TC Restaurant Group announces its one-of-a-kind six-story venue in partnership with Morgan Wallen called “This Bar & Tennessee Kitchen” will open Saturday, June 1 at 11 am. The bar, restaurant and live music concept in downtown Nashville’s iconic Lower Broadway district is located by the front entrance of the famed Ryman Auditorium.

“We’re thrilled to welcome our first guests on Saturday, June 1, to This Bar leading into CMA Fest,” said Grant Burlingame, vice president of operations at TC Restaurant Group. “This venue has been a labor of love for us and Morgan. His fans and music lovers alike will love the experiences they will find at This Bar. We’re proud to open its doors.”

After the June 1 opening, fans, and guests can stay tuned on social channels (@mwthisbar) and the website (www.mwthisbar.com) for updates on on-going hours leading into CMA Fest.

The opening comes after news that Wallen’s recent three-performance weekend at Nissan Stadium contributed to a record setting weekend of hotel bookings in Nashville, according to information shared by the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. 75,000 hotel rooms were sold from May 3 to May 4, the most in the city’s history.

Since launching his career, Wallen has primarily shared his music and stories with fans directly on the road at his live shows, and This Bar is an extension of the boy from East Tennessee’s life. Paying homage to growing up in Tennessee, This Bar incorporates pivotal elements that shaped Wallen’s life, with each level showcasing photos and memorabilia from his childhood as well as some of his most notable performances to date.

This Bar and Tennessee Kitchen is designed and built from the ground up to deliver a unique experience on 4th Avenue adjacent to the historic Ryman Auditorium just off Broadway in the heart of Music City. The venue will be approximately 30,000 square feet and feature three live music stages, six bars and an open-air rooftop.

The menu is curated by Wallen with Chef Tomasz Wosiak, Vice President of Culinary Development for TC Restaurant Group, and feature southern delectables, bar bites, Tennessee favorites and some of Mama Wallen’s own recipes.

The venue also features a gift shop with exclusive Morgan Wallen merchandise offerings and even an homage to his favorite Tennessee team.

“Morgan Wallen is one of the most sought after stars in the music industry, and we are thrilled that he has trusted us to deliver a concept that will bring him closer to his fans, hold fast to his roots and enshrine his name among an exclusive group of artists who can claim international stardom with a Lower Broadway destination fans all over the world seek out,” said Adam Hesler, President at TC Restaurant Group.

Tennessee football is preparing for its fourth season under Josh Heupel and its second season with double-digit wins. If the Vols want to achieve that feat, they will have to run the offense with a redshirt freshman. 

We saw glimpses of Nico Iamaleava last season during his redshirt season, but not much. Besides the Citrus Bowl, where the Vols beat Iowa 35-0, Nico’s playing time was during garbage time against inferior opponents. 

Regardless, we will see how Nico fares as the top guy in the quarterbacks’ room when Chattanooga makes the trip to Neyland Stadium on August 31. The Vols will open their season against the Mocs at 12:45 PM ET. 

After Tennessee’s Week 1 matchup against the Mocs, the Vols will have back-to-back primetime games on the schedule for Weeks 2 and 3. In Week 2, the Vols will travel to Charlotte to play North Carolina State in the Duke’s Mayo Classic at 7:30 PM ET, and in Week 3, they will return home to face Kent State under the lights at 7:45 PM ET in Neyland. 

The Vols’ Week 2 game against NC State will be the third-night game on the new “SEC on ABC” broadcast, which is taking the place of “SEC on CBS,” which hosted primetime SEC games for the past couple of decades. Other primetime games being hosted on ABC are Notre Dame at Texas A&M on August 31 and USC vs. LSU on September 1 in Las Vegas. 

Tennessee’s Week 1 and 3 games will be broadcast on SEC Network. The Vols will look to take care of business against Chattanooga and Kent State before heading into SEC play. 

The Vols open its conference schedule this year at Oklahoma, which will be an early road test for Tennessee. The SEC has not released its game times for the remainder of Tennessee’s games this season and will announce those game times later in the summer.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal lawsuit claims police officers took thousands of dollars from a businessman in their Tennessee city in exchange for obstructing efforts to investigate allegations that he was sexually assaulting multiple women for years. The police department has denied any wrongdoing.

The extortion claim involving several Johnson City Police officers appears in court filings from a federal lawsuit accusing building contractor Sean Williams — who is now in custody on state and federal criminal charges — of drugging and raping women in the East Tennessee community from 2018 to 2021 while police did little to investigate him.

There was “either an implied or explicit agreement” that the officers would shield Williams, “permitting him to continue his criminal activities of abuse and trafficking with impunity,” say lawyers for nine women, listed as Jane Does 1-9, who are suing the city.

These plaintiffs raised the extortion claims months ago, but their May 14 filing makes the claims more explicit by alleging that banking documents back the assertions. The same lawyers also revealed, in April, that they have provided hundreds of pages of information for a federal public corruption investigation of the police department.

Williams awaits trial on state charges including child rape, aggravated sexual battery and especially aggravated sexual exploitation, and federal charges including three counts of production of child sexual abuse material and one count of distribution of cocaine. He’s also charged with escape, after authorities said he kicked the window out of a federal transport van and was caught in Florida more than a month later.

The law firm representing Williams did not immediately respond to a request for comment emailed by The Associated Press.

Erick Herrin, an attorney for the city and multiple officers who were sued, said all the defendants deny the allegations, but court rules limit what else he can say. In a statement, the city said it would welcome an investigation.

“There has been no evidence presented to support allegations of corruption by the Johnson City Police Department, and we welcome any investigation that could dispel such claims,” the city said.

The May 14 filing claims Williams’ business partner, referred to as Female 4, opened shell companies disguised as subcontractors and transferred thousands of dollars from Williams’ business, Glass and Concrete Contracting LLC. The money was laundered so she could take “owner draws” to pay $2,000 a week to some Johnson City Police officers, who had also seized cash from Williams’ safe, the document alleges.

The plaintiffs point to bank records, saying that for instance, during a two-week period in June 2022, Female 4 withdrew nearly $30,000 in cash from the company’s account. They say the woman appears to have withdrawn no more than $10,000 per day, “likely in an effort to evade mandatory suspicious activity.”

In a filing in March, the plaintiffs said Williams himself described the extortion in a message from jail in September 2023. They say he used a contraband cellphone to send the messages to a coconspirator who then posted them on Facebook. One mentioned weekly payments of $2,000 to officers using fraudulent 1099 tax documents and “forged owner draws.”

In a court filing in response, Female 4’s attorney said her communications with Williams have been infrequent since their personal relationship ended in 2017. The filing says the Facebook post was made by “someone using the name of Sean Williams” and says she has no relevant knowledge about the allegations and doesn’t have any relevant documents.

The attorney for Female 4 did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

The local district attorney, who is prosecuting Tennessee’s charges against Williams, declined to comment on the extortion accusations, citing an ongoing investigation, and didn’t specify whether or not they’re looking into extortion claims.

The lawsuits say Williams’ crimes continued even after Jane Doe 1 survived a fall from the window of his fifth story apartment in September 2020. Officers investigating the fall found ample evidence of sexual assaults in his apartment, including a list of names labeled “Raped.” Even when that woman went public, Williams’ identity was protected as “Robert Voe.”

Kateri Lynne Dahl, a former special prosecutor in the East Tennessee U.S. attorney’s office, was brought in as a liaison with city authorities. She also filed a federal lawsuit against the city. She says she gathered substantial evidence that Williams had been dealing drugs and was credibly accused of sexually assaulting and raping multiple women, but the police refused to investigate further, and botched her effort to arrest him on an April 2021 federal felon-possessing-ammunition charge, letting him flee.

The city rebutted Dahl’s claims in a statement that pointed to prosecutorial delays.

Williams wasn’t arrested until April 2023, when a campus police officer in North Carolina found him asleep in his car and learned of the federal warrant. An affidavit says a search of the car found — along with drugs and about $100,000 in cash — digital storage devices with more than 5,000 images of child sexual abuse as well as photos and videos of 52 female victims being sexually assaulted by Williams at his Johnson City apartment while they were in an “obvious state of unconsciousness.”

Many of the videos were stored in labeled folders, and at least a half-dozen names on the folders were consistent with first names on the “Raped” list found in his apartment two and a half years earlier, the affidavit states.

Meanwhile, public outcry over the police response to complaints from a growing number of women prompted the city in the summer of 2022 to order an outside investigation into how officers handled sexual assault investigations. And in November 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a federal sex trafficking investigation.

Findings from the city’s third-party audit, released in 2023, include that police conducted inconsistent, ineffective and incomplete investigations; relied on inadequate record management; had insufficient training and policies, and sometimes showed issues with gender-based stereotypes and bias.

The city said it began improving the department’s performance while awaiting the audit’s findings, including following the district attorney’s new sexual assault investigation protocol; reviewing investigative policies and procedures; creating a “comfortable space” for victim interviews and increasing funding for officer training and a new records management system.