The site of the new Bobby’s Idle Hour
If you appreciate venerable Music City dive bars — whether for their wallet-friendly booze prices, the old-school character they maintain in a rapidly gentrifying town or their value as a source of flexible employment for those who need it, including musicians and artists — February has been a rough month. On Feb. 8, word went out that Buzz Edens, who opened East Nashville’s Edgefield Sports Bar & Grill in 1994, will not be renewing his lease and will close this summer. On Feb. 17, management at The Gold Rush, which opened in 1974 and became a mainstay of Elliston Place’s Rock Block, announced that the bar would shutter within a few hours, after last call.
At least there’s some news to feel good about: Despite being displaced for a second time by real estate development, Bobby’s Idle Hour is set to make a comeback in the late spring or early summer. And the bar won’t have to leave Music Row, the neighborhood where it’s been for more than 40 years, and where some version of it existed long before that.
In July, then-proprietor Lizard Thom Case was told by his landlord that his lease would not be renewed, and Bobby’s had until January to leave the building at 1028 16th Ave. S. — the building it had occupied since 2005, following a decades-long tenure just down the street. Despite public rallies and attention from multiple media outlets, Bobby’s closed with an all-day blowout on Jan. 12. There was no last-minute save — as there was in the 2014 case of RCA Studio A — and five adjoining properties including the former Bobby’s site are likely to be razed to make way for an office building.
But one hopeful piece of information, in the works for months, was revealed at the farewell get-together. Josh Distad, an easygoing Minnesota native who became a regular customer and then a bartender at Bobby’s in 2014, had been hand-picked by Case to buy the bar’s name and assets and reopen it, provided he could find a location.
“I really lobbied heavy to get him to be interested in being the new owner, ’cause I knew he could carry on whatever the Idle Hour is,” Case tells the Scene. Case, a Bobby’s regular since the ’90s, took over the bar in 2013 from Dianne Herald, widow of its namesake Bobby Herald (himself a bartender-turned-owner, who had bought the Idle Hour Tavern and C&G Diner with Dianne in 1978). “There’s so much involved in moving the place and getting started,” Case says. “I’d rather get back to writing songs, so that’s what I’m gonna do. And I’m gonna certainly help Josh and the folks get the place started.”
Those folks include Distad’s business partner Carolyn Lethgo (another Bobby’s regular) and two silent investors. In Nashville’s current real estate market, it would not have been surprising if Bobby’s ended up in a different part of town — such was the case with much-loved record store Grimey’s, which had been on Eighth Avenue South since 2004 but had to move to East Nashville last year to find a large enough space with an affordable lease.
Instead, Distad and Lethgo announced on Feb. 11 that they’d signed a lease on a narrow cinder-block building not far away at 9 Music Square S. (On all other blocks, the street is called Grand Avenue.) It’s a stone’s throw from 1010 16th Ave. S., the original site of Bobby’s, where the TenTen on the Row condo building now stands. The new landlords of Bobby’s are Dane and Del Bryant, the latter of whom was once president of the massive performing rights organization BMI. Both Bryants are sons of the legendary songwriting duo Felice and Boudleaux Bryant.
“It’s just kind of a building that sits off the street on Grand between 16th and 17th, and it’s a little bit in the alleyway,” says Distad. “We’re a dive bar, so it’s not the worst-case scenario if we’re not on the street. We don’t need to have fancy flashing neon lights.”
During Case’s tenure, he gently guided Bobby’s toward a middle ground between progressive thinking and familiar comfort. There was a ban on smoking inside. Tourists looking for something you can actually do on Music Row besides take a guided tour had joined the customer base, alongside the traditional clientele of area residents and college students. They marked their visits in the age-old manner, signing dollar bills and taping them to the walls and ceiling. Songwriters — hitmakers and otherwise — remained among the patrons even as publishing houses and studios slowly moved elsewhere. A tiny stage and P.A. were set up inside, and by the January closing, there were 35 to 40 hours of performances every week.
None of the changes had diminished the bar’s status as a place where it’s rewarding to become part of a community of regulars, even in a bar and restaurant landscape with heaps of new, high-end options. As he fields quotes from contractors on the necessary renovations to the new building — including a covered patio out back where folks can smoke and kick around songs they’re working on — that factor is foremost on Distad’s mind. He doesn’t plan on monkeying with the name, either. Everyone knows it’s Bobby’s Idle Hour.
“I think a lot of people recognize it as Bobby’s, so that’s kind of why we didn’t want to take that name off of it,” he says. “I think there’ll be slight changes, but we’re gonna try to keep the format as similar as we possibly can, with also having hopes of having maybe bigger-name acts coming in every once in a while. We’re not completely changing what we are. I’ve worked the bar for four years, so I know what we are and we aren’t.”
