Urban Cowboy, the boutique hotels synonymous with wild-hearted design and good times at its properties in Nashville, Denver, and The Catskills, New York, is stepping out from behind the check-in desk with its first-ever standalone bar. Housed in a retrofitted Nashville arcade building, the saloon-style concept riffs on the brand’s irreverent culture, with exotic taxidermy, Roberta’s famed pizza, and a soon-to-open mezcal speakeasy—just steps from Broadway’s honky tonks.
Here, we get the scoop from cofounder and creative director Lyon Porter.
You found a special space for this project. It’s a 1902 shopping arcade, one of the first in America, modeled after those old-world European passageways. You’ve seen them in London and Paris. This one sat in cobwebs for a century, totally forgotten. We’re the flagship for its relaunch.
It has insane bones—original brick, beams, these long vaulted corridors. When I walked it, there were still 1980s hair salon chairs sitting around. I looked through a tiny window, saw the full arcade, and knew that was the back bar. It’s like looking down the spine of a Brontosaurus in the Natural History Museum. You don’t expect a thousand-foot view like that in a Nashville bar.
Downtown Nashville has its challenges right? That’s what drew me to it. Locals might go to Robert’s, the oldest honky tonk. After that? They leave. The stuff with soul and the sauce is typically on the outer donut of downtown, but the hole is just neglected.
Broadway is becoming full-on Vegas. Jelly Roll just opened a honky tonk. Snoop Dogg and Dre are opening a hip-hop cocktail lounge. It’s wild, and kind of amazing. I’m in the middle of everything and I’m in the middle of nowhere. I’m trying to place-make.
You’re leaning in. Absolutely. That’s what travel is. You go to Burning Man, you become a burner. You go to Oaxaca during Day of the Dead, you put on the mask. Everyone leans into the fantasy of a place. Nashville is no different. It’s the birthplace of country and bluegrass, it’s already in costume, but nobody’s done a cowboy bar with style.
How does Urban Cowboy’s distinctive maximalist aesthetic show up here? I went nuts, in the best way; framed everything around eye travel, around symmetry. There’s a wall of glass we added to open up that view of the arcade from the back bar, and I designed everything around it. Symmetry helps me make sense of the world. That’s why our properties are a favorite of photographers. They’re cinematic.
Each level of this place tells its own story. The upstairs is high-design cocktail lounge with a mirror-backed bar, velvet details, and lighting that glows like a film still. Downstairs is the saloon: rough wood, raccoon taxidermy, and Roberta’s pizza counter. Then there’s the mezcal bar, which is a whole other thing we’ll be unveiling soon.
I’m listening. It’s still under construction, but already my favorite. Tucked in the back, it’s going to be dark, candlelit, really intimate. There’s a custom terracotta tile floor inspired by a tattoo artist from New Orleans, and we had the tiles made locally, all based on tarot’s evil archetypes.
The vibe is mezcal-forward but not formal. No cocktail menu. Just talk to the bartender and they’ll make you something weird and perfect. Think agave spirits, southwestern mysticism, candlelight, and DJs spinning deep cuts on Friday nights.
Taxidermy is an obsession for you at this point. What pieces are you excited about? Oh man, everything. The bar takes inspiration from my favorite historic saloons like Jackson Hole’s Million Dollar Cowboy Bar and Buckhorn Exchange in Denver, and all these places had an insane amount of taxidermy
I just got back from the Round Top vintage market in Texas with a mountain lion I snagged from Midwest Taxidermy. It hangs one paw down like it’s stretching, lounging above the saloon entrance right beneath a massive buffalo head. I needed a lion in there. There’s also a whole family of raccoons fishing in a canoe, a possum, and too many horned beasts to count. I didn’t want it to feel kitsch, more like you stumbled into a Wes Anderson western.
What’s your favorite design detail? I mean, we have a neon Cowboy sign with a lasso that goes up and down which is awesome but my favorite is the view from the back bar, hands down. It’s this perfectly framed, symmetrical shot down the arcade. No one ever cut a wall out to reveal it. People are going to walk in and stop mid-step, mouths open, when they see it.
What type of energy should people expect during a visit to Urban Cowboy Bar? It’s not a honky tonk. It’s not a dive. It’s an elevated cowboy experience. You can have a beer and a shot downstairs, a $17 cocktail upstairs, then sneak into the speakeasy for something mezcal and moody. It’s designed to let people move through different versions of themselves over the course of a night.
Lastly, how is the hotelier in you translating to your first venture without rooms? Narrative. Hotels tell stories. They set moods. We’re still writing scenes, even if no one’s sleeping over. That’s what Urban Cowboy taught me—you build the container, and people pour themselves into it.
