WATCH: 21 Years Before They Reunited to Play Bridgestone Arena, The Postal Service Made Their Nashville Debut at Slow Bar

If you moved to Nashville in the last twenty years (or aren’t old enough to remember the Nashville of two decades ago), the bar anchoring the block at 1024 Woodland St. in Five Points has probably always been 3 Crow to you, until it shuttered last year. But before that, for three glorious years from 2000-2003, way before Five Points was the Five Points of today, it was Slow Bar. Owned and operated by local musician and entrepreneur Mike Grimes, who’d just opened his original Grimey’s Records in its early Berry Hill location a year prior, the bar- which had formerly been Shirley’s Bar, and Grimes purchased on a whim for $10,000 after a recording session across the street at Woodland Studios- was small and scrappy, but played host to some incredible then up-and-coming artists like My Morning Jacket, The Shins, Ryan Adams, The Black Keys, and Kings of Leon.

Immeasurable in helping East Nashville cultivate the cool reputation it has today, one of the later shows during Slow Bar’s three-year stretch was none other than The Postal Service, 21 years ago on April 11, 2003- a performance which still remains their one and only Nashville show to date, until they return tonight at Bridgestone Arena. Though singer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Gibbard had had modest success with his indie group Death Cab For Cutie (who were about to explode later that same year with fourth album Transatlanticism), producer and multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Tamborello was gaining a following in the electronic scene as Dntel, and contributing vocalist (and current Nashville transplant) Jenny Lewis was already known for her band Rilo Kiley, and despite the fact that they were signed to Sub Pop, the band’s one (and still only) album, Give Up, had only come out a few months prior, and they were still a relatively unknown act outside of the Pitchfork crowd.

That would change not long after, propelled by the sudden success of Death Cab, a popular Iron & Wine cover of their single “Such Great Heights” on the cult classic Garden State Soundtrack, and slow-simmering attention for Give Up‘s infectious indie and electro pop perfection, propelling the album to Gold certification by early 2015. By then, though, the band were already busy with other projects, leaving that single run of dates in the spring and summer of 2003- including that Nashville stop at the Slow Bar- as their entire live legacy, despite never “officially disbanding,” and flirting the idea of a second LP which never materialized. In 2013, for Give Up‘s 10th anniversary, The Postal Service returned with a deluxe reissue and a supporting tour, headlining festivals and performing at arenas thanks to the years of hype in their absence. But on that relatively short reunion, no Nashville date materialized, nor was Music City included when, ten years later, the band reunited once more for a 20th anniversary run.

We’d almost given up hope, until the latest Postal Service Tour- co-headlining with Gibbard’s other band, Death Cab for Cutie, to celebrate 20 years of Transatlanticism– extended into 2024, finally returning the celebrated group to Nashville for the first time since 2003, tonight at Bridgestone Arena, which can accommodate tens of thousands of people compared to Slow Bar’s dozens.

Though we weren’t in attendance at that original show- which included support from indie folk outfit The Mountain Goats and electronic artist Cex- we’ve long wondered what it was like to see the band at such an exciting early juncture, and, incredibly, we recently discovered that the entire performance had been uploaded to YouTube a few years ago (which, if you remember how tough it would’ve been to record a concert in 2003 before smartphones, feels like a minor miracle that this footage even exists). Aside from a couple of new songs in 2013, Give Up remains the band’s sole musical output, so this set is actually quite similar what you’ll see them play at Bridgestone, albeit much, much smaller. In addition to all ten of the album’s tracks, the Slow Bar show featured non-album track “There’s Never Enough Time” as well as a cover of Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” as the encore (both songs appeared on the 10th anniversary edition of Give Up).

This footage, uploaded by YouTube user Lee Wilson, and apparently captured by his friend Joseph, is an incredible time capsule not just of the earliest days of an iconic band before they found widespread fame, but also of a time and place in Nashville history just before the city’s rapid transformation of the last couple of decades. Watch the whole thing below!