Layla Vartanian

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City. We are not doing our normal intro today, as today is a Wednesday Rewind. And today we're going to be talking with Layla Vartanian. She's the owner at Layla's Bluegrass Center, I think this is Layla's Honky Tonk. And we talked, this was our 52nd episode that we did. You'll hear that shortly, because I'm going to play the full episode. This is going to be with intro and everything, so I'm not going to give you the intro twice because the intro was just about the same. But we did this interview, and a couple months later I went in to Layla's, still closed because of the pandemic, and I sat and talked with her for another hour and hour and a half.

01:05And she let me get on stage, and we read some one-star reviews, and probably my favorite one-star review that I had a chef read, or somebody who's a restaurant owner read. If you go to our YouTube page, you can totally watch, or go to our TikTok page, you can totally watch her review. It is awesome. She's so, so genuine, and she's just so amazing. I talked to her just recently, and we're thinking about doing another show. So let me know what you think. This is one of my favorite episodes of all time. It is brought to you today commercial free. Commercial free by Fowenbow. Fowenbow, F-O-H and B-O-H dot com. If you are hiring out there, you need to check them out. You can request up to like a thousand interviews with people right now. They've got thousands of people on their site right now waiting for you to ask them to come work for you. It's that easy. You sign up, you can say, I need a server.

02:07It's like 40 bucks, 45 dollars, something like that, and you can hire a server. You need a manager. You need a general manager. You need a dishwasher, line cook. Any of these positions, you can hire pretty much immediately. They are really, really amazing, amazing people. So Fowenbow, F-O-H and B-O-H dot com. Go check them out right now. I know that you need people. So that is, if you haven't done that yet, you need to go check it out. This episode is also brought to you by What Chefs Want. You all know who What Chefs Want is. In Creation Gardens, they do so many things for the independent Nashville restaurant community. And I'm just so honored that they sponsor this show because they're number one thing. Dude, you need to talk about who we are. We just want to, you're supporting these people and we want to support them too. So they just said, we just, we just, so they're, they're just amazing. They're amazing people and I just appreciate everything that they do for the restaurant community here in Nashville.

03:10And without further ado, let's just jump in. Let's talk with Layla Vartanian. Episode 52 of Nashville Restaurant Radio with the owner of Layla's Honky Tonk, Layla Vartanian. Girl, I got to sell this business. I can't, I'm not making any money. He goes, you want to buy it? I really didn't want to buy it, but Jim convinced me to. I had good credit, so I put like $5,000. He wanted $5,000 for the inventory to take over the Bluegrass Inn. Wow. So I took my credit card and I went to the bank and I, I got five, $1,000 checks, cashier's checks. Yeah. Then I put on my credit card and I brought it, and I brought it to Robert and I go, here you go.

04:12And he gave me the key to the place and now I was a bar owner and I told myself from being in the bar restaurant business, I would never do this again in my life. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now, here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. And we got a good one today, folks. We have got Layla Vartanian. She's the owner of Layla's Honky Tonk right there on Broadway and her story is unique. This is probably the least amount of talking that I do throughout an hour long interview and I'm sure you're going to be okay with that. She just tells her entire story.

05:12She tells the story of when Garth Brooks played there and why he played there. She talks about COVID-19. She talks about the she talks about the protests. She talks about everything. We just get in there and she tells these stories and you want to talk about a genuine person. I just you got to listen. Just hang in there and listen, listen, listen, because this is a good one and I cannot wait to get it going. I mean, it's so old school. I mean, she's talking to me on a telephone and you can just totally tell. It's just amazing. So without further ado, I don't even get to introduce her. She just starts talking. She is so amazing. Ladies and gentlemen, Layla Vartanian. My name is Layla Vartanian and I'm originally from Chicago, Illinois, the north side of the city. I came to Nashville in 1996 and I came with my boyfriend at the time and him and I were musicians and we thought we'd become famous in Nashville as musicians.

06:29So you're deaf. That's a common theme. What did you play? I played the upright bass, the upright, the stand up bass, stand up bass. What's your boyfriend play? And Jim played the guitar and in Chicago we had a band called Gringo and we were more like an alternative punk folk band, sort of like, I don't know if anybody knows X from the 80s maybe from L.A. or like Nick, yes, Nick Cave, also we were compared to Nick Cave. Sure. Okay. So we had that kind of sound going and then we decided to leave Chicago and come to Nashville and we changed our sound a little bit more towards punk bluegrass. So we were doing more of a bluegrass sound when we came to Nashville and a lot of traditional country music, Hank Williams, Carl Smith and Patsy Cline, things like that, Ernest Hubb, just the old traditional country music.

07:46What got you into that kind of music, like younger age, what did you listen to when you were growing up? Who were your influences? I listened to all kinds of music growing up. I listened to a lot of punk rock like the Ramones, Patti Smith was one of my favorite female singers growing up and R.E.M., Talking Heads and then I would listen to classical music, Beethoven, Mozart, I would listen to a lot of Spanish music, I would listen to I just love a little bit of jazz, folk music, country music, I just love music. Were your parents musicians? My father played the banjo and the violin and he was from Syria, so I'm first generation of the state.

08:53My mother was a church singer, so she had a very high soprano, beautiful voice. She grew up with music in the home. Yes, it was very important to have music in the house, absolutely. How'd you meet Jim? And food, and food by the way, we were, my parents opened up, my background is Armenian which is very similar to Mediterranean, Greek, Lebanese cooking, so my parents had a restaurant in Chicago and they were the first people to bring pita bread, hummus and tabouleh to the city of Chicago in the late 50s, early 60s. Wow. Yeah, so I'm, restaurant business is what I was grown up in and so I know it very, very well, like the back of my hand. So you are in Chicago, your parents are restaurateurs and you moved to Nashville in 1996 with Jim, your boyfriend, and you guys are musicians, what's the first thing you did when you got to Nashville?

10:06We rode up and down Broadway and we went to a couple of the bars that were open on Broadway, there were only a very few bars that were there. Second Avenue used to be the place to be back then. Yeah, Second Avenue was, they used to have a lot of, I think Second Avenue was closed down I think back then, I mean by traffic. Yes. Yeah. I used to go cruise when I was that, probably 1995, 94, 95, I used to go cruise Second Avenue like in my car because that was the big thing to do is cruise Broadway and Second Avenue. Yeah, yeah. So Jim and I came here and we were trying to find a gig. So we went to, there was Wolfies across the street from Tootsie and there was The Turf, there was Music City, there was Roberts, yeah, Roberts, and I think that basically, oh and then no, there was the wagon burner right next door to Robert and there was an Indian woman who owned the place, American Indian, she had long black hair down to her butt and she lived in the bar too and it was just, it had carpeting in the bar so you could imagine the stench in there when you had carpet in a bar.

11:40Oh gosh, and smoking back then too. Well yeah, smoking was a big thing. So you're in Nashville, you're finding a gig. Yeah, we came to Nashville and we started to look for a gig to play at any of the small bars and nobody would hire us. I mean we had real nice Western wear that we would wear, you know, we dressed up and no one would hire us because they said we were a little too country. So we played on Second Avenue and we brought a couple car batteries and we put them in a bean crate and the bean crate, then we put a post on the bean crate to make a little light. So we made our own little stage and we had a microphone, I had my upright bass and Jim had a guitar. And you played on the street on Second Avenue, like busking almost? Yeah, we were busking, yeah, we played on the street on Second Avenue. Nice. We did that for a year, almost a year because we had a little, Jim's family had a little place in Murray, Kentucky, which was a two hour drive from Nashville.

12:54And it was in Irving Cobb and it was right on the lake in Kentucky. There was no running water, no sewage or anything, you had to have a septic tank and it was just this old, old trailer that we would go back and forth with because neither one of us had any money. We were just two broke, starving musicians and we'd go back and forth to Murray, Kentucky and then come back and play on Second Avenue on the weekends to try and make money. And every time we played in a spot on Second Avenue, that's when Second Avenue, the street was starting to be very abandoned down there. There were a lot of abandoned buildings and things were changing on Second Avenue. Any spot that we went to, another musician would try and take our spot because we'd get a crowd around us and all these other musicians wanted to play with us. Because Jim was a very, he looked sort of like John Voight from Midnight Cowboy.

13:59Okay. And let's say the character from Toy Story. What was the cowboy character's name? Woody. Woody. Yeah, he looked like Woody and John Voight together. All right. So he had a very comical, expressional face when he played music and he was very passionate about his music too. So people wanted to play with us all the time. So we always had to fight for a spot on Second Avenue. Did you ever have any kind of big time acts walk by? Or have like Travis Tritt or somebody jump in and play with you while you were busking? No, we had, we sort of got discovered by some producer from Warner Chappell. Okay. And they did some recordings on us. And like I said, we were playing very alternative country also.

15:02Very interesting music we were doing. And if you listen to it now, if you could find, we put out a couple of records. If you could find the music today, it's still be as if we recorded it today. It was like timeless music. Is it on app? Can I find it on iTunes? You might be able to look up Gringo. I don't know. Gringo. Gringo. Yeah. G-R-I-N-G-O. All right. So if you're out there, do you want to hear Layla's band with her then boyfriend, Jim? Check out Gringo on Apple Music or Spotify or wherever you can find it. I'm going to do that today. I would love to hear what you guys sounded like back then. So we would, you know, we toured a little bit of the U.S. before we came to Nashville because we were on an independent label in Chicago called Pravda. So when we got to Nashville, we had to play on the street because no one would hire us. And then I'm going to make this story short. So me being in the restaurant business, we would go to Robert's a lot and sit there and have coffee or, you know, a beer in the morning, whatever musicians do.

16:09Sure. One day at Robert's, it was really busy in there. And we got to know the owner, Robert, old man Robert, Robert Moore. And he took a liking to me and Jim, both of us, because we always would sit there and talk to him. And he's still living today. He's still present. I talked to him occasionally. He's still doing pretty well, actually. One day it was really, really busy in there on a Saturday afternoon. Me being from the restaurant business, I'm like, boy, they need help in here. One bartender can't do it all. So I took it upon myself and I just started waiting on table. There was a woman by the name of Maddie, Miss Maddie, who worked there. And she was like the head lady for Robert at night. You know, she'd always have her cigarette hanging from her lip, always had a cup of coffee. And those were the days where you could smoke, you know, anywhere and everywhere. And she liked us, too.

17:11And so when I saw all these people coming in there and not getting service, I took it upon myself and started waiting on table. And whoever was working, I dropped all my tips in their tip jar. I was just like, damn, he's losing so much money because he doesn't have help. So Miss Maddie would come in like an hour and a half, two hours earlier than her shift so she could have her coffee, smoke a pack of cigarettes. She'd come in at like four o'clock and her shift was at six. So she came in and she saw me working and she said, Laila, did Robert hire you? I said, no, Miss Maddie, it was so busy in here and I just couldn't see all these people sitting here and not getting any service. So I just took it upon myself. So Robert usually came in about that time, too, and he would always sit and play dominoes.

18:11That was his favorite game to play. So he watched me and he said at the end of the shift at six o'clock, he said, girl, I feel proud of you. And he patted me on the back and he said, you want a job here? And I said, yes, I would love a job here. I need a job. I need to make some money. Jim and I were just basically living in our van, traveling back and forth from Kentucky. So I got hired and I started working there. The morning shift from seven a.m. because they used to have breakfast back then. And I worked from like seven a.m. till bartending at Robert's. Cooking and bartending because that's what you have to do on the morning shift. You can't do it all. Yeah. He knew Jim and I were trying to get a gig. He knew we were musicians. And it was New Year's Eve day that year and the band didn't show up.

19:13And Robert was like, girl, go find Jim. Get up there and start playing some music. So me and Jim got up there with a couple other guys. I think we had a fiddle player and a steel player, maybe a banjo player with us that we rounded up. Because in Nashville, you could throw a rock and hit a musician, I mean, anywhere. So it wasn't a hard thing to find at the very last second to get some people up there on stage and start playing. So we got up there and played the whole shift on the New Year's Eve day. It was the six o'clock to ten o'clock shift because they go in four hours. You play for four hours with no breaks. I mean, it's a great learning, educational thing to play on Broadway. I mean, it's fantastic. It's a school, actually. Oh, yeah. And it's a way to get your chops up, too, you know. So we played and at the end of that shift, if you don't go to your shift, you play your shift, you lose it.

20:19So whoever had that shift that day never showed up. So they lost that shift and we got it. So from that day on, we played for like 45 days straight. Robert used us for Robert and he then the ball right next door that was called the wagon burner. Robert's partner, Toby, who owned the building, her lease was up. So they wanted to do a bluegrass venue. So since they saw Jim and I play bluegrass, they called the place Bluegrass Inn and Jim and myself became lead band at the Bluegrass Inn. So we got a gig there playing four or five nights a week. Nice. Yeah. And then me and Jim split up and I got the bar. Like I said, I'm making this story really short.

21:19I'm taking out all the juicy part. Well, so yeah, what happened with you and Jim? Well, you're going to have to see the movie on that one. Can you paraphrase? Well, let's say alcohol was his better friend than I was. All right. Let's see. There you go. Yeah. I think a lot of people understand that. What's that? I think a lot of people understand that. Oh, yeah. Especially if you're an artist. Yeah. And so I took the bar over and it used to be called Jim and Layla's. And one day he pissed me off so bad I was out there in front of the window of Jim and Layla's that I was scratching his name off. So then it became Layla's. Layla's Bluegrass Inn. Right. And it was called Layla's Bluegrass Inn. So for the longest time, everybody knew it as the Bluegrass Inn or Layla's Bluegrass Inn.

22:20That's how I remember it. Yeah. I used to love going to Layla's. Nobody liked bluegrass music down there. There was very few people. And the few people that enjoyed Bluegrass Brandon, they weren't drinkers. So you couldn't make money. So Robert, he's like, and some people were stealing from him too. So he's like, girl, I got to sell this business. I can't. I'm not making any money. He goes, you want to buy it? And I really didn't want to buy it. But Jim convinced me to. I think I'm backtracking a little bit. It's OK. So I had good credit. So I put like $5,000. He wanted $5,000 for the inventory to take over the Bluegrass Inn.

23:24Wow. So I took my credit card. And I went to the bank. And I got $5,000. $5,000 checks? Cashier's checks. Yeah. Then I put on my credit card. Oh, wow. And I brought it to Robert. I go, here you go. And he gave me the key to the place. And now I was a bar owner. And I told myself, from being in the bar restaurant business, I would never do this again in my life. Because as a child growing up in the restaurant business, New Year's Eve, Fourth of July, all the holidays that everybody never had to work and got to celebrate, I always had to work and didn't get to celebrate. So when you're in the restaurant business, you work all the time.

24:25It's a thing. You're always working. Yeah. Right. So let me ask you. Go ahead. I was just going to say, so that's a part of being an entrepreneur that I think that some people miss and some people totally get. So you had an opportunity put in front of you. And it was $5,000. You didn't necessarily have $5,000 cash, but you had cash available because of your credit. Let's talk about the mindset. Let's talk about how do you go from, hey, I've got this bar next to Robert's and I'm playing there regularly. And now the risk involved with doing that in that time, in 19, was it 97, 98? Yeah, 97. There's a ton of risk involved in doing that. And that's a long-term plan. What was your decision-making process? Was it just a, I'm just going to do it? Let's throw caution to the wind?

25:26Or was it carefully planned out? No, there was no plan whatsoever. It was just spur of the moment type thing. And like I said, I was sort of against it because I know the hard work it involves. And I know that Jim, bless his heart, he liked liquor too much. I was going to be doing this on my own. And I'm like, I don't want to do this on my own. I know what it's like. I know the hardship behind it. I know you don't make much money. You have to work and work and work. So anyway, like I said, he talked me into it because that was one of his gifts. But he was a very good talker. Persuader? Yes. When I got it, I said to myself, Layla, what the hell are you doing? What did you get yourself into? Because now not only did I just buy the place for $5,000 on my credit, that place was a dump.

26:27It was a dump. I mean, they had carpeting in it. It had brown. I mean, the color then was brown and I'm sure it was white at the time. But I mean, it was just disgusting in there. And I had to bartend. You had to make up a menu because back then you really had to have food in order to get a liquor license. And you had to have so many seats. I would go to garage sales or whatever and try and buy whatever. He had bar stools in there. The bar already had stools and seats and stuff. But they were all broken, half broken and nothing matched. It was just a mess in there. But this is how small businesses begin and this is how small businesses work. They're not just these gigantic companies who come in and Jason Aldean's and they spend millions and millions of dollars. I mean, this was a little dump that you said. And you had to gut the thing.

27:27You had to go to garage sales and flea markets to find things to put in there. And it was a labor of love. It was a labor of love. And it was really, it was my blood, sweat and tears that were in there. I mean, I had to do it all. I had to clean the place. I had to clean the bathroom. And this, at the same time, I was still working at Robert. And then I'm like, okay, I can't do both. I can't, I'm not going to kill myself. And you know, I was a lot younger back then and I had a lot of energy. And failure is not in my vocabulary. So I wasn't going to make this fail, especially when I just spent $5,000 to my name on it, just buying the beer and stuff. So slowly, slowly, gradually, I sort of made it work. The bluegrass became a little bit more country and more traditional country. And I'm like, how am I supposed to decorate this place?

28:28Because it was low ceiling and there were rafters all over the place. So I said, you know what? I don't know why I came up with the idea, but it was a cheap idea. And then I put license plates, started putting license plates one at a time on the rafters, just collecting them. And if you've ever been at Layla's, I have like over 1,000 license plates all over the place now. I mean, it's insane how many license plates I have. You know, I would tell people, bring me in a license plate, I'll buy you a beer, just to help me decorate the place. And I had no money to decorate it. I got a bunch of license plates if you need some more. Oh, yeah, bring them down, I'll hang them up for you. All right. And I'll buy you a beer. Well, yeah, I thank you so much. I just love that story. I love that when, I love that people, there's a perception out there, you know, there's a perception, you see all the bright lights and all the neon, and it looks like downtown Nashville is this big, almost a corporation, you know, these old red and these big places, which are gorgeous.

29:34And they're just doing such an amazing job. And then you hear a story about Layla's Honky Tonk. I assume you changed the name to Honky Tonk because you didn't want to, like bluegrass wasn't necessarily the thing that was bringing people in. So you changed to Honky Tonk. That's the way things are going. Exactly. Yeah. Well, and another thing, people, you would say the word bluegrass, they'd go, oh, I don't like the blues. I mean, people didn't even get it, you know. Sometimes people just don't get a lot of things in life. Let's just put it that way. I totally, I know what you're saying. So is there a seminal, what was the big moment? Was there a moment, because I watched a Garth Brooks documentary the other day. And one of the big things was during a radio, a country radio event, Garth Brooks did a concert at Layla's. And it was a huge moment.

30:34What was that like for you? I mean, to go from all of this to having Garth Brooks playing there. Right, Garth Brooks is one of the biggest single musician, album selling guy around. I mean, I don't know who could beat him. And how that story came about was Garth Brooks did like seven to 10 concerts at the Bridgestone in, well, we're in 2020 now. No, he did it in 2017, 2018. Oh, okay, I was thinking about the flood relief concerts. Yeah, not the flood, no. Then he did like seven to 10 concerts in like 2017 or 18. Sure. And it was in December when things are really slow. And at the time, wintertime, everything slows down and it was very slow.

31:38And it helped bringing business to Broadway for everybody. And I'm the only one that has a marquee on, my sign is a marquee. It actually used to be a movie joint where you would watch porn movies. Oh. Yeah, Layla's was a porn movie place. Okay. And so on the marquee, I put, Merry Christmas, thank you, Garth Brooks for doing all those shows at a very inexpensive cost to people. And his management, they were looking for a place for him to play on Broadway because he was doing like a small hockey talk tours or like a dive bar tour or something. He was doing some kind of thing where he wanted to play in a venue.

32:40He wanted to go back to where his roots were, exactly. Sure. So they were walking up and down Broadway looking for a venue to go play at. And somebody on his management team looked up at the marquee at Layla's and it said, Merry Christmas, thank you, Garth Brooks. And this was in February, by the way, or no, January. And when it snows in Nashville, people freak out just from one snowflake. The whole city shuts down. The grocery stores get all their bread and butter and milk. It's a thing, yeah. Take it off the shelves because everybody gets nervous from the word snow in Nashville. Me coming from Chicago, it's like, ah, come on, you people, you don't know what snow is. So anyway, we had that day or that week, we had a little bit of snow because I had told one of my workers, I said, Christmas is over.

33:44We got to get that sign, you know, the lettering off the marquee because it still said, Merry Christmas. And we are now in January. Merry Christmas, thank you, Garth Brooks. So because of the snow, the guy who was supposed to take the lettering off, he didn't show up because the city shut down. So it was still there. Thanks be to God. Talk about serendipity and blessing from the Lord. A few days later, the Garth Brooks crew was looking for a place to play. And when the management saw that, thank you, Garth Brooks, the lady goes, that's where we're going to play. So they came up to me and they said, we're looking for a venue for a country artist to play in. And I'm like, yeah. They didn't tell me the name of the guy yet. And I'm like, yeah, we could do that here, no problem. And they're like, well, it's a big artist. I go, well, that's fine. You know, you might have to bring in your own sound system because I don't have that great of a, at the time I didn't have that great of a sound system.

34:47I said, that will be no problem. So they said, well, you're going to have to sign a disclosure that you won't tell anybody who's coming in. And I'm like, oh, I'm thinking to myself now, okay, well, who the hell is this person? Is that Alan Jackson? Well, who's coming in here that I have to sign a piece of paper saying I won't tell anybody. So then we're talking and she goes, I'll give you a call in a couple of days. And I'm like, okay. So they call me back and I said, it's going to be Garth Brooks. And I'm like, what? Is that like Garth Brooks playing in my play? They're like, yep. And I was just like, let's do it, man. Layla's never had some, you know, any attention. I built a place with my own blood, sweat and tears. You know, I'm the last place that anybody goes in. I get the overflow of everybody else. I haven't had much help from anybody. And I'm like, wow, this is going to be exciting.

35:50So I never told, I didn't tell anybody. And it was, you know, there was like 200 people in there. It was for, oh, it was for country radio. Yes. That's what it was for. So I never got any publicity out of it except for in the news. And I kept to my word saying I wouldn't tell anybody because I didn't want to get my place ransacked, honestly. You know, because I didn't have really that much security and I didn't want, you know, to go against their word either and to keep it safe. So, I mean, it was, and by doing that, I developed a good relationship with Barth Brooks, though. I mean, he's come back there a few times. And he did something for iHeart Radio. And he was actually supposed to do something this year there, too, but because he was going to do his dive tour at Layla's this year and because of the coronavirus pandemic, it didn't happen.

37:04It was going to be in July, July 7th. So let's talk about that a little bit. What was it like, this coronavirus pandemic? I mean, you had to close, what, March 19th, I think it was? March 16th. And here's, Brandon, here's another story. You know, coming from the city of Chicago, there's a lot of Irish people there. And us closing March 16th, a day before St. Patty's Day this year, the first day that I had Layla's back in 1996 or 7 when I opened, I said to myself, oh, wow, St. Patty's Day. I'm going to decorate this bar. And I'll put green everywhere and leprechauns and four-leaf clovers and, you know, get it all decked out for St. Patty's Day because in Chicago, it's a big ordeal, St. Patty's Day.

38:06You know, they turned the river, Chicago River, green. They have a huge parade. Nobody goes to work the next day because they had the Irish flu. So here I am. I got my own bar in Nashville and I decorated the place up. And I must have had like two or three customers and everybody who saw it, they're like, what's all this decoration? What's St. Patty's Day? What is this? And I'm like, it's a day where the Irish people just drink. You know, you just party all day long. It's a great day to party. I had no, nobody knew what St. Patty's Day was, number one. Nobody came in the bar because it was St. Patty's Day. They didn't get it. They didn't know what it was down here. So it was a big disappointment for me. So that was my first time I decorated for St. Patty's Day. And it was the last time I decorated my bar for St. Patty's Day, except for this year.

39:13Because I had this really cool Scottish-Irish musician that started playing for me. His name is Josh O'Keefe. And I really liked this kid. He's got a great voice. He's got a great, he's pokey, country alternative. But he's got a wonderful sound to him. And he goes, Laila, what do you think? And he's from England. And he goes, Laila, what do you think about doing a St. Patty's Day? I said, I think it would be great because of your sound and music. So I decorated, I made the place look like a leprechaun puke in there. So I had the light bulb green because I had Christmas lights hanging from the rafters. So I turned all the Christmas lights green. Actually, I didn't turn them green. I had to change the bulbs up because they're the old, old Christmas lights. They're not the LED where you just press a button and make it easier on you. No, I got to go change every damn light, which I had my cook Bill do.

40:18He changed all the lights to green. We put all kinds of leprechauns. We put all kinds of pot of gold, rainbows, all kinds of stuff in there. For March 17th of 2020, we were going to have this big St. Patty's Day party in there. I had a nice band, Josh O'Keefe. I mean, he was excited, I was excited. We advertised it a little bit. And then here we are, the pandemic of coronavirus. We had to shut down March 16th, the day before. Doesn't sound like that holiday is working out for you. No, you know, some people wear those t-shirts, kiss me, I'm Irish. I guess I didn't have the right t-shirt on that day. I don't know. So here I am again, decorated the place for St. Patty's Day and couldn't even open it up. So you were closed for what, two and a half months? Yes, two and a half months.

41:20What did you do during your time? What did you do during that time? Well, we did a few live streamings from inside the bar. We did just a few of them. And we did it with all the, I had the decoration still up there. I wasn't going to take it down because it was, what's the point? Take it down, what for? But I also, you know, I'm such a workaholic, I have a few rental houses. And I had a house that I was just going to put up for rent. I remodeled the whole thing. And it needed, I was at the point where it needed a whole paint job. And it was going to cost about, I don't know, $6,000 to paint the whole place. So now here I'm closed. I have no money coming in. I've got to paint this place. I can't afford to pay $6,000 to a painter. I have all this time on my hands.

42:21So me and, I have a business partner and some rental properties. Gail and I started painting, with Bill's help, the house. So we didn't even feel the virus around us until I got home and saw no activity on the street. The streets were dead. Downtown is dead. Every time I came downtown, it was a ghost town. And I'm like, what is going on? I mean, this is unbelievable. What is this coronavirus? And you know how, I mean, everybody was scared and the media was scaring everybody and telling you that if you just breathe the air around somebody who has it, it's going to go through your skin and get you like the boogeyman. And they put fear in everybody and it worked.

43:25And everybody was scared. And it was just devastating. 115,000 people have died. What's that? I mean, 115,000 people have died. Even with all of that. What did they die from? From the coronavirus. That's what I'm hearing. Well, that's what they tell you. They died of coronavirus. But those people that died of coronavirus had all kinds of, now we know, underlying condition. They were elderly people. They were people that had either cancer already. They were people that had maybe some respiratory thing or they were just old people anyway. And now they're tagging everybody coronavirus, coronavirus. You know, I'm sure they all died of pneumonia, but they didn't say pneumonia anymore. They said coronavirus. So is there a virus out there? Yes. Do I want to catch it?

44:25Absolutely not. Do I wash my hands? You better believe it. Have I washed my hands as a child? That's what your mother teaches you. Dayla, go wash your hands. Before you sit at the table, go wash your hands. I mean, these are, you know, I don't even want to catch the flu. I can't afford to get sick because I run my own business, number one. And number two, being sick is not fun. You know, so you have to be careful whether it's coronavirus or whether it's SARS, SARS or Bangkok flu or whatever. You always try to be as careful as possible. Hey, I want to ask you a question. Are you close with all the other honky tonk and bar owners on Broadway? I mean, do you guys like talk? Is there like an association of some kind where you can all get together and it's like a Facebook group that's private that you guys have or something like that? Well, we do. Yes. To answer your question. Yes, I am. I'm first of all, I'm the only female bar owner on Broadway.

45:28And yes, I get along with everybody. I get along with they would call me Switzerland because I get along with everybody and not everybody gets along with everybody else because they're all male. I'm the only female bar owner except for, you know, a couple of wives. Yeah. Brennan Sanderson from the stage, her and her husband run legends and the stage and stuff. But I guess where I was going with this is I was going to say you missed St. Patrick's Day. You missed Cinco de Mayo. And some of these are holidays that are, you know, pretty big drinking holidays where people go out. Could you I had this idea and I was talking to a restaurant that I work with and I was saying, what if we just recreate Mother's Day? What if we just everybody bands together and we say, hey, during Mother's Day, we were all in quarantine. We are going to redo Mother's Day this Sunday, this Sunday.

46:30Bring your mom out to lunch. We're going to celebrate. We missed Easter. Let's have the Easter bunny come out. Let's do a whole Easter thing. Like, could you could you guys all band together and remake St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo and some of these other holidays and say, look, we missed these due to a pandemic, but we're going to do it this Saturday is Cinco de Nashville or it's going to be St. Patrick's Day Nashville. We're turning the block green and come out to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Is that a crazy idea? No, it's not a crazy idea. It's not a crazy idea at all. Since we missed it. Get people back downtown having a good time. Like, once this thing kind of passes through, we all feel comfortable. Like, what if we recreate these holidays and make it an intentional time to come out and have a good time? People want to come out and have a good time for any excuse at this point. That's a really good point. You know, they're just itching. I mean, kids haven't been in school. I mean, could you have ever imagined, Brandon, that this would happen to any of us?

47:36I mean, we've seen recession. We've seen, you know, the Vietnam War. Well, I haven't, but I was a baby then. But we've seen regular devastation. We've seen regular disasters. Tornadoes, hurricanes, things that are common, things that we're used to and that we know. Maybe we haven't been affected by it, but these are common disasters that other cities, states, you know, get affected by. But the damn whole world shutting down by a pandemic, by a virus in the year 2020. I mean, that's pretty incredible that you could paralyze the whole damn world. That's pretty powerful.

48:37It's power. And it's you know, it's unique because of all the different things we've had in the past, it's only affected certain areas. A hurricane affects the area a hurricane hits, a tornado affects the area a tornado hits. But the pandemic, this, you know, I feel like our country was on such a divide with just politics and everything. And then this was something that kind of unified us to a degree. And then it's kind of pulled us back apart. And now we're now we're in the middle of a civil rights movement that is that is really big, that's really gaining traction. And I want to talk to you about that a little bit as well. Well, don't forget this is an election year. This is an election year for sure. And that's why this is happening. You think that this is happening because it's an election year? People who are listening out there on the airwaves, you have to go out and vote. If you want to make a change, if you're sick and tired of things, the way politicians are, the way politics are, you have to vote.

49:39People, you can't complain and not vote. Go register and vote, people. Amen. And if you don't do that, you're not going to get change. No matter what side you're for, it doesn't matter. But that's your civil right. That's probably the only rights that we have anymore is to vote. So go take advantage of it and do it. Completely agree. I mean, let that be heard. I mean, that's the best advice you can possibly give right now. I mean, get out there and vote every single person. Right. And if you're not registered, don't get registered. You know, when they have the there's so much going on. I mean, it's just never ending. They just had, you know, we had a riot on Broadway three weeks ago. I've only been open. OK, I open Memorial Day. It was a Monday. I believe it was the 25th.

50:41And a week later, then we get all our windows on Broadway downtown bashed in. By by losers and looters. And I mean, it was scary. I'm like, where are we? What is happening in this world right now? I pinched myself. Is this a nightmare? Can I please wake up? Can I please go back to March 1st or whatever? Because I can't believe this is happening. Can you imagine being downtown and these crazy kids going crazy and smashing windows and looting places? No, I can't imagine that. I was I was watching it on TV. Were you downtown when that was going on? No, I was I was at home watching it on TV and I saw they were right at Leila's climbing on the window. I'm like, oh, my God, they're trying to break my window, too.

51:41And I'm like, I got to get down there. And I live downtown. So I got down there immediately. And it just so happened I had four pieces of plywood upstairs in my attic. And I got a couple of guys help me from second fiddle. They were boarding up their windows. They helped me board up my windows. And it was scary. It was it was just scared because I saw them looting Margaritaville and the food store and they smashed the windows at the stage. I mean, it was just horrible. Then we had another protest like a week later. So everybody's scared. You know, is this going to happen again? Do you take the boarding off the windows and have to put it back and all that stuff? Yes, I did that every night. It was my new key. It was my new key to the plate was a screwdriver.

52:43Every night we would board them. And then in the morning, I don't screw it. Then I boarded up that I didn't screw them. So then I said, you know what? This is starting to be ridiculous that they're going to break my window. Let them break my window. I have insurance. Whatever happens is going to happen. And then they had that they had that other big rally with the four teenage girls, which I'm so proud of. Yeah, me too. That rallied up like three thousand people. I mean, four teenage girls got them and they did a fantastic job. I was down there and even the protesters, if anybody was getting out of hand, they'd be like, come on, get back in line and start marching. You're not here for anything else but to protest and march. And the night that the other people were looting, those were protesters. They were just a bunch of looking to have trouble and fun. If that's what you call fun at somebody else's expense. I mean, it was shame on those people.

53:45Just shame on them. Yeah, I think that I think if you were one of the peaceful protesters, you were very upset by that happening, too, because it put, you know, a tarnish on something that people are trying to make. A really good point. And, you know, I watched those I watched on TV like you and I live in West Nashville, but I take a lot of pride in Nashville and what we are and who we are. And I just well, I felt for every single business owner. It was weird because my brain I've been doing a lot of introspective and a lot of thoughts in my brain went to a I got so angry watching it. And then my brain kind of turned to a not knowing anything else. Then I thought, you know what? I've never been so mad that I wanted to burn my own city down. I've never been so mad that like I've never been that mad. And it kind of put in perspective to me what these people protesting and just that black people are feeling across the nation.

54:45And it really it hit my heart pretty strong. Yeah, but those weren't they weren't people. Still, those were these both of them were white people burning stuff. I mean, the guy at the courthouse. They were all kinds of colors that were doing it. Black, whites, whatever. Just healthy kids. But they were there protesting. They were there to, like I say, just do damage. They just wanted to do damage. And it's just it's a shame. Shame on them. But I was trying to say, you know, going back to voting is those poor teenage girls who put that rally together. They should have had people registered down there to try and get them all to register and vote if anybody needed to be registered. Yeah, that would have been a good good call to have just like somebody there registering people to vote. Yeah, and all these protests, they should do that every time that they're in front of Legislative Plaza or City Hall.

55:53They should you have all those people gathering there. And if you're not registered, that's the time to get them to register and vote. Are there still protests happening on Broadway? Yeah, we had one Saturday. That's part of it. I wonder if you could. I mean, if there's another one downtown, I wonder if you could lead that revolution and get a big table and put it out front of Leila's and say, hey, register to vote. Come here and kind of get get that ball rolling. Yeah, I have great ideas, but I don't have the energy anymore, Brandon. I understand. I can't do it all, you know, I'm putting it out there in the universe. Somebody else will do it. All right. Well, I we've been talking for an hour and I know there is a million stories of really cool things that have happened inside of your building and things that you've experienced that I would love to hear another time.

56:56Thank you so much for talking about how you got where you are. I think that the perspective that you just gave of where you come from, what it took to get where you're at, perseverance, hard work pays off. And it does pay off. You know, it's good. Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say I just thank you for for being candid and telling me this story and telling the people of Nashville and the world. You know, kind of your story. And if you're coming to Nashville, you know, I think one of the questions that people ask all the time is where should we go? What's the place we need to go? And it's like, yeah, some of these big time places are cool and they're fancy and they're neat. But if you want the original Nashville experience, I think you're going to get it when you go to Layla's. When the pandemic, you know, I also still play music with sort of like a girl's band.

57:58There's a very good artist by the name of Lily May that people have to go check out. She's an extraordinary, talented young girl. And her and her siblings, her sisters and the brother, have been playing at Layla's for over 15 years. And now she's on her own, doing her own recordings. And she's been on the road with Jack White. She's played with Jack White. She's under Jack White's label. And she's been on the road with Robert Plant last year. Wow. She's a singer-songwriter. She writes her own songs and sings them. She's just fabulous. Look her up, Brandon. Her name is Lily. What's her full name? Lily May. She goes by Lily May.

58:59Yeah, just look up Lily May. But her last name is Rishi. Okay. Yes, please go to Layla's on Broadway. I'm a small honky tonk, but I'm the real thing. You know, I don't have a famous name like Luke Bryan. Is that his name, Luke Bryan? Yeah, that's a guy. He has a place. He's legit. He's a big time guy. Yeah. But he didn't put any work into the bar that has his name on it. Let me just tell you that. No, and you know what? I respect the hell out of you for being the only woman-owned honky tonk. And I think that that is just amazing. And if you're out there and you're a bachelorette and you're coming to town, there better be a line outside of Layla's. That's right. Tell them, Brandon.

59:59That needs to be the spot. If you're coming to town and you want to go to the original, you want to go to a honky tonk that's woman-owned, that's the original soul of what Nashville is, go check out Layla's. Support this woman. She has put her blood, sweat, and tears into what she's doing. And I can't thank you enough for coming on Nashville Restaurant Radio today. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me. Speak on your, what do you call it, pod? Is it podding? A podcast. Podcast, okay. I love you. You're so great. How about that, folks? I'm telling you, Layla Vartanian, so when they announced that Miranda Lambert was going to be opening a honky tonk, she was the first female country star. I was like, no. No, Layla was the first female country star. And she to this day is still the very, she owns, she's the only independent owner, female owner of a honky tonk downtown Nashville.

01:01:09So how about that? If you have people that come to town and you want to support a local person who runs a honky tonk, Layla is the way to go. Now, if you want to go back farther into our repertoire, before I get to a Wednesday rewind, remember, you can go back and listen to all of these episodes, whenever you like, on Anchor. Just go to our website, NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com, click the episodes button, and you can scroll down and see them all. But we interviewed next door at Robert's. Jesse Lee is the lead singer for Brazil Billy. Sorry, I'm just trying to get all this together. Jesse Lee Jones. And we did a two-parter with him, because he had to leave right in the middle of one of our interviews, and we caught up with him again. Another amazing interview. He bought Robert's Western World from Robert, just like Layla bought Layla's from Robert. Robert was an amazing dude.

01:02:09And he gets right into the middle of it. He tells the story of Tootsies and why, it's interesting because those two are close friends, and they're doing it right. And if you're going to take people to an original Nashville honky tonk, that's where you need to go. So thanks for listening today, and I hope that you guys are being safe out there. Please wear a mask, go get vaccinated. Love you guys. Bye.