Lola Kirke found country music through the back door of Rock ân Roll. âI found Gram Parsons through the Rolling Stones and The ByrdsâParsons was my gateway drug,â the singer, songwriter, and actor told AD recently from a hotel room in Austin, Texas, one of the many stops on her tour for her third country album Trailblazer.
Known for pairing magenta with rhinestones and a lyrical wit, Kirke hasnât always been country. A New Yorker at heart, she grew up in a West Village brownstone with a rockstar dad (Simon Kirke, drummer for Free and Bad Company) and a stylish mom (Lorraine Kirke, an interior designer and the owner of vintage clothing store Geminola). It wasnât until college that her penchant for cowboys, country, and the Wild West developed, where she notes in her debut memoir, Wild West Village: âMaybe it was just nice to imagine somewhere more lawless than the lawlessness Iâd known in the West Village.â
During the pandemic, Kirke leaned into her country music passion and moved to Nashville on a whim. She lived in a two-room carriage house before buying the East Nashville ranch where she currently lives, where she wrote her book, which launched earlier this year. âI always loved the South, but I never thought I could live here,â Kirke says. âActresses donât live in Nashville. They live in New York City and LA. I found Nashville by accident.â
Since establishing herself down South, however, Kirke has fallen in love with Music City. Here, she dishes on her favorite spots around town.
The Parthenon
Presiding over Nashvilleâs Centennial Park lives the worldâs only exact-size replica of the Parthenon, standing at 65 feet high with 46 Doric-style columns. Nashville was already known as the âAthens of the Southâ because of its numerous higher education institutions and because it was the first Southern city to establish a public school system when this icon of classical architecture was built in 1897 as a celebration of Tennesseeâs hundredth year of statehood and an ode to ancient Greece. Kirke chose this ornate setting to shoot a home workout video, a companion piece to her eighties-inspired country album, Lady for Sale, in 2022. âThe idea was that the workout would make you look and feel like a goddess, so obviously, The Parthenon,â she says.
Third Man Records
