Peek Inside an Enviably Chic Nashville Songwriting Studio

With more than twenty number-one songs, three Grammys, an Academy Award nomination, and writing partnerships with stadium-headlining artists like Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga, Nashville songwriter Hillary Lindsey knows what it takes to pen a hit—and the right setting helps. “I came up in my twenties writing in all the beautiful old buildings on Music Row. They’re stunning; old and haunted by the ghosts of legends,” she says. So when she began looking for a permanent home for her publishing company, Hang Your Hat Music, she knew she wanted a place with the same soulful, artistic energy. “I knew I couldn’t recreate the history, but I wanted a space that felt like those historic buildings creatively.” 

Eventually, Lindsey stumbled upon an aging dental office in Berry Hill, another Nashville neighborhood steeped in music history situated just southeast of Music Row. The single-story, shotgun-style building wasn’t much to look at from the exterior (or interior, for that matter), but Lindsey was drawn to the property’s funky, friendly neighborhood, in which she’d lived when she first arrived in Nashville in the early 1990s. “Berry Hill is part of my history,” she says. “And given how much greater Nashville has changed, it still feels mostly untouched.” 

Where others might have stumbled over the building’s choppy layout, tiny rooms, and low-slung ceilings, Lindsey saw only the potential. She just needed the right design partner. Enter Melody Clifford and Halina Hickerson of Clifford & Hickerson Interior Design. “We had an immediate natural connection,” Lindsey says. It helped that Clifford and Hickerson are the daughters of the original Marshall Tucker Band drummer, and immediately understood the assignment: transforming a vanilla office space into a bluesy artistic writing retreat for Hang Your Hat’s stable of writers and their musical collaborators.

Local building regulations and code necessitated working within the property’s existing footprint, but together with the team at Moffitt Builders, they took the whole place down to its studs before reimagining the square-footage to include a new parlor, three tracking rooms, two writing rooms, two offices, and a communal living room and kitchen. “In a lot of ways, the studio has a traditional Southern base with beautiful molding, built-ins, and wallpaper,” Clifford says. “But Hillary was also open to pushing it a bit and taking design risks you might not feel brave enough to take in a personal home.” A gold ceiling in the kitchen and a splash of pink on the one in the parlor? Done. Floor-to-ceiling orange tiles in the bathroom? Sure. Papering the walls in one of the writing rooms with Schumacher’s whimsical trompe l’oeil–style Grand Tour stripe? Into it.

“We approached the design a bit like a boutique hotel with a different vibe per room,” Clifford says. “Everywhere you look should be something that entertains or inspires.” To create that sense of playfulness and wonder, Clifford and Hickerson added layers of color and texture, accessorizing with quirky found objects often sourced from local antiques markets or Lindsey’s own collections. “Any time we thought it was too perfect, we’d mess it up a bit,” Hickerson says. 

For Lindsey, the completed studio space, which officially opened last year, has exceeded all her creative expectations. “It’s impossible for me to pick a favorite room,” she says. “It changes depending on what I’m writing and what my mood is. Some days it’s about catching the song that’s in the air, and I think these rooms help with that.” 

Mostly, she’s happy her writers are happy: “They all want the name of my designers.”  

Kravet’s Miserden Trees wallpaper in green sets the woodsy tone in one of the writing rooms. “Hillary wanted each room to have a different feel, similar to a boutique hotel,” Hickerson says. “So while the other writing room has an English Country feel, this one has more of a nature vibe.” 

Throughout Hang Your Hat, Clifford and Hickerson leveraged the visual interplay between pattern and texture to create memorable and inspiring spaces. “We very rarely used anything solid,” Clifford says. “Our dad is the creative musician type, and they all gravitate toward something that gives a reaction.” 

The studio’s color palette is largely rooted in earthy atmospheric shades, but bright pops of color and bold design moments, including this orange (Sherwin Williams Baked Clay) bathroom, featuring floor-to-ceiling Zellige tiles in a coordinating hue, enliven the creative workspace. 

Clifford and Hickerson knew Schumacher’s trompe l’oeil–style Grand Tour stripe was a reach but were thrilled when Lindsey greenlit the whimsical wallpaper, which now anchors the writing room’s English Country aesthetic.  

Thibaut’s Square Dance wallpaper on the ceiling adds warmth and interest to the studio’s creative manager’s sunlit office. 

Throughout the revamped studio, the designers used pieces from the personal collections of Lindsey and her partner, Cary Barlowe, including the retro amps stacked in the corner of this black-and-white tracking room.

One of the studio’s three tracking rooms—production spaces where writers and artists can lay down working tracks—this moody black-and-white space was designed for Lindsey’s partner, Cary Barlowe, also a talented songwriter and musician. Here, Hickerson and Clifford added custom built-ins for guitars and other instruments. 

In the studio’s parlor, the kidney-shaped settee’s soft lines as well as the unexpected pop of pink (Sherwin Williams Gracious Rose) on the ceiling add feminine touches to an otherwise masculine space. 

Clifford and Hickerson lent Hang Your Hat’s communal kitchen a bit of rock-and-roll glam with sleek dark-stained cabinetry as well as a walnut hood and waterfall-style island. Bold contemporary fixtures complete the look. 

“I love the kitchen/den space,” Lindsey says. “We had a big potluck dinner here at Christmas, which was amazing. And even when we’re all in our writing rooms, when we walk out, there’s always someone making a cup of coffee, and you can check in. It’s a very jovial space for me.”