MARCH 12–18, 2020 I volume 39 I number 6 I Nashvillescene.com I free
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NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
contents
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40
Time and Again ..........................................8
Sound and Vision
cover story
How the devastation wrought by a deadly tornado once again united Nashville
art
Terry Adkins’ two-part exhibition finds the prescient artist looking back
by d. Patrick rodgers
by Joe nolan
Not all of the efforts in the wake of last week’s tornadoes have been benevolent
Telling Tales
Bad Faith ................................................. 12 by steven Hale
The Watchmen ........................................ 14 The trio behind Twitter’s @NashSevereWx may well have saved lives last week by steve cavendisH
Eye of the Storm ..................................... 16 Longtime Scene photographer Eric England reflects on capturing images from the 1998 and 2020 tornadoes in his East Nashville neighborhood by nancy Floyd
Nashville’s Precious Spaces ................... 18 Last week’s tornado damaged and destroyed a host of historically significant buildings
A group show at David Lusk Gallery is a visual treasure trove by laura Hutson Hunter
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Books
Moments in the Hunger
The Night Watchman is a sweeping vision of spiritual and historical resonance by emily cHoate and cHaPter 16
42
How Nashville’s homeless community and its advocates weathered the storm
by olivia ladd
aleJandro ramirez
The Nashville Blues and Roots Alliance begins its second year
Local restaurants seek and offer help in posttornado days
by ron Wynn
by margaret littman
Che Apalache hopes to open new horizons in bluegrass
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critics’ picks
D. Striker’s RR Party, A-Trak, Destroyer, Macy Gray, Airswimming, Sad Baxter, Music City Irish Fest, James McBride, Letterkenny Live, The Players Club and more
37
food and drink
CSA FYI .................................................... 37 From young family farms to mainstays and more, here are some area suppliers for your seasonal CSAs by JenniFer Justus
Veg Out .................................................... 38 Finally, a veggie burger that knows its place — inside a bowl by erica ciccarone
Tornado Relief Benefit Shows Planned Across Music City Sadler Vaden: The Cream Interview What are Prisons and Jails Doing to Brace for Coronavirus? Not Much.
on the cover:
North Nashville Photo: Daniel Meigs
See the Winner of Our Very First Local Doughnut Bracket
Play, Fiddle, Play ..................................... 42 A new album brings the late, great John Hartford’s notebooks to life
Communion ............................................. 22
this week on the web:
music
by J.r. lind
Shelter From the Storm .......................... 22
march 12, 2020
Feats of Strength .................................... 42
In This World............................................ 43 by abby lee Hood
Remembering Jim Williamson .............. 43 The Nashville Jazz Orchestra leader dedicated his life to the communal spirit of music by ron Wynn
The Spin ................................................... 44 The Scene’s live-review column checks out Wire at Mercy Lounge by cHarlie zaillian
45 fiLm
Saint Misbehavin’
Saint Frances triumphs in its sweet, light, authentic moments by sadaF aHsan
Pan’s Labyrinth
Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy is an imaginative miscalculation by craig d. lindsey
47 47
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nashvillescene.com nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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FROM BILL FREEMAN CROSSOVER VOTING: DIRTY POLITICS’ OLDEST AND DUMBEST TRICK Tennessee’s open primary system allows any registered voter to vote in the primary of their choice. An annoying by-product of the system is crossover voting, though this foolish gesture to create mischief has rarely had an impact on who gets elected. I was reminded of this on Super Tuesday. My wife Babs and I arrived at the church we’ve attended and loved for decades, which also serves as our precinct’s polling place, and ran into a fellow Nashvillian we’ve known for years. We chatted for a minute and went inside to vote. As Babs and I were leaving, we were happy to have voted for our candidates and left hand in hand, feeling patriotic and encouraged by the beautiful weather. We saw our friend waiting for us in the parking lot. A lifelong Republican, he gleefully told me that he’d voted in the Democratic primary for Bernie Sanders. When I quizzically asked him why, he told me with a laugh that he wanted to bolster the candidate he felt was most “beatable” by President Donald Trump. His motivation felt like a stark contrast to the fine feeling of civic pride we’d just left with. It got me thinking. Tennessee’s open primaries have allowed crossover voting as long as we’ve had this method, but it’s still irksome when someone willingly wastes a vote maliciously — as FairVote calls it, “party-crashing.” When someone crosses party lines to wreak a tiny bit of havoc with their one vote, they’re stating that every single election down-ballot is inconsequential. Party delegates, party executive committee members, city commissioners, property assessor, criminal court judges, chancery court chancellor and Metro trustee were on Nashville’s ballot. With their ballot, crossover voters are expressly saying that their juvenile desire to have a funny story to tell is more important than choosing the candidates to represent their party and hold these important positions. There have been concerted efforts by Republicans to make a collective impact — Rush Limbaugh’s 2008 “Operation Chaos” is an example. It was designed to nudge then-unknown Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, the candidate seen by Limbaugh and other participants in this schoolyard prank as the more formidable Democratic candidate. Whether their efforts made a measurable electoral difference is debatable, but the fact remains that Obama did indeed win the Democratic nomination for president, and history was made. If anything, it may be that all the attention from Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” fed the groundswell of Obama’s first campaign. The failure was predictable, according to those who study voting patterns — who say maliciously intended crossover voting is substantially diluted by votes cast sincerely by members of each party in their primaries. The crossover voting conversation has prompted calls to limit primaries to only party-affiliated voters. That would leave out independent voters who intentionally remain unaffiliated. It would also exclude voters who vote for the most compelling candidate and don’t necessarily follow their party line in lockstep. Open primaries
NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
also give someone of a minority party a legitimate voice in local elections. These elections are decided at the primary level, by and large, when there are multiple candidates in a single party and only one candidate — or no candidate — from the minority party. Open primaries are the most transparent and accessible, but they depend on voters’ honor to refrain from maliciousness. I was so proud of Nashville after Super Tuesday in so many ways, but our voting tallies again demonstrated that we’re a city with balanced perspectives. Despite fevered rhetoric that’s deepened political divides, Nashville remains evenhanded in our election results. Moderate candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden earned more votes in this primary than Bernie Sanders did in either this primary or 2016. Also worth noting is that Trump received fewer votes in Nashville’s 2020 Republican primary than in 2016, when Trump barely beat Sen. Marco Rubio — by about 1,000 votes in a crowded field (much like the Democrats’ field this year). Yet, with no competition to speak of in 2020, he won even fewer votes in Nashville? That’s either from maliciously intended crossover voters or from legitimately lukewarm GOP voters. Either way, it doesn’t spell “resounding success” for Trump. Biden’s strong showing in Nashville and Trump’s comparatively lukewarm GOP support indicate that Nashville continues to support candidates who ignore partisan extremes in an effort to govern efficiently and compassionately. Crossover voting may be dirty politics’ oldest trick, but it’s also the dumbest.
Bill Freeman Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and Home Page Media Group in Williamson County.
Editor-in-Chief D. Patrick Rodgers Senior Editor Dana Kopp Franklin Associate Editor Alejandro Ramirez Arts Editor Laura Hutson Hunter Culture Editor Erica Ciccarone Music and Listings Editor Stephen Trageser Contributing Editors Jack Silverman, Abby White Staff Writers Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Geoffrey Himes, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Chris Parton, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Cy Winstanley, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Editorial Intern Bronte Lebo Art Director Elizabeth Jones Photographers Eric England, Daniel Meigs Graphic Designers Mary Louise Meadors, Tracey Starck Production Coordinator Christie Passarello Circulation Manager Casey Sanders Events and Marketing Director Olivia Moye Events Managers Ali Foley, Caleb Spencer Publisher Mike Smith Advertising Director Daniel Williams Senior Account Executives Maggie Bond, Debbie Deboer, Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Stevan Steinhart, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Account Managers Emma Benjamin, Gary Minnis Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Creative Director Heather Pierce IT Director John Schaeffer For advertising info please contact: Daniel Williams at 615-744-3397 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com
Copyright©2020, Nashville Scene. 210 12th Ave. S., Ste. 100, Nashville, TN 37203. Phone: 615-244-7989. Classified: 816-218-6732. The Nashville Scene is published weekly by FW Publishing LLC. The publication is free, one per reader. Removal of more than one paper from any distribution point constitutes theft, and violators are subject to prosecution. Back issues are available at our office. Email: All email addresses consist of the employee’s first initial and last name (no space between) followed by @nashvillescene.com; to reach contributing writers, email editor@nashvillescene.com. Editorial Policy: The Nashville Scene covers news, art and entertainment. In our pages appear divergent views from across the community. Those views do not necessarily represent those of the publishers. Subscriptions: Subscriptions are available at $99 per year for 52 issues. Subscriptions will be posted every Thursday and delivered by third-class mail in usually five to seven days. Please note: Due to the nature of third-class mail and postal regulations, any issue(s) could be delayed by as much as two or three weeks. There will be no refunds issued. Please allow four to six weeks for processing new subscriptions and address changes. Send your check or Visa/MC/AmEx number with expiration date to the above address.
In memory of Jim Ridley, editor 2009-2016
nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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Photo: Eric England
11th and Holly streets in East Nashville
march 3, 2020
Donelson Christian Academy and the surrounding neighborhood Photo: Eric England
Photo: Daniel Meigs
north Nashville
nashvillescene.com | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | Nashville Scene
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Time and Again How the devastation wrought by a deadly tornado once again united Nashville by d. Patrick Rodgers
Photo: Daniel Meigs
north Nashville
Nearly 8,000 days after that 1998 storm — 7,992 days, to be exact — Tennessee’s capital was once again battered by a tornado. And once again, it was an F3 — or an EF3, as it’s known under the since-introduced Enhanced Fujita Tornado Scale. This time, it struck in the dead of night, part of a lethal cluster of cyclones that ripped across the Midstate, ultimately killing 24 people in four counties and effecting colossal damage.
Antionne Gaines inside his North Nashville home
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Photo: Daniel Meigs
“Y
ears from now, we will be telling our children and grandchildren about this horror and the surviving of it. Maybe, as we tell those stories, we will remember what it was like to see East Nashville, once again, in ruins. If we are truly lucky, we will remember the valiant spirit that plunged in, immediately, to clear the rubble away. We will know that, for all that is gone, there are treasures around us. They have been there all along. There is no wind that can reduce them to dust.” Those words, written by then-editor Bruce Dobie, appeared in the April 23, 1998, issue of the Nashville Scene, one week after a category-F3 tornado besieged downtown, East Nashville, Donelson and Hermitage. Though there were no casualties, dozens of people were injured, and hundreds of houses and businesses were damaged. Large swaths of the city were permanently transformed. But it wasn’t the first time. Sixty-five years earlier, in March 1933, a tornado — also a category F3 — pummeled downtown, East Nashville and Hermitage, killing 11 Nashvillians.
Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
According to the National Weather Service, several supercell thunderstorms spawned the roughly half-dozen tornadoes that wrought chaos in Middle Tennessee in the wee hours of March 3. The one that cut its way across Nashville had the longest path, extending more than 60 miles. The cyclone began at 12:32 a.m. in Pegram, and then carved its deadly path from the western portion of the county near John C. Tune
airport — where it did an estimated $93 million in damage — into North Nashville, Germantown, East Nashville, Donelson and Hermitage, before wreaking more havoc in Wilson and Smith counties. Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed. Multiple buildings at TSU’s agricultural farm in North Nashville were smashed. One of the original brick walls of the 120-year-old Germantown building housing bar and restaurant Geist was toppled. Near East Nashville’s Five Points neighborhood, venues and restaurants including Burger Up, Soda Parlor, The Basement East and High Garden Tea sustained immense damage. (Incredibly, a laminated menu from High Garden was found more than 100 miles away in Overton County.) East Nashville’s East End United Methodist Church took a heavy blow. Much of Donelson Christian Academy was reduced to rubble. At the Old Hickory Boulevard Kroger in Hermitage, vehicles were tossed around the parking lot like Matchbox cars. According to Metro Public Works, 71 traffic signals were damaged or lacking power throughout the city, with 112 roadways initially closed. Most tragic of all, of course, was the loss of life. At some point shortly before 1 a.m., 36-year-old Michael Dolfini and his 33-yearold partner Albree Sexton were struck by debris while leaving East Nashville bar Attaboy, where Dolfini worked. Sexton, who was employed at East Side establishments Lockeland Table and The Fox, was killed immediately. Dolfini died a short time later. As the night wore on, more lives were lost, though the total number of deaths and injuries wouldn’t be known for some time.
Just as in 1933 and 1998, the recovery efforts began immediately. Employees at the Bongo Java in Five Points were on site and offering folks coffee by the time the sun was up — for free, even with the shop’s own
nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
windows blown out. Volunteers were on the ground throughout the city within hours, with GoFundMe campaigns and fundraisers launched by midweek. Benefit shows were scheduled — and already-booked shows were turned into benefits — at venues including Drkmttr, Exit/In, 3rd and Lindsley, Marathon Music Works and more. Local restaurants and bars began offering shifts to industry professionals whose places of work were out of commission. In North Nashville, groups like activist organization Gideon’s Army were on the ground and helping with outreach immediately. Third Man Records employees — including Jack White himself — were spotted in uniform and helping with cleanup throughout the neighborhood. Churches like New Covenant Christian Church and Greater Heights Missionary Baptist Church
germantown
were set up as donation centers, as was nearby art space Elephant Gallery, which also functioned as a charging station for phones. “At first we were running out of stuff like every hour,” says Ellie Caudill, who recently stepped down as Elephant Gallery’s manager, but is still helping with tornado-outreach efforts there. “But now we look like a store.” Volunteer organization Hands On Nashville began coordinating efforts right away. According to HON, folks had signed up for more than 30,000 volunteer opportunities via the organization’s website by the Friday following the storm. Within 48 hours of the tornadoes, $2.1 million was donated to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee; as of press time, that number had grown to $6.5 million. In East Nashville’s Lockeland Springs neighborhood on Saturday, groups
Photos: Daniel Meigs
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March 3, 2020 Tornado Path
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Photos: Daniel Meigs
Volunteers clearing trees from Jordan’s yard. from left: Michael Munoz, BennetT Farkas, Kyle Numann, Drew Hethmon.
Theodore jordan in front of his north Nashville home
nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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Signs of normalcy returned to Shelby Bottoms Sunday as couples lounged in the sunny grass and families crowded the playground. But evidence of the storm’s violence was not far away. Volunteers picked remains of nearby houses out of the woods that surround the greenway, and a gash of downed trees let sunshine through to the previously shady path. Also on Sunday, Hands On Nashville asked that anyone not already signed up for volunteer opportunities stay home and rest. The response, they noted, was simply too great. As reported by WPLN on Thursday, affected areas including Mount Juliet and Putnam County were also having to turn volunteers away. The Volunteer State was living up to — and indeed, exceeding — its reputation. State Rep. Bo Mitchell withstood the chaos of the 1998 tornado from Legisla-
tive Plaza, where at the time he served as a staffer in the Tennessee Senate. Last week, he could be found in North Nashville and East Nashville, chainsaw in hand, heading in whatever direction help was needed. “I think it’s simple humanity,” Mitchell tells the Scene, going on to reference the catastrophic flood that hit the city back in 2010. “Whether you’re an elected official or not, I think the flood here in Nashville taught us that. We were a neighborhood and community where I lived in 2010 before the flood. We became a family after the flood. You see the need. You drop what you’re doing if you can and go take care of that need.” That ethos proves something about our beloved city, and our state. Tennessee’s nickname isn’t simply some outmoded legacynod, a dated reference to our propensity for sending volunteers into battle two centuries ago. Volunteerism, giving and community are taken seriously here. No matter what future damage Nashville may withstand — be it on the West Side or the East Side, to the north or to the south — that spirit will never be reduced to dust. Additional reporting by Stephen Elliott. Email editor@nashvillescene.com
north nashville
Bad Faith
Not all of the efforts in the wake of last week’s tornadoes have been benevolent By Steven Hale
Photo: Eric England
T
woodland street in East Nashville
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Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
Photo: Daniel Meigs
of volunteers from across the state could be found clearing brush and passing out meals to fellow volunteers. From donation numbers to the influx of volunteers and resources, the speed and breadth of the response were breathtaking.
he sun had only just risen over tornadoravaged parts of North Nashville and East Nashville as a frustrated sentiment started emerging from the devastated neighborhoods: Don’t come over here without a chainsaw. The message was meant literally. Downed trees were blocking roads and houses, and they needed to be cut and cleared. But there was a deeper, figurative dimension too. If you’re not here to help, don’t be here. The March 3 tornado has revealed the beautiful impulse in so many Nashvillians to donate their time, money and effort to neighbors in need. But it has also stirred up some unseemly responses that fall at various points on a spectrum from understandable-but-unhelpful to grossly exploitative. A common urge to head out and see what happened quickly turned into meandering and gawking that left residents of affected areas feeling strangely observed in their own neighborhoods. The way social media has turned us all into online content creators was immediately evident; soon the destruction was being used as a backdrop for selfies, one Nashvillian’s crumbled home serving as the setting for another’s unusual Wednesday. Not surprisingly, The Basement East’s “I Believe in Nashville” mural — incredibly left standing while much of the venue was wrecked — quickly became an iconic image of the disaster. It seems likely that its popularity, among social media users and local news outlets, contributed to the way North Nashville (unlike East Nashville) was largely overlooked in the immediate aftermath of the tornado. Further down the spectrum, some saw the havoc as an entrepreneurial opportunity. With the scope of the damage just starting to become clear — and the death toll across Middle Tennessee still climbing — a great deal of URLs were quickly registered for possible use in capitalizing on the tragedy: NashvilleRiseUp.com, RiseUpNashville.com, PrayersForNashville.com, IBelieve-InNashville.com, BelieveNashville.com and many more. As volunteers signed up in droves to help with cleanup and honest repair crews offered services,
ill-intentioned scammers began circling affected neighborhoods as well. A March 9 community meeting was organized by The Equity Alliance to give information and resources to North Nashville homeowners reeling from the tornado. There a Metro Nashville Police Department detective from the fraud unit warned of “con artists” moving through the neighborhood offering services and trying to get down payments in cash. The primary impetus for the meeting was the influx of investors and developers seeking to prey on distressed homeowners by offering lowball cash offers for their property. In the wake of the storm, multiple homeowners shared with the Scene text messages they received from investors expressing abbreviated condolences before inquiring about whether there was a deal to be made. It’s not an unfamiliar dynamic to residents of North Nashville, a historically black neighborhood that has been battered by the winds of gentrification and displacement for years. But with the tornado doing demolition work and creating an easy opening, that dynamic was heightened. It’s a troubling irony that two of the areas hardest hit by the March 3 tornado — North Nashville and East Nashville — have histories that are inextricably tied up with the way capitalism rushes in to fill a void left by cataclysm. The origin story of today’s East Nashville involves a similar disaster in 1998, when a tornado ripped through the community and cleared the way for the start of the revitalization that overwhelmingly changed the area. In North Nashville, the forces of change have more often been racist and man-made — redlining and the imposing construction of I-40 to name a couple. A natural disaster threatens to exacerbate the rapid change and displacement already underway there. If longtime residents and the mark they make on their communities aren’t swept away with the debris in the coming months, it will undoubtedly be because of the tireless work of activists and organizers who are rallying around them. At the North Nashville meeting hosted by The Equity Alliance at Lee Chapel AME Church earlier this week, Stand Up Nashville’s executive director Odessa Kelly spoke forcefully about that goal. “The purpose here today is for us to come together and give dignity to people who are living here,” she said. “To not just make them a commodity, an opportunity on someone’s spreadsheet, an opportunity to put more wealth into pockets that are already lined.” Email editor@nashvillescene.com
nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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Photo: Eric England
17th and holly streets in east nashville
The Watchmen
The trio behind Twitter’s @NashSevereWx may well have saved lives last week By Steve Cavendish
A
nnakate Ross stands in her front yard about nine hours after the March 3 tornado ripped off the side of her Holly Street home in East Nashville. Her husband Andrew stacks books against the wall — or where a wall should have been, anyway. From the side yard, you can see the neighbor’s garage apartment, which has been knocked off of its foundation. The force of the storm threw their neighbor Thomas into the Rosses’ backyard and sent him scrambling through their battered back porch for safety. Only minutes before the tornado struck, the couple grabbed their two daughters and headed downstairs in a rush, barely making it into a kitchen closet for safety as the imploding windows blew glass into the room and a living room wall was sheared off. When the tornado sirens went off, the couple did what they always do — they checked their favorite Twitter feed to see if the warnings were real, or if it was just another countywide blast that wouldn’t affect them. “@NashSevereWx saved our lives,” Annakate says. “We saw a video clip on their feed and a warning to take shelter.” Will Minkoff, 41, is one of the three guys on the other side of that Twitter account, along with David Drobny, 44, and Andrew Leeper, 36. Minkoff is somewhat uncomfortable with the stories from Ross and others, which have filled their replies in the week following the storm. The always-amiable Drobny didn’t want to talk on the record about being called a “hero,” a term all three have shunned. It’s fair to say they have had a hard time processing the admiration shown to them. “I guess what I’d say is I’m happy we were able to serve our community,” Minkoff says. “I’m happy that people listened to what we said, and that we were regarded as a valid source of information. And if they want to keep praise on us, I will deflect as much of that as I can to the [National] Weather Service, because nothing we do
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would be possible without those people dedicating themselves to a life of public service. These are top-notch scientists, experts in their field. And they’re the ones that are doing the science and the math and the physics that make what we do possible. We’re just a vessel to communicate that information.” With almost 175,000 Twitter followers, @NashSevereWX has an enormous footprint in Davidson and Williamson, the two counties that the account covers. The crew is just as likely to post a funny GIF as a radar image, and most of their followers take notice when the feed turns serious. Ross and several other Holly Street residents told the Scene that when words like “confirmed” or “serious” started popping into tweets, they knew to take cover and pay attention. Minkoff says that’s intentional. “We start choosing words on Twitter like ‘confirmed,’ like ‘significant’ — we start using words that mirror the words that are in the tornado warning,” he says. “Then we start calling out waypoints or landmarks on a map.” It’s something the group practices for, even running through simulations of older storms, including the 1998 tornado that ripped up East Nashville. Just a few hours before last week’s tornadoes spun up in Davidson and the surrounding counties, Drobny had been jokingly comparing weather models to contestants on The Bachelor. According to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., the storm system didn’t have a ton of potential when the agency’s “convective outlook” was issued. The SPC gave it only a 2 percent chance of producing a tornado or large hail. But after 11 p.m., Drobny noticed a supercell developing west of Nashville near Waverly. He messaged Minkoff and Leeper to get ready to go. Drobny takes the lead on the Twitter feed in situations like these, while Minkoff backs him up reading models and communicating with the National Weather Service. Leeper is the broadcaster on the trio’s YouTube Live feed. At 11:27, the Storm Prediction Center’s probability for an EF2plus tornado jumped to 20 percent. By this time, they were monitoring the #tSpotter hashtag for evidence of the storm posted by anyone in its path. “We call it ground truth,” Minkoff says. “Their radar can only see down so low. And everything between the bottom of that radar beam and the ground is an assumption for [the National Weather Service] unless they can get a report.” What was showing up was troubling — large hail that would be much more at home in the plains states than Tennessee.
Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
As the supercell tracked east, the tweets became more serious: “Storm passing near Waverly, ETA to west Nashville 12:15 AM, downtown/East Nashville 12:30 AM, has a hook signature where a tornado is possible.” The storm sped along as the crew passed on NWS warnings, ways to stay safe during a tornado and radar imagery. By 12:45, the feed was using all-caps. “This is a confirmed tornado in Metro Nashville. It’s in East Nashville now that passed Five Pts moving east into East Nashville. Shelby Bottoms, East Nashville, Briley Parkway, Hermitage, take cover now. This is a LEGIT TORNADO. TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY.” The crew followed the cyclone’s path into Wilson County before looking back to track the rain and lightning, which followed the tornado across Davidson County. At the height of the YouTube feed, almost 10,000 people were watching, while thousands more liked and retweeted the Twitter dispatches. By 5 a.m., with the weather clear,
Drobny and Leeper crashed into sleep while the cleanup began across the county. A bleary Minkoff took his kids to school. “I had a guy get out of his car in the [dropoff] line,” Minkoff says. “He walked up to my car, tapped on the window, and I rolled it down. The guy leaned into my window to give me a handshake and a heart-to-heart that we were incredible last night.” Minkoff relays the story not as a boast. He’s a little sheepish telling it, but does so after a question about the reaction the group received. “That’s just not really what we’re in it for,” he says. Drobny calls the Scene on Friday afternoon as he’s walking through East Nashville, surveying the aftermath to understand the impact of the tornado. He wanted to know what could be done to give people more warning. He wanted to understand how the couple had been killed outside Attaboy. And he wanted to know what they could do better next time. Email editor@nashvillescene.com
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nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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Eye of the Storm
Longtime Scene photographer Eric England reflects on capturing images from the 1998 and 2020 tornadoes in his East Nashville neighborhood By Nancy Floyd
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Holly Street fire hall then came back and processed them and made prints. And then by that afternoon I had prints that could then be scanned and turned into coverage.” The photographs ran in the April 23, 1998, issue of the Scene, seven days after the storm hit. After last week’s tornado, England was once again capturing the destruction from the same vantage point on Holly Street, where his home — now a rental property — had its windows blown out. A tree also crashed through the garage. This time around, his photos were published on the Scene’s website and social media accounts within a few hours, and were ultimately viewed online by tens of thousands of people before day’s end. “This time, it’s just instantaneous,” he says. “The one thing that is really, really different, I guess, is that when I was going through Five Points especially … everybody had their phone out, talking into their phone, taking a video, taking a picture. Even the pictures that I took and that came out in the Scene’s slideshow that got lots of views, everybody and their brother had coverage just as good or better immediately because they were in a different spot. Still photography is really dependent on the moment, and so it’s what you get when you get there.” One of the moments that England cap-
Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
woodland street
Photos: Eric England
A
s dawn broke over East Nashville on March 3, residents of the Five Points, East End and Lockeland Springs neighborhoods roamed the streets. They surveyed the damage, checked in on their neighbors and grieved over the destruction from an EF-3 tornado that had ripped through the community not long after midnight. For many, the scene was eerily similar to that of an April afternoon in 1998, when a deadly tornado ravaged much of the same area. Longtime Scene photographer Eric England — who’s been an East Nashville resident since 1996 — was among the first on the ground after both devastating events, capturing the wreckage through the lens of his camera. It was wreckage that included his own house on Holly Street, as well as the homes of his neighbors and friends. “It was hard because I feel my obligation to take some photos, and then I feel an obligation to stop and just take care of what needs to be done,” England says. “It’s bad. It was really emotional, especially the people you see [now] that were there [in 1998]. It’s just way worse, I feel like, at least for that neighborhood.” In 1998, England was taking cover at home when the afternoon tornado struck his neighborhood. His Holly Street property suffered minimal damage then, but the surrounding area didn’t fare as well. Once the storm passed, he grabbed his camera and surveyed the area on foot. “I walked down to what was then Radio Cafe, and Mac [Hill] had started giving away all the beer and the sandwiches because the power was out,” he says. “And everyone was starting to assess. And then I started walking to a friend’s house, and the whole roof was gone off of his house. He was hit pretty bad. And I just started walking around and taking photos like that.” In 1998, England was shooting on film and had to process the images in his home before they could be published. “I had my darkroom in my house there on Holly Street, so I went out, shot a few rolls of film and
tured that has reverberated through the community — one that was the most challenging and emotional for him personally — was a series of shots of firefighters lowering the flag at the historic Holly Street Fire Hall, which was built in 1914. “The guys at the fire station taking down the flag — the flag pole was bent,” he says while fighting back tears. “The station on Holly Street, I believe, is the oldest one in town. Our Scout
troops go there, everybody goes there. I had a friend 20 years ago [who] took their kids there when he shoved a Lego up his nose. Those guys, they were taking the flag down, folding the flag. In the midst of all this, they’re still doing those things. ... It’s kinda nice to see them do it.” The images that England captured of East Nashville and later of Donelson — along with Scene photographer Daniel Meigs’ coverage of the destruction in North Nashville and Germantown — gave readers from Nashville and beyond immediate access to these storm-ravaged areas and showcased the breadth and severity of the damage. “I feel like I could do a better job somehow,” England says. “There [are] probably things that I missed just because it’s all so much. ... And so I feel like, wow, at a certain point, one shattered building looks like another shattered building. That sounds horrible, but I mean, it’s just so much. It’s really overwhelming.” Email editor@nashvillescene.com
Holy $#*t Nashville!
THANK YOU SO MUCH! Only one week after the tornado, we were able to re-start production in a temporary space. Our fantastic crew is still working, and we can still deliver flowers! What an unbelievable display of community! We are completely humbled by how many people have jumped in to help clean up our city. We can’t believe how many people have donated food, water, money and their time. Nashville, we are yours, we love you!
WE WANT TO SEND YOU SOME FLOWERS!
If you know someone that helped our city recover from this storm you can nominate them to receive free flowers from FLWR Shop. Every single week, we’re going to pick one of the nominees and send them flowers. For as long as it takes. Go to www.flwrshop.com/thankyounash and fill out the form to nominate someone. Or multiple someones.
We’re here, Nashville! Thanks to you! Lets get some more beauty into your lives!
www.flwrshop.com
• 615-401-9124nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE 17
Photo: Eric England
the church at lockeland springs
Nashville’s Precious Spaces Last week’s tornado damaged and destroyed a host of historically significant buildings By J.R. Lind
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Church of the Assumption on March 5
Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
Photo: Daniel Meigs
T
ornadoes have no regard for man-made distinctions. Storms care not about class or race or social status. The devastation is both random and widespread. They’ve no sense of aesthetics or holiness or culture. Tornadoes are capable of destroying both the hideous and the beautiful, the sacred and the profane, the refined and the kitschy with the same violent capriciousness. Nor do tornadoes concern themselves with what we’ve chosen to honor and protect. With reckless disregard for our collective inheritance and the legacy we’ve worked to preserve for the future, the March 3 tornado ripped across Davidson County, from John C. Tune Airport in the west to the Wilson County line in the east, sending homes tumbling and tearing lives asunder. Along the
nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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Holly street fire hall way, the tornado cut through neighborhoods with some of the highest concentrations of historic properties — Buena Vista, North Nashville, Germantown, East Nashville, Hermitage — damaging and destroying a host of buildings of historical significance. The Metropolitan Historical Commission continues to assess damage to properties on the National Registry of Historical Places, a process that may not be completed for months, though initial assessments should be finished this week. Photographs of Germantown’s Church of the Assumption — built in 1859 to serve the German immigrants who lent the neighborhood its name — are among the iconic images in the wake of the storms. Walls are gone. The stained-glass window near the altar is now in innumerable fragments on the
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floor of the sanctuary. The roof is damaged. The steeple teeters. The Rev. Bede Price, the church’s priest, ran from the rectory into the sanctuary as the twister passed 100 yards away to preserve the host — that is, the bread taken by Catholics during Holy Communion. He was uninjured. In the midst of Lent, the holiest part of the liturgical calendar, Assumption parishioners will hear Mass elsewhere: at Monroe Street United Methodist across the street (another NRHP property that saw some damage) and at a variety of facilities owned by the diocese. Nearby, the Onyx Building at the corner of Jefferson and Seventh is destroyed, six years after being bought and restored. The neighboring Elliott School, currently being repurposed as residential space, is damaged. Both properties were under preservation easements. Across the river, the YMCA’s Y-CAP facility on Russell Street sustained heavy damage. Built in 1910 as Russell Street Presbyterian, the building has served Presbyterian and Baptist congregations and as a funeral home. In 1997, the Y picked it up at auction, 16 years after it was added to the NRHP. The Holly Street Fire Hall, built in 1914 and the oldest continuously operating fire station in the city, lost its roof. Across the street, The Church at Lockeland Springs — built in 1903 and formerly Lockeland Bap-
Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
Photos: Eric England
Dodson Chapel Methodist
tist — sustained significant damage. In Hermitage, Dodson Chapel Methodist is in tatters, much of the structure now a void. The current building was built in 1906, though the legacy of the congregation goes back much further; indeed, Andrew Jackson cast his last ballot at one of Dodson’s predecessor churches when he voted for fellow Tennessean James K. Polk. The tornado moved with such strength and such precision that the bricks were torn from the building, exposing the original exterior walls below. Three church buses lay among the wreckage. The Metro Historical Commission and
its sister Historical Zoning Commission provide technical assistance for repairs and restoration of historical properties damaged in natural disasters. For nonprofits, churches and private citizens, free consultations are available. Owners of incomeproducing buildings are eligible for a 20 percent federal tax credit if substantial rehabilitation is required. Those prosaic and practical pieces of assistance go a long way, but some properties may never be fully rehabilitated, and the loss to our cultural inheritance won’t be easily mended. Email editor@nashvillescene.com
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by Alejandro Ramirez
T
he camp under the Jefferson Street Bridge is a tangle of debris, tarps and tents, the aftermath of the tornado that ripped through Nashville on the morning of March 3. One day after the storm, Mike sits in an old lounge chair while his puppy Star runs about on a leash. Mike’s tent is crumpled up nearby, his belongings ruined. “That’s 13 years of my life,” says Mike, who asked that we not include his last name. There are many other destroyed tents nearby, the remnants of a large campsite made up of people experiencing homelessness. Just a few hundred feet away is the badly damaged Department of Human Services building, its roof now a pile of rubble. There’s plenty of destruction in the nearby Germantown neighborhood the day after the tornado — traffic lights are out, businesses like The Christie Cookie Co. are damaged, telephone poles are wrecked.
Communion
Local restaurants seek and offer help in post-tornado days By Margaret Littman
I
t’s one of the oldest buildings in the city that has been in continuous use, and after last week’s tornado, it may be shuttered for up to 90 days. That’s the situation at Geist, the Germantown restaurant that saw pieces of its walls and windows end up on Jefferson Street. Geist is one of many restaurants and bars facing a triple threat from the tornado: damaged buildings, loss of inventory, and hourly employees who need somewhere to work while the pieces are put back together again. It is not a contest, and terms like “hardest hit” are subject to different criteria. But however you look at it, the hospitality industry — the second-largest industry in the city in terms of number of employees, according to the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp. — is suffering in the wake of last week’s tornado damage. Many of the city’s small chef-owned restaurants and bars are in battered neighborhoods, including East Nashville, Germantown and Donelson. Some businesses are closed — whether for the short term due to power outages or for the long term due to structural damage — and even those that are open are facing complications. In addition, some suppliers to said restaurants — including Sysco Nashville, Aramark, Restaurant Depot and Best Brands — are coping with their own tornado-inflicted destruction. It didn’t take long for the hospitality community, particularly restaurants, to rally to keep each other employed, sheltered, fed and supported, all while trying to figure out how to get their lights turned on, and while grieving the losses of members of the community. “This sounds weird, but it went from the lowest day of my life to one of the better days of my
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life because of the way people reached out,” says Mike Krajewski, owner of MK Fitness and an investor in Nashville Urban Winery — both of which sustained considerable damage. “We have been flooded with opportunities for temporary housing and offices, meals, cooler space, volunteers, repair vendors and more,” says Austin Ray, whose A.Ray Hospitality runs a number of local restaurants, including Von Elrod’s Beer Hall & Kitchen in Germantown. As of press time, Von Elrod’s has reopened with bar service only, with kitchen service to be brought back in the near future. Below is a rundown of the ways in which the local hospitality industry is coping. All donation numbers are up to date as of press time on Monday, March 9. • The Nashville chapter of the United States Bartender Guild, through the USBG National Charity Foundation, started a GoFundMe for industry workers facing hardship. That means anything from funeral expenses for a loved one to auto repairs. Recipients do not need to be bartenders or USBG members. The fund has raised more than $71,000. • Chef Jessica Benefield, owner of The Green Pheasant and Two Ten Jack, feels lucky that her home and restaurants were spared. She almost immediately started a GoFundMe for hourly hospitality workers and those who rely on tips, with the intent to purchase grocery gift cards that those in need can use. To date, she has raised more than $22,000. “It is so successful that I am having to look for places to give these funds,” she says. ·· The 37206 service-industry GoFundMe has raised more than $45,000 for East Nashville restaurant employees so far. ·· Neither Nicky’s Coal Fired nor Hathorne was in the path of the tornado, but both offered refrigerated storage space for chefs who didn’t want ingredients to go to waste while the power was off. ·· Food supplier Sysco Nashville (where a wall be-
Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
Photo: alejandro Ramirez
How Nashville’s homeless community and its advocates weathered the storm
Mike says that on the night of the storm, 20 to 30 people were at the camp. When the storm hit, he called 911. “I thought it was gonna be the last time anyone was gonna hear my voice,” he says, adding that the responders did great work helping the camp after the storm hit. Organizations focused on helping the homeless mobilized after the storm. The Bridge Ministry, a group that began by serving the folks at the Jefferson Street Bridge in 2004, has been active at the campsite and other parts of Nashville, helping tornado victims and relief workers. Candy Christmas, founder of the organization, says the group is also helping Metro schools provide food to students while classes are canceled. Other volunteers have visited the Jefferson Street camp since the tornado, providing haircuts, a mobile shower and supplies, according to videos shared on Facebook. A few tents have also returned to the site. Other campsites in Nashville may be slower to rebuild, if they can at all. Howard Allen, an unhoused advocate for the homeless, usually stays at a different camp near the Jefferson Street Bridge. He stayed at a hotel the night of the storm, and hasn’t been able to return to his campsite — but he’s seen pictures of the devastation and is sure he lost everything. He hopes the Federal Emergency Management Agency can help him find housing; if not, he returns to waiting for Section 8, where he says he’s approximately the 2,000th person in line. Lindsey Krinks, co-founder and co-
the Jefferson Bridge campsite on March 4 director of homeless-outreach organization Open Table Nashville, says the widespread displacement from the tornado may impact Nashville’s current affordable housing crisis — especially since the general waiting list for Section 8 housing is closed. (The only public housing lists accepting new applicants are one for people over the age of 62 and one for people experiencing chronic homelessness.) “There’s nothing for people,” says Krinks. “Where the hell are people gonna go?” As it happens, Krinks and her husband Andrew, the former editor of Nashville street paper The Contributor, are themselves displaced, after the tornado wrecked their North Nashville home. The whole
neighborhood was hit hard, with crushed and damaged homes all over their street. But volunteers are also everywhere. One of the first people to help the Krinkses was a man living at a campsite. Lindsey says she and her husband will be all right, but she worries about the future of North Nashville — particularly, how developers may take advantage of those who’ve been affected. Fears of gentrification in North Nashville are looming, and she says the city needs to do more to protect those who are already marginalized and at risk of further displacement and homelessness. “We have the resources and knowledge to do it,” she says. “It’s about our priorities.” Email editor@nashvillescene.com
Photo: Eric England
Shelter From the Storm
Restaurant Depot
tween a cooler and freezer collapsed) is bringing in products from Louisville and elsewhere in the interim, and plans to have full inventory within a week or two. Alcohol supplier Best Brands, which lost its warehouse, is leasing space from liquor distributor and competitor Ajax Turner in order to keep its doors open and local restaurants and bars stocked with booze. Benefield says chefs are getting creative and paying premiums to have replacement shipments as they run out of certain items. ·· Even sadder for chefs than not being able to open their restaurants is seeing food go to waste. That’s according to Laura Karwisch Wilson, partner and founder of food-business incubator and commissary kitchen space Citizen Kitchens. Citizen Kitchens started serving coffee and prepared sandwiches from its Hunters Station location, to both victims and rescue crews. Food trucks used the central East Nashville spot to continue to feed folks. Of course, they were far from the only ones. The Feral Pastry Chef set up at the patio of Crying Wolf, offering vegan meals for those in need.
·· The Nashville Food Project is expert at feeding people in emergencies on a day-to-day basis. The nonprofit was well-poised to make more than 2,000 from-scratch meals daily and post details on their site about where the food could be found. The group was also able to rescue food that would have gone bad from commercial kitchens in affected areas. ·· Chef Sean Brock encouraged his many social media followers to place wholesale tea orders from High Garden Tea, which sustained significant damage. That way High Garden’s owners will have some income even without its retail shop. ·· The Music City Center, The BE-Hive, Tailgate Brewery, website FOH & BOH, pop-up Setsun and others are starting to make offers to cooks, servers and others. “We have been coordinating with the Greater Nashville Hospitality Association, collecting who has job openings,” says Butch Spyridon, president and CEO of NCVC. “But this is not a poaching situation. It is fine for everyone to go back to their original jobs whenever.” Email editor@nashvillescene.com
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your Nashville Symphony
Live at the Schermerhorn
BERNADETTE PETERS 4 Concerntsced Just Annou
JUNE 3
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Y AY IDA RID ALLEE FFR N SSA O ON M M A A 0 A ATT 110
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This weekend CELTIC JOURNEY
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615.687.6400 NashvilleSymphony.org
NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
LEGENDS OF MUSIC SERIES PARTNER
WITH SUPPORT FROM
Critics’ Picks W e e k l y
r o u n d u p
o f
th i n g s
t o
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punk act Butthole. 8:30 p.m. at Mercy Lounge, 1 Cannery Row P.J. KINZER
PA G E
MUSIC
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[WE CAN DISCOVER THE WONDERS OF NATURE]
Vanderbilt University Orchestra and Singers
Thursday’s program featuring two top student ensembles at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music — the Vanderbilt University Orchestra and the Vanderbilt University Singers — is special for a few reasons. The musical selections are three flowing, evocative pieces by contemporary Canadian composer John Estacio (Solaris, Borealis and Wondrous Light), as well as two movements of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. There’s also a multimedia component, with projections by visual artist José Francisco Salgado, and the program is produced in conjunction with several of the university’s visual media and science programs. It’s a presentation that reflects on the beauty and strangeness of our universe, and to make sure more people can enjoy it, it also marks the school’s first program with adaptations (including priority seating and a sensoryfriendly kit available from ushers at the hall) for people with sensory differences like autism spectrum disorders. As with all Blair events, the show is free and open to the public. 8 p.m. at Blair School of Music’s Ingram Hall, 2400 Blakemore Ave.
a-trak
Playing Nashville Underground on Friday
PA G E
32 elonmusk
With Tape Deck Mountain and Wanderers
PA G E
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STEPHEN TRAGESER
Letterkenny Live
AIR S W I M M IN G
Of all the paintings by celebrated German Expressionist Max Beckmann, his selfportrait in a tuxedo is definitely the most iconic. The front-facing sophisticate holds a cigarette in one hand with the casualness of an assassin, and has always >> p. 28
March 13-15
[FAITH HEALING]
InTERNATIONAL Lens: Stories of Intersex and Faith
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides writes, “It’s often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, ‘Stay there. Don’t move.’ ” That kind of trauma is often shared among intersex people — that is, people born with a combination of male and female chromosones, genitals or sex hormones — whose early medical intervention has shaped their entire worldview. Being born intersex is a surprisingly common occurance (some reports estimate as many as one in 60 human births) that remains largely unknown to many people, and a documentary screening for free this week seeks to illuminate the effects. “Our anxieties about sex and gender,” say the filmmakers, “often rooted in religion, have led us to hide, shame, and harm healthy intersex children.” Stories of Intersex and Faith, showing as part of Vanderbilt’s Independent Lens series, follows four intersex individuals, examining their experiences through the lens of their religious faith, with an aim to educate people — especially the religious
people whose judgment affected the documentary subjects themselves. 7:30 p.m. at Vanderbilt University’s Sarratt Cinema LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
MUSIC
FILM
The Barbershop Theater
[ALL MY FRIENDS ARE BAD KIDS]
Black Lips w/Poppy Jean Crawford & Butthole
There are two things that Black Lips have done exceptionally well in their 20year run: They have been able to filter the sound of baby-boomer rock down to its most grotesque and volatile elements, and they produce a live show that is as much of an absurd spectacle as it is a fulfilling musical experience. On their new album Sing in a World That’s Falling Apart, the Atlanta squadron presents a country-rock sound that’s like a funhouse-mirror reflection of The Byrds, Michael Nesmith or The Ozark Mountain Daredevils. On tour with Black Lips is Poppy Jean Crawford, a Los Angeles songwriter who has a menacing, seductive pop sound full of reverb and grit. Show up on time to catch Nashville pop-oriented
PHOTO: Dani Pujalte
THURS/3.12
[CLOSER, PLEASE. CLOSER!]
Lecture by Joseph Koerner: Max Beckmann — Art in a State of Siege ART
Somebody get these guys a Puppers
black lips
nashvillescene.com | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | Nashville Scene
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NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
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critics’ picks
1/2 MILE OFF BROADWAY ON THE SOUTH SIDE
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8:00
ANGELA OLIVER
6:00
SIXWIRE AND FRIENDS LINES AND RHYMES
THE PETTY JUNKIES
8:00 1:00 7:30
THU
NASHVILLE BLUES AND ROOTS ALLIANCE
8:00
FRI
WMOT FINALLY FRIDAY (FREE)
12:00
SAT
VINYL RADIO BACKSTAGE NASHVILLE LIVE VIP HIT SONGWRITERS SHOW ROBBEN FORD
3/19
HURRICANE RUTH, BROTHER ROCK, SUGAR LIME AND BLUE & NIECIE
3/20 CHRIS MOYSE, JOHN SALAWAY, KELLEN OF TROY, BECKY BUTLER
3/21
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR : COMMUNITY FOUNDATION’S 3/22 MIDDLE TENNESSEE EMERGENCY RESPONSE FUND THU
DEVON GILFILLIAN, THE WOOD BROTHERS, LERA LYNN, LOS COLOGNES, SIERRA FERRELL, MORGAN WADE
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8:00
COMING SOON 3-23 The Time Jumpers 3-29 Brandy Clark : Who You Thought I Was Tour w/ Cheley Tackett SOLD OUT 3-30 The Time Jumpers 4-1 Jordan James, Ashley Cooke, Kurt Stevens 4-2 Matthew Perryman Jones ,Peter Bradley Adams, Molly Parden, Katie Herzig, Lera Lynn, Sean Kennedy 4-3 The Eaglemaniacs : The Music Of Don Henley and The Eagles 4-4 Resurrection: Journey Tribute 4-6 The Time Jumpers 4-7 Flora Cash with Beau Young Prince 4-8 Colin Raye and Friends 4-9 Stairway to Zeppelin plus Kings of Pain 4-10 Pat McLaughlin Band 4-11 The Long Players 16 Year Anniversary Show Bruce Springsteen’s The River 4-13 The Time Jumpers 4-14 Songs and Stories for St Jude 4-15 Colin Linden 4-17 &18 Ray Wylie Hubbard 4-19 Corb Lund w/ Paul Burch 4-20 The Time Jumpers 4-24 Hurray for the Riff Raff w/ People Museum 4-25 Guilty Pleasures 4-26 Overcoats 4-27 The Time Jumpers 4-29 Trout Steak Revival 5-1 Caroline Rose 5-2 Steve Moakler 5-4 The Time Jumpers 5-6 Koch Marshall Trio feat. Greg Koch 5-8 The Secret Sisters 5-9 Rubiks Groove 5-10 Eric Hutchinson w/ Casey 5-11 The Time Jumpers 5-15 12 Against Nature Steely Dan Experience plus Live From Ventura Boulevard 5-16 The Smoking Section 5-17 Pokey LaFarge 5-18 The Time Jumpers 6-3 7th Annual Country for a Cause 6-18 King Buzzo featuring Trevor Dunn 6-26 Anderson Council: A Pink Floyd Experience performs “ Animals “ 7-26 JR JR
reminded me of a much more lowbrow icon: Hannibal Lecter. Art historian and Harvard professor Joseph Koerner has written about Beckmann extensively, and in one paper he summed up the aggressive but dismissive expression of Beckmann’s tuxedo self-portrait succinctly: “He belongs, we don’t.” Koerner uses the portrait as the jumping-off point for his lecture about art in a state of siege — Beckmann’s career spanned the tumultuous time from the fin de siècle through World War II, making him an obvious candidate for that art-historical lens. Don’t miss this chance to hear an accomplished art historian speak on one of the most fascinating elements of recent Western history — black tie optional. 4 p.m. at Vanderbilt University’s Cohen Hall, Room 203 LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
FrI/3.13 MUSIC
818 3RD AVE S. DOWNTOWN • 259-9891
INFORMATION AND TICKETS 3RDANDLINDSLEY.COM 866-468-3401 • TICKETWEB.COM
[THE LINE ON THE LEFT IS YELLOW]
D. Striker’S RR Party Feat. JaSmin kaSet BanD & JuStin anD the CoSmiCS
For some, Friday the 13th means superstition. It means Jason Voorhees’ birthday, and the onus for body-swapping films of the freaky variety. But in Nashville’s local music scene, Friday the 13th has long signaled the arrival of yellowclad and seemingly ageless satirical country star D. Striker, who has issued a new edition of his zine and played a show every Friday the 13th for nigh upon 22 years. The tradition continues this week, when Striker will once again host his RR Party at beloved Five Points institution The 5 Spot — which, thank the maker, didn’t sustain any significant damage as a result of last week’s devastating tornado. Expect Striker and his band of crack country-flavored rock ’n’ rollers to issue rambunctious renditions of tunes like “Take Time With the Road,” “Country Star Condos” and “(I’m Hungover in) the Walmart Breakroom.” Opening the show will be high-octane local rockers Justin and the Cosmics, as well as spectacular pop songwriter Jasmin Kaset and her Jasmin Kaset Band. It’s an East Side affair — come out and see what the longtime locals have to offer. At press time, The 5 Spot was undamaged but had been left without power by the storm. If the electricity isn’t restored in time for Friday’s show, it may move to a new location. 9 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. D. PATRICK RODGERS [MALE GAZE]
You’Re on new bRidges made of home (You found the light in a daRk poem) ART
3RDANDLINDSLEY.COM
8:00 12:00 8:00 8:00
PRIVATE EVENT INFO FROM 30 TO 700 GUESTS EVENTSAT3RD@GMAIL.COM
Artist Benjy Russell makes magic out of pedestrian elements, endowing them with smart, allegorical meanings and gushworthy aesthetics. The design showroom and gallery Wilder has recently moved its digs to a sleek Germantown townhouse, and for this exhibition Russell will create a site-specific installation that serves both as a mid-career retrospective of his work and a blueprint for a new, awe-inspiring world. However lofty that sounds, the word world doesn’t feel quite accurate. Russell’s work is cosmic and erotic, pulsing with universality while beckoning us to explore uncharted dimensions. It’s also rooted in lush, natural
NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
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CRITICS’ PICKS
YOU’RE ON NEW BRIDGES MADE OF HOME (YOU FOUND THE LIGHT IN A DARK POEM)
MUSIC
landscapes — flowers, valleys and skies that remind us that no matter how far we travel philosophically, the earth will provide for us if we let it. The exhibition, titled You’re on new bridges made of home (you found the light in a dark poem), will trace human impulses and desires around the townhouse’s three floors with ornate flower sculptures, video feedback loops, photographic installations and more. The exhibition will also feature some of Russell’s collaborative work with artists and writers including Rya Kleinpeter, T Fleischmann and WIFE. Opening reception 5-9 p.m.; March 13-27 at Wilder, 701 Taylor St. ERICA CICCARONE [STAY GOLD]
A-TRAK
MUSIC
Plenty of DJs bridge the gap between hip-hop and electronic music, and ATrak is one of the more notable figures doing so — but he’s even more relevant because of his work behind the scenes. Early on the Canadian musician established himself as a champion scratcher in international competitions like DMC, and he later went on to provide scratches for tracks by artists like Kanye West and Calvin Harris. As a producer, he’s worked with underground artists and mainstream stars — recent collaborators include Young Thug and Quavo — and scored a Grammy nomination for the song “Barbra Streisand” as one-half of Duck Sauce. Away from the turntables, A-Trak also founded Fool’s Gold in 2007, an indie label that has since released Kid Cudi’s breakout single “Day ’N’ Nite,” Danny Brown’s acclaimed mixtapes The Hybrid and XXX, and Run the Jewels’ self-titled debut, among many others. 9 p.m. at Nashville Underground, 105 Broadway ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ
dent spirit of The Replacements and pair it with the earnest, nostalgic heart of Gaslight Anthem, and songs like “Future Mixtape for the Art Kids” and “Dirty Cigarettes” will fill your head and your heart with that same invigorating (but kind of overwhelming) wave of emotion you might have felt the first time you fell in love. Opening the show will be The Aquadolls, a SoCal pop trio signed to the great Burger Records. Their set of twinkling harmony-heavy pop will make you nod your head and maybe even pogo a little bit, if you’re feeling up to it. 8 p.m. at The High Watt, 1 Cannery Road MEGAN SELING
PIGEONS PLAYING PING PONG
MAR 15
MAR 24
W/ GOOSE
DANCE GAVIN DANCE
W/ THE NEW REGIME
W/ ANIMALS AS LEADERS, ISSUES, VEIL OF MAYA, ROYAL CODA
MAR 27
MAR 31
HOT CHELLE RAE
THUNDERCAT
MARATHONMUSICWORKS.COM 1402 clinton st. nashville, tn | BOX OFFICE: FRIDAY 10AM - 4
[DESTROY ALL MUSIC]
DESTROYER
A candidate for the most misleadingly named band in rock history, Destroyer celebrates a quarter-century this year. Destroyer is the stage name of Vancouver singer and poet Dan Bejar, and the project’s 12th album, Have We Met, has all of Bejar’s hallmarks — erudite lyrics, amorphous song structures, an instantly recognizable voice. The 47-year-old’s adventurousness, production-wise, is always where one’s mileage varies. For example, I adored 2002’s warmly recorded, valiantly performed This Night, yet couldn’t get through a single track on its intentionally synthetic-sounding ’04 follow-up Your Blues, made almost entirely with MIDI. That said, it could be the Prefab
F i s y h a Fr y d i r at the F
WILDHORSE SALOON EVERY FRIDAY FROM 2/28 TO 4/10
YAZOO OLE 94 BEER BATTERED FISH & CHIPS • $19 Hand battered 1/4lb cod, crispy caper tartar sauce, WH fries, sweet corn hushpuppies, lemon
[DEADBEAT BANGERS]
Also available
BEACH SLANG W/THE AQUADOLLS
Fun fact: It’s not a Beach Slang song that initially turned me on to Beach Slang. It was the Philly band’s cover of Dramarama’s “Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You)” that pulled me in. They nail it. Singer-guitarist James Alex perfectly captures the original’s feverish frustration with punky, snarling guitars that pierce through the tension. (Beach Slang also covers another ’80s favorite, The Plimsouls’ “A Million Miles Away.”) But it was Beach Slang’s originals that turned me into a fan. They take the stri-
MAR 13
FLY FISHING FILM TOUR
SILVERSUN PICKUPS
MUSIC
“SELF PORTRAIT OF ME BY YOU,” BENJY RUSSELL
MAR 12
• TORTILLA CRUSTED • CATFISH • LOW COUNTRY • CRAB CAKES 120 2nd Ave N, Nashville, TN 37201 | wildhorsesaloon.com
DESTROYER
For a limited time! nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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critics’ picks
MUSIC
CHARLIE ZAILLIAN [HOT FUN]
Macy Gray
In recent years, critics have revived the reputations of quasi-soul singers like Nina Simone and Roberta Flack. I listen to both of them, but I prefer the relative vulgarity of R&B singer Esther Phillips, who during her career went from Southern soul to country, and from R&B to disco. With her crabbed phrasing and acid timbre, Phillips influenced Ohio-born neo-soul icon Macy Gray. After weathering somewhat inaccurate comparisons to Billie Holiday — herself perhaps the finest singer of the 20th century — Gray began making firstrate records like 2003’s The Trouble With Being Myself. Meanwhile, her 2018 album Ruby is one of the finest soul releases in recent memory. However Gray created Ruby — it features four producers and a raft of songwriting collaborators — it’s a landmark of seemingly normalized soul. Gray’s voice slides through arrangements that go from War-meets-Sly Stone bass lines to post-blaxploitation horn and string arrangements. The album sounds like Gray simply plugged in a very interesting sensibility in order to write songs that ended up being funny, weird glimpses into her struggle for self-definition. Ruby is hot fun that doubles as some far-out shit — Esther Phillips would be proud. Nashville soul-rock band The Untamed will open. 7 p.m. at The Cowan, 500 Cowan St. EDD HURT
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[IT’S GOT A DEATH CURSE]
Friday the 13th
A long time ago, I was on the phone with a girl as she started listing horror movies she liked. When she asked me if I’ve ever seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I said, “I’ve seen the original.” She immediately replied, “There’s an original?” Ever since then, I’ve always wondered if people are more familiar with the scary movies that dropped in the ’70s and ’80s, or the far-inferior remakes and reboots of those films that came out in the 2000s and 2010s. This weekend, Full Moon Cineplex will screen the 2009 revamp of Friday the 13th directed by Marcus Nispel, who also did the afore-referenced remake of Chainsaw. In the famed 1980 gorefest, infamous serial killer Jason Voorhees murders any young, horny motherfucker who dares to get his or her stroke on in his vicinity. Let me just say this: If you go to this screening with a date who has seen only this iteration of the Friday the 13th story — and likes it — break up with that person immediately. Because this version is stupid as fuck. 7 p.m. at Full Moon Cineplex, 3455 Lebanon Pike CRAIG D. LINDSEY THEATER
Sprout kick I’ve been on, but I’m digging the new record’s elegant mid-’80s U.K. art-pop vibe more than I’ve dug on any Destroyer album in a while. Fellow Canadian experimental popsters Nap Eyes will open. 8 p.m. at Mercy Lounge, 1 Cannery Row
FILM
macy gray
[FREEDOM OF FANTASY]
airswimming
Opened in 2018, The Barbershop Theater has quickly established itself as a force in Nashville’s lively theater community, making space for a wide range of progressive artists and art lovers. This weekend, New York-based theater-makers Kristin McCalley, Clayton Landiss, Kallen Prosterman and Sarah Smith return to Nashville to present Charlotte Jones’ thought-provoking play Airswimming. Based on a true story, Airswimming follows two women who are incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane in 1920s England. Their crime? Giving birth
NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
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What’s next? Tennessee Performing Arts Center
500 COWAN STREET • NASHVILLE, TN 37207 LOCATED AT TOPGOLF
UPCOMING EVENTS MAR
21
SIR MIX-A-LOT
with Wick-It The Instigator
MAR
23
FIT FOR A KING
MAR 18 War Memorial Auditorium
with Chelsea Grin, Crystal Lake, Alpha Wolf
MAR
The Art of International Whiskey
27
3LAU MAR
28
MAR 12
War Memorial Auditorium
MAR 16
MAR 22
THE LACS
with Hard Target, Wess Nyle
APR
3
WATKSY
Placement Album Tour with Travis Thompson
MAR 24-25
MAR 27-29
APR 7-19
APR
4
AN EVENING WITH
DAVID SEDARIS
DOJA CAT - SOLD OUT Brother Ali: Secrets & Escapes Tour 2020 with Open Mike Eagle, DJ Last Word
5/1
Gondwana with E.N Young, Aprendíz
5/2
Yung Pinch
4/18
Sullivan King
5/4
The Sounds
4/23
DMVU & TVBOO
5/7
4/24
Gramatik
Protohype & Jantsen with E.N Young
4/25
Jacob Whitesides
5/11
The Pretty Reckless with Them Evils
4/26
Fozzy with Through Fire, Royal Bliss, Black Satellite
5/12
Felly
5/18
Palaye Royale with Arrested Youth
5/26
Less Than Jake and Lagwagon
4/15
APR 17
War Memorial Auditorium
APR 20
MAY 2
4/28
TPAC.ORG 615-782-4040
Groups of 10 or more call 615-782-4060
TPAC.ORG is the official online source for buying tickets to TPAC events.
John Mark McMillian Awake in the Dream Tour with The Gray Havens & Strahan
BUY TICKETS AT THECOWAN.COM THECOWANNASHVILLE
THECOWANNASH
nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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critics’ picks
RICKIE LEE JONES Wednesday, April 15
Wednesday, April 8
JOHN SEBASTIAN
LYNDA CARTER
MAX WEINBERG’S JUKEBOX Thursday, April 16
Wednesday, May 6
Saturday, May 2
THE WEIGHT BAND W/MEMBERS OF THE BAND & LEVON HELM BAND (5/16) BJ THOMAS (6/5) DAVID WILCOX (6/13) HOT TUNA (7/25)
ALI BARTER // MAR 6
THE DALES // MAR 18
w/ Lady Junk
w/ JD Clayton
UPCOMING SHOWS Mar 12 Mar 12 Mar 13 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 14
Bendigo Fletcher (7pm) The Pressure Kids w/ Brother Moses (9pm) Thomas Csorba w/ Charlie Whitten (7pm) Dedo w/ AB and Jen Miller (9pm) William Matheny (7pm) The Western Sons w/ The Smokeshows
Mar 15 Mar 16
and Kaitie Forbes (9pm) Maya de Vitry w/ Courtney Hartman Ali Barter w/ Lady Junk (7pm)
Mar 16 Mar 17 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 19
MIMI Monday (Mariah Carey Tribute) ft. Maureen Murphy, Hollie Hammel, and Kendra Chantelle (9pm) New Faces Night ft. Scotty Hylbert, Jennafer Russell, Isaiah Zach, Waltzer Tent, Autumn Nicholas Rascal Martinez w/ The A-Oks & The Garden of Eden Tow’rs w/ A Boy and His Kite (7pm) Zach Deputy (9pm)
1604 8th Ave S Nashville, TN 37203 thebasementnash
thebasementnash
thebasementnash
sAt/3.14 [THE GROOVER]
Bowlive Feat. Soulive, GeorGe Porter Jr. & DJ loGic
Saturday’s show is the first public event at the new outpost of the successful New York bowling alley and venue Brooklyn Bowl, down by the home of the Nashville Sounds. For that reason alone, you might be inclined to swing by just to check it out, but the show onstage is virtually guaranteed to please. On one arm of the double-headliner bill is Soulive, a trio that’s been carrying the banner for instrumental funk and soul-jazz since 1999 and has been a festival staple for nearly that long. The group’s core is drummer Alan Evans, his keyboardist brother Neal Evans and their friend, underrated guitarist Eric Krasno, but they’re widely known for their collaborative nature. Also playing is George Porter Jr., who helped invent New Orleans funk as bassist of The Meters. And don’t snooze between sets: Manning the decks will be esteemed soul-jazz-loving turntablist DJ Logic. 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, 925 Third Ave. N. STEPHEN TRAGESER [FUN, FUN, FUN]
oF Montreal
I’m tempted to call veteran indie band Of Montreal’s new full-length UR FUN a followup to The Beach Boys’ last great record, 1977’s Love You. On Love You, Brian Wilson wrote about the joys of the everyday from the vantage point of a genius musician who was also an ordinary — and not always coherent — human being. Whatever the style of The Beach Boys had been, Wilson employed his immense gifts to create timeless paeans to watching television, astrology and catching a late movie with your significant other. Several decades later, Of Montreal’s latest seems like a move into a plush pop-music bunker. UR FUN is unabashedly escapist — leader Kevin
MUSIC
Sat, April 4 & Sun, April 5
THE JAMES HUNTER SIX
Barnes has constructed intricate amalgams of Beach Boys harmonies, prog textures and ’80s pop. Something titled “Polyaneurism” works well, while “Gypsy That Remains” is like a Hollies track remixed in a teen-pop style. UR FUN is pop eclecticism that lacks a center, which is why I still prefer Love You — The Beach Boys never really forgot where they came from. Opening for Of Montreal will be Lily Konigsberg and Matt Norman, who perform as Lily and Horn Horse, along with Nashville synth-poppers Scale Model. 7 p.m. at Cannery Ballroom, 1 Cannery Row EDD HURT [GLORIOUS BAXTER]
SaD Baxter w/Pretty Matty, Pony & SluSh
Not only does Sad Baxter’s hook-heavy, tonally excellent grunge-pop do the band’s ’90s ancestors proud, the winners of the Scene’s 2018 Best of Nashville writer’s choice for Best Band consistently tour with artists of a similar ilk, particularly those from Canada. Baxter and Vancouver’s excellent, underrated Dead Soft were a perfect match in November at Drkmttr. This time around, the power duo of singer-guitarist Deezy Violet and drummer Alex Mojaverian will be joined by a pair of Torontonians. Pretty Matty deals in dictionary-definition pop-punk, with the nasally vocals and power chords often found in places like Orange County and Long Island. Pony’s 2017 LP Do You is moodier, pairing sticky-sweet vocal hooks with post-punkish guitar clang. But either band would’ve been right at home on the Angus movie soundtrack, or a Vagrant Records compilation from the early 2000s. Also playing: Slush, whose Brian Jonestownmeets-Swervedriver guitarscapes were a highlight of last month’s local punk showcase Spewfest IV. 8 p.m. at Drkmttr, 1111 Dickerson Pike CHARLIE ZAILLIAN MUSIC
CHARLES ESTEN
MUSIC
(615) 538-2076 • WWW.FRANKLINTHEATRE.COM •419 MAIN STREET, FRANKLIN, TN 37064
to children out of wedlock. Shunned and forgotten — and not released until the 1970s — Dora and Persephone take on alter egos, forming a unique bond and employing fantasy as a means of survival. March 13-15 at The Barbershop Theater, 4003 Indiana Ave. AMY STUMPFL
MUSIC
A Division of The Heritage Foundation of Williamson County
[MUSKRAT LOVE]
elonMuSk
Nashville band ElonMusk and worldfamous engineer, entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk are two very different entities, although they do have certain commonalities — they’ve surely both smoked weed and thought a lot about space. The local three-piece is made up of Ryon Westover (bass/synth), Frank Hand (guitar) and Kate Haldrup (drums), and
of montreal
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critics’ picks
SCALE MODEL GUITARS REPAIR, RESTORATION, & CUSTOM BUILDS scalemodelguitars.com 615-988-0411
BROADWAY QUALITY ENTERTAINMENT WITH DINNER AND FULL BAR
music city irish fest
[EMERALD EYES]
Music city irish Fest
Without Celtic music, Lower Broadway would likely sound a lot different. While some readers might find that an appealing revision, there are plenty of lovers of Nashville’s many hallmark genres — including country, honky-tonk, bluegrass and Americana — and they’ll undoubtedly enjoy the fare at the Music City Irish Fest. The festival is produced by the same team that hosts Nashville Oktoberfest; it highlights Celtic music’s journey and evolution in America, and encourages audiences to embrace the “beautiful inheritance” of Irish and Scottish tradition. To support that mission, general admission is free. Don’t miss artists like the Scottish folk band Talisk, or JigJam, an Irish quartet famous for mixing Irish music and bluegrass. Irish dance performances include the opportunity to join in, and Nashville Pipes and Drums will also perform. Visit musiccityirishfest.com for details — and don’t forget to wear green! March 14-17 at Bicentennial Capitol Mall,
ART
600 James Robertson Parkway ABBY LEE HOOD [UNSUNG HEROES]
sounds & tones oF JeFFerson street: A history desk debut
Driving down Jefferson Street today, you may see only a few indications of the thriving music scene that once graced the neighborhood. But in the 1940s, the street was lined with clubs that hosted the biggest names in jazz, blues and R&B — from Jimi Hendrix to Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. Today most of those clubs have disappeared, but some of Nashville’s artists and historians are working to keep the legacy of the neighborhood alive. Thanks to a partnership between Jefferson Street Sound, Vanderbilt University and Metro Arts Nashville, eight former Jefferson Street musicians will have the opportunity to tell their stories at this event, which will also feature an exhibit of self-portraits and other photographs that showcase the significance of Jefferson Street, both as a part of Nashville’s history and as an influential force in American music. 11 a.m.2:30 p.m. at Jefferson Street Sound, 2004 Jefferson St. BRONTE LEBO
The Andrews Brothers
Mar 19 – Apr 9, 2020
Purchase your tickets through
www.chaffinsbarntheatre.com or call 615-646-9977 ext 2
SUN/3.15 MUSIC
COMMUNITY
has undoubtedly established itself as a heavy, doomy space-rock group. But the release of its debut album — titled … As Your Wanderer Taps at the Invisible Gate — will reveal whether the band’s music has a mission, or if its goal is simply to leave listeners suspended in a continuous cosmic trance. The two long, lyric-less singles that have already been released suggest the latter. Each track presents its own journey, jolting through multiple phases — from low, fuzzy humming to sharp, chaotic and almost frightening soundscapes. A series of music-video teasers on the band’s social media accounts provide a visual interpretation of its sound, revealing shape-shifting, psychedelic color displays. With an accompanying liquid light show from artist Mad Alchemy, Saturday’s live performance should be pretty similar to that experience. Supporting ElonMusk are local acts Tape Deck Mountain and Wanderers. At press time, The 5 Spot was undamaged but had been left without power by the storm. If the electricity isn’t restored in time for Saturday’s show, it may move to a new location. 8 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. KELSEY BEYELER
[YOUNG AMERICANS]
suburbAn Living
Philadelphia pop band Suburban Living sounds like they might have absorbed the late-’70s and early-’80s style known as New Romanticism. I’ve always loved Roxy Music and David Bowie, and ’80s bands like ABC and Spandau Ballet certainly had their moments. On his band’s 2016 fulllength Almost Paradise, Suburban Living leader Wesley Bunch came up with a set of sleek songs that draw upon the New Romantic aesthetic. If New Romantic rock celebrated artifice — along with Bowie and Bryan Ferry, Marc Bolan was another major influence on the style — Bunch & Co. are worthy successors to Spandau Ballet and Japan. I also hear hints of The Cure in Suburban Living tunes like “Walk Away” and “Lies and Demands.” There’s something plush about the band’s alienation that I find reassuring — hey, maybe they really like being disaffected in the suburbs. They have
nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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2219 Elliston Place 321-4457
r 18 wEd ma 19 tHu mar
HAPPY hour music
suburban living a new album, How to Be Human, set for spring release. Fellow Philadelphia synthpop band Korine will open for them this week at Drkmttr. 9 p.m. at Drkmttr, 1111 Dickerson Pike EDD HURT
drink specials daily
thu Love me in The Dark
3/12 Grindhouse FRI Ben Donovan and The Congregation 3/13 Timbo and the Tennessee Studs sat J Edwards 3/14 Bryan Fox Band Sun Luke Munday’s Bluegrass Sunday 3/15 Chris Scruggs MON Hard Redemption 3/16 Monday Night Beer Jam TUE Brandon Will 3/17 Nashville’s Most Wanted WED Robert Daniels 3/18 Music Row Freakshow THU Grindhouse 3/19
THis Week’s LisTinGs
Thursday, March 12
aT 4:00 Nashville reads sToryTiMe with Mary cady aT 6:30 Therese aNNe Fowler A Good Neighborhood in conversation with KaTheriNe KlocKeNKeMper
saTurday, March 14
aT 10:30 saTurday sToryTiMe aT 2:00 Kayla sTarK & vivieN MildeNberger aT 2:00 JeFF sharleT
suNday, March 15
This Brilliant Darkness MoNday, March 16
American Legion Post 82 E S T . 1952
ALL WELCOME
M-F: 4:00 PM - 2:00 AM Weekends open at Noon 3/12 Monthly Membership Meeting 3/13 No Judgement Karaoke 3/14 Honky Tonk Saturday 3/16 Open 3/17 Honky Tonk Tuesday 3/18 Bluegrass Wednesday 3204 Gallatin Pike Nashville, Tennessee (615) 228-3598
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aT 6:30 saloN@615 with JaMes Mcbride
Deacon King Kong
Tuesday, March 17
aT 6:30 saloN@615 with louise erdrich
The Night Watchman
wedNesday, March 18
aT 6:30 parNassus booK club discussing Little Faith
Thursday, March 19
aT 10:30 parNassus booK club discussing Little Faith with special guest NicKolas buTler aT 4:00 sToryTiMe with Mary cady aT 6:30 lisa gorNicK
The Peacock Feast
parnassusbooks.net 3900 Hillsboro Pike in Green Hills 615.953.2243 @parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks
[AS LONG AS YOU KEEP TRYING]
SilverSun PickuPS
Angelenos Silversun Pickups have been flying the flag of rock-solid, reliable altrock for 20 years, issuing a steady stream of vaguely post-punkish indie rock ever since their full-length debut Carnavas in 2006. The band’s most recent effort — last year’s Widow’s Weeds — is its first with noted producer Butch Vig, best known for drumming with late-’90s chart-toppers Garbage and producing Nirvana’s iconic Nevermind. What Vig and the Pickups managed to create with Widow’s Weeds is a dark and brooding effort, reportedly inspired in part by the death of keyboardist Joe Lester’s father as well as frontman Brian Aubert’s battle with alcoholism. Songs like “Straw Man” and the titular track have shades of mid-career Smashing Pumpkins and Vig’s own Garbage, and Silversun Pickups are known for their snare-tight live performances. SoCal rockscene mainstay Ilan Rubin’s solo project The New Regime will open the show. 8 p.m. at Marathon Music Works, 1402 Clinton St.
empathetically exhausted, in the way you might feel drained by watching an overtime football game.” McBride, who also authored the beloved 1995 novel The Color of Water, remains one of the most exciting voices in contemporary fiction. 6:15 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike ERICA CICCARONE
D. PATRICK RODGERS
MON/3.16 [CONCRETE JUNGLE]
Salon@615 Feat. JameS mcBride
James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, will stop off in Nashville on tour with his hotly anticipated Deacon King Kong. Set in 1960s New York, the novel tells the story of a cranky old church deacon named Sportcoat who shuffles into the yard of a housing project and shoots a drug dealer at point-blank range. This sets in motion a headlong plot filled with an assortment of vividly drawn mobsters, cops, churchgoers and neighbors, who all want to know why the deacon snapped — and why he doesn’t remember a thing about it. New Yorker critic Jonathan Dee writes: “The prose radiates a kind of chain-reaction energy. After some chapters, you feel
COMEDY
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MUSIC
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BOOKS
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[FIGURE IT OUT]
Letterkenny live
Straddling the continuum of Canadian TV comedy that sweeps from Schitt’s Creek to The Trailer Park Boys (with some Kids in the Hall in there for good measure), Letterkenny is a treasure of mordantly funny dialogue and the most reassuring of vowels. The fact that they’re bringing nine members of the cast (Roald will be there!) of this genuinely beloved show to TPAC is a testament to the scrappy series and to the willingness of the public to embrace superb comedy regardless of geographic specificities or television formats. The show is one of those treasures that has been given a suitably resplendent platform thanks to the voracious appetite of domestic streaming services, and it’s an utter delight to anyone who digs really smart humor that could pass for coarse, vulgar and tacky in the eye of a casual bypasser. Visit the glossaries that abound
NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
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3/9/20 4:14 PM
critics’ picks
[WHERE THERE’S A WILL]
William Tyler w/STeve Gunn & mary laTTimore
William Tyler is 40 and looks younger, but it’s not too early to call him a local legend. Just crunch the numbers: three-and-ahalf years as co-owner of much-missed West Nashville venue The Stone Fox; four albums of heady solo guitar music (including three for Chapel Hill’s influential Merge Records); infinite indie-rock points accrued as a member of Lambchop, Silver Jews and Superdrag. Tyler relocated to L.A. a few years back, a move that last year’s lovely Goes West LP commemorated. But whenever he comes home for a show, you can count on it to be a singular stand-alone event — like September’s show with Kevin Morby, or his post-Thanksgiving all-star tribute to fallen comrade David Berman. On Monday’s show at Third Man, Tyler will be joined by guitar traveler Steve Gunn and harpist extraordinaire Mary Lattimore. It’s only the first date of a nine-day tour for the trio — culminating at Knoxville experimental-music summit Big Ears — but here’s hoping they intend to jam, and that it will be recorded. 7 p.m. at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
FILM
TUES/3.17 [LAST MAN STANDING]
He DiD iT WiTH STyle: a KirK DouGlaS Seminar
Local treasure the Belcourt Theatre has announced its latest slate of seminars, including one on the recently departed Golden Age of Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas. He Did It With Style: A Kirk Douglas Seminar will take a deep dive into the influential star of Ace in the Hole, Spartacus, The Bad and the Beautiful and many more influential films. For half a century, Douglas seemed undefeatable.
He acted in more than 80 movies, often playing tough, charismatic antiheroes — he even walked away from a helicopter crash in 1991. The Belcourt seminar will “offer a cultural history of Douglas’ place in Hollywood” and “address the ways in which this star’s ‘larger-than-life’ persona responded to and negotiated norms of white masculinity in U.S. culture.” Led by Vanderbilt professor Claire Sisco King, the two-hour seminar will accompany a lineup of Douglas-starring Weekend Classics, including the World War I saga Paths of Glory, which plays March 14-15. The cost of the seminar is $25 ($20 for Belcourt members). 7 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. ERICA CICCARONE
WED/3.18 FILM
MUSIC
on the internet to pick up its hockey-derived Polari of a language if you must, but this is not to be missed. 8 p.m. at TPAC’s Jackson Hall, 505 Deaderick St. JASON SHAWHAN
[NO BALLS THERE]
STaff PicKS: The Players Club
There’s probably a reason O’Shea Jackson, the artist better known as Ice Cube, is recognized more as a rapper and actor than as a filmmaker. Aside from an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about hiphop’s historical obsession with Oakland Raiders gear, his sole directorial effort remains 1998’s The Players Club, the story of Diamond, a hard-working girl who starts dancing at the titular venue to pay for her tuition at an HBCU. Ice broke into the screenwriting game with Friday, but The Players Club could not be further from that laid-back stoner classic — reviews at the time compared it to the blaxploitation flicks of the ’70s, but it’s much closer in tone and thematic seriousness to the work of John Singleton, though it lacks his sensitivity. The Players Club might have aged poorly in its depictions of sex work and sexual assault, but it’s still worth watching if only for the stray details: superb supporting turns from Bernie Mac as the club owner and Jamie Foxx as a DJ, a cameo from Luke of 2 Live Crew, and a classic soundtrack with cuts from K-Ci & JoJo, Master P and more. 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave.
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the players club
nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
Cocktails You Should Be Drinking NashvilleScene.com
food and drink
CSA FYI
From young family farms to mainstays and more, here are some area suppliers for your seasonal CSAs By Jennifer Justus
I
don’t know if the CSA has finally reached the acronym status of, say, ASAP or LOL — or even the timely POTUS or DNC. But it has certainly come a long way. CSA stands for communitysupported agriculture, and by signing up for a CSA share with a local farm, customers choose to support a farmer upfront in exchange for a regular and seasonal box of vegetables (and sometimes meats or other products). In the meantime, the farmer and customer get to know one another, and the customer sharpens kitchen-improv skills with incentive to make healthful meals from scratch at home. Not so long ago, Middle Tennesseans only had a handful of farms to choose from when picking a CSA. Options now are bountiful. And though CSA shares vary somewhat in structure, price and duration, this is the time of year when farms open sign-ups. At their core, CSAs give us more opportunities for connection — feeling connected to the land where we live; feeling connected to food by season; and feeling connected to the people who grow or raise the food that we’ll use to nourish ourselves and those around us. A CSA can get us away from our screens and away from a processed, shipped existence, back toward our roots in real life — or IRL, as some might say. Below you’ll find a list of area CSAs — it isn’t a comprehensive list, but it can get you started in making choices.
lost weekend farm
Younger Family Farms
According to the 2017 USDA census, the average age of a farmer in Tennessee is 59. But here in Middle Tennessee, several younger families have taken a chance on a tough business. For example, Bloomsbury Farm has a popular CSA, and the farmers at Sugar Camp Farm in Bon Aqua have already sold out of their 2020 CSA shares. Before starting their farm, they interned at Bells Bend Farms, which has had a CSA for 11 years. A couple more to consider:
Lost Weekend Farm Elizabeth and Paul Lassiter grow food at Neely’s Bend in Madison, and they call their CSA share The Good Life Box. It usually includes seven to 10 types of fruit, vegetables and herbs per share. Full and half shares are available at two price points and run from May through mid-October. It might include corn grits and garlic scapes at the beginning of the season to arugula, crowder peas, tomatoes, turnips and sweet potatoes by fall. More info and sign-ups: lostweekendfarms. com/good-life-box
Sweeter Days Farm Christa and Todd Bentley (whom the Scene covered in our Veterans Day issue back in November) run Sweeter Days Farm in Ashland City. This year they’re providing a 20-week summer CSA as well as an eight-week fall CSA, which runs
sweeter days farm from mid-October through mid-December. What to expect? In spring, you might see beets, fennel, broccoli, bok choy. Summer will bring eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and collards. By fall, it’s sweet potatoes, mustard greens, radish and more frostsweetened carrots. Sweeter Days offers a 5 percent discount for active-duty military — the equivalent of one share. More info and sign-ups: sweeterdaysfarm. com/csainfo
from — this is the CSA for you. More info and sign-ups: barefootfarmer. com/csa
Experienced Mainstays
Growing Together
Since 1972, farmers Hank and Cindy Delvin have blazed a trail for others in organic farming in Middle Tennessee, and now their son Hank Jr. offers a CSA through Delvin Farms, while the Delvins’ daughter Amy and her husband Brandon Tavalin have a grass-fed meat CSA at Tavalin Tails that includes 20 to 22 pounds of meats per share, including beef, lamb, pork and chicken. Also to consider:
Hill and Hollow Farm The couple behind this farm, Robin Verson and Paul Bela, met on an organic CSA farm in Northern Illinois and almost immediately started making plans for their own. After farming and working across the world (Australia, Taiwan, Indonesia), they put down roots in Edmonton, Ky. Their first CSA began about two decades ago with 19 customers, and while some of those same folks remain today, Hill and Hollow has added many new friends. You’ll find vegetables, herbs and flowers in their CSA shares. More info and sign-ups: hillandhollowfarm.com
Long Hungry Creek Farm Jeff Poppen (also known as The Barefoot Farmer) is about as close to a celebrity farmer as Nashville gets. From Red Boiling Springs, Poppen runs one of the oldest and largest organic farms in Tennessee and encourages CSA members to treat his farm like their own for “hiking, picnics, swimming, camping and planting potatoes.” He grows biodynamic food — 80 varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers. If you like a little dirt on your potatoes — as a reminder where they came
An Ethnically Diverse Farm
While labor on farms often involves people of color, the USDA census indicates that 95 percent of farmers running their businesses are white. Here is a local spot with folks from ethnically diverse backgrounds.
This program of The Nashville Food Project includes 10 farmers who came to the United States as refugees from Bhutan and Burma. While some of the farmers have been in the States for several years, others arrived as recently as the fall — which means you’ll have the chance to help support their businesses as they find community in a new country. The farmers, many of whom have been farming their entire lives, grow more familiar vegetables like tomatoes, collard greens and bok choy, as well as Nepali mustard greens and bitter gourd. After two seasons with a successful fall CSA, Growing Together will be adding a spring CSA this year. Both CSAs run eight weeks. (Full disclosure: I work with The Nashville Food Project.)
More info and sign-ups: thenashvillefoodproject.org/csa
Out-of-the-Box Boxes
In addition to CSA shares with vegetables, many farms have specialized areas of expertise — places such as Stomping Ground Herbals, which offers an herbalism share. Caney Fork Farms provides a mixed share that includes vegetables, meats and breads, while Rosie Belle Farm and Green Door Gourmet allow customers to choose products that range from vegetables to jams, honey and goat cheese. CSA shares focused on meats and fish abound too, and those include farms like Myers Farm Beef, Virgin Bay Seafood, Tennessee Grass Fed (beef), Ladies of the Lamb and Pure Pastures (chicken and eggs). Email arts@nashvillescene.com
nashvillescene.com | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | Nashville Scene
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Taste The Flavor of:
VEG OUT
d town Digging into vegetable dishes aroun
Sunflower Cafe — Burger Bowl — $11.25
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he city of Berry Hill is home to a delightful array of small businesses and specialty shops. At less than one square mile, the tiny city has everything you never knew you needed — from beads and healing crystals to scuba gear, dollhouse furniture and birdhouses. You can make a day of prowling around independently owned shops. Once you work up an appetite, head down Azalea Street to a plant-based eatery that’s become a dependable mainstay for Nashville vegetarians. The menu at Sunflower Cafe is 100 percent vegan — although you can add dairy cheese to any dish you like. I’ll be honest: I’ve been a Sunflower Cafe vegetarian (with intermittent stretches of being a mere pescatarian, 2834 azalea PlaCe SunflowerCafenaShville.Com don’t judge) for nearly 20 years, and I know as well as anyone that not all vegan dishes are created equal. Often, the best meals don’t try to imitate chicken or beef, but rather stick to their veggie guns with pride. That’s why I love the burger bowl at Sunflower. It starts with tender, plump grains of yellow rice. What makes this rice so good? The staff member I asked claimed ignorance. (I love a mystery.) Next comes kale, which some might consider the most overrated vegetable out there. But at Sunflower, it’s lightly sautéed — never stringy, always easy to chew — and tossed with sesame seeds. Then comes the burger, which is where things get real. I loathe a smushy veggie burger. If it’s in a bun, it should maintain its form, but sadly, many a tasty burger fails this test. Sunflower’s ingenious solution? They put the burger — which is packed full of zucchini, beets, carrots, sticky purple rice and other veggies (but no beans!) — atop the bed of rice and kale. Cut it up into bits, people! You can choose from nine (!) sets of multiple toppings — make it hearty with sautéed onions and mushrooms, go tropical with sweet-chili-pineapple, etc. I always order the Traditional Sunflower style: tangy sundried tomato spread, bright tomato slices and garlic aioli. (I ask them to leave off the red onion. It’s your funeral on that front.) Friends, by the time I reach the bottom of my bowl, I feel as wholesome as Berry Hill itself. ERICA CICCARONE
NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
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3/9/20 4:17 PM
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nashvillescene.com | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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art
Sound and Vision Terry Adkins’ two-part exhibition finds the prescient artist looking back
T
erry Adkins: Our Sons and Daughters Ever on the Altar, an exhibition currently on view at both the Frist Art Museum and Fisk University, is one part multimedia visual art display, one part musicological investigation. Its sculptures, prints, photographs, paintings and videos offer overlapping histories of black American music and black American lives. But the show — which includes work from the latter half of Adkins’ nearly-40-year career — is most noteworthy for its timely multidisciplinary aesthetics, which offer a strikingly contemporary perspective on lesser-known asTerry Adkins: Our pects of black art and Sons and Daughters Ever on the Altar music. Through May 31 at Adkins’ best muthe Frist Art Museum, sic-art hybrids are and through Sept. 12 sculptural objects at Fisk University’s Carl Van Vechten Art created from pieces Gallery of musical instruments. The Frist show opens with a quartet of “Aviariums From Ornithology’’ — four horizontal sculptures made of concentric successions of drum cymbals and trumpet mutes arranged along aluminum rods. The repetitive circular shapes evoke sound waves, and the “Aviariums” are a great example of Adkins’ penchant for combining familiar materials into unique new forms. The Frist installations also include multimedia salutes to Adkins’ musical heroes: “Principalities” uses video, audio and even
an actual parachute to contrast Jimi Hendrix’s anti-war flower-child image with his earlier, lesser-known stint as a paratrooper in the Army’s 101st Airborne. “Belted Bronze” offers large sculptures, drawings and video to celebrate Chattanooga-born blues singing legend Bessie Smith. My favorite work in this “recital” is “Columbia,” a large wood disc hanging on the back wall of the gallery. Adkins covered the disc in one coat of shiny black enamel paint for each of Smith’s platinum records. It’s simple, and it’s stunning. The Frist component offers installations of large sculptures, series and constructions, but Fisk’s portion of the exhibition is mostly a 2D affair. The sizes of available gallery spaces necessitated this split between larger and smaller works, but the distinctions between the halves that make this whole exhibition are among the great successes of its arrangement. The Frist displays are large, looming, ponderous and meditative. But the Fisk presentation excites with variety — bursts of color, swatches of texture and deep history lessons. Continuing with musical analogies, the Frist installations are operatic — elaborate and grandiose. The Fisk display is a rocking jukebox loaded with shiny black portraits of people, places and periods at 45 RPM. One highlight of the Fisk show is “Trope Heroic” — a gorgeous wall sculpture that at first glance looks like a set of giant
A group show at David Lusk Gallery is a visual treasure trove By Laura Hutson Hunter
W
hen artist-curator Amelia Briggs found the battered red children’s book Famous Fables in a Franklin thrift store, she knew she was onto something. The blocky, sans-serif font on its cover is so restrained it’s almost institutional, and the black-and-white silhouette illusions are straight out of Kara Walker’s aesthetic playbook. It was the perfect unifying object for the group exhibition she’d been dreaming up with David Lusk, who owns the gallery where Briggs has worked as director for seven years. For David Lusk Gallery’s Fable, Briggs asked artists Ashley Doggett, Rob Matthews, Huger Foote, New Hat Projects, Mellow Mountain Coalition, Anne Siems, Leslie Holt, Emily Weiner and Terry Lynn to create a work or group Fable of works inspired by the Through April 4 at book. Whether the artists David Lusk Gallery interpreted that directive literally or loosely was entirely up to them. Briggs’ expertise as an artist in her own right helped guide her to choose these particular artists — her own puffy, brightly colored works indicate that her style would lend itself well to themes of childhood. But certain artists interpreted the instruction in ways that weren’t so straightforward.
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“mellow mountain fable 1&2,” mellow mountain coalition
Telling Tales
Huger Foote — son of legendary Civil War historian Shelby Foote — took inspiration from the tendency for fables to be told from an animal’s point of view, and made photographs with that perspective in mind. In his three untitled photographs — each of which echoes the artist’s time spent under the tutelage of William Eggleston — details like a scrap of snack-cake cellophane share space with power lines, which share space with ragged strips of asphalt and bundles of pansies. There is no hierarchy of visual information in these shots — it’s all just blocks of light and color. Hanging on Lusk’s freestanding wall — a front-andcenter space that a more lowbrow critic might call the gallery’s money-shot space — is an installation of draped paper by New Hat Projects. The artist and
“Aviarium (Dicksissel),” Terry Adkins
By Joe Nolan
brass minotaur horns, but is actually an assemblage of two tubas. Adkins’ early champions noted that his work seemed simultaneously ancient as well as ahead of its time, and the myth and mirth offered by this work puts those captivating contradictions front and center. Other music-centric highlights here include a duet of gorgeous prints made from metal music-box discs, but the Fisk portion of the show also shouts out black contributions to art and literature. Some of the most stunning works in this two-part exhibition are included in Adkins’ “Progressive Nature Studies” — a portfolio display that re-creates George Washington Carver’s experiments with natural pigments, and celebrates Carver’s lesser-known contributions to the development of abstract painting. “The Philadelphia Negro Reconsidered” is inspired by the color-coded maps W.E.B. Du Bois created for a 1899 demographic study of black life in Philadelphia’s original South Ward. Of course, Du Bois is best known as
the author of The Souls of Black Folk, and Fisk curator Jamaal Sheats includes the book’s original printing plates alongside Adkins’ “Darkwater Record” — an installation made from a stack of cassette decks set to play readings of Du Bois’ 1960 speech “Socialism and the American Negro,” but with the volume turned completely off. The bouncing meter needles transform the audio into a purely visual display, and the stack of tape recorders is topped by a bust of Chairman Mao Zedong. In 2014, Adkins unexpectedly died of a heart attack at age 60, and his abbreviated life seems particularly stunted given the fact that Adkins’ art is so perfectly suited for today’s contemporary art conversation. It is yearning for history and authenticity even as it attempts to reflect the multifaceted viewpoints of the post-postmodern age. Adkins’ New York Times obituary described him as a “composer of art, sculptor of music.” Adkins was also an artist born for this new century, with a vision that put him ahead of his time — and the courage to never forget his past. Email arts@nashvillescene.com
Furthering those trick-mirror reflections is Mellow Mountain Coalition’s pair of 44-by-22-inch panels, titled simply “Mellow Mountain Fable 1” and “Mellow Mountain Fable 2.” Like New Hat, Mellow Mountain is an artistic partnership — Hamlett Dobbins and Tad Lauritzen-Wright have been working together since 2008 — and their work in Fable is an oversized paper installation. But everything else about the works is so dissimilar it’s as if they’ve intentionally played off of each other. Unlike New Hat’s austere aesthetic, the Mellow Mountain tableau is reminiscent of the psychedelia of 1970s children’s shows — you can almost imagine the monkey and the fox from the fable the artists reference popping up from behind the Mike Kelley-winking wood-grain panels with Cheshire grins. On their own, each work in the exhibition is strong, but it’s the way everything plays together that is Fable’s biggest sucA panel discussion with cess. This show is an album, not a design duo featuring Kelly Diehl and Fable artists Huger Foote, collection of singles, and its themes Elizabeth Williams has produced Terry Lynn, Rob Matthews, of childhood trauma, innocence “Fly and Fade and Burn,” and it’s a New Hat Projects and Emily Weiner, moderated by Cat and redemption strike a balance bold addition to Fable. Measuring Acree, will take place at 11 between poignant and heavy. There 144 by 162 inches, the piece is a.m. Saturday, March 14, at is space between the profane (Ashstunningly monumental, and it uses David Lusk Gallery ley Doggett’s fairly maudlin painting mirroring in a manner borrowed from of a black wet nurse feeding white chilthe fable The Raven and the Swan. The dren, Leslie Holt’s animal shadow puppets piece is made from two large strips of paembroidered onto canvas) and the polished (Rob per that curtain the wall — one side is folded into Matthews’ studies in sacred geometry, Emily Weiner’s various accordion patterns and covered with chaotic, Cy Twombly-esque chalk lines, while the other side re- iconographic lunar totems). Like the storytelling tradition the artists took inspiration from, Fable is pithy, mains elegantly undisturbed, patterned with slivers of multidimensional, and a lot of fun. pigment the artists say reference a raven’s flight and the chronophotography of Êtienne-Jules Marey. Email arts@nashvillescene.com
Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
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3/9/20 4:46 PM
books
MoMents in the hunger The Night Watchman is a sweeping vision of spiritual and historical resonance By Emily ChoatE
T
homas Wazhushk — the titular character of Louise Erdrich’s engrossing new novel, The Night Watchman — paces the dark and empty spaces of the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant in the hours before dawn, studying and strategizing ways to help his community fight for its life. He also fights to keep himself awake through the graveyard shift. While he’s experiencing severe exhaustion, his memories rush in, sometimes unbidden. He meets with the ghosts of friends who are long dead, and relives the toughest times in his childhood: “There were moments in the hunger he would never forget.” That early threat of starvation forced The NighT WaTchmaN By Louise erdrich harpercoLLins 464 pages, $28.99 erdrich wiLL discuss The NighT WaTchmaN 6:15 p.m. Tuesday, march 17, aT parnassus Books
young Thomas away from home and into a government boarding school — cut off from family and the Chippewa language. But now he works nonstop to keep his people together. As chairman of the reservation’s cash-strapped tribal council, Thomas relies on his night watchman’s salary to fund the vital community work he does during the daytime, as well as to support his family’s loving but crowded household. In an afterword to the novel, Erdrich describes how she created Thomas by drawing on the experiences of her own grandfather, Patrick Gourneau. As tribal chairman for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Gourneau fought against a venal piece of anti-Indian legislation — House Concurrent Resolution 108, also known as the “termination bill.” Passed by Congress in 1953, the resolution called for the nullification of crucial treaties. Such treaties outlined Chippewa control over their remaining lands, guaranteed vital federal services and recognized the tribal status of the Chippewa — and ultimately, the status of all Native American tribes. Losing the battle against Resolution 108 would have meant losing legal safeguards that kept these already ravaged nations from dissolving altogether. The novel’s other driving force alongside Thomas is Patrice Paranteau, a powerful young woman who does precision work at the jewel-bearing plant. Supremely competent in a wide range of skills, Patrice faces enormous pressure from family members who depend on her salary, friends who may not be trustworthy, and men whose trouble-
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making desires seem to follow her everywhere. Her daily life carries razor-thin margins for error. Luckily, Patrice “did things perfectly when enraged.” When she learns that her older sister Vera, who’d disappeared months earlier in Minneapolis, has been spotted — in distress, carrying a new baby — Patrice marshals her inner resolve. Determined to find Vera, she leaves home for the city and initiates a chain reaction of events — some surreal, others harrowing. Her family’s dilemmas expose the ways in which poverty and systemic racism inflict impossible choices on those who are the most vulnerable and the least protected. Meanwhile, sensing that their time may be limited, Thomas orchestrates a formal challenge to the termination bill. He gathers support from a memorable cast of friends, family and neighbors. These efforts bring together disparate voices within the community. Among those voices are guardians of the older ways, like Patrice’s fascinating mother Zhaanat, who was hidden away from government schools as a child so the traditions of medicine and other teachings she’d learned could survive intact. Millie, a younger tribal member who left the reservation, uses her academic study of Chippewa economics to support the legal fight in a completely different way. White locals who have come to understand why the bill would devastate their community also lend their skills to help. Erdrich imbues The Night Watchman with her signature style: a sweeping vision of spiritual and historical resonance, animated by the rich depth of feeling within her characters and a wry current of humor. Amid its many strengths and pleasures, this novel creates a graceful meditation on the power — and the steep cost — of holding vigil for the things of our world that we love and that we know we may lose. Thomas and Patrice both struggle under the strain of immense responsibility. But they both come to experience something else too — glimmers of profound revelation that connect them to a story far larger than they can ever comprehend. They may labor and risk for the sake of today’s formidable troubles, but what they serve is in fact the vast wholeness of time — what Thomas’ father calls the “holy element” of time. Awake in the middle of one winter night, Patrice steps outdoors into “a resounding silence.” She no longer knows what she hungers for, or where her next steps might take her. But she feels herself “included in the pause of some vast complex idea, and she wondered. Will I be included in the next thought?” For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. Email arts@nashvillEscEnE.com
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music
Play, Fiddle, Play
A new album brings the late, great John Hartford’s notebooks to life
D
epending on whom you ask, you may get a lot of different answers about who John Hartford was. The prolific New Yorkborn musician and lover of Mississippi River lore wrote one of the The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project most-covered pop Vol. 1 out Friday, songs ever, “Gentle March 13 on My Mind.” But he was a scholar of many kinds of folk and roots music, and spent much of his career putting that knowledge to work in Nashville. He made key contributions to The Byrds’ 1968 country-rock masterpiece Sweetheart of the Rodeo. His 1971 album Aereo-Plain set the standard for progressive bluegrass (aka “newgrass”). Not long before he died of complications from non-Hodgkins’ lymphoma in 2001, his work on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? helped usher in a renewed interest in roots music that boosted the nascent Americana genre. John Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes, a book project spearheaded by his family and published in 2018, testifies to another aspect of his relentless creativity. It contains 176 of some 3,000 original compositions written between 1983 and 2001. It’s an amazing resource for musicians who can read and play music from standard staff notation. Thanks to the array of outstanding musicians who play on The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project Vol. 1, a 17-track album completed with help from a Kickstarter campaign and out Friday, anyone will be able to hear selections from this body of work for themselves.
The project began not long after Hartford’s death, when his daughter Katie Hartford Hogue and her family moved back to Nashville and eventually filled their basement with the contents of Hartford’s office. Among the materials — many of which were donated to Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Center for Popular Music at MTSU — were 68 spiralbound notebooks filled with pieces, some of which ended up in the book. Before Hartford started writing these tunes, he had only played music by ear, and his prolific writing was partly spurred on by having learned to write notation. “Whenever he did something like that, he was obsessive about it,” Hogue tells the Scene. “He would always have tunes going on in his head — everything would kind of make music to him. Now he had a way to write it down. So he just started writing. And the more he started writing, the more came out.” The recording was produced by Matt Combs, who also assisted with the book. Combs, a fiddler and mandolinist in the Grand Ole Opry house band who studied under Hartford, recruited a slew of worldclass musicians to play on the album, including bassist Dennis Crouch, fiddler Megan Lynch Chowning, banjo player Alison Brown and mandolinists Sierra Hull and Ronnie McCoury. It was important that the project not feel stiff and constrained, so each musician picked songs that spoke to them, then interpreted and arranged them through their own creative filters. While the album is mostly fiddle- and mandolin-
Feats of Strength
Charles ‘Wigg’ Walker. Still, even though we emphasize and stress blues as a big part of what we do, we find it’s still a challenge for us in terms of getting the blues to the level we’d like in the city.” The Nashville Blues and Roots Alliance presents six events yearly, including three showcases at 3rd and Lindsley that feature a regional or national performer alongside locals. The next of these is set for Thursday, March 19, and will be headlined by St. Louis blues star Hurricane Ruth. She’s coming to Music City ahead of the release of a fine new LP, Good Life, later this month. Playing alongside her will be bluesschooled Music City outfits Nick hurricane Swan Band, Brother Rock, Sugar ruth Lime Blue and Niecie. Hubner practices what he preaches with regard to celebrating all forms of roots music. He is the morning drive-time DJ on Americanafocused radio station WMOT 89.5-FM, as well as host of the station’s weekly event Finally Friday, held at noon each Friday at 3rd and Lindsley. But he sees at least one thing the blues community needs if it’s to flourish the way Americana has. “One thing we’d like to see are more venues for the
The Nashville Blues and Roots Alliance begins its second year By Ron Wynn
J
ust as there has long been a far more active local jazz scene in Nashville than many living outside its borders believe, the blues scene here is strong as well. The Nashville Blues and Roots Alliance is enterNashville Blues and ing its second year of Roots Alliance showcase advocacy and support Thursday, March 19, at efforts for local blues 3rd and Lindsley acts, just as its predecessors the Music City Blues Society and Nashville Blues Society did for decades. The alliance’s goals include raising the profile of area blues and roots performers, as well as coordinating efforts with other like-minded organizations in town. “We’re certainly open to participation and membership by acts and fans who embrace the concept of roots music in its broadest sense,” Whit Hubner, president of the alliance, tells the Scene. “But we’re trying hard to get more exposure and interest in blues musicians and blues acts. We want to provide more platforms for live music, especially for blues. We’ve got performers in the organization like Jonell Mosser and
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photo: Charles Seton
By Olivia Ladd
centric, it doesn’t adhere to any one specific style: There are old-time tunes, progressive experiments and parlor waltzes, among other things. “A lot of what John was doing was effectively journaling,” says rising mandolin picker Tristan Scroggins. He performs on the album and has been helping the family with archival work for the past year. “It was like a musical diary. One of the songs on the album is recorded with a string quartet. It’s clearly John practicing writing four-part harmony stuff. It’s not particularly complicated, but it’s this view into his brain. It’s like his musical thoughts for the day.” Chris Eldridge, whom you’ll know as a member of Punch Brothers and the other half of a duo with fellow masterful guitarist Julian Lage, also plays on the album. He sees Hartford’s work as an essential guiding force in moving string-band music forward.
blues,” Hubner says. “We have Bourbon Street, and blues acts perform at B.B. King’s, and there are lots of other places like Mercy Lounge, the Ryman or 3rd and Lindsley where we get blues acts appearing on a periodic basis. As a group, we’re certainly happy to have those places, and I’m not complaining about them. But it would be nice to have more places that brought in more of the big-name touring acts on a
“He’s so prolific, so creative, so reverent of tradition while simultaneously being completely irreverent towards it,” says Eldridge. “He kept those two things in just beautiful balance. To me and a lot of my peers, Hartford is kind of an eternal hero.” Scroggins will be part of a tour, being planned for May, on which some of the fiddle tunes (and other longtime Hartford favorites) will be performed live. He appreciates how the project opens up another avenue for more new audiences to experience Hartford’s unpretentious genius for themselves. “He’s had a real staying power, and now the new generation of performers and artists and creators is coming along, he’s a part of that,” Scroggins says. “Once that happens, you’re cemented into the fabric of music.” Email music@nashvillescene.com
regular basis.” If you’d like to become a member or get involved, the Blues and Roots Alliance’s website at bluesandroots.org has the details. Hubner notes that the alliance has worked with the Tennessee Jazz and Blues Society on past events at Carol Ann’s Home Cooking Cafe, and he says they’re certainly open to teaming with the Americana Music Association or other similar groups. “We all have similar missions,” he says. “We want to see the music grow and prosper, and there be more opportunities for local musicians to perform and work.” In addition, Hubner also has a major long-term goal for the alliance. And he’s confident the city would support the effort. “I’d love to see us have either a weeklong or a weekend blues festival that’s similar to the Chicago Blues Festival,” says Hubner. “I really think we could do it, especially someplace like Riverfront Park. Use it as a vehicle to both bring in some of the greats from around the nation and spotlight and showcase all the talent we’ve got in the area. It could be a huge event for Nashville if it’s done the right way. I don’t know if it will happen anytime soon, but I’d sure love to see it.” Email music@nashvillescene.com
Nashville Scene | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
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music
In This World
Che Apalache hopes to open new horizons in bluegrass By Abby Lee Hood
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he Apalache doesn’t make music about politics — they make music about the human experience. But some human experiences, like leaving a dangerous life to seek refuge in the United States, are politicized by folks who might gently be described as less tolerant. Led by fiddler and singer Joe Troop, Che Apalache offers a unique mix of bluegrass and folk traditions from other countries around the world, most notably Argentina and Mexico. Troop was born in North Carolina and developed a deep love of stringband music. But being queer in the South can be a particularly painful experience, so he left the U.S., going on to live in several countries before settling in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, he began teaching bluegrass music, and with a handful of his best students — Pau Barjau on banjo, Franco Martino on guitar and Martin Bobrik on mandolin — he formed Che Apalache. The quartet draws on a variety of cultural backgrounds to form a blended genre they’ve dubbed Latingrass. On Sunday, the group will make a return to Nashville. The show at City Winery comes in the wake of the band’s first Grammy nomination: 2019’s Rearrange My Heart, produced by Nashville-residing banjo ace Béla Fleck, was up for Best Folk Album. In addition to the accolades, they’ll bring their perspective on the LGBTQ community, immigration and more, which they hope has the potential to open hearts and minds. “Bluegrass is not a welcoming genre,” Troop tells the Scene in a recent phone interview. “We come across a lot of Latinx people, immigrants or children of immigrants. A lot
Remembering Jim Williamson The Nashville Jazz Orchestra leader dedicated his life to the communal spirit of music By Ron Wynn
E
ven some of the most devoted jazz fans look at big-band ensembles as a part of the idiom that deserves respect, but has little relevance in the 21st century. Jim Williamson, however, never believed that. In addition to being an outstanding trumpet and flugelhorn soloist, he spent nearly 25 years as the leader of the Nashville Jazz Orchestra, consistently proving that an 18-piece aggregation could play anything and everything in the jazz canon, while finding room for selections from the contemporary popular music world. Williamson, who died Feb. 26 at age 78, was not just the NJO’s music director and leader, but also its heart and soul. Since 1996, the orchestra’s roster has included a host of Music City’s finest instrumentalists and vocalists, and their programs have ranged from
Playing Sunday, March 15, at City Winery
of them express that they’ve always loved bluegrass, but felt stigmatized.” “The Dreamer,” a single from Rearrange My Heart that NPR recognized among its Best Songs of 2019, is one song that helps bridge the gaps between cultures. It tells the story of a young boy struggling with prejudice in the wake of deportation splintering his family, as Troop sings: “Blue flashing lights through endless nights / Proved the world was unforgiving / An immigrant child must face a life / Where dreaming is forbidden.” The song draws on bluegrass’s facility for talking about displacement and heartbreak — what it’s like to feel that you aren’t welcome in the place you call home. Troop & Co’s music has plenty to offer traditional bluegrass fans, and the lyric cuts like a knife — the way many of the best bluegrass songs do. By addressing a theme that’s about
as contemporary as you can get, it brings the power of the music to younger listeners who maybe haven’t lived the rural lifestyle that string-band songs often reference. Troop’s experience as a queer man in the U.S. enabled him to tell these stories, he says, by giving him the ability to see the humanity in others all over the world. The lack of acceptance he faced as a young man helped him see past the gossip and polarized rhetoric that he says was informing people around him. “Thank God I was queer,” Troop says. “It has helped me formulate this mentality. If you’re a queer Southerner you already know what being othered is.” DACA recipients — like his friend Moises Serrano, whose life was the inspiration behind “The Dreamer” — have come up to Troop in tears after shows. Finally seeing themselves and their stories reflected in a
music they loved but never felt represented by is a powerful feeling. “Immigrant-friendly, queer-friendly bluegrass is my favorite thing in the world,” says Troop. “We can’t wait to get it out in the world.” Back home in Argentina, Troop’s students have students of their own, who are now playing Scruggs-style banjo licks in the mountainous regions of the country. They’re using the technique to express their own regionalized stories of struggle, hard work and coming together. He wishes more bluegrass fans would welcome those players and audiences into the fold. What resonates with many listeners — and might surprise some others — is that no matter what language the songs are sung in, most of them are about working-class folks who share the same struggles. Email music@nashvillescene.com
salutes to Afro-Latin music and classic Broadway tunes to collaborations with contemporary jazz greats like Kirk Whalum and original compositions by members of the band. That versatility reflected Williamson’s idiomatically diverse background. A native of Harriman, Tenn., whose father was a band director, Williamson earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Tennessee in music performance, though the school had no formal program for jazz studies at the time. Williamson compensated for that by playing in the faculty-led group called the Jazz Giants. When he joined the Air Force, he joined another jazz band. Upon returning to complete his graduate studies, Williamson was allowed to include some jazz tunes in his formal recital. During the ’70s, he was a part-time instructor at UT, and a member of the faculty brass quintet. He also made periodic appearances with the Knoxville and Chattanooga symphonies, and would
later do the same with the Nashville Symphony. Jazz education was a big part of Williamson’s life. He was at one time head of Roane State Community College’s music department, and was later an instructor at Middle Tennessee State University. In addition, he founded jazz programs at Seigel and Oakland high schools in Murfreesboro. When he relocated to Nashville, Williamson further solidified his reputation as a formidable player by performing or recording with numerous jazz, pop, soul and country greats. The lengthy list runs the gamut from jazz trumpet legend Randy Brecker to Michael McDonald, from Aretha Franklin to B.B. King and beyond. But the NJO was Williamson’s pride and joy, and those who worked with him remember him fondly. “Jim Williamson had an endless spirit for life, for music and for gathering friends together to share those two things,” writes saxophonist and NJO mem-
ber Doug Moffet. “He was a man who ‘never met a stranger.’ He was also willing to help a stranger, by volunteering with the overnight shelter program at his church. His tireless efforts helped develop and organize the creative side of jazz big bands and jazz events in Nashville for decades. It was an honor for me to be a close friend of Jim’s.” George Tidwell, who also plays trumpet and flugelhorn with the NJO, was playing big-band jazz in Music City with the Nashville Jazz Machine decades before Williamson came to town. He recalls Williamson as an extraordinarily talented and creative player, but even more than that, remembers his belief in his work and his generosity of spirit. “When I think of Jim a word comes to mind — essence,” Tidwell says. “He was the very essence of many things: a love of music of all kinds, plus the dogged determination to keep the music he loved most alive and well. … New musicians in town, fledgling arrangers — anyone, really, that he could help, he would help. One of the great results of Jim’s encouragement and mentoring was to add any number of fine new contributors to the Nashville jazz world — players who might have given up and moved on without the Jim connection.” Email music@nashvillescene.com
nashvillescene.com | march 12 – march 18, 2020 | Nashville Scene
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By Charlie Zaillian
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ost people would rather hear a song they know than one they don’t. It’s why cover bands, fullalbum shows and package tours featuring a bunch of artists from the same generation do so well. For many a musician who has enjoyed some measure of success, submitting to fans’ nostalgia is a necessary evil if you want to keep creating the music you actually want to make. Not if you ask Wire. A little more than 40 years ago, the English post-punk pioneers nailed it on the first try, firing off three straight stone-cold classics between 1977 and 1979, starting with the iconic Pink Flag. Today three of the group’s four founding members are still playing with the band, and they’re well into their 60s. But it would be something like admitting defeat for these tireless innovators to spend their time looking backward. Currently, they are touring behind their 17th studio album and eighth since 2000, the killer Mind Hive. Wire’s prolific, always-forward-leaning nature might not have them touring arenas, but their fans know to expect something exciting and new from them with every release. For those folks, Friday night’s show at Mercy Lounge
was a can’t-miss opportunity. When I interviewed singer-guitarist Colin Newman for the Scene recently, I was surprised to hear that this would be the first time Wire had ever played Nashville. The show didn’t sell out, but the turnout Friday was respectable, considering all that had happened earlier in the week. For many in attendance, the show was the first chance to really go out since the tornado that rendered large swaths of the city and some surrounding counties unrecognizable on Tuesday morning. Other fans traveled from as far away as 500 miles. The band eschewed a traditional opener in favor of a DJ set by drummer Robert “Gotobed” Grey, who presided over a laptop with the authoritative posture of someone with a black belt in karate. Grey treated arriving showgoers to Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner,” the prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 and other curious selections. Grey then returned to the stage with Newman, bassist-vocalist Graham Lewis and guitarist Matthew Simms just after 9 p.m. The foursome didn’t address the past week’s events in Nashville explicitly, but they read the room well, tuning their choice of songs to the audience’s need to be taken elsewhere. The 19-song set list, which Newman acknowledged in an aside to the crowd as “somewhat contrarian,” broke from long-standing Wire tradition. Rather than consisting almost exclusively of songs from records either just released or in the pipeline, it drew from 10 releases in the band’s astonishingly eclectic body of work, which
meant something for die-hards, newcomers and everyone in between. Key tracks from Mind Hive, like the dirgey “Be Like Them,” tuneful “Cactused” and droning “Hung,” slotted in effortlessly next to Wire 1.0 faves like the slippery, poppy “Outdoor Miner,” the anthemic “ExLion Tamer,” and a pair of Lewis-sung songs, “I Should Have Known Better” and “A Touching Display.” Deeper cuts included the spooky, metallic “Over Theirs” from 1987’s The Ideal Copy, driving and dreamy “It’s a Boy” off the group’s ’88 gem A Bell Is a Cup, and “1st Fast,” an unrelenting barnburner from 2003’s comeback EP Read and Burn. The band was fully in control as it veered between extremes in sound, style and mood — pretty and gnarly, bleak and hopeful, tothe-point and drawn-out, indiscernible and clear as a bell. Wire is less compelling visually than it is sonically. Slight, slouched and bespectacled, playing his seafoam-green guitar with exacting fury, Newman’s modest presence is more professor than entertainer. Lewis and Grey, who make up a machine-like rhythm section, don’t look up much, staying zeroed in on their instruments. The band’s tall, regal junior statesman Simms showed off the odd rock-star move (as well as an enviable effects-pedal array, from the gear talk I could overhear). But the performance was workmanlike by nature — no gimmicks or artifice, just a few mild-mannered personalities getting weird and loud. For the Wire faithful, that was more than enough. EMaiL thESpin@naShviLLEScEnE.coM
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NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 12 – MARCH 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com
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3/9/20 4:43 PM
FILM
SAINT MISBEHAVIN’ Saint Frances triumphs in its sweet, light, authentic moments BY SADAF AHSAN
T
here’s a simple, striking scene at the very start of Saint Frances — a small, quiet movie that offers more authenticity in brief moments than most feature-length movies man-
age as a whole. Bridget (played by Kelly O’Sullivan, who also wrote the script), a girl-next-door type, wakes up after what she presumes is a onenight stand to find a pool of darkened blood at the center of the bed. It’s also smeared on her lover’s cheek, and there’s a bloody handprint on hers. This isn’t a crime scene, but a very realistic love scene. In real life, women get their periods. They can show up at particularly inopportune moments like these. They are also not a big deal, and Saint Frances treats them as such. Jace (Max Lipchitz) — a kind man who is eight years younger than Bridget, and whom she settled for at the end of a bad party — smiles. It’s no sweat. He’ll wash the sheets, he had a great time, and he couldn’t even tell when he went down on her. She smiles back. It’s a little moment, but it’s the kind of moment that cinema at large tends to veer away from. Menstruation is rarely sexy, and yet, somehow, it is here. The majority of Saint Frances moves in this way, largely thanks to Bridget, a stunted 34-year-old who doesn’t know what she wants in a career, in a man, in life in general. She’s blunt and honest, but she’s also endearing in a Hannah Horvath kind of way.
SAINT FRANCES NR, 100 MINUTES OPENING FRIDAY, MARCH 13, AT THE BELCOURT
We watch as she fumbles her way through unprotected sex, as she chooses to get an abortion, as she downplays her body’s signals that she may not be well, as she sleeps with a man who continuously finds subtle ways of blaming her for why he can’t seem to keep it up. It’s all very textbook and authentic in a way that made me, a 30-year-old woman lost in a lot of areas in her life, feel validated. In the big picture, as a coming-of-age story, Saint Frances has been told many times over. But in its more specific strokes, it depicts uglier and messier and bleaker moments — the ones that need to be shown from a woman’s perspective so they can be normalized, rather than ending up the butt of gross-out jokes. But there’s another female perspective here that helps illustrate Bridget’s growth. Bridget gets a gig nannying the titular Fran-
ces, a 10-year-old who’s not easy. She’s one of those kids who tends to say whatever pops into her head, often in public, which is only made worse by the fact that she’s smarter than most children her age. Of course, the precocious child with wisdom beyond her years is a well-trodden trope. In recent years, it’s become less cute and more cloying — as precocious and particularly smart children so often are in real life. (The screen adds 10 layers of adorability.) Fortunately, this isn’t the whole story. Frances doesn’t change the trajectory of Bridget’s life, but caring for a living being and getting invited into her mothers’ lives certainly makes an impact. Bridget is with them when they need help raising their children, and when they try to navigate their postpartum depression. They are with Bridget when she has a health scare and when she feels suffocated by the need to
PAN’S LABYRINTH
Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy is an imaginative miscalculation BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY
W
endy is a film that basically encourages kids to leave their families behind and ride the gotdamn rails. The latest movie from Benh Zeitlin — who directed 2012’s Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild — once again sees the director following lower-class children on a magical journey. The kids this time around are the titular Wendy (Devin France) and her twin brothers (Gage and Gavin Naquin). The children of a single mom working at a greasy spoon near some train tracks, the trio is awakened at night by a kid named Peter (Yashua WENDY Mack), who’s rocking PG-13, 112 MINUTES OPENING FRIDAY, MARCH 13, dreadlocks, a privateAT THE BELCOURT school jacket and a heavy patois as he rides on top of a train. So, of course, they decide to hop on and find out who the hell this kid is. Next thing you know, they embark on a journey that brings them to an island full of kids of color, who follow a big-ass luminescent fish they call “Mother.” The children ap-
parently do not age. You’ve surely realized by now that this is Zeitlin’s version of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan saga, with the dreadlocked Peter luring kids to his version of Neverland. Just as he did with Beasts, Zeitlin is lensing kids in a Malickean fashion as they frolic all over the place. You may also get a sense that Zeitlin is also getting his Maurice Sendak on as we see the kids flock to where the wild things are. It’s kind of unfortunate that the movie spirals out of control in its second half, as Wendy and her brothers get into some danger that puts them face to face with their own mortality — something the ageless Peter prefers not to deal with. Eventually Wendy comes in contact with old, forgotten souls who apparently
walked away from their utopian surroundings and painfully (and quickly) grew the fuck up. This is apparently how Captain Hook and his roving gang of pirates came to be. Zeitlin does round up some interesting little ones for the journey. As Wendy, France is an appealing presence. She knows how to bring the affection when a scene requires her to be caring, and she’s nononsense when the scene requires her to be authoritative. (Between her and Beasts of the Southern Wild star Quvenzhané Wallis — who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance — where does Zeitlin find these little girls who can carry a whole damn feature film?) It’s a nice contrast from Mack’s Peter, who is mostly just petulant throughout this thing. It made
find success in a way the world (and her parents) can understand. Certainly, there’s plenty that could weigh Saint Frances down — abortion and menstruation talk and a lesbian couple struggling to keep it together and a few scenes we’ve seen before (including one involving breastfeeding in a public park). But thanks to a light script, a natural cast and breezy direction by O’Sullivan’s partner Alex Thompson, none of it feels contrived. Saint Frances explores the ways in which women at all stages of life present one face to the world while hiding another — because it’s what we’ve been taught, and it’s what often comes easiest. Here, we see women finally becoming comfortable with revealing their true faces. In that way, Saint Frances resembles the very specific sensation of removing one’s bra at the end of the day — sweet relief. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
me wonder why would anyone want to follow this little dude anywhere. Zeitlin quietly crams a lot of concepts into this movie, most of which deal with how humans tend to mess everything up when they eventually get old. There’s one moment where the kids, after a moment rife with conflict, hang around on the beach in an area full of discarded garbage and waste. I guess this is Zeitlin showing how much bullshit washes on shore once you forget to have fun — or something like that. While I assume this wasn’t Zeitlin’s intention, Wendy might also make some parents mad. The movie romanticizes young children wandering off — they’re in a distant land where they don’t grow old, and they run and play the whole damn time. In the opening moments of the movie, a young Wendy witnesses one kid take off his pants and follow Peter onto a train before they ride off into a land of makebelieve. While you’ll likely get the sense that Zeitlin is telling his audience to remember a time when things were playful and imaginative, he could’ve done it in a way that didn’t feel like it endangers children. Personally? If I start seeing kids on the back of trains, I’m calling the authorities. Basically, Wendy is a problematic fumble in Zeitlin’s still-small filmography. He may be a filmmaker who wants to remind people how much wonder and optimism they had in their youths, but his well-intentioned efforts are woefully miscalculated. This movie is — dare I say it — Zeitlin’s Hook. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
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