Exclusive: Tanya Tucker joins 'big boys on Broadway' with pop-up tequila bar in downtown Nashville
You can't fit a horse into a bar, right?
Yes, that's the only way to announce that on May 2, Country Music Hall of Famer Tanya Tucker is bringing her Cosa Salvaje tequila brand to a pop-up bar on the second floor of Lower Broadway's Nudie's Honky Tonk.
Tucker's five-year-old Cosa Salvaje brand will be featured in various cantina-inspired cocktails at the reimagined upstairs venue. Veteran, formerly West Coast-based executive chef Bryan Lareau will curate a menu to complement the theme.
"I'm over the moon about Tanya Tucker's Tequila Cantina," Tucker said in a statement. "It's been a dream for several years to join the big boys on Broadway."
Via this announcement, it's important to note that in May, the 400 block of Broadway will feature establishments where Tucker, Garth Brooks, Hank Williams Jr. and Alan Jackson are celebrated.
After initially spiking in appeal for highlighting the works of 2000s- and 2010s-era male headliners like Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line (among others), Lower Broadway will, by this summer, feature spaces celebrating a half-century of country music's most commercially successful mainstream stars.
The Tequila Cantina is a partnership between Icon Entertainment & Hospitality and Tucker. For Icon CEO Bill Miller, it continues — along with Nudie's, Printer's Alley's Skull's Rainbow Room and Southern Turf Club, Fourth Avenue's Frank Sinatra-themed bar and lounge, Lower Broadway's award-winning Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline museums, the Johnny Cash Bar and BBQ, plus the House of Cards bar — his work linking Nashville's modern expansion with timelessly iconic musical culture-driven artists-as-legacy brands.
"(Icon is) thrilled to partner with Tanya Tucker on this incredible pop-up," Miller said.
The company prepared by spending an entire day tasting cocktails crafted by bartenders at Sinatra Bar & Lounge, Nudie's and the Southern Turf Club all containing Cosa Salvaje as the primary spirit.
The announcement comes nearly a year after Tucker's April 2023 ride down Rep. John Lewis Way astride a world-champion black Friesian stallion to celebrate the announcement of her then-forthcoming induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame and to highlight Cosa Salvaje.
Two months later, on a weekend that saw her perform at the Grand Ole Opry and Ryman Auditorium (and riding the same stallion onstage at the former), the "Delta Dawn" and "Two Sparrows in a Hurricane" vocalist joked that "God's sprinkling magic dust on these people or something," referring to the positive response she received as her career entered its sixth decade of Grammy award-winning pop cultural relevance.
Tucker and entrepreneur Elle France co-founded the Cosa Salvaje tequila line in 2019. It is currently available in 14 states and Canada. Numerous bottles in the line have art featuring Tucker riding black stallions.
She and her brand are being paired with Nudie's, which resides in a 100-year-old building aligned with legendary country stage gear maker Nudie Cohn. It houses millions of dollars worth of rare country music memorabilia and stage costumes, having designed outfits for Hank Williams, Gene Autry, Johnny Cash, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Roy Rogers, Elton John and dozens of others, including Elvis Presley's famous gold suit. Cohn's customized Cadillac El Dorado Nudie Mobile also hangs on the wall.
For more information on Tucker's Cosa Salvaje Tequila, visit CosaSalvajeTequila.com. Details on Tucker's career are available at TanyaTucker.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tanya Tucker bringing Cosa Salvaje pop-up bar to downtown Nashville
