CULTURE 35

new effort from Nate Lucena and Kentaro Kumanomido. The gallery and events space is in the original location of Urban Matter, the home goods and gift store now located on South Grand Boulevard.

Wildfruit Projects opened its space in June with the goal of creating a queer-led dedicated space for building community. Its first event was a Pride party that drew in 100 attendees.

“[It’s] not exclusive to the queer community,” Lucena says. “But we want a space that is safe and prioritizes lifting up St. Louis’ queer, artistic and creative community.”

The name, Wildfruit, is a tonguein-cheek nod to the use of “fruit” as a slur as well as an homage to the three fruit trees — two apple and a peach — located in the gallery’s backyard, which Lucena says is “wild” and “has a life of its own.”

It was that backyard that helped the two fall in love with the building, and they jumped at the chance to purchase it. The result is a passion project for the owners, who have been in St. Louis since 2009.

Located in south Dutchtown, the gallery stands out thanks to large windows brightening the space. Wildfruit is one of the few businesses on the street, in a part of town that has struggled with vacancies in the past couple decades.

Lucena says he hopes it will become a permanent staple in Dutchtown and that, for them, com- munity means not only the queer community but also the neighborhood in which the gallery is located.

“We are pretty committed to finding ways to get people to come and engage with the neighborhood,” he says. “It’s something we think about a lot. We want to be clear: We love our community.”

Entering the building feels like stepping into a cozy, intimate home. Refurbished hardwood and exposed St. Louis brick make it feel like a place to relax while you explore the art.

The space comes complete with a comfortable bathroom, a fullservice kitchen (the opening included delicious, locally sourced snacks) and that large backyard, which includes a gazebo.

Wildfruit can cater to many types of events and plans to continue to showcase more artists’ work this summer. “We like to say to people, ‘If you have an idea for building community, come,’” Lucena says. “Come talk to us about it, and we’ll see if we can make it happen.”

When visiting the current exhibit, visitors will be able to appreciate and purchase items from Chambers’ latest collection, which includes her hand-painted clothing.

To make her hanging sculptures, Chambers uses weaving, wrapping and sewing. Her goal with each piece is “to document the people around me, and myself.” Each represents personal history, such as the migratory patterns of family and friends, or those in the environment around her.

Chambers is based in St. Louis, as is her personal story. She takes great pride in being from here and believes in the power of her familial history belonging to the city where she’s now raising her family.

“My great-grandmother, Pearl Miller, moved here from Oklahoma,” she says. “I’ve been tracing my family history, and I’ve found it’s been four generations belonging to north St. Louis.”

Along with the art, her spiritual work is displayed for purchase, as is the Black Herbalist Guide. Chambers is also offering an herbal oil-making class and will present on the guide at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 11.

She produces and dries the herbs herself at her farm, Coahoma Orchards. The orchard is located in north county, in the Jeff-VanderLou neighborhood. It’s an urban farm open to the public, where one can pick familiar favorites, such as black cherries, and native plants, such as paw paw.

“I’m a sustainable artist,” she says. “I’m a spiritualist, so I try and find things which mean something.”

Visit Wildfruit Projects at 4704 Virginia Avenue. Viewing is by appointment only, but there will be a public artist talk and celebration at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 7.

Top 10

Melding blues and rap, St. Louis artist Dominique Dobbs’ first album hits No. 6 on the Apple blues charts

Written by BENJAMIN SIMON

For as long as he can remember, Dominique Dobbs has loved blues music — all its instruments, texture and emotion.

“I was always hypnotized with old-school samples,” he says. “Like blues samples and just old soulful-sounding melodies.”

But he loved rap music, too.

“I was also mesmerized with hard-hitting drums that you would hear in trap music,” he says.

When Dobbs became a producer, within just a few years, he found himself melding them together. He didn’t do it intentionally at first. “Subconsciously,” he calls it — until he noticed that he’d found a special sound. Blues and rap together.

That sound is what makes up Hustle City Blues, the 25-year-old Dobbs’ first album under his last name. Dobbs created the beats, and St. Louis rappers and singers provided the vocals.

To his surprise, the album has blown up. Since its release on February 17, Hustle City Blues has reached No. 6 on the Apple Music blues genre’s top albums — it’s tucked in between albums by Jimi Hendrix and the Black Keys.

“Hustle City Blues is the combination of [blues and rap],” he says. “You got your soulful beats, blues elements — bass guitar, saxophone, maybe flutes. And then you got your trap drums — you got your 808, you got your hi-hat rolls, and hard-hitting snare drum or kick drum.”

Growing up in St. Louis, though, Dobbs’ talent wasn’t mixing beats. It was basketball. He starred at Hazelwood Central, winning the Suburban XII North Player of the Year. He later earned a scholarship to Lindenwood University.

In college, Dobbs discovered music production. He began toying with sounds to emulate legendary St. Louis producer Metro Boomin.

Soon, Dobbs was hooked. He was so hooked that his college coaches made a rule: Dobbs couldn’t bring his computer into his room on road trips because he would stay up too late making beats.

He hung up his jersey in 2019 to focus more on music and graduated from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

“I’ve been doing something involved with music every day since summer of 2019,” he says.

Over the next few years, he bounced from basement to apartment to homemade studios. Along the way, he met LA4ss, a prominent St. Louis rapper who has made countless hits over the years that have echoed through- out the city.

But LA4ss was drawn to Dobbs.

“He really picked up on that sound,” Dobbs says. “He was like, ‘Man, you finally found my sound.’”

That’s when Dobbs realized he had something unique. It’s not only the fact that he combines rap and blues. The music is deeply layered — to the point where it sounds like there are multiple competing songs running on one track, but somehow, they manage to fit seamlessly together.

“I make the music or the song feel like a movie,” he says. “That’s what I tried to do throughout the whole project.”

Dobbs has collaborated with artists for a number of years. He works at and manages a studio, Unplugged STL. But this is the first full album that features his beats — and only his beats. He started more than a month ago, compil- ing 40 to 50 songs before landing on 12 final tracks.

Hustle City Blues is an album. But Dobbs also seems to use it as an adjective. It represents his sound, his upbringing, the city of St. Louis, its warts and its beauties.

“That’s why I ended up calling it Hustle City Blues because people say you can’t spell hustle without STL,” he says. “So we hustle city. And then you got your blues elements with it, too. And then it’s also a play off of the St. Louis Blues.”

He wanted only St. Louis artists, such as LA4ss, Mbz Live and Merissa Elayne, to perform over his beats. Even the idea of blues, he says, represents St. Louis. The National Blues Museum is housed in St. Louis, after all. But it’s more than that. Blues music, he says, is pain music, and that resonated with him. “It’s just long-term pain from living in the inner city of St. Louis,” he says.

He didn’t plan on making a hit album. He just wanted to share his work.

But when he woke up the morning after it was released, he found it at the top of the charts, as 14th of 200 blues albums listed worldwide.

“For me instantly to be top 14, top 15, that was crazy,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting it that fast.”

Before he released the album, he wasn’t sure what he would do next. But now he knows: drop another one. n

Tom ‘Papa’ Ray Speaks Out

After more than 30 years on air, the Vintage Vinyl owner was let go from his volunteer position at KDHX

Written by RYAN KRULL

After more than 30 years behind the microphone, Vintage Vinyl record store owner Tom “Papa” Ray will no longer DJ on the community radio station KDHX (88.1 FM).

Ray hosted the show Soul Selector, highlighting soul, blues and R&B on Mondays from 4 to 7 p.m.

Ray announced his departure from the station on Facebook last week, writing he was fired on a Zoom call with KDHX Executive Director Kelly Wells. Ray writes in the post that his firing stemmed from his disagreements with and criticism of Wells.

Ray tells the RFT that his discord with Wells was long in the making.

Last August, longtime KDHX host John McHenry passed away. For almost 30 years McHenry had hosted the station’s Blursday rhythm and blues program. But, Ray says, after McHenry died at age 75, weeks passed without the station issuing any sort of statement or memorialization.

Ray says that he sent Wells a “terse” email about what he saw as an oversight and was told that she would only meet with him if a consultant acting as a neutral facilitator was present.

“She wouldn’t say how much money the station has spent on consultants,” Ray says. “It really wasn’t my place to ask that.”

Ray says Wells again offered to meet with him in September with a neutral facilitator present. According to Ray, she told him that agreeing to the meeting was the only path forward for him at KDHX.

“We had that meeting,” Ray says. “It really didn’t resolve anything.”

Among Ray’s gripes were that the station had no presence at last summer’s Music at the Intersection, despite the fact that other radio stations operated booths at the festival and that it was nearly in KDHX’s backyard. Ray also says that he was once given malfunctioning equipment for an appearance at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Ray says that there was a Zoom meeting with Wells and longtime station volunteers last Monday night. The meeting was scheduled during Soul Selector, but Ray got a fill-in host for his show so he could attend. He’d hoped to voice some of his concerns, but he said the meeting was “so scripted and choreographed that literally you couldn’t ask a question or say anything.”

“She’s built this station so basically she can’t be questioned about any of her questions or behaviors,” Ray says.

Last Tuesday, Ray was called into a Zoom meeting with Wells and the president of the KDHX board of directors, Joan Bray.

“The moment it started, Kelly started reading a prepared statement saying my services were no longer needed and I had done my last radio show at KDHX,” Ray says.

The RFT reached out to KDHX via the station’s media relations email as well as by phone but did not hear back by time of online publication last Wednesday. Wells also did not respond to a message. One hour after publication, Wells reached out on behalf of KDHX with this statement:

“Tom Ray has contributed his time and talents to serving the community through his volunteer role at KDHX for more than 35 years. We are grateful for and honor his legacy and commitment. We wish him well as he continues his journey.

“In 2020, KDHX committed to transforming this organization. The transformation was cocreated with our partners — listeners, donors, staff, and volunteers. Through this process, we collectively developed a new purpose statement, a set of organizational values, and a strategic plan to guide our work and operationalize our commitments. In implementing this strategic plan and living into our values, KDHX has made a number of organizational changes, including the separation from Tom Ray. This decision was not made lightly, nor was it the comfortable or easy choice for anyone. The process of making the decision and the actions we took were aligned with the values and actions our community helped create in 2020.

“We understand that change can be uncomfortable. We are building a foundation at KDHX that is grounded in our values of stewardship, independence, partnership, integrity, discovery, passion, and joy so that we will be resilient into the future as we work together to build community through media.”

Both Wells’ ascension to the director’s role and her years in it have been marked by turmoil.

In 2014, KDHX fell behind on its quarterly payroll taxes after expenses mounted from the move from its long-time Tower Grove East headquarters to its current home in Grand Center. The following year, nearly half of the board of directors of the station resigned and Executive Director Beverly Hacker was fired after 22 years on staff.

That’s when Wells, a longtime employee, was brought in as interim executive director, a promotion that soon became permanent. But the problems continued.

In 2019, staffers described to the RFT a “culture of dysfunction,” saying that employees who questioned leadership often faced retaliation or even termination. They alleged a “staggering rate of turnover at the station in the past year,” saying at least eight employees quit or were fired from an organization that only listed 10 staff positions in total.

Musician Syrhea Conaway, a now-former member of the station’s programming committee, criticized Wells’ approach to diversity, equity and inclusion, noting that at least five employees or volunteers of color had bad experiences under her leadership. Wells, she said, had “no business being leadership at KDHX, or anywhere … It comes down to, in my opinion, just poor leadership. Poor management skills. No emotional intelligence.”

Former event coordinator Darian Wigfall said, “Kelly is going to kill that organization if left to her devices.”

At the time, Wells had said the station was moving into a new phase of examining what it meant to be a true community organization, which involved diversifying staff and programming. “And we’ve entered into an uncomfortable space of trying to figure out how to do that,” she said. “And that’s what we’re learning through right now and what we’re continuing to pursue.”

As for Ray, he has been a St. Louis institution for decades. With Lew Prince, he began Vintage Vinyl at the Soulard Farmers Market in 1979, and the shop became a must-visit for music lovers and touring bands alike.

Prince left the shop in 2015, but Ray has no such plans, telling St. Louis Public Radio in 2020, “My retirement plan is to drop dead on the floor of the store, talking to somebody about music, and I hope it doesn’t mess them up too much.” n