Nashville At Night: Top 9 Things To Do In Nashville At Night

Wondering what to do in Nashville at night? This travel guide shares nine unique Nashville nightlife experiences. 

Nashville is a tall drink of a city, a boozy bash of Tennessee whisky and cute cocktails. Cups clink. A Bar Song blurs into more bar songs. Nightlife sloshes along Honky Tonk Highway, where country music accompanies a tipsy weekend. 

I sit at a rooftop bar on the corner of Broadway and sip a faux paloma. Four floors below, bachelorette groups click their pink cowboy boots, lift their white cowboy hats, and sing, at the top of their lungs, “I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires. Maybe next time, he’ll think before he cheats.”  

The party bus moves on to an Old Town Road. The sun sets.

Hot breaths of clouds behind John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge fade to black, as locals file into the bar, catching up with out-of-town friends after work. Nashville at night can be loud and wild and intense, but I love this city at its most relaxed.

Here are nine of the top things to do in Nashville at night.

Go To An Escape Room

If you can convince at least one friend to join you for an Escape Game in Nashville, go. Escape Game has three locations in Music City (Downtown, Opry Mills, Berry Hill), but only one (Berry Hill) contains a puzzle room themed around Nashville’s music scene. Nashville, the game, was the company’s first: You have sixty minutes to scour a recording studio for a hidden record contract. No country music knowledge required, but math plays a part (quick tip: take advantage of the unlimited hints).

Visit The Frist After Five

The Frist Art Museum’s rotating exhibitions aren’t the only things in flux, reeling back visitors. On Thursdays, after 5 PM, The Frist stays open (until 8 PM). Museum members mill in the lobby. Docents lead thirty-minute gallery tours. Families (and a few couples on first dates) meet up at Cafe Cheeserie for (free!) live music (here’s the line-up) and lively conversation. 

A Late Night Date Night

My first trip to Nashville was a few years before I moved to Tennessee. My husband and I had spent ten cooped-up hours on the road. We waited for a big meal and stretched our legs by a neon sign: Loveless Motel. We walked into country gift shops (that before the 1980s, functioned as motel rooms). We ate breakfast for dinner, right off the highway, in a packed space. We wiped half a dozen biscuits and fruit jam from our plates (in minutes that felt like seconds). The Loveless Cafe was our first late-night date night in Nashville. 

If you’re looking for more dressed-up options, here are a few places to eat in Nashville at night: Bad Idea (for their after 10 PM, Laos-inspired, share-ables), Pinewood Social (for its mini Crema coffee counter and large portions), Rolf & Daughters (for the sweet corn agnolotti), and Tailor (for the spicy pre-fixe menu, candlelit tables for two, and Vivek Surti’s commitment to dinner-party-style hosting). 

See A Movie At The Belcourt Theatre

On Thursday night, I headed to The Belcourt Theatre. I moved past the box office and ordered popcorn (which, according to a gleeful, butter-yellow movie preview, came in a biodegradable bag). Vanderbilt professors and film majors filled in a few of the 255 chairs in the 1966 Hall. I settled into one of the empty blue seats and looked ahead at the screen. Belcourt showcases arthouse movies, indie films, the latest A24 productions, classics, and cult favorites. Back when the theater was titled Hillsboro (in the early 1930s), the Grand Ole Opry broadcast from here. The Belcourt has had a significant facelift since its earliest days as a silent movie house, but it still operates as a love letter to cinema.

Hop Into These Bars

Nashville nightlife is often synonymized with loud bars and a crowd of drinks. But if you’re looking for a more chill, relaxed night experience, Fox Bar & Cocktail Club and The Amsterdamian glam up little lounges. Picture moody atmospheres, an intimate selection of seats, and assertive cocktails (and mocktails!).

Proper Sake, a fermented rice bar, canvassed in wood, specializes in koji-based spirits. Bard’s Towne Books & Bourbon pops up at Tall Tales, an East Nashville rooftop bar above Waymore’s Guest House, for open-mic poetry nights. Old Glory occupies an ex-boiler room, in an unlabeled building that was once one of the biggest steam cleaning sites in Nashville. Remnants remain: brick walls scaling up to a ceiling and a smoke stack reaching just as high. The entrance is tough to spot, especially at night (look for a door within a triangular splash of yellow paint).

Attend A Concert

Nashville is Music City: Country singers play practically every day at the Grand Ole Opry House, and Ryman Auditorium’s bright wooden stage acts as a rite of passage for many vocalists. Bridgestone Arena opens up to fans of popular artists. Schermerhorn Symphony Center hosts a series of casual, fun events (think movie nights with live orchestral scores and an annual mash-up of video game themes). The Parthenon, in Centennial Park, sometimes doubles as a candlelit live music venue, too. 

Listen To More Live Music

In a listening room, the audience hushes library-quiet. You can hear small shifts of knee-top guitars rustle blue jeans, and the pressed-in breaths of neighbors. It’s hard to imagine a softer setting than this to listen to lyrics. 

The Bluebird Cafe is Nashville’s most iconic listening room. This is the venue where Taylor Swift sang Songs About You, Me And Britney, and Beautiful Eyes at age fourteen [source]. Maren Morris and Trisha Yearwood have taken the stage, too. 

The Round (Bluebird’s songwriter showcase) is hard to get tickets for (the only way is on Bluebird’s website). Tickets sell out quickly, so if you want to go, save the pre-sale date. The Bluebird Cafe is the kind of place that belongs on a Nashville bucket list, but if it’s just the Writers’ Round experience you’re after, The Listening Room Cafe, another choice, is an underrated venue that also supports songwriters on its main stage.

Printers Alley

In 1915, Printers Alley was all ink and paper. A dozen newspaper publishers around. The Tennessean. Nashville Banner. At night, it was a men’s quarter, too. Saloons, (not so) gentlemen’s clubs, gambling parlors – whatever their poison was, Printers Alley had a business to go with it [source]. 

Today, Printers Alley draws visitors looking to get off Lower Broadway. They duck into a slit of a road, running from Church to Union Street, staring up at the neon-lit signs between 3rd and 4th Avenue. They enter a nightlife district, passing brick walls and doors for Skull’s Rainbow Room, Bourbon Street Blues & Boogie Bar, Alley Taps, and The Black Rabbit (located in Bankers Alley, but often lumped into Printers Alley). 

Step Into Honky Tonk Highway

I sit on the rooftop of Acme Feed & Seed. For fifty-plus years, this building, on the corner of Broadway, was a farm supply store. The smells of hay, compost, and puppy chow [source] have long been replaced by the scents of fried chicken and smoked beef. Local artists perform weekly in the first-floor dining room, part of Acme Feed & Seed’s all-ages spin on downtown shenanigans. 

Honky Tonk Highway is Nashville’s party stretch. Tourists, donned in newly-purchased cowboy hats, crawl into honky tonks, dance, and drink (until the early hours of the morning). Dimlit, cover-charge-free, country-themed bars, managed by hospitality groups, name-drop celebrity partners. Bachelorette groups sip shots of beer, belly laugh, and whoop (I admire their energy, and sometimes think: I’ll have what they’re having). 

But Acme Feed & Seed’s relaxed, open-air rooftop is where my inner bookworm feels the most comfy meeting up with friends hankering for a night out on Broadway. I look at the views (Nissan Stadium, Cumberland River, The Batman Building), open a can of Better Than Booze (the paloma mocktail flavor), and share my honky tonk picks (Robert’s Western World, Layla’s) before sunset.

Did you find this Nashville nightlife guide helpful? What are your favorite things to do in Nashville at night? Let me know in the comments below!

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