Jason Hollis on Working with Pharrell Williams & Justin Timberlake, Producing for Netflix & YouTube & Building The Eighth Room in Nashville | Nick Egan Times

Jason Hollis joins Nick Egan Times for an inspiring conversation about creativity, entrepreneurship, music, visual art, and his mission to build one of Nashville’s most unique cultural destinations.

A respected creative visionary, producer, artist, and entrepreneur, Jason Hollis has worked alongside some of the biggest names in entertainment, including Pharrell Williams and Justin Timberlake. Throughout his career, he has helped develop innovative projects across music, media, digital platforms, and live entertainment, while also producing content for major companies including Netflix and YouTube.

In this episode, Jason discusses his journey through the music and creative industries, collaborating with world-renowned artists, the lessons learned from building successful ventures, and the importance of taking creative risks. He also shares the story behind The Eighth Room, the ambitious transformation of Nashville’s historic Douglas Corner into a one-of-a-kind venue and cultural experience inspired by legendary music destinations and rock ‘n’ roll history.

The conversation explores entrepreneurship, music production, branding, creativity, leadership, the future of live entertainment, and what it takes to turn a bold vision into reality.

An insightful discussion with a true creative entrepreneur whose work continues to influence music, culture, and the evolving entertainment landscape.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Hi everyone, thanks to this episode of Nick Egan Times. On this episode, we have a creative powerhouse guest. We have the incredible, multi-talented visual artist, music producer, entrepreneur, and now the visionary behind one of Nashville's most iconic rebirths, The Eighth Rooms, and Jason Hollis. Jason has worked with legends like Freud Williams, Justin Timberlake, and has produced groundbreaking shows for Netflix and YouTube, plus helping shape the careers of major brands. Jason now, alongside his wife Erin, has transformed the legendary Douglas Corner into a jaw-dropping venue inspired by the Viper Room, Max's Kansas City, and pure rock and roll art culture. With an unmistakable vibe, this isn't a music venue. It's an amazing experience. This is Jason Hollis and the Eighth Room. Welcome to the multi-talented Jason Hollis and thanks for coming on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Thank you. Hi, my name is Jason Hollis. I'm coming to you live from Nashville, Tennessee. The best place. Welcome to the E room.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah, well, it's you know, it's it's a good place. You know, you're you're in a pretty good place right now, Sydney, Australia, which I love.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yeah, yeah. All right, let's jump straight into it. Um, take us back. Tell us about your career, um, and I guess how everything's transpired to where you're at now.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Oh, wow. How much time do we have? Um, all right, I'll give you the the the quick background. Um I came up in uh in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Um, and I think my you know, my my first love of music was from uh child children's cartoon cartoon shows that I used to watch. Uh from the Muppets and Fraggle Rock uh to like Jabberjaws, like all these early cartoons all had bands in them. And um, I was just like, I don't know, man, there was something about you know being in a band on you know, on a cartoon show I thought was probably the coolest thing in the world. Um you know, I grew up listening to my father's record collections and um, you know, just kind of fell in love with with music at a very early age. Um in my middle school years, I began working at a local music store called Ziegler Music in Baton Rouge, and um which sold guitars and and band instruments and um quickly became um kind of inundated in the in the in the in the local and try and touring music scene. Um most importantly, like the uh the guys that I were I was hanging around with in the music store all played with like greats. So when I was you know young, you know, middle school, early high school, I was hanging out with like Chuck Berry and Ray Charles and Alan Toussaint and Dr. John and all these great musicians. And then in my latter part of high school, I was really working with these guys with all the touring bands coming through, um, really doing like AR stuff, getting them deals um on strings and drum heads and guitar cases and and all that stuff. And that just kind of like really propelled me into wanting to take the next step and and and make records, you know. I wanted to kind of do what I loved, which was listening, listening to music. Um, so the day after I graduated high school, I moved to Los Angeles, California with no friends and no family, and just set out to kind of, you know, be in the music business. That didn't happen, but uh along the way I gained uh you know some really great mentors out there, and they started kind of molding me and teaching me the way of the business without being in the business. Um shortly, like two years into Los Angeles, it was Los Angeles is a really big place. And to go out to LA and think that you're gonna be in the music business, it's it's a little short-sighted, you know, especially coming from somebody straight out of high school, you know, living at home. Um, because LA is a big place, and the music industry is very spread out. So you have like Santa Monica, Burbank, Hollywood, you know, and it you just can't get to all these places, and and you can't get in. It's very difficult to get into the music business in LA. So I I kind of after two years in Los Angeles, I set my sights on Nashville, and I moved moved here and in like 1995. And at the time, um, in Nashville, there were two streets. There were 16th and 17th Avenue. And those two streets had every major record company, they had every publisher, like every house was a studio, every other house was a publishing company or management company or a music law firm, or these two streets had everything on it. So I just kind of jumped in and started meeting everybody that I could meet on you know on those two streets. And that led me to um to MCA DECA, where I really kind of started my career under the great Tony Brown. Uh Tony Brown, Mark Wright, Travis Hill, and Frank Liddell, which are all legends here in in Nashville. Those are the guys that really kind of got me into the business and and um taught me, you know, not everything I know, but taught me a lot. They gave me a lot of tools from a toolbox, you know. And um 2001, I went out on my own independent and started making records and um really became a risk taker at that point because I I learned in my, you know, working at MCA DECA that you know, I wasn't gonna be the guy that was gonna work up the ranks. You know, I wanted to be like like a Tony Brown who developed and found artists and broke artists. And you know, he gave me this one great piece of advice uh one day. He was like, you got to get out, you got to go find something, you gotta break it, you gotta make it yours, you gotta make it happen, and you got to take risks. And uh he said, you're not gonna do that in this job. And so I left and and went out independently in 2001, and uh it's been a it's been a journey ever since.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Incredible, it's it's amazing. Uh tell me about the um significant eighth room and the inspiration behind that.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

So the the the eighth room is um it's got a it's got a short history, but has a very long history. So this building used to be the old Douglas Corner here in in Nashville, Tennessee. And the Douglas Corner was around for 35 years. So my my first one of my great mentors, Tony Brown, uh, you know, rushed the stage at Douglas Corner and signed Trisha Yearwood here. Um Clinton Black was signed here, Blake Shelton was signed here, Garth Brooks was signed here, Big and Rich were formed here. You know, all the legends from George Jones to Merle Haggard to Wayland Jennings, everybody's played here. Um, and it went down during COVID, which is about the time I moved from Los Angeles back to Nashville. And, you know, kind of coming up in the music business here, I knew I knew all the stories of the Douglas Corn. I'd I'd been here, you know, in the early 90s. And so I was just, you know, like looking at this building that that kind of went down. And um, you know, I just started kind of walking by it every day and just looking at it. And one day the the door was open. I came in, I met the realtors and um got to talking to them and you know, did that a few times and ended up kind of hearing what uh a group of uh hospitality group had in mind for this space. And I just realized that like we we you know, we we we can't have that. You know, this is such a legendary room that it needs to remain a music venue. So um I went home and talked to my wife and said, hey, I think we're gonna we're gonna open a bar and a music venue. And and we did, and it's it's been um it's been a lot of fun, man. You know, we we've been able to really kind of carry the torch that the the old Douglas Corner had with having like A-list uh, you know, A-list musicians and and celebrities play here. The first band that we had on the stage was Shine Down. Um, Queen was in here the night before. They they did their Bridgestone Arena uh show. It's just been you know kind of like an amalgam of of um interesting creative people coming through here. It's been a lot of fun, and it's really nice to um to be able to carry on the legend of this historic space.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Yeah, it's fantastic. All right. Um with a young Jason and someone that's obviously done incredible things that you've done, what advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Oh man, uh you know, I I think that I think there's a couple of things, right? Um I think the first thing is um a piece of advice that I was given when I was young. Uh, you know, like we're talking 17, 18 years old living in in Hollywood. A friend of mine, Tony Zettlin. Um, Tony was uh an ex-music industry guy, came over with the Beatles, uh, worked on the Beatles, worked on Pink Floyd Journey. Um, and he was retired, but he became a mentor of mine. And and one of the greatest pieces of advice he ever gave me was um, I think you know, when you're young and you're hungry, you think that you know everything, and or you want to you want to chime in with your, you know, your story, your bits of information. So one day he he looked at me and he said, I'm gonna give you the best piece of advice ever. And I was like, okay, what? And he was like, shut the fuck up and listen. He was like, be a sponge. Just don't talk, just listen. Be around great people and listen. And that was a that was a wonderful piece of advice. I don't think I talk for the next two years, to be honest with you. You know, like I just kind of absorbed everything that was around me. And I think that that was uh that was one of those pieces of advice that I'll never forget. And and oddly enough, I found myself um saying that same thing to a young musician, you know, just several weeks ago, who he just you know is hungry and he just kept kind of chiming in. I was like, oh man, I said the roles are reversed. I'm now Tony Zettlin. And this is the protest. And um, but I think on top of that, I think, you know, besides being a sponge and and really kind of absorbing everything around you, um, especially when you're amongst great people that have done you know big things, I think that the best thing you can do is listen. I think besides that, man, um this industry, like anything in entertainment, is it's it's very difficult, you know. Um I think that most most young people now don't understand paying paying your dues and what that means. I think that there's a lot of people that have grown up on instant gratification, and it doesn't help with social media because everything is instant, you know. Um you're getting that dopamine hit every time you open your you your Facebook or Instagram or TikTok and look at how many people have commented, you know. But the real work goes into um, you know, building yourself and what you have to do in order to get to uh a successful level. For me, it was, you know, I worked 10 years of my life for practically free, you know, and you're not talking about just you know, four hours here, five hours there, like we're talking like 20-hour days, you know, 22 hour days, 24 hour days, 36 hours, you know. And I did that always knowing that I was I was growing, you know, and I think one of the biggest lessons that that I've learned is that you have to um you have to celebrate the wins that you get because you have so many losses and so many defeats and so many no's that you have to celebrate all the little the little tiny wins that you get, whether that's a door opening and you meet a producer or you meet somebody from a radio station or you meet a promoter, or you you meet this guy that's connected, or you know, you meet a editor of Rolling Stone, whatever it is, you got to celebrate all the little wins to keep yourself up. Because like anything that's high risk, high reward, there's just a lot of suppression, a lot of pushing you down. You know, and on top of that, I think that you always have to have goals. You have to set goals. And I think most people think of a goal as like, like, here's my goal up here. I look at goals as like there's a thousand little tiny goals in between here and here, you know, so you're constantly hitting little tiny wins all the way up, and and and you're kind of achieving these little micro successes on the way to this goal. Because by the time you get up here, this goal is now down here, and you're setting a new goal up here. And I just look at celebrating wins and and setting yourself up for success by setting a lot of like little micro goals along the way of like this big thing that you want to achieve. And you know, the rest is just really up to hard work, and and you put in the hours and you put in hard work, and at some point luck, you know, kind of interacts, and then magic happens, and you then you seize that moment.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Yeah, definitely. I couldn't agree more. Um what motivates you daily?

SPEAKER_01 15:19

I think for me, it's it's always about what's next, you know. Um I think it's like it's like like kind of what we were just talking about. It's it's within goals. So, like, for example, like the eighth room um was a very big goal for me, you know. There was a whole year of renovation, and uh, you know, I was doing the vast majority of the work in here by myself and with my wife and my daughter, and and then you know, you get to these different levels again of these micro goals of like, I can't wait for this one wall to be built, you know, then the wall's built, and I can't wait for the bar to go in, I can't wait for this to happen. I can't, then it's like, okay, the building, the building stages are complete. I can't wait for wallpaper to go up. I can't wait for the furniture to move in. I can't wait for opening, you know, then you I can't wait for this band to play. So I think for me, it's just all about kind of like um looking at what what's next for me. You know, it's everything is what's what's next. I mean, I've accomplished this goal now. So for me, it's always about what what's what's the next what's the next thing? Um and then again setting new goals. You know, I don't believe in boredom, you know. I don't believe in boredom and I don't believe in burnout. Um so for me it it's it's always about finding kind of you know the next the next project.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Marvelous. What's the best compliment you've ever received?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Oh man. I don't know. The best compliment. You know, man, I that's a great question. I I don't know. I I I tend to to be um you know, I don't block things out. I I think the best compliment I've ever received is just thank you. You know, when you when you help somebody and and they acknowledge the fact that you've helped them and they know that they wouldn't have done something if it weren't for you. I just think I think gratitude, you know, I think that's that's the best thing. You know, I'm sure somebody said some very nice things about my lovely hair. Um, but it is the company blocked a lot of that stuff out. I think we can I think I think the the greatest comp the greatest compliment though is is win is gratitude and and receiving you know acknowledgement of of of you know appreciation. I think that's probably the yeah, probably the greatest thing that anybody could receive, really. Love.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

What um what are some pinch me moments when you look back at your career that really stand out for you that when you take a step back and you're like, wow, that's I can't believe that's happened or transpired.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

I think it's probably like it's it's probably like multi-tiered and like a sandwich of things, right? I I I I I don't look at one thing in particular and and and go, oh, you know, this Pharrell project was awesome, or this Justin Timberlake thing was great, or this YouTube thing was fantastic. I don't look at it like that. I I think I kind of look back when when I do look back at it, um, because I try and always look forward, but when I do look back, I look at um just the the the level of work that went into getting to to any of those places where you can where you can look at like a like because like a for example, um like what when when I worked with Pharrell, um you know, you're you're so in the moment, you know, you're so in the moment of creating what it is that you're creating, and then the next you know, then you're on to the next thing. And you know, there's there's not a lot of time to really absorb um, oh, that was cool. It's just you have to be just really in the moment of of that time and appreciate what's happening right then and right there. Um, it's not like I'm you know, I'd video uh I'd you know selfie or videotape myself of any any of those moments and and go back and look at it because like the feeling of being in that space, in that time, in that moment right then, I think is um I think that's what it's all about, you know. Even back in the day when I was when I was broke and and hungry and working my ass off, I I I look back at that and I was like, that was like probably one of the best times of my life. I had so much fun, you know. Every day was an adventure, and like, you know, are you gonna? I wasn't even concerned about am I gonna eat and am I gonna sleep? It was just like absorbing everything and learning what I could learn. And now I I kind of, you know, I know what I know and I've gotten good at what I'm good at. And I think those moments still ring true um to this day, but I just think it's a whole sandwich of of things, just an amalgam of everything. You know, I think one of the one of the one of the great things that I I do look back at that I I just thoroughly had a blast with was coming to Australia and and working with some of my friends out there and bands and getting to go to like the legendary Grove studios with Scott Horsecroft and you know make a record and and and do some stuff like that. But there's you know, again, there's so many of those at this point. It's just it was really, you know, being in the moment and being present at those times and acknowledging the fact that, you know, I'm here and I'm I'm getting to do what I love to do, you know.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Incredible.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

I think that's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Yeah, that's that's incredible. Thank you for sharing. Um what what are your hobbies and passions? Obviously, you mentioned you don't want to be bored or you can't be bored. What do you like to do, aside from everything that you've done and you're doing in work, what do you like to do when you're downtime?

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Um I like to paint, but you know, that's always been something I've done. Um, I think my whole life is make art paint. Um I did an art show last year here. I had like probably 32 pieces. I sold most of everything, but you know, just creating, you know, just being able to make shit happen. I mean, you take you like and and painting is such a it's such an it's such a great thing. It's it's such good therapy because you start with nothing and then you create something, you like it, it's great. If you don't start over, paint over it, you know. So I think it's good therapy. Um that that's a that's a hobby. Um, you know, I don't know, man. At this point in my life, you know, my daughter's off to college in like two weeks. So I think spending time with her has been a great hobby. Um you know, there's there's little things like I like to go for walks. I go for walks almost every day. It's therapeutic for me. It's like that's that's where um I'm able to work out creative ideas or um think of new things that I want to do or phone calls, you know, just little things. You know, I'm I'm pretty boring, man. You know, I like to work and um I like to be creative and I like to be around creative people and and make make magic happen, just make things happen, you know. Create create something from nothing. But on top of that, I don't have a ton of hobbies, you know. I like to I like to work. I think it's just in the DNA, you know.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Where's your favorite place you've ever traveled, or you like to travel to?

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Well, I love uh Sydney. Um Bondai. Yeah, freaking beautiful, man. I love Bondi. The people are great. Um best coffee I've ever had in my life is in Bondi. Um Melbourne is you know another great city. London. I just got back from London not too long ago. And I tell you, man, London is London, something is about to happen in London. You can feel it. It's just it's in the air. It's like it's there's a revolution about to happen. And I think like these OASIS shows really sparked it off. You know, it's bringing everybody together. There's just a buzz happening. And you know, London has gone through a lot of a lot of suppression since COVID. Um, you know, there's there's certain fly, you know, English flags you can't fly without being arrested any longer. And I think that you're feeling there's a feeling of like something big is about to happen there. Don't know what it is, but something big's about to happen. And um that's always good because that sparks new music, it sparks new leaders, it's it sparks new ideas. But um, yeah, London is is is probably way up there for me. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

Great. And if you are 18 again and you could change anything, it could be personally or professionally, what would you change?

SPEAKER_01 25:25

If I could go and do do it all over again, yeah. Is that what you said?

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah, yeah. Like if you could change anything.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Yeah, I wouldn't change anything. I love my life. I it's this has been such a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and um wins and losses, and I don't know, man. I wouldn't change anything. Nothing. Nothing. Because it's it's really kind of made me the person I am today, and it's built my character. And I wouldn't go back and and be a dentist or a or a you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't change anything. It's nothing. This is it's just been, you know, it's it's just been a roller coaster. And I I think that when you have a life like that, you know, why why would you why why would you change anything? You know, I've met everybody that I've wanted to meet so far. I've worked with everybody that I've wanted to work with. I've done things that I never thought I was gonna do. Um, so yeah, no, man, I'd I'd come right back as me. Because, you know, why why why why mess with perfection, you know?

SPEAKER_02 26:39

It's sensational and it's actually really inspiring. Yeah. Um, Jason, thanks for coming on the podcast. I do appreciate it. It's it's sensational everything you've achieved and everything you've done. And yeah, I look forward to obviously seeing everything you're gonna do in the future.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Thank you. If you're ever in Nashville, drinks are on me. And if ever I'm back in Sydney, drinks are on you.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah, brother. That's it. That's us. I come to America all the time, so I'll definitely come hit you up and see you.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Yeah, please do, man. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me on your podcast. It's been great. I thoroughly enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Yeah, I enjoyed it too. Thank you, my friend.