Ziona Riley at The Mouthhole, 7/27/2024
Running a DIY show space in your home is a thankless job. And while nobody expects it to be a cash cow, the good folks who run these venues often sink a great deal of their own money and time into the enterprise. For that reason, unique Nashville spots like this have a high turnover rate, leaving behind nothing but a gilded memory. Fondly remembered places like the Acklen House, The Glass Menage and The Other Basement all burned brightly before flaming out in relatively short order. One Music City home, however, has been the site of basement shows for an astonishing 12 years.
Since 2013, a trio of musicians and longtime friends — Michael Sadler and brothers Travis and Zac Caffrey — have been hosting free live performances at the home they share, dubbed The Mouthhole. That incredible run comes to a close in August, when the literal underground venue hosts the 11th and final Fest(er), the crew’s annual weekend of Mouthhole music and art. The residents will soon be relocating to a new house in South Nashville.
“The place is just kind of falling apart,” Sadler explains of the current Mouthhole house. “And we’re in a situation where the landlord — the guy that owns this house — owns, like, hundreds of houses in Nashville. He doesn’t take care of them. We’ve gone for about eight years without central heat and air. The roof is slowly caving in. And it’s things that we haven’t been able to facilitate fixing ourselves.”
The trio no longer felt safe living in the house and made a plan to move. They announced their intentions via a GoFundMe campaign in late May and were able to purchase a new house together. While they’ll continue to make music and book and host shows, those will generally be at other venues, not their new home.
From left: Zac Caffrey, Michael Sadler and Travis Caffrey at The Mouthhole, 7/27/2024
“We had some help from a very generous friend that just loaned us the money to put a down payment on a place,” says Sadler. “We’re not really gonna do the same thing there. We’ll have parties and maybe a few backyard things. We’re not set up there to have a space like [the current Mouthhole]. So it will inherently be a lower-impact kind of thing.”
As an example of what to expect, Sadler points to The Psycho’s Quiz Show, a kind of live game show with musical accompaniment that the group has been putting on at Springwater on the second Friday of each month for about a year. (The next installment is set for Friday, Aug. 8.) But for now, Fest(er) XI will close out this chapter of The Mouthhole on Aug. 1 and 2.
Zac Caffrey will play Friday night, likely donning an ape mask onstage with Chop Chop Chang, his synthesizer-based homage to a chimp NASA launched into space in 1961. Other acts that night include the dance-floor hooks of Caroline Red and the ominous dirge of Cavehole. Travis Caffrey and Sadler will follow up Saturday night in their sharp-witted and Beefhearted duo The Chewers. Among many others, they’ll be joined by wry comedian Cortney Warner, local psych-rocking outfit Heinous Orca and Cookeville rockers The Dog’s Body, fresh off the release of The Deer of Wisdom via Knoxville’s Gezellig Records.
Appropriately for a venue called The Mouthhole, its openness — with its denizens intentionally being inviting to the audience and performers alike — is what has made it special. Sadler is justifiably proud of the work he and his friends have done in their home and the legacy it leaves behind, and he’s looking forward to the possibility of welcoming people who’ve never gotten to experience The Mouthhole to the final Fest(er).
“And I’ll just put out a personal challenge to all the young kids: Beat it,” Sadler says with a note of defiant hope. “Beat 12 years.”
