A Brilliant Partnership: Country Music Hall of Fame and Hatch Show Print
By Vicki Bohlsen, President
I recently went to Nashville, Tennessee, for a girls’ weekend. Although the concert we planned the entire trip around was canceled, we managed to have a good time. We went to a John Hiatt concert at Ryman Auditorium (the steel guitarist and the fiddler!) and did some of the requisite things you do in Nashville, one of which was go to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
One of the girlfriends, whom I’ve known for a couple of decades because we used to work together at an agency that promoted family entertainment events, heard of an exhibit that she thought we’d like: Hatch Show Print. Up for anything, I just agreed, not even knowing what it was.
The Hatch family started the art and business of letterpress printing back in 1875. Whether wanting to sell out a circus, vaudeville act or country music concert, Hatch Show Print was getting the advertising job done by designing and printing their recognizable posters that were sprayed on sides of buildings and barns. The minute I stepped into the exhibit, mere steps away from the entrance to the Country Music Hall of Fame, I recognized the work that is now part of American History. We’ve all seen it!
The tour started out with background about the Hatch family that moved from Wisconsin to Nashville in 1879, four years after the business was started; they have kept the growing business in the family for more than a century. Through the years, you can only imagine how they’ve had to work to stay relevant. Throw in a recession and a pandemic and, I thought, it’s a wonder they’ve managed to stay in business!
What I couldn’t stop thinking about was how the entire production – the exhibit, tours, shops, gallery, and the working business – is housed steps away from the Country Music Hall of Fame. Traffic from Hatch flows into the museum, and vice versa. How brilliant is this? I mean, you can watch Hatch employees making iconic letterpress posters for clients that you learn all about in the museum. We saw the press where Johnny Cash and Taylor Swift concert posters were printed, for God’s sakes.
My brain was working overtime – counting the number of tours they do weekly, the number of people at an average tour (tours X people X ticket price = $); calculating what rent might cost in this prime building and location; assessing what they might generate in tchotchke sales from the gift shop and print sales from the gallery. Then it occurred to me. THIS is a serious partnership. Dare I say it again? Brilliant!
I stayed behind and asked my tour guide a few questions; I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I quickly realized that he was a Hatch employee and had been for decades, so I was just frank with my questions. Does Hatch pay rent? Who approached whom?
From my conversation with him – and through some serious sleuthing – I learned that the Country Music Hall of Fame purchased Hatch Show Print in 1992 and moved Hatch into the Country Music Hall of Fame building in 2013.
As both a letterpress print shop and a working museum, Hatch Show Print not only operates as a thriving business providing custom prints and posters for clients, but also serves as a resource for educational activities and programs on everything from the history of advertising and graphic design, to the technical elements of letterpress printing.
Oh…. And, I’m sure, this whole thing is generating some serious revenue. Boom!