In addition to being due in court this August following his arrest for allegedly throwing a chair off of Eric Church's rooftop bar, Morgan Wallen is apparently also in the process of getting a Nashville watering hole of his own. Perhaps there, unlike most public places, chair-throwing will be welcome, or even encouraged?
However, the city council has now voted to bar (ha, get it?) a 20-foot neon sign emblazoned with the musician's name from hanging from the bar and over the sidewalk below due to his reputation for being a not-so-upstanding citizen, The Tennessean reports.
Morgan Wallen's This Bar, a bar and restaurant named after Wallen and his 2019 hit "This Bar" but run by a third-party business, is set to open this weekend on Fourth Avenue North in Nashville's famed Lower Broadway entertainment district, adjacent to the legendary Ryman Auditorium.
City council members voted 30–3 to deny the establishment's bid to construct a massive sign advertising the establishment with Wallen's name on it, citing the recent arrest — which happened just 600 feet from the bar location — and felony charges, as well as that time in 2021 when the singer-songwriter was caught on video yelling a racial slur. He later defended his actions, calling his use of the word "playful."
"I don't want to see a billboard with the name of a person who's throwing chairs off of balconies and who's saying racial slurs and using the N-word," council member Delishia Porterfield said at yesterday's (May 21) hearing [via The Tennessean].
Council member Jordan Huffman added, "Mr. Wallen is a fellow East Tennessean. He gives all of us a bad name. His comments are hateful; his actions are harmful."
Wait, are actions actually having consequences now? Huh! Last December, in his first major interview in two years, Wallen addressed the incident, saying, "There's no excuse. I've never made an excuse. I never will make an excuse. ... I think, for me, in my heart I was never that guy that people were portraying me to be, so there was a little bit of like, 'Damn, I'm kind of actually mad about this a little bit because I know I shouldn't have said this, but I'm really not that guy.'"