Council refuses to sign off on Morgan Wallen's new Nashville bar, citing past behavior

The City Council in Nashville, Tennessee, rejected an effort to install a sign on Morgan Wallen's new bar, with council members citing his past controversies, including his use of a racial slur and nearly hitting police officers with a chair he threw from a Nashville rooftop. As a reason for rejecting this procedure.

A resolution introduced Tuesday at a Nashville City Council meeting would have allowed 4th Avenue Property LLC, the bar ownership group, to hang a large, illuminated sign at a downtown Nashville venue, called Morgan Wallen's This Bar and Tennessee Kitchen.

The resolution failed, with three council members voting yes, 30 no and four abstaining, depriving Wallen and the businesses behind his bar of the opportunity to hang a neon sign above the Broadway joint, which is scheduled to open Memorial Day weekend.

Representatives for Wallen declined a request for comment Wednesday. An attorney who appeared in business searches as a registered agent for 4th Avenue Property did not immediately respond to a phone call and email seeking comment Wednesday night.

Councilman Jacob Kubin, who introduced the resolution, took a moment to say he came across his desk around the same time Wallen was accused of throwing a chair from a rooftop in Nashville last month, nearly hitting first responders in the street.

After the chair throwing incident Whalen wrote on X That he “wasn't proud of my behavior” and that he had “the utmost respect for the officers who work every day to keep us all safe.”

Cobain said he realized the city was “going to put a sign with the name of someone who was not well represented downtown.”

Cobain acknowledged Wallen's efforts in apologizing, saying he supported the proposal because of those efforts and because the restaurant group supporting the bar — TC Restaurant Group — was easy to work with and “has worked on efforts to make downtown a safer place.” “.

Referring to Wallen, Cobain said: “The fact that someone's name appears on a bar doesn't mean we condone all behavior.” He added, “The operator himself, I don't think, should be punished for what happened.”

TC Restaurant Group did not immediately respond to a call and email seeking comment Wednesday night.

Cobain eventually asked his colleagues to support the measure, but said he just wanted to take a moment to talk about the circumstances before moving forward.

Later, when pressed by a colleague, Cobain again said he wanted to give the third-party operators a fair shot at opening and running the project, “but I also felt like I couldn't let this person go quietly” because of “what he said and did.”

The conversation surrounding the resolution, which reached the floor with support from the committee, then turned negative, with other council members saying they could not support a massive banner bearing Wallen's name after his past actions.

After confirming with Cobain that Wallen used racial slurs in 2021, At-Large Councilwoman Delicia Porterfield said, “I will vote no against this,” citing legislation passed earlier in the session that “says we wanted to make sure that Nashville has been a place Supportive of everyone.”

“So I don't want to see a billboard with the name of the guy who throws chairs off balconies and who utters racial slurs and uses the N-word,” Porterfield said.

Two years after the racist insult incident, Wallen told Billboard There is “no excuse” for his use of that word. He said at the time, after speaking with a number of black leaders, that his process of “learning and trying to be better” was ongoing.

Councilwoman Brenda Judd also said she would vote no, citing the same reasons as Porterfield, noting that Wallen “keeps getting second chances.”

Councilwoman Joy Smith-Kimbrough echoed her colleagues' sentiments, adding that she could not support the resolution out of respect for the officers who were nearly hit by Whalen's chair.

Councilman Jordan Huffman went so far as to say that Wallen gives all East Tennessee residents a “bad name.”

“His comments are abhorrent. His actions are harmful. “You don't belong in this city, to me,” Hoffman said, encouraging his colleagues to vote against the resolution.