Studio Mama Supper Membership’s Intimate Dinner and a Present | Eating Opinions

If you drive by the crimson Studio Nashville constructing on Charlotte Avenue, there’s a superb likelihood you gained’t discover it. There’s no signal out entrance. Parking is within the alley, the place there’s a again set of stairs to get inside. From the surface, you actually wouldn’t think about that that is the place the place individuals flock every quarter for an intimate dinner and present.

However since 2023, that is the place Rebecca Wooden has been internet hosting Studio Mama Supper Membership, a four-course, $550-per-person dinner and personal live performance for 30 or so fortunate individuals. Rebecca is thought for her expertise within the kitchen — she obtained the nickname “Studio Mama” by working as a studio chef for eight years at Zac Brown’s recording studio Southern Floor Nashville. Below her firm title Coronary heart’s within the Combine, she provides a meal subscription service with entrées, baked items and pantry staples.

Throughout the pandemic, Rebecca self-published Studio Mama Neighborhood Cookbook, a set of music-industry tales and recipes. She supplied a dinner with reside music within the studio the place her husband Oliver Wooden — roots musician and frontman for The Wooden Brothers — data as one of many huge prizes for the cookbook’s crowdfunding efforts. A Wooden Brothers fan made the funding after which opened up the night to different followers. The night was so successful that Rebecca determined to maintain doing it, and shortly after launched Studio Mama Supper Membership. 

“My husband is an overthinker, and I’m a doer,” she says.

The Supper Membership has 4 often scheduled acts per 12 months, plus a further fifth present in December — that one is often a fundraiser with Oliver onstage. In 2024, the present benefited The Nashville Meals Challenge. The subsequent present, which is about for March 15, will characteristic Americana singer-songwriter Langhorne Slim.

In case you’ve been in Nashville for a minute, you’ve most likely been to a home present. They’re fashionable methods to work together with musicians, with the music and with fellow viewers members. They foster connection and permit some freedom that performers don’t at all times get at a conventional venue. However even in a city stuffed with home concert events, what Rebecca has created is completely different — partly as a result of her occasions happen in knowledgeable recording studio with inherently good acoustics. 

After which there’s Rebecca’s meals.

“Studio Mama is a lower above any home concert events,” says singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan, who performed the occasion in 2023. “What they’re doing over there’s on a distinct stage.”

Different artists who’ve performed the stage — which is 2 to 3 toes from the small bar and the communal eating tables — have included Darrell Scott, Nikki Lane and musicians from the Black Opry Revue.

As a result of it’s in Nashville, Studio Mama Supper Membership has musicians onstage, within the viewers and even working, mixing drinks or serving large platters of completely seasoned carrots. The vibe has an area, neighborhood aptitude — though on the night time Tasjan performed, he discovered that one fan flew in from Baltimore simply to see the present. A part of the vibe of Supper Membership is that people who’re within the viewers be part of the artist for a track or two, in Nashville custom. When Tasjan performed, he introduced his buddy Judy Clean as much as sing, and he says she wowed the viewers. She’s simply signed with Rounder Information — maybe Supper Membership friends will have the ability to say they heard her again earlier than she was well-known. 

Gabe Dixon heard what was occurring over at Studio Mama Supper Membership, and through a songwriting session with Oliver final 12 months, he talked about that he and his spouse Amanda want to attend someday. Oliver prompt they arrive for the December fundraiser for The Nashville Meals Challenge — if Dixon agreed to hitch him onstage for a track or two.

Dixon agreed; he was already a fan of Rebecca’s cooking from her Southern Floor days.

“I knew it might be scrumptious meals, however I didn’t understand how well-done the entire expertise can be,” says Dixon, who has performed his share of home concert events. These sorts of experiences, he provides, are essential as a result of they rejoice the craft of songwriting.

“I had an especially huge 12 months in 2024,” Dixon says. “[Playing with Oliver at the Supper Club] was the very last thing I did, and it was a wonderful capstone for the 12 months.” 

The small viewers and the format of the night — an hour of cocktails and dialog, adopted by dinner after which the present — permit artists to experiment and maybe play one thing completely different from what they may at an even bigger present. In addition they play with musicians they haven’t performed with earlier than. In Tasjan’s case, that included the home percussionist and upright bass participant. 

“We did a very cool, slowed-down, virtually Nick Drake-style model of ‘Mary Jane’s Final Dance’ by Tom Petty,” Tasjan remembers. He needed to play one thing the viewers would acknowledge, however together with his personal stamp on it. “It appeared prefer it was resonating with of us,” he says. 

For a lot of performers, the bodily proximity to the Supper Membership viewers is one in every of its promoting factors.

“I carry out higher when individuals and I are shut,” says Sean Scolnick, who performs below the title Langhorne Slim. “I have to be energetically and bodily near the viewers to have one of the best expertise. The extra of a divide between myself and the group, the shittier I really feel.”

Scolnick had heard concerning the Supper Membership and was intrigued, realizing Oliver “was a grasp vibes man.” The 2 have been on tour collectively final 12 months, and that connection led him to guide a date. The thought of the Supper Membership is simply the sort of factor that made him fall in love with Nashville greater than a decade in the past.

“It’s no ego, no division between you and the viewers, simply individuals getting collectively for the love of music,” Scolnick says.

Rebecca refers to herself because the HBIC (“head bitch in cost”), however there’s nothing bitchy about her hostessing prowess — or the everyone-is-welcome vibe she creates. Studio Mama Supper Membership is a novel expertise, and is priced accordingly. The ticket value contains the four-course family-style meal, cocktails, wine, dialog and the intimate present in an actual recording studio that has been embellished for the night. Volunteer alternatives to assist in the kitchen can be found for individuals who need to attend however can’t swing the ticket value. Performing artists, bartenders and kitchen employees are paid, and Rebecca is dedicated to utilizing high quality and ethically sourced meats and greens for the culinary expertise. She doesn’t pay herself for her appreciable work.

Rebecca works with nonprofit Nashville Grown to supply elements, and he or she develops her menus based mostly on what’s in season.

“It’s an costly get together, nevertheless it feeds my soul,” she says. She averages the prices over the 12 months, so costs are the identical irrespective of which artist is performing.

“It’s a very nice occasion to reset your soul, “ says Rita Martinez, who has attended some dinners together with her husband, together with the one with Nikki Lane in addition to December’s fundraiser.

“What you might be paying for is the intimate expertise and the standard,” says Martinez, who used to personal The Salty Cubana. What the Supper Membership provides is just not a Michelin-star sort of meal, she says. It’s residence cooking, served household type — and he or she’s OK with that. “I care the place my meals is coming from, and I’m prepared to pay extra to know it’s from a pasture-raised supply.”

The meals is plentiful too, and for those who’re nonetheless hungry — which appears unlikely given the massive parts on the platters which are handed round — you’re inspired to ask for seconds.

You additionally don’t have to decorate like you will a $550-a-plate, black-tie dinner. “We wish it to really feel good, informal and comfortable and fancy,” Rebecca says. “If you need, put on your good pajamas — the silk ones, not flannel.”

As soon as you purchase a ticket, you’ll be emailed a survey asking about dietary restrictions and preferences in addition to any mobility challenges. (The again entrance requires stairs, however there’s a plan B if wanted.) Rebecca accommodates many dietary wants, together with providing vegetarian and gluten-free dishes.

Rebecca presently cooks out of the Citizen Kitchens meals incubator area — although she’s within the technique of constructing her personal industrial kitchen — and transports the meals to Studio Nashville for dinner.

“To patrons of the humanities and music followers, issues like Studio Mama are a really worthy funding of your hard-earned leisure {dollars},” Tasjan says. “I do know a number of of us don’t have the disposable earnings that they used to, however this can be a true expertise curated by Rebecca. 

“You possibly can’t even actually clarify it — you simply need to go.”