“To Nashville, Love Dolly”: Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel Opens as Her Final Gift to Music City

On Tuesday morning, thousands of rainbow paper butterflies drifted down onto the corner of Commerce Street and Third Avenue North, and Nashville finally got the opening it had been waiting on for nearly three years. Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel, a 245-room love letter to Music City complete with a top-floor venue called Jolene’s and a museum devoted to her life, held its official grand opening on October 6. It came six weeks after the world lost her, on August 25, at the age of 80. The star wasn’t there to cut the ribbon. Her fingerprints, however, are on everything.

Built with Herschend, her partner of 40 years at Dollywood, SongTeller brings together rooms and suites, dining, craft cocktails, two live music venues and Dolly’s Life of Many Colors Museum under one roof at 211 Commerce Street, steps from Lower Broadway. For anyone traveling to Nashville for the music, the evening can now begin, and end, under Dolly’s name. For her fans, it has become something more: a place to pay tribute.

Photo Credit: Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel

A Hotel With Dolly’s Fingerprints on Every Floor

There was nothing hands-off about this project. Throughout development, Dolly worked with her team and creative partners, reviewing details, sharing stories and memories and weighing in on the decisions that shaped the property. That matters for a woman whose world held glamour, humor, family, faith, ambition and a lifelong devotion to the mountains she came from. Capturing all of that takes more than a song title over the door, and her personal touch runs throughout the building, tying its spaces to her life, her career and her long love affair with Nashville.

The city is woven into her story, from the young songwriter finding her footing to the global superstar she became. SongTeller was conceived as her love letter to it (the hotel’s own sign-off reads “To Nashville, Love Dolly”), and its 245 rooms and suites give guests a place to settle into her world while exploring the city that helped make her.

Devoted fans will be drawn in immediately. But the hotel works just as well for any Nashville visitor looking for a central base with dinner and a show built in. You don’t need to know every word of “Jolene” to appreciate having your evening’s plans a few floors from your room, though it certainly won’t hurt.

Photo Credit: Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel

Jolene’s, Parton’s Live and Music Every Night

In Nashville, a hotel’s relationship with music matters, and SongTeller puts it front and center with two original venues.

Parton’s Live, on the second floor, celebrates Dolly’s legacy as a songwriter with writers’ rounds, songwriter sessions and emerging-artist showcases, paired with shareable plates, desserts and seasonal cocktails. It’s exactly the kind of room where a young Dolly might once have played, and where the next generation of Nashville talent now gets its shot.

Then there’s Jolene’s. Named for the 1973 hit that remains one of the most famous songs ever written, it occupies the hotel’s top floor, with nightly performances from Nashville singers and songwriters, food, drinks and views across downtown. Of course the top floor is called Jolene’s. Where else would she be?

Together, the two stages give SongTeller a rhythm well beyond check-in, dinner and checkout. A performance can be the centerpiece of a night, whether it’s your first evening in Nashville or your last.

Dolly’s Life of Many Colors Museum

For fans, the third floor may be the most moving part of the building. Dolly’s Life of Many Colors Museum, named for her beloved “Coat of Many Colors,” fills the entire level with more than 20,000 square feet of personal stories, artifacts and multimedia exhibits. It is billed as the largest exhibit celebrating her life anywhere in the world, tracing every decade of a journey from the top of the Smoky Mountains to the top of the charts.

The museum has its own entrance at 126 Third Avenue North, so it’s open to visitors who aren’t staying overnight, and it is sure to become one of the most-visited stops in town for anyone wanting to remember her.

Photo Credit: Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel

Coffee, Cocktails and a Reason to Linger

Between performances and afternoons exploring downtown, the hotel’s restaurant and SongTeller Café provide places to gather, refuel and slow down. A stay here can easily take in a morning coffee, a long lunch, a show and a conversation that stretches well into the night.

Hospitality is the thread tying it all together, and the ambition is to make guests feel the way Dolly always made people feel. “Dolly’s greatest legacy may be the way she has made people feel—seen, welcomed, inspired and connected,” says Shannon Foster, the hotel’s general manager. “That is the spirit we hope guests feel the moment they walk into SongTeller.” Foster adds that the team hopes visitors leave with a memory, a song or a story of their own, a fitting wish for a hotel named for the art of telling them.

Photo Credit: Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel

Forty Years of Partnership, and a Legacy That Lives On

SongTeller is the latest chapter in a partnership between Dolly and Herschend that began with Dollywood four decades ago and has since produced Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort & Spa and HeartSong Lodge & Resort, properties steeped in the same warmth and storytelling found here. Bringing that partnership to downtown Nashville gives it a new stage, with live music and her deep connection to the city at its heart. AOA served as project manager, working with Herschend on design and construction.

The ribbon cutting also honored the cause closest to her heart. Children whose lives have been touched by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which has mailed free books to children around the world, took part in the ceremony, a reminder that her legacy has always reached far beyond the stage.

In the end, SongTeller’s invitation is simple: come in and stay awhile. With 245 rooms and suites, a café, a restaurant, two music venues and a museum devoted to her extraordinary life, it offers a new place to make Nashville memories, and a place to feel close to the woman who soundtracked so many of ours. She designed it to welcome you. It still does.

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