row roundabout on a warm Wednesday night in October 2014, the overflowing patio at the Harp & Fiddle — then known as Dan McGuinness Pub — might have simply looked like an especially busy evening for the restaurant.

And the black SUV idling out front on 16th Avenue could have just been some dude’s Uber.

Indeed it was someone’s ride: Alice Cooper’s. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer was performing in the most unlikely of venues — a modest Irish pub — slaying a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of about 200 with a set of classic-rock covers, capped by his own 1972 delinquent anthem “School’s Out.” Even by Nashville’s recently minted It City standards, it was an “I can’t fucking believe this” sight, the Godfather of Shock Rock, sans makeup but with his full band, drawing blood on a stage just steps from a kitchen frying fish-and-chips.

Such high-wattage appearances at the Harp & Fiddle have become expected by those in the know: the rock fans who crowd the pub’s patio every Tuesday night for Thee Rock N’ Roll Residency. The cheekily regal moniker doubles as the name of both the weekly showcase and the band that hosts it — a four-piece crew of long-haired rock vets led by guitar heroes Philip Shouse and Jeremy Asbrock.

Sporting a nearly constant shit-eating grin, the affable Shouse, who while onstage often wears rock-inspired dog T-shirts from his own Mutt Merch line (“Black Labbath,” for instance), embodies the gregarious rocker archetype, always ready with a thumbs-up or affirming “dude.” The more serious Asbrock, with his feathered hair and thousand-yard stare, is a dead ringer for Randy Rhoads. Drummer Jarred Pope and bassists Judd Fuller and Cinderella’s Eric Brittingham — they alternate bass duties depending on who’s in town — round out the Rez.

But while the core four remain mostly the same from Tuesday to Tuesday — delivering note-perfect hard-hitting covers of primarily ’70s rock — the thrill of never knowing who might show up to jam makes Thee Rock N’ Roll Residency one of the coolest can’t-miss gigs in town.

Since founding the Residency in 2014 with original bassist Chuck Garric and drummer David Parks, Shouse and Asbrock have welcomed four Rock Hall members to their humble stage: Cooper, Cheap Trick frontman Robin Zander, Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover and Heart guitarist Roger Fisher. That’s in addition to a who’s-who of classic-rock titans, hair-metal survivors and contemporary rockers keeping the genre alive. Derek St. Holmes, Kip Winger, Mark Slaughter, Skid Row’s Rachel Bolan, the entirety of German heavy-metal kings Accept, Pantera’s Rex Brown, New York Dolls’ Sylvain Sylvain, and Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger have all sat in at the Harp & Fiddle, tearing through covers like Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” Styx’s “Too Much Time on My Hands,” Dio’s “Heaven and Hell,” Guns N’ Roses’ “Out Ta Get Me” and even The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.”

“You just feel elated when you’re standing in that audience,” says Hale, who recently headlined Ascend Amphitheater as part of the Carnival of Madness Tour. “And it makes my heart so incredibly full and happy. [The Residency] are literally carrying the torch for rock ’n’ roll in Nashville. There’s this huge misconception outside of Nashville that it’s all country all the time. So it’s so neat to break into this secret club where everybody still plays this amazing rock ’n’ roll music. And they’re amazing musicians, so it’s not like they’re half-assing it. They play some of those songs better than the original artists.”

Hale and Hottinger, who recently bought a home in Nashville, used to live across the street from the bar and became regulars of the Tuesday night rock club. “We’ve had such a good time getting to know these guys,” says Hottinger, “and a lot of them play in bands that are our heroes. It’s kind of surreal, really.”

Tell that to Shouse and Asbrock. Both in their early 40s but preternaturally youthful in appearance — Shouse practices yoga and is an avid biker; Asbrock became a “cooking badass” to manage his Type 1 diabetes — the dual frontmen and guitar-slingers have the distinct look of kids in a candy store as they talk about the rock gods who have joined them onstage.

“It’s really bizarre for me, because I grew up listening to all those guys, and now they’re all my friends,” says Asbrock, a Nashville native. “I remember when there was no rock here. It was pretty bleak in the ’90s.”

But that fallow period also dangled the carrot of a songwriting town, along with affordable real estate and cost of living. Aging rockers flocked in droves from Los Angeles to Nashville. Mark Slaughter, Cinderella’s Tom Keifer, and John Corabi, who famously replaced Vince Neil in Mötley Crüe in 1992, all put down roots in Music City.

“I moved here in 2004, and all the Cinderella guys were here, Wolf [Hoffmann] from Accept was here, Mark Slaughter was here,” says Shouse, a Wisconsin native who spent time in Alabama before settling in Nashville and taking touring gigs with country artists like David Lee Murphy and Rodney Atkins. Since then, the floodgates have opened wider, with Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford, the Crüe’s Mick Mars and Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine becoming residents.

Thanks to Asbrock and Shouse, they now have a refuge, a gathering place for players of hard rock, metal and even ’60s golden oldies. At a recent show in July, the band busted out Iron Maiden’s “Two Minutes to Midnight,” with Matt Farley — the chef at the Southern Steak & Oyster downtown — howling the vocals. A week earlier, they re-created The Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday” with drummer Sandy Gennaro.

Farley and Gennaro are just two in a sea of locals who bring the goods onstage every bit as fiercely as the special guests. Asbrock’s wife Hannah Fairlight blows up The Runaways; Greg Mangus, leader of AC/DC tribute band Noise Pollution, summons Bon Scott and Brian Johnson; Louis Lee Napolitano, the “Mick Jagger” of Rolling Stones homage Jaggered Edge, struts his androgynous stuff; and 16-year-old young gun Hunter Lovan shreds a mean Hendrix.

Many of them were in the crowd the night Cooper came to town. Shouse credits the appearance (the event was moved to Wednesday on that particular week to coincide with Cooper’s show with Mötley Crüe at the Bridgestone) with putting the Residency on the map. He praises Rez alum Garric, Cooper’s bass player for 14 years, for persuading the “I’m Eighteen” icon to grace the patio.

“It just brought us all together as a community of rock ’n’ rollers,” says Garric. “Alice had a blast, Jeremy and Phil had a blast, and it was a great night for all. If what happened with Alice Cooper that night had anything to do with the longevity of what Jeremy and Phil are doing now, then God bless them.”

For Cheap Trick’s Zander, it was Mangus, a loquacious Midtown bartender, who lured him to the stage.

“Every time I go in the bar, he’s been coaxing me to go to the Residency, and finally I gave in one night and did it,” says Zander, who sang the Cheap Trick deep cut “He’s a Whore” at his first Residency gig. He’s since been back numerous times, bringing along his son. “I really enjoyed it. When you’re coming off the road and have a day off, it’s a good place to go shake off the dew.”

Especially since it’s a Gherm-Free Zone.

“People don’t bother you too much,” Zander says. “They’re excited to be there, and they don’t know who is going to show up. It could be anybody. It could even be the singer of Cheap Trick. [The idea of the rock club] doesn’t exist anymore — but it does in Nashville.”

What’s more, it’s profitable. Harp & Fiddle owner Quinn O’Sullivan says Thee Rock N’ Roll Residency has made Tuesdays one of the most popular nights for his business.

“It’s been great for us,” O’Sullivan says. “But most importantly, it’s been something that we can be part of. In Nashville, there’s a lot of options for music, and for us to have a night and a genre, with ’70s rock ’n’ roll, it’s real special for us.”

That’s putting it mildly. To attend a show by Thee Rock N’ Roll Residency is to travel back in time. During another oppressively humid July Tuesday, die-hard fans — often musicians themselves — showed up in stretch pants, teased hair and a Hot Topic lineup of classic-rock T-shirts. Def Leppard, KISS, Led Zeppelin, Europe, The Who, Velvet Revolver and Motörhead logos were all represented, not to mention a Stryper crew T-shirt. Brandy Goldsboro, the Residency’s DJ and social-media diva, warms up the audience every Tuesday by blasting hard-rock playlists from Asbrock’s Macbook. A lifelong ’80s rock fan, she stresses the all-are-welcome vibe.

“A lot of those guys dress like that on a daily basis,” she says. “We’re used to it. Some of the younger kids, they’re starting out in their rock bands, and they dress like it’s 1987. And then you have the older dudes coming in half-shirts [laughs]. But we don’t care. And they’re comfortable doing that there. They can come and let their flag fly.”

One of the Residency’s most passionate fans is also one of its famous faces: Bebe Buell. The singer/model — and the mother of Liv Tyler with new Nashvillian Steven Tyler — moved here in 2013 and regularly kicks out the jams with the Rez. She is fond of The Cult’s “Love Removal Machine” and recently ripped up The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” getting in fans’ faces and dangling the mic in front of her hips like a dick.

“Nobody judges you,” says Buell, 63. “What Nashville offers is a lack of ageism. Nobody gives a flying fuck how old you are. As long as you can kick their ass, they just don’t care.”

The same goes for the fans. Thee Residency is proudly all-ages, with the crowd made up of teens to seniors. Larry Davy, 69, and Les Hottovy, 63, attend weekly, rocking out alongside kids who could be their grandchildren.

“I grew up on rock ’n’ roll,” says the silver-haired Davy, a fan of Bad Company and The Who. “I was sad when the rock ’n’ roll station here in Nashville turned into a country station.”

Musician Todd Austin, with his high hair, natty suits and cane, is the most hard-to-miss of the Rez regulars. He plays in three different funk bands — including a Prince tribute — but like Davy, he’s drawn to rock. “What Jeremy and Philip have accomplished is rarified air,” he says. “They have created a sense of camaraderie.”

Somehow, Thee Residency has tapped into exactly what is missing from today’s fractured music (and cultural) landscape: an unwavering sense of community. Always all-ages, the showcase excludes no one. There’s no imposing wall around the patio, no bouncer, and never a cover. It’s free music, performed by and for fans of rock ’n’ roll.

“I call it the rock family,” says Michael Wagener, the German producer, engineer and mixer who has overseen such groundbreaking albums as Metallica’s Master of Puppets and the first two Skid Row LPs. “It’s this whole community that is coming together, and it’s very cool. If you’re into music, I don’t think there is a better place to live right now.”

Says Mangus, “Rock ’n’ roll has always been kind of an outsider’s thing for metalheads and rockers, and these guys all have a place to go every week.”

The Residency ringmasters met when Shouse caught a show by Asbrock’s band The Shazam. Sporting a KISS Love Gun shirt, Shouse was easily spotted. Asbrock remembers thinking, “I gotta talk to that dude.”

“This was before you could buy any rock T-shirt in Target,” laughs Shouse. A decade-plus friendship was born. In April 2014, they noticed some holes in their calendars.

“I said, ‘Hey man, you want to try a weekly thing for a month?’ ” recalls Asbrock, who by then was playing in a number of tribute bands with Shouse, paying homage to Thin Lizzy, KISS and, with his own Big Rock Show, ’80s metal. “I had seen a band do a residency [at the Harp & Fiddle], and that gave me the idea. I knew the bar was open to it.”

O’Sullivan quickly jumped on board. According to the proprietor, he and the band worked out a regular fee, with the players also keeping anything that lands in the tip jar. (This is Nashville, after all.)

Still, the Residency views their gigs as more of a hang and less of a concert. To the guys, it helps maintain the loose nature of the nights.

“It’s not like going to a show,” says Shouse. “We want people to stumble in instead of coming to a concert. It’s like going to your friend’s house with the great record collection.”

But the Residency’s set list hardly resembles a dusty greatest-hits jukebox. When they cover Van Halen, often with David Lee Roth sound-alike Ryan Cook, it’s “Atomic Punk,” not “Jump.” Shouse and Asbrock’s tendency to dig deep helps dispel any cover-band stigma, as does the musicianship with which the band performs the nuggets.

Eddie Trunk, the Sirius/XM DJ and former host of VH1 Classic’s That Metal Show, first witnessed Thee Rock N’ Roll Residency on a Monsters of Rock cruise. (Asbrock estimates he’s set sail on 14 different ships with a variety of bands, including the Rez.) An outspoken champion of a genre he feels is marginalized, Trunk was taken by the Residency’s depth of knowledge.

“I generally do not get excited about tribute or cover bands,” Trunk says. “But those guys brought something to it that really got me excited, with their song selection and the way they delivered it. We’re in a world where, with classic-rock radio airplay, if you talk about Thin Lizzy, there is only one song that is ever getting played. If you talk about Aerosmith, there are a couple of songs. For KISS, there is one song that gets played all the time.

“We’re pounded and pounded with the same songs by unimaginative, non-risk-taking program directors who don’t want to take you deeper and give you more of what the journey was about for those bands,” he continues. “That is one of the coolest things about what the Residency does. They bring you that. I saw them do Ted Nugent, and they didn’t do ‘Cat Scratch Fever,’ they did ‘Dog Eat Dog.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, who the hell does that?’ ”

Expertly playing those covers has catapulted a few of the musicians into higher-profile gigs, à la Judas Priest’s Ripper Owens. Drummer Sarah Tomek sat in with Shouse and Asbrock during an Aerosmith night and caught the eye of Steven Tyler collaborator Marti Frederiksen, who recruited her to join Tyler’s solo band, Loving Mary. Likewise, Christopher Williams ended up behind the kit for Accept after the band saw him play at the Residency.

“It’s a great networking tool for musicians,” says Corabi, who enlisted Shouse and Asbrock for his solo band. When he’s home in Nashville, he drops by the Residency to jam.

“They’re like an Armani suit jacket. Even in a pair of jeans, you can put a T-shirt on and just a badass black Armani and it’s gonna work,” he says, “and that’s the type of music the guys are playing in the Residency. It’s good old-fashioned classic rock, and it works for any audience.”

But in the end, the bond between Shouse and Asbrock is even stronger than the music. The guys possess their own shorthand, whether onstage or over dinner at the Harp & Fiddle. They complete each other’s sentences and solos — and often dress alike. When they hit the town, Asbrock doesn’t ask if Shouse is wearing a Van Halen T-shirt too — “I ask which Van Halen shirt are you wearing.”

“Our friendship is the heart of the show,” Asbrock says. “The show wouldn’t have started without it and couldn’t continue without it. We started playing music together for no other reason but to have fun playing stuff we like together. Everything evolved out of that.”

And it continues to evolve. Shouse and Asbrock are always eyeing more special guests for future installments of Thee Residency.

Their dream guest?

“Steven Tyler,” says Shouse, without hesitation.

“To cover The Yardbirds,” says Asbrock. “Or do ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ and have him blow harp for 15 minutes.’ ”

Maybe Bebe can put a word in.

Email editor@nashvillescene.com