Morgan Wallen’s legal troubles have hindered his attempts to open a bar in Nashville’s busiest nightlife district yet again.
Wallen’s long-planned joint venture with TC Restaurant Group, named This Bar & Tennessee Kitchen, failed to open as scheduled this weekend. The delay comes as Wallen is facing three felony counts of reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct. Those charges stem from an incident in April where Wallen, 31, allegedly threw a chair off the roof of fellow country star Eric Church’s Chief’s Bar in downtown Nashville.
“We’re proud of our team who has worked tirelessly to prepare Morgan Wallen’s This Bar & Tennessee Kitchen for opening. 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 ownership group told Us Weekly. “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.”
The delay comes mere days after Nashville City Council resoundingly rejected the bar’s request to hang a 20 foot-tall neon sign outside of the establishment. The sign would have read “Morgan Wallen’s This Bar.” That request was voted down by a count of 30-3 with four council members abstaining. Council members pointed to Wallen’s history of arrests and using racial slurs in their reasoning for nixing the signage.
“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,” council member Delishia Porterfield said on Tuesday, May 21.
“His comments are hateful,” council member Jordan Huffman added. “His actions are harmful.”
Wallen’s country music peers have taken the opportunity to take the chart-topper down a peg. During the Academy of Country Music Awards earlier this month, presenters Ashley McBryde and Noah Reid reworked his hit song about hungover regrets, “Last Night,” to be about Wallen’s arrest.
“Last night after some alcohol, [the] chair right over there really started to piss me off,” Reid sang, “They told me that I threw it at somebody that I never met, and my publicist keeps telling me this ain’t over it.”
For a long time, it seemed that Morgan Wallen was going to be one of the next big things in Nashville. And then scandal after scandal hit. The country singer launched his music career in April 2018 with the release of his debut album, If I Know Me. After finding success early on with singles […]
Wallen has apologized for his past use of racial slurs and the recent chair-throwing incident.
“I didn’t feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks. I’ve touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief’s,” he wrote on X in April. “I’m not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility.”
