The Bobbin, Nashville
The Bobbin gives Nashville a small hotel rooted in its songwriter soul rather than its bachelorette circus, with a listening room, a record library and a porch that belongs to 12 South. It is the city at its most genuine. The trade-off is a residential setting a short ride from the Broadway action some visitors come for.
We arrived in 12 South on a warm evening as the neighbourhood did its slow turn from coffee to cocktails, the sidewalks full of dog-walkers and the smell of someone's smoker drifting over. The Bobbin sits among the bungalows and boutiques with an easy, low-slung confidence, brick and dark-stained cedar, a wraparound porch already half-full of guests and locals. Inside it is warm and tactile, walnut, aged brass, Tennessee limestone, a wall of records behind the front desk and a guitar or two leaning where you might leave an umbrella. This is the Nashville of songwriters and Sunday porches, not the neon of Lower Broadway, and the hotel wears that distinction with pride.
The room
Our room looked over the porch and the live oaks of 12th Avenue, its windows thrown open to the evening. The design was handsome and unfussy: a walnut platform bed, a leather wing chair, brass picture lights, a palette of tobacco, cream and forest green. The room's heart was a turntable on the credenza beside a small, well-chosen stack of records, with the promise of more from the lobby library. Thoughtful touches abounded, a guitar on a stand for anyone who plays, good coffee, a minibar of Tennessee whiskey and local sodas. The bathroom paired limestone with a deep shower and a scent of cedar and vetiver.
Most Nashville hotels sell you the party; this one sells you the song, and that is the rarer and better thing.The Suite Edit
Service & food
The staff are Nashville-friendly in the authentic, music-loving way, happy to talk you through the week's songwriter rounds or point you to a record shop down the street. Breakfast is hearty and Southern, biscuits and sausage gravy, a sorghum-glazed ham, chicory coffee, served in a sunny room off the porch. The standout is the listening room, an intimate, acoustically careful space where writers play in the round several nights a week over a tight menu of bourbon, beer and good bar snacks. There is no full restaurant, but 12 South's celebrated cafés and taquerias are a two-minute walk in any direction.
The verdict
The Bobbin is for the traveller who came to Nashville for the music and the neighbourhoods rather than the pedal taverns, the muso, the romantic, the couple after porch life and a songwriter round. Anyone who plays an instrument will feel particularly at home. The honest caveat is location: 12 South is a residential delight but it sits a ten-minute ride from Lower Broadway, so guests whose itinerary revolves around the honky-tonks will be hailing rides each night. Embrace the neighbourhood, take the listening room over the bar crawl, and you will leave with the truer Nashville.
The photo set
Location
2308 12th Avenue South, 12 South, Nashville, TN 37204, USA
