Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800: Highlights from LACMA’s Collection is an exhibition featuring paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and more created in Mexico and Central and South America during the early modern era. The works explore the intricate social, economic, and artistic dynamics of these societies that led to the creation of astounding new artworks.
NASHVILLE’S TENNESSEE TITANS: GLOBAL REACH, LOCAL PRIDE
IN THE PAGES of The Tennessean, I recently stumbled upon an intriguing story that made me feel very proud. The article cemented the fact that our beloved city and its pro football team, the Tennessee Titans, are not just making waves locally, but are gaining fame and admiration around the globe.
At the center of this story is Jamie Cowperthwaite, a 49-year-old British anomaly. Raised in the town of Hull, he was introduced by his father to the music of Glen Campbell. He developed a profound affection for country music. Jamie turned this love into a career by hosting his own country music radio show, through which he shares the vibrant sounds of Nashville.
When it came time to pick an NFL team to cheer for, Jamie Cowperthwaite’s deep-seated connections to Nashville’s rich culture left no room for doubt — the Titans were it. His devotion to the Titans spans approximately 15 years, a love affair that reached its zenith during a unique moment in London. Alongside his wife Miria, Jamie found himself among the enthusiastic crowd gathered at a London pub. This pep rally was a prelude to the much-anticipated game between the Titans and the Baltimore Ravens, part of the NFL International Series.
Amid the celebration, an extraordinary encounter transpired. Jamie was honored to meet none other than Titans’ controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk, who graced the gathering, fueling the excitement of the fans. It wasn’t a high-profile event but an intimate connection between the team’s leadership and its global supporters. Here was Amy Adams Strunk, mingling with the crowd, embodying the Titans’ spirit and showing that the Titans’ reach extends beyond Tennessee’s borders.
Taking Jamie’s experience as a testament to the Titans’ growing international allure, there are more stories that underscore Nashville’s rise as a city that captures the imagination of people worldwide.
The Schmidts, Anne and Jonas, embarked on a unique journey from the German city Hanover to witness their cherished Titans in London. Their love for Nashville was sparked during a road trip across the United States in 2014 and
solidified when they attended a Titans game in 2017. Their connection to our city has become so profound that Anne humorously suggested they would have postponed their wedding had the London game coincided with the big day. And why wouldn’t she feel that way? Nashville was recently ranked No. 8 on Travel & Leisure’s “15 Favorite Cities in the United States” list. It’s little wonder, as so many from around the globe find Nashville one of the greatest places for culture, food, shopping and — of course — music and sports.
But getting back to the Titans — remember when they were the Houston Oilers? As also reported by The Tennessean, Paul Tarr is a 59-year-old resident of Southampton, England, who boasts an intimate knowledge of American football. In the 1980s, he invested the equivalent of nearly $2,000 in modern U.S. dollars in his own football gear and joined a local league as a guard. Fueled by this passion for American football, Paul devised a rather unique method of choosing his NFL allegiance. Each week, he decided to support the team that had the worst outcome. The Houston Oilers suffered a severe defeat on one fateful Sunday, leading to a commitment that has lasted to this day. In an amusing twist, “He bet himself he’d buy a custom-made Julius Chestnut jersey if the former undrafted running back made it onto the 53man roster this preseason.” Several months later, when Chestnut secured his spot on the squad, Paul proudly donned his Chestnut jersey.
These stories show us how the Tennessee Titans, representing our great city of Nashville, have forged an international fan base, uniting people from various regions via a common love for the game of football and the city of Nashville itself. It’s clear our beautiful city and our beloved Titans are celebrated far and wide. It makes me proud to call Nashville my home.
Bill Freeman
Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and The News
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PHOTO: JESSIE ROGERS/TENNESSEE TITANS
NASHVILLE KEEPS WINNING IN REPETITIVE CITY-STATE LEGAL BATTLES
New state laws aren’t passing constitutional muster
BY ELI MOTYCKA
Metropolitik is a recurring column featuring the Scene s analysis of Metro dealings.
ON OCT. 11, Metro Nashville’s legal department brought a fourth lawsuit against the state, protesting an attempt by lawmakers to wrest control of the city’s sports authority. The 13-person body is Nashville’s go-between for the Titans, Sounds, Predators and Nashville SC, each team’s stadium facility, and hundreds of millions in bond debt.
Metro legal director Wally Dietz and his team of city attorneys made what has now become a familiar argument: By singling out Nashville, the state violates its own constitution, which has included protections for certain cities and municipalities since lawmakers adopted the Home Rule Amendment at the Tennessee Constitutional Convention of 1953. This provision has earned Dietz tentative wins against state attempts to cut the size of Nashville’s city council and interfere with controversial NASCAR renovations at The Fairgrounds Nashville. Metro is using Home Rule protections to fight takeovers of the airport authority and sports authority.
Unless it gives a local legislative body final say, says the state constitution, “Any act of the General Assembly private or local in form or effect applicable to a particular county or municipality” is void. A second crucial Home Rule Amendment clause outlaws so-called “ripper bills,” legislation meant to remove local officials from office.
Nashville’s suits name Republican state leaders House Speaker Cameron Sexton, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and Gov. Bill Lee, the individuals legally responsible for laws passed by their government. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, obligated to defend the laws passed by state lawmakers, argues opposite Nashville. His office does not contend that these laws are necessary or just, only that they’re legal. The state’s defense consists of two parts. First, that appointed board members are not technically local officials; second, that these laws could apply to future municipalities, even if they only apply to Nashville today.
“We say that is fantasy,” Dietz tells the Scene “Judges are agreeing with our theories and our interpretation of the constitution and case law. If we continue to obtain victories in trial court, I’m hopeful the legislature will figure out they cannot continue to do this.”
Each battle between Skrmetti and Dietz makes the gray area between state and local power a little more clear. Many legislators have built political careers railing against
wasteful spending, promising constituents across they state they’d shrink government to simplify its role in the lives of Tennesseans.
Six months after Tennessee’s spring legislative session, its highest-profile laws have gummed up courtrooms, failed constitutional muster, wrought havoc on the city’s airport and occupied teams of city and state lawyers.
In April, Nashville won a temporary injunction against the state law slashing the city’s 40-person council in half. A three-judge panel agreed that the timeline was too tight and only applicable to Nashville, and Dietz and Skrmetti agreed to postpone arguments over a final, permanent injunction against the law to 2024. In September, a different three-judge panel sided with the city again, when the state tried to lower the voting threshold necessary for Metro Council to approve expensive upgrades to the fairgrounds. In addition to the state’s mounting losses against Nashville, lawmakers’ attempted ban on public drag performances (“adult cabaret” including by “male or female impersonators,” in the legislation’s words) met a barrage of legal challenges and will likely head to trial. Judges in Memphis and Knoxville blocked the antidrag law over the summer before a three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned their injunctions, setting up a protracted legal fight over Tennesseans’ First Amendment rights that continues in federal court. (The 6th Circuit has also issued rulings in the state’s favor, however, including upholding state laws banning gender-affirming care for minors and banning abortion.)
The Home Rule Amendment has been gold for Metro Legal. The amendment is clearly written and clearly violated, allowing for 3-0 wins in Nashville’s first two cases. Both NASCAR and council reduction rulings have strengthened Nashville’s final two lawsuits, the sports authority and airport takeovers.
“Right now, everybody agrees [the law] only applies to Metro Nashville,” Metro Assistant Attorney Melissa Roberge told the court during oral arguments about the airport takeover earlier this month. “That leads to the question of: Can it be applied anywhere else? Two of this court’s sister courts have answered that question in the council reduction act case and the speedway case.”
State attorney J.P. Urban could barely make it three sentences without being challenged by judges — particularly Judge Zachary Walden, the panel’s East Tennessee representative — to clarify or substantiate his claims. A 2021 state law requires three judges from Tennessee’s three Grand Divisions to oversee challenges
“
“WE ALL NEED TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL IN TERMS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE STATE AND METRO. IT IS NOT HEALTHY.” —WALLY DIETZ, METRO LEGAL DIRECTOR
to state legislation. Judges Anne Martin and Mark Hayes joined Walden in scrutinizing the state’s defense, which argued that the airport board exists so far outside of Metro that it is a “separate government entity” not entitled to protections, a precedent set in an unsuccessful 2022 challenge to Gov. Lee’s school voucher program.
“Is there a limit on the legislature’s ability to simply assume control of the hospital?” asked Hayes moments before the state concluded its arguments. “The airport? The levee and drainage district, which is more prevalent in my area? Or some other development board, like an industrial development board, if the legislature decides it wants to assert control?”
According to Dietz, the sports authority case will proceed along similar lines. A favorable
ruling on the airport case — expected in late October — would be powerful case law for the sports authority, allowing Metro to build on its own wins in front of new judges.
“We all need to change the channel in terms of the relationship between the state and Metro,” says Dietz. “It is not healthy. It is just not healthy for the state to be attacking our local government, its own largest economic engine. I’m hopeful that these lawsuits will help recalibrate the relationship.”
Nashville’s initial complaint hammered the laws not because they’re unjust but because they flagrantly violate existing protections. McNally, Sexton and Lee were served last week. As of this writing, the state has not yet responded to Metro’s latest suit. ▼
GOV. BILL LEE AND MAYOR FREDDIE O’CONNELL
PHOTO: HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS
THE QUEENS ARE ALL RIGHT
The local drag community continues to rally against Tennessee’s anti-drag legislation
BY KELSEY BEYELER
HISTORY HAS PROVEN time and again that attempting to censor something often generates further interest in it. This is true of music, books and, most recently, drag performances. Though efforts to restrict drag performances and LGBTQ expression aren’t new, Tennessee made history this year by becoming the first state to effectively outlaw certain drag performances in public.
The legislation — officially called the Tennessee Adult Entertainment Act — was passed this year alongside other anti-LGBTQ bills, including one designed to stop minors from receiving gender-affirming care. These laws sparked outcry from members and supporters of the LGBTQ community, and many galvanized to support those affected. The so-called public drag ban has been challenged and ruled against by federal judges, but its future is still uncertain. And efforts to censor the LGBTQ community continue.
In March, Gov. Bill Lee signed the Adult Entertainment Act, which prohibits “adult cabaret performances” from being performed in public or where minors could see them, punishable by a misdemeanor for one offense and a felony thereafter. The legislation defines adult cabaret performers as “male or female impersonators” as well as “strippers,” “exotic dancers,” “topless dancers” and “go-go dancers.” Many questioned how the legislation could be enforced. Would this affect drag performances on transpotainment vehicles? Would bars have to black out their windows so minors can’t view drag performances from the sidewalk? Could the law be leveraged to criminalize trans people for simply existing in public?
“It was very dark there for a minute,” says local drag queen Justine Van de Blair. “It was uneasy. You didn’t know if you were going to walk out of your house and get hate-crimed or just made fun of.”
Van de Blair also says the legislation “backfired.” As lawmakers considered and ultimately passed this bill and others targeting the LGBTQ community, local advocates and allies rallied to resist the legislation. They filled committee rooms, organized outside the state Capitol and encouraged their fellow Tennesseans to speak out. An enormous benefit concert was held at Bridgestone Arena featuring an all-star lineup of musicians including Jason Isbell, Sheryl Crow, Joy Oladokun and many others. Touring musicians dressed in drag and invited queens onstage with them to show solidarity. And of course, people attended drag shows.
“I think in a way it brought a lot of light and exposure to the drag community,” says Vidalia Anne Gentry. “For me, especially in the immediate aftermath, attendance was up. The energy was great.”
The so-called drag ban was quickly and successfully challenged in Memphis, where a Trump-appointed federal judge ultimately described the law as “constitutionally vague,”
TONY
“alarmingly overbroad” and in violation of the First Amendment. The ruling prohibits the law from being enforced, but only in Shelby County.
A second federal judge — this one a George W. Bush appointee — temporarily blocked the law from being enforced in East Tennessee. The lawsuit was filed after Blount County District Attorney General Ryan Desmond shared a letter stating his intent to prosecute those who violated the Adult Entertainment Act during the Blount Pride festival.
Following the Memphis ruling, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti appealed the judge’s decision to the 6th Circuit Court — a decision in that appeal has still not been made. Meanwhile in Middle Tennessee, the city of Murfreesboro has attempted to prohibit public drag performances in its own way. Ahead of this year’s BoroPride Festival, taking place this weekend, fest organizers the Tennessee Equality Project were unable to receive permits to conduct the event on city property. The Murfreesboro City Council also passed an ordinance prohibiting “indecent materials or events.” The ordinance has also been used to remove four books about LGBTQ identities from the Rutherford County Library System. A lawsuit on behalf of the Tennessee Equality Project alleges that Murfreesboro city leaders engaged in an anti-LGBTQ campaign designed to prohibit free speech and expression by withholding permits for Pride from the TEP and passing the ordinance. It argues that the ordinance could even subject people to civil and criminal penalties for displaying “any acts that are ‘homosexual’ in nature or any material or event even suggesting homosexuality.” On Oct. 20, a judge temporarily blocked the enforcement of the ordinance during the weekend of BoroPride.
In response to the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation throughout Tennessee, people are getting involved in state and local politics. Alongside advocating for or against certain legislation, local queens like Gentry are using their platforms
“WE’VE ALWAYS HAD TO RAISE OUR VOICES, AND WE’VE ALWAYS HAD TO BE ON THE FRONTLINES OF EVERY ARGUMENT, SO I THINK YOU’RE ALWAYS GONNA SEE DRAG QUEENS IN THE FRONT OF THE LINE FIGHTING FOR RIGHTS.”
—KENNEDY ANN SCOTT
to engage others in the political process, from calling lawmakers to fostering engagement in local elections and encouraging people to vote — though this is nothing new. Gentry has been known to sling some voter registration cards at her events, even before the anti-drag legislation.
“Drag queens have always been political,” local performer Kennedy Ann Scott tells the Scene 30 minutes before stage call at The Lipstick Lounge, where Scott and her sisters will go on to entertain a packed house of roaring fans. Each queen absolutely drips style and swagger as they all rotate through outfits and dance numbers for the adoring crowd.
“We’ve always had to raise our voices, and we’ve always had to be on the frontlines of every argument, so I think you’re always gonna see drag queens in the front of the line fighting for rights,” says Scott.
“Drag is never going away,” adds fellow queen Lucinda. ▼
The 2024 U.S. Senate race is picking up some steam as incumbent Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic hopeful Gloria Johnson reported fundraising totals last week. Blackburn has a sizable advantage in cash on hand, with more than $6.5 million in the bank. Johnson has more than $1.2 million in the bank. Johnson still must win the Democratic primary for the chance to take on Blackburn. One early poll of the race shows Blackburn with a big lead over Johnson. Emerson College found that 50 percent of registered voters support Blackburn, while 26 percent support Johnson, with 25 percent undecided.
In the latest installment of her Metro Council column “On First Reading,” contributor Nicole Williams writes about the second meeting of the council’s new term, which featured Metro legal director Wally Dietz’s embattled confirmation process. The Cooper administration alum was ultimately confirmed in a nearly unanimous vote. Also in the latest OFR: High school student Seamus Purdy spoke out against a resolution to accept a $3.3 million state grant for school resource officer salaries.
Contributor Betsy Phillips has a long, deep dive on the Lewis family whose connections to Nashville politics stretch back half a century and go much deeper than white supremacist and self-proclaimed Nazi Brad Lewis’ association with Franklin mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson. “How can a person who has been wrapped in a protective bubble of family power, who will never be able to fail as fully as he might deserve, ever realize the grave risks others take to hold his same positions?” she writes. “Of course he can have a Nazi fight club in his attic. Who would ever stop him?”
BABY PERFORMS AT THE LIPSTICK LOUNGE
FROM FORREST AVENUE TO FOREST AVENUE
Examining the process that led to the name change of an East Nashville street BY
LENA MAZEL
Street View is a monthly column in which we take a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
ON SEPT. 11, Tennessee Department of Transportation crews replaced the sign on Forest Avenue in East Nashville. For years, the street had been named “Forrest Avenue,” but this year the Metro Council voted to change the spelling to “Forest” after a number of residents petitioned for a change.
The primary reason for the change seemed obvious to many: At first glance, the name Forrest evokes Confederate general and KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Tennessee has numerous monuments to Forrest, and activist efforts in recent years have led to the removal of Forrest monuments and new names for streets and parks. In June 2021, Tennessee officials removed a bust of Forrest from the state Capitol after years of protests.
Later in 2021, an infamous Forrest statue on private property facing I-65 was removed by the property’s new owners. In recent years, Memphis has also made changes: The city removed its Forrest monument, renamed its own Forrest Avenue and relocated Forrest’s remains to Columbia, Tenn.
Renaming streets in Tennessee can be an arduous process because of the Heritage Protection Act, which prohibits removing monuments or renaming places with any demonstrable ties to historical figures, unless groups obtain a waiver from the Tennessee Historical Commission. The act was enacted in 2013 after Memphis moved to rename a number of Confederate spaces. Shortly after the legislation was passed, the group Sons of Confederate Veterans issued a press release taking credit for its “basic text.” (The bill’s sponsor later denied this, though he did admit the SCV had input in the bill’s process.)
PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND
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The Heritage Protection Act considerably lengthened the process for removing monuments like the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue from the Tennessee State Capitol. But for East Nashville’s then-Forrest Avenue, neighbors had an advantage: The street likely wasn’t named after Nathan Bedford Forrest at all.
with both one R and two.
Erin Kice is one of the neighbors who organized to rename the street. Kice says she first became interested in the street’s history after seeing early-20th-century maps of the neighborhood with the single-R spelling.
“The more we looked into it, the more it seemed like it was named Forest with one R based on the other street names around here,” says Kice. Forest Avenue is near other arboreally themed streets like Woodland and Holly streets, and historically bordered a woodland area.
East Nashville neighbors had approached District 6’s then-Councilmember Brett Withers a number of times about changing the name, but efforts had repeatedly lost traction. Constituents were particularly passionate in 2020, but Withers cautioned against going door to door because of social distancing concerns.
But this year, the timing worked out: During the name change’s public comment process, Metro’s Planning Commission received about 75 notes in favor of the change and about 20 notes in opposition. Name-change advocates living in multiple sections of the street knocked on doors and left petitions on porches.
“It was truly a grassroots, neighbor-toneighbor conversation,” says Keri Adams, who knocked on doors, created a petition for her section of the street and gathered letters of support. “I was surprised by how many people said, ‘This has bothered me since I moved here.’”
As part of the name-change process, the Metro Historical Commission researched the street’s history. The commission’s report found no link between the street spelling and the Confederate general. The street had been named Forest Avenue in documents as early as 1887, and historical maps had the street spelling
On June 22, the Metro Planning Commission held a public hearing about the name change. Most of the public comments were in favor; some speakers mentioned that despite the name’s history, most people reading the sign would likely perceive an association with Nathan Bedford Forrest. Speakers opposing the change cited concerns over mail delivery and emergency services, but Withers explained that because the two names were so similar, disruption would likely be minimal.
Withers’ legislation passed through the council unanimously, and the name change became official in August — right at the end of Withers’ second and final term.
“It’s been one of those lingering topics in East Nashville for a long time,” Withers tells the Scene. “I’m grateful to have that done.”
The new name coincided with a conservation easement for a green space at the terminus of the street, a four-acre parcel that Withers and his constituents helped the city acquire.
“Those two things happened at the same time — we got the street renamed to Forest with one R, and it terminates at an actual forest that we’re going to preserve,” says Withers. “So I think that’s a really nice wrap-up to my council term.”
At the Planning Commission meeting, perhaps the most compelling testimony came from Jeremy Lindsay, who said he was speaking for his wife Allison and next-door neighbor Monique, who are both Black. “I think the people that are opposed to this, if they knew Allison, and they knew Monique, and they could make them feel a little more comfortable, it would be a pretty easy call,” said Lindsay. “It’s one R. It feels like a pretty small ask, and it’ll make people feel a lot more welcome.”
In a letter to the commission, one resident put it less gently.
“I don’t want to live on a street that is named after a Confederate loser,” wrote 11-year-old Molly Geiss. “Please change our street to be Forest with one R.” ▼
SUBDIVISION OF THE A.V.S. LINDSLEY 29ACRE TRACT, 1887
SCAN TO ENTER
THE OTHER NASHVILLE
PART 2
BY BRITTNEY McKENNA
THE REV. JAY VOORHEES emailed to say he was running late.
The lead pastor at City Road Chapel Methodist Church in Madison had agreed to chat with the Scene in his book-filled office on a Wednesday morning in October, but two more urgent matters came up unexpectedly.
First, he needed to preside over burial ceremonies for the Call the Name project, which he founded. Part of Nashville’s Indigent Burial Program, Call the Name provides dignified, compassionate burials for deceased Davidson County residents who otherwise would or could not have a service, whether due to financial difficulties or
having no known surviving loved ones.
Voorhees knew about this the night before, but Wednesday morning he received another plea for help: a call from a congregant whose spouse was suffering a medical emergency. He took them to the hospital and made sure they received proper care, updating their spouse, who was stuck at work, via phone. At press time, the congregant was recovering well.
All this before 11 a.m., and Voorhees was early to our interview.
Meeting the Scene at a back door of City Road Chapel, Voorhees was immediately faced by a person in crisis. Their partner was in jail,
they said, and they had nowhere to go. They’d heard City Road could help with urgent needs. Voorhees calmly guided them upstairs, where a staffer would enter them into Metro’s Homeless Management Information System, the city’s primary database on homelessness.
Then we’d sit down for an hour-plus chat spanning affordable housing policy, creative outreach solutions, finding common ground
among conflicting ideologies and more.
If you think Voorhees sounds like some kind of superhuman, you aren’t alone. He has many fans in and around Madison who are grateful for the faith and outreach communities he and his staff at City Road provide. What’s truly remarkable about Voorhees, though, is that he isn’t superhuman. He’s a mortal man with a family and a regular life, with family photos and
THE REV. JAY VOORHEES
PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND
coffee-table books compiling humorous church signs dotting his office.
What sets Voorhees apart is his willingness to put his money where his mouth is — or in church parlance, to practice what he preaches. Since coming to City Road in 2014, Voorhees has grown the church’s offerings to people experiencing homelessness to include basic needs like laundry services and hot showers as well as a fully operational transitional shelter, which opened two years ago and can house up to 15 people while they wait for permanent housing.
It’s a lot for one man and his small church, which he says sees “60 to 75 people on a Sunday morning” and has an annual budget of $350,000, “most of which is for just the operations of building.” Long odds or not, City Road is the epicenter of the homeless community in Madison, also serving as home base for organizations like Open Table Nashville and The Beat.
The very same morning Voorhees speaks to the Scene, David Wooten and his wife are catching up with friends in the church parking lot. They’re particularly excited, because after a year of waiting they will soon move out of the shelter system and into housing. Wooten, who is in a wheelchair, has been camping on the back side of City Road — the building, well-loved but in need of updating, is not accessible — while his wife stayed in the shelter.
Voorhees notes that Wooten’s temporary accommodations were far from ideal, but still provided a safe and consistent shelter, one that — crucially — was close to his wife and the rest of his community.
David’s shelter is also emblematic of Voorhees’ approach to helping people experiencing homelessness. Like many people working to alleviate homelessness in Nashville, Voorhees understands the importance of creativity, flexibility and on-the-fly thinking, particularly as the housing crisis continues to grow unchecked.
DURING THE RECENT mayoral election, few issues elicited more passion among potential voters than Nashville’s need for affordable housing. Part of Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s winning campaign included “15 Fixes on Day One,” a list of issues he planned to address as soon as he took office. One of those fixes is the creation of an Office of Housing, which, as O’Connell’s campaign site describes, would “work closely with data from the new Office of Homeless Services that [he] worked to create as a Councilmember to ensure that our housing strategies are inclusive of all incomes and abilities — and with our transportation planners — because housing affordability and transportation go hand-in-hand.”
Many working in homeless outreach, including Voorhees, are eager to see what housing and homelessness policy will look like under Mayor O’Connell, who took office one month ago.
India Pungarcher, advocacy and outreach specialist at nonprofit Open Table Nashville, tells the Scene she hopes to see, among other changes, more transparency from Metro, both in interacting with advocacy organizations
“Our housing crisis affects every single person in this city in some way: every Metro worker, whether it’s in MNPS, it’s the fire department, it’s our EMS, or our police. Every single person is affected by this issue.”
—India Pungarcher, Open Table Nashville
and in presenting information about housing and homelessness to the public. She shares that many people working in homeless outreach simply wish to hear Metro entities acknowledge the housing crisis for what it is, rather than using soft or sugar-coated language to appease citizens. Pungarcher believes that before the problem can be solved, everyone must agree that there is, in fact, a problem.
“I don’t think it’s something that we’re allowed or encouraged to be honest about,” Pungarcher says. “Every time we try to point out how big of a deficit of housing we’re in, we get kind of chastised and scolded by Metro, like
communication, both between stakeholders and to the public, is a priority for him, and has been since the two years he spent as part of the Homelessness Commission and, later, the Homelessness Planning Council.
“My hope is that we see increasing alignment now across the mayor’s office, Office of Homeless Services, the Planning Council and our Continuum of Care,” he tells the Scene. “The use of American Rescue Plan Act funding should mean we have some sense of success with the oversight process built into that, and the Planning Council just approved a refreshed strategic community plan that we can use to benchmark success over the next three years.”
Voorhees and Pungarcher agree that greater collaboration between Metro entities, advocacy groups and other stakeholders is another important goal, as different providers could focus on one or two specialties rather than stretching themselves thin trying to be a one-stop shop for a deeply complex issue.
“From my perspective — and I will fully confess that I don’t know everything that goes on in the machinations of the homeless services community — but it feels to me like there really has got to be a more collaborative approach to dealing with it,” Voorhees says. “None of us can deal with this on our own. And we need to support each other.”
Both Voorhees and Pungarcher see a dire need for a system that can offer support to a person not just until they are placed in permanent housing, but for as long as it takes for them to achieve true stability, whether for mental health needs, for help kicking substance abuse, for finding employment or for the myriad other contributors to the retention of stable housing.
“There are a lot of folks who are doing street outreach or doing housing navigation,” says Pungarcher, “but the retention piece of making sure that you have the resources and capacity to ensure that people are able to maintain their housing, that’s something that, historically as a city, we haven’t done a great job of investing in.”
“My hope is that we could really develop a system that works,” Voorhees says. “My experience right now is that we have lots of different organizations doing lots of different stuff. And it’s all good stuff. And it’s all involving people that are committed to helping other people. But I continue to feel like we don’t really have a comprehensive system with protocols in place that allow for handoff and communication.”
we’re only supposed to think of the positive and the good work we’re doing. And I think that’s really hard, because I think it takes away, again, from how deep we are in this crisis. … Our housing crisis affects every single person in this city in some way: every Metro worker, whether it’s in MNPS, it’s the fire department, it’s our EMS, or our police. Every single person is affected by this issue.”
Voorhees expressed a similar sentiment a few days earlier, saying, “I don’t want us to be negative. But I want to be honest about the limitations that we have.”
O’Connell tells the Scene that increased
This lack of a system allows people to fall through the cracks more easily, particularly, as Pungarcher notes, the growing number of clients who get housing only to lose it a year or two later — often, as development continues to surge, due to rising rent costs or changes in building ownership. It also creates burnout among nonprofit employees who don’t have the time or resources to provide the degree of help the crisis demands.
“They’re getting eviction notices, or notices that their lease isn’t going to be renewed,” she explains. “So then we’re scrambling to find housing for the same people that we thought we solved it for. We thought we made it.”
OPEN TABLE EMPLOYEES INDIA PUNGARCHER (LEFT) AND KELLY CHIENG (RIGHT) WITH KIARA AS SHE MOVES INTO HOUSING
Pungarcher shares an anecdote about someone she’d placed in housing who recently received a notice from his landlord saying he would be evicted in 15 days if certain lease violations, like bringing an unauthorized friend onto the property, weren’t rectified. The resident was confused by the notice and believed he was being evicted immediately, so he frantically contacted Pungarcher.
“I was like, OK, let’s take a step back,’” she says. “‘If we read this letter, it says you’re not getting evicted. We have 15 days to rectify the situation. Let’s go meet with the landlord and go to the office.’ So we’re doing that today. But what if someone didn’t have someone on their side and got this letter? He was ready to just leave his apartment. And also, I don’t know what this conversation is going to be like with this landlord today. I’m not sure if they’ve already made up their mind or if they’re going to hear him out.”
O’Connell points to the distinction between a “housing first” model, which focuses on getting individuals into housing and can neglect next steps, and a services model, saying his administration is poised to enact the latter.
“‘Housing first,’ as a model, relies on stable access to housing without worrying as much about a person’s overall condition as they became unhoused, so the services model is supposed to focus on preventing a return to homelessness,” he says. “Thanks to Mayor Cooper’s investment — which I supported on the Metro Council — we do have significant shortterm funding for supportive services, and some of those we’ll want to target to people who are entering housing from encampments and other challenging conditions.”
Short-term thinking will be critical. While building new affordable housing is a necessary goal, doing so will take time, likely years, while the number of people living on the streets continues to grow. Pungarcher says Open Table is constantly trying to find innovative, cost-effective ways to stretch its resources. She and another staffer visited Chattanooga over the summer to see some of the initiatives Mayor Tim Kelly has implemented since taking office in 2021. One of those projects is a temporary sanc-
tioned homeless encampment with adjacent amenities like kitchen appliances and a pantry.
One of the first people Pungarcher met on their visit was a resident of the encampment who told her: “I’ve been sober since I got here. And if I wasn’t here, I’d probably be dead. I have a support system. I stopped drinking. If I have to leave here, I know I’m going to lose my sobriety. If I can’t stay here, I’m not going to work on housing, because I trust the people that are here running it. They have my back, and they’re going to get me living somewhere that I want.”
Asked about navigating the short-term while planning for longer range goals, O’Connell shares that Metro’s first permanent supportive housing (PSH) project is “almost complete,” with “a near-term goal … to ensure that we get people moved in and set up the service model for
long-term success.” Another near-term priority, as O’Connell sees it, is “to understand whether the public-private model to incentivize market developments to include PSH has worked since funding was made available.”
“And our goal with our Homeless Management Information System improvements has been to become more competitive for federal HUD funding,” he adds. “So, we will have some sense of that over the next few years, as we hope to transition our collaborative applicant from MDHA to the Office of Homeless Services to keep better alignment with providers and people with lived experience. Our data is as good as it’s ever been, so tracking the broader goal of reducing chronic homelessness should be easier than ever before.”
IN APRIL, the Scene spent time in Madison meeting and getting to know a number of people experiencing homelessness in the area. I met a staggering number of folks who were willing to share difficult, often harrowing stories thanks to the presence of Darrin Bradbury, who at the time operated under the pseudonym “Mother Hubbard.”
Bradbury has spent most of 2023 doing outreach work in his Madison neighborhood, and earlier this year he turned his venture into The Beat, a 501(c)3 organization providing on-theground outreach and assistance to Madison’s growing unhoused population. He agrees with Voorhees’ and Pungarcher’s assertions that transparency, collaboration and creativity are integral to alleviating the homelessness crisis.
He personally also sees a lack of communal housing as a missed opportunity for getting people off the street. This is something espe-
cially close to Bradbury’s heart, as he’s opened his own home to people he’s met through his outreach work in Madison. One couple in particular has found stability while living with Bradbury — hours after being photographed for the Scene cover story, both overdosed and nearly died. They now share a room in Bradbury’s home and are working toward finding stable employment and permanent housing.
“Communal housing needs to be part of the conversation,” Bradbury says. “And how communal housing is different from transitional housing is that it can be permanent. It can be transitional, too. It can be whatever you need it to be. And we have found through some beta testing of our own ideas that it’s really effective in keeping people sheltered, housed and supported.”
Bradbury also sees a racial element in the way homelessness is addressed, sharing how neighbors around City Road only began complaining about people sleeping in their cars in the church parking lot when a Black man began sleeping there too.
“We had a bunch of white folks sleeping in their cars,” he says. “And then we brought this one Black man around, and all of a sudden the complaints just started coming in. I can personally attest that this man’s behavior was no different than anybody else that was sleeping back there. And I give a tremendous amount of credit to Jay, who put up with those complaints for an extremely long time based on the same sentiment of, like, this is obviously a race issue within the neighborhood.”
Pungarcher notes that the city’s focus on reaching out to people camping outdoors creates racial inequity, as people of color are far less likely to live in encampments due to fears of
DARRIN BRADBURY (THIRD FROM RIGHT) WITH SOME OF THE PEOPLE THE BEAT HELPS
3D-PRINTED SHELTERS PILOT IN CHATTANOOGA
arrest or harassment.
“If you go to North Nashville, homelessness looks different there,” Pungarcher says. “There’s not as many camps, but there are lots of walkers and folks that are doubling up or staying in abandoned buildings. And you have folks who have lived at the Mission for probably years. We don’t have the same priority of getting folks out of shelters who maybe can’t stay on the street, because, if they did, they’re gonna get the cops called, and that could be dangerous or life-threatening.”
Through his outreach work, Bradbury met Laura Knotts, president of the Madison-Rivergate Chamber of Commerce. The two quickly bonded over a desire to mitigate the growing homelessness crisis in Madison, with Knotts’ hope for the area to be developed equitably dovetailing with Bradbury’s mission of helping the underserved.
Knotts tells the Scene that the chamber has a vested interest in helping alleviate the homelessness crisis, though her resources to do so are limited. Knotts is currently the chamber’s only staffer, but she says she hopes to hire part-time help in the coming months. She has connected with both Bradbury and Voorhees to discuss creative ways to treat unhoused people with compassion while also honoring her commitments to business-owner clients.
from where all of their advocacy groups are trying to help them.”
Voorhees makes this same point, noting that many people seeking shelter — in Madison but throughout the rest of the city as well — benefit substantially from being able to stay with loved ones and friends, and that even the sense of home provided by being in a specific area can bring added stability to their lives.
“They need to feel safe, in addition to the community around them feeling safe,” Knotts says. “It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you’re scared for your well-being, how can you concentrate on holding down a job?”
And speaking of holding down a job, one shorter-term though no doubt complex solution that Knotts believes could help in Madison is second-chance employment — very few jobs are available to people with felony charges on their records. She also hopes to see more housing that accepts residents with felony charges.
“What we really need is more housing that is available for felons,” she says. “We need more people to consider being second-chance employers. Because if you get housing, you have to have a job to be able to maintain that housing. In the middle of a staffing crisis, like a lot of our companies are going through, being a second-chance employer could be a solution to that.”
“One of the things I hear a lot from our businesses is, ‘How do we handle the issue of homelessness?’” Knotts says. “Sometimes they’re having to deal with mental health issues, and sometimes they’re having to deal with substance abuse issues. And they’re trying to balance kindness with the comfort of their customers and their employees. So it’s a really difficult balance that all of our businesses are facing. That is just one of the reasons why we are so keen to work with Jay and Darrin to try to find a unique solution.”
Knotts sees doable solutions for both shortand long-term needs. In the long term, she’d love to see more shelters and transitional housing options actually in the Madison area, as she explains: “A lot of our advocacy groups are located in Madison. So it doesn’t help to send somebody to the Mission [downtown], far away
O’Connell’s administration cannot overhaul housing and homelessness in Nashville overnight — or likely even within one term — but this change in leadership presents a sorely needed opportunity to decide how Nashville will grow and who gets to be part of it. Voorhees sums up a sentiment I heard, phrased one way or another, in each conversation I had for this piece.
“I would like to see [Mayor O’Connell] have a much more active role in leadership around homeless services,” Voorhees says. “I think he’s going to need to show up in the room and say, ‘What are we doing?’ And that’s not just him going to his staff at the Office of Homeless Services. That’s going to be him meeting with organization heads and saying, ‘Look, we’ve got to figure out how to make this work.’ Because otherwise, we’re all just going to be spinning our wheels.” ▼
NOV 2 TO 4 | 7:30 PM
Classical Series
COREA’S CONCERTO + ROMEO & JULIET with the Nashville Symphony Live Recording
NOV 5 | 2 PM NOV 5 | 7:30 PM
HCA Healthcare and Tristar Health Legends of Music AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH DAVID FOSTER & KATHARINE MCPHEE PresentedwithouttheNashvilleSymphony.
FirstBank Pops Series JEFFERSON STARSHIP with the Nashville Symphony
PresentedwithouttheNashvilleSymphony.
NOV 17 & 18 | 7:30 PM
PIAZZOLLA, AND ESTÉVEZ with the
NOV 20 | 7:30 PM Presentation
BUDDY GUY: DAMN RIGHT FAREWELL TOUR PresentedwithouttheNashvilleSymphony.
NOV 21 | 7:30 PM Presentation
EVENING WITH JEFFREY OSBORNE & PEABO BRYSON PresentedwithouttheNashvilleSymphony.
NOV 28 | 7:30 PM
Special Event
JOHN DENVER: A ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH CONCERT CELEBRATION with the Nashville Symphony
THURSDAY / 10.26
SATURDAY, OCT. 28
[A BIT OF FIENDISH FUN]
MUSIC
FABLE CRY: FESTIVAL OF GHOULS: HALLOWEEN INFERNO
The Halloween season just wouldn’t be complete without some spooky good fun with Nashville’s favorite theatrical noir rockers Fable Cry. Fortunately, this marvelously macabre crew is back in action this weekend at OZ Arts for its ninth annual Festival of Ghouls: Halloween Inferno. Leaning into “the sensual delights of Dante’s Inferno,” this year’s festival promises an eye-popping immersive celebration that invites guests to dress up and be part of the spooky spectacle. Along with the headlining set from Fable Cry, this year’s lineup includes music from locals Basic Printer and alt-rocker Ergo, Bria, with special performances from Suspended Gravity Circus (a Best of Nashville award-winning troupe of aerialists), Back to Black Burlesque, Gidget Bardot and Viktor Von Blackwood, plus a devilishly delightful fashion show from Goth Bats. AMY STUMPFL
8 P.M. AT OZ ARTS
6172 COCKRILL BEND CIRCLE
THE CONTRIBUTOR’S MASQUERADE BALL
PAGE 30 THE FRONT BOTTOMS PAGE 38 HERE COME THE MUMMIES W/
FILM [THE GREATEST TEACHER] DARE TO FAIL
I recently named the Defy Film Festival the Best Film Festival in the Scene’s Best of Nashville issue. The Dare to Fail short film showcase is quickly establishing itself as that experimental film festival’s demented little brother. DTF is the brainchild of Steve Parnell and JR Robles, and the monthly mini-festival of one-minute movies aims to make filmmaking affordable and accessible to anyone who can manage to capture and edit up to 60 seconds of moving images and sounds. It’s a cracked concept in this age of three-hour comic book films, and the results are as weird, hilarious and jarringly paced as you might expect. These events have happened at locations like Vinyl Tap and the Kindling Arts Festival, but no matter where they screen, the Dare to Fail happenings ooze an intoxicating mix of unbridled irreverence and pure love of film. This October installment will be the last DTF submission showcase of the year, and its Seven Deadly Sins theme guarantees less-than-sacred cinema just in time for All Hallows’ Eve. JOE NOLAN
7 P.M. AT THIRD COAST COMEDY CLUB
1310 CLINTON ST.
[SLOW-MOTION EMOTION]
FILM
INDEPENDENT LENS: THE SOUVENIR
When I wrote a Scene review of The Souvenir back in 2019, I admitted that Joanna Hogg’s acclaimed, semi-autobiographical love story, brilliant as it is, often had me dozing off. (I’m quite certain I was running on a limited amount of sleep the day I saw it.) One night, I downed a Red Bull and gave it a rewatch — and it’s still the quietest film ever made about a tempestuous, toxic relationship. Set in 1980s London, The Souvenir features Honor Swinton Byrne as a Hogg stand-in who tries to make a film while keeping her pompous junkie boyfriend (Tom Burke) happy at home. (Tilda Swinton, Honor’s mom, also plays her mom in this.)
This time around, I was surprised at how this dysfunctional bit of slow cinema is also playfully meta. Hogg practically calls out her pretentious younger self, as Swinton Byrne’s wannabe auteur strives to make serious, important cinema that’s not personal and self-indulgent. With The Souvenir, Hogg realized that serious, important cinema can also come out of being personal and self-indulgent. Shonni Enelow, professor of English at Fordham University, will introduce the film, which shows as part of
Vanderbilt’s ongoing Independent Lens series.
CRAIG D. LINDSEY
7:30 P.M. THURSDAY AT SARRATT CINEMA 2301 VANDERBILT PLACE
FRIDAY / 10.27
MUSIC [OH STRANGE DELIGHT] CAT CLYDE
Though Cat Clyde was raised in small-town Ontario, you could mistake the 31-year-old singer-songwriter for a longtime Nashvillian thanks to her sound, her style and her strength as a vocalist. You could also broadly refer to the tunes on her February release Down Rounder as idiosyncratic folk, but Clyde moves around the sonic spectrum a lot — from the dulcet, wistful “Not Going Back” and “Real Love” to piano ballad “I Feel It” and the uptempo rave-up “Papa Took My Totems.” And that’s not to mention my personal favorite, the album standout “Mystic Light.” The record is full of diverse arrangements, but the best parts of Rounder are Clyde’s rich, supple vocals. She’s spent a good deal of time in Nashville lately, popping up at a handful of shows during September’s AmericanaFest. But locals who missed her sets there can catch her this weekend at The Basement, where she’ll appear with Detroit’s Libby DeCamp. D. PATRICK RODGERS
7 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT
1604 EIGHTH AVE. S.
BENEFIT
[WHY SO SERIOUS] THE CONTRIBUTOR ’S MASQUERADE BALL
For more than a decade-and-a-half, street newspaper The Contributor has done the important work of giving unhoused Nashvillians job opportunities. In addition to covering issues that impact the homeless community — from social justice to local politics and the arts — the nonprofit also contracts with members of that community to serve as vendors, who sell copies of the bimonthly publication for $2 apiece (cash or Venmo). On Friday, The Contributor will host its annual Masquerade Ball, which will feature hors d’oeuvres, drinks, a live auction, a silent auction, tarot card readings, a photo booth and a performance from magician Amory Hermetz (not to mention the opportunity to dress like a member of the Gotham elite moments before the Penguin makes a grand entrance with his henchmen). Costumes, masks and dapper dress are encouraged, and proceeds from the $100 tickets will benefit The Contributor’s ongoing mission of giving unhoused folks opportunities for economic advancement and giving the Nashville news landscape another important outlet. Buy tickets and find more information at thecontributor.org.
been widely hailed for his masterful style and virtuosity. But this internationally acclaimed artist is also known as a champion of new works, having premiered some 250 new works by both established and emerging composers. This weekend, McAllister will join the Nashville Symphony to perform John Corigliano’s aptly named Triathlon. This remarkable piece not only requires the soloist to play “in perpetual motion and in extreme registers,” but also requires him to play three different members of the saxophone family: soprano, alto and baritone. McAllister and musical director Giancarlo Guerrero premiered Triathlon with the San Francisco Symphony in 2022 and will be recording the performance here in Nashville. In addition, audiences can look forward to experiencing Mozart’s timeless Overture to The Magic Flute and Ottorino Respighi’s evocative Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome AMY STUMPFL
OCT. 27-28 AT THE SCHERMERHORN
1 SYMPHONY PLACE
FILM [ONE GOOD SCARE] NIGHTLIGHT 615: HALLOWEEN
Tacit killer Michael Myers’ reign of terror in fictional anytown Haddonfield, Ill., nominally wrapped up with last year’s Halloween Ends (Of course, we all know to never say never when it comes to horror sequels.) Though the overall effect was mixed, there was a lot to like about David Gordon Green’s recent sequel trilogy in the extensive film series. But no matter how many times I see the original Halloween — or any film featuring one of the multitudinous slashers who have followed in Myers’ gently clopping footsteps over the past 45 years — it never gets old. Director John Carpenter and the late, great Debra Hill collaborated on a masterfully economical script, in which the horrors lurking beneath the surface of the suburbs are made manifest, and they upended conventions in ways that set standards for decades to come. It seems like the filmmakers turned every disadvantage of their shoestring budget into a bonus: A little DIY spirit and white spray paint turned a cheap Captain Kirk mask into the blank face of evil, while the eerie score that Carpenter wrote and performed himself on piano and synthesizer is so effective it’s been imitated ad nauseam ever since. And by and large, the cast led by Jamie Lee Curtis — in what’s for better and worse a career- and genre-defining role — makes the whole tale feel chillingly plausible. Friday’s outdoor screening presented by Nightlight 615 is the perfect opportunity to see the film and share the creeping dread with a live audience.
STEPHEN TRAGESER
6:30 P.M. AT BICENTENNIAL CAPITOL MALL STATE PARK
600 JAMES ROBERTSON PARKWAY
D. PATRICK RODGERS
6-9 P.M. AT THE STANDARD
167 ROSA L. PARKS BLVD.
[IRONMAN]
MUSIC
NASHVILLE SYMPHONY AND TIMOTHY McALLISTER: TRIATHLON
Classical saxophonist Timothy McAllister has
FILM [ALMOST BEYOND COMPREHENSION] THE EXORCIST
William Friedkin’s The Exorcist was a cultural phenomenon upon its initial release in 1973 and has come to be widely regarded as one the finest horror films ever made. Following the journey of Regan (Linda Blair) as her mother
WITNESS HISTORY
This ceramic ashtray, embellished with skulls and roses, was given to Guy Clark by Country Music Hall of Fame member Emmylou Harris. The friends and musical collaborators recorded together many times, including on Clark’s albums Old No. 1 (1975), Texas Cookin’ (1976), Old Friends (1988), Boats to Build (1992), and Cold Dog Soup (1999).
From the exhibit Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present
artifact: Courtesy of Joy Brogdon artifact photo: Bob Delevante
RESERVE
(Ellen Burstyn) attempts to free her from the clutches of a demonic force, The Exorcist is still just as shocking and psychologically engaging as it was when it was first released 50 years ago. Featuring several iconic and terrifying moments and some of the most controversial lines ever spoken in cinema history, the film (and its allegedly haunted production) has gone on to become the source of many legends. It has been parodied, alluded to and referenced in countless films and television programs over the past halfcentury. Be sure to check out The Exorcist in a new 4K restoration playing at the Belcourt this Halloween weekend. ROB HINKAL OCT. 27-28 & 31 AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
SATURDAY / 10.28
FESTIVAL
[CARVED
IN STONE]
WILLIAM EDMONDSON ARTS & CULTURE FEST
William Edmondson is one of Nashville’s most important cultural figures, and this weekend’s celebration of his legacy is a fitting honor. A sculptor whose 1937 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art marked the institution’s first show dedicated to a Black artist, Edmondson has been widely studied: The Barnes Foundation recently made headlines with William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision, and an expansive 2021 show was organized at Cheekwood here in Nashville. Edmondson made all his sculptures at his home in the Edgehill neighborhood, where he lived until his death in 1951. It’s there that the William Edmondson Arts & Culture Fest takes place — it’s the perfect opportunity to learn more about Edmondson and also enjoy one of the last outdoor festivals of the season. Expect live music, craft vendors, plenty of activities for children and even live artist demos. Visit edmondsonhome.org for details. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
10 A.M. TO 4 P.M. AT THE WILLIAM EDMONDSON HOMESITE PARK & GARDENS 1450 14TH AVE. S.
MUSIC
[WHO’S YOUR MOMMY]
SOCCER MOMMY’S HALLOWEEN BASH
“Can’t believe I finally get to throw a Halloween show at home,” Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, enthused in a September Instagram post about her Halloween Bash at Eastside Bowl, which goes down Saturday evening. In a more recent post accompanied by a spooky photo, she advised, “Be there or be scared.” According to Soccer Mommy’s publicist, Halloween is Allison’s favorite holiday, and she is encouraging attendees to come in costume, as she no doubt will be. It will be the indie-rock outfit’s first headlining appearance in Nashville in nearly a year, and as usual, guitarist-vocalist Allison will be backed by Rollum Haas (drums, percussion), Nick Widener (bass), Julian Powell (guitar) and Rodrigo Avendano (guitar, synths). Fans can expect to hear material from the recently released Karaoke Night, a five-song EP featuring covers of songs by Taylor Swift, Sheryl Crow, R.E.M., Pavement and Slowdive, as well as from last year’s acclaimed full-length Sometimes, Forever. A portion of the bash’s proceeds will be donated to Planned Parenthood. Avey Tare and Total Wife will join Soccer Mommy on the bill.
DARYL SANDERS
8 P.M. AT EASTSIDE BOWL
1508A GALLATIN PIKE
MUSIC [LIGHT ME UP] ILLITERATE LIGHT
To try to describe the experience of an Illiterate Light concert in words is an almost impossible task. No other band currently touring, let alone any duo, brings to the stage the same amount of passion and energy as this group, and no other band in recent memory can create such an enormous and incredibly engrossing sound with only two instruments. No matter how familiar you may be with their musical catalog, it is impossible to leave an Illiterate Light concert without becoming a superfan of the group. With the release of their newest (and excellent) album Sunburned earlier this year, the group is sure to play familiar favorites as well as newer tracks, putting on a show that is hard to beat. Their use of harmonies and effective blend of electronic
PHOTO: DANIEL TOPETE
SOCCER MOMMY
SPECIAL ACTIVITY AREAS
AUTUMN ALLEY Presented by HG HILL REALTY
Autumn Alley is back with a full block of fall fun on Main Street! Between the square and 4th Avenue, enjoy an interactive area including The Great Pumpkin, Pumpkin Tree, Extreme Pumpkin Carving, Free Games, and an Acoustic Stage presented by Lipscomb University.
PETZONE Presented by PETSENSE by TRACTOR SUPPLY
The parking lot next to Simmons Bank will be transformed into PetZone, an activity area for you and your four legged friends! Play games and win prizes for your pets, or adopt a companion of your own at the adoption center!
THE FRANKLIN THEATRE ENDZONE Presented by MERCER ADVISORS
Take in College Football Saturday at THE ENDZONE presented by Mercer Advisors. Don’t miss the action while you’re at PumpkinFest, stop by The Franklin Theatre for football all day long!
GABBY’S DOLLHOUSE EXPERIENCE Presented by ALLIED GLOBAL MARKETING
Dive into the whimsical world of Gabby's Dollhouse, the widely popular children's television show, presented by Allied Global Marketing. Bring your little one by this fun, interactive walk-through exhibit located next to our Heritage Foundation tents in the Square!
CLUBHOUSE GOLF OF TENNESSEE - GOLF SIMULATOR
From Pebble Beach to St. Andrews, play world-renowned golf courses right in the PumpkinFest footprint! Try your hand at the carnival style golf games or challenge your friends to a closest-to-the-pin contest. All ages and all skill levels are welcome.
ACOUSTIC STAGE Presented by
SCARECROW CRAWL
Enjoy Discounts & Win a Movie Ticket to The Franklin Theatre! Grab a passport and follow the Scarecrow Crawl to find the unique Scarecrow at each destination and write its code on your passport to claim your prize!
• CTGRACE
• McGavock’s Coffee Bar
• JJ’s Wine Bar
• Sweethaven
• Shuff’s Music
• Twine Graphics Retail
• Hester & Cook
• The Registry
• Wilder
• Vinnie Louise
• Franklin Visitor Center
• Triple Crown Bakery
• Kilwins
• The Heirloom Shop
• Walton’s Jewelry
• Binks Outfitters
• Finnleys
Passports available at the DFA tent on the square or at each shuttle stop entrance.
Sign-up to our newsletter at FranklinPumpkinfest.com and be entered to win a Family Four Pack of Franklin Theatre movie tickets!
THE FRANKLIN THEATRE ENDZONE Presented by Sign-Up & Win Tickets!
and acoustic instruments allow them to pull off songs in a variety of different styles with equal effect — for a taste, check out standout track “Feb 1st,” which showcases a harder rock sound. It may be a cliché, but it’s true — they simply must be seen to be believed. Indie rockers Arts Fishing Club open. ROB HINKAL
8 P.M. AT EXIT/IN
2208 ELLISTON PLACE
MUSIC
[THE OWLS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM] WHITE LODGE: EVENING WITH THE MUSIC OF TWIN
PEAKS
Craving some dreamy fun this Halloween weekend? Step back into the world of Twin Peaks by way of The Blue Room on Sunday. White Lodge: Evening With the Music of Twin Peaks offers fans of David Lynch’s acclaimed series a chance to celebrate the program and its accompanying prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, with live performances of selections from each iconic soundtrack, composed by the great Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. (Fun fact: The soundtrack version of the Twin Peaks theme song won Best Pop Instrumental Performance at the 1991 Grammy Awards.) Be sure to get in on the fun and dress as your favorite character, as costumes are encouraged. Don’t miss out on your chance to experience the mystery and magic of Twin Peaks all over again right here in the heart of Nashville (and be sure to pour yourself a damn fine cup of coffee while you’re at it).
ROB HINKAL
8 P.M. AT THE BLUE ROOM AT THIRD MAN RECORDS 623 SEVENTH AVE. S.
FILM [HALLOWEEN SPIRIT] SPIRITED AWAY
The 2003 Best Animated Feature Oscar winner and Sight & Sound’s 75th-greatest movie of all time is returning for Halloween weekend via Fathom Events. Considered by many to be one of the best from legendary director Hayao Miyazaki, Spirited Away is a great movie for the whole family. The film tells the story of young Chihiro Ogino and her adventures in the world of Japanese kami spirits. As she works at a mystical bathhouse to try to save her parents, who were turned into pigs, she embarks on an adventure filled with whimsical fantasy that captures hearts, and it has enough narrative
for adults to chew on through its themes of greed and work life. Whether you are a passionate Studio Ghibli fan, a parent looking for something festive for the kids or a cinephile who never got around to crossing this one off the list, Spirited Away delivers as one of the best animated movies of all time. Fathom Events will screen the film with Japanese audio on Oct. 28 and 31, while the English dub plays Oct. 29 and 30 and once more on Nov. 1. KEN ARNOLD OCT. 28-NOV. 1 AT REGAL AND AMC THEATERS
SUNDAY / 10.29
[I’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE]
MUSIC
MARGO CILKER
Margo Cilker may hail from the Pacific Northwest, but her songs agree with the conventions of traditional folk or country music just as much as any Southern artist who graced this year’s AmericanaFest lineup. Cilker reminds me that country music is, indeed, countrywide. The singer’s path is a bit of an oddity — she grew up in California’s Santa Clara Valley (aka Silicon Valley) and dropped out of Clemson University to move to Spain, where she taught English and spent some time playing in a Lucinda Williams cover band. Now she lives with her husband, a cowboy, in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington. The songs on her second album Valley of Heart’s Delight are tethered to a sense of place; when listening I imagine winding through a mountain pass, feeling dwarfed by the craggy peaks on either side. She writes and sings so beautifully of a home she can’t return to, but will try to find anyway. If you like The Band or Creedence Clearwater Revival, you will like Margo Cilker. Local Americana artist Liv Greene will open the show. JACQUELINE ZEISLOFT
7 P.M. AT 3RD & LINDSLEY
818 THIRD AVE. S.
[THE DREAM’S ON ME]
MUSIC
KENNY BARRON TRIO
There’s nothing particularly avant-garde about most of the work jazz pianist and composer Kenny Barron has performed and recorded over the past half-century. When you listen to Barron bear down on a standard tune like Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s
UPCOMING SHOWS AT THE MUSEUM’S CMA THEATER
OCTOBER 28
RODNEY CROWELL
THE CHICAGO SESSIONS TOUR WITH SPECIAL GUESTS ROB ICKES AND TREY HENSLEY
NOVEMBER 7
CHRISTOPHER CROSS
NOVEMBER 8
AN EVENING OF MUSIC WITH VALERIE JUNE, RACHAEL DAVIS, THAO, AND YASMIN WILLIAMS
DECEMBER 5 and 6
GIRL NAMED TOM ONE MORE CHRISTMAS TOUR
DECEMBER 20
DARREN CRISS A VERY DARREN CRISSMAS
DECEMBER 21
BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY’S WILD & SWINGIN’ HOLIDAY PARTY
MARCH 5
GEOFF TATE & ADRIAN VANDENBERG
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
Museum members receive exclusive pre-sale opportunities for CMA Theater concerts. Learn more at CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Membership.
KENNY BARRON TRIO
The CMA Theater is a property of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
OCTOBER 27 & 28
ALL THEM WITCHES WITH GA-20 (10/28)
DECEMBER 29 7 & 9:30 PM
PETE DAVIDSON LATE SHOW ADDED!
FEBRUARY 9
GRACE POTTER ON SALE FRIDAY AT 11 AM
FEBRUARY 15 LIVE AT THE OPRY HOUSE DANCING WITH THE STARS LIVE! WITH SPECIAL GUEST JULIETTE HOUGH
MARCH 14
KC & THE SUNSHINE BAND ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
MARCH 30
CHELSEA CUTLER WITH YOKE LORE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
JUNE 15
HAUSER ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
“This Time the Dream’s on Me,” you’re hearing a summation of jazz history, and Barron’s understated approach enables him to bring up the heat on his 1986 version of the song, recorded with bassist Buster Williams. Barron got into fusion jazz on his 1974 Peruvian Blue, which reminds me of similar efforts by Gil Evans. I also love Barron’s work with the quartet Sphere on their 1987 masterpiece Four for All. The band essays Thelonious Monk’s “San Francisco Holiday (Worry Later)” and Duke Ellington’s “Melancholia,” and Barron’s pianistic savvy suits Monk’s compositional strategies just fine. Barron was born in Philadelphia in 1943 and made his bones there in the late ’50s playing with the likes of drummer Philly Joe Jones. After moving to New York in 1961, he went on to work with Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and Yusef Lateef. Barron brings his light touch and vast knowledge of jazz history to the Schermerhorn on Sunday, and he’ll be supported by drummer Johnathan Blake and bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa. EDD HURT
7:30 P.M. AT THE SCHERMERHORN
1 SYMPHONY PLACE
[IN THE SWAMP]
MUSIC
GENESIS OWUSU
The Ghanaian-born and Australian-raised singer and songwriter Genesis Owusu blends genres with panache on Struggler, which is the followup to his 2021 debut full-length Smiling With No Teeth. Owusu began his career in 2015 as part of a duo with his brother, hip-hop artist Citizen Kay, and Smiling With No Teeth stands as a pretty impressive work. What I hear on the album is a version of neo-soul as it was practiced by, say, Terence Trent D’Arby and Lewis Taylor — “Centrefold” and “Don’t Need You” are good songs with the kind of changes you luxuriate in. You might note he puts down his love object in “Don’t Need You” in somewhat summary fashion: “I said your ass is stinky / And you built like a mole.” Meanwhile, Struggler peaks with a track titled “That’s Life (A Swamp),” which is a beautifully built — and pleasingly kinetic — riff on the concept of neo-soul. Owusu says Struggler is partly based on the ideas contained in Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, and Owusu even titles one song “The Roach.” As
Kafka fans know, whatever Gregor Samsa turned into in the beginning of the story — Vladimir Nabokov, who knew about insects, believed it was a winged beetle — made him an object of derision to the philistines who never understood him anyway. At his best, Owusu sounds too welladjusted and tuneful to be a convincing victim of existential transformation, but the conceit works anyway. Enumclaw opens.
EDD HURT
8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST
917 WOODLAND ST.
MONDAY / 10.30
FOOD & DRINK [TRICKS, TREATS] SOMETHING ‘OFFAL’ THIS WAY COMES ... AGAIN
If you’re feeling like the world seems a little awful these days, some Halloween fun might be the distraction you need. Henley’s executive chef Kristin Beringson has an idea to turn things from awful to offal. She’s cooking up Rabbit Hole Presents: Something “Offal” This Way Comes … AGAIN, a spooky dinner at the Midtown restaurant. The idea is to indulge in a 10-course (no, not corpse) meal of various seemingly grotesque — but delicious — foods. You’ll likely be eating foods you haven’t had on your plate before. (Don’t expect any boneless chicken breasts.) The dinner takes place in the Rabbit Hole, a hidden dining area that recently received a Best of Nashville nod. You’re encouraged to dress as you see fit, be that in a spooky costume, or perhaps a Lady Gagastyle meat dress. Tickets are $125 and can be purchased online. MARGARET LITTMAN
6:30 P.M. AT HENLEY
2023 BROADWAY
TUESDAY / 10.31
MUSIC
[TWIN-SIZED SPOOKS] THE FRONT BOTTOMS
Toss on a Halloween costume and head to Marathon Music Works for a haunted night with The Front Bottoms. The New Jersey in-your-feels indie and punkish-rock duo stops for one night
GENESIS OWUSU
inside the Nashville concert hall on the band’s ongoing You Are Who You Hang Out With Tour. (Way to channel the concerned suburban parent with that name, guys.) The tour comes in support of the band’s new 10-song LP, named, you guessed it, You Are Who You Hang Out With, the latest in a growing collection of happy-andsad-at-the-same-time tunes that *really, really* hit the spot. Come to hear the new songs, but stay for the packed-house, beer-chugging and crowd-surfing sing-alongs to tried-and-true catalog entries (cough, “Twin Size Mattress,” cough) that helped make the band a must-see staple in rock clubs for the past decade-plus. My advice? Wear a costume with a mask. It’ll help hide those slow-rolling, cathartic tears that could hit when the guys break into “Wolfman” or “West Virginia.” MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
8 P.M. AT MARATHON MUSIC WORKS
1402 CLINTON ST.
[HALLOWEEN JAM]
MUSIC
LES CLAYPOOL’S FEARLESS FLYING FROG BRIGADE
Savannah, Ga., act Perpetual Groove, on tour with HCTM throughout the fall, will open the festivities. JASON VERSTEGEN
8 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL
925 THIRD AVE. N.
MUSIC
[GONNA MAKE A COUCH POTATO OUTTA YOU] HALLOWEEN PARTY FEAT. AFTON WOLFE’S IDIOT BOX SHOW & WEIRD PALS
Since one of the time-honored traditions of All Hallows’ Eve is dressing up in costume, musicians often mark the day by donning musical costumes — in other words, spooky season is a prime time for tribute shows. On Halloween night at venerable Five Points haunt The 5 Spot, you’re in for a special treat of that variety, as a doubleheader celebrates both the indelibility of television theme songs (via Afton Wolfe’s Idiot Box Show) and the creativity of polka-loving parody maestro “Weird Al” Yankovic (thanks to Weird Pals). Among the myriad guests joining Wolfe & Co., you’ll hear Anana Kaye, who collaborated on Whispers and Sighs with the great David Olney shortly before his death, and thoughtful lyricist Julia Cannon. “Weird Al” is near and dear to the hearts of many, and the guests during Weird Pals’ set will run the gamut from rockers Los Colognes and Lilly Hiatt to R&B-schooled popster Natalie Prass to country ace Joshua Hedley and beyond. Who will dare to cross the streams with selections from the soundtrack to Yankovic’s cult-classic TV takeover film UHF? Only one way to find out: Get there.
Les Claypool — bona fide prog-rock weirdo known for fronting Primus and 5,000 other (OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration) projects? Playing the Ryman Auditorium? On Halloween? Talk about a can’t-miss haunted house. Claypool returns to the Mother Church with his reunited Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, a cast of musicians including Sean Lennon on guitar, Harry Waters on keyboard and Skerik on horns. It’s the band’s first tour in roughly two decades, and Brigade shows include a jammy stew of various Claypool material, plus a live start-to-finish performance of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals. And for Claypool, playing Nashville means returning to a venue he’s no stranger to. Primus headlined the venue last year, part of a tribute tour to undervalued Rush album A Farewell to Kings. A day before that show, he crashed Billy Strings’ headlining run at the venue for a few bluegrassblended Primus covers. As for the upcoming show on Halloween? Who knows who may show up to join the party. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER 7:30 P.M. AT THE RYMAN
116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.
MUSIC
[THE MUMMIES RETURN] HERE COME THE MUMMIES W/ PERPETUAL GROOVE
Look out! Here Come the Mummies is set to celebrate Halloween night live and undead at Brooklyn Bowl with their own off-brand of freaky funk-rock for fans of dead pharaohs. Mummy Cass and his 5,000-year-old band of embalmed impresarios guarantee a spooky party that would make King Tut’s butt shake from beyond the tomb. Those planning to witness the linen-wrapped spectacle can expect necro-boogie bangers such as “Threeway on the Freeway,” “Freak Flag” and “Attack of the Wiener Man,” among many others. Just in time for scary season, Here Come the Mummies released a cover of Rockwell’s smash hit “Somebody’s Watching Me” in August featuring the legendary Saxsquatch on, you guessed it, the saxophone. The transcendental sounds of
STEPHEN TRAGESER
8 P.M. AT THE 5 SPOT 1006 FOREST AVE.
WEDNESDAY / 11.1
MUSIC
[IT’S BETTER THAN BAD, IT’S GOOD] BOB LOG III W/THE SHITDELS
The arid skies of Tucson, Ariz., may not have a lot in common with the humidity of Southern Mississippi, but that doesn’t prevent Arizona bluesman Bob Log III from drawing inspiration from the greasy gutbucket guitar of the Delta. His outrageous persona and raunchy guitar tone are often compared to his New York contemporary Jon Spencer or hillbilly wildman Hasil Adkins. Armed with his six-string Silvertone guitar, a daredevil speedsuit and a helmet attached to an outdated phone receiver, Log uses his feet to keep rhythm on cymbals and a bass drum. His irreverent humor and onstage antics give his high-voltage shows a sense of unpredictability. Local support comes in the form of budget rockers The Shitdels, a rowdy noise-drenched psychedelic-punk trio founded in Memphis and relocated to Music City, USA. Their Shape-Shift Faces LP is one of the more interesting rock albums Nashville has offered in the past few years. P.J. KINZER
8 P.M. AT THE 5 SPOT
1006 FORREST AVE.
IT WILL BE 40 YEARS this January since my first trip to France, and I still remember my first meal there with vivid detail — the sort of detail that eludes me when I try to recall what I had for dinner last night. By a stroke of good fortune, I was in Cannes for MIDEM, the annual international music trade show on the French Riviera. Jetlagged but determined to explore, I left the hotel and wandered. When I saw a little cafe, I
HOW DO YOU LOU?
Wine and cheese at the bar or a leisurely, multicourse meal in the dining room, how you Lou is up to you
BY KAY WEST | PHOTOS BY ANGELINA CASTILLO
went in to get a bite to eat. The corner building had windows on two sides, with hanging plants in place of shades. I was seated at a tiny, marbletopped round table, and not wanting to risk mangling the pronunciation, I pointed to salade niçoise on the succinct menu.
The server briskly slid a white oval plate in front of me, with slices of baguette and ramekin of butter on a smaller dish. Every bite of the
colorful composition — tender leaves of bibb lettuce deftly dressed, crisp haricots verts that disavowed my aversion to green beans, redrimmed slices of radish, al dente new potato halves, hard-cooked eggs with bright-yellow yolks, briny black olives and chunks of oily canned tuna — was a marvel of simplicity.
The closest I’ve come to replicating that in Nashville has been every visit to Margot Cafe &
Bar, which has consistently adhered to the principles of know-your-farmer and purity of product since opening in 2001. And then I met Lou.
The creamy-white facade of the meticulously restored 1930s craftsman bungalow — doublehung windows and front door framed in black — on grassy lawn under a tall tree is a welcoming approach to Lou, the restaurant that chef-owner Mailea Weger birthed in 2019.
The San Diego native spent her early career in fashion before being drawn to hospitality a decade ago, working in the kitchen of Maison de l’Architecture’s Café A in Paris before committing to study at the Culinary Institute of San Diego, which launched her into cooking positions in New York, New Orleans and Los Angeles. When her parents moved to Nashville, she took the opportunity on visits to study the city’s restaurant scene. As vibrant as she found it, she still believed there was a niche she could claim.
The two rooms in the front of the house are loosely defined by a free-standing brick column anchored by a fireplace. By day, light streams through uncovered windows onto wood floors and white walls adorned simply with framed photographs and original art. On one side there’s a small bar with four stools and a scatter of tables; the rear wall of the main dining area on the left is covered in a lush floral wallpaper. Down the hall, past the swinging kitchen door and out the back door are more tables on a brick patio.
You may notice immediately, as my party of four did, that the round tables inside are seemingly suited to parties of two. And as we did, you’ll get over it. Magically, the small surface is just big enough for wine and water glasses, a votive candle, pre-set personal plates, linen-wrapped cutlery, multiple service dishes delivered just as a space opens and whisked away once emptied — the attentive service is efficient but not rushed. Miraculously, the table doesn’t feel cluttered, especially — ahem — if you put your phones away. If you prefer a side salad and single entrée such as the butterflied trout, there’s room for that or even the largeformat platter of sliced dry-aged ribeye.
Weger is committed to natural, organic wines from boutique vineyards (primarily European) and to choosing not by the grape but how you
want the wine to “feel.” Rely on guidance from the well-informed staff, who cheerfully bring multiple bottles to the table for tasting pours.
A boxed section — charcuterie, fish and cheese — leads the menu with a price tier of one, three or five items. We reached consensus on five of the 12 and added the warmed quarterloaf of Dozen wheat sourdough.
The dishes will rotate with availability, but you can probably count on the salmon rillette — a dice of in-house cured lox mixed with rendered bacon fat (both byproducts of Lou’s popular brunch menu), formed into a puck, topped with a tangle of chervil. We had a sizable slab of tangy cow’s-milk cheese (from Bloomy Rind) with a plop of house-made jam. Thin slices of coppa were wrapped around spears of pickled cantaloupe. The table winner was the ball of labneh submerged in a puddle of olive oil and a splash of smoky salsa negra, served with toasted wedges of sourdough.
Build a meal from the right side of the menu, set into trios that segue from starter to vegetable to water to land. I am late to the crispy-rice phenomenon, passing it by on menu after menu. My tablemates insisted, and I’m forever grateful — though the bar is now set high thanks to Lou’s interpretation, which Weger says took her and opening sous chef Mike Kida two weeks to perfect. Steamed rice is mixed with saffron tea, put into a pan with highly heated oil and pressed down with a spoon to form a crust. That crackly shell is filled with rice and clarified butter, finished in the oven, inverted onto a plate, strewn with nuts, capped with pickled fruit compote and tendrils of green leek. All the tastes, all the mouth feels, all on one plate.
The Peruvian lima beans are my unforgettable takeaway from Lou — elevated
peasant food of giant fresh lima beans cooked in beer, drained and spooned onto a lipped plate brimming with pale-green olive oil, with marinated red peppers, burrata torn into bitesized chunks, urfa (I looked it up so you don’t have to — a Turkish dried and flaked chili pepper) and bee balm.
Croquettes — quintessential comfort food — are a recent and golden addition to the menu, three to a plate. Adhering to the seasons, the last summer cucumbers we had have now been replaced by roasted root vegetables. We misread the braised lamb and curry as lamb curry, but were pleasantly surprised with a mold of tender lamb bound with tomato jam and studded with pepitas, set in a pool of earthy curry.
Succumb to the chocolate siren call and you won’t be disappointed. The dark chocolate hazelnut cake is layered with sabayon, but it was surpassed by the chilled retro glass dishes of
and salt. (This is a good time to tout the kitchen’s impeccable use of salt throughout the menu.)
Kida, Lou’s chef of four years, and his wife/ pastry chef Sierra Cody have departed, with plans to open a small sandwich and ice cream shop. Paul Nguyen has arrived from California to take the helm as chef de cuisine, bringing with him deep experience in French technique, so expect Lou to lean even more to that culinary profile. Weger opened Lou Paris this spring and splits her time between there and here; operating partner Campbell Moore steers the Nashville ship.
In Lou, Weger has achieved a seamless synthesis of easy-breezy California contemporary and classic Parisian poise, fashioning an exquisite experience that bears repeating again and again. ▼
sublime ice creams — almond basil, cantaloupe sorbet and sheep’s-milk cheese with olive oil
BRAISED LAMB AND CURRY
LABNEH WITH SOURDOUGH
PERUVIAN LIMA BEANS
THE AESTHETICS OF RETREAT
An exhibition of interdisciplinary work from Lovie Olivia pushes boundaries by ignoring them
BY JODI HAYS
IT IS THE PERSISTENT question asked of artists but answered mostly by the ecosystems surrounding them: What do you call your work? Is it assemblage? Collage? Found sculpture? Is it a tapestry? You call that a painting?
Lovie Olivia, a self-described autodidact, calls it work. Beauty as a Method, Olivia’s solo show at Tinney Contemporary, is curated by Michael J. Ewing, and is concurrent with the Frist Art Museum’s Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, which includes four of Olivia’s paper-, ephemera-, scrapand vellum-based works. Those works are, for lack of a better word, collage, but the Tinney show puts Olivia’s interdisciplinary practice on display — it includes a cross-examination of the artist’s vibrant collage works as well as her color-filled paintings.
The paintings in the Tinney space are modestly scaled. Ewing organizes these more traditionally presented paintings and frescoes — which feature whole figures in colorful, patterned interiors — alongside the framed
collages. For the framed works, Olivia cuts figures and shapes from cardstock, then places them, nested with scrawled notes, in ordinary file folders that she transforms through slicing, coloring, painting and even quilting. Silhouetted heads peek out from under graph paper, and bodies in profile interleaf as layers of cut shapes, sometimes subdued with antique metal brads.
Olivia is not only collaging material, but also ideas, as do the best artists of our time. “Squid ink is 99 percent melanin, so I am trying to tell a story through a material,” she says in a short video that screens in a loop in the Frist’s Multiplicity show. The works are part reading list, part book, part Joseph Cornell-inspired collage, part origami, part sculpture. They are a dense amalgam of her interests in embodied material and intersectionality.
Traditionally, file folders keep unsightly papers organized and offices tidy, collected and protected. These ordinary manila office folders make me think of jobs. In my early post-under-
graduate days, I had a temp job that had me in the bowels of the filing/claims room of a mega-insurance company in the Financial District in Boston. The files were worn, chock-full of information, handled, stacked and stuffed, made to be opened, read and researched. You can imagine the density of care, knowledge and experience that’s encased in just one folder. Seen through the organization of an artist in the studio — in this case Lovie Olivia’s in St. Louis — viewers are privy to what went into making her paintings. I see Kara Walker’s silhouettes and Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines and flatbed picture planes.
In addition to the care and collection in a folder, floral imagery in the Tinney show references retreat, compositionally (and conceptually) recalling Aaron Douglas’ murals, and here they are just a mile from his old stomping grounds at Fisk University. In keeping with the formal moves of Olivia’s work, you can find references to the interiority of refuge, solace and things kept secret — as if you’re a disorganized
detective or a confused mapmaker.
Many artists insist on calling interdisciplinary works paintings. In breathing space into what we call a painting, drawing or collage, we can also — in repetition and difference — make something that has no category. If, as academic Saidiya Hartman writes, “Beauty is a way of creating possibility in the space of enclosure,” then Beauty as a Method shows us frescoes and free association, inviting pure color and designed interiors to live together. If anything, I can’t wait to see how these definitions conflate even more. ▼
Lovie Olivia: Beauty as a Method Through Oct. 28 at Tinney Contemporary, 237 Rep. John Lewis Way Closing reception 6:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26
“FOREST,” LOVIE OLIVIA
I SAW DESIGN
Nashville Design Week enters its sixth year with exciting explorations of design
BY KELSEY BEYELER
THE CONCEPT OF DESIGN might seem broad or even abstract, but whether you recognize it or not, design affects almost every aspect of contemporary life. Consider how the layout of your living room can influence how comfortable you feel at home, or how the interface of a social media app can affect your personal relationships. The folks at Nashville Design Week are back to embrace that reality, and they’re offering a week full of events that explore all that design encompasses.
Now in its sixth year, Nashville Design Week is a citywide event that celebrates design and the many opportunities — and challenges — it can present. Urban designer Ron Yearwood is NDW’s director of strategy, and he tells the Scene that the organization seeks to create “bold conversations and collaborations” through workshops, demonstrations and panel discussions led by local creatives. This year’s classes range from podcasting and website design to repurposing projects, walking tours and more. These workshops go beyond simply teaching skills — they consider how we approach design, how we feel about it and where we can take it.
In anticipation of NDW, the Scene caught up with a few event hosts for an in-depth look at their offerings. You can learn even more about these events and others at nashvilledesignweek.org.
DESIGN FOR IDENTITY
Monday, Oct. 30
7-9:30 p.m. at Aero Build, 1015 W. Kirkland Ave., Suite 421; $25
“The human body was the first canvas,” Ania Diallo tells the Scene. Among the many art forms that Diallo has worked with, she’s been focusing on henna art lately, and plans to center a multidimensional body-art fashion show around it. Inspired by a Savage X Fenty fashion show, Diallo pitched the event with the idea that creative showcases can focus on more than one art form. Her event, made in collaboration with Kamilah Sanders and John Blackwell, will be a multimodal celebration of art, bodies, movement and culture. The show will represent several countries that have traditions with henna, honoring the different expressions of its use while also exploring how it can connect us as humans.
Will we be replaced with technology? That’s a question that many professionals and creatives are asking amid the emergence of artificial intelligence in the workplace. Rather than feeling worried, Will Thomsen wants you to feel excited about it — particularly if you’re in the film industry. Thomsen is the founder of Fantastic Voyage, a new commercial production company that specializes in branded content and visual storytelling. He’s interested in new technologies and the way they influence creativity, and he’s created a lunchtime panel to explore this topic
and share ideas and inspiration for leveraging new platforms in the film world.
“You can’t ignore it,” Thomsen tells the Scene “Don’t be afraid of the opportunities technology is opening up for us — use them.” Thomsen will consider this concept with a lineup of industry professionals who have used A.I. in their own work, including Tanner Grandstaff, Ryan Berkey, Kali Bailey and Justin Wylie.
DESIGN FOR THE BLACK CULINARY EXPERIENCE
Wednesday, Nov. 1
7-9:30 p.m. at Hardison House, 1010 Hardison St. $40 Bound to be anything but bland, this workshop — hosted by Brian and Cassia Garrett — will consider the role of Black chefs and food professionals in the local culinary landscape. The Garretts are the co-founders of HUE, a business that showcases Black chefs through private dinners with an emphasis on storytelling. This marks the pair’s first event in Nashville, and they rounded up an impressive lineup of chefs and panelists including Marcus Buggs of Coneheads and Plane Jane, recent Chopped champion Star Maye, Karen Thomas of the Pepper Pott and chef Jerod Wilcher. The experience will feature small plates and discussion about representation, creativity and how design manifests in food — from high-end restaurants to your own kitchen. “We want to make the food experiences less transactional and really cause people to be intentional about what it is that they’re consuming,” says Cassia. ▼
PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS
NASHVILLE DESIGN WEEK 2021
ADVICE KING
WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THE FORTHCOMING LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINING ACADEMY?
BY CHRIS CROFTON
In 2014, comedian, musician, podcaster and Nashvillian Chris Crofton asked the Scene for an advice column, so we gave him one. Crowning himself the “Advice King,” Crofton shares his hard-won wisdom with whoever seeks it. Follow Crofton on Twitter and Instagram (@ thecroftonshow), and check out his The Advice King Anthology and Cold Brew Got Me Like podcast. To submit a question for the Advice King, email bestofbread@gmail.com.
DEAR ADVICE KING,
The state of Tennessee recently broke ground on the Multi-Agency Law Enforcement Training Academy (MALETA). It’s in Nashville. A bunch of Republican lawmakers — including Gov. Bill Lee and state House Speaker Cameron Sexton — posed holding ceremonial shovels. It’s going to cost $415 million. It’s on 800 acres. It will have dorms and a commissary. It will have a little fake city for officers to practice urban warfare. What are they preparing for? Why wasn’t this discussed during the mayoral election? What should Nashvillians do?
—Hannah in Nashville
I HEARD ABOUT THIS, Hannah. And I was flabbergasted. I never use that word, either. But I was. I was absolutely fucking flabbergasted. Then I was enraged. Then I was frightened. And then I was sad.
“Why wasn’t this discussed during the mayoral election?”
What a great question, Hannah. I have no idea why it wasn’t discussed during the mayoral election. In fact, I find it insane that it was not discussed during the recent mayoral election. Why the hell are we talking about stadiums and sidewalks when an armed camp is being built in our city? They’re calling it a “campus.” A campus with a fake city where men in body armor learn how to rappel down the sides of apartment buildings? Nope. That’s a military base.
“Campus” is to “military base” as “enhanced interrogation” is to “torture.” That’s an analogy, Gov. Bill Lee. You see, I’m not an idiot, Gov. Lee. You and your crowd (Cameron Sexton, other assorted weirdos and bullies) treat Tennesseans like we are idiots. I went to school. In America. In the 1970s and 1980s. We were taught all about analogies. In fact, we were raised to be little analogy experts. I don’t know why, really, but we were. They were on the SATs and ACTs and everything. So I know a good analogy when I see one — and that’s a solid analogy. We didn’t just learn about analogies in these American schools, either. We also read George Orwell’s 1984. Did you, Gov. Lee? Or were you too busy dressing in drag at football games? Well, in case you missed it, here’s a quote from that book that I feel is extremely relevant to this discussion: “Big Brother is watching you.”
And here’s another one: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
Americans aren’t dumb, Gov. Lee. As I just mentioned, we read George Orwell’s 1984. So, Billy, we know this local army base is intended to be used against us — the citizens of Tennessee. And it won’t be used against the rich citizens — it will be used against the poor ones.
We know that this giant police “campus” is not intended to combat external threats. We have a National Guard for that. We have an Army, a Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard, CIA and NSA. We also know the Multi-Agency
Law Enforcement Training Academy won’t be training officers to get cats out of trees — unless they’re planning to shoot them out. The MALETA will include a “firing range complex” about the size of the Mall at Green Hills. We all read George Orwell’s 1984 as children, Mr. Governor. We know.
Knowing is not enough, however.
When Atlantans heard that their city was intending to build one of these campuses, they organized against it. They started a movement that made news all over the country. You may have heard of it, Nashville — it’s called Stop Cop City. Protesters have tried to physically interrupt the facility’s construction. One, Manuel Teran, was shot 57 times by Georgia State Troopers. Protesters have been arrested, and — unbelievably — charged with racketeering. Atlanta officials refuse to hold a referendum on the project, even though Cop City’s opponents have collected 116,000 signatures demanding one. Georgia’s Cop City is supposed to occupy 85 acres and cost $90 million. MALETA? Eighthundred acres, $415 million. Atlanta got organized. Nashville got brunch.
IS GOV. BILL LEE RIGHT, NASHVILLE? ARE WE IDIOTS?
The MALETA groundbreaking was on Sept. 27. I’m watching a video of it right now. Every single politician holding a shovel at that ceremony is white. They are all Republicans. None of Nashville’s Metro councilmembers appear to be in attendance, as far as I can tell. Many of the politicians are laughing. ▼
MALETA GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY
CHRIS CROFTON, ADVICE KING
A FEELING NOT UNLIKE HAPPINESS
Claire Keegan’s stories chart the good and bad of romantic relationships
BY SEAN KINCH
CLAIRE KEEGAN’S NEW story collection,
So Late in the Day, has a misleading subtitle. Stories of Women and Men sounds charming, potentially romantic; in reality, these tales make a convincing case for singlehood, especially for women. The stories’ premises evoke classic Hollywood — the end of an affair, a chance encounter, a passionate weekend — but Keegan twists expectations in ways not even Cary Grant could unravel.
The source of Keegan’s popularity, soaring in recent years with the success of her novels Small Things Like These and Foster, is less her narrative ingenuity than the quality of her prose. Though her stories are rife with details from her native Ireland, where she’s revered among literature’s first rank, her characters have a universal appeal that has raised her profile in America too. Critics praise her ludic imagery and her knack for capturing complex emotions with few brushstrokes. Her fiction rewards re-reading, when her sentences can be savored for their precision — not the surgical incisiveness of Thomas Mann, but the compassionate minimalism of Anton Chekhov (whom Keegan references by name here).
Cottage (a real place on the island of Achill) when a retired German professor imposes on her for a tour of the house. Their interactions, which begin cordially but take a nasty turn, affirm her decisions to reject the men in her past who proposed to her. “She felt great fortune, now, in not having married any of these men,” she thinks, “and a little wonder at ever having said she would.”
Keegan masterfully deploys telling details, efficient metonymy that projects inner states onto objects. In the title story of this collection, she associates the early, loving weeks of a relationship with the nourishing items a couple buys at the farmers market: “loaves of sourdough bread, organic fruit and vegetables, plaice and sole and mussels off this fish van, which came up from Kilmore Quay.” Contrast that abundance with the state of the man’s refrigerator when he reverts to bachelorhood. “There was nothing fresh there: a jar of three-fruits marmalade, Dijon mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise,” Keegan writes. “He took a Weight Watchers chicken & veg out of the freezer and stabbed the plastic a few times with a steak knife before putting it in the microwave for nine minutes.”
The central character in that story is Cathal, whose semi-dreary life is briefly enlivened by Sabine, a lively woman who is sufficiently self-conscious about her physical flaws to consider settling for him. No sooner does she move into his place, however, than Cathal begins to bristle at her intrusion. When he lets petty selfishness torpedo their chance at happiness, Sabine concludes that her cynical friend Cynthia may be right about men, “that a good half of men your age just want us to shut up and give you what you want, that you’re spoiled and become contemptible when things don’t go your way.”
Cathal at least harms only himself, whereas the other two stories in this collection include men whose toxicity is more dangerous. In “The Long and Painful Death,” an Irish writer is just settling into her residency at the Heinrich Böll
The final piece, “Antarctica,” was also the title story of Keegan’s first collection, published in 1997. Here it offers readers the opportunity to gauge how her writing has evolved over two decades. “Antarctica” begins with a “happily married woman” on a solo shopping trip to London who blithely wonders “how it would feel to sleep with another man … before she got too old,” though she “was sure she would be disappointed.” The story maintains a light tone until its end, when it takes a dark turn. That pattern, comedy turning tragic, is the reverse of what happens in Small Things Like These and Foster, where Keegan pushes young characters to the brink of chasms before steering them to safety.
While her vision has grown rosier, Keegan retains her penchant for creating lovable eccentrics. The protagonist of “Antarctica” feels peculiarly drawn to documentaries about the icy continent. “I always thought hell would be an unbearably cold place where you stayed frozen but you never quite lost consciousness,” the married woman tells her lover. “There’d be nothing, only a cold sun and the devil there, watching you.” Even Cathal, mired in loneliness after the implosion of his engagement, finds joy in drinking from his tap: “A feeling not unlike happiness momentarily crossed over his lips then, and down his throat.”
Another notable trend in Keegan’s work is the diminutive size of her past three books, each of
them stretched with ample margins to reach 100 pages. These are wee books, perfect for stocking stuffers, but they offer a generous vision. Each requires little more than an hour to read, but Keegan’s quirky people will stick with you long afterward.
For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. ▼
So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men
By Claire Keegan Grove Press 128 pages, $20
Keegan will discuss So Late in the Day 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 28, at Parnassus Books and 5:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 30, at
PHOTO: FREDERIC STUCIN ASCO & CO.
FREE TO ATTEND KID & FRIENDLYPET
NOVEMBER 4 + 5 / ONEC1TY / 10 AM - 4 PM
COME HUNGRY FOR SPONSORED BY
Join us for the Fall edition of Crafty Bastards on November 4 + 5 at oneC1TY! The FREE TO ATTEND festival will be our biggest yet with 120 crafters selling their handmade jewelry, body care, gourmet food products, pet goods and more! Knock out your holiday shopping and support local while enjoying craft cocktails, wine, beer, food truck fare, live music, activities and more.
TASTING GARDEN
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 NOON-4PM
SAMPLE YOUR WAY THROUGH THE TASTING GARDEN FEATURING
GRAB TICKETS TO THE NEWLY ADDED TASTING GARDEN AND BRUNCH POP-UP!
BRUNCH IT UP with access to the Brunchy Bastards pop-up and enjoy a full-sized Bloody Mary, unlimited chicken and waffles and more!
PRESENTED BY
BRUNCH POP-UP
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5 10AM-1PM
MUSIC
THE BOYS ARE BACK
The Wooten Brothers return to the stage — and the road
BY RON WYNN
ONE OF MUSIC CITY’s most popular and celebrated family ensembles has reunited. After more than a decade off the road, the great bassist Victor Wooten and his equally masterful brothers — keyboardist and singer Joseph (aka “Hands of Soul”), guitarist Regi (aka “Teacha”) and percussionist Roy (better known as “Futureman”) — are on an extensive national tour. They began by teaming up with seminal New Orleans unit Rebirth Brass Band for a two-week run across the Southeast, and they recently added 10 new dates. Ahead of a hometown stop at Riverside Revival — which will feature a full program of just the Wootens — Victor Wooten tells the Scene there’s a very specific reason why the champions of soul, funk, jazz and more have embarked on this venture.
“This feels very special — we haven’t done this since 2010, and the big reason for it is we want to honor Rudy,” says Wooten, referring to his late brother. Saxophonist Rudy Wooten, who died in 2010, is also the namesake of Gulch-area club Rudy’s Jazz Room. “We get to pay tribute to him every night. Another big part of honoring him is we’ve gone back and gotten a bunch of music that hasn’t been released, and we’re going to put that out. We really want people to understand how great he was, and the contribution he made when he was playing with us.”
The group has already released a new single called “Sweat” and its accompanying music video on Wooten’s own independent Vix label. He says to expect periodic releases over the next few months, with a full album on deck on a date TBA in 2024.
“Sweat” is a nearly four-minute showcase for everything that makes The Wooten Brothers’ music so beloved. There are exuberant collective vocals, crackling funk rhythms, tight and crisp ensemble interaction and enough space for the keen individual skills of each family member to be clearly and fully heard. Plus, there’s an inventive blend of footage in the video, which contains both material shot around Nashville and in Wooten’s garage studio, as well as glimpses of Olympic gymnasts and others working hard to attain success.
Each Wooten brother’s résumé is glittering. The list of artists on whose bandstands five-time Grammy winner Victor has appeared includes Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (of which he’s a founding member), Dave Matthews Band, Keb’ Mo’, India.Arie and most recently funk guitarist Cory Wong, a collaboration Wooten describes as “fantastic and a lot of fun.” He also has written two books and been a mentor for literally thousands of students at his Center for Music and Nature since it opened in 2000.
Joseph Wooten has been a vital part of The Steve Miller Band since 1993, but also has worked with numerous other great musicians. Roy has impressive film and academic creden-
tials, and also concocted innovative instruments in the forms of the SynthAxe Drumitar and the RoyEl percussion keyboard. His amazingly creative Black Mozart project is just one among many that have seen him excel in classical, jazz, soul, gospel and spoken-word projects. Regi is both a highly sought-after music teacher and a prolific guitarist who’s performed with a host of great players, among them drum legend Ginger Baker. One of the associations Victor Wooten recalls most prominently is playing with revered jazz pianist, composer and bandleader Chick Corea, who died in 2021.
“It was such an honor to play with him,” Wooten recalls. “The amazing thing about him, aside from the fact he was such a master musician, is that he was an even greater human being, which is something that most people just never knew. He was such an incredible person, and I learned so much from him. I remember him telling me that what was most important to him as a bandleader was helping you as a musician to reach your highest level — to be the best person that you could be, not just in terms of playing,
TRUST FALL
Mike Baggetta and mssv rely on staying connected at multiple levels
BY SEAN L. MALONEY
WHEN I CATCH up with Knoxville-residing guitarist Mike Baggetta, noted improviser and leader of mssv (that’s short for “main steam stop valve”), he’s on the road, 28 days into a 61-day tour with some 58 shows on the docket. When Baggetta, drum maestro Stephen Hodges (whose extensive résumé includes recording projects with Tom Waits, Jonathan Richman and Mavis Staples) and bass hero Mike Watt pull into The Blue Room on Friday, it will be show No. 50 in the marvelously routed marathon of a self-booked itinerary. Both the trek and the album it follows — September’s Human Reaction, a prime slab of improv-forged art punk — harken back to the DIY days of yore while blasting their way into the future.
“Some of the towns we played, Watt’s never even played before,” Baggetta tells the Scene. Along with his bandmates in groups like Minutemen and Firehose and their various associates, Watt pioneered the hard-touring DIY aesthetic, building the foundation of the national indie network that we know today. The fact that the group found territory that Watt hasn’t covered is a bit awe-inspiring, and it has other benefits too.
“It’s kind of cool to check out new places, and then also see old friends and try out new stuff,” says Baggetta. “Musically, it pays off for us, because the way that I’ve always run this band is that when we have a tour, a record comes. So we play the music from the record, and then in the middle of the set we do a bunch of brand-new music — and we’ll do maybe half new music one night, half new music the other night, and we’ll flip-flop. So that way, right at the end of that tour, we can record the next album.”
but just in terms of life. That philosophy is something that I’ve never forgotten.”
But right now, the family unit is front and center. In addition to the current tour, Wooten adds that next year the group is planning both a European run and a return to Australia.
“I’m sure at some point I’ll be doing some other stuff with the Flecktones, Joseph will be back working with Steve Miller, and our other brothers will be doing their things. But right now we are totally focused and committed to this tour, and we’re especially happy to be playing again in Nashville. Plus, there’s one other thing about this one that’s special, along with honoring Rudy. I’m the youngest, so people now get a chance to see where I got everything from, and the impact and influence my brothers have had on me.”
This performance-composition formula leads to explosive results. Even the most subdued moments on Human Reaction bristle with telekinetic interchange. These three musicians, each a master of his instrument, anticipate and prod, rein it in and let it free. They push each bar and movement back and forth in an ever-moving audio sculpture.
The process is as important as the end product, splayed open in front of the audience onstage every night. The trio creates a Debordian détournement of our concepts of rock and improvisation. From the frazzled, nervy tape-trader punk of opener “Say What
PHOTO: DEVIN
You Gotta Say” to the pastoral synthesis and distant drum rolls of closer “In This Moment,” Human Reaction finds three incredible musicians actively sharing space to make an enveloping musical experience.
“The best practice is playing in front of people,” Baggetta says. “That really gets music to a place that you can’t get it to any other way. The music evolves every night in ways that it’s not going to do in a practice
room, and we’re all on board with that here in this band. And it’s really fun. I’m really lucky that these guys treat my music as if it’s their own music. … The main challenge is making sure that we’re in the moment onstage — we have eye contact, we have ear contact, and we’re there for each other if something goes wrong.”
All that ear contact creates an undeniable oddball
swing that gives pieces like “Junk Haiku” a woozy, Raymond Scott demo-tape feel and “Baby Ghost (From the 1900s)” a ghoulish Carnival of Souls vibe Human Reaction is a work of propulsion and movement, and it begs the audience to see what happens next.
“We laugh a lot. We have a good time. I think living, like, a normal kind of road life is pretty fun for the most part. It’s conversation and learning and trying to stay
in touch with people. I like that it kind of pares down what’s really important in your life.” ▼
TILL I DIE
Nearly two decades into their career, Screaming Females continue tapping into the DIY spirit
BY ADDIE MOORE
NEW JERSEY POWER trio Screaming Females has made it 18 years now without a single hiatus or lineup change. Singer-guitarist Marissa Paternoster credits the group’s longevity to the same punk-rock spirit that binds together the disparate outsider music scenes she’s encountered alongside drummer Jarrett Dougherty and bassist Mike Abbate.
“DIY’s been really good to us,” Paternoster says. “We really value cultivating community and bringing people together through music and making sure it’s inclusive and accessible. Music is a wonderful thing, and it can really take you all around the world if you’re lucky. We’ve managed to last this long because of DIY, so we’re really grateful to have found it and allowed it to be part of our lives.”
As for Nashville memories, Paternoster recalls the connections that landed the group a split 7-inch in 2009 with local indie legends JEFF the Brotherhood (on the latter’s Infinity Cat Recordings imprint). She also has memories that might be a little less significant in the grand scheme of things, but are nonetheless indelible — like multiple shows at The End, where the band’s name is spelled incorrectly on the wall inside: “Screaming Feamales.”
“We haven’t been [to Nashville] recently, I feel like, but when we first started touring nationally, we were really good friends with Daniel Pujol and JEFF the Brotherhood,” Paternoster says of Music City. “We did a lot of traveling and tours with those two respective groups and played at their houses.”
Screaming Females return to town on Halloween night for a show at Drkmttr. The muchloved all-ages venue is the type of performance space that accommodates fans who weren’t alive yet when the group debuted in 2005.
“We always try to prioritize playing all-ages shows whenever possible,” says Paternoster. “But unfortunately, as time goes on and Live Na-
tion buys up more and more venues, it’s harder and harder to find viable all-ages spaces. So I’m sure places like Drkmttr are important to the Nashville community.”
Despite getting their flowers over the years as guests on Last Call With Carson Daly, collaborators with Garbage and recording clients of Steve Albini, Screaming Females remain fiercely independent. The group’s hard work and the consistent efforts of label home and fellow New Jersey punk institution Don Giovanni Records made staying small in a grandiose way possible — as did the ever-changing state of the various scenes in the Screamales’ touring network.
“When you get older, it’s really easy to get sour about what the kids are doing, and I’ve always made a point as I grow older to know that the kids are always going to be OK, and they’re going to make new, cool stuff,” Paternoster says. “And they’re always going to create spaces for each other so that they can be together, because that’s what we did. It really seemed like it was against all odds, even back when we were young. They’ll always figure it out. DIY will always prevail.”
Though critical acclaim for the band’s February release Desire Pathway and their prior seven albums rightly played up Paternoster as a dynamic, compelling vocal powerhouse with memorable guitar riffs for days, the band’s always been a sum of its parts. Thus, they’ve cheated the odds and stayed together this long without taking a break, trying to expand to a four-piece or relying on the occasional fill-in member.
“We all have our unique styles of playing, and those have always been important to what makes the band sound the way it sounds. We write very democratically. Everybody contributes their thoughts and ideas to songs. So I think if it was a different combination of three people, it’d sound different. And therefore, it wouldn’t be the same project. It’d be something else.” ▼
Playing 8 p.m.
Oct. 31, at Drkmttr
Playing 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27, at The Blue Room
PHOTO: BOB SWEENEY
The 28 th Medallion Ceremony
Produced and Presented by THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME® AND MUSEUM
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE MEDALLION ALL-STAR BAND
Biff Watson, Bandleader & Acoustic Guitar
Paul Franklin, Steel Guitar
Jen Gunderman, Keyboards
Rachel Loy, Bass
Brent Mason, Electric Guitar
Jerry Pentecost, Drums
Carmella Ramsey, Vocals
Deanie Richardson, Fiddle and Mandolin
Jeff White, Acoustic Guitar and Vocals
Photos by: Jason Kempin and Terry Wyatt / Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Donn Jones Photography and Amiee Stubbs Photography
Patty Loveless
Wynonna Judd
Jessi Colter and Margo Price
Charlie McCoy
Brenda Lee
Bob Seger Don Schlitz
Connie Smith
Dean Dillon Medallion All-Star Band
Charley Crockett Jamey Johnson
Vince Gill
Brandi Carlile Sister Sadie
Bob McDillTanya Tucker
WMOT
RED CLAY STRAYS with AARON RAITERE SOLD
HALLOWEEN with THE PIANO MEN: THE MUSIC OF ELTON JOHN & BILLY JOEL NO LATENCY EXPERIENCE
SAM BURCHFIELD & THE SCOUNDRELS + NICHOLAS JAMERSON & THE MORNING JAYS + TOPHOUSE
MUSIC: THE SPIN
ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
BY D. PATRICK RODGERS
EARLY IN HIS SET on Oct. 17, Nick Cave told fans gathered at the Ryman Auditorium to expect “an extremely reduced show.” He and his colleague — Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood, who joined Cave on bass for most of the set — would try to “open up these songs and see what’s inside them.” Cave explained that this would require more attention than usual from us showgoers.
Indeed, just a few minutes earlier, the 66-year-old goth icon took the stage with no preamble, no entrance music, no fanfare. There had been no opener either. Cave simply entered at 8:15 p.m., taking a seat at a jet-black concert grand piano lit by a rose-colored shaft of light and — with Greenwood nearby stage left — launching right into “Girl in Amber.”
Most but not all of the songs in the set list were Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds tunes, from heartstring-tuggers “I Need You” and “Into My Arms” to “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry.” Cave explained that he’d often sing the last as a sort of strange, dark lullaby to one of his sons decades ago while living in Brazil — that one was tinged with shades of tragedy, as two of Cave’s four sons have died in the past decade.
was the triumphant “Jubilee Street,” as well as surprise treat “Euthanasia,” a heretofore unreleased song. There was also an uproarious rendition of “Balcony Man” from Cave and Warren Ellis’ 2021 record Carnage. During that one, the spindly, suit-clad Aussie asked those of us seated in the Ryman’s gallery to holler each time he sang the word “balcony” — a word that comes up a half-dozen times or so in that song and was met with roars from the packed balcony each time.
Throughout the two-plus-hour performance, Cave popped up from his piano bench from time to time to cue the house lights, blow kisses to the crowd, cheekily engage with smitten audience members or offer morsels about the background of various songs. Throughout it all, there were no flubs or sour notes. Just Cave’s supple piano playing and powerful vocals, with Greenwood’s subtle low-end undergirding every line — though he ducked into the wings to sit out every third or fourth song.
Dark and moody though Cave’s catalog may be, not every song was dour, of course. There
After a main-set-closing “Push the Sky Away,” Cave and Greenwood returned for an extended two-part encore that featured, among other tunes, Grinderman’s “Palaces of Montezuma,” a fan-requested “Idiot Prayer” and a rendition of “Shivers.” The latter was written by Cave’s late fellow Birthday Party member Rowland Howard when Howard was just 16 years old and The Birthday Party was still known as The Boys Next Door. It was one of many special moments throughout the evening — a long, enchanting tour of a fascinating career, and one of the more enrapturing intimate performances to grace the Mother Church in recent memory.
EMILY KINNEY WITH ALICIA BLUE
RED WANTING BLUE
Saturday, October 28
SONGWRITER SESSION
Ashland Craft
NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, October 28
POETS AND PROPHETS
Luke Laird
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, October 29
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Shaun Richardson
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 4
SONGWRITER SESSION
J.T. Harding
NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 4
HATCH SHOW PRINT
Block Party
3:00 pm · HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP
LIMITED AVAILABILITY
Sunday, November 5
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Tim Galloway
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, November 12
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Lars Thorson
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 18
PERFORMANCE
Shawn Lane 11:00 am · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 18
PERFORMANCE
Jeff
w/ Noah Pope & Shane T Kendell Marvel's Honky Tonk Experience Mudhoney w/ Hooveriii The Hotelier & Foxing w/ emperor x Tommy Prine w/ maggie antone Nick Shoulders & the okay crawdad w/ Hannah Juanita nation of language w/ miss grit grentperez w/ fig yard act w/ pva babyjake w/ mills slaughter beach, dog w/ bonny doon JP Cooper Cochise w/ TisaKorean & BigNumbaNine bre kennedy w/ timothy edward carpenter gayle w/ dylan jonny craig w/ Sunsleep, KEEPMYSECRETS, & A Foreign Affair gimme gimme disco
dylan hartigan (7pm) iguanahead, hedberg, doom gong, jeremy stinson (9pm) waxed, the swell fellas, pelagius, soot pindrop songwriter series ft. winter wilson
Anthony Mossburg, Maddie Ettrich, and more! ivan pulley band w/ collin nash (7pm) caroline romano, braison cyrus, jordan lindsey (9pm)
under the rug w/ social animals the electric sons w/ austin grimm photo ops w/ patrick damphier (7pm) whole damn mess w/ bayshore (9pm)
Crocodyle, Diet Lite, Spirit Ritual
philip
METROPOLIS HAS NOTHING ON THIS
BY JASON SHAWHAN
THERE ARE FEW moments with the synthpop and goth-rock bona fides to kick a crowd into gear like the eight-note fanfare that kicks off live renditions of “Stripped,” one of the most enduring of Depeche Mode’s arsenal of hits. Everyone who loves Depeche Mode has a moment that typifies that special response — the feeling that they’re playing your song — and the grandeur of those eight notes remains an emotional jump-start that countless bands have attempted, but so very few can reliably deliver.
Openers DIIV (pronounced “dive”; they said so themselves) set the vibe nicely. They found the exact right balance between rawk crunch and shoegaze swirl, letting everyone feel like they were swooping into a Gregg Araki film — rising up on diaphanous effects-pedal waves, diving deep into delicate shred.
But the Mode have been masters of mood since 1981, evolving alongside technology while at the same time finding the sounds to express where we’re all at. If the band’s experimentation early on with industrial music was their ice-cold dom side in full display, the broadening of their soundscape has found other ways to explore emotional dynamics.
“Wagging Tongue,” the second single from Memento Mori — the newest album, which gives the tour its name — made concrete all the complicated feelings in Bridgestone Arena: the absence of synthesist Andy Fletcher following his unexpected passing last year remains almost tactile in the air. “Wagging Tongue” is focused on the damage that grief can do, it does so as the second song in the show; it’s also the very first co-write by lead vocalist and frontman Dave Gahan and chief songwriter and crafter of all manner of sounds Martin Gore in the band’s history.
Later in the set, Fletch got a massive tribute with “World in My Eyes,” one of his personal faves and the first of the four songs of the night from the band’s 1990 magnum opus Violator. But the vibe was never somber, even in the darkest-edged
material. Depeche Mode has always aimed for the liberation of catharsis, tending to pull away from the paralyzing and somber.
Embracing his silver-fox destiny with a sparkly ensemble at the start of the evening, Gahan remains a dynamic presence after four decades in the game. He’s capable of a lithe septuple pirouette, a matador shuffle that would do Pina Bausch proud, and even a deep knee bend that playfully tweaked the fan base in a gentler way than the actual passage of time does. He works his ass off onstage, playing off of Gore in a way that embodies the multidecade journey they’ve had in this band.
Technically, drummer Christian Eigner and keyboardist Peter Gordeno are touring members, but they’ve been part of the Mode since the late ’90s, and they’re an essential part of the live experience. Eigner in particular impresses, using a live kit and sample triggers to pay proper respect to the snare sounds of sequencers past:
“Enjoy the Silence” would have you feeling like there was a Roland module plugged in somewhere, but one of the few blessings of this decade is that live drummers have grown up playing nice with house music. And it’s always nice when Dave gets to take a break for a couple of songs, letting Martin take the lead — on this tour, it’s on “A Question of Lust” and the stirring “Soul With Me.” But the two have always had such great harmonies together, and they made it all the more apparent throughout the twohour-and-change set.
Despite the fact that Depeche Mode is a fairly traditional rock band now, I derive a great deal of strength from the moments when they let their dancefloor dalliances back out to play: the way that François Kevorkian’s monstrous Pump Mix emerges in the back half of “Personal Jesus,” or how “Never Let Me Down Again” always makes space to spin out into its New Beat-adjacent Aggro Mix, or how the glorious synth majesty of “Just Can’t Get Enough” exists onstage in its 12-inch Schizo version. Time barrels on, and as the great philosopher Tom Jones said, “Tomorrow is promised to no one.” And even as knees will creak and new generations every day make the unfortunate acquaintance of their sciatic nerve, we gather to dream, and to dance, and to take part in the ritual. ▼
Barren
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24–26
VIRTUAL SCREENING
Love Gets a Room
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25–27
VIRTUAL SCREENING
Musical Tales from the Venetian Ghetto
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26
GORDON JCC AT 12 PM
SHTTL
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26
BELCOURT AT 7 PM
Stay with Us
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28
AMC BELLEVUE 12 AT 7 PM
Farewell Mr. Haffmann
MATINEE SCREENING
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29
GORDON JCC AT 2 PM
Hummus Full Trailer
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31–NOV 2
VIRTUAL SCREENING
The Goldman Case
WEDNESDAY, NOV 1–NOV 2
VIRTUAL SCREENING
CLOSING NIGHT
Matchmaking
THURSDAY, NOV 2
BELCOURT AT 7 PM
PET OF THE WEEK!
ELSIE’S excited since October is Adopt A Shelter Dog Month! It’s true. She’s a happy dog who always has a smile on her face. But this month? It’s extra BIG because she is a shelter dog that wants to get adopted. She’s an adventurous 1-year-old that enjoys playing with her two-legged and four-legged friends. She has a joyful attitude and goofy smile that is guaranteed to bring happiness to everyone around her. She also loves chasing her toys and dreams of a yard to do just that. Elsie’s active spirit would make her the perfect companion for walks, hikes, and runs. Visit Today at NHA!
Call 615.352.1010 or visit nashvillehumane.org
Located at 213 Oceola Ave., Nashville, TN 37209
Adopt. Bark. Meow. Microchip. Neuter. Spay.
TAKING THE FALL
Anatomy of a Fall expertly dissects a complicated marriage
BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY
TO QUOTE A Ginuwine song title, the world is so cold in Anatomy of a Fall, the Palme d’Or-winning drama from French filmmaker Justine Triet. Set mostly on the snowy mountains of France’s Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the story is just as bleak and chilly as the movie’s surroundings. This is technically a courtroom thriller, as the bulk of the film sees a character on trial for the murder of her significant other. The woman is Sandra (Sandra Hüller, aka the long-suffering daughter from 2016’s Toni Erdmann), a German writer who’s been accused of offing her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis). Although her husband’s death seems like a suicide — he’s found outside their home by their son (Milo Machado-Graner) after plunging from an attic window — an investigation suggests there might have been foul play.
Triet doesn’t appear to be interested in crafting a suspenseful mystery that gives you a revealing resolution. Fall is really about the disintegration of a marriage. Once Sandra is on trial, consistently being coached by her lawyer friend (Swann Arlaud) on how not to appear guilty, she’s forced to answer questions about her and her hubby’s notso-solid union. We enter the movie fully aware that things are tense between the two: The opening scene features Sandra being interviewed at her home by a woman. It’s a breezy convo that’s cut short by her husband blasting an instrumental cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” — yep, you heard
DICK FLICK
Dicks: The Musical is a transgressive critique of the business world
BY JASON SHAWHAN
me — upstairs.
With a script co-written with her husband, fellow filmmaker Arthur Harari, Triet presents a marriage story in which both sides have legitimate reasons for thinking the other is not carrying their end of the load. The movie’s intense centerpiece is a lengthy argument between Sandra and Samuel, which Samuel recorded and is later played in the courtroom. Triet flashes back to that heated exchange in their kitchen, with Samuel accusing Sandra of everything from infidelity to plagiarism and Sandra refusing to play the bad guy in Samuel’s self-victimizing narrative.
While she’s known for dramedies like Age of Panic, In Bed With Victoria and Sibyl (the last of which co-starred Hüller), Triet goes all-in on the riveting seriousness that makes up Fall Inspired in part by the Amanda Knox case, Triet
TREVOR (AARON JACKSON) and Craig (Josh Sharp) are both the titular dicks and the writers (along with composer Karl Saint Lucy) of Dicks: The Musical, a furious, raging critique of modern business culture and the inescapable weirdness of families. They’re brought together in a ridiculous office consolidation to sell ridiculous products, where their new supervisor Megan Thee Stallion (with flawless outfits and choreography) pits them against one another — not just personally, but in their very shaky perceptions of The World. The two are abstractly successful businessdudes determined on living Alpha Lives while soaking in a sea of excess, with money and ladies at arm’s reach and no lingering sense of emptiness. But that latter ache grows all the more present when the two realize that they are identical twins of near-Shakespearean provenance.
[Side note: If, looking at the two stars, you as a viewer can’t get past the fact that they aren’t anything close to identical, that’s probably a good sign that the film isn’t necessarily for you. There are lots of things in this scrappy beast of a movie that might cause turmoil, but if you’re having trouble embracing that aspect of the story, then I worry what might happen when The Sewer Boys show up, or when God gets some exceptional changes of outfit.]
What are two professionally successful but personally adrift late-20-
creates her own scandalous, sensational trial wherein the prosecution (played prickly by a bald-headed Antoine Reinartz) seems hellbent on painting the accused as a cold, heartless killer. (Between this and the equally harrowing Saint Omer, U.S. distributor Neon is beginning to become the stateside home for French legal dramas about women on trial for killing a loved one.)
VISIT
NASHVILLESCENE.COM TO READ OUR REVIEW OF KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
Triet occasionally makes awkward moves with the camera, creating zooms and pans that seem more like accidents that were left in. It’s like she’s making sure the audience is unsure about who or what to focus their attention on.
As a woman who tries to remain logical and pragmatic even when things become increasingly dire, Hüller maintains a sympathetic level-
something business guys to do upon discovering this shared family history?
If your first thought was Parent Trapping, you were absolutely correct. Which brings in Harris (Nathan Lane) and Evelyn (Megan Mullally), entrenching their iconic stature among theater kids and weirdos for at least another decade or so. The problem with these particular parents is that Harris is very gay and Evelyn is immobile in her apartment (and possibly an ancient incarnation of some unknowable power and at the very least gifted with some Cronenbergian attributes), and neither is particularly nostalgic for their rocky marriage. So what are the dicks to do? Shenanigans! But the best kind: messy musical-theater shenanigans.
When Mullally, toward the end of the song “Lonely,” lets loose with her Supreme Music Program/Sweetheart Break-In rock goddess voice, it is an electrifying moment. It doesn’t break the character of Evelyn from the willowy mystery she’s been presented as, but rather complicates her. That’s a transcendent bolt from above. But it in no way precludes other film-shaking choices later on, including a couple of character evolutions coupled with a transgressive finale that very well may cause riots.
This film does a good job of getting at the raw, naughty energy of truly underground theater, where boundaries can be broken and cuss words can be used as load-bearing joints in the script. There’s a lot of Tom Eyen here, as well as some John Waters and even some Gregg Araki, and it’s exactly the right next step for everyone who saw Theater Camp and maybe wanted to take the next, edgier step. But understand that this film’s last 10 or so minutes are as potentially explosive as those of Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum in that they present something that will make the closed-minded and the dogmatic just completely lose their shit. And possibly spontaneously
headedness even in moments when it seems like her world is completely unraveling. Machado-Graner gives the film’s best performance as Sandra’s visually impaired son. He gives off wise-beyond-his-years energy as an 11-yearold piano prodigy who’s painfully aware of the gravity of the situation. You’ve gotta give props to Triet for wondering what would happen if you melded Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage with the documentary miniseries The Staircase (two productions that were both remade by HBO, by the way). You basically get a mystery where figuring out who did it is not important. What is important — as Anatomy of a Fall expertly, exquisitely lays out — is how it got to that point in the first place. ▼
combust.
I worked in a theater during the opening weekend of Drop Dead Gorgeous back in 1999, and you have never seen a pre-YouTube, pre-Worldstar freakout like right when Denise Richards’ character started her performance of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” Dicks: The Musical leaves that shockwave in the dust, never looking back, messing with all the minds. ▼
Dicks: The Musical R, 86 minutes Now playing wide
Anatomy of a Fall NR, 150 minutes Opening Friday, Oct. 27, at the Belcourt
ACROSS
1 Director who said “Horror films don’t create fear. They release it”
6 Center cut?
9 Length just over one centimeter
13 Entertainment one might view from a box
14 Half of a rhyming game name
16 Mine, in Marseille
17 Desert near Sinai
18 Indecent
19 “It’s a ___”
20 Natural find with a cavity
21 Whole alternative
23 Major Japanese company HQ’d in a 43-story tower shaped like a rocket
24 Capital of Washington?
27 Rubber overshoe
29 Shows indecision, in a way
32 ___ Verde, national park in Colorado
35 Org. concerned with cyberwarfare
36 Melber of MSNBC
37 Infamous presidential denial
40 Seasonal phenomenon depicted six times in this puzzle
44 Gave advice
45 Desire for a lonely hart?
46 Childish Gambino’s record label
47 He actually died about 1,500 years before the fiddle was invented
48 Quizzes
49 “The $10,000 Pyramid” host
52 Person who might call a child a bairn
54 “This again?!”
55 Tea brand
58 How some money is held
62 Be overly sweet
64 Classic N.Y.C. cinema name
66 Food that can be eaten to help with anemia
67 Sprinted
68 Place for a brace
69 Día de los Reyes month
70 Drink that should not be served shaken
71 Tonsil treater, in brief
72 Freshen DOWN
1 Third-most common Chinese surname in America
2 Competitive poker?
3 State flower of Utah
4 Guiding statements
5 Jet black, as hair
6 ___ de mer
7 They may precede cries of “GOOOOAAAAL!”
8 Peddle
9 Isn’t out of
10 Our bodies need 20+ different kinds to function
11 Some seating sections
12 Lawyer in “To Kill a Mockingbird”
15 Cool cat’s “Copy that”
22 Wide ray
25 Male members of the House of Saud
26 Some people on deck
28 Its lowest score is 120, in brief
29 Show indecision, in a way
30 Name of seven Danish kings
31 D-F-A is one, in music
33 What you do just for grins?
34 Ticks off
38 Many a surgeon, informally
39 Corner piece
41 Conceal, with “away”
42 Pass
43 The Legend of Zelda console, in brief
48 When many businesses open
49 Passageways
50 Structure built in a catenary arch shape
51 On a ___
53 Edmonton N.H.L. player
56 Ending with euro
57 Animals on Nebraska’s state quarter
59 Like some numbers and scores
60 Withered, climate-wise
61 Toot one’s own horn
63 “___, verily”
65 Up to this point
PUZZLE BY DAN CAPRERA
resident of the State of Ten-
nessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ISRAEL MARTIN LUTHER MASON.
It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after November 16, 2023 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on December 18, 2023. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day, Clerk L. Chappell Deputy Clerk Date: October 19, 2023
Chelsey A. Stevenson Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 10/26, 11/2, 11/9, 11/16/23
EMPLOYMENT
Non-Resident Notice
Third Circuit
Docket No. 23D652
TANESSA LARAE MARSHALL vs. ISRAEL MARTIN LUTHER MASON
In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ISRAEL MARTIN LUTHER MASON.
It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after November 16, 2023 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on December 18, 2023.
It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day, Clerk
L. Chappell Deputy Clerk Date: October 19, 2023
Chelsey A. Stevenson Attorney for Plaintiff
NSC 10/26, 11/2, 11/9, 11/16/23
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