Nashville's Cannery Hall 're-opens' as 'fun, independent' multi-space venue alternative

Performance venues receiving facelifts isn't a story new to Nashville.

However, Cannery Hall -- a physical brick space a decade older than the 131-year-old Ryman Auditorium -- has been renovated or expanded at least four more times than country music's "Mother Church."

On Wednesday, after eight months of extensive renovation, the space reopens as a four-stage concert venue.

The venue has been closed since May 2022, when the lease for then-venue operator Mercy Lounge ended:

The spaces now available at Cannery Hall include the following:

• 300-person capacity Row One room

• The 625-person capacity Mil

• A 1,275-person capacity Mainstage

• The Amaranth -- a top-floor special events space able to hold up to 380 people.

As well, local-to-Nashville barbecue restaurant Peg Leg Porker -- among many -- has been tabbed to aid with the food offerings at all Cannery Hall venues.

Zach Liff's DZL Management first purchased an interest in the property in 2019 before acquiring it in full in 2020.

"It just made sense to make sure we can preserve it. It's such an icon. I think our opportunity is to have it be a part of the neighborhood, as opposed to just a single standalone thing," stated the developer -- who owns 16 contiguous acres of downtown Nashville real estate, including office, retail, residential, hospitality, and mixed-use types -- near Cannery Hall, to The Tennessean, in 2022.

DZL's 16 acres now involves brands including Gibson Guitars, The Finch Grill & Raw Bar and Philippe Chow restaurant chains, plus Pullman Standard Cocktail Lounge occupying space in DZL-owned Station District spaces, including The Baggage Building and Cummins Station.

Amidst local-to-global growth, Nashville remains Nashville

Cannery Hall's general manager, Brent Hyams, led The Tennessean through an exclusive January tour of the renovated space.

Hyams brings 25 years of Nashville entertainment experience to the space, having worked with the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Ryman Auditorium, Tennessee Performing Arts Center, War Memorial Auditorium and Spring Hill, Tennessee-based Worldwide Stages before assuming the post for Cannery Hall in Feb. 2022.

Music City's modern-era real estate boom precipitated the Warner Family's property sale. Though interest from both coasts was high for the property as a complete renovation, the Warners chose Liff, a Nashville native, as a buyer because he understood the inherent importance of maintaining the city's fundamental physical aesthetics amidst a seeming national-to-local overhaul of the city's appearance and land.

Liff's lived experience as a touring musician inspires his passion for pairing adaptive reuse with re-fitting Cannery Hall's acoustics, sonics and visuals with the aid of Full Spectrum, an integration of customized lighting and sound equipment builds from brands including PK Sound, Hennessey Sound Design, Void Acoustics, Borealis Live Design and Firefly LED.

AI and robotics-driven immersive audio experiences, LED walls, and architectural lighting solutions using the building’s 400-year-old columns familiar to spaces including Las Vegas' Electric Daisy Carnival, music videos for Tim McGraw and Carrie Underwood, nightclubs in Ibiza, feature films and more will enhance performances at Cannery Hall.

A space built as a Liberty Mills flour mill when ground wheat was a more prominent Nashville export than Americana and country music evolved into, most sustainably, a restaurant, performance and television production space for 1980s and 1990s era country music and Western-themed entertainment.

By the 2000s and 2010s, Mercy Lounge and the Cannery Ballroom and High Watt spaces had emerged from the space's previous uses.

"The Mercy Lounge [was] a pillar of Nashville's burgeoning non-country music scene, [hosting] future superstars like Adele, Katy Perry and Lizzo, as well as established acts giving intimate performances (Bon Jovi, The Black Keys, Panic! At The Disco, John Fogerty), stated The Tennessean in 2021.

Transplants, locals, both served well via venue's offerings

Within three weeks of opening, the venue will feature acts including house music veterans Walker and Royce playing for over 1,000 people, plus a bass-laden EDM triple bill of Table B, Blurrd Vzn and Gunpoint offering dubbed-out vibes for 500-plus.

Of course, those offerings aren't necessarily what comes to mind when one thinks of Nashville's music scene.

That's on purpose.

While the venue will still have a plethora of offerings for those looking for the types of events they also see in longtime Music City spaces like City Winery or 3rd and Lindsley, 100 newly transplanted Nashvillians -- mainly from Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego and New York -- arrive daily.

In those cities, music clubs are less tilted towards guitar-driven singer-songwriters more familiar with the influence of fiddles, pedal steel guitars and Western swing than most anything else.

Alongside frequent-touring Americana and country, jazz and soul nights, and yes, even bachelorette-loving Music City weddings in the sparse yet poshly appointed top-floor Amaranth space -- it is entirely possible that multiple genres of acts and types of events can -- and will -- appear simultaneously in the space.

Between January and May, Cannery Hall has no event nights scheduled where concerts are held at the same time.

There is enough space to adequately handle the venue's total legal capacity of 2,500 patrons simultaneously. Sonic bleed between floors could be problematic, but Hyams is confident of the venue staff and architect's abilities.

Moreover, there is even room to accommodate multiple food preparation kitchens, merchandise stands, green rooms, extensive lower-level rest facilities for engineers and laborers supporting acts, plus laundry and shower facilities on-site.

For emerging and established acts, plus their fanbases, Cannery Hall's amenities make Nashville an even more attractive tour stop than just taking a morning to be a tourist.

'Cool, fun, independent venue'

Cannery Hall is also socially and politically unique in Nashville's shifting landscape.

The venue is a member of the three-year-old and Washington, D.C.-based National Independent Venues Association.

After successfully securing $16 billion in federal funds to aid independent venues and promoters during the COVID-19 quarantine, NIVA has evolved into an advocate for preserving the cultural and economic power of smaller, independently-run venues amid the growth of corporate event marketers, producers and ticketers also owning venues, simultaneous to gentrification and rising costs impacting many cities nationwide.

Cannery Hall operates in the same Nashville as other prominent Music City venues including the Ryman Auditorium and quarter-century-old Bridgestone Arena, which achieved acclaim as the music industry's top ticket-sale grossing theater and arena, respectively, in 2021.

Nashville has an ever-growing number of venues, including two other 1,200-person standing capacity venues: the 2-year-old Nashville outpost of the nationwide Brooklyn Bowl chain and Marathon Music Works.

Hyams is optimistic when describing multipurpose-space Cannery Hall's value to Nashville's evolving venue offerings.

"Whether a native or a transplant, Nashville's population demands a cool, fun, and independent venue inspired by everything happening," he said.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Cannery Hall: After months of renovations, Cannery is back