Nashville Needs A Honky Tonk Hero

The honky tonks of Nashville’s Lower Broadway should not become casualties of the city’s success. With property tax bills surging, many of the venues that made Music City famous could be forced to close, killing a living piece of American culture.

From Loretta Lynn to Morgan Wallen, from the Grand Ole Opry to Elvis Presley recording at RCA Studio B, Nashville has exported a distinctly American culture to the rest of the country and the world. That culture reached my own family in New York long before I ever visited the capital of Tennessee. My grandmother listened to the WSM Barn Dance, the radio program that eventually became the Grand Ole Opry, and my mother grew up watching “Hee Haw.”

I saw why that legacy matters on a recent visit to Nashville with my wife and two sons. It was only my second trip to Music City, but an afternoon at The Stage on Broadway listening to country classics confirmed what millions of Americans already know: Nashville is a special place that carries something distinctly American that spans generations.

That is why Nashville’s ongoing property tax fight, which threatens the very businesses and institutions that made Lower Broadway the heart of Music City, matters to people far beyond Davidson County.

The numbers show what happens when rising assessments translate into dramatically higher tax bills. Acme Feed & Seed’s annual property tax bill reportedly jumped from roughly $129,000 in 2024 to nearly $600,000 in 2025. Honky Tonk Central’s reportedly increased from about $81,000 to $348,000 over the same period, while Kid Rock’s Honky Tonk climbed from roughly $209,000 to $765,000.

Layla Vartanian, owner of Layla’s Honky Tonk, said her taxes increased by roughly three and a half times. Without reform, she warned, “this whole block would be wiped out.”

Recently, I met with Broadway honky tonk owners, entrepreneurs, business owners, policymakers, media leaders, advocates, and community stakeholders at the Detroit Cowboy restaurant to hear their concerns firsthand. The message was unmistakable. The property tax increases hitting Lower Broadway are an immediate threat to the businesses that built Nashville’s reputation. When costs rise this fast, doors can close quickly.

In my introductory political science course, I was taught an old lesson from Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland: the power to tax involves the power to destroy. That warning feels particularly relevant in Nashville today. When tax policy makes it impossible for the institutions that built Music City to survive, government is no longer supporting a community. It is dismantling it.

Those concerns were only heightened when Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell was asked whether the city would step in as Acme Feed & Seed faced possible closure because of its property tax increase. “It’s not up to me whether he keeps that business open,” O’Connell said. “The market evolves. New businesses start even as beloved old businesses close.”

But property taxes are not some outside force. They directly affect whether someone can afford to keep a business open. City leaders may not personally close the doors, but they can make it impossible to keep them open.

The question facing Nashville is simple and ironic: Should the people who create a city’s prosperity be able to remain in the city they helped build, or should they be priced out by the very prosperity they brought to life?

The neon lights of Lower Broadway do not stay on by themselves. They are kept alive by real businesses, many of them family businesses that do not operate on Fortune 500 margins. When taxes and assessed property values rise faster than those businesses can handle, the lights go out quickly.

This is the trap. Lower Broadway is valuable because honky tonks, live music venues, and local businesses turned it into a destination. But once that success drives up market values, the tax system begins to treat the home of country music like just another real estate asset.

On paper, a parcel may look more valuable because of what the market might pay for it. In reality, the honky tonks are not operating on hotel, luxury development, or corporate complex margins. They made Lower Broadway worth more, and now that value is being used against them.

We would be worse off if Lower Broadway were replaced by high-end retail, national chains, and businesses that could exist in virtually any American city. On Lower Broadway, the Apple Store feels out of place among the honky tonks, live music, and neon signs that made the street famous. But the greater danger may be even worse than a different kind of business moving in. If taxes keep climbing, Nashville could end up with empty storefronts and dark stages where honky tonks once brought country music lovers together.

Nashville now stands at a crossroads. One path prioritizes the people, businesses, and institutions that built Music City. The other allows them to be priced out by policies that fail to recognize their value.

The people who built Nashville deserve the chance to remain part of the city they helped create. It is time for state leaders to protect the businesses that keep Music City alive and answer John Rich’s call: “Be a honky-tonk hero.” Make Waylon Jennings proud.

***

Kyle Davis is an Advisor in the Coalitions department of the Heritage Foundation.