(NewsNation) — Garth Brooks plans to serve “every brand of beer” — including Bud Light — at his Nashville restaurant, which is slated to open soon.
Named the Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk, the establishment is named after one of Brooks’ songs.
Speaking to Billboard’s executive editor in a wide-ranging interview at the publication’s Country Live event, Brooks said he wants his new spot to be somewhere people feel safe.
“I want it to be a place where you feel like there are manners and people like one another,” he said.
To Brooks, this means offering Bud Light, despite the backlash its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, received after partnering with a transgender TikTok creator named Dylan Mulvaney.
“Our thing is this: If you (are let) into this house, love one another,” Brooks told Billboard. “If you’re an a-hole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway.”
Billboard noted that a number of other artist-owned bars have pulled the beer, including John Rich’s Redneck Riviera and Kid Rock’s bar. A number of pundits and celebrities threatened to boycott Bud Light after Mulvaney made an Instagram post earlier this year promoting the brand, although the influencer has also found lots of support.
These responses come at a time when activists say the rights of transgender people, and those of other members of the LGBTQ+ community, are under attack.
The Human Rights Campaign recently declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time in its more than 40-year history.
According to a website that tracks this legislation, there were 556 anti-trans bills introduced across the country in 2023 as of June 9, with 369 labeled as “active.”
Mulvaney herself has spoken out on the Bud Light situation and transphobia she’s experienced online, saying in April of this year that she has always tried to love everyone — “even the people that make it really, really hard.”
“I think it’s OK to be frustrated with someone or confused,” she said, according to NewsNation partner The Hill. “But what I’m struggling to understand is the need to dehumanize and to be cruel.”
Mulvaney thanked those who “choose to see my humanity” even if they don’t “fully understand or relate” to her experience.
“I’m just gonna go ahead and trust that the people who know me and my heart won’t listen to that noise,” she added. “What I’m interested in is getting back to making people laugh.”