Sound Bites Blends Food and Music, One of Tennessee’s Most Natural Pairings

On any given night across Tennessee, you’ll see musicians in restaurants, tuning their guitars or warming up at the piano, as they prepare to elevate the guest experience for diners enjoying their meals. Elsewhere, you’ll find hosts and hostesses poring over the perfect songs to play to create just the right atmosphere at their dinner parties. This is the Tennessee experience — food paired with music. 

The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development recently expanded this natural pairing with a creative challenge. It teamed up chefs and musicians from across the state and asked them to create  “Sound Bites,” harmonious combinations of taste and sound.

Sonic Seasoning

Sound Bites is based on the idea of “sonic seasoning,” a phrase coined by Oxford University experimental psychologist Charles Spence to describe how the brain treats sound as an active ingredient in perception. Per Spence’s research, elements like pitch, tempo and instrumentation can influence how the brain perceives taste. Carefully paired soundscapes and playlists can intensify the notes you detect as you eat a dish.

To illustrate this theory, TDTD created three chef-musician teams highlighting Tennessee’s major regions. Country artists Lee Brice, David Tolliver and Billy Montana worked with Dancing Bear Appalachian Bistro’s Jeff Carter to represent East Tennessee. West Tennessee chef Felicia Willett of Felicia Suzanne’s collaborated with Three 6 Mafia cofounder DJ Paul, rapper Lil Wyte, producer Boo Mitchell, and the band Southern Avenue. And singer-songwriter Ben Rector teamed up with Nashville chef Philip Krajeck of Rolf & Daughters, Folk, and Junior to capture Middle Tennessee’s spirit. TDTD then asked each group to compose a unique dish and a song to pair with it, documenting their creative processes through three short films.

Sensory Duets

Each docu-short takes viewers on the artists’ journeys of creating dishes and pairing them with the perfect chords. “We have incredible tomatoes here,” Krajeck says in the Middle Tennessee film. “But one of the things people don’t know, or haven’t experienced, is what it’s like to walk through rows of tomato plants.” There’s the smell of the vines, the feel of the leaves, the flesh of the tomato. Krajeck translates those sensory experiences into flavors and textures, using every element of the tomato to craft a transportive bowl of pasta. 

Inspired by Krajeck’s decision to use the entire tomato in his dish, Rector opts to use the entire instrument — in this case, a banjo — in his song. High frequencies represent the acid and salt in the food. The lyrics capture the feeling of walking through tomato vines, inspired by Rector’s own memories of his grandfather’s garden.

Natural Collaborators

What makes Sound Bites more than a clever creative exercise is its invitation to participate. TDTD’s online interactive pairing tool invites you to enter a dish and identify its primary flavor profile (sweet, sour, salty, bitter or umami) to receive a Tennessee playlist curated to complement those notes. Toggle between different playlists to experience how subtle shifts in tempo, pitch and instrumentation influence your own perception of flavor. 

“Sound Bites … [is] built as a discovery platform,” says Debra Smith, TDTD’s assistant commissioner of marketing. “The pairing engine connects food and music, while the website guides travelers to explore culinary experiences across the state. It’s designed to drive exploration well beyond the initial launch, with room to evolve over time.” 

For restaurants and hosts, this opens up intriguing possibilities. Just as sommeliers carefully select pairings and chefs thoughtfully plate dishes, hosts can curate playlists by flavor profile rather than genre alone. Music can become part of the mise en place — an intentional layer of hospitality. “For centuries, people have paired food with wine,” says Mark Ezell, TDTD commissioner. “Now, we’re asking, ‘Why not food and music?’” 

For Tennessee, the implications are even broader. Music is not just an industry here — it’s cultural infrastructure. By positioning music as an ingredient in the culinary experience, Sound Bites reframes two of the state’s strongest assets as collaborators rather than companions. 

“The goal is to see visitors move from inspiration to exploration … [and] to see culinary experiences contribute meaningfully to overall travel growth,” says Smith. The result is immersive tourism — a reminder that in Tennessee, flavor has a soundtrack.