Morgan Wallen’s new Nashville bar delays opening amid sign controversy

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The Memorial Day weekend opening for country music star Morgan Wallen’s new bar was postponed days after Nashville’s city council denied the venue a neon sign with the country star’s name, citing his past controversies.

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TC Restaurant Group announced over the weekend that “Morgan Wallen’s This Bar” would not open during the holiday weekend as originally planned.

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“The ground-up construction of a six-story venue launching with hundreds of team members is a tremendous amount of work and a complex process,” the group said in a statement to The Washington Post.

“When we open, we want This Bar to be an exceptional experience for guests. Unfortunately, the process requires more time, and we are not able to open and provide that experience this Memorial Day weekend. Rest assured it will be well worth the wait. We look forward to welcoming guests soon.”

The delayed opening comes days after local politicians denied Wallen’s plans for a 20-foot sign outside his bar, with some council members pointing to Wallen’s previous controversial behaviour of using racial slurs and being arrested for allegedly throwing a chair off another bar’s rooftop as reasons to deny him.

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“We just voted down a resolution allowing an Aerial Encroachment with Morgan Wallen’s name on it. Yes THAT Morgan Wallen. The one who throws chairs & uses racial slurs,” said Delishia Porterfield, council member at large, in a post on X. “Nope! No thank you. Try that in a small town. … Better yet….don’t try it all,” she wrote, referencing the controversial Jason Aldean song.

“His comments are hateful, his comments are harmful, and you don’t belong in this town, as far as I’m concerned,” said council member Jordan Huffman, according to WSMV, a Nashville news station.

A spokesperson for TC Restaurant Group told The Post that the delay had nothing to do with the city’s council’s decision to deny Wallen’s bar a neon sign. “They are working through all of the normal complexities of starting a new business,” the spokesperson said in an email. “All parties involved are working together and they look forward to opening soon.”

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Wallen has not directly responded to the council’s decision, though he may have subtly referenced Huffman’s comments about him not belonging in Nashville in an Instagram Story post of a recent concert in the city. (Representatives for Wallen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Wallen was arrested in early April for allegedly throwing a chair from the sixth-floor roof of a downtown Nashville bar. He was charged with three felony counts of reckless endangerment, according to Nashville police.

In 2020, Wallen was arrested at a different Nashville bar for disorderly conduct and later issued an apology. He similarly apologized in 2020 after social media photos showed him partying without a mask during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, TMZ published footage that appeared to show the country star using the n-word outside his home, which led some radio stations to take his music off the air.

Wallen is touring as a part of his One Night at a Time World Tour, named after the chart-topping album that broke the record for most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for a country album.

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