Derek Hoke’s Electric Mountain Arrives as Two Dollar Tuesdays Ends

Without a doubt, the musical landscape of Nashville has changed since singer, guitarist and songwriter Derek Hoke started hosting a multi-artist show, Two Dollar Tuesdays, at Five Points bar and venue The 5 Spot in 2010. Musicians who were just beginning to make their reputations played the show in its early days — think Margo Price and Jason Isbell. Many of them are now big stars. But the basic idea of Hoke’s show, which is to present a democratic, nobody’s-a-star approach to making and appreciating music, remains viable in a city exploding with talent. Hoke helped invent contemporary Nashville by presenting music he liked on a small stage in the heart of East Nashville, and that’s no small accomplishment.

All good things come to an end, however, and Sept. 13 marks the final installment of Two Dollar Tuesdays. It’s a bittersweet moment for Hoke, himself an accomplished singer and songwriter who moved to town in 1999. In Nashville, he sought fresh inspiration after growing up in Florence, S.C., as a music fan and self-taught musician who loved classic country, rock ’n’ roll, punk and anything else he found interesting. You can hear his style on his new full-length Electric Mountain, out Friday. It’s a remarkably genre-unspecific collection of songs that often address the complexities of relationships.

As Hoke tells me, the decision to end Two Dollar Tuesdays was bound up in his ambitions for the future and his realization that he’d spent a substantial portion of the past decade waiting for Tuesday to roll around once again.

“That’s a good chunk of one’s life to devote to something,” Hoke says from his East Nashville home. On the phone, he comes across as thoughtful and energized — he tells me he’s pacing around his backyard and thinking about how his neighborhood has changed in recent years.

“No one lives around here anymore. It’s kind of me and several other people that still live down the street from The 5 Spot. That kind of neighborhood-hang thing has morphed and evolved.”

Indeed, the power centers of Nashville have shifted, as they always do, and these days you can find new venues — and new talent — in, say, Madison. Still, Hoke helped pioneer the idea that Nashville’s deep pool of talent, from singer-songwriters to rockers to unclassifiable exponents of folk and soul, is something unique, and worth attending to in an environment that’s both welcoming and radically democratic.

After Hoke came to Nashville, he found work at the Belcourt, and he also went on the road, minding the merch table for bluegrass star Ricky Skaggs. In addition, he got familiar with a town that had begun to expand its musical reach beyond country. He tells me about his love for bands like Lambchop, who became popular in the ’90s, and for musicians like guitarist William Tyler and pedal-steel player Paul Niehaus.

“My first gig was at the Radio Cafe, and I just became a sponge, going out to shows and seeing bands and artists play — and slowly starting to write new material,” he says. He released an album, Goodbye Rock N Roll, in 2010, with Nashville greats like steel guitarist Chris Scruggs and singer Melissa Mathes lending a hand.

Goodbye Rock N Roll was, despite its title, no farewell to the musical principles Hoke adheres to, which include a deep love of rock ’n’ roll and country music. Electric Mountain, which is his fifth full-length, peaks with “Got Money,” in which Hoke examines materialism and finds it wanting. As he sings, “I’ve been everywhere around the world / I’ve got a Cadillac and a penthouse too / But none of it means a thing without you.” The song’s post-Atlanta Rhythm Section dynamics suit its subject matter perfectly, and Hoke sings in an understated, soul-inflected voice.

“I did not make a honky-tonk record,” Hoke explains about Electric Mountain. “There happens to be fiddle and steel, but I’m not singing that way.” His eclecticism has informed the programming of Two Dollar Tuesdays, which has also featured the expert record spinning of DJ Tim Hibbs for most of its lifetime.

When I ask him about specifics of past Two Dollar Tuesdays, Hoke sounds like a guy who’s done so much that it’s hard to remember everything. “It’s kind of a blur to me when I get asked that, because I never thought of there being a definitive beginning. It probably took, like, six or eight months to get the thing going on sleepy Tuesdays up there at The 5 Spot.”

He does recall how his friends — Nashville greats like Price and Caitlin Rose — took the stage on some of those Tuesday nights. As he reminds me, everyone who has played Two Dollar Tuesdays got time to perform exactly five songs. That includes Hoke, who has closed out every show. Still, there have been plenty of highlights.

“I remember — Peter Buck’s onstage playing bass with this guy, and Mike Mills is in the audience. Or, you know, Jason Isbell played a couple of songs, and nobody knew who he was.”

Nashville Music News | Nashville Scene

Derek Hoke, founder of The 5 Spot's Two Dollar Tuesdays, deals in twang and camaraderie

• Marissa R. Moss