Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood celebrate the opening of friends in low places Honky Tonk & Bar

Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood are officially the newest residents in Nashville's Neon neighborhood as they celebrated the grand opening of Country Music Hall of Famer Brooks' Friends at Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk on Thursday (March 7). The venue was named after the country star's 1990 hit.

At a press conference that night, Brooks told reporters of the two-year process that led to the creation of Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk, “A lot of love has gone into this building. There's a lot of people who ruined a– to make this happen,” he said, thanking the mostly local crew who built the venue.

While there are nearly a dozen country star-themed bars and venues either open or under construction on Nashville's Lower Broadway — a testament to the commercial power of country music — Brooks' new space is filled with unique elements that honor not only his career history, but also to offer a different edge for Nashville patrons.

Located at 411 Broadway, the four-story, 54,715-square-foot venue features a honky-tonk on the first two floors, including a retractable stage (the center of said stage has the “G” logo from the stage in New York's Central Park, where Brooks performed to an estimated audience of over 1 million people on August 7, 1997). Meanwhile, the outdoor fourth-floor rooftop bar area, called “The Oasis” after a sequence on “Friends in Low Places,” has a beachy vibe with indoor and outdoor seating, 10-foot palm trees and two full bars. The rooftop area also tips its hat to the location's former venue, Paradise Park, with a refurbished neon sign above one of the doors that read “Paradise Park Food Stand, Burgers, Fries, Chicken.”

The first two floors and the rooftop are open to all, while the third floor features a trio of event spaces, including the members-only Sevens Club, decked out in an old Hollywood vibe. A curved bar, pool table, and piano, along with upholstered and leather chairs and sofas, as well as a jukebox, fireplace, and insulated windows give the third floor an intimate, relaxed, and decidedly Lower Broadway feel.

Adjacent to the Sevens Club, Yearwood's vision and craftsmanship are distinct in a party and event rental space with a look similar to the decor Yearwood used for her Trisha's Southern Kitchen show, with a spacious, fully functional kitchen and sitting room leading to a smaller sitting room and an elegant boardroom area. Yearwood noted that plans could sometimes include filming her cooking show in the kitchen area. The areas offer an environment for gatherings of up to 250 people.

“I feel like Frank Sinatra could walk into this bar and order a Jack and Smoke [a specialty drink offered in the venue] and I feel very comfortable,” says Yearwood Advertising sign of the Sevens Club. “It feels right. There are these two floors of honky-tonks, and when you get off the elevator on that floor, it's like being in a residence. There's crown molding, it's rich, luxurious furniture, and you walk into this Sevens Club and it's like, “Wow, we're on Lower Broadway?” And even in the kitchen, there are wooden ceilings, and this chessboard. I fought for this chessboard. Garth was like, “That seems like a lot,” and I was like, “No, it's a statement.” And it's beautiful.”

Personal touches are scattered throughout, including the front entrance, where patrons can see the bronze statue of Brooks, taken from Bakersfield, California's Crystal Palace, where Brooks proposed to Yearwood in 2005. The back wall of the space is a mural of photos from Brooks' career. Specifically, Brooks' touring team, including Moo TV and Bandit Lites, oversaw the venue's lighting, production and huge LED screen. The building also includes a police substation that the group created in partnership with the Metro Nashville Police Department.

The menu reflects Yearwood's work as a best-selling cookbook author and host of the Food Network cooking show, Trisha's Southern Kitchen. Deals include fare from her cookbooks as well as bar food. Patrons can also try a reproduction of the sour cream wedding pound cake recipe that Yearwood's mother made for Brooks and Yearwood on their 2005 wedding day.

“I remember going to a restaurant in Memphis and being told that Elvis used to eat there a lot,” says Yearwood of bringing personal touches to the venue's menu. “I wanted to order what Elvis ate, so I ordered the banana and peanut butter sandwich. So I felt like if you're a fan and that's the real recipe, that's the cake, and my mom used to make wedding cakes on the side when we were little kids to make extra money, so that was her thing.”

“The goal here was to keep it simple,” Yearwood also told reporters about the menu. “Most of my recipes are things that my mom made, my mom and my dad, they were home cooks. That's what we're going for here. … It was a process of going through and saying, 'This is going to work at scale.' The menu is exactly where we start. We'll see what works and change it as we go, because we have a lot of recipes to choose from.”

Also, a new six-episode documentary on Amazon Prime Video gives a behind-the-scenes look at the design and construction that went into creating the new honky-tonk. Brooks and Yearwood partnered with Max and Benjamin Goldberg and their team from Strategic Hospitality, who have also worked on local Nashville restaurants, including The Patterson House. The documentaries are produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Casey Patterson Entertainment, with Brooks, Casey Patterson and Carol Donovan serving as executive producers. The documentary features Brooks and Yearwood working with the Goldbergs as well as Jenny Deathridge Bratt and Camille Tambunting to create the space.

Brooks says Advertising sign: “My favorite moments [in the documentary] it's when you see these people's character come under fire – you're up against schedules, you're up against budgets.”