The Scene Turns 30: The More Things Change ...

Before we dive into all the navel-gazing and own-horn-tooting of celebrating 30 years of the Nashville Scene, we have to make a confession: The Scene is not, technically speaking, 30 years old. Truthfully, we’re closer to 38. 

On the occasion of our “10th anniversary” in 1999, we asked Henry Walker — who, we pointed out at the time, “was the Scene’s media critic until three months ago” — to critique the paper. “Like a vain middle-aged woman,” wrote Walker, “the Nashville Scene likes to pretend she’s younger than she is. … This ‘10th-anniversary’ issue is, well, a small affectation that polite gentlemen shouldn’t question.”

Walker pointed to a column titled “Rebirth of a Paper” that ran in a June 1989 issue of the Scene. It was penned by Albie Del Favero, a Nashville native who’d been the paper’s publisher for nine weeks at that point. In the column, Del Favero explained how he relocated home to Nashville from New York with dreams of starting an alternative weekly newspaper. He explained that, despite being told by a business adviser over breakfast at Shoney’s that he “didn’t have a big enough ego” to start his own paper — and despite being told by his family that he “better not bring [his] Yankee ass back to town and publish a newspaper that makes fun of Nashville” — he got the financial backing to take over the Scene when it came up for sale.

Before Del Favero and his editor, former Nashville Banner reporter Bruce Dobie, took over the Scene, it was slim and generally controversy-free. “The paper was tossed into driveways,” wrote Walker in ’99, “whether you wanted it there or not.” But in that June 1989 column, Del Favero vowed to offer a different kind of newspaper, one that “captured the essence of what makes Nashville Nashville.” The Scene would answer the call from young, hip, progressive folks for “a media vehicle in town that distinguished the worthwhile from the mundane.”

And so, vain or not, that’s what we celebrate when we say it’s our 30th anniversary — the 30th anniversary of the Scene establishing itself as a relevant, progressive voice. Dobie and Del Favero both left the paper in 2004. Since then, we’ve weathered further ownership changes (two in the 11 years I’ve been at the Scene), layoffs, boom times and lean years. We’ve seen the paper fatten up and slim down a time or two, rehire for lost positions, win some awards, get some things right, and get some things wrong (more on that last bit here).

But in looking back at 30 years of archived Scene issues in preparation for this week’s paper, something became apparent: As much as Nashville has changed over the course of these three decades, an awful lot has stayed the same. There are the more obvious moments of déjà vu — for instance, the fallout surrounding a philandering mayor (Boner in ’90, Barry in ’18) — but there are also the more subtle ones.

In a May 1990 issue we called “A Master Plan: The 30 things Nashville needs & the people to do them,” Scene staff — under the collective byline “the Committee of Insiders,” which we’ve used off and on throughout the years — explored “a new generation of ideas, new projects, new life.” While plenty of those needs have since been met (including a performing-arts high school, a city art museum, a non-country record label, a solid bakery, curbside recycling and wine in grocery stores), it’s remarkable just how easily some of our complaints could be applied today. Not only did we call for the bloated Metro Council to be cut from 40 members to 12, but we also wanted an “experimental bus-rail line” (more on that not happening here), “more low-income housing” and “more sidewalks and other pedestrian walkways.” “Let’s think about getting people back on their feet when we build new buildings,” we opined.

Earlier that same year, Dobie managed this excellent burn: “Lest anyone think Metro Council is the only political body in town that practices a primitive form of political incest by naming its friends and associates to vacant positions whenever they appear, the Legislature is probably equally as pathological.” There was the January 1992 story about the Metro Transit Authority cutting services and raising fares in response to a widening budget deficit, and an April 1992 blurb in which we quoted Scottish Formula One racer Jackie Stewart complaining about Nashville drivers: “You people tailgate,” he said.

“Hillsboro Village is one of the few testaments to Nashville’s past that is struggling to stay a part of its present,” wrote longtime contributor Christine Kreyling in the kicker of her cover story “Caught in the Squeeze,” which also ran in ’92. “It is a survivor of years of urban demolition and reconstruction, an integral part of Nashville’s living history. It can speak volumes about where Nashville came from, if only we care to ask it.” The article explored the unique location and problems facing the Village, a part of town that, Kreyling wrote, “seems right off the set of Andy of Mayberry.” Encroaching development, parking and traffic issues (we bemoaned Green Hills’ traffic in an issue later that month), the intersection of residential and commercial neighborhoods — though most of Hillsboro Village’s storefronts have changed, the issues remain.

A year later, in an editorial titled “Keeping Up,” senior writer John Bridges lamented Southerners’ regrettable affinity for the Rebel flag and a misplaced romanticism over the Confederacy’s sullen defiance. I wish wholeheartedly that this editorial felt dated upon reading, but we live in a state whose Capitol building — right at the center of our city — still houses a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest. (I’ll take any opportunity I can to write this one: We need to take that godforsaken thing out of the statehouse.) A few months later, contributing writer Daniel Cooper’s cover story “Jefferson Rising: After 20 years in I-40’s shadow, Northwest Nashville struggles to live again” in part explored what the creation of I-40 did to that historically black Nashville neighborhood (“ripped it open and gutted it,” he wrote). “Ugliness … descended upon Jefferson after I-40 rocked the town.” In one of my favorite cover stories in my tenure as editor-in-chief — “History Repeats Itself in North Nashville,” published in June of last year — staff writer Steven Hale delved into that very same issue.

I could go on. Our deep-dive into the Scene’s archives didn’t so much turn up anomalous and coincidental examples of still-relevant issues, but rather revealed the fact that our town’s story is one that’s still being written. Nashville is a unique, progressive, creative city that — it’s true — hasn’t always gotten certain things right: transit, responsible development, taking care of our most vulnerable citizens. But it’s also a city full of smart people who give a damn, and we at the Scene hope to speak to them with a newspaper that is, as Del Favero put it in his column, “feisty and funny and maybe more than slightly irreverent.” One that appeals to “the intelligent and concerned people of the community” and “might make Nashville an even better place to live.”

We endeavor to keep that vision alive, and we thank you for coming along with us. Thanks for reading, and here’s to another 30.

Additional reporting for this story was done by Alexandra DeMarco.