NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When frantic messages started trickling therein a tornado had hit a beloved music venue in Nashville, Mike Grimes told himself it couldn’t possibly be that bad.
Plot
Could Basement East really be destroyed? Just hours before, the club Grimes co-owns had hosted a benefit for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Affectionately referred to as “The Beast,” the club was only 5 years old, but already had established a reputation together of Nashville’s trendiest music spots, across the river from the city’s tourist-laden honky-tonks on lower Broadway.
The venue, with a capacity limit of 475, quickly became referred to as a premier site for hosting big-name acts in an intimate setting. Margo Price, Cage the Elephant, John Prine, Maggie Rogers, Maren Morris, Sturgill Simpson and lots of others played there.
Maybe, Grimes thought desperately as he drove over to the club, the people texting him about the destruction were exaggerating.
But when he pulled up to The Beast, his stomach dropped. The tornado had ripped the roof cleanly off a touch after 1 a.m., crumbling the bulk of the walls and leaving a tangled mess of destruction behind.
“You just don’t want to believe it,” Grimes said. “It was immediate shock.”
The March 3 storm killed quite 20 people, some in their beds, because it struck after midnight. quite 140 buildings were destroyed across a roughly 60-mile (97-kilometer) swath of Middle Tennessee, burying people in rubble and basements.
The six Basement East staffers who were cleaning up after the Sanders event escaped harm by running to the particular basement of the building just minutes before the powerful EF-3 tornado roared down the road . It took two staffers to shut the door against the winds, even as the twister omitted .
Right on the heels of the tornadoes, the virus outbreak slammed into the state with brute force last spring, and by Thanksgiving, Tennessee ranked among the worst-hit within the country, with a record number of hospitalizations and cases. To date, quite 11,000 residents have died from COVID-19.
The pandemic hit Nashville’s renowned music scene particularly hard. Small, intimate clubs weren’t designed to think about virus-control measures like social distancing.
“It’s so strange to possess a scenario where the building is gone then we’ve something … like COVID-19,” a confluence of devastating occurrences “that has never happened like this in our lifetime,” Grimes said.
As the virus raged on, the dream of once more packing Basement East filled with music lovers seemed shakier than ever.
“There were times that thought crossed my mind: ‘It’s not getting to happen,’” Brown said.
The club first opened its doors in 2015, but it took nearly five years for the venue to show a profit. It wasn’t until 2020 that Brown and Grimes felt they might breathe, that what they were doing was working. The partners — who describe themselves as grown teenagers with a love for rock ‘n’ roll — had wanted to celebrate their five-year anniversary in April 2020, but the tornado and pandemic had other plans.
Now, because the anniversary of the 2 catastrophic events approaches, the partners hope to finally reopen. Amid signs that virus cases are dropping and with more people getting vaccinated, they’ve set their sights on this spring. But they still decide to require patrons to wear masks and can spread tables out throughout the club’s 5,000-square-foot (465-square-meter) space.
When the tornado struck Basement East last March, it left one thing standing: some of a wall mural with the slogan, “I believe Nashville.”
Like that wall, the town itself is steadfast and resilient, Brown and Grimes note. Both believe Nashville’s central role within the world of yank entertainment and culture will make sure that it perseveres.
“The magic of music,” Brown said. “That’s what makes this place so strong.”
