music at the winery
The McGuires.
~ story and photos by Jeff Tryon
The Brown County music scene is drawing traffic to its many venues. These days, there are a lot of options for music in and around Nashville— but it hasn’ t always been like that.
Bob Smerdel, tasting room manager for the Country Heritage Winery at the south end of town in Coachlight Square, has been booking acts from around the area for over 13 years.
“ When I first came here, [ live music ] was just the Country Heritage Winery( formerly Chateau Thomas Winery), Brown County Inn, and up at the Seasons in the old saloon,” he said.“ It’ s grown quite a bit from there. On Friday and Saturday, there are probably no less than eight or ten places that are playing music, either within town, or within a short drive,” Smerdel said.
The Country Heritage Winery’ s intimate, performer-friendly space just off the horseshoe-bar tasting room is a favorite of local musicians and 64 Our Brown County • Nov./ Dec. 2024 their admirers. He said that musicians really love the sound, and the closeness of the room.
And, as more and more folks are discovering, the local music is always good.
“ The quality is unsurpassed, unless you go down to Nashville, Tennessee and walk down Broadway,” Smerdel said.“ But that’ s a whole other world.”
It’ s not just the venues offering live music that have multiplied, so, too, has the number of talented performers from Brown County or nearby.
“ The week doesn’ t go by that somebody doesn’ t reach out and say,‘ I’ m a musician, looking for a place to play.’ So, I think for any music venue in town, there’ s plenty of artists in this area or within an hour that are promoting themselves, making those phone calls to try to get their foot in the door.”
In his years of booking acts at the tasting room, Smerdel has built up a database of area musicians. He tries to schedule acts based upon the number of people they can bring in.