A Collage of Familiar Faces,M.L.Rose Grows in Nashville

Nashville Interiors

By Nicole Childrey | Photography by Anthoy Romano

March 14, 2025

DOWN IN THE BASEMENT IS WHERE IT ALL COMES TOGETHER.

Funky finds from thrift stores and flea markets wait for their next assignment. Layers of lanky collage-art panels line up in various stages of completion, carefully quilted with cutouts, glue and wild pops of pop culture.

“Right now, I’ve gotta figure out — I have this huge wall that’s like 35 feet wide and 16 feet tall,” says designer Jeff Stamper, stocking his basement studio with stuff to outfit the seventh M.L.Rose Craft Beer & Burgers location, this one set for a summer opening in Inglewood. “I gotta figure out what’s gonna really make that stand out and make it interesting, so that when people come in, they’re like, ‘Oh you knowthat restaurant with the thing?’”

The thing is a point of interest, a conversation starter — a design feature that helps give a place made for eating, drinking and gathering a unique and memorable personality. 

Jeff Stamper is the man behind the art and decor sourcing for all the M.L.Rose locations.

Stamper’s succeeded in finding the thing for M.L.Rose six times already, tracing back to the Nashville-bred brand’s first location, which opened in 2008 on Eighth Avenue South as The Melrose Neighborhood Pub. Inside that space, long stretches of custom collage work trace the cultural path from Mark Twain to Dr. Dre, with hundreds of twists and turns in between. It somehow evokes the intentional storytelling of a museum exhibition as much as haphazard sticker piles on the walls of every dusty punk club.

Closing in on two decades since the glue dried on Eighth, owner and A.Ray Hospitality founder/CEO Austin Ray thinks of that collage work as his brand’s “original statement piece.”

“In the early days, I was struck by how much people liked it,” Ray says. “They continued to like it over the years, and it is still a conversation piece 16 years later, for both new and old guests. I always hear people say, ‘I notice something different every time I come in here.’”

Starting a Conversation Piece When M.L.Rose was incubating, Ray was fresh off the closure of music venue City Hall and the chic, metropolitan BarTwenty3—one of Music City’s key pre-boom providers of “we’re not in Nashville” moods. For his next hospitality venture, he wanted to re-team with Stamper, who’d worked on both. 

This time, Ray envisioned a laid-back, low-key neighborhood bar — “a familiar place where you feel like you belong,” in Stamper’s memory. Their previous collaboration wouldn’t have tipped to it, but corner-bar vibes were a way more natural fit.

“The first time Jeff and I got together, I could immediately tell we spoke the same design language,” Ray says. “We both have a natural tendency to make places feel both lived-in and a part of the community they’re in.”

Ray gave Stamper an intention, a handful of posters and free rein to get weird. 

The posters made Stamper think about unvarnished old Nashville — the easy energy at Springwater and The Gold Rush. His mind tracked back to school nights clipping snippets from Creem and Thrasher and weekends slapping show flyers on Nashville walls with wheat paste. That mixed in with some of Stamper’s more recent experience working at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, designing exhibitions by organizing individual artifacts into cohesive visual stories. 

“It started off feeling like, ‘OK, this is an exhibit,’” Stamper says. “Then I just kept filling it in and filling it in.”

Propagating M.L.Rose

Although there’s a wide range of fun and funky ephemera that goes into a completed M.L.Rose design, carefully curated collage work became the signature. That’s carried through as new locations have opened from Sylvan Park to Mount Juliet, Franklin to Gallatin. 

Because Nashville natives Stamper and Ray continue to collaborate, each restaurant speaks the established M.L.Rose language fluently, though each has its own distinct accent. Franklin draws on equestrian textures and Civil War history; Gallatin casually evokes lakeside life. Capitol View, five or so blocks from where Tennessean editor Edward W. Carmack was shot dead on the street in 1908, pulls in periodical prints.

“I think because of the exhibit design, I always try to find something that’s germane to the place or the story,” Stamper says.

Ultimately, each space comes together through a mix of instinct, stream of consciousness creativity and happenstance. Stamper and Ray go on sourcing expeditions to flea markets and thrift stores. Stamper trains his aesthetic eye on eBay. And he keeps tapping into a lifelong tendency to hoard stuff that sparks inspiration — because it looks cool, evokes nostalgia, tells a story or offers some mix of the three.

“I think that’s a Russian matchbook from the ’30s or something. And there’s monster stamps from England,” he says, flipping through finds that will become fixtures. “I’m a collector of sorts. A very loose — I’m not a serious collector. You won’t find anything wrapped in plastic.”

By the time Inglewood opens, Stamper will have hung up an ode to the cassette tape, lit up a tribute to Heileman’s Old Style and stitched together scenes that stretch from Dolly to Dolemite. He gets it all to feel of a piece through an intentionally organic process — “I’m not gonna say reckless abandon,” he says, “but some sort of abandon.”

Every M.L.Rose location has felt important, but for Stamper, the one at 3701 Gallatin Pike is particularly personal. It’s also within walking distance from his house.

“I’ve lived over here, off and on, since 2004,” Stamper says. “This is my neighborhood, and I’ve watched it change and grow. So I’m inspired to do right by my neighbors. And we have a pretty cool neighborhood.”

Stamper working on the 2nd M.L.Rose location, circa 2012.