Bobby Karl Works The Room: The 2014 Grammy Viewing Party

Not all of the fun on Grammy Night happens in Los Angeles.
The Nashville Chapter’s annual viewing party is a terrific occasion as a cocktail supper and a gathering of fabulons. This year’s event (Jan. 26) took place at Anthem, the dance club where the Pub of Love used to be on 12^th Avenue North.

Moving and grooving were the members of the Nashville Chapter of the Recording Academy (NARAS). Nashville boasts the largest number of student members of any chapter in America, and they showed up en masse. That made it a good-lookin’ party full of cute young things in party couture.
Among the “senior citizens” also in attendance were Pat Embry, Pat McMakin, Scott Warner, Scott Hallgren, Joy Styles, John Briggs, Jonathan Martin (who has moved from being a Channel 5 anchor/reporter to being primary correspondent for Al-Jazeera’s Nashville bureau), Rob Simbeck, Karen Clark, Eric Holt, Raeanne Rubenstein, pop recording artist Gareth, Paul Nielsen, Charles Dorris, David & Carolyn Corlew, Bil VornDick, Doak Turner and Justin Levinson.
We snacked on hot-spicy chicken drumsticks, smoked salmon lox, cheese cubes, veggies with blue-cheese dip, tortilla chips with hummus and pepperoni discs at the food bars. The wait staff circulated with mini deli sandwiches, bags of freshly popped popcorn, petite pizza slices and the like.

Anthem had a number of party spaces for the event. There was an upstairs lounge, a long balcony overlook, a terrace bar/food area and a main floor featuring two lounge areas and a dance floor surrounded by a series of round banquettes. Sleek black leather chairs and couches and gleaming ebony wood tables and cabaret stands were scattered throughout. The venue boasted brick and dry-stacked stone walls, plus black-draped partitions.
Truth to tell, the layout for this party wasn’t the best. The entryway led to a narrow hall that became a bottleneck because the lone stairway, a bathroom and a food buffet were all at its egress. Once you got past that, a few steps down led to a too-small barroom. Then you finally descended again onto the main floor, which was pleasantly large enough. The upstairs lounge and the balcony were mellow. As we viewed the telecast, our Nashville-oriented artists did us proud as show performers. Hunter Hayes, Kacey Musgraves and Taylor Swift knocked it out of the park. Blake Shelton shored up a legends segment featuring Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Lifetime Achievement Award winner Kris Kristofferson. Newly short-coiffed Keith Urban was a journeyman guitar soloist with Gary Clark Jr. Harmonizing Miranda Lambert and Billie Joe Armstrong saluted the late Nashville legend Phil Everly with “When Will I Be Loved.” Musgraves also appeared on the show as the surprised Country Album of the Year winner. Divine Martina McBride and charmingly furry Zac Brown were among the Grammy presenters. Grammy winners this year included Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, The Civil Wars, Darius Rucker, Mandisa and The Del McCoury Band.
Our party hosts-with-the-most were The Recording Academy’s Ashley Ernst, Laura Crawford (did you know that her dad is TV maven Greg Travis?) and current Leadership Music class member Alicia Warwick. Thanks to them, a lovely time was had by us all.