Country music is alive and well in Nashville; you might even see a young family in broad daylight practicing their line dancing on the sidewalk outside a bar downtown — all in cowboy boots, including the toddler who just learned to walk. But these days, there’s much more to the Tennessee capital than country. One of seven cities chosen to begin Google for Entrepreneurs Tech Hub Network, Nashville is bustling with new business. The dynamic food scene draws an international clientele and chefs from bigger cities. There’s money to preserve historic buildings and revitalize neighborhoods, like Germantown, which was established by European immigrants in the 1850s. Add a farmers’ market, some enticing shops and a batch of very stylish hotel rooms, and it’s hard not to conclude that the city is changing its tune — or at least adding a few new riffs.

FRIDAY

1. Welcome Aboard | 4 p.m.

The Music City Center, the new $598-million convention center with the curvy roof and guitar-shaped ballroom, gets all the attention as a totem of Nashville’s bright future, but Union Station is an anchor to the past. Built in 1900, and all but abandoned by 1979, the stately Gothic railway terminal was spared demolition by a group of Nashville investors. Today, limestone fireplaces, oak doors and panels, and a 65-foot vaulted ceiling marked by golden yellow stained glass distinguish the building, now a hotel, that sits on a hill, just south of the Capitol and a stone’s throw from the live music downtown. Both buildings are open to the public; for a free tour of the mammoth convention center, reserve online well in advance.

2. Grand Ole Evening | 6:30 p.m.

The sexy, bourbon-centric bar on the ground floor of Husk — a luminary in the new constellation of ambitious restaurants and a sister to the original in Charleston, S.C. — is a good place to alight for a drink (cocktails start at $10) and snack to start the evening. If they’re on the menu, order the Rappahannock oysters, with charred cucumber and smoked black peppercorns ($14), which are served warm and will sate you through a show at the Ryman. The storied auditorium, built in 1892, before the advent of microphones, sells daytime tours, but to get the full effect of the exceptional acoustics, go at night, when a full range of musicians, as disparate as the local hero Vince Gill and the English misanthrope Morrissey, have taken the stage. (Ticket prices vary.)

3. Nashville on Hudson | 9 p.m.

Called Nashvegas for its glitzy glamour, the city could just as easily be called the sixth borough of New York. It is filled with Manhattan refugees, while lots of creative companies are setting up shop here as a cheaper, nicer alternative. And in the gentrifying Germantown section, there’s Rolf and Daughters, which might have been plucked from Dumbo and inserted into its century-old brick warehouse — except for the Southern charm: an unflappable bartender, a waitress with great food knowledge yet no pretense, and a kitchen that turns out what it calls “modern peasant food” but is, in fact, deft and sophisticated. Recent menu items include a starter of beets with cashew cheese, blackberry and quinoa ($12) and squid-ink bucutina pasta with octopus, n’duja and breadcrumbs ($20).