NASHVILLE, TENN.- Step inside Robert’s Western World, and it’s the music that hooks you. Maybe you don’t know the words, maybe it’s the soundtrack your parents or grandparents loved. But there’s something about the rapid-fire twang of a guitar, the percussive pulse of a slap on a double bass that threatens to burst out of this old honky-tonk.

On Monday, for the first time in recent memory, Robert’s took that music to the street outside. On its block of Lower Broadway, the famed downtown Nashville strip of country music bars, people gathered to celebrate JesseLee Jones, the owner of Robert’s, and the 25 years he has spent protecting its country roots from trends and changes.

“We don’t look at it like it’s a museum piece,” Joe Fick, a bass player and vocalist with the band Kelley’s Heroes, said of the music he frequently performs at Robert’s. Fresh off the stage, he added, “It’s really cool to see it out here.”

The free block party, which stretched through the sweltering day into a humid summer night, cemented how the musical dreams of Jones, a Brazilian immigrant, have become intertwined with the legacy of one of Nashville’s oldest honky-tonks. Perhaps more important, it was an homage to an era of live country music that has nearly been overtaken by the commercialization of a genre and a city.

“It’s also a celebration of country music, the celebration of a dream, the celebration of Nashville, Tennessee,” Jones said in an interview before the party. He added: “This is my heart. This is my home, and I made this the home for a lot of people.”

There is, of course, also the mythology of Robert’s itself. The Civil War-era warehouse site was once the home of Sho-Bud, a pedal steel guitar manufacturing company that made and sold instruments to country music legends. As Lower Broadway struggled in the 1990s, Robert Moore opened a Western boot and clothing store there, and he gradually expanded it to include beer, a grill and live music every night.

And then there is the lore of JesseLee Cavalcanti, who first became enamored with music as a child in São Paulo. He arrived in the United States in 1984, and was left with only an Italian-Portuguese-English dictionary after being robbed on his first day. He started driving roughly eight hours from Peoria, Illinois, each weekend with a cassette tape of country singer Marty Robbins as his soundtrack, fueling an appreciation for classic country.

As JesseLee Jones, he would go on to become the frontman for the house band at Robert’s. And in 1999, he took over ownership of the honky-tonk, vowing to preserve its commitment to classic country music. The most notable change? The boots aren’t for sale.

“I am protecting this great music,” said Jones, 62. “I think it’s roots music. It’s Americana, it’s classic country, it’s whatever they want to call it, whatever title they want to put on it.

“Welcome to hillbilly heaven,” he added. “It is what it was.”

His stewardship of Robert’s for the last 25 years has fulfilled that pledge. There is still a wall of boots, along with a collage of show posters and photographs that honor music legends and honky-tonk regulars alike. (Singer Wynonna Judd, in particular, is known to make an occasional surprise appearance onstage.)

The menu is printed on neon sheets, with its most beloved offering at the top: the recession special, where $6 still gets you a fried bologna sandwich, a pile of chips, a Moon Pie and a cold can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

There isn’t a television, no matter what kind of sports fans are in town. Its altar remains the stage, where a rotating cast — and sometimes Jones and his band, Brazilbilly — stick to the most fundamental of country songs. A framed note, displayed proudly next to the stage, laments that some patrons didn’t recognize the music and urges performers to “just bring it up 10 yrs” to make it more current.

Country music has a complicated and at times exclusionary legacy. But there is a discomfort among those who have been coming to Nashville for decades with some of the changes that have transformed the streets outside: high prices, the increased reliance on artificial sounds instead of musicians, the streak of country institutions that have shuttered their doors to be replaced by celebrity brands and corporate ownership.

“There isn’t anywhere that embraces it quite like Robert’s — it feels special,” Brennen Leigh, a country singer who came to perform Monday, said of traditional country music.

That is what brought hundreds from across the city and out of town, some extending trips by an extra day for the chance to two-step on the street and hear a sound they could find only here. Some drove up a day early to make it for the gospel music Sunday morning, others made a split-second decision to drive down to catch a glimpse of musical greats.

“I’m still waiting to wake up,” said Travis Krupinski, 27, a guitar player from Buffalo, New York, who credited a series of visits with reigniting a passion for his own music.

Colleen DeGregory, 58, dressed in a handmade Dolly Parton fringe skirt, said, “It’s still steady, it’s still true.”

“Jesse grabbed it and ran with it,” added DeGregory, a Nashville resident and Robert’s regular for three decades.

Tattoo artists set up inside to ink the Robert’s serif R — ordinarily stamped on patrons to show that they can legally buy a drink — on hands, wrists, even behind an ear ($50 for fans, free for staff). Outside, vintage vendors sold turquoise silver jewelry, flashy belt buckles and hand-embroidered bandannas.

As musicians changed sets in the early evening, the modern soundtrack of Lower Broadway punctured through: that favorite ballad of the pedal taverns, “Get Low,” a club remix of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” a cover of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

But then, the bright riffs of a mandolin or a violin would cut through once more as couples paired off to spin through the street. With a stage on either side of the block, longtime fans shuffled from one end of the street to the other, while more casual observers paused to nod along to “Route 66” and “Heart Over Mind.”

There was a variety of instruments onstage — a pedal steel guitar, an accordion, guitars, violins, even a clarinet — as musicians worked their way through hourlong sets. And they took turns tossing the spotlight and melody to one another, fingers whirling across fingerboards and nodding approvingly at each improvised flourish.

“Look at all these fiddles,” said Ray Benson, the leader of the swing band Asleep at the Wheel. Benson, who flew in to perform between shows out West, recalled climbing the steps inside Robert’s as a young musician to get his band’s guitars repaired long before it was a honky-tonk.

“I would meet legends here,” he recalled. “You can come here and hear the real deal.”

Jones, with the R stamp inked on his hand as his first tattoo, could be seen in front of the stage. At one point, while standing alongside his wife and business partner, Emily Ann Jones, he mouthed the word “unbelievable.”

Right at 10 p.m., he took the stage, a holster on his hip and a guitar in hand to croon through some of his favorites, at one point harmonizing with his wife.

“Thank you for allowing us to keep traditional music alive in Nashville,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.