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A long-standing Nashville tradition will return for its 12th year on Sunday, May 16th as Grand Old Dulcimer Day fills the air at Two Rivers Mansion with everything from mountain music to classical tunes and even a little rock and roll.
The free event, a celebration of the mountain dulcimer, will take place from noon until 6 p.m. at Two Rivers Mansion, which is located at 3130 McGavock Pike. According to event organizers, the 12th annual festival will include stage performances by renowned artists and dulcimer groups as well as dulcimer exhibits, introductory dulcimer lessons for children and plenty of great food provided by Houston’s Meat & Produce.
Sponsored by the Grand Old Dulcimer Club (grandolddulcimerclub.org) and Metro Nashville Parks with support from Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, Grand Old Dulcimer Day is tentatively scheduled to include performances by Sarah Elizabeth, Lee Rowe, Joni Bishop, Stephen Seifert and many more.
Festivalgoers will enjoy great music and delectable food against the backdrop of the historic Two Rivers Mansion, a 19th Century home built by the McGavock family. Restored to the 1870s period – the time when it was completed – the stunning estate was left to Vanderbilt University in 1965. The university later sold the home and 447 acres to Metropolitan Nashville government, which made the mansion and a 14-acre portion of the property part of its parks system.
The 40-plus-member Grand Old Dulcimer Club is one of many such clubs in middle Tennessee. The club is a group of dulcimer players and musician friends who meet monthly to play, learn and share. Club members regularly take their music into hospitals, nursing homes and schools.
For more information, news and updates about the Grand Old Dulcimer Club or Grand Old Dulcimer Day, please visit http://grandolddulcimerclub.org.
Rumours, located in the 12 South area of Nashville, is a great wine bar and restaurant. Their knowlegable staff is always friendly and willing to help you select the perfect wine to compliment your meal. It's cozy atmosphere makes it all the better. I highly recommend that you visit rumours next time your in the area and they can be found at Rumours.
What can be said about the Loveless Cafe. It is truely unique and represents the spriit of Nashville. While being most famous for their biscuits and Carol Fay, aka the Biscuit Lady, they have outstanding meat and three meals. In an old motel and cafe, the Loveless remains a local favorite and has recently opened their Barn for special occasions. Please visit them at the Loveless.
Monell's is a great family style dining restaurant located in Germantown and Franklin. Skillet Fried Chicken is served with every meal and daily specials can be found on the website. Monell's is open seven days a week. Please visit their site at www.monellstn.com.
The Frist Cafe is located inside the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. It is an outstanding place to have lunch with the seating looking out onto the courtyard and the ability to see some of the exhibits while you are there. It is also a great place to take visitors from out of town. They have specials each week and have a dessert happy hour everyday from 2-5p. You can find them at Frist Center Cafe
Copper Kettle - Located at 94 Peabody in downtown Nashville and 4004 Granny White Pike in Green Hills. The Downtown location is open for breakfast and lunch and the Green Hills location is open for lunch and Dinner. Sunday Bruch is served at both locations. For more information you can find them at Copper Kettle
Ground is breaking on Nashville’s new Music City Center. The starter’s gun has fired for Nashville’s ring of downtown support hotels as to whether they will continue to reflect their tired facades and interiors or step up with capital improvement investments that meeting planners will be comparing other resort destination cities and comparable designated headquarter hotels in close proximity to their civic conventions.
As publically documented, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and the Metropolitan Development and Housing Authority continue lobby for investment support for a new 1000 room hotel adjacent to be developed by Phelps Development, Portman Holdings and Tower Investments. From conversion of design concepts to construction documents, and then to construction of a structure of this style is a reasonable 36 month optimum window. With a scheduled 2013 opening of Music City Center, each day of delay in finding the necessary investment groups to support this complemental project stack the odds against having a new hotel and convention center opening together.
Having a sufficient quantity and quality of room options reasonably close to the convention and meeting venue is a critical tipping point for meeting planners for events which the Music City Center is geared to attract. But when you look at other resort destination convention facilities as San Diego, San Antonio, Orlando, Washington D.C. , and Las Vegas, their aesthetic look, feel, freshness, and age of their potential event headquarter are factors in the decision process for centric focused prestige events and planners.
The reality is that MDHA has forecasted to double the historical attendance and revenue via occupancy taxes at opening. Double attendance. Immediately upon opening. The current schedule of events for the current convention center structure in 2010 is about 220. The event count is not projected to change for 2013, but the capacity to handle more people is maxed out at the existing facility according to a convention center spokesman. The new center’s added capacity will not change the anticipated event count from this year’s schedule. But added rooms are part of the occupancy tax equation.
Doubling the attendance means more rooms which would appear Nashville may not have. Downtown Nashville hotels will be a major a factor when meeting planners are pursued to double the attendee count now projected by Convention planners with the new Music City Center. Nashville’s lack of “WOW” factor in downtown options may still make it a distant fifth in the field it will be attempting to compete when meeting planners discuss other resort destination convention and meeting options.
Only one Nashville downtown property at least provides a significant sense of arrival statement for its guest: The Hilton. In proximity to the Music City Center it is also the initial drive by first choice by location as the headquarter hotel with the current status quo. In comparison to the Hilton, without their historic landmark cache’ the bulk of Nashville downtown hotels look tired and feel every bit their age.
Nashville’s immediate downtown inventory of 3053 hotel rooms closely matches the capacity of Gaylord Opryland Hotel. The exhibit space and meeting rooms between both will be within a comparable range.
The working relationship between the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau, the current Convention Center, and Gaylord is very positive and they work closely together in bringing convention and meeting business events to Nashville. The organizations have worked together in host alternating the same event in subsequent years.
Gaylord will continue to market a self-contained package within recently renovated rooms, meeting rooms, and public spaces in the past few years, and their historic captive marketing of Gaylord’s Nashville music city “Opryland” options for meeting planners.
The competitive reality is that other key resort destinations have a more dynamic options and geographic proximity of rooms to their civic convention centers. Doubling your meeting capacity without sufficient housing to support that goal make result with an outcome that even great Music City hospitality can’t overcome.
The Music City Center will require more synergy and partnering dynamic creativity and energy with their downtown hoteliers on the same level as their competitive counterparts in other resort destination cities to present a viable option that extends beyond a Music City Center Music City image, feel, and hospitality. How other resort destinations are set up will be highlighted in subsequent articles.
Flyte is a terrific restaurant located at the corner of Division and 8th Ave. Aside from providing great food, wine and beer, they are focused on locally provided food with healthy and humanely raised food. In addition they have happy hour Tuesday through Saturday from 430p-730p and includes 25% off the lounge menu. For more information visit them at Flyte World Dining and Wine.
Demo's, a Nashville Classic, continues to offer great value for both lunch and dinner. With over 80% of their lunch menu being under $7.00 it is hard to find a better deal in Nashville. They offer just about everything from Steaks to Chicken to Seafood and of course their trademark spaghetti. To see their menu and find a location near you visit their website at Demo's.
