The Zach Bryan effect: Why country music fans are flocking to Nashville

Times

12-07-2025

It's 1am on Lower Broadway, Nashville. In a neon-lit, honky-tonk twangy country music fills the room and a cowboy hat tips in my direction. Fried bologna sandwiches sizzle on the grill and pints of Pabst Blue Ribbon line the bar of Robert's Western World, and I am, without a hint of irony, having the time of my life. It's an iconic bar that boasts a sturdy rotation of world-class musicians — Lana Del Rey performed here in 2023 — where you can slow-dance with a wild-haired stranger and maybe fall in love for a song or two.
I've crossed over 6,000km and one ocean to be here, but it feels oddly familiar. Last April Aer Lingus launched a direct flight from Dublin to Nashville, a new bridge between Ireland's musical roots and this southern American city that beats with a surprising kind of kinship.
It's easy to overlook just how deeply country music resonates in Ireland. Carried across the Atlantic by 18th-century settlers, Irish fiddle tunes, melancholic ballads and raucous jigs found new life in the Appalachian mountains. The storytelling tradition — tales of lost love, exile and hard luck — flourished in isolated communities, blending with African-American blues and frontier gospel. The lilting strains of the Irish reel became the backbone of the American fiddle tune, while barn dances echoed ceili nights.
Back home, the Country and Irish music scene emerged from the showband era, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s where we were two-stepping to Big Tom and Philomena Begley at packed dance halls and GAA club fundraisers from Dingle to Dungloe.
Then there was Garth Brooks. Blame it all on his (Irish) roots, the Oklahoma showman, with his ten-gallon hat and heart-on-sleeve ballads, struck a chord with Irish audiences in the 1990s. Brooks became a phenomenon and when his planned Croke Park gigs were cancelled in 2014 there was national uproar.
Today Ireland's affection for polished country music has swelled even more and just last month Zach Bryan, a 29-year-old also from Oklahoma, performed three sold-out shows at Phoenix Park, with a total attendance of more than 180,000 people.
To get underneath the skin of country on home soil, you can leave Dublin mid-afternoon, clear US immigration before you board, and be sipping whiskey by nightfall at the pulsing, sweating, guitar-strumming belly of Tennessee.
Dubbed 'Music City' Nashville's identity is steeped in a legacy that sings from every street corner and backroom bar. The moniker's origins trace from 1873, when Queen Victoria allegedly dubbed the Fisk Jubilee Singers' voices as angelic, saying they must be from a 'music city'. The name stuck — and Nashville has made good on the promise.
The city's soundtrack hums with a musical heartbeat unlike anywhere else. It's a creative crucible where genres collide — country, bluegrass, gospel, rock, indie and Americana converge in writers' rooms and studios. Everyone, it seems, is a musician or knows one.
The result is a city that doesn't just play music; it lives it, breathes it, and, most importantly, writes it. Beyoncé recorded bits of Cowboy Carter here, while Del Rey, who played a sold-out show at Dublin's Aviva stadium last month, has recorded some of her forthcoming country-tinged album in studios in the city.
Elvis Presley recorded more than 200 tracks in RCA Studio B, a shadowy temple where legends were made and souls bartered in sweat and song. 'It was late, everyone was getting tired but Elvis wanted to do one more song,' the guide reveals. 'He got the lights turned right down low, went up to the mike, closed his eyes and started singing.' She then turns down those same lights, presses a button and Elvis sounds like he's in the room singing Are You Lonesome Tonight? It's both chilling and exhilarating at the same time.
Around the corner is an apartment where, legend has it, Roy Orbison wrote Oh, Pretty Woman when he looked out the window and saw a girl walking past.
Your visit to RCA Studio B is included in the same ticket price for the guided tour at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (countrymusichalloffame.org; €45.30), which is a must-visit — it is part museum, part shrine. Its sleek, modernist façade belies the raw, storied soul housed within. Hank Williams's handwritten lyrics sit alongside Elvis Presley's flamboyant Cadillac. There's a display featuring key pieces from Taylor Swift's Eras tour. The exhibit includes a sparkly purple ballgown, known as the 'cupcake dress', and a one-of-a-kind koi fish guitar.
Among the other gems is Johnny Cash's first black stage suit and Patsy Cline's cowgirl costume, battered acoustic guitars and gilded Grammy awards, each artefact telling a fragment of the larger country music narrative.
Just down the road is the Ryman Auditorium — the so-called Mother Church of Country Music. It's hallowed ground. The acoustics are so good you could whisper a Liam Clancy ballad on stage and still make a grown man weep in Row Z. The world-renowned Irish tenor John McCormack performed there in 1916 — cut to 2025 and Dermot Kennedy is performing in October (ryman.com; €30.65 for a self-guided tour).
You can't visit Nashville without a night on Broadway, where the city's image explodes into technicolour spectacle — think Temple Bar crossed with Las Vegas. A strip baptised in bourbon, honky-tonk, rhinestone jumpsuits and more cowboy hats than a John Wayne fever dream. Pedal taverns full of whooping bridesmaids from Indiana, LED signs flashing 'Cold Beer & Country Music', endless variations of the same bar: boots on the wall, fiddle on the stage, deep-fried everything, €12 margarita in a plastic cup and bands belting out tunes from Johnny Cash to Randy Travis. I spotted more than one inflatable horse.
It's a glorious riot of fun. Everyone's drinking hard seltzer; Wagon Wheel gets a few airings by girls who queue to take selfies under a neon boot. Pop in for the sheer Americana of it all. In a peculiarly Nashville quirk, many of these bars are owned by country stars. Blake Shelton's Ole Red, Miranda Lambert's Casa Rosa, Luke Bryan's rooftop joint, Jason Aldean's bar and grill, Dierks Bentley's Whiskey Row and Jelly Roll's Goodnight Nashville all line the strip. Even Garth Brooks, Ireland's adopted son, opened his Friends in Low Places honky-tonk last year.
'The walls here have seen more tears and drunken confessions than a thousand confessional booths combined,' a wannabe cowboy, who is on a stag from New York, shouts in my ear.
There are also gems such as Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, where you'll hear musicians so good you'll wonder why they're not headlining festivals.
Spend any time with locals and you realise that the country clichés are mostly for visitors. Nashville's working musicians aren't all strumming banjos in cowboy hats. They live in neighbourhoods like East Nashville or 12 South, drink craft beers in converted garages, and their wardrobes owe more to vintage denim than western wear.
It's Jack White's adopted city. Sheryl Crow, Kacey Musgraves, Keith Urban and his wife, Nicole Kidman, Kings of Leon, and the Black Keys all live here too. Taylor Swift owns an apartment and a mansion in Nashville. Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel also join Oprah Winfrey and the like who have planted roots here. Reese Witherspoon owns the popular Draper James boutique in the 12 South area. Think beards and tattoos, bespoke denims from Imogene + Willie, leather jackets and vinyl records spinning classic outlaw country alongside blistering indie rock. Nobody struts.
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And, if you still think Nashville's culinary reputation begins and ends with fried chicken and barbecue, you're missing the best part. While hot chicken is indeed a rite of passage — Prince's (princeshotchicken.com) if you want the real deal, Hattie B's (hattieb.com) for a friendlier queue — the city's restaurants are world-class.
Locust, run by the Dublin chef Trevor Moran, formerly of Noma, is one of the most exciting places I've eaten. It has received accolades such as Food & Wine magazine's 2022 Restaurant of the Year and was featured on The New York Times' 2022 Restaurant List. Moran's hands have been blessed by the gods of fermentation and fire. Every plate is a manifesto against mediocrity. Feast on exquisite dumplings, beef tartare and delicate kakigori, a Japanese-style shaved ice (locustnashville.com).
Over in Germantown, Rolf and Daughters does knockout small plates and pasta — scallop crudo, sourdough bread, tomato tart, cecamariti and linguine with mussels have garnered much praise. The cooking is boundary-pushing without being smug and the cocktails are top-notch too (rolfanddaughters.com).
For all Nashville's modern buzz and indie dive bars, it's worth anchoring yourself in a slice of old-school Southern elegance — and they don't come with more stories than the Hermitage Hotel. Opened in 1910, it's a grand, beaux-arts pile with sweeping staircases, soaring ceilings and a lobby that feels like it belongs in a F Scott Fitzgerald novel. Its history is rich with Tennessee lore: politicians plotted Prohibition here, country stars drank in the Oak Bar, and in recent years it's become a discreet bolt hole for visiting A-listers dodging Broadway's chaos.
The rooms are enormous, the bathrooms marble-clad, and the famous art deco men's restroom in the lobby (complete with lime-green glass tiles and original 1930s fixtures) is a listed attraction in itself. Even if you're not staying, pop in for a cocktail at the bar or afternoon tea in the Veranda, beneath glittering chandeliers. It's a serene, old-world contrast to Nashville's grit and neon — and proof that the city knows how to do glamour as well as grit (thehermitagehotel.com).
Away from the music, Nashville offers more surprises. Centennial Park is home to a full-scale replica of the Parthenon, complete with a towering statue of Athena, and is as bonkers as it sounds.
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For the art lovers, check out the Frist Art Museum in a stunning art deco building that used to be the city's main post office (€17; fristartmuseum.org)
Fancy some whiskey tasting? Located in Marathon Village, the Distillery Tour of Nelson's Green Brier Distillery takes you through the past, present and future of this storied distillery, (€21.40; greenbrierdistillery.com).
Nashville is more than its stereotypes. It's cooler, scruffier, grander, funnier and it might just be the best American city you've never really considered. And crucially — unlike over-touristy US cities like New York or Boston — Nashville still feels like it's yours to discover.
Yes, there are tourist traps and you might overpay for a pint somewhere. But you could also have a night that ends with a woman named Peggy teaching you how to line dance, and I promise you'll be talking about it for years.
Aer Lingus flies direct from Dublin airport to Nashville, with fares starting from €499 return.. The airport can also be used for connecting flights within the US, aerlingus.com. Demelza de Burca was a guest of visitmusiccity.com