Everything You Need to Know About Going to a Concert at Ascend Amphitheater
From Americana rock to jazz pop, we’ve seen it all at Ascend, one of our favorite Nashville venues.
Vance Joy. Norah Jones. Odessa.
Kimbra. Lucius. Young the Giant.
Brandi Carlile! St. Vincent!
Ascend is Nashville’s premiere outdoor venue. It’s downtown (like on the riverfront) and there’s a blend of lawn seating and actual seating. While they have just changed their bag policy (and have been truly so rude about implementing it without so much as a heads up or email via TicketMaster etc to upcoming visitors… I digress), I have generally had good experiences there. We’ve learned some things over the years of our shows at Ascend, so I’m sharing them with you!
Where to Eat and Drink
I would describe all these restaurants as $$ (not cheap, not totally spendy). That’s to be expected for the area. You’re in the heart of a city so expect to pay a little extra for your pre-show cocktail.
For a casual bite: Liberty Common
A cute French bistro meets American cafe style menu with Aperol spritzes and oysters. Their happy hour is actually excellent.
For a large group: Bakersfield
As a Californian, the town of Bakersfield does not elicit fondness or an association of authentic Mexican food, but this place does know what they’re doing. Their guac and margaritas are not messing around. If you’re going with a group of 6 or more, they do a house selections menu for $18 per person.
For a date night: Calacas
Jackson took me here recently on a date night and it was so yummy! We enjoyed the Día de los Muertos vibe. While we’d say skip the ceviche, definitely try the pork pibil tomale and the chingon carnitas.
For Southern cuisine: Martin’s
If you’re from out of town and hungering for some genuine Southern barbecue, we recommend Martin’s. It’s a solid joint with a few different offerings, though you can’t go wrong with pulled pork, fried pickle chips, or a half rack of ribs.
What to Wear
When people from home (California) ask me about the weather at home (Nashville) in the summer, I have come to terms with describing it as “similar to what I imagine it feels like to be inside a giant mouth.” Ew. But TRUE. The humidity. Feeling that outdoors is giving you a shower after you already showered and put on make up and dry clothes. Peeling your thighs off of plastic chairs and carrying their indent with you for an hour. It’s a mess. But it’s non-optional, so we deal with it. K? K.
That said, if you’re seeing a show any time between May and September, prepare to sweat. Ascend’s dress code is casual. I like wearing something long and flowy (protection from the itchy grass, breeze, comfort) or something short and strappy (limited fabric, breathing room for my arms). That bug spray in your friend. Wear comfy sandals so that you can pop them off once you’re to your lawn seats. Remember that you’ll want to be comfortable sitting on the ground, so wear something you can move around in decently.
What to Bring (and NOT Bring)
Ascend has joined many other arenas in implementing a clear bag policy. It helps speed up the entrance line and makes safety checks easier (so I get it, but next time you implement a policy, at least alert people: ugh). While you technically can still bring in a tiny clutch, I find it’s best just to set up a clear back and leave it in the closet so it’s always ready to go. Camille and I split this two pack from Amazon and spent $9 each on a bag dedicated for outings like this.
Here’s what you can put in there:
Cell phone - duh.
Credit and/or debit card - inside Ascend is cashless—which I think should be illegal and is discriminatory, but I’ll save that rant for another day. For now, you’ve been warned.
Mini deodorant - you’ll thank me when you want an extra swipe because the Outside Mouth is too sweltering.
Empty Water Bottle - you can bring in one full and sealed plastic water bottle (sure, but the environment, ja feel?) or an empty aluminum or plastic water bottle to fill up near the bathrooms once you’re inside. If you want to get specific, you’re allowed “up to 1 gallon in a factory sealed or empty reusable water bottle. All reusable water bottles must be plastic or aluminum, no glass allowed, or ones with a camel-back straw.”
Food - you can bring your own food with you! This is amazing and so rare. Pack your picnic, making sure that you remove any branded packaging and everything is in a clear container. The deets: food must be “in a clear plastic container or 1-gallon ziplock bag. No food with any bones or that would need the use of utensils. No commercial branding names/ branding so please put any food into a separate clear bag/container to store your food.”
Deck of Cards - if you’re waiting between sets or you get there early to stake out a good lawn spot, having a little game with you is handy.
Handkerchief - we keep these handy for when you need a last minute tissue, napkin, or sweat absorber.
Old Quilt - this doesn’t have to fit in the bag (thank goodness). We find that a large old quilt is the comfiest to sit on, gives you large surface area, and can easily be doubled in case the grass is wet without losing much seating space. If you don’t have one, swing by Good Will and wash one you find thoroughly.
Do NOT bring:
Umbrella - it will get confiscated and you will be sad. Not that I know that from personal experience…
Aerosols - bug spray, hair spray, dry shampoo: leave them at home. Bug spray your legs and arms before you leave home or bring one with a pump-style top.
Lawn chairs - you can rent them there for $10!
Any outside beverage that isn’t water. Sorry.
Animals (except service animals) - leave your pets at home. This is not the time and place.
What to Eat and Drink Once Inside
Ascend has a pretty fair selection of food.For local food, you’ve got Daddy’s Dogs, Ben & Jerry’s, and different food trucks each show. They also have in-house entree offerings from cheeseburgers, hot dogs, chicken tenders, hot chicken, Impossible meat cheesesteaks as well as side snacks like nachos, pretzels, candy, and popcorn.
For drinks, expect to find canned wine (red, white, and pink), a couple different beers, and some cocktails. Drinks are ungodly expensive IMHO. Jackson paid $32 for a large seltzer and a tall boy of beer. YIKES. We say pregame and just pretend it’s a college throwback vibe.
Are you the designated driver for your group? I have good news for you! You get free fountain sodas. Just go to the Guest Services tent right inside the main gate and someone will get you a voucher.
Where to Park
Option 1: Don’t drive in the first place. Take a Lyft! This is what we do pretty much every time we come downtown. When we come with friends, they drive to our place in East and we take one ride share together. (It was actually a factor in choosing the location of our house). We recently had a horrible experience with Uber and have always loved Lyft as well as have some friends who have had good experiences working for Lyft. There are designated drop off and pick up zones for ride shares so check your app to know where those are. We always order the Lyft ride 2 songs before we think it’s the end of the show. We typically don’t mind missing the last bit of the encore unless it’s someone we are huge fans of (read: Brandi Carlile). Beating the rush a little bit helps. But it’s also for sure the time to pay that extra surge charge or the up-fee for having your car come directly to you. Trust us.
Option 2: Reasonably priced garages. I used to work downtown and can attest that you’ll rarely get the $11 parking ticket for an expired meter so I never pay them. If you can find a street spot, this is for sure your best move. If you’re heading downtown—I was about to say “on a weekend” but really every day is some tourist’s weekend in Nashville—then it’s worth knowing a few of the best garages to park in.
Library Garage: 151 6th Ave N, Nashville, TN 37219
Their hourly rate is $6 BUT their daily max rate is $20. If you park after 5 pm or on weekends, then it’s a $10 max for up to 12 hours. If you’re a Nashvillian with a library card, you can park for free for 90 minutes any time and then it’s just $3 per half hour after that.
Metro Courthouse / Public Square Park Garage: 101 James Robertson Pkwy, Nashville, TN
Their hourly rate is $8 BUT their daily max rate is $20. If you park after 5 pm or on weekends, then it’s just $5. Find yourself downtown frequently for work or live somewhere downtown where parking is tough? Night-only parking is $100/month.
4th and Commerce Garage: 147 4th Ave N, Nashville, TN 37219
Their hourly rate is $10 BUT their daily max rate is only $25. If you park after 4 pm, the max rate is $15 and if you park after 6 pm or on a weekend, then it’s just $10! Truly a steal.
Bonus: Getting Great Tickets for Cheap
Ok this really feels like sharing some insider secrets. We have seen many shows at Ascend for free. Yep. We’ve been gifted tickets here or there by loving friends.
But our number one trick? DoMore615.
Register for an account and pay only $3 to cover your first 3 months of membership. If you like it after that, they’ll charge you just $5 a month. What does membership get you, you ask? At least one pair of free tickets to an upcoming Nashville event (live music, sports, plays, and more) each month. You’ll get an email asking if you want to keep the tickets, release them back to others in the pool, or gift them to a friend. Typically, tickets get your name on the list somewhere or stash a pair for you at will call. It’s a great way to have what my family calls “planned spontaneity” because the events on offer are between one week and 2 months out and you can opt in rather than having to search from scratch by yourself. Then, just plan a fun date night or GNO around the event you got tickets to! We’ve been to the Ryman, Ascend, writer’s rounds, and Bridgestone through the DoMore615 program.
Don’t forget to take at least as many silly photos as you do cute ones. Blessings upon your Ascend-sion!
xo,
em
Jackie Shane Pride Celebration
As a graduate student, I’ve had the chance to work with a lot of neat organizations, my favorite of which has been a partnership with Jefferson Street Sound Museum (JSSM). Lorenzo Washington, their founder, was friends with legendary Jackie Shane leading up to her passing and we wanted to collaborate to do something really fantastic for Pride to honor her life.
Another part of graduate life has been fellowships and scholarships. I was fortunate to be a Curb Public Scholar at Vanderbilt, which comes with a $2,000 budget to implement some kind of public-facing piece of scholarship. I was able to leverage this budget to equip JSSM to host the first annual Jackie Shane Pride Celebration.
This was an absolute blast to plan and host and, most importantly, could not have happened without the generosity of volunteers, friends, and our planning committee.
As I wrap up my time in academia, it is fulfilling to get to put on an event that raises awareness for such a fantastic artist (read more about Jackie Shane’s story in this post), work with an awesome local museum, and create a space for queer folks to unite and celebrate during Pride.
So I Went to A Hardcore Concert
A bit of backstory: Jackson (my husband) met his best friend Drew when they were randomly assigned as roommates freshman year at Vanderbilt in 2011. They are somehow very different and very similar at the exact same time. We’ve spent countless hours together over the years and we love Drew very much. A few years ago, Drew moved to Atlanta to work in the film industry. While there, he connected with a really rad girl named Allyson. Now they’re married! They came to town for the Coheed and Cambria concert and invited us to join them since it was Drew’s 29th birthday. They knew full well that it wasn’t our typical music, but also could count on us to be down for a new experience and to get to see a bit of their world as they’re both fans and this was their third time seeing the band live.
The show was at Municipal Auditorium, which I must say was incredibly well air conditioned for hosting over a thousand people in the dead of July heat in the South. (We usually describe outside in the summer here as feeling like being inside of a mouth. Ew. But accurate).
We snagged dinner at the new 5th and Broadway project’s Assembly Food Hall, which I can happily recommend even as a Nashvillian whose relationship status with downtown is “It’s Complicated.” We walked from there to the show and prepared our ears for blasting. Pro tip: if you forget your earplugs on the counter like I did ( * face palm *) then you can always stuff some toilet paper in your ears. It ain’t glamorous but it’ll get the job done and your cilia will thank you later.
If you’ve been to a live show with me, you might know that I tend to write during shows. Yep. I don’t know why, but the muse has inconvenient timing.
While I haven’t written any song pieces yet (which is what I usually do), I was very inspired by the experience of being out of my musical element and thinking about what it meant to listen in this arena. Here are my (hot) take aways:
This is a rock opera. Serious classical structure underlies much of hardcore and metal instrumentation. Walk the Moon is just the poppy end of this spectrum. They’re somehow vocally similar to the lead singer of Band of Horses. But also see: Phil Collins? The lead guitarist and singer has some of the most beautiful hair I’ve seen. Very fitting for his industry / genre. The audience parts sounded like me trying to hum the anthem of Game of Thrones from memory (it would be a mostly accurate struggle). We then sonically took a hard left into Beach-Boys-covered-by-Fall-Out-Boy territory. For aforementioned hair and opera reasons, I recommend Coheed and Cambria to fans of Les Mis.
The whole experience reminded me of youth group. Jackson described it as being similar to going to Catholic mass for the first time and not knowing the words to songs or what to expect from the rituals. The average person here is Drew, who I know went to youth group. There were songs that swayed in 6/8. There was more in-time clapping than the Baptist center down the street on any Sunday. Really giving mega churches’ Easter Sunday production a run for their money. The house lights were still up, the floor is linoleum, everyone here is a nerd (that’s a compliment): Like, was a school assembly in there. Again like CCM, the songs are organized around a central narrative and have unnecessary Nth repetitions of a chorus or refrain just so its followers can experience the joy of singing along.
There was an alien balloon that I have a suspicious theory about: the same company that must do most of the balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade must have had a turkey body leftover whenever the production designer for Coheed and Cambria. Balloon person was like “Yeah we totally have an alien for you” and then promptly added some tentacles to the turkey body and recolored it. I mean, props. But it if you’d seen the show, you would 100% be on board with my theory. Side note: They paid a lot for CGI. But also, not enough.
This is true at all shows: There’s nothing like the face of the panicked stage hand who is running up between songs to secure a microphone stand.
We had a great time and I would definitely go back. It might not be the kind of music I listen to on a day-to-day basis, but the show was nothing short of fantastic and a true culturally immersive experience.
How have you gotten out of your musical comfort zone lately?
xo,
em
Reflecting on a 35mm Summer
Summer 2019 was the first time I picked up a film camera. I ordered a Nikon FE from Etsy and off we went! Once the scans from our Belgium + France trip came back with great success, we started carrying the camera everywhere we went. Here are some images from Moon River festival in early September that same year.
I Saw 50 Live Shows in 2019
I started off 2019 the way I do most new years - by making a few resolutions. I trimmed my wishlist of ways to better myself down to a few key items that seemed doable, if pushing it a little. As a life-long musician, I feel most inspired and most like myself in the setting of a live performance (though not necessarily on stage). I decided to immerse myself in the muses’ light by attending 50 live performances (music, theater, comedy) in a single calendar year.
I started off 2019 the way I do most new years - by making a few resolutions. I trimmed my wishlist of ways to better myself down to a few key items that seemed doable, if pushing it a little. As a life-long musician, I feel most inspired and most like myself in the setting of a live performance (though not necessarily on stage). I decided to immerse myself in the muses’ light by attending 50 live performances (music, theater, comedy) in a single calendar year. Living in Nashville definitely made this easier - you’d be hard pressed to find a silent night in this town. Still, we were on a budget and traveling much of the year. Add in my class schedule, and I was going to have to really work to get to fifty shows. AND I DID IT. Here’s the recap:
Goodbye, wallpaper. Hello, paint!
When wallpaper is too expensive but you still want a pop of color and pattern in a space, painting is the way to go.