Chris Cobb Can’t Stop Reenacting “The Battle for Nashville’s Soul”

This is a follow-up on our reporting on Chris Cobb's quixotic quest to save the EXIT/IN and the open questions that still surround it. Read parts one and two.

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The Belcourt’s Music City Mondays has remained one of Nashville’s most consistent weekday evening offerings for most of the indie theater’s recent history. And last week, the series that aims to highlight the most important movies about music in film history took a decisively local turn with its screening of The Day The Music Stopped, a feature documentary that, as its official synopsis states, “follows Exit/In owner Chris Cobb as he wages a heroic effort to advocate for venues nationwide — while struggling to keep the legendary Nashville venue afloat at home.” 

The latest from Nashville-based filmmaker Patrick Sheehan positions itself as the definitive version of the events that took place from Spring 2021, when AJ Capital Partners announced plans to buy the storied Nashville venue, to January 2023, when Cobb made his tumultuous exit from the property. Co-produced by former WSMV anchor and Nashville Banner co-resurrector Demetria Kalidimos, the film also prominently features an interview with Axios Nashville reporter Nate Rau.

For anyone who weathered COVID in the Greater Metro Area, Cobb’s self-styled David v. Goliath fight against the corporate overloads at AJ became a potent symbol of Nashville’s identity crisis in the wake of unprecedented growth. During the year it was supposed to be celebrating its 50th anniversary, the storied independent venue found itself for sale.

Owner and local music entrepreneur Chris Cobb made a bid on the property that was summarily rejected, then created a firestorm of publicity and a GoFundMe campaign purportedly to buy the venue that raised $271,541. At the same time, he restarted the Music Venue Alliance Nashville, a 501(c)(6) nonprofit, “dedicated to retaining and nurturing the fragile, yet complex ecosystem of our famous music scene in Nashville, Tennessee.” 

Despite these seemingly valiant efforts, Cobb’s work appeared to be in vain. AJ closed on the property and Cobb’s tenure as EXIT/IN owner ended in November 2022. The night before the new owners took the reins, someone vandalized the venue, cutting wires, ripping up breaker boxes, and tagging everything with phrases like, “Sorry, not sorry.” As for the money, Cobb told the public on his campaign site that,  “Should our bid fail, all money raised with be donated to NIVA [The National Independent avenue Alliance] and MVAN.”

Our prior reporting on the matter revealed that long before he started the fundraiser, Cobb knew he had no chance of purchasing the property. Its original owners, whose relationship with Cobb soured over his incendiary approach to community conflicts, rejected his initial offer even though it was above the asking price. Likewise, AJ Capital never expressed interest in selling the property. According to all available evidence, Cobb knew his bid was dead in the water before he started the campaign.

Even more curiously, the Secretary of State’s office considered MVAN an inactive and dissolved nonprofit for at least seven months into Cobb's fundraising, meaning he was soliciting hundreds of thousands in donations for an entity the state of Tennessee deemed no longer in existence. During the process, Cobb refused to answer The Pamphleteer’s questions about the funds or provide the Form 990s that nonprofits are required by law to make public. Nearly three years later, the status of the money remains ambiguous. 

Following our first story, The Pamphleteer received numerous tips from readers about their own dealings with Cobb and MVAN. As the legend goes, Cobb first rose to fame as Music City’s man of the people when he turned down event behemoth LiveNation’s bid to buy his former venue Marathon Music Works and the EXIT/IN in 2016. We previously reported in 2022 during the week the EXIT/IN changed hands that a source familiar with the matter alleged that Cobb was actually the one who initiated the offer, which another independent source corroborated. 

Given its clearly stated intent to paint Cobb as Music City’s indie savior, we knew that The Day The Music Stopped would likely gloss or omit these very real questions about Cobb’s business dealings and mythos. However, the most shocking aspect of the documentary is that it unintentionally affirms many of the details we uncovered. 

The Day the Music Stopped more accurately resembles a visual diary of Nashville’s perpetual crisis state circa 2020 that details the March tornadoes, BLM riots, Christmas Day bombing, and pandemic mania with quick asides of Cobb repeatedly ranting about corporations. Throughout, Cobb remains a carefully controlled enigma–a messiah whose miracles Sheehan extols but goes to great pains never to explain. 

Upon news of the doc’s release and upcoming national roadshow, The Pamphleteer revisited the Music Venue Alliance Nashville’s records since, given that 2.5 years have passed after his final bid to buy the club failed, MVAN (and NIVA with which Cobb is also involved) should have received the GoFundMe’s windfall by now. As of press time, no form 990s for MVAN are available on its website or other government and nonprofit databases. 

According to the Secretary of State’s business lookup, Tennessee dissolved MVAN again in August 2024 due to inactivity. Cobb reinstated it in November 2024, but is delinquent on his annual report. Though we have repeatedly asked Cobb for copies of his form 990s and an account of where the $271,541 he raised during the GoFundMe has gone, he continues to ignore our requests. 

The Pamphleteer reached out to Cobb, Sheehan, Kalodimos, and Rau with questions about MVAN’s finances and how the film depicts these dealings. We also reached out to MVAN board members Ron Brice–owner of 3rd and Lindsley–and attorney Rob Bigelow. Cobb, Brice, Bigelow, and Rau could not be reached for comment. Kalodimos responded via email, “I was a producer and partner in this production…but I am not involved in the intricacies that you are looking at,” before forwarding our questions to Sheehan. When reached for comment, Sheehan responded, “I am not aware of the specifics of how any money was handled for the GoFundMe or the state requirements issue re MVAN.”

The Day the Music Stopped doesn’t capture Nashville’s soul so much as it spotlights a tight circle of pseudo gatekeepers. The slow-motion montages cycle through the same post-punk acts cheered by the same few dozen devotees and presents that sliver as “the music scene.”

During the post-screening Q&A, even the film’s featured players conceded the scene can’t draw enough people to break even or even attract a critical mass of attendees that any random Broadway bar amasses by 7 p.m. on a weeknight. According to Cobb and these other personalities, this manufactured problem has an easy solution: the state and federal government should give independent venues more money to subsidize putting on unprofitable shows.

Such an argument could hold validity if the EXIT/IN continued as an incubator of major talents like Ryan Adams and Lucinda Williams. But, as the film makes painfully clear, it hasn’t had a hand in breaking a major artist since Cobb took over. Instead, it experienced a fall from grace. The venue that hosted Chuck Berry as its headliner durings its 80s reopening scored its last night to the sounds of local punk icons Diarrhea Planet.

More importantly, The Day the Music Stopped elides that Cobb, MVAN, and those who share their political alliances created a self-inflicted crisis that brought independent venues to the brink. Beyond Cobb, Rau, and Kalodimos, the film’s biggest star is former mayor John Cooper, who blames the pandemic and George Floyd riots for indie venues’ struggles despite the fact that his Twitter call to arms for protestors and draconian closure of bars and venues aimed at political enemy Steve Smith—Broadway’s most prominent entrepreneur and COVID critic—exacerbated the situation. 

Not to be outdone, Cobb and MVAN advocated masking and vaccine requirements long after Tennessee’s state of emergency expired, hindering show attendance and sending the next generation of concertgoers to Broadway, which quickly rebounded as Cooper’s political career collapsed.

By the time The Day the Music Stopped gets to its third establishing shot of the Batman Building, it’s clear that its version of an independent Nashville comes with quite a few caveats. As the film admits, it wasn’t Cobb, but conservative politicians like Sen. Marsha Blackburn and State Rep. Johnny Garrett who came to the aid of independent venues – revelations that caused quite palpable cognitive dissonance among the Cobb-friendly crowd in attendance.

But for any local with a modicum of context, the project unveils that the greatest threat to Nashville’s soul is not faceless corporations, but the self-proclaimed purveyors of culture who want to remake a city that has resoundingly rejected them in their own image. 

This is a follow-up on our reporting on Chris Cobb's quixotic quest to save the EXIT/IN and the open questions that still surround it. Read parts one and two.