Grammy Awards: Nashville club Station Inn featured on upcoming show

Tune into the Grammy Awards this Sunday to step inside Nashville's own Station Inn. 

The venerable bluegrass club — located in an untouched nook of the gentrified Gulch neighborhood — will get a prime time feature alongside some of music's top talent during the CBS broadcast this weekend. 

The Recording Academy will feature Station Inn in an effort to highlight independent clubs impacted by the pandemic, said venue marketing director Jeff Brown. Along with Music City's home to renowned pickers, the broadcast will showcase The Apollo Theater in New York City and Los Angeles clubs the Troubadour and Hotel Café. 

The segment will feature a brief interview with longtime owner JT Gray, Brown said. Awards will be presented from each venue during the show, according to a Recording Academy news release. 

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"We felt relatively alone," Brown said of when pandemic precautions closed Station Inn. "So to have someone of that caliber to step up to us and reach out to us and say, 'Hey you’re not alone… and we wanna do something for you and we wanna make sure the entire world knows you’re not alone.' That was pretty significant."

Station Inn opened in 1974, moving to its longtime home at 402 12th Ave S. in 1978. Founded by a cohort of bluegrass musicians — Marty and Charmaine Lanham, Bob and Ingrid Fowler, Jim Bornstein and Red and Bird Lee Smith — who first served as the club's house band, Gray took over Station Inn in 1981. 

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Since opening, the intimate venue has welcomed artists such as Bill Monroe, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Allison Krauss, John Prine, Dolly Parton, Dierks Bentley and more. 

After the pandemic temporarily closed its doors, the club launched Station Inn TV, a virtual platform to consume archived shows and watch live performances. Station Inn TV includes roughly 450 on-demand shows and attracted subscribers in 18 countries since launching, Brown said. 

"[The fans] supported us," Brown said. "We would be one of those stories of 'guess who didn’t make it though the pandemic' if it weren’t for them." 

Independent venues were among the businesses struck hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. Clubs across the United States, including Station Inn and others in Nashville, lobbied Congress last year to pass a $15 billion "Save Our Stages" lifeline. 

Station Inn reopened last year for limited capacity performances. Upcoming shows include Golden Shoals and Po' Ramblin' Boys. 

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