Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar
Rock and Roll Fever Dreams
When Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar landed downtown, with a front door just steps from Broadway, they needed help with several large-scale wall graphics, including a massive entryway installation. They were also on a very tight timeline, so speed and creativity were both at full throttle.
For the entryway, we leaned into the classic feel of hand-pulled music posters, playfully imagining a “what would have been” world where Pete’s is cast as a century-old entertainment staple. We created a huge range of poster designs using a mix of public-domain illustrations, custom drawings, and an eclectic palette of worn, weathered typography. Subtle shifts in color and composition acted as a multiplier, ensuring the wallscape never felt like a repeating pattern.
When guests walk in, there’s a moment to pause, take it all in, and prepare to be transported down the stairwell into the raucous party waiting below. The brand’s playful rubber ducky mascot makes a strong appearance here and throughout the building.
Design: Studio Delger
Wallpaper Illustration: Bella Stern
Architect: STG Design
Print and install: ImageLife
Muralist: Good Lookin’ Signs
Location: 152 2nd Ave N, Nashville, TN 37201
As you enter the bar, more moments of pop, color, and downtown Nashville fun come into view. In particular, we created intricate, hand-illustrated custom wallpaper for the restrooms. Guests will notice pianos, guitars, nods to Nashville, and the bar’s iconic rubber duck woven throughout the pattern.
Each of the three restrooms features a different colorway, while the exterior vestibules echo the design in a black-on-black interpretation.
Elsewhere inside, walls showcase custom-illustrated oversized postcards from Nashville, along with hand-painted murals that play off the bar’s central piano theme.
The private employee greenroom is covered top to bottom in a rock-and-roll fever-dream collage. Famous and infamous moments are ripped, torn, layered, colored, cut, and inverted to create an energetic frenzy to sink into. Various band logos are redrawn to spell out “Pete’s,” adding another layer of irreverence and mischief.
