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Aubrey Wise
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Aubrey Wise
Nashville’s Lower Broadway isn’t known for its subtlety. It’s often obnoxious, crowded, and with its flashing neon and plastic cups of the next morning’s regret, it’s a version of Music City powered by bachelorettes and bar crawls. When Ashley McBryde opened her first bar there last year, she didn’t try to match the noise. She went the other direction.
Situated on the fifth floor of Eric Church’s Chief’s — Redemption intentionally sits above the chaos. It’s a non-alcohol-forward space, perfect for Dry January, influenced by the singer’s years-long path to sobriety. McBryde’s Redemption gives Nashville something Broadway hasn’t offered before: a place where people who don’t drink, or don’t drink anymore, can still be part of the city’s bustling, party-forward atmosphere.
Chief’s executive Heather Otto says the vision came from the artists themselves
“You feel Ashley, you feel Eric when you’re in this building because they were involved in it,” she says. “It’s not just another bar celebrating an artist without as much involvement. Her stamp is all over that room.”
That personal touch includes everything from the stained-glass windows to a small bottle upstairs that says Be Brave—a nod to one of McBryde’s tattoos. When the opportunity arose to stamp her name on a bar like many other country singers have done, McBryde was skeptical.
“Why on earth would I do something that everyone is doing?” she says. But when she was asked what her floor inside Chief’s might look like — with each level built around an artist’s point of view — she realized she had something to say. Her years spent navigating Nashville’s drinking culture led her to one word and a necessary truth: Redemption. It’s the name of a song from her Jalopies & Expensive Guitars era, but it also reflected the part of her life she’d had to rebuild.
“I had a handle. I drank a handle. I lost the handle. I had to put it down,” she says. “I think maybe calling that Redemption would be a wonderful thing.”
The space is small and deliberate. The stage is built for one performer, maybe two, and designed for a singer/songwriter to create a unique moment.
“We don’t have a whole lot of (spaces for them) on Broadway,” McBryde says. “Maybe they don’t want to be in a cover band, but they want to start getting their performance chops up.”
For John O’Neill, Chief’s programming director, that’s the whole point. “I want that to be a listening room,” he says. “Once the door closes, you forget you’re on Broadway.” He adds, “Ashley was all for trying to develop people and trying to do something a little different. And I think it’s played out pretty well.”
The drink menu follows the same less-is-more idea. The creative cocktails (or mocktails) are designed N/A first, with alcohol optional.
“Normally, there would be an asterisk in a normal bar that says (nonalcoholic) drinks available on request,” McBryde says. “There’s an asterisk that says alcohol also available to put in these drinks.”
Otto says that detail mattered.
“We wanted it to be a space where people could come and feel comfortable and celebrate their sobriety journey,” she says. “Or if they just didn’t want to drink, that it wasn’t out of the norm.”
Redemption’s mocktail menu pulls heavily from McBryde’s lyrics — One Night Standards, served with a ring pop; American Scandal, a nod to an old-fashioned; and 6th of October, from one of her most emotional songs. Regulars even chase the full menu to earn a patch that reads “I’ve Been Redeemed.”
“A lot of people love to do it,” Otto says. “It’s fun.”
While sobriety is the healthiest choice, it comes with a social price that McBryde understands. She and three friends once kept the same liquorsoaked late-night routine.
“There were four of us voted least likely to ever quit,” she says. “One of us died. The other three quit drinking.”
Their friendship survived, but the camaraderie — the dependability and familiarity of their nights out — was hard to maintain in their new sober world. She heard the same thing from others. One man told her that when he quit drinking, he had no place to go to make new friends. Redemption, she hopes, is the remedy.
“I think it provides maybe just a little bit of a lean-to in the storm,” she says. “To be just out of the rain for just a minute.”
One of her favorite surprises came when a friend looked up at the stained-glass window featuring the lyrics they had written together. “He said, ‘Dude, some words that we made up together are in stained glass in your bar.’”
McBryde laughs. “And I go, ‘Holy shit, it’s my bar.’”
O’Neill sees the same reaction from performers.
“For the artists, it’s an opportunity to get in front of a bunch of different people every night,” he says. “And when she hops up after her shows downstairs — man, that’s the thrill of it. They get to share the stage with her, even just for a bit.”
McBryde is extending her Redemption Residency at Chief’s into 2026. She won’t repeat a show. January and March will feature Just Me and My Shadow, fully acoustic nights she calls “gut checks.”
“There’s nothing to hide behind but your guitar,” she says. “Can you still do it?”
February’s Postcards from Lindeville shows highlight the characters that populate her albums — from “Livin’ Next to Leroy” to “Blackout Betty.” April’s Mixtape From the Mixed-Up Years celebrates the music she and her band grew up hearing in their families’ cars — everything from Alison Krauss to Blues Traveler.
There’s a reason she puts so much weight on live performance.
“I am an anxious individual,” McBryde says. “The only time the never-ending channel-flipping of anxiety in my brain gets quiet is when I’m on a stage.”
It’s why she plays Redemption after her full-band sets downstairs. She changes into a dry T-shirt — “I’m a sweaty, sweaty gal; I work for a living” — and goes upstairs to test new songs.
“They have no agenda,” she says. “I get to watch a song duke it out with an audience.”
O’Neill sees that intimacy as the bar’s strength.
“We’re the first non-alcoholic space on Broadway,” he says. “And we’re offering real songwriting. Real discovery. It’s this magical little present — you come in, the world shuts out, and you hear something that matters.”
Redemption isn’t about judgment. It’s McBryde’s truth — open to anyone who wants to share it with her. Guests can hear original music without being asked why they’re not drinking. They can order a mocktail to avoid temptation — even on Lower Broadway. For Dry January, or any month, Redemption offers a necessary alternative.