NYE in Review: Broadway was an Overcrowded Hellscape, Old Crow and Moon Taxi Rock WMA and the Ryman, Punks Love on Lemmy and LCD in East Nashville

If there's one time and place for Nashvillians to put their local pride to the test, it's Lower Broad on New Year's Eve. In previous years — which featured performances from likes of Lady Antebellum, The Fray and Hank Jr. — the annual Bash on Broadway shindig and shitshow was, for The Spin, a milquetoast, countrified clusterfuck to which attention need not be paid. This year was different. Thanks to a bill boasting, among others, local faves Wild Cub, kick-ass Georgia transplants The Whigs, country music critical and commercial Seabiscuit Chris Stapleton and rock-stars-next-door Kings of Leon, we had to bite the bullet and finally go. 

To be clear, it's cool that Music City's answer to Times Square-style revelry featured a half-dozen or so local artists performing for an estimated 150,000 people on two stages, while just blocks away local institutions Old Crow Medicine Show and Moon Taxi headlined theater shows of their own. Party hats off, Nashville! But braving a crowd of 150,000 (in temperatures dipping into the low 30s) is pretty much guaranteed to suck. And suck this experience did. 

The scene seemed manageable enough when we sauntered onto it a little after 8 p.m., in time to catch Wild Cub shimmying through a set of RIYL The Killers, Vampire Weekend, New Order and Morrissey jams on the Music City Stage. Positioned at the west end of Lower Broad on an uphill slope just past Bridgestone Arena, this very well may have been the tallest stage ever erected, and Wild Cub sure did look like rock gods on it. Although the air was so crisp that you could see frontman Keegan DeWitt's breath as he belted out hooky choruses while dancing like he was auditioning for an A-Ha video, the reception from the selfie-stick-wielding, koozie-gripping, goofy-glasses-sporting crowd was anything but chilly, and a batch of new songs from the record Wild Cub has been working on met a warm reception. As DeWitt & Co. wrapped it up, we headed down the incline toward the larger Jack Daniel's Stage at First and Broadway, but it was all downhill in more ways than one as we set out into the shit in hopes of grabbing a cocktail or two and finding a decent spot to watch Stapleton.

Not only were such efforts in vain, it quickly became clear that they were plain fucking futile, and the size of the crowd hadn't even reached critical mass. A block-long one-in-one-out line to get into to Paradise Park (Paradise Park!) was a bad sign. So bars were pretty much out of the question. And we weren't even close enough to actually make out human beings on the stage when Stapleton and his band (which on this occasion featured Americana super-producer Dave Cobb on acoustic guitar) made their entrance to the tune of a weeping pedal steel version of "Auld Lang Syne" that was pretty enough to briefly transcend the cold cattle call we'd by now found ourselves ensnared in. "What a sight," Stapleton bantered after an opening “Nobody to Blame.” “We put out a record last year, and it's doing all right." That's an understatement, but one worth noting, as Stapleton was booked on this bill long before Justin Timberlake helped make Traveller the No Strings Attached of respectable 2015 country LPs. “Chris Stapleton is a spiritual experience,” we overheard one woman say as we jockeyed for a sightline. Four blocks from the stage, we did find a decent view, but it happened to fall in the sonic-ping-pong purgatory between primary and secondary P.A.s. Fuck.

Video monitors (that were more out of sync from the audio the farther from the stage we ventured) lined Broadway, and we eventually settled on watching the show at one of them, essentially now attending a glorified live-stream. And even from that vantage, there was no respite from the growing throngs of people. At the end of a reliably excellent “Fire Away” — the third song in Stapleton’s set — we turned around and realized we were trapped, totally hemmed in by folks crowding toward the video monitor from every direction. It was actually frightening. Also, we were sober. SOBER! Somehow we had made it out of that standing dog pile only to find ourselves in another, while waiting in a beer line that moved a matter of a couple feet in the 25 minutes we were there. From there, we took in the back half of Stapleton's set. Folks couldn't get drinks fast enough to maintain a buzz, and that made party-ready people restless, but 150,000 drunks crammed shoulder-to-shoulder didn't sound like a fun picnic either. We didn't blame these Lord of the Freezing Flies conditions on Stapleton, though. He's perhaps the only singer in the world who could serenade us with a mid-set snippet of "Free Bird" and not have it make matters worse. 

Eventually, we gave up on the beer line and decided to go drink and get warm at the Ryman. Again, we had to battle our way upstream on Fifth Avenue through the current of sequined cocktail dresses and glitter-frosted party hats. The whole way we could hear the echoes of Chris Stapleton’s buttery croon slapping back off the outer walls of skyscrapers lining the streets. Soon enough, we found ourselves seated in the sacred pews of the Ryman, can of beer in hand, staring down at Scene favorites Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear. The folkie Kansas City mother-son duo had a four-piece backing band in tow, and even called up Nashville-by-way-of-Canada country darling Lindi Ortega for a song. In addition to standouts from the duo's stunning debut LP Skeleton Crew, the covers-heavy set included renditions of Fleetwood Mac's “Dreams,” Bob Dylan's “Knockin' on Heaven's Door” and a stripped-to-the-bone, apropos take on Tom Waits' “New Year's Eve.” The Music City NYE MVP award goes out to Nashville's own Larissa Maestro, who played cello for Madisen and Mama before racing over to Cannery Ballroom to belt out ’90s hits with My So-Called Band. 

When the auditorium curtains parted for Old Crow Medicine Show, turnt-up fans greeted Ketch Secor and his dapper crew — Americana's answer to The Pogues — with rhythmic stomping and clapping. The rowdy NYE crowd was up for a good time, and the Old Crow boys were ready to show it to them. After all, the band had a lot to celebrate from 2015, scoring a Grammy for its eighth studio LP Remedy. Over the next two hours, the neo-school string band rocked Mother Church parishioners with bluegrass jams, clogging, tall tales and a fitting tribute to Texas swing king Bob Wills. The whole show, broadcast live on 650 WSM-AM and emceed by Eddie Stubbs (natch), was anything and everything that we could hope for from a New Year's Eve at the Ryman. Just before midnight, the band started a countdown. When they got down to “One!” we slammed our Johnny Walker shot, and 2016 began. The band busted out “Auld Lang Syne” and followed it up with “Wagon Wheel,” a pair of songs likely played in every live music venue for a 10-block radius. But Old Crow gets a little extra credit for sorta writing one of them.

Unfortunately, some members of the "we" in this Spin equation had to bail on OCMS to re-enter the Bash on Broadway atmosphere and catch Kings of Leon. By this point, Broadway was even more impossible to navigate, and Kings cuts like "Crawl," the rarely played Come Around Sundown standout "Mary" and Mechanical Bull single "Supersoaker" were basically just background music as we tried to find a way to actually see this (now unusually quiet) concert. Long story short, this was the first time a Kings of Leon show falling short of being awesome wasn't the Followills’ fault. In fact, the band sounded great, especially when playing songs we really do dig, like "On Call" and "The Bucket." Soon enough, we settled on watching the show on one of those video monitors, this one on Second Avenue in front of the Sbarro, where we couldn't see even part of the actual stage. (We should also note that this was the only place we could find porta-potties … to accommodate 150,00 people!)

"I wish you could see what it looks like up here," Caleb Followill bantered at one point. "It's fucking crazy." Well, we wished we could see, like, the stage and stuff. Again, these circumstances weren't KOL's fault, but they did kind of reinforce the local ivory-tower perception of the band that's at the core of their tense relationship with Nashville. But it seems those days are over, and even from blocks away, with skyscrapers between us and the stage, it seemed Caleb and his brothers and cousin don't have that chip on their shoulders anymore. "We're just tickled to be up here," Caleb said.

Unfortunately, we'd trekked up to the Beer Sellar for a piss break just before Stapleton joined the Followills for a cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man." But we would've just been watching it on a screen anyway, which is how you can watch it below. 

Luckily, we could see the fireworks when midnight hit, and indeed, that was pretty epic. Collective optimism over the new year took hold, and despite the hours of trauma leading up to it, spirits were high as tens of thousands celebrated by singing along to "Use Somebody" and "Sex on Fire." 

Up the street, the good times weren't as few and far between, because what better way to voyage into the future than with an outer-space cab ride? Or, if you were present at Moon Taxi’s New Year’s show at War Memorial Auditorium, perhaps an Uber or Lyft did the trick. After the band’s 20-plus-song, two-and-a-half-hour double-set performance, neither one would have been able to bring us back down to earth, surge prices be damned. The longtime local live music champs had us riding high on good tunes, and they proved to a near-capacity WMA that with enough sonic space-time, pop and prog rock go hand in hand. And we weren't the only ones. The band had a sea of frat boys and bachelorette parties (we counted at least three) singing along to jammed-out cuts from its 2015 indie-pop long-player Daybreaker. It was a triumphant way to cap a year that included high-profile appearances on the likes of Late Night With Seth Myers and Bonnaroo's Which Stage — moments that brought the band closer from regional cult status to quasi-mainstream status. Taping Late Night, the band rubbed elbows with film icon Quentin Tarantino. Perhaps that encounter inspired the band to open its first set with an instrumental cover of Tomoyasu Hotei's “Battle Without Honor or Humanity,” featured in Tarantino's 2003 classic Kill Bill: Volume 1, before rocketing it into a much-applauded performance of their anthemic ode to irreverence “All the Rage.”

At that point, The Spin was still recovering from the heavy sonic cold-cock delivered by openers All Them Witches. As usual, ATW cast a black magic spell on the room (which unfortunately was only about a third full when the band started playing) that, while not really preparing us for the happy hours of upbeat jam-pop to come, reminded us how the band helped make 2015 a banner year for dark, heady Nashville stoner rock. 

As for Moon Taxi, the melodic interplay of frontman Trevor Terndrup and lead guitarist Spencer Thomson’s bright, silky guitar riffs paid non-bluesy tribute to Duane Allman and Dickey Betts’ guitar harmonies, although it’s wrong to throw Moon Taxi into the same musical category as the jam bands of old. Even with its Southern roots and cult-galvanizing live performances, the band’s songs are too short and sweet to invoke the mellow Woodstockian groove reserved for titan hippie rockers and onstage improvisers — the members wore plain-colored T-shirts and button-downs (aside from Terndrup’s second-set wardrobe addition: a shiny puffer jacket) as they mechanically played song after song like a DJ clicking through a proggy dance playlist. 

The band's sets moved swiftly, with several musical non-sequiturs built into the beginnings and endings of songs, including a Star Wars theme intro to the Daybreaker single “Year Zero,” Terndrup strapping on a talk box to finish off “Who’s to Say” and a six-minute jazzy tradeoff jam sesh at the end of “Cabaret.” Per tradition (this was the band's seventh Nashville New Year's show), the Taxi drivers flexed their chops and cobbled together a medley of 2015 hits by the likes of Bruno Mars, Fetty Wap and Adele to close the first set. Before long, the band was back onstage, and the final countdown to 2016, another balloon drop and another obligatory rendition of “Auld Lang Syne" was underway. 

For the last time in 2015, some of us started the night off at East Nashville's version of the Rock Block with the eternal question: "Is it still cool to park at that Walgreens?" Having secured our valuables, we rolled into The East Room in time for the last half of Mouth Reader's set. The early crowd was understandably a little reserved, as was the band — not enough of us to surf on, though that would change soon. Even though they had to restrict their antics to the streamer-festooned stage, the trio blasted out their agile fuzz-punk jams as if the house was packed.

Up next, Joey Plunket and his JP5 belted their stew of catchy power-pop and ballsy alt-country with characteristic fervor. They obliterated any remaining ice in the crowd with their penultimate number, the first of several of the night’s tributes to the late, great Hawkwind bassist and Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, who died Dec. 28. The righteous cover of Hawkwind's "Silver Machine" stirred up a swirl of perpetual motion that ebbed and flowed, but lasted pretty much until we saw a gold-spandex-clad dancer pass out on a couch some five hours later.

It took only until the second chorus or so of Jawws' opening number for a mosh pit to clear itself at the front of the stage, populated mostly by young’uns who would probably scratch their heads at a Dan Quayle joke. Or then again, they might not; we noticed drummer Hunter Tidwell sporting a Bernie Sanders shirt. How politically engaged were we as teens? Anyway, Jawws peppered its set with new tunes, which frontman Eli Tidwell announced the band was in the midst of recording when they heard about Lemmy's death. They paid tribute by joining forces with White Reaper's Tony Esposito and Ryan Hater for an extra-furious, set-closing "Ace of Spades."

The new-on-our-radar trio UZi exuded irreverent, Ween-y charm. With two members dressed like they just clocked out of a line-cook gig and the third sporting a swarthy yachtsman look, they sang catchy, warped tunes about drugs and girls, including one called "Butt Stuff" — we're not entirely sure whether that's a sex reference or a drug reference. Regardless, they played tight and made seamless transitions between O.G. punk and tropical grooves, all while clowning for their buddy's camcorder. Worth keeping an eye on.

This East Room shindig was billed as the "Taco Soiree and Shit Show." The veggie tacos available by the bar ensured that the gig would live up to the first part of that name, and scheduling Hans Condor to ring in the new year was a surefire way to get the last half. Immediate slam-dance pandemonium ensued from the downbeat around 11:35 p.m. A kick-drum pedal died a glorious death. Frontman Chazz Kaster orchestrated a mass stage-dive. And there were still two minutes to kill before midnight, filled with a deafening full-crowd chant of "Mo-tör-head! Mo-tör-head!" led by Kaster's hoarse rasp.

After White Reaper drummer Nick Wilkerson conducted the countdown to midnight, black balloons rained from the ceiling, Kaster took a pool cue to a giant taco piñata, and a slew of party poppers filled the room with the smell of gunpowder. Once the streamers were torn down and balloons were popped, the Condor wrapped their set by memorializing the spirit of Motörhead with a cover of the band's namesake song. The deaths of Lemmy and Motörhead drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor are two things among many we're glad to leave behind in 2015, but we're also damn glad it's the year the mighty Condor reunited, keeping the element of danger alive and well in rock 'n' roll.

With local faves like JEFF the Brotherhood and Diarrhea Planet out of town and others taking the night off, Louisville's White Reaper were guests of honor at pretty much the only game in town that night, as far as garage-kissed, punk-inclined rock ’n’ roll went. And they brought the goods, thrashing their way through stacks of anthems about fighting to stay sane and healthy through the journey to adulthood, from the Pixies-indebted "Sheila" to the thrumming Strokes-ian "Make Me Wanna Die." When they weren't busy lining up for a seemingly endless stream of stage dives, the crowd was shouting along with the esprit de corps that fuels the best hometown house shows. And who knows, we may be writing about White Reaper as locals in the future; while playing a little fanfare to check his guitar tuning, frontman Esposito quipped, "In a perfect world, my band would live right next door to Jawws."

Meanwhile, across the street at FooBar, the third annual Foo Year’s Eve blowout was in full effect, as a mishmash of cover bands and DJ sets hyped a disparate crowd into the stratosphere. We rolled up as the unmistakable tones of an Usher song competed against the fuzzed-out din of "ultimate Pavement experience" harbingers Crooked Corners.

The last time Crooked Corners played a gig, they wound up spurring an impromptu Pavement semi-reunion, as Bob Nastanovich and Steve West joined the group of locals — which, full disclosure, includes Scene managing editor D. Patrick Rodgers — and landed them on the music blogosphere’s news cycle. No such luck this time, though the band’s appropriately sloppy renditions of tunes like “Range Life” and “Gold Soundz” had dudes in jean jackets pumping their fists with gusto.

Following Pavement was Talking Heads, because of course. An 11-piece band managed to Tetris their way onto the FooBar Too stage, occupying every inch of available space before powering through a truly astounding set of Heads hits. This is the second year in a row in which a band featuring members of Chalaxy has completely ruled our New Year’s Eve, and for good reason. For 20 minutes, members of Chalaxy, Girls & Money and Mesmer Tea completely inhabited the spirit of Talking Heads — right down to David Byrne’s vintage goofy-dad dance moves.

After the confetti fell and drunk strangers engaged in the sloppiest make-out seshes imaginable, the strike of midnight brought Meth Dad and Hot Tub Club to close out the covers with LCD Soundsystem dance jams. For a hot second, FooBar Too turned into a sweaty Brooklyn disco, writhing and partying as hard as we’ve ever seen in Nashville. This isn’t much of a dancing city, but it sure as shit was when “Dance Yrself Clean” kicked into gear. The ensuing dance-punk freak-out channeled a whole year of bullshit into one cathartic moment in the minimalist electronic groove.