NASHVILLE’S famous New Year’s Eve celebration has got the green light – but not as you’ve ever seen it before. The annual celebration, which last year attracted 200,000 fans to watch country rocker Keith Urban, will instead be a virtual gig.

The Jack Daniel’s Music City Midnight: New Year’s Eve in Nashville show will star indie rock band Moon Taxi and powerhouse trio The Shindellas, the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp has announced.

And it will be available for fans worldwide to watch live or via the Visit Music City website from New Year’s Day. 

Due to Covid restrictions and the responsibility of keeping everyone safe, it will be the first time in the event’s 12-year history that the New Year’s Eve show will not have a live audience.

But the show WILL go ahead, keeping up a proud tradition.

Nashville’s own Moon Taxi will play for 40 minutes just before midnight and The Shindellas, who fuse jazz, soul and R&B, will perform a 20-minute set earlier in the show.

Moon Taxi have risen from hometown heroes to win an international fanbase with six albums busting boundaries between rock, pop and country. New album Silver Dream is due in January 2021.

The Shindellas – Kasi Jones, Stacy Johnson and Tamara Chauniece – serve up R&B, soul and jazz and have become festival favourites since being launched multi-platinum songwriting duo Chuck Harmony and Claude Kelly.

The online stream will also include highlights from previous Nashville New Year’s Eve events, including Urban’s star turn last time out.

“Music City has consistently hosted hundreds of thousands of spectators to ring in the New Year, and while we are sad to ask the crowds to stay home, we are ecstatic about the opportunity to say goodbye to 2020,” says Butch Spyridon, president and CEO of Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp.

“We hope everyone will tune in to enjoy the live music and the start of 2021. You can expect us to be back next year with the biggest show ever. We have some making up to do.”

For those who can’t stay up to watch it live from 4.30am GMT (10.30pm CST), a video of the whole concert and highlights from previous year’s will be available to view on the Visit Music City website from New Year’s Day. 

For all the latest news on Nashville’s New Year’s Eve event go to visitmusiccity.com/newyearseve and for tourism tips see www.visitmusiccity.com