DREW GREEN

Thursday August 11, 2022

@ 27 Live! at L27 Rooftop Lounge in Nashville, TN

(Review by: Jeffrey Kurtis)

Rooftop decks on all the bars across Nashville have become the common, go-to party spot for so many of the visitors to the Lower Broadway area of downtown. They take in the neon lights, a few extra libations, and bask in the cover bands playing music cranked to the 10’s that radiates up and down the famous street all day and night competing in one convoluted wall of staticky sound.

However, to escape the extremely crowded hustle and bustle that Lower Broadway has become, locals will always seek out the type of places that host great original music and are maybe a little more upscale, a little more chill, and a little more private so that they can still call it their own.

It’s funny that to find a place to call our own, we’ll head to the Westin Hotel and their amazing L27 Rooftop Lounge – a hotel, which is ironically known to be full of tourists who are staying in the near downtown proximity and call the confines of it home for their extended weekend trip to Music City.

But where most of the tourists are walking out the front doors of their lobby for their night out on the town, we’re walking in for our night up high above the city skyline.

With an incredible 27^th floor view of the entire city, the rooftop lounge features a swanky bar area that seamlessly gives way to a lounge full of cushioned couches set strategically around coffee tables.

But it’s the amazing cabana styled pool area that attracts music lovers on these very special nights when it sits a stage directly atop the clear blue waters, fitted perfectly between the stone bricked pillars and overhead covering of the pool, transforming it into an amazingly unique venue for some of country music’s hottest emerging acts; on this night – Drew Green!

With his single “Good Ol’ Man” currently impacting radio in big ways, the McMinnville, TN native took the stage in front of a shoulder-to-shoulder packed in tight crowd, bringing his modern branded pop infused country sound to a very receptive crowd of longtime fans, local family and friends, and his now soon to be biggest new fans!

The moment that the PA speaker stopped pumping out the array of current country music being played to hold everyone over while the stage setup was still taking place, the crowd erupted as the lights over the stage dimmed and a thumping bass backbeat took over the sound system, rattling the floor as you felt its vibrations rumble up and down your legs.

Green hit the stage with a huge hometown smile plastered across his face as he immediately dropped into the boot-stomping rhythm of the opening song “Bout to Get Backwoods” and quickly got the party crowd cranked up.

Transitioning into “Dirt Boy,” he had his home towners in the crowd embracing what has become their small-town anthem as they sang along with him, before letting out a deafening cohesive harmony into the final chorus with glasses raised high in the air.

Green then tried out a new song on the crowd, “Take Me with You,” before pausing to gratefully tell part of his backstory.

“I started playing music down the street from here at Tootsie’s four years ago, four nights a week,” he told. “It is absolutely crazy to be seeing people singing my songs with me when I spent so many nights singing other people’s songs,” he finished with a grateful moment of thankfulness as he then punched into the fan favorite “She Got That,” during which couples in the crowd had their arms wrapped around one another as they swayed along with the slower paced melody.

“I’m about to be putting out a lot of new music,” Green enthusiastically stated as the crowd cheered. “But I’ve got two new songs coming out tonight in just a few hours and this is one of them,” he shared as he took us on a sunburnt journey through the Beach Boys kissed feel-good vibe of “Girls in the Sun.”

As if he even needed to encourage it, Green enticed, “Let’s have a little fun y’all!” eliciting a crowd response that clearly said they were up to his challenge as the band hit into the opening notes of “Woods” as the crowd raised their voices so loudly that they nearly drowned his out as they bopped along with the ultra-catchy melody as their arms bounced through the air surfing on the summertime breeze that made its way across the rooftop.

After sharing the Nashville holler and swaller tradition with the crowd, Green allowed the powerful lyric of “Little More Be Alright, which sings of being content with what you have while striving for more, to completely captivate the audience into a trancelike state as they swayed side to side while staring starry eyed at Green, singing along with his every word.

“I want to try out some new music on y’all tonight, if that’s alright with you?” Drew asked as the crowd aptly responded yes through their applause. “We just learned this one earlier today,” he confessed as he pulled in the crowd word by word, line by line to his addictive new song “Best Ex I’ve Ever Had.”

“So, I had been down here in Nashville writing songs for about 8 years, and one night when I was drunk in a bar, I met this guy who wrote songs. I’m sure y’all know Hardy!” Green playfully teased as the crowd hooted and hollered. “Well, we went to his house and wrote this song and just a couple weeks later, Hardy calls me up and tells me that Florida-Georgia Line was going to cut it for their Can’t Say I Ain’t Country album. It’s the song that gave me my start, led to my publishing deal, and eventually, to me signing with my record label….but both me and Hardy really liked the song and wanted to sing it ourselves, so we did a version of it together and it’ll be coming out soon,” Green finished as he lit the crowd up with an electric performance of “Colorado.”

“This next song is another one of my favorites that I’ve ever been part of,” shared Green. “I put a clip of me singing this one out on TikTok and the next thing I knew, millions of people were talking about it and girls were messaging me and asking me to sing it at their weddings. This song changed my life,” he humbly stated as he delivered “The Rest of Our Lives,” bringing the couples in the crowd closely into one another as they rekindled their fire along with the slower paced tune.

“This so crazy here tonight! This is the first show I’ve ever played where my whole entire family is here,” Green gleefully shared as his family bellowed out screams from all corners of the rooftop sky deck. “I remember that it was rainy day here in Nashville and we had this idea. We ended up writing this song that day. We wrote it so fast, and I knew it was a good song. I didn’t even really care what anyone thought of it, but we pitched it around town – I was just a songwriter at the time, but when I signed my record deal, I got to sing it myself and it just hit the Top 20 at SiriusXM,” he finished as he encouraged the crowd to sing along with him as he delivered an incredible performance of us his current smash hit, “Good Ol’ Man.”

“Y’all like cold beer?” asked Green as he held up his red solo cup in a toast to the crowd. “I’ve written probably about 200 songs about it, and this is one of them,” he finished with a swig from his cup as he hit into fan favorite “Cold Beer and Copenhagen,” followed by “This Miller Lite of Mine,” continuing to pay homage to the adult beverage with the ultra-catchy song that he said was written on a day spent out at a local lake – Center Hill – by him and two of his songwriting buddies at 2:30 AM after a long day of writing 4 songs together.

“I got my dad here in the house tonight and he’s the most Alan Jackson, Sammy Kershaw loving country music fan I know. He’s the reason I ever got into country music,” shared Green as his family erupted in cheers. ‘’This next song is the one song that I wrote about that, and it’s the most hip hop sounding song I have which is hilarious to me,” he chuckled as he played “Dirty Money,” before closing his one hour and ten minute set with “Hooch,” a song he dedicated to all the moonshine drinkers out there that gave the rambunctious audience one more chance to let their voices be heard as they screamed along with the lyrics.

This was so much more than just another show.

This was a flat-out party!

And while Drew Green may have been the host of it, and masterfully used this stage as a bold showing of his entire catalog to give everyone a look into why he is one of country music next big male artists, the fun, upbeat atmosphere just as much belongs to the enthusiasm produced by the crowd, who brought the goods all night long – from first note to the last – and allowed their energy to radiate from the rooftop of the Westin and transcend over every corner of Music City.

FULL SET LIST

1) Bout to Get Backwoods

2) Dirt Boy

3) Take Me with You

4) She Got That

5) Girls in the Sun

6) Woods

7) Little More Be Alright

8) Best Ex I’ve Ever Had

9) Colorado

10) The Rest of Our Lives

11) Good Ol’ Man

12) Cold Beer and Copenhagen

13) This Miller Lite of Mine

14) Dirty Money

15) Hooch

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