Council rejects sign for Morgan Wallen's new Nashville bar, citing past behavior
The city council in Nashville, Tennessee, has rejected a bid to install a sign for Morgan Wallen’s new bar, with council members citing his past controversies, including his using a racial slur and nearly hitting police officers with a chair he threw off a Nashville rooftop as reasons to reject the measure.
A resolution introduced Tuesday at the meeting of the Nashville Metropolitan Council would have authorized 4th Avenue Property LLC, the bar’s ownership group, to hang a large, lighted sign at the downtown Nashville venue, named Morgan Wallen’s This Bar and Tennessee Kitchen.
The resolution failed, with three council members voting yes and 30 no and four abstaining, denying Wallen and the companies behind his bar the opportunity to hang a neon sign above the Broadway joint, which is set to open this Memorial Day weekend.
Representatives for Wallen declined a request for comment Wednesday. A lawyer who appeared in business searches as a registered agent for 4th Avenue Property didn’t immediately respond to a phone call and an email seeking comment Wednesday night.
Council member Jacob Kupin, who introduced the resolution, took a moment to say it came across his desk around the same time Wallen was accused of throwing a chair off of a rooftop in Nashville last month, nearly hitting first responders on the street.
After the chair-throwing incident, Wallen wrote on X that he was “not proud of my behavior” and that he has the “utmost respect for the officers working every day to keep us all safe.”
Kupin said he realized that the city would be “putting up a sign with someone’s name on it who has not, you know, been a good actor downtown.”
Kupin acknowledged Wallen’s efforts to apologize, saying he was in favor of the motion because of those efforts and because the restaurant group supporting the bar — TC Restaurant Group — has been easy to work with and has “worked on efforts to make downtown a safer place.”
Referring to Wallen, Kupin said, “The fact that someone’s name is going up on a bar doesn’t mean we condone all the behavior.” He added that “the operator themselves, I don’t think, should be penalized for what happened.”
TC Restaurant Group didn’t immediately respond to a call and an email seeking comment Wednesday night.
Kupin ultimately asked his colleagues to support the measure but said he just wanted to take a moment to talk about the circumstances before they moved forward.
Later, when he was pressed by a colleague, Kupin again said he wanted to give the third-party operators a fair shot at opening and running the business, “but I also felt like I could not let this individual just slide through quietly” because of “the things he has said and done.”
Conversation surrounding the resolution, which reached the floor with committee support, then turned negative, with other council members saying they couldn’t support a massive sign bearing Wallen’s name after his past actions.
After she confirmed with Kupin that Wallen used a racial slur in 2021, at-large council member Delishia Porterfield said, “I will be voting no against this,” citing legislation passed earlier in the session “saying that we wanted to make sure that Nashville was a supportive place for everyone.”
“So I don’t want to see a billboard up with the name of a person who’s throwing chairs off of balconies and who is saying racial slurs and using the N-word,” Porterfield said.
Two years after the racial slur incident, Wallen told Billboard that there is “no excuse” for his using the word. He said at the time, after having spoken with a number of Black leaders, that his process “to learn and try to be better” was ongoing.
Council member Brenda Gadd also said she’d vote no, citing the same reasons as Porterfield and noting that Wallen “continues to get second chances.”
Council member Joy Smith Kimbrough echoed her colleagues’ sentiments, adding that she couldn’t support the resolution out of respect for the officers who were almost hit by Wallen’s thrown chair.
Council member Jordan Huffman went as far as to say that Wallen gives all East Tennesseans a “bad name.”
“His comments are hateful; his actions are harmful. And you don’t belong in this town, as far as I’m concerned,” Huffman said, encouraging his colleagues to vote against the resolution.
Rebecca Cohen
Rebecca Cohen is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.
Valeriya Antonshchuk contributed.