Gimme Shelter 2018: Bobby's Idle Hour [Updated]

Bobby’s Idle Hour has been passed down by generations of regular customers like a family heirloom. In 1978, Bobby Herald and his future wife Dianne — the couple wed at the bar in 1990 — took over the already-venerable Music Row watering hole, added “Bobby’s” to the name, and tended it through decades of change. That included moving the bar in early 2005 from its original location (now home to the condo development TenTen on the Row) to its current home at 1028 16th Ave. S. Bobby died from throat cancer that fall. In 2013, another one of the bar’s regulars, songwriter Lizard Thom Case, took over from Dianne. Lizard’s name was added to the sign, but he still calls it “Bobby’s,” as does everyone else. 

Aside from a ban on smoking, the inside feels like a time capsule from the days of the Carter administration. There are wobbly tables and well-worn stools, beers that won’t hurt your wallet (mostly domestics with a few craft brews in the mix), walls covered in dollar bills signed by visitors, and an acoustic guitar on a hanger in case someone needs it. The bar’s clientele includes a smattering of students and tourists, neighborhood residents, and songwriters who work on what’s left of the Row as studios and publishing companies have drifted elsewhere.

“I cannot tell you how many people we get in there off that trolley that say, ‘This bar is what I’ve been looking for the whole time we’ve been in Nashville — this is a real down-home bar,’ ” says Case. “And when that’s gone, those tour buses, they’ll have to drive down the road and say, ‘Well, that’s where there used to be a bar where songwriters hung out. And now there’s a plaque.’ ”

If a plan by Panattoni Development goes forward as expected, a group of five adjoining properties, including Bobby’s, will eventually become a six-story office building. Those five buildings top the 2018 edition of Historic Nashville Inc.’s Nashville Nine, an annual list of endangered places with historical significance. 

In July, Case received notice from his landlord that his lease will not be renewed, and barring the kind of 11th-hour intervention that saved RCA Studio A from a similar fate in 2014, Bobby’s will have to be out of the building by the end of January. Case says he’s pursuing some options that might allow Bobby’s to move elsewhere, maybe even on Music Row, but nothing’s settled. “I won’t give up until we have to,” he says.

Josh Distad, a genial and unflappable Minnesota native who’s behind the bar at Bobby’s most nights, puts a finger on what stands to get shoved to the side by new high-dollar construction. 

“The bar’s always had that aspect of, like, hanging out with your high school buddies or whatever in the basement,” says Distad. “I lived up the street, so I came down here every chance I ever had — because I enjoy bars where you can just sit down and have a conversation with whoever it is. I don’t think that there’s a lot of bars in town that really, in my mind, present that. It’s moving to more high-end cocktail bars. The neighborhood bars go by the wayside.”

There’s a casualness and sense of community at Bobby’s, a place where people mix and relax, off-duty songwriters pick guitars and bounce ideas off of each other, and everyone’s free to enjoy or ignore the roughly 35 to 40 hours of performances on the tiny stage each week. Bobby’s isn’t a place you go for a special night out — it’s where you go every other time. For now, at least.

*Update, Jan. 16: The most recent incarnation of Bobby's Idle Hour is now closed. WSMV has video from the final party at the bar on Jan. 12, and it ends with a note of hope. Lizard Thom Case has passed the name on to Josh Distad, who hopes to find a space to open the next incarnation of Bobby's Idle Hour on Music Row.