Holmfirth Tavern: Home of country music in the UK

"Holmfirth has become the Nashville of Yorkshire," says Holmfirth Tavern owner Chris Bray.

Transcript

00:00Wish Girls You Loved Never Gave Back Our Memories

00:16Wish Girls You Loved Never Gave Back Our Memories

00:21I wish every poor woman together stood alone

00:31We're in the home of last of the summer wine so we're going to straighten up our stockings and

00:36find out what else is here other than the extremely popular TV serials. The pub has been going five

00:44years and is a popular destination for country music fans old and new. It's inspired by the

00:52owner Chris's favourite artists from Johnny Cash to Dolly Parton. What's it like running a pub here

01:00in Home Firth? It's good, like I say I used to live in the States and when I got back to Home Firth

01:07I found a lot of the bars were very samey and I did always want to build a bar that was different

01:12so you could come here although you're in a small town of Home Firth you can feel like you're

01:16anywhere in the world and especially that feels like you're in Nashville and it's been amazing

01:21since I've opened. Two years ago I created a TikTok account and we went viral with the first

01:28video that I posted we got 570,000 views which has brought people from all over the country to

01:34visit this little bar in Home Firth that's flagged the country music flag and it's kind of blown me

01:40away as well of how we've got international recognition as well so I have a lot of artists

01:45that contact me from Nashville that have come over to play and then word of mouth has gone back that

01:50they've come over here they've had a good time and then more people keep contacting me and I've

01:54recently had a girl from Australia coming over to play and I had a girl from Italy recently coming

01:59over to play and they're all hearing about the Home Firth Tavern on the country wave right.

02:05That's amazing and you're a musician yourself as well? Yeah so I've always been a musician I used

02:11to play keys and drums as a kid and then I picked up the guitar and decided to teach myself guitar

02:17and coming out of living out in the states and coming back here and falling in love with country

02:21music and now I play quite regularly not just here in my own bar but I play different festivals and

02:29other bars across up and down the country and again flying the country flag.

02:34And what's your big dream for this place? My big dream for this place is to keep it going and

02:40keep getting more artists over from Nashville and more writers around I love a good writers

02:46round over here and maybe I discover the next Taylor Swift from the UK and that ends up playing

02:52the Grand Ole Opry and they were discovered in the Home Firth Tavern.