Nashville's songwriting elite set up shop in Midtown Manhattan Thursday night, as the Paley Museum hosted the first New York City edition of Southern Rounds, a stripped-down storytelling showcase that pairs hit songwriters with the tales behind their biggest cuts. Tickets ran from $75 for general admission to $125 for VIP access, and attendees aged 21 or older who presented government-issued photo ID got a complimentary pour of Elsie Marshall Whiskey.
The show marked the launch of a broader, year-round music initiative at the museum that began September 1 and will eventually include live performances, listening parties, DJ nights and masterclasses, according to The Paley Center for Media. Southern Rounds is serving as the inaugural program for that push, and the museum's president and CEO, Maureen Reidy, framed the night simply: the event, she said, brings music from Nashville to New York City, according to News12 New York. Per that report, the Southern Rounds series is structured as a six-part monthly run that will include not just live performances but red-carpet events as well.
Whiskey, Workshops and a Nashville Listening Room
Southern Rounds itself isn't new — it was co-founded in Nashville back in 2019 by songwriter Richard Blackstone, with a format built around acoustic showcases that put hit songwriters directly in front of audiences to perform their own songs and explain how they were written, according to the Paley Center for Media's event listing. That listening-room style has long been a Nashville staple, and the Midtown version leaned into it further by tying the whiskey pour directly to the catalog on stage: Elsie Marshall Whiskey was created by performer Kevin MaC and takes its name from his song “Granny Drinks Whiskey.”
News12 New York reports the series also includes workshops alongside its performances, and one attendee, Samuel Duque, said he learned invaluable knowledge from the masterclass portion of the night. Duque's takeaway was blunt: aspiring artists, he said, should keep going after failure. MaC framed the broader goal of the event similarly, saying it aims to help people achieve their dreams by showing them a path forward, per the same report. Organizers told News12 that the event aims to encourage the next generation through Nashville's established music makers.
The Songwriters Behind the Songs
The lineup paired rising and veteran Nashville creators with serious industry credentials. Hannah Dasher has written songs for both Brad Paisley and Lainey Wilson, News12 New York notes, and her path to those credits included a memorably rough patch: she co-wrote “Go to Bed Early,” later recorded by Paisley on his 2017 album *Love and War*, while working at a Bass Pro Shops near the Grand Ole Opry — a job from which she was fired for writing songs during her shift, according to The Country Note. She landed her first publishing deal six months later.
D. Vincent Williams brought decades of hits to the stage as well. He won the 2002 Academy of Country Music Song of the Year award for co-writing “I'm Movin' On,” recorded by Rascal Flatts, and his catalog has landed on albums that have collectively sold tens of millions of copies for artists including Reba McEntire, Jason Aldean and Kenny Rogers, per the Paley Center's event listing. Williams told News12 New York that a good song should tell the truth and be honest, a philosophy that ran through the night's between-song storytelling.
A Landmark Building With a New Sound
The Paley Museum itself carries its own history into this new chapter. Located at 25 West 52nd Street in a building designed by architect Philip Johnson, the institution opened in 1976 as the Museum of Broadcasting, was renamed the Museum of Television & Radio in 1991, and became The Paley Center for Media in 2007, according to Britannica. The venue has hosted plenty of buzzy programming under Reidy's leadership, including a sold-out panel this past August where Megan Rapinoe moderated an in-depth conversation with the Ted Lasso cast, showing the museum's live-event capacity extends well beyond music.
After the Midtown premiere, Dasher, MaC and Williams didn't stay put. The trio traveled to Eastern Long Island on Friday to open the 2026 Sag Harbor American Music Festival at the Bay Street Theater, serving as the opening act for multi-genre artist Raul Midón, according to the Sag Harbor American Music Festival.
Country's Growing Manhattan Footprint
Southern Rounds' arrival lands amid a broader commercial resurgence of country music across New York City. Kips Bay's Common Country, a 3,400-square-foot Southern-themed honky-tonk that replaced a former sports bar, opened in December 2024 to capture rising local demand for that kind of nightlife, a shift Hoodline documented in its report on the Kips Bay honky-tonk's opening. Country storytelling has also found a foothold in Midtown's theater scene, with the jukebox musical *Music City* — featuring Billboard country hits and Brooklyn actor Jonathan Judge-Russo — reopening at St. Luke's Theatre this past June.
Big-name artists have been putting down literal roots in the city too. Grammy winner Zach Bryan bought a seven-level West Village townhouse for $13 million in March, a purchase that included nearly 2,000 square feet of outdoor space. Together with the Paley Museum's new year-round music push, these threads point to a Nashville-to-New York pipeline that shows little sign of slowing down.
