Nashville Scene 11-12-20

CITY LIMITS: CAN THE TENNESSEE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BE FIXED?

NOVEMBER 12–18, 2020 I VOLUME 39 I NUMBER 40 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

PAGE 6

FILM: THE BELCOURT RETURNS WITH A SLEW OF COVID-19 PRECAUTIONS IN PLACE PAGE 28

Safety, compensation and accountability at Nashville construction sites

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

WORK IN PROGRESS

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NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

contents

CONTENTS

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

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Can the Tennessee Democratic Party Be Fixed? ....................................................6

Pen Names

CITY LIMITS

To save itself from the fate of the Whigs, the TNDP should look at Heidi Campbell

BOOKS

Jeffrey Jackson tells a story of love, art and resistance during World War II

BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN AND CHAPTER 16

BY J.R. LIND

Meet the Nonvoters Who Are Turning Out the Vote ................................................6 DACA recipients and others without voting rights made their own mark on last week’s election

BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

A Different Kind of Care ............................9

24

MUSIC

The Wisdom to Know the Difference..... 24 Stellar songwriter Darrell Scott focuses on what he can control in a chaotic time

Alzheimer’s caregivers are coping with limited options during the pandemic

BY GEOFFREY HIMES

BY HANNAH HERNER

Rapper Gee Slab discusses celebrating Nashville hip-hop in the national spotlight with playlist Tenn Toes Down

Pith in the Wind ...................................... 10 This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

Hometown Pride ..................................... 25

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

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In the Haze .............................................. 25

Work in Progress

The Spin ................................................... 26

Safety, compensation and accountability at Nashville construction sites

The Scene’s live-review column checks out The Extraterrestrials, Jaime Wyatt and more

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN AND LORIE LIEBIG

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Join the Art Writing Symposium at TSU, catch Opera Jukebox at Nashville Opera, build your own streaming Ang Lee film festival, watch The TRY Channel on YouTube, watch The Crown Season 4, listen to the new Psychedelic Furs album and more

The ’Court Is Back in Session ................ 28

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: Cream Premiere: Lackhoney Gets Reflective in ‘All Gone’ [Fresh Track] Gicola Lane on Georgia’s Surprising Results and Organizing the South Nashville Food Project Partners With Local Breweries to Fight Food Insecurity Local Filmmaker Dwayne Logan’s ‘Black Thoughts’ Is a Moving Call for Racial Reconciliation

ON THE COVER:

Photo: Eric England

Spencer Cullum gives English prog a Nashville twist on his new album

COVER STORY

BY EDD HURT

CRITICS’ PICKS

FILM

The Belcourt Theatre returns this week with limited capacity and a slew of safety precautions

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

Ahead of the Pack .................................. 29 Wolfwalkers is a beautiful reminder of the joys of conventional animation

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BY CORY WOODROOF

FOOD AND DRINK Acme at Its Nadir

Tom Morales on shutting down Acme Feed & Seed during the pandemic for the safety of staff and customers

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

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NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

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MARKETPLACE

ART

Flower Power New paintings by Sam Dunson examine Black male demise

BY SHANTAY ROBINSON

Walk a

Mile

with J.R. Lind

With feet on the street, we discover Nashville’s own unique beat – one mile at a time

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11/9/20 6:19 PM

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FROM BILL FREEMAN REPUBLICAN POLLSTER FRANK LUNTZ SAYS ‘POLITICAL POLLING PROFESSION IS DONE’ AFTER THIS YEAR’S PRE-ELECTION POLLS MISS THE MARK Political pollsters have been on edge and in the spotlight as this year’s preelection polls clearly underestimated Donald Trump’s support, seemingly repeating 2016 mistakes. Will Americans continue to trust these polls? Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, doesn’t think so.

Noting that pollsters did not do a good job in 2016, Luntz says this year’s polling will cause the public to have “no faith, no confidence.”

He even went so far as to say “the polling profession is done.”

Why have the polls been so far off again this year, when according to a Nov. 4 Wall Street Journal story many pollsters made changes since 2016 in hopes of “accurately capturing the mood of the country ahead of the 2020 election”? To Luntz’s point, the changes obviously did not work.

According to MSN.com, on the morning of Election Day, The New York Times gave former Vice President Joe Biden a 70 percent chance of winning Florida — but Trump ultimately won the state by more than 3 points. A Wisconsin poll by ABC News and The Washington Post had Biden leading by 17 points in the state, but Biden pulled ahead there by only about 20,000 votes. FiveThirtyEight projected that Democrats had a 70 percent chance to take back the U.S. Senate, while Biden had an 89 percent chance of winning the presidency. But as we’ve seen, it’s been an excruciating neck-and-neck race even in some states that were perceived as blue.

Many polls were off by a significant number of points, just as they were in 2016. Whatever “changes” the pollsters implemented did not help them make more accurate predictions.

The difference this year, of course, is that pollsters had the overall outcome correct — former Vice President Biden has finally won the war and will be our 46th president. But certainly it’s been a much harder battle than anyone could have expected based on pre-Election Day polling numbers.

In Wisconsin, three different polls predicted Biden would win the state by between 6.5 and 11 points. He won by only a fraction of a percent. President Trump’s lead in Ohio before Election Day, according to FiveThirtyEight, was projected to be 1 point or less — but he won by more than 8 points. In Florida, Biden was projected to win by 2.5 points, but he lost by 3.5 points. In Michigan, Biden won by 2.7 points — pollsters had the outcome right, but he was projected to win by 8 points.

There’s much speculation as to why these large error margins occurred.

Perhaps pollsters forgot some of the lessons they learned from 2016’s postelection analysis. USA Today noted last week that the errors in pre-election polling data from 2016 were due to how education was weighted in the poll data.

Pollsters overvalued college graduates and their correlation to support of Clinton, while apparently failing to connect

remaining voter types to their potential support of Trump. Perhaps that was the case again this year.

Nick Beauchamp, a political scientist at Northeastern, says in a story on the university’s site that another reason for the skew could be that “specific polls undercounted the extent to which certain demographics — such as Hispanic voters in specific states — shifted toward President Trump.” Beauchamp also notes that projected averages in nine swing states were off by a median of 6 points, an error large enough to possibly affect future public trust. Perhaps, as noted

by Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, we put too much “stock in public opinion polls, and those who interpret them.”

Another school of thought says that in the year of COVID-19, there could be no accurate projections, as the pollsters had no benchmark, no experience for what was ahead of them. According to Courtney Kennedy, the Pew Research Center’s director of survey research, “Outside of a few historically vote-by-mail states, pollsters do not have any experience modeling the vote in this type of election.”

Solomon Messing, chief scientist at the liberal digital organization Acronym, feels the outcomes are more a result of how COVID campaigning was handled — that President Trump’s camp was more open to canvassing neighborhoods and seeing voters in person, while Biden’s camp mostly depended on social media and digital outreach.

Obviously, between the mail-in voting, the underestimating of President Trump’s support throughout various communities and an unusual campaigning format during the pandemic, things did change drastically this year.

While Luntz may be right to grieve the impact on public trust, it’s unlikely that polling will fall by the wayside. Trust will have to be regained, but political candidates always hire pollsters to get an idea of the landscape — it’s what they do.

And for better or worse, it’s likely they always will.

Bill Freeman Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and Home Page Media Group in Williamson County.

Editor-in-Chief D. Patrick Rodgers Senior Editor Dana Kopp Franklin Associate Editor Alejandro Ramirez Arts Editor Laura Hutson Hunter Culture Editor Erica Ciccarone Music and Listings Editor Stephen Trageser Contributing Editors Jack Silverman, Abby White Staff Writers Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Geoffrey Himes, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Chris Parton, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Andrea Williams, Cy Winstanley, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Art Director Elizabeth Jones Photographers Eric England, Matt Masters, Daniel Meigs Graphic Designers Mary Louise Meadors, Tracey Starck Production Coordinator Christie Passarello Events and Marketing Director Olivia Moye Promotions Coordinator Caroline Poole Publisher Mike Smith Senior Advertising Solutions Managers Maggie Bond, Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Stevan Steinhart, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Advertising Solutions Manager William Shutes Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Aya Robinson, Price Waltman Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis For advertising information please contact: Mike Smith, msmith@nashvillescene.com or 615-844-9238 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

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CITY LIMITS

CAN THE TENNESSEE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BE FIXED?

To save itself from the fate of the Whigs, the TNDP should look at Heidi Campbell

I

t was another tough Election Day for the Tennessee Democratic Party.

Sure, Joe Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton in the state, but Donald Trump’s vote share stayed roughly the same as 2016 at 60.7 percent.

Biden won the same three counties — Davidson, Shelby and Haywood — as Clinton.

In the Senate race, Marquita Bradshaw won the same three counties and was crushed by Bill Hagerty, who landed roughly 62 percent of the vote.

There were some hopeful whispers that Renee Hoyos might make some headway against Tim Burchett in the Second Congressional District. Burchett won by 36 points. Outside of the safe seats of U.S. Reps. Jim Cooper and Steve Cohen, the best performing Democratic congressional candidate was minor professional Resistance figure Christopher Jolly Hale, who adopted the bizarre (some would even say dimwitted) strategy of telling voters in the 4th Congressional District that scandal-ridden Rep. Scott DesJarlais — a man who a former Tennessee Republican Party operative once called a “terd” [sic] who he regretted “push[ing] ... across the finish line in 2010” — was not conservative enough. Thus, Hale — a Democrat, remember — said people should vote for him in 2020 so they could eliminate DesJarlais’ incumbency advantage and vote for someone more conservative in 2022, offering a parade of horribles that included loony Islamophobe Lou Ann Zelenik and monorail enthusiast Joe Carr.

While his vote total was a seemingly impressive 111,000 or so, Hale got a third of the vote, the lowest share of any of DesJarlais’ Democratic challengers in his six congressional elections.

Democrats failed to flip any seats in the state House, either in the suburbs or in more rural areas where the party made a play at, among others, Craig Fitzhugh’s old seat in West Tennessee. John Mark Windle of Livingston and Johnny Shaw of Bolivar remain as the only Democrats representing nonurban districts (although Shaw’s district does include parts of Jackson). The lone bright spot for the Dems was Heidi Campbell defeating Steve Dickerson for a Davidson County Senate seat, growing the Senate Democratic Caucus to six.

Obviously, Democrats in Tennessee face certain structural disadvantages. In a state where a wildly popular moderate-Democrat former governor can only win three counties and 44 percent of the vote in a Senate election, as Phil Bredesen did in 2018, it’s hard to argue that any change in electoral strategy or fundraising tactics or leadership would make that much difference. And super-duper-majority control of the legisla-

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ture gives Republicans redistricting power, which of course they’ll use to their advantage, just as Democrats did for years (and frankly, despite Sen. Jeff Yarbro’s annual legislative effort to pass the Fair Maps Act, would if they could again).

Things just aren’t easy for the party, and pithy criticisms of the TNDP are a dime a dozen. (Some wry Twitter user had a nice crack about the party’s inability to win its own primaries, for example.)

And every two years, the TNDP and its loyalists go through the wailing, the gnashing, the self-examination, the calls for a new chair, as if just one change at the top can suddenly reverse the fortunes of a party that’s been flagging for decades — as if party chair Mary Mancini has anything to do with a political realignment that started 50 years ago, or the fact that a third of the state was a Republican stronghold for 100 years before that.

But to paraphrase a successful salt-ofthe-earth Democrat, the buck’s gotta stop somewhere.

Days after the election, Mancini took the decision out of the hands of the party’s executive committee, announcing Nov. 7 she wouldn’t seek a fourth term as chair. The executive committee will meet in January to pick a new leader.

In the meantime, the party faithful will lob all the tried and true criticisms: that the complacency that grew from the success of the first 150 years of the party has infected its institutions and its thinking, and has yet to be eradicated; that it needs a more robust data-gathering operation; that the relationship between the executive committee and the chair should be realigned; that the county parties have to do more to recruit candidates; that the executive committee should do more to recruit. This is all so much inside baseball that will no doubt be examined by innumerable task forces and committees, but there’s one strategy the new chair could adopt right away, even if the effort may not bear fruit for years.

Find more Heidi Campbells.

Whether the TNDP meant to or not, it found a winning strategy with the former Oak Hill mayor. In fact, it found a strategy the TNGOP found decades ago. You have to build a bench, and you have to have people start somewhere. In Campbell’s case, it was first as a city commissioner and then as mayor of a tony enclave of 4,700 people.

She did her time, grew her support, made a name for herself and then took the next step.

Starting in the ’80s, this is what the Republican Party in Tennessee would do. Find attractive candidates with ties to their communities and run them for city council or school board or county commission. Have them grow their support and make a name

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

BY J.R. LIND

for themselves, and then put them up for bigger races that are winnable. This was an especially effective strategy for Republican women, including now-Sen. Marsha Blackburn, former U.S. Rep. Diane Black and a host of current and former state legislators.

On the other hand, the Democrats find an attractive candidate (say, James Mackler) who no one’s ever heard of outside of a Jackson Day Dinner and then throw them up for a statewide race. (Mackler, of course, finished third in the U.S. Senate primary behind Bradshaw and Robin Kimbrough.) Sometimes, they try even more bizarre things like running supporting actors from long-forgotten Richard Mulligan vehicles. (In this case, Park Overall, the anointed frontrunner, lost in the primary to Mark Clayton, who was ultimately disavowed by the TNDP.) Outside of the big cities, no one except the overexcited care much if their city councilmember or county commissioner is a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian or a Democratic Socialist or whatever — so long as they get the potholes fixed, keep the parks green and maybe exercise a little discretion with the taxing authority.

Even some of the reddest suburban counties — Wilson, for instance — have Democrats on their county commission. Do their constituents know? Maybe. If they do know, do they care? Not particularly, probably.

These are the training grounds, the realest of the retail politics. There’s no need to nationalize an Oneida city council race.

A Biden-backing longtime middle school principal in Dover may not know anything about critical race theory or all the mechanics of single-payer health care, but damn it, the people know who he is. And if he sticks around in local government long enough, they’ll see he can get things done and work hard for their families, and maybe even the MAGAiest man in Stewart County will give him a shot at the state House.

And after a few terms, maybe one of these folks gets some traction and runs for Congress. Maybe not, but in the meantime, you put more and more of these Quiet Democrats in city halls and county courthouses and then push for them for bigger things.

Someday, one of them will catch fire.

This shift has the advantage of neutralizing another frequent intraparty complaint: that rather than going on offense to expand their base, the party has adopted a siege

mentality in Nashville and Memphis (and to a lesser degree, in the areas of Knoxville and Chattanooga where they have success), protecting those seats at all costs without fielding a real challenge elsewhere.

You do what you always do, you get what you always got, and for the past two decades for Tennessee Democrats, that’s been not much. Insofar as there’s been a strategy, it seems to be finding candidates palatable to the party apparatchiks and activists rather than the voters they have to convince to pull the proverbial lever.

If the D next to the name is such an obstacle to overcome — and admittedly, right now it is, just as the R was for years for the other side — make it irrelevant by making the name itself one that people already know and already trust.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

MEET THE NONVOTERS WHO ARE TURNING OUT THE VOTE DACA recipients and others without voting rights made their own mark on last week’s election

BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

M

ore than 3 million Tennesseans voted in last week’s general election. That’s a record.

While the turnout number was higher than ever, more than half of Tennesseans did not vote — some because they were too young, others because they have been disenfranchised due to their criminal records, and still more because they were uninterested or uneducated about the process.

But one group of nonvoters was more invested in the election than ever, spending hours contacting potential voters and distributing election-related literature with TIRRC Votes, the political advocacy arm of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS Rights Coalition.

Nethmi Hewavithana is a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Tennessee, where she is studying neuroscience and global studies on a student visa — meaning the Sri Lanka native is unable to vote.

Her voting advocacy started in high school, when she encouraged her friends who were eligible to vote.

“Even though I can’t vote, the policies still affect me,” Hewavithana says.

During her phone-banking with TIRRC Votes, Hewavithana’s goal was to help potential voters sort out problems, like if they didn’t know when or where to vote.

“The first question a lot of people ask is, ‘How did you get my number?’ ” she says. “But at least every two hours you get two or three people that you talk to that say, ‘I’m so glad you called, I’m having trouble finding my voting location.’ It’s the small victories that make me want to keep doing it.”

Dulce Castro, a 21-year-old history major at Cumberland University, worked as a part-time engagement coordinator on the TIRRC Votes campaign. With protection under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Castro says it can be frustrating to see her peers who are eligible to vote sitting out elections. Though she was born in Mexico, she has lived in Nashville since 2006.

“I do have hope that something better will happen in the future, and Congress and the president will come together and work to find a policy that helps us,” Castro says. “But as of right now I have no pathway to citizenship and no way for me to vote.”

Though many of TIRRC Votes’ endorsed candidates

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CARE Alzheimer’s caregivers are coping with limited options during the pandemic

BY HANNAH HERNER

“I

tell caregivers, you have to be the advocate for yourself and for your loved one, and you make sure that you are taking care of yourself first,”

says Joyce Wisby.

Since her husband Jim died from Alzheimer’s disease six years ago, Wisby has led a support group for caregivers.

Those who look after people with Alzheimer’s are accustomed to being at home with their loved one in order to help meet their needs. But with respite care options — that is, short-term relief for primary caregivers — closed due to the pandemic, isolation has become more acute, and caretakers are having to find creative ways to cope.

On Nov. 17-19, the Alzheimer’s Association Tennessee Chapter will bring caregivers together virtually with a free online conference, a shift from its four inperson conferences across the state last year. Session topics will include navigating challenging behaviors, the benefits of music therapy and caregiving through the lens of diverse communities, the last presented by the president of Meharry Medical College.

Wisby says her group’s numbers are down

lost their races last week, Castro found hope in Joe Biden’s apparent victory over Donald Trump, whose administration has sought to end DACA protections, in our neighboring state of Georgia.

“The work over here in Tennessee, we might not see it now to the full potential, but I personally am optimistic that in the future there will be more people who will be more open-minded, and they will be willing to listen to us and willing to work with us,” Castro says.

Like Castro, Katherine Izaguirre Garcia lives in Tennessee with DACA protection. She grew up in Nashville after moving here at age 2 from her native Honduras. The 20-year-old nursing student at Cumberland University also got her start in voting advocacy in high school, when she helped organize a registration drive and field trip to the polls.

While phone-banking this year, she helped one voter who planned to early vote on Oct. 30, one day after early voting closed, change their plans. Like Castro, Izaguirre Garcia says it can be disappointing when her peers who are eligible don’t vote.

“The reason why I became involved in encouraging others to vote is because, even though I’m not able to vote, whoever is in office and whatever policies and laws they pass still does affect me,” she says. “My way of being able to have some influence in who is in office is through encouraging others to vote, to use their vote as a way to also represent my voice. … Even though a lot of us aren’t able to vote, we still do have an influence on what the election results are. It just shows how powerful we are.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

since switching to Zoom, but phone calls from caregivers needing a sympathetic ear are up. Wisby also led a weekly three-hour respite at her church called Sunny Days Club, wherein caregivers could drop off their loved one to have some time to themselves.

That has since pivoted to Zoom as well.

Without respites and wanting to avoid the risk of bringing hired caregivers into their homes, people like Carla Chamberlain and her mom Nancy Green, who has Alzheimer’s, are together 24/7. The two have only left their house for doctors’ appointments since March, relying on friends and family to bring groceries.

Technology has been a lifesaver for the pair. Green attends many of her typical enrichment activities online, including Sunny Days Club, and Chamberlain attends her support group. Chamberlain queues up videos from Nashville organization Music for Seniors as well as Nashville Public Library’s puppet shows, which Green really enjoys.

“Every little interaction helps,” Chamberlain says. “It has saved our sanity.”

The transfer to online resources didn’t work as well for John Tometich and his wife Mary.

“For her anyway, that’s just not a good substitute,” John says. “She really likes the personal interaction and doesn’t really comprehend what’s going on with the whole computer thing.”

The exception, however, was Frist Art Museum’s Making Memories at the Frist programs — Mary has always loved art. In the past, Mary would occasionally attend grant-funded adult day care, and John would work only on weekends. The couple lives with their grown son and his family, so the son took on caretaking responsibilities during the day after he lost his job due to the pandemic. John works during the week now. If it weren’t for the whole family

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“THE LIVE FLEETWOOD MAC EXPERIENCE”

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PAUL MCDONALD + ARTS FISHING CLUB THE TIME JUMPERS

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12-18 Mike Cooley (of Drive-By Truckers) 12-19 Resurrection: A Journey Tribute 2 SHOWS! 12-31 Ward Davis 2 SHOWS! 1-7 Ketch Secor’s Folk City 1-23 A Pink Floyd Experience: Anderson Council Performs “Animals”

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nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CITY LIMITS

FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT THROUGH THE WINDOW AT BARTON HOUSE living together, he says, he wouldn’t be able to leave the house at all — and hired help isn’t feasible.

“I’d love to have somebody … coming in every day to more actively and proactively engage her in things,” John says. “You know, the financial reality of things is such that that’s not really an option for us right now.”

Thanks to long-term-care insurance that

THIS WEEK ON OUR POLITICS BLOG:

As expected, Tennessee’s nine electoral votes went to President Donald Trump, who won the state with a little more than 60 percent of the vote. Former Vice President (and current President-Elect) Joe Biden won the same three counties — Davidson, Shelby and Haywood — as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Former Ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty easily carried the state in his U.S. Senate bid against Democratic challenger Marquita Bradshaw. The state also returned seven Republicans and two Democrats — the same split as before — to the U.S. House of Representatives, and the only substantive change in the General Assembly was former Oak Hill Mayor Heidi Campbell’s defeat of Republican incumbent Steve Dickerson for a Davidson County state Senate seat. (More on that on p.

6.) … The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators filed a bill aimed at preventing the execution of condemned prisoners with intellectual disabilities. The proposed legislation is motivated in large part by the case of Pervis Payne, an intellectually disabled Black man who was scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3 before Gov. Bill Lee granted a reprieve until April 2021 due to

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calls, Percy hasn’t been able to see his wife in person since then, due to both COVID-19 restrictions and a recommended period of transition. Still, Percy’s wife doesn’t like to be alone, so Percy pays for a nurse to keep her company for a few hours each day. It’s $2,700 a month on top of the $5,400 for the facility paid by insurance. It would cost more than insurance is covering to have someone come to the house on a full-time basis, he says.

Barton House is a facility in West Nashville that houses only those with mid- to late-stage Alzheimer’s. Though she wouldn’t say how many beds are full, executive director Elizabeth Masic says the facility is not up to its capacity of 44 beds. Barton House has been in lockdown since March 11, relying on video calls, phone calls and window visits. They recently added a limited number of masked and socially distanced visits in a distant wing of the building.

“People really want to be able to see their loved ones anytime they want to, and we’re just not able to do that right now,” Masic says.

Even so, a person with Alzheimer’s may say they recently visited with someone they haven’t seen in months, or remember a video call as an in-person interaction. They may not be aware that the pandemic has been affecting them for seven months now.

THE ALZHEIMER’S “It’s really harder on the ASSOCIATION TENNESSEE caregiver and the family who CHAPTER’S FALL 2020 VIRTUAL cannot see their loved one,” he bought 11 years ago, CAREGIVER CONFERENCE WILL Wisby says. “The loved one, Percy — who has asked that TAKE PLACE NOV. 17-19; FIND MORE INFORMATION AT they have no sense of time, the Scene not use his real ALZ.ORG and they have no short-term name — was able to make the memory. They don’t remember difficult choice to set his wife that the grandchildren haven’t seen up in a memory care assisted them, but it’s the grandchildren that living facility six weeks ago. Wisby are suffering.” talked him through it and encouraged him EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM to make the move. Save for a couple of video

the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that the execution of people with intellectual disabilities was unconstitutional. But perplexingly, there is currently no procedure through which a Tennessee court can hear a person’s claim on that matter.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has made this clear and called for legislators to determine a fix, which is what the newly proposed bill aims to do.

Payne was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of a white woman named Charisse Christopher and her 2-year-old daughter Lacie Jo. But Payne has always maintained that he was an innocent bystander who came upon the horrific scene while checking to see if his girlfriend was at her apartment across the hall. A judge in September ordered DNA testing in the case on numerous pieces of evidence that had never been tested. His attorneys have long argued that Payne meets every definition of intellectual disability established by the law and the courts. … Voters in states as politically varied as Mississippi and Oregon voted to relax drug laws, particularly those pertaining to marijuana, during the election. Our own Steven Hale notes that while legislative efforts to legalize medical marijuana in Tennessee have failed, they have made headway, garnering support of various Republican lawmakers.

Whether that momentum continues remains to be seen. Dickerson was one of the leading supporters of medical marijuana, and his failure to get the

legislation through was one line of attack Campbell, who supports full legalization, used during the campaign. … Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ruled that a proposed charter revision that city officials contend is illegal cannot go before county voters. The citizen group 4GoodGovernment collected the necessary signatures to put the revision before Nashville voters, but the Davidson County Election Commission asked the court to rule on whether it actually had to hold the election. The charter revision would have rolled back a 34 percent property tax rate increase passed earlier this year and limited Metro Council authority to raise taxes and issue bonds.

Charter experts called it both illegal and impractical — the former because it applies retroactively and because it limits city government’s constitutionally guaranteed taxation powers, and the latter because of its form, which lacks specific citations to the Metro Charter that it purports to revise. Lyle wrote that the proposed law change violates state law in “clear and obvious ways.” … After watching Georgia’s surprising results last week, we talked to Nashville organizer Gicola Lane about the work it takes to bring about unlikely change. “There’s a condescension that happens, especially around Black-led organizing in the South. But Black people are in the South.”

NASHVILLESCENE.COM/PITHINTHEWIND EMAIL: PITH@NASHVILLESCENE.COM TWEET: @PITHINTHEWIND

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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— Billy Joe Shaver Recalling his conversation with Waylon Jennings at an RCA recording session in Nashville, pressing Jennings to record his songs. From the exhibit Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s.

The songs of Billy Joe Shaver helped define the era of the late 1960s and early 1970s with a direct, yet poetic, style of songwriting. Explore the major exhibit Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and learn more about his incomparable life.

DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE Visit CountryMusicHallofFame.org to buy tickets.

Photo: Raeanne Rubenstein from the Raeanne Rubenstein Collection from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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WORK IN PROGRESS Safety, compensation and accountability at Nashville construction sites

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

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preparing for Josh to go off to college in Kentucky, and Gustavo would be their last child to raise and “to ring out those last celebrations before [they had] an empty nest.”

After Ramirez’s death, it was initially unclear to investigators who was accountable for his fall, as the site’s general contractor and subcontractors shifted blame. Questions about Ramirez’s training on the worksite emerged — while it’s legal in Tennessee for minors to work on construction sites, they’re supposed to have fewer responsibilities than adults.

WSMV, which followed Ramirez’s case closely, obtained documents that showed the teenager had received training and certification to work with equipment needed to scale scaffolding at the site — even though it’s illegal for employees under 18 to use such equipment.

According to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, fatalities caused by falls have been and continue to be the leading cause of death for construction employees nationwide, accounting for 320 of the 1,008 construction fatalities recorded in 2018. (Safety harnesses were not necessarily required at the site where Ramirez fell, state officials previously told the Scene.)

For labor activists, the accident emphasized long-standing concerns about safety and construction in Nashville — concerns rooted in an industry culture that seemingly shrugs off accountability in favor of cutting costs, leading to layers of contractors and subcontractors who make accountability for injury and wage theft difficult to discern.

“Anytime someone is injured on a job site, we as a society should reflect on what we can do better to prevent that in the future,” says

PHOTO: ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

G

ustavo Ramirez was a popular 16-year-old who loved soccer, played drums at school and in a church youth program and had an infectious, happy-golucky personality. His oldest sister, Jenifer Enamorado, says he always had a soccer ball or basketball nearby.

“He always had to keep his hands busy,” she says. “Hands and feet.” Enamorado’s husband, a huge soccer fan, always said the teenager had el toque — “the touch,” a natural talent for the game.

Ramirez — whose nickname was Kike, pronounced “kee-kay” — was the youngest of six kids, and spent most of his life in Kentucky before his family moved to Springfield, Tenn., in 2020. Shortly after, he took a summer job alongside his older brother — a construction gig at a La Quinta hotel near Nissan Stadium.

On June 24, Ramirez and his brother Josh, 18, were working on the construction site’s scaffolding 120 feet in the air. Ramirez’s older brother suddenly heard a noise and turned around to see Gustavo fall.

According to Josh, Ramirez said “I love you” before plummeting to the ground. They were his final words.

Metro police arrived on the scene and found no signs of foul play, but they did learn the teenager wasn’t wearing a safety harness while working on the scaffolding.

The family, says Enamorado, was devastated and confused.

“When you get that type of news, there is confusion,” she says. “It’s the first emotion that you have. And then it’s grief, and then there’s anger, but overwhelmingly there’s grief.”

She adds that Ramirez’s family had been

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

AT A VIGIL, A FAKE COFFIN FOR GUSTAVO RAMIREZ WAS BRIEFLY PLACED NEAR THE CONSTRUCTION SITE WHERE HE DIED Karla Campbell, an attorney representing Ramirez’s family in a civil lawsuit against the site’s general contractor and other companies at the site. Campbell, who is with the firm Branstetter, Stranch & Jennings, has represented construction workers and building trade unions in Nashville, and she adds that Ramirez’s case is “sadly not my first wrongful death case,” nor the first time she has represented a child’s family.

Campbell says Ramirez’s death doesn’t represent a “new problem.” “It’s just a more dramatic example of how our government has essentially allowed this to happen,” she says, “such that construction entities can subcontract with another entity or even a sham entity.”

Ramirez’s family has filed the lawsuit against the site’s general contractor, D.F. Chase, as well as subcontractor Stover

and Son, and E.Z. Distributing Inc., which trained the teenager.

Ramirez wasn’t the only construction worker in Nashville who died on the job this summer. In August, a wall collapsed on 61-year-old Timothy Tyler during a job on West End Avenue.

According to the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration, there have been 10 construction-related fatalities in Tennessee out of a total of 36 workplace deaths this year. It’s a small increase from last year, which saw eight constructionrelated deaths out of 25 workplace fatalities.

“We average somewhere around 35 fatalities every year,” says Wendy Fisher, assistant commissioner of TOSHA. “And not quite half, maybe a third of them … are construction. Some years are higher, some are lower. … It is very hard to target.”

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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NASHVILLE CONSTRUCTION SITES’ INJURY RATE — 12.7 PER 100 WORKERS

Source: 2017 Build a Better South study

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

A REPORT BY The Tennessean described 2016 and 2017 — a span during which 16 construction workers died in the Nashville area — as the deadliest two-year stretch in the Nashville metropolitan area in more than three decades. The numbers are relatively low compared to other dangerous jobs like logging, but still higher than deaths seen in cities experiencing similar growth.

The fatalities also seem linked to the city’s construction boom — with more workers building houses, apartment complexes and office buildings comes more risk. A lack of fall protection accounted for a third of all OSHA fines issued in Tennessee between October 2016 and September 2017, according to the report.

The 2017 Build a Better South study also found that injuries were common in Nashville construction sites. Nearly one in four Nashville workers responding to the study’s survey had experienced a workplace

RAÚL MORELOS OF WORKERS’ DIGNITY

injury at some point in their career. The study also reported an injury rate of 12.7 per 100 workers, which is four times higher than the rate OSHA reported that same year, and reported a large number of Latino and immigrant workers at Nashville construction sites.

Raúl Morelos is a former construction worker who now is part of a construction safety committee with Workers’ Dignity, a labor advocacy organization. He says he never felt very safe on local worksites — for him, these were usually jobs that took place on rooftops, often without adequate safety equipment.

“You feel exposed,” Morelos tells the Scene via an interpreter. “I was very afraid, but … I had to work.”

Morelos had his own workplace accident in December, when he fell from a wall and suffered an injury to his clavicle — which required surgery — and back. His employer provided health insurance for the job, but Morelos is frustrated that neither the doctor he has visited nor the employer’s insurance company believes his injury keeps him from working.

“I can’t do things I was able to do before the accident,” like bending over, says Morelos.

He filed a workers’ compensation claim in July, but four months later, he’s still waiting for it to move forward.

Morelos has since joined Workers’ Dignity and now helps other workers file compensation claims. But he and the workers he assists remain frustrated with the lengthy process.

Intertwined with safety issues is the problem of accountability. When Ramirez fell, it was unclear who was at fault. D.F. Chase, the main contractor of the build, claimed ignorance about Ramirez’s employment. At a vigil organized the day after the teenager’s death, Cecilia Prado,

an organizer at Workers’ Dignity, told the crowd Ramirez’s parents wanted not just justice but also information, “because they actually had to find out all the details of what had happened through the news and through the police.”

Advocates and Ramirez’s family struggled to get clear answers in the following days, and inspectors from TOSHA faced similar roadblocks. Eventually TOSHA fined two subcontractors: Cortes Plastering and Stover & Sons. TOSHA says that Stover & Sons is appealing its $5,400 fine. The owner of Cortes Plastering has not appealed, but had yet to pay the $15,500 fine when the Scene spoke with TOSHA.

SORTING OUT THE LAYERS of contractors and subcontractors is a familiar headache for state investigators.

“It’s getting harder and harder [to determine accountability], because so many contractors are subbing out to other contractors, and then those contractors are subbing out to other contractors,” says TOSHA’s Fisher. “By the time we actually figure out who is responsible, it’s the third or fourth tier down the line … as far as setting the jobs out.”

Local elected officials have noticed the problem as well.

“It’s a real mess,” says District 30 Metro Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda. “No one wants to take responsibility, and … the buck always gets passed.”

The common practice of hiring subcontractors can also lead to wage theft — some recent accusations of wage theft, for example, surfaced from workers at the downtown Margaritaville Hotel who claim they were denied overtime pay. It can also lead to worker misclassification, wherein subcontractors list their crew members as independent contractors

to avoid insuring them. This also makes it difficult for construction workers to receive compensation benefits should they get injured on the job. Sometimes these subcontractors disappear once a job is finished, fleeing the state and laying low before returning to town. Sometimes the company closes down and reopens under a new name, free from any penalties incurred by its previous incarnation. A report earlier this year found that the Tennessee Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Compliance Program assessed more than $4.5 million in penalties from 2018 to 2019, but collected only $1.8 million in assessments.

These sketchy practices can cut costs, which allows companies that hire out these subcontractors to launch competitive bids at a low price. And it leads to consistent problems for Nashville construction workers.

Metro Councilmembers, for their part, have been looking for solutions on the municipal side — mainly concerned with how the city awards contracts for publicly funded projects.

“I myself and some other community leaders have been looking at a different way of doing this,” says Sepulveda, who says the city needs to change its procurement policies — how it goes about obtaining goods and services.

Finding a proper solution is a bit tricky for the Metro Council, however, because the state could preemptively shut down measures to set such standards. That’s what happened to an attempted Metro Charter amendment in 2015 that would have required contractors to hire local workers on construction jobs.

“The sooner we figure this out the better, because we shouldn’t have one more death on a construction site,” says Sepulveda, who hopes that something related to procurement practices will be presented to the council before the end of the year. “We should be prioritizing jobs and contracts to construction companies that are taking into consideration their workers.”

At-Large Metro Councilmember Zulfat Suara has also taken a hard look at procurement, already shepherding the passage of a pair of bills related to contracts in Nashville. The first established a publicly available list of suspended and disbarred contractors — a widespread measure related to all businesses working with Metro, not just those in construction. The second abolished a master list of architects and engineers that determined who the city would contract with. Suara tells the Scene the list was neglected and may have barred businesses owned by women and people of color from getting a fair chance

“YOU FEEL EXPOSED. I WAS VERY AFRAID, BUT … I HAD TO WORK.”

—RAÚL MORELOS nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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at acquiring contracts. She adds that these bills also encourage city officials to evaluate contractors in real time and determine if they’ve ever been suspended, rather than simply picking from a list.

“Even if we’re doing the right thing, we want the residents [of Nashville] to have confidence that we’re doing all that we can,” says Suara. “Whether it’s making sure that our selection process is open to all and not just a select few, whether it’s making sure that bad actors are exposed, you know, that’s a way to create confidence in the system.”

Last week, Suara also introduced a bill, co-sponsored by District 32 Councilmember Joy Styles, that would establish requirements to retain all procurement records for up to three years — a practice Suara says the city follows but hasn’t codified in an ordinance. Styles, in response to Ramirez’s death, introduced a resolution in June to keep workers under the age of 18 off of construction sites without proper training and equipment. The bill passed.

Nashville can look to other Southern cities for examples of a more equitable industry.

The city council of Austin, Texas, decided that contractors who participated in what’s called the Better Builder program would get fast-tracked to contracts. The program was established in 2012 by a local labor advocacy group called Workers’ Defense Fund, and participants of the program are required to offer workers’ compensation insurance, provide safety training in accordance to state and federal guidelines, and pay more than minimum wage to their workers.

“People can see construction happening everywhere,” says Suara. “And it is very important that as this growth is continuing, the people that are helping to make that happen — the construction workers — are being treated right and being paid fairly.”

ACCIDENTS LIKE RAMIREZ’S fall weren’t the only recent incidents to bring heightened attention to safety issues in the city. When the COVID-19 pandemic came to Nashville in March, restaurants and businesses closed down across the city — but construction continued. According to data from the city regarding COVID-19 clusters, from May to June there were 185 cases of coronavirus across five construction sites, including

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75 cases associated with the Montgomery Bell Academy worksite. There have been a total of 19 clusters at construction sites according to city health data (although the city doesn’t provide details on sites with fewer than 10 cases).

The emergence of two COVID-19 cases at Fifth + Broadway in the spring also highlighted worker concerns about transparency and worksite safety. That story went public after anonymous workers approached Fox 17 and later NewsChannel 5 about the COVID-19 cases, saying many workers weren’t informed about the cases until three weeks later. Skanska — a Swedenbased contractor that had been accused of wage theft in Nashville during the construction of the downtown JW Marriott in 2019 — apologized for not informing workers sooner, and said they had otherwise followed Centers for Disease Control guidelines.

They also closed the site down for a weekend following the first confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The late-spring and early-summer outbreaks concerned labor advocates, but city health officials are heartened by the fact that the last big cluster was reported months ago in June.

According to Dr. Gill Wright of the Metro Public Health Department, the rash of outbreaks in the spring and summer represented a learning curve for health officials rather than “bad actors” flaunting protocol. The citywide mask mandate helped greatly, he says, as did improvements in contact tracing.

Health department bureau director Hugh Atkins personally visited many construction sites in the early days of the pandemic, and he tells the Scene he saw plenty of protocol compliance at these locations, including temperature checks and hand-washing stations.

Many construction workers come from communities that have been getting hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic — specifically, Nashville’s Hispanic and immigrant communities.

“We’ve had a lot of people in the Hispanic community who are construction workers that were getting sick,” says Sepulveda.

She adds that these ill workers would often return home to multigenerational households where they could spread the virus to their families.

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY

FIFTH + BROADWAY Says Dr. Wright: “We are working closely with community partners for the immigrant and refugee community. And I think that those efforts have made some difference also in our overall results.”

Morelos of Workers’ Dignity is an immigrant who arrived in Nashville from Mexico in May 2019. He says immigrants face many challenges at their workplaces, which often stem from workers not knowing their rights. Those who speak up are also afraid of retaliation — in the form of bosses threatening to report them to immigration services, for example.

“We don’t know which rights we have and as a result we remain silent,” says Morelos.

“So I’m trying to find a way to get all of these people who are being screwed over to come to us and not allow those injustices to go with impunity, because it’s going to keep happening if we don’t do anything about it.”

The circumstances can be disheartening for immigrants trying to make a better life here in Nashville.

“You feel like you would be able to do something here that you cannot do back home because of insecurity, because of corruption, because of crime,” says

Morelos. “And you come here with the illusion that you’re going to be able to do all of those things here. And then this kind of thing happens, and ... your illusion just dies.”

Sepulveda, who has family members who work or have worked in construction, also feels a sense of urgency about the issue.

“It’s still something that’s very personal to me,” she says. “It’s a big industry, and it’s an industry where a lot of my community members work in. And so I’m making sure that I am doing everything possible to keep them safe and to keep everyday people who are hard workers, who come from a background just like me, safe.”

Hopefully the work of Sepulveda and others can spare more families the grief Ramirez’s parents and siblings are experiencing.

“The most I want to impart from my family is our loss, the measurable loss that many families before us have experienced in this industry,” says Enamorado. “And unfortunately, even if we would wish it to not be so, many families after us will experience [it]. And we would like for that to not be true. … It shouldn’t be a fact of life.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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PHOTO: DANNY CLINCH

One could argue that Lucinda Williams has done enough for the world this year by releasing her LP Good Souls Better Angels in April. But robbed of the opportunity to tour behind her first album of new material since 2016’s The Ghosts of Highway 20, the revered country-folk-androck singer-songwriter — an archetypal artist for what’s known today as Americana — went right back to work on a massive project that explores some of her influences in depth. The result is Lu’s Jukebox, a suite of six live-in-studio concerts featuring Williams performing her favorite covers (peppered with new originals and old favorites) with her band. Each set was recorded by producer-engineer Ray Kennedy and filmed by the production team Neighborhoods Apart. The series began Oct. 29 with a tribute to Tom Petty, and the second installment on Thursday, Nov. 12, is a salute to Southern soul musicians.

The third episode covers Bob Dylan, and it will drop Nov. 19; a collection of ’60s country songs will follow on Dec. 3, with Christmas tunes on Dec. 17 and a Rolling Stones revue on Dec. 31. Williams & Co. have devised a way for purchases of virtual tickets for each stream to benefit individual venues, including Nashville’s City Winery.

Just visit City Winery Nashville’s website or the corresponding link on Williams’

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JOIN THE ART WRITING SYMPOSIUM AT TSU

In a 2019 New York Times article about the dominance of white male perspectives in art criticism, Aruna D’Souza says: “The problem is not that these critics lack some

at Indiana University who specializes in essential connection with the work of artists Black studies with an emphasis on the of color. It’s that many of them simply are transmission of ancestral memory and not familiar with the intellectual, conceptual the arts as a path of community healing and artistic ideas that underlie the work.” and transformation. Another standout As an attempt to bridge that gap, Tennessee will be a session with Scene culture State University has launched its first editor Erica Ciccarone, who will Art Writing Symposium. The free be in conversation with artist online event takes place all day EDITOR’S NOTE: Omari Booker. Booker and Saturday, Nov. 14, and includes AS A RESPONSE TO THE Ciccarone plan to discuss a series of focused sessions ONGOING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, how they have built a that will inform community WE’VE CHANGED THE FOCUS OF THE CRITICS’ PICKS SECTION TO professional relationship members — whether INCLUDE ACTIVITIES YOU CAN through their work — how students, artists, writers, PARTAKE IN WHILE YOU’RE AT Ciccarone approaches writing educators or otherwise — HOME. a story, and how Booker has about different facets of art and learned to interact with the press culture. One session will feature professionally. Their conversation Maria Abegunde Hamilton, a lecturer

will be moderated by Ashley Lawal, the founder and editor of Nashville-based publication Urbaanite. Find out more information and sign up for sessions via the symposium’s event page. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Saturday, Nov. 14, via TSU Department of Art LAURA HUTSON HUNTER OPERA

ART

website to make sure your purchase will be tallied in the right spot. The video comes via the Mandolin platform, and will be available for rewatching up to 48 hours after the stream. You can also preorder a download, CD or LP of each set, though the opportunity eventually goes away after the stream. See lucindawilliams.com for all the details. The second installment streams Thursday, Nov. 12, via the Lu’s Jukebox website STEPHEN TRAGESER

[PUT ANOTHER DIME IN THE JUKEBOX, BABY!]

CATCH OPERA JUKEBOX AT NASHVILLE OPERA

In the weeks leading up to the election, Nashville Opera gave music lovers an opportunity to place another kind of vote — and lift up some big, beautiful voices — with its Opera Jukebox. In this clever fundraiser, four acclaimed artists offered

nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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I’ve finally come down from the high of the virtual Southern Festival of Books that took place in early October, and literary events are once again calling my name.

Parnassus Books continues to provide excellent online author events to help us feel smart and engaged during a pandemic, and the bookstore has Alice Randall scheduled for a Sunday evening reading and talk.

Randall is among Nashville’s most talented writers, and if you haven’t read her work before — such as novels The Wind Done Gone and Rebel Yell — her latest, Black Bottom Saints, is a great place to start.

Swirling fact with fiction, Randall anchors the novel with Joseph “Ziggy” Johnson — the real-life MC, theater director and general doyen of Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood in the mid-20th century. From his hospital bed, Johnson pays tribute to the Black artists, athletes and entertainers who made a mark on Motor City. Randall employs the literary rhythms of a skilled orator, elevating Dinah

Rock ’n’ roll hasn’t been at the center of popular music for a long time. But it’s far from “dead” — local and regional rock and punk scenes remain extraordinarily vital vehicles for building community and reveling in the power of self-expression.

If you wanna know about this in intimate detail, ask longtime Nashville rocker Ryan Sweeney. Around his day jobs and family responsibilities, the veteran drummer runs two modest operations, Sweet Time Records and Sweet Time Booking. Sweeney has pulled off two excellent iterations of the Sweet by Sweet Time rock-and-punk festival, bringing together groups like widely loved Memphis heroes the Oblivians with outstanding bands from around the country (including here in Music City) that might not be well-known outside their hometowns. The third run of Sweet

by Sweet Time, originally set for August, was torpedoed by the pandemic. Not to be daunted, Sweeney canvassed his vast network and collected tracks for a 26-song compilation called Sweet Time that’s set to be released on Nov. 17. Tunes from standout

FILM

PHOTO: JOHN PARTIPILO

Nashville groups like Schizos, Modern Convenience and Snooper are paired with contributions from fellow travelers like Oakland, Calif.’s Midnite Snaxxx, Richmond, Va.’s Sick Bags and Mexico City’s Johnny Otis Dávila — potent reminders that rock knows no boundaries. All proceeds from digital sales of the album will be split among all-ages venue Drkmttr as well as bar and musicians’ hangout Duke’s and bar and venue The 5 Spot, three establishments that would have hosted events during SXST 3; proceeds from sales over the minimum amount on physical editions will also be donated. Head over to the Sweet Time Records Bandcamp profile to preorder your copy. STEPHEN TRAGESER

Washington, Joe Lewis, Robert Hayden and 49 others to sainthood in memorable vignettes. Concurrently, Randall tells the story of a woman known only as “Colored Girl,” weaving slim scenes from her life in between Johnson’s musings. With this, Randall explores the influence of the Detroit luminaries on a young mind. The result is a sonorous ode to Black art. 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15, via Parnassus Books’ Facebook page ERICA CICCARONE

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[ON THE SELF-ABUSE FRONT …]

BUILD YOUR OWN STREAMING ANG LEE FILM FESTIVAL

Even with Nashville’s beloved arthouse the Belcourt Theatre reopening this week with limited capacity and safety precautions in place (more details on p. 28), we’re going to keep on updating our series of buildyour-own-streaming-fest Critics’ Picks for those of you who want to binge the work of great filmmakers from the safety and comfort of your own couch. For this, our 26th installment, let’s focus on a filmmaker with an exceptionally diverse body of work — Taiwanese American writer-directorproducer Ang Lee, whose technical skill is

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN matched by his knack for depicting intimate interpersonal relationships. Kick things off by selecting one of Lee’s earliest works: his 1991 debut Pushing Hands (free with an Amazon Prime subscription), about an aging Chinese martial arts master living in New York City; or 1993’s The Wedding Banquet (free with ads on Tubi), a romantic comedy about a Chinese immigrant hiding his same-sex relationship from his homophobic parents.

Or dive right into the drama with 1995’s Emma Thompson-penned adaptation of Sense and Sensibility ($4 to rent via Prime, iTunes or YouTube), which landed seven Oscar nominations. I have a particular soft spot for Lee’s 1997 ensemble drama The Ice Storm (also $4 on Prime, iTunes and YouTube), what with its weird sexual energy and high-falutin’ 1970s Connecticut vibe.

Next, for something completely different, queue up 2000’s beautiful, multiple-Oscarwinning wuxia film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (free with a Prime subscription).

While some folks are partial to Lee’s Eric Bana-starring 2003 Marvel flick Hulk, I’d say cruise on forward to 2005’s universally acclaimed Brokeback Mountain ($4 to rent in all those aforementioned spots), a tender if ultimately heartbreaking film with careerbest performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger that earned Lee a Best Director Oscar. There are a number of other efforts with which you can bring your Lee streaming fest home — 2009’s Taking Woodstock, 2016’s war drama Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, last year’s Will Smith action thriller Gemini Man. But for my money, a good way to wrap it up is with 2012’s Life of Pi, a neat fable and a visual spectacle that’s available for $4 via Prime, iTunes and YouTube, and earned Lee his second Best Director trophy.

D. PATRICK RODGERS [THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN]

SEE HEIDI MARTIN KUSTER’S RECOLLECTED AT GALERIE TANGERINE

The work of Heidi Martin Kuster is anchored in her geological interest. Her abstract paintings are filled with smooth rock-like shapes and pools of water. They’re a meditation on time — how rocks form without human intervention and are shaped by elements outside of human control. It’s comforting this November to consider a rock in a stream, its edges gently worn round over the course of years — evidence of a past we can’t change, permission to relinquish some control. Kuster is a former Nashvillian whose studio was in the May Hosiery building at Ground Floor Gallery + Studios in the early Aughts, and she’s returned to mount this exhibition at Galerie Tangerine. Re-Collected shows her progression with color. In recent years, Kuster has moved from muted earth tones

to bold multicolored compositions. The folks at the gallery are making it easy to see the exhibition safely. The gallery is located in a small architectural firm with few employees, and you can schedule a private appointment by visiting the website’s contact page (galerietangerine. com/contact-us). Face masks are required, and hand sanitizer is available. If you’d like to experience Re-Collected at home, Kuster gave a tour of the exhibition that’s posted on the gallery’s Instagram account (@galerietangerine). Through Dec. 4 at Galerie Tangerine, 900 South St. ERICA CICCARONE

COMMUNITY

STREAM PARNASSUS’ EVENT WITH ALICE RANDALL

PREORDER SWEET TIME

[FOOD NETWORK]

DONATE TO LOCAL FOOD ORGANIZATIONS

With the holidays approaching, now is as good a time as any to donate to and volunteer with one of Middle Tennessee’s many food-based organizations.

Here are just a few places to consider, whether you grow, cook or just want to give a few bucks: The Nashville Food Project has been growing food and preparing nutritious meals for the community since 2011. The people working there are always looking for volunteers to help in the gardens and kitchens (no experience needed!), and they accept monetary donations at thenashvillefoodproject.org. You currently need an appointment to make food donations, so check out their guidelines before you clear out your cupboards or run to the store. At Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, just $1 provides four meals for hungry Tennesseeans, and one-time or monthly monetary donations can be made at secondharvestmidtn.org. There, you can also set up your own virtual food drive, and encourage your friends and colleagues to donate along with you. Nonperishable food donations can be dropped off at 331 Great Circle Road. The Nashville Free Store accepts donations every Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. at Drkmttr on 1111 Dickerson Pike. Monetary donations can be made at nashvillefreestore. com. You can also leave food anytime at one of the Nashville Community Fridges — there’s one outside Drkmttr and another outside the Elephant Gallery at 1411 Buchanan St. And keep an eye on the Third Man Records website too — every year Third Man gives away records and raffle tickets for rad prizes to people who make donations to the Nashville Rescue Mission (616 Seventh Ave. S.). MEGAN SELING FOOD & DRINK

[BOTTOMS UP]

[TAKE YOUR SWEET TIME]

ART

BOOKS

up five arias each. Fans voted, and the top two winning arias from each singer will now be featured as part of a free online concert on Saturday. The lineup includes soprano Danielle Pastin, mezzo-soprano Renée Tatum, tenor Adam Diegel and baritone Corey McKern singing beloved works from Puccini, Bizet, Wagner and much more. The program is free, but you can also place bids to have an aria dedicated to that someone special — or even join a virtual after-party with your favorite artist. It’s a fun way to celebrate the power of music while also supporting Nashville Opera. 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, via nashvilleopera.org AMY STUMPFL

MUSIC

CRITICS’ PICKS

[TRY, TRY AGAIN]

WATCH THE TRY CHANNEL ON YOUTUBE

You gotta find solace where you can these days. For me, it comes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday —

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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SHOPPING

CRAIG D. LINDSEY [POST IT]

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POSTER ARTIST

Concert poster artists are the unsung heroes of the music ecosystem. When a print makes it into a frame and onto your wall, the occasion it was made for — an album, a show, a tour — is immortalized. A longtime fave of mine is Chicago artist Jay Ryan, whose intricate, eye-popping work for Jack White, Bully and others consists of expressive, lifelike creatures against backdrops both naturalistic and futuristic.

Even in a year of no gigs, the quarantineinspired “Camp In” and “Passivity Equals Compliance” posters and “I Will Hug You In The Future” postcard set available on Ryan’s site, thebirdmachine.com, show the calamitous events of 2020 have not sapped his inspiration. Locally, the Ryman may be dark, but Hatch Show Print has kept the presses running; if you’ve been in East Nashville’s Five Points neighborhood lately maybe you’ve noticed the “Hide Your Smile for a While” mask PSA mural (also a poster).

Other notable visual artists from the rock world with recent work available for sale online include Eli Saragoussi from Athens, Ga., Ryan Duggan out of Chicago and Brad Vetter, a Hatch alum based in Louisville, Ky. Check them out, and try going down an Instagram rabbit hole of your own to see what might speak to you or your loved ones’ sensibilities. Beautiful art makes great gifts! CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

[CROWN ROYALS]

WATCH THE CROWN SEASON 4

Now is the perfect time to get lost in another country’s dramatic history — and check out some stunning costumery and opulent set design and cinematography along the way. If you haven’t yet watched The Crown, the lush and soapy historicaldrama series that follows the life of Queen Elizabeth II, call in sick to life and catch up as soon as possible, because Season 4 is going to be the best season yet. On Nov. 15, Netflix will deliver what every The Crown fan has been waiting for — this year, we finally get a look at Emma Corrin as Princess Motherfucking Diana. Hell yes! The season is said to cover Queen Elizabeth’s life from 1977 to 1990, and it will reportedly include dramatic portrayals of Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman prime minister of Britain, the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the Falklands War and more. Oh, did I mention Gillian Anderson is playing Margaret Thatcher? Because Gillian Anderson is playing Margaret Thatcher.

This season is gonna be great. Premiering Sunday, Nov. 15, on Netflix MEGAN SELING MUSIC

that’s when The TRY Channel drops new episodes on YouTube. Coming all the way from Ireland, this channel features a crew of Irish men and women partaking in everything from fine cuisine and snacks from around the world to hot sauces and extremely potent forms of alcohol. (It’s these videos that are the most popular — and the most Irish.) But the real fun comes from watching these colorful characters play off each other when they’re paired up.

You get fascinating figures like fashionista Ciara O’Doherty, who seems impervious to anything alcohol- or pepper-related; actor (and one-time Game of Thrones bit player) Dermot Ward, who is the complete opposite; and YouTuber Leather Jacket Guy, who thinks everything is better with a cabbage leaf from his pocket. Take a deep dive at youtube.com/c/TheTRYChannel, and enjoy the fine company of these lads and lasses.

TV

CRITICS’ PICKS

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[FLASH FORWARD]

LISTEN TO THE NEW PSYCHEDELIC FURS ALBUM

The fact that Made of Rain, the first Psychedelic Furs album in 29 years, holds its own with anything from the U.K. New Wave greats’ early-’80s heyday is as refreshing as it is unexpected. Produced

by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Richard Fortus in his hometown of St. Louis, the record’s dozen sweeping, texturally rich tunes don’t rewrite “Love My Way” or “Heartbreak Beat” — and they don’t need to. From the cacophonous opening salvo “The Boy That Invented Rock & Roll” to the uptempo jangle of “Don’t Believe” and goth gospel of “Come All Ye Faithful,” Richard Butler’s trademark hoarse-voiced vocals create a pleasing sonic friction and, as always, land knockout punches emotionally. This is the good kind of nostalgia — rooted in, but not indebted to, bygone days. Here’s hoping the retooled Furs can take it on the road in 2021.

CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENTS THURSDAY NOV 12 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with JEFFREY H JACKSON Paper Bullets

FRIDAY NOV 13 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with DENISE KIERNAN We Gather Together

SUNDAY NOV 15 5:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with ALICE RANDALL Black Bottom Saints

MONDAY NOV 16 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with MICAIAH JOHNSON The Space Between Worlds

TUESDAY NOV 17 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with KWAME ALEXANDER Light for the World to See

THURSDAY NOV 19 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with MICHAEL IAN BLACK A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son

FRIDAY NOV 20 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with SUZZY ROCHE The Town Crazy

OPEN FOR BROWSING! Tuesday - Saturday 10:00am - 6:00pm SHOP ONLINE parnassusbooks.net Curbside pickup available!

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FOOD AND DRINK

ACME AT ITS NADIR : Winners’ Reader poll

VOTED BEST FOR 15 YEARS!

Tom Morales on shutting down Acme Feed & Seed during the pandemic for the safety of staff and customers

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

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s, Thanks for your! vote Nashville

TOM MORALES

S

uccessful restaurateur Tom Morales has been a long-standing supporter of Nashville, his hometown, but he’s clearly frustrated with how the city is handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a press conference back in 2013, Morales announced his plans to renovate the old Acme feed store at the foot of Lower Broad to create a four-level entertainment complex named Acme Feed & Seed. Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp president Butch Spyridon congratulated him on the accomplishment and jokingly asked him to promise to lend the facility to the NCVC for official use every Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve. Morales acceded with a grin.

But Morales — who established his restaurant reputation serving as the primary caterer for more than 2,000 movie sets before opening a small empire of Nashville dining establishments — isn’t smiling now. The pandemic hasn’t been the first disappointment for Morales lately, as two of his local ventures — Saffire and Fin & Pearl — have shuttered over the past few years, and he stepped away from his ownership stake in Woolworth on Fifth. But his two powerhouse downtown properties at Acme and The Southern Steak & Oyster consistently rank in the top 100 in revenue for all the independent restaurants in the country, with combined sales of more than $30 million annually.

So it’s especially grating to Morales that external factors have forced him to again close Acme — after waiting almost six months to reopen after Metro’s Safer at Home order shut down all the restaurants in the city back in March. Morales’ wait was much longer than that of most of his neighboring downtown restaurants and honkytonks, a decision the restaurateur took extremely seriously. In a statement released after deciding to close Acme again at the end of October, Morales explained: In March of 2020, the city of Nashville asked us to close our doors as the COVID pandemic emerged as a public threat to our collective health as a city, a country and the world. The message from our federal leadership was and continues to be muddled, so we decided as a company we would listen to the science. Our decisions would be primarily based on the safety of our staff and customers, followed by the economics of operating in this climate. We chose to furlough over 200 employees, allowing them to keep their benefits, insurance and an assurance they had a job on the other side of the crisis. We needed strong leadership to set the example for a path forward, leadership never came.

Speaking with the Scene via phone, Morales expanded on that. “A restaurant needs to operate at 100 percent capacity to eke out

a 10 to 12 percent profit,” he says. “We’ve been operating on our own money since early October and losing $15,000 to $20,000 a week, but we were able to take care of 290 people who have their health insurance through the company. We knew that once the PPP money ran out, we’d be sacrificing our cash reserves and our future. If you’re losing money every week, what’s the reason to stay open?”

He continues, answering his own question. “There are three things driving the reasons why restaurants are staying open.

One is greed, and those people aren’t following the mandate. Two is desperation. Three is because you see so many people suffering without income, and you open up to support them. We [were] in that third category.”

Morales is especially disappointed in how safety regulations are being enforced. “It’s a big conundrum of politics and rationalizations,” he says. “They’re not enforcing the mandates; it’s all piecemeal. You’ve got Metro employees who can drive through town without wearing masks, so where is that enforcement? Those are people that they employ, so you’d think that the city could control them. When the tornado hit, we didn’t say it was a hoax. We all ran and helped. It’s contrary to our nature to turn our back on people in need.”

Business conditions downtown made it almost impossible for Morales to operate Acme the way he wanted, with check averages way down and locals staying home. “People are getting hamburgers instead of a steak. The businessmen aren’t here. The Pinnacle and Bridgestone buildings are both empty. The headquarters we paid for with tax incentives are monolithic tombstones looming over downtown. We’re lost as a city.”

What’s more, Morales says the customers who were coming to Acme during the pandemic were more of a hazard than a blessing.

“The people who are visiting aren’t coming in planes,” he says. “They’re coming by car, college kids from surrounding counties that then go back and spread the virus to their hometowns. We’ve been acting

“THERE ARE THREE THINGS DRIVING THE REASONS WHY RESTAURANTS ARE STAYING OPEN. ONE IS GREED, AND THOSE PEOPLE AREN’T FOLLOWING THE MANDATE. TWO IS DESPERATION. THREE IS BECAUSE YOU SEE SO MANY PEOPLE SUFFERING WITHOUT INCOME, AND YOU OPEN UP TO SUPPORT THEM. WE [WERE] IN THAT THIRD CATEGORY.” —TOM MORALES

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

FOOD AND DRINK

TREAT YOURSELF TO SOMETHING SPECIAL THIS HOLIDAY SEASON! as safely as we can, but we’re still seeing COVID among our staff. But it’s from the customers, not from how we’re running our business. They come in and complain about our rules and say that’s not what they had to do at another bar. I can’t stop them from sneezing on our employees, but if we’re closed, we’re not putting our people in jeopardy. It’s the toughest decision-making I’ve ever had to do.”

Morales is also concerned for the musicians who used to play on the stage on the ground floor of Acme. “Nashville became Nashville because of live music,” he says.

“People came here because they had a dream, and every record label had an A&R man in every honky-tonk looking for the next big star. The real loss we’re feeling is live music. Acme has still been a place where a person with a day job and a dream can get up onstage and perform. Instead of being a music discovery incubator, Nashville is a COVID incubator. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that bars that don’t make people wear masks and socially distance are incubators.”

“If everybody operated within the mandate, we’d be sending a different message,” Morales says. “Eighty percent of the industry is trying to do the right thing. All we need is a leader to deliver a consistent message, but I don’t think we have that. Face it: The truth is that the city needs the tax revenue — the city needs cash. That lower

five blocks of Broadway is the biggest taxrevenue-generating spot in the state of Tennessee. They need that money, so — wink, wink — they don’t want to scare people away even if they’re the wrong people.”

Even though Acme has closed again for the foreseeable future, Morales hasn’t completely given up on his commitment to downtown. The Southern Steak & Oyster remains open Thursdays through Sundays, and the music will play on courtesy of Acme Radio’s online streaming service.

In his statement accompanying the closing announcement, Morales said: “We will focus on livestreams benefiting charities like the one we hosted back in June that raised $50,000 for the Music Health Alliance. We’ll focus on small, curated private events that we can have full control over from start to finish. We’ll focus on ways to bring our city together safely, at a time when we all need it most.”

But Morales remains worried about the future.

“There’s nobody in the towers downtown or the airport or the live music venues,” he says. “That’s not the Nashville I knew or want to be a part of. During the shutdown, we went from $35 million to zero overnight.

I came from nothing, and I may end up with nothing. But that’s OK. I’m just glad I’ve been able to create an opportunity for 400 people to make a living.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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ART

FLOWER POWER

New paintings by Sam Dunson examine Black male demise

22

“MAMA” SAM DUNSON

S

am Dunson’s Black Flower, currently on view by appointment at The Rymer Gallery, is a collection of allegorical paintings that reveal the artist’s perspective on very pressing issues of Black male SAM DUNSON: BLACK FLOWER THROUGH DEC. 27 existence AT THE RYMER GALLERY in America.

EMAIL INFO@THERYMERGALLERY.COM TO SCHEDULE A VIEWING APPOINTMENT Coming out of a heated summer of Black Lives Matter protests, these works couldn’t be timelier, although they are essentially timeless: “Mama” is a heart-wrenching reminder of the killing of George Floyd and the culture that surrounds it. “Self Portrait With Blind Faith” paints a picture of how we move forward without clear direction. And “Dressed Up” allows us to see both life and death anew.

The exhibit’s overall allegory is a tragic tale — one that might seem otherworldly, but is reality for many. “Mama” comes in the wake of the viral video of Floyd calling out for his mother as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin holds him to the ground with a knee on his neck, preventing Floyd from breathing. In this piece, Dunson

“SELF-PORTRAIT WITH BLIND FAITH,” SAM DUNSON

BY SHANTAY ROBINSON

includes a mother figure holding a wounded son. The artwork undeniably speaks to the Black male connection to the mother figure, who often receives the most credit for raising children in the harshest circumstances.

In “Mama,” the male figure is unresponsive, and the mother figure holds the pain of his wound in her hand, and also in her gaze. The look on her face is representative of the pain mothers who have tragically lost their sons feel — hurt mixed with defiance.

“Self-Portrait With Blind Faith” is a novel painting that lends itself well to this year’s events — both the pandemic and civil unrest. While the world was sheltering in place as we tried to understand how to cope with the airborne virus that would kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world, protestors took to the streets to protest police brutality with a faith that surpassed reason. Dunson paints himself without the irises of his eyes, his glasses sitting on his forehead. His visual situation is faithfulness. While the number of COVID cases was constantly increasing, droves of people incensed due to police violence exercised their constitutional right to protest with the same type of faith that Black communities throughout history have utilized.

In his artist statement, Dunson says his aim is to detail man’s desire to focus “on demise, death and destruction.” This body of work falls in line with the dominant narrative surrounding the Black male, and it speaks to what so many of us are fighting against in this moment. “Dressed Up” is a clear juxtaposition of life and death that works on a formal and allegorical level — it is beautifully rendered and imaginatively conceived. A doorframe boxes in the image of a man who is waist-deep in water with flowers cascading down the hallway, and it’s an ingenious way to suggest a funeral to the viewer without being heavy-handed about it.

There are ways to portray the Black male existence without focusing on demise, death and destruction. Dunson did not do it in this body of work. Still, this conversation is important right now. Dunson’s intention is to focus on growth, but it’s unclear how he does that in this collection.

The allegorical nature of Dunson’s paintings could be stronger. Black Flower walks us through the maturity of a man, but doesn’t speak to his adolescence; the narrative seems unfinished. The paintings depict a life cycle, but man does not come into existence fully formed. It would be helpful

to see the developmental stages of the Black male. “The Try Cycle,” a tricycle covered in flowers, might attempt to give us a sense of youth, but as a sculpture, it strays from the rest of the paintings. We cannot truly appreciate the growth of the Black man in these artworks without seeing from where he came.

It’s not difficult to instantly liken the title of Dunson’s exhibition to the ideology of Black Power, but Dunson seems to dismiss the connection. Instead, he states that flowers “serve as symbols of growth and in many cases as life itself.” While Dunson’s intentions are valiant, this year, Black Power made a comeback, and it brought together a globe full of allies. Perhaps leaning into the philosophy of Black Power and building with thinkers who have already expressed their thoughts on Black male existence — such as Amiri Baraka — could encourage further growth. Leading with Black Power, Dunson might see an already-existing body of work that challenges the status quo, and offers a richer understanding of the existences of Black men. After all, the meaning and philosophy behind an artwork are just as important as its beauty.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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BOOKS

PEN NAMES Jeffrey Jackson tells a story of love, art and resistance during World War II

BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN

“T

he cowardly bureaucrats of the police, who live on lies and shameful cruelty, will be destroyed by the Soldiers with No Names.” On the island of Jersey, in the English Channel, two women named Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe dropped notes such as this one, trying to sow doubt among the German military occupiers during World War II. In his gripping historical narrative, PAPER BULLETS: TWO ARTISTS WHO RISKED THEIR LIVES TO DEFY THE NAZIS

BY JEFFREY H. JACKSON ALGONQUIN BOOKS 336 PAGES, $27.95 JACKSON WILL DISCUSS PAPER BULLETS 6 P.M. THURSDAY, NOV. 12, AT A VIRTUAL EVENT HOSTED BY PARNASSUS BOOKS Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis, Jeffrey H. Jackson rescues the story of resistance by these two remarkable women.

Jackson is professor of history at Rhodes College in Memphis. He is the author of Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 and Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris. He answered questions via email.

What was the status of Jersey during World War

II? The history of Jersey during World War

II is not widely known in the popular imagination, but it was actually quite important.

Hitler constructed a series of fortifications along the eastern edge of Nazi-occupied territory to defend against Allied invasion. He called it the “Atlantic Wall.” The Channel Islands, located just off the coast of Normandy, were the only bits of British territory conquered during the war, and they were on the leading edge of the Atlantic Wall. So they were strategically very important. As a result, thousands of German troops were stationed there, and many of the aircraft during the Battle of Britain launched from the islands.

“For Lucy and Suzanne,” you write, “fighting the German occupation of Jersey was the culmination of lifelong patterns of resistance.” How so? Lucy and Suzanne had grown up as daughters of wealth and privilege in the southern French city of Nantes. Lucy’s father owned and edited a newspaper, and Suzanne’s was an important surgeon and head of the medical school. But from a young age, they were also rebellious. They fell in love as teenagers, but it was difficult to pursue a same-sex relationship as daughters of such prominent

fathers in a conservative society. They were also artists — Lucy was a writer and Suzanne an illustrator; they collaborated on photography — and they moved to Paris after World War I. There, they became part of avant-garde art circles and made friends with Surrealists and communists. Their work — especially their photography, for which they are now somewhat famous — was really shocking to many people because it challenged traditional notions of beauty and femininity.

For some queer people today, Lucy and Suzanne are seen as role models because of their lesbian relationship and their refusal to conform to traditional notions of femininity. How did their sexuality shape their identity and their politics? At the time, lesbians in France were widely visible because they had created many places to meet and mingle. But they were also viewed with great suspicion. Critics argued that lesbians undermined people’s morality and were not doing their patriotic duty to produce children after the war had killed off a generation of French men. Even in the artistic world, many people — including their friend the Surrealist artist André Breton — were homophobic. Lucy and Suzanne had to navigate this world with care.

But being in Paris also allowed them to experiment with clothing, hairstyle and gender. They took gender-neutral artistic names: Lucy became Claude Cahun (in French, Claude can be either a man’s or a woman’s name), and Suzanne became Marcel Moore. They often dressed in men’s clothing (which was technically illegal in France), and they cut their hair short, which many women did in the post-World War I period. Lucy sometimes even shaved her head. For them, all of these acts were about inhabiting new personae and rejecting the stuffy, bourgeois world in which they had grown up. It also meant that the personal was political for them because they were making a statement that they did not accept traditional norms about women or femininity.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Paper Bullets is its level of detail and its feeling of immediacy. How did you conduct the research? How did you approach the writing? The book was many years in the making. It required research trips to Yale, London, Jersey and a few other places. Many of the details and descriptions come from a careful reading of Lucy and Suzanne’s writings, but I’ve tried to fill in information about the historical context to help their words come to life.

I also wanted to respect their relationship without trying to describe it in ways which I could not. I am a heterosexual cisgender man writing about lesbians who some people today would consider transgender (even though neither Lucy nor Suzanne would have used that word; they didn’t even really describe themselves as lesbians in their writing). I did not want to try to imagine details or describe aspects of the love story which they did not discuss, both because they were so private about their relationship and because I wanted to acknowledge my own limits in approaching that part of the story.

To read an extended version of this interview — and more local book coverage — please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

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11/9/20 5:31 PM

MUSIC

THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE Stellar songwriter Darrell Scott focuses on what he can control in a chaotic time

BY GEOFFREY HIMES

L

ike most musicians, Darrell Scott has been hit hard by the loss of live-performance income due to the pandemic.

But rather than moping and moaning about his fate, he has stayed busy at the DARRELL SCOTT SINGS things he can control.

THE BLUES OF HANK So far in 2020, he has WILLIAMS AND JAROSO released two new OUT NOW VIA FULL LIGHT albums as well as an RECORDS archival single from his time with Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, produced the new Hayes Carll album and gone deep into building a new home studio out in the country. And he has two-and-a-half more albums in the pipeline, almost ready to go.

Though Scott still owns the Nashville house he’s had for decades, he’s spending more and more time at his 500-acre property on the Cumberland Plateau, two hours east of town and north of I-40. Nashville is where he wrote songs for the Dixie Chicks, Guy Clark, Brad Paisley, Alan Jackson, Patty Loveless and Montgomery Gentry, but the plateau is where he’s writing his next crop of songs. He often writes them while he’s out in his untracked woods, trying to figure out where to establish trails for his daily walks.

“I find that nature speaks to me the way songs can speak to me,” Scott says over the phone from his country home. “When I’m thinking about where to put a trail, I’m always assessing where the westerlies are coming from, where there might be an old logging road we can repurpose as a trail.

Going on a wander like that, where you don’t know where you’re going, is like writing a song. You take a turn you didn’t expect, and you find something new. When I’m thinking about a new song, it’s quiet I’m looking for, and that’s what I’m looking for out here.”

Because he’s always writing new songs and rearranging old ones, Scott ends up with a lot more promising material than he can fit into a conventional album-release schedule. Now that he’s no longer driving to the Nashville International Airport and flying off to some 200 live shows a year, he has the time to pull out those orphaned songs and arrangements buried deep in his computer and spruce them up for public release.

“I’ve worked with plenty of people who use their 12 latest songs as their album,” Scott says, “but that’s not how I think about it. In my world, the songs just came out on their own. Anytime I’ve tried to write something for my next album, for George Strait’s next album, for my girlfriend, for my publisher — it always ends up as a lesser song.

The better song comes when you don’t know what it’s for — they go where they want to go, and I’m just hanging on for the ride.

“So I end up having more songs than I have records to handle them,” he continues.

“I just want to honor the songs I have, so they can see the light of day, so I can cleanse my system. You can’t wait for the perfect business moment to release them, because

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there isn’t one.”

The first album Scott released in 2020 didn’t include any of his own songs, but was organized around arrangements that moved the blues influence in Hank Williams’ songs from the background to the foreground. The result, Darrell Scott Sings the Blues of Hank Williams, was released in April on Scott’s own Full Light Records.

“I grew up in Indiana with a dad who had two heroes in life: Hank Williams and Johnny Cash,” Scott explains. “So I knew Hank’s catalog as a child. My dad was a songwriter, not a professional but a songwriter who just had to write, and I was inundated by that approach. Recently I asked myself, ‘Why can’t you take a Hank song and blues it up?’ It’s not something I’m putting in there; it’s already in there. I knew certain Hank songs could handle that very easily.”

He avoided the overly familiar Williams songs and dug out the overlooked gems. He turned “My Sweet Love Ain’t Around” into an R&B rave-up with Reese Wynans’ B-3 organ filling all the spaces. He followed that with a version of “Lost Highway” cast as laid-back country-blues. “Men With Broken Hearts,” one of Williams’ religious recitations in his Luke the Drifter guise, is remade as a 2020 morality tale with “The StarSpangled Banner” reharmonized with jazz chords in the background. Richard Thompson’s bassist Danny Thompson and Buddy Miller’s drummer Marco Giovino anchor the bottom, while Shad Cobb’s fiddle matches Scott’s slide guitar on the uptempo breaks.

Scott’s second album of the year, Jaroso, was released in October. It’s named after a Colorado town near the New Mexico border where a friend of Scott bought an abandoned adobe sanctuary that was once a Catholic church. The more his friend described it, the more Scott realized it could be the perfect spot for the live album he’d always wanted to make.

“I love live albums,” he declares. “I’ve done a few of them, and I love other people’s live albums. But a P.A. is not a friend of the live recording; it’s always ringing off the walls and creating problems. I knew this church was small enough that I could sit up there with my instruments and play for 40 to 50 people in an intimate way with zero amplification, just four mics: two on the room, one on my voice and one on my guitar or banjo. I thought it would have a real immediacy, and I was right.”

Eleven songs from that evening made the album, and Scott had previously released recordings of only five of them. Kicking off the proceedings is the remarkable “There’s a Stone Around My Belly,” an anthemic tribute to his pastoral retreat on the Cumberland Plateau. “I’ve been up on a mountain,” he sings over the waves of melody, “I’ve been rolling like a stone / Searching this whole world over for a place to call my own / Alone to see the sunset, and to count what I have lost / Alone to read Walt Whitman and

live like Robert Frost.”

The six unreleased tracks include enthusiastic covers of songs associated with Merle Haggard, Hoyt Axton, Mickey Newbury and Malcolm Holcombe. The unreleased originals are “No One Needs an Angel,” an a cappella look back at a messy adolescence, and “The Hummingbird,” a kind of sequel to “Randall Knife” by Scott’s former employer Guy Clark. In this case, a young son didn’t break the tip off a knife, as in Clark’s song. But he did want to see if his father’s Gibson Hummingbird guitar would float in the nearby swamp. It didn’t.

Scott went for a similar stripped-down aesthetic when he produced Hayes Carll’s latest album, Alone Together Sessions, released in September. This project grew out of a Christmas party at Carll’s Nashville home last winter. When he and Scott pulled out the guitars to play a few tunes, the host said, “Man, this feels so good; we have to record some of this.” Scott, not being a sports fan, obliviously scheduled a session for Sunday, Jan. 12, when Carll’s favorite NFL team the Houston Texans was playing in the divisional playoffs against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Despite that distraction, the sessions went well, and Carll released the three recordings from that day as digital singles: “Times Like These” from his 2019 album What It Is; “Sake of the Song,” a co-write with Scott originally recorded in 2016; and the Lefty Frizzell/Johnny Rodriguez/Merle Haggard hit “That’s the Way Love Goes,” done as a duet with Carll’s wife Allison Moorer. That encouraged Carll and Scott to continue, and they worked up eight more Carll originals, including “Drunken Poet’s Dream,” done as a duet with co-writer Ray Wylie Hubbard.

Once the pandemic set in, of course, they had to change their work habits. Carll would record the vocals and rhythm guitar in his bedroom and send the tracks over to Scott,

who would add embellishment on various fretted instruments in his kitchen. The songs came from all phases of the singer’s career and allowed him to rethink the compositions.

“The songs became less ornate,” Scott observes. “They became more what they truly are, without all that production. The song should always be the leader of the pack — it has to come forward. Here’s one of the ironies in our business. We record a song, and it’s frozen in one eternal form, even though we play it with different bands and different arrangements in 200 shows a year. Why do we have to be slavish about the way it was recorded 17 years ago, as if it were never to be altered, never to be touched? I’ve always believed that songs are living things, that they can be handled more than one way in one person’s career.”

In July, Scott released a digital single of “Satisfied Mind,” originally a 1955 Porter Wagoner hit. During the 2010-2011 world tour by Band of Joy — a group led by Robert Plant and featuring Scott, the aforementioned Miller and Giovino as well as Patty Griffin and Byron House— Scott would step into the spotlight and sing lead on “Satisfied Mind.” This live recording from the tour was also added as a bonus track to Jaroso.

“It was an unusual group,” Scott says of Band of Joy, “because Buddy, Patty and me are all singer-songwriters who can step out front, but also support Robert. The business irony is that we made the album during the first two weeks we knew each other, and after two years of touring, we’d become the band that could make the record we should have made. That’s the recording I would have wanted to hear. Robert loves to keep moving creatively. He went on to the next project, and I totally respect that. But if the call came for that band again, I’d be the first one on the bus.”

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NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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11/9/20 5:29 PM

MUSIC

HOMETOWN PRIDE

Rapper Gee Slab discusses celebrating Nashville hip-hop in the national spotlight with playlist Tenn Toes Down

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

I

f you live in Nashville, hopefully you are or are becoming familiar with the city’s rich, dynamic hip-hop scene. Artists like Daisha McBride, Petty, Tim Gent and Brian Brown are local favorites for their singular takes on writing and performing, as SPIN THE TENN TOES DOWN PLAYLIST ON well as the active SOUNDCLOUD AND FIND roles they play in MORE OF GEE SLAB’S Nashville’s heavily WORK ON BANDCAMP collaborative rap AND SPOTIFY community. Many of them were featured in a recent outstanding collection of feature pieces for National Public Radio by veteran music journalist Jewly Hight.

IN THE HAZE

Spencer Cullum gives English prog a Nashville twist on his new album

BY EDD HURT

O

n his debut solo full-length Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection, the eponymous pedal-steel player and singer lends his mild voice to a set of songs that evoke the folkier dimensions of early-’70s English SPENCER CULLUM’S COIN COLLECTION OUT prog rock. It’s an adTHURSDAY, NOV. 12, VIA dictive exercise in style YK RECORDS that doesn’t register as dated in 2020. Cullum evokes the jazzy folk-prog of Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers with help from an array of Nashville musicians — the “coins” in his “collection,” as he puts it — including guitarist Sean Thompson and singer-songwriters Caitlin Rose and Erin Rae. Cullum gets the details right throughout Coin Collection. At its best, the set of original tunes gives the music of Wyatt, Syd Barrett and Brian Eno a new shine, and Cullum proves himself an excellent songwriter. He’s also a fine pedal-steel player, as his work as part of Nashville instrumental duo Steel-

Another of Nashville’s best-loved MCs has a new project that seeks to boost Music City’s signal to reach a broad national audience. Outstanding rapper and East Nashville native Gee Slab collaborated with Datwon Thomas, editor-in-chief of influential hip-hop and R&B magazine Vibe, on Tenn Toes Down, a playlist of Nashville rappers that serves as a 16-track primer on the city’s eclectic and exciting community of talent. Tenn Toes Down, which landed on Soundcloud and Audiomack on Oct. 9, was born when Slab visited Thomas in New York City in late 2019. The pair went live on Instagram, and Slab started playing tracks from Nashville artists, which quickly got the attention of Thomas’ IG followers.

ism and with country stars like Miranda Lambert proves. Though Coin Collection isn’t a showcase for his considerable chops on the instrument, the story of how he came by his skills is relevant to the new LP. Now 37, Cullum was born in Essex, U.K., and grew up immersed in the sounds of psych-folk rockers like Wyatt and Fairport Convention. He moved to Nashville in 2011 after stints in London and Detroit. Along the way, he says in a phone interview from his Nashville home, he started studying the credits printed on ’70s album covers.

He discovered B.J. Cole, an English pedal-steel savant whose textural work has graced recordings

by John Cale, Björk and Elton John. ”I didn’t really get into country pedal-steel playing when I first started,” says Cullum. “I would look up vinyl of Elton John and Humble Pie records — a lot of old ’60s and ’70s British bands that would have, you know, pedal-steel music. I kind of saw [Cole’s] name on the liner notes, and then went and saw him at one of his own shows. He does electronic pedal-steel stuff now.”

As Cullum tells me, he began taking lessons with Cole in London in 2004, which helped prepare him for his eventual move to Nashville and his work with Ohio-born guitarist Jeremy Fetzer in Steelism. The duo’s music fuses the Southern-fried instrumental

rappers’ talent, but also the city’s wide range “People were liking it and asking who the of sounds. That range is what Slab thinks artists were, and we came to the idea,” Slab makes Nashville hip-hop so distinctive. tells the Scene. “He said, ‘Do you want to do “We don’t have one sound,” he says. a project?’ He put the ball in my court.”

“That’s what’s really special to me — that The pair originally planned to release you can get any piece of what you like out Tenn Toes Down in March, but they put the of hip-hop or rap, and find all of it here. If project on hold in light of the COVID-19 I want to go listen to trap music, I can go pandemic. They reconnected in July, and find it. If I want to go find more alternative Slab resumed contacting Nashville artists styles, I can go find it. If I want bars all day, to gauge their interest in being part of the I can go find it. If I want some bops, if I want compilation. to get a vibe — whatever I want, I can go “I hit up 50 to 60 artists,” he says. “The find everything in one city. In other cities, 16 on the project definitely weren’t all I they have a formula.” contacted. … You can’t please everybody.

Slab himself appears on the project too, So you can’t get everybody on there. We closing out the compilation with his track weren’t trying to make it a 30-song thing.

“Crap Table.” The track, produced by DviWe wanted it to have an album feel, where ousMind, is something of an origin story, in people will pay attention to the track list.” which Slab peppers a personal narrative Slab and Thomas met back in 2017 (“Went broke and bounced back without through a multi-city run of shows Vibe an ounce of pity”) with pearls of wisdom organized to feature rising MCs, called the (“Don’t know yourself, how you tell me what Freshpack Tour. Thomas offered Slab a trip I need?”) over airy keys and swirling vocals. to New York City and an introduction to pro“I wasn’t planning to put myself on the ducer King Henry. In turn, Henry helmed project, but that’s one thing Datwon said a five-track EP featuring Slab called Favor I had to do,” he says with a laugh. “I didn’t Ain’t Fair, which was released that Decemwant anyone to feel like I was trying to make ber and promoted by the magazine. myself seem like something, but he was like, Thomas saw a lot of talent in Slab, to be ‘Nah, you gotta put a song on there.’ So that’s sure, but he also saw an artist deeply comwhy I made my song the last song.” mitted to his city and its community of artMuch of 2020 has been challenging for ists. Accordingly, Thomas gave Slab full Slab. Several of his loved ones lost homes creative control over the curation of the in the March tornado, and he’s lost friends playlist project. and an uncle to COVID-19. He was unable “I would send Datwon stuff, but he gave to write for the first three months of the me full range to chop it up how I wanted to,” pandemic, but he has since found his footing Slab says. “I did about 20 different arrangements of the songs once I got down to the 16.” and is focusing his energy on new projects.

In September, he released a new single, Artists who appear on the project include “Garnett,” which follows his summer EP No the aforementioned McBride, Petty, Gent Signal. He has a number of plans in place for and Brown, as well as fellow mainstays 2021, including a Tenn Toes Down event he like Mike Floss and newcomers like Quez says will be “major.”

Cantrell and Legendary Spitta. The track “We’re doing a lot to keep this train going. list is a mix of unreleased music and fan Somebody told me a long time ago that when favorites, with Slab explaining that he let you get the light, you better stay in it. So each artist choose the track they believe best that’s what we’re doing.” represents what they do. The resulting colEMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM lection shows not just the depth of Nashville

rock of bands like Area Code 615 and Alabama funk rhythm section The Fame Gang with the krautrock of Neu! and Can. On brilliant tracks like 2017’s “The Henchman/The Buffalo,” Fetzer, Cullum and drummer Jon Radford connected old-school funk to post-rock.

Coin Collection connects modern Nashville to the experimentalism of early-’70s England, when pop and folk collided with jazz and minimalism. The album peaks with “My Protector,” a track that sounds

uncannily like an outtake from Robert Wyatt’s 1974 album Rock Bottom. The track’s guitar parts pay homage to the work of Robert Fripp and Phil Manzanera, and Cullum’s lyrics describe a fraught relationship.

Elsewhere, “Jack of Fools” sports guitar licks that sit somewhere between Richard Thompson and cult legend Ollie Halsall. Cullum re-creates the hazy atmosphere of prog-folk on “Imminent Shadow,” which sports an intricate acoustic guitar figure that reminds me of English singersongwriter Bridget St. John.

There are a few pro forma moments on Coin Collection that approach pastiche, but Cullum has captured the wooziness — and the charm — of the music he so clearly loves.

Thompson’s guitar licks are particularly apposite, and James “Skyway Man” Wallace’s piano and Mellotron work adds to the texture.

As Cullum says, Coin Collection is a reminder of music’s ability to cross barriers and span oceans.

“Even though the music has an English sound, I’m seeing all these amazing players in Nashville that are sort of influenced by that sort of music, like Skyway Man, Erin [Rae] and Sean Thompson,” he says. “I think it’s important to say that there are great folk pickers in Nashville who are unbelievable.”

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nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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11/9/20 6:09 PM

MUSIC

THE SPIN

ALL I HAVE TO DO IS STREAM

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN AND LORIE LIEBIG

Scream your own name

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he 5 Spot’s ongoing series of proshot streaming performances from local artists — developed over the summer and formally debuted in September — kept rolling Nov. 2 with a five-song set from Jeremy Ivey and his bang-on band The Extraterrestrials. You might recognize guitarist Evan P. Donohue, bassist Coley Hinson and drummer Josh Minyard as the core of Donohue’s own band; six-string and lap-steel player Alex Munoz rounds out The Extraterrestrials.

Ivey, a longtime Nashville player who’s also the husband and bandmate of country-rock heroine Margo Price, stepped out on his own with 2019’s The Dream and the Dreamer. He quickly turned around a follow-up, Waiting Out the Storm, last month. At The 5 Spot, the 41-year-old musician offered up a fun-size sampler of his hook-heavy second album, which takes an

for those choosing to watch from home.

With that modern convenience comes the risk of technical difficulties. Those did pop up during this week’s showcase featuring Jaime Wyatt, who we picked as the Best Country Transplant in our recent Best of Nashville issue.

Though opener Jeremy Pinnell’s vocals were somewhat distorted through the first half of his set, it didn’t mask the gritty, powerful tone that has captivated listeners. A stalwart of the country scene that’s blossomed out of Kentucky, Pinnell shared a mix of new songs slated from a record that was in the works before COVID-19, plus some older cuts like “Take the Wheel” from 2017’s widely praised Ties of Blood and Affection. He even brought out his take on Waylon Jennings’ “Good Ol’ Boys,” better known as the theme from The Dukes of Hazzard.

It’s been an eventful year for headliner Wyatt, who relocated to Nashville from Los Angeles before the release of her latest album Neon Cross in May. The pandemic sidelined most of her touring plans for 2020, but more than five months after the release, Wyatt got to bring her newest songs and her full band to a live audience.

Although an internet outage caused a

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unflinching look at our world’s myriad problems — climate change, wealth inequality, police violence — with a levity that keeps it from feeling too preachy or on-the-nose.

Bob Dylan’s influence on Ivey’s wordy songcraft, laid-back delivery and handsomely disheveled look is undeniable. The spare, solemn “Someone Else’s Problem” also recalled Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche” and The Handsome Family’s “Far From Any Road” (aka the opening-titles music from the first season of True Detective).

The cheery cynicism of Ivey’s “Loser Town” would’ve made the late Warren Zevon proud. Catchiest of all — and most sobering — was the rollicking “Things Could Get Much Worse,” with an assist from Price on backing vocals. The song is a reminder that people do have the power to act, even in situations that feel overwhelming.

Some wry between-song asides would have been welcome from Ivey, in order to offset the unbearably tense atmosphere on the eve of the presidential election. Although those hopes went unfulfilled — the pretaped, tightly edited show was all rock, no talk — the material offered lots to think on long after the screen went dark.

Lightning 100’s long-running Nashville Sunday Night concert series, broadcast live from 3rd and Lindsley, has resumed in pandemic-adjusted fashion with reduced audience capacities and video livestreams

delay in the video stream, it was worth waiting out the extended intermission. Wyatt kicked things off behind her keyboard for the emotionally charged “Sweet Mess” before sliding into the equally powerful “By Your Side.” Earlier this year, Wyatt told the Scene about how Neon Cross encompasses a range of emotions, from finding the humor in tragedy to seeking solace in hard truths.

All of those elements are elevated in her live performance, from “Rattlesnake Girl,” dedicated to “all the weirdos — my favorite kind,” to “Goodbye Queen,” which tackles the trouble with finding love while living on the road.

Wyatt also dug into her celebrated 2017 record Felony Blues, bringing back numbers like “Wishing Well” that helped define her as a breakout country talent. A welcome surprise was the appearance of Nicole Atkins, who joined Wyatt on vocals for a few songs, including the rollicking “Felony Blues.” The jam-packed set highlighted Wyatt’s ability to mix the edginess of seasoned honkytonkers with the cool factor of alt-rockers over the years.

We’ll have to keep waiting to see a full tour in support of Neon Cross, but the evening showcased the myriad facets of Wyatt’s inventive and engaging style. Add that to the list of things we’re looking forward to once the pandemic is finally under control.

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FILM

THE ’COURT IS BACK IN SESSION

The Belcourt Theatre returns this week with limited capacity and a slew of safety precautions

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

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on the work of the National Association of Theater Owners. They have this great CinemaSafe program that we’re following.

And then we’re going two steps beyond.”

Upstairs, the Belcourt’s smaller Manzler/ Webb Screening Room and Jackson Education and Engagement Space will remain closed. But the cinema will continue to open films online via its virtual screening room, and also continue its virtual education programming. Silverman notes how virtual experiences like this year’s 12 Hours of Terror horror marathon and education and engagement director Allison Inman’s Anatomy of Cinema programs have brought in online participants from all over the country.

There won’t be any further installments in the Belcourt Drive-In series, Silverman tells us, citing both the changing weather and the fact that one of the theaters’ projectors was being used for the outdoor screenings. “As all things, pop-ups look so easy from the outside, but they are of course tremendously complicated from the inside. … I can’t praise all of our staff enough for making that thing happen out of thin air, basically. It was kind of miraculous, and has been so smooth and great, and filled the need for a moment.”

You’ll be able to buy tickets for the Belcourt’s indoor films in person, though the arthouse is strongly encouraging folks to buy them online in advance.

“Toby’s been on the horn pretty constantly,” she says of programming director Leonard’s efforts to bring new films to the theater. “In some ways it’s a unique moment, because we are seeing more of the independent [films] have windows before they have a life online. ... I think we’ll be able to do a pretty good mix of new releases and repertory. But you know, because we’re us, we can rely on just the repertory too and still make it imaginative and good and not just the same-old same-old that you were sort of seeing other theaters open without curators.”

Even with the new precautions in place, and even with some of us sorely — desperately, even — missing the moviegoing experience, Silverman and her colleagues know returning to the cinema will be a difficult decision for many.

“We’re not expecting people to fly out of their houses and fill the theaters immediately — I think it’s all going to take time,” she says, going on to reference a recent memo written by one of the White House’s senior COVID-19 advisers. “But [look] at the latest report from Deborah Birx that came out that said we don’t always have to look at total shutdowns, but we do have to follow the practices we know. This is the thing I wish we were seeing more of — people following those practices so everyone can have confidence. But we’re going to bake [safety precautions] into the way we operate and hope that people are willing to give it a try.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

MODIFIED SEATING AT THE BELCOURT THEATRE

PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS

I

n August, the Belcourt Theatre announced its new drive-in series, set to take place in the independent cinema’s small Hillsboro Village parking lot and feature repertory screenings and new releases alike.

It was enough to bring a tear to a local cinephile’s eye — seeing classics like The Birds under the late-summer sky, the familiar faces of Belcourt staffers partially obscured behind masks as they guided cars Tetris-style into the theater’s modest lot.

These screenings were the first that the 95-year-old theater had hosted in five-and-ahalf months. And while they were a delight and a privilege, a couple of questions still hung over each drive-in showing: When will things return to normal? When can we all go see a movie inside the theater again?

Of course, with cases of COVID-19 still rising all across the country and in Nashville in particular, the answer to the former remains unclear. But the answer to the latter was announced by the Belcourt just this week: The Belcourt will reopen for indoor screenings on Friday, Nov. 13.

“I think we can do this and keep people safe and get them out of their houses,” says Belcourt executive director Stephanie Silverman. In an interview with the Scene, Silverman details the elaborate list of precautions she and her staff are taking as they open doors for limited-capacity screenings of two films this week — the Kate Winsletstarring romantic drama Ammonite and the animated fantasy film Wolfwalkers (see our review of the latter on p. 29).

“We’ve done a lot of research into how to keep people safe,” says Silverman. “And then, we’ve of course been obsessively following the CDC information — distancing, masks. So what we’ve done is we’ve reduced the capacities in both halls, and we actually have a very specific seating map that will allow people to sit together — couples can come together. But everybody will be, most of the time, at least 10 feet apart from anybody else.”

The Belcourt is limiting capacity to a maximum of 56 patrons per screening in both of the downstairs theaters — that’s roughly 17 percent of capacity in the 1925 Hall and 22 percent of the capacity in the 1966 Hall.

Programming director Toby Leonard will likely schedule about two showings per hall per day on weekdays, and three per day per hall on weekends. Both staff and customers will be required to wear masks, though once you’re in your seat you’ll be permitted to remove your face covering to enjoy a drink or a snack. The theater is also instituting some high-tech new procedures, including U.V. air scrubbers in both halls, along with an electrostatic mister that will be used to clean each seat between screenings.

“These rooms of course are huge-volume rooms in terms of airflow,” says Silverman.

“And then with the added protection of U.V. scrubbing, we feel like we’re making all of the decisions based on the research, based

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CROSSWORD EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ ACROSS

AHEAD OF THE PACK

for freedom and empathy in a Puritanical world of oppression, fanaticism, unforgiving legalism and fear, the high-spirited animated tale stands for everything animation can be — rather than what it chooses not Wolfwalkers is a beautiful to be. With a story that recalls Pixar’s spunky Scottish tale Brave, Wolfwalkers is set during a long-ago reminder of the joys of time when a young girl and her wolf-hunting father conventional animation acclimate to life on a British Isle that is at the time governed by England. Wolves plague this small comBY CORY WOODROOF munity — the animals are a metaphor for misunderstood scapegoats — and are unwillingly ceding their fter your 50th time watching Frozen II on forest to the community’s quest for farmland.

Disney+ with your kids (that much Olaf The girl journeys into the woods to meet a peer does things to a person), you might be — a shape-shifting “wolfwalker.” (Basically a much inclined to never see another computermore Irish version of an Animorph, for all you ’90s animated film again.

Scholastic Book Fair alums.) The film’s surface-level CGI fatigue isn’t new, of course. Ever since Pixar themes are fairly obvious: Kids get a good reminder changed the game with Toy Story in 1995, American to not fear, and even to embrace, things and people studios have largely WOLFWALKERS that are different from you. But Wolfwalkers also exphased out hand-drawn PG, 103 MINUTES amines life in an oppressive society, amid a faith not animation. Disney hasn’t OPENING FRIDAY, NOV. 13, rooted in love and healthy relationships but rather made a hand-drawn AT THE BELCOURT fear. At its core, the film carries on a distinctly frank feature since 2009’s The conversation about the horrors of a Puritan society Princess and the Frog, and we aren’t likely to see a and why it’s good to evolve past a ruling class that major studio embrace that delicate style of animamanipulates its citizens. It’s just subversive enough to tion again anytime soon. CGI is the present and the be a little startling in a kids’ film. future — hand-drawn animation, like stop-motion, is While the ’90s Disney fan in you may want more of a curio. one of these kids to break out in song at If that sounds bleak for fans of the art some point, Wolfwalkers finds its own form, good news is just a sketch away.

THE BELCOURT IS way to thrill you with heady themes Beginning Friday, you can don a mask REOPENING THIS WEEK and gorgeous animation. Just the and visit the newly reopened Belcourt WITH LIMITED CAPACITY painstaking effort and care that went to see a magnificent new hand-drawn AND STRICT COVID-19 SAFETY PRECAUTIONS IN PLACE. FOR into building the film’s intricately feature on the big screen. Wolfwalkers, MORE ON THAT, READ OUR drawn backgrounds can demonstrate the fourth feature from Irish animaSTORY ON P. 28. how intimate and lasting this art form is. tion outfit Cartoon Saloon, will make Hand-drawn animation may never return you feel like you’re swirling around in a in full force, but films like Wolfwalkers make storybook — it’s immersive in a way you can’t deeply convincing cases for why preservation of this always find with computer-rendered films. CGI looks form of moviemaking is vital. cool; hand-drawn animation has a soul.

Infusing Irish heritage into a story about a search EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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Cinemax competitor

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Introduces to the mix

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1

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65 PUZZLE BY FRANCESCA GOLDSTON AND JEFF CHEN

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44

Rowboat mover

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nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 12 – NOVEMBER 18, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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www.madisonflatsapartments.com | 615.285.5981 The Residence at Old Hickory Lake 2401 Lakeshore Drive, Old Hickory, TN 37138 Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 20A54 JACQUELINE RUTH JONES, ET AL.

SMITH

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LEGALS LEGAL NOTICE NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT Sterling Nashville West Property, LLC is pursuing a Petition for Termination of Use of Land as Burial Ground and for Removal and Reinterment of Remains of Decedents in the Chancery Court for Davidson County, Tennessee (case #200166-III). Petitioner seeks to relocate a cemetery at 7114 Charlotte Pike, Nashville, Tennessee in Davidson County. Petitioner believes that persons buried at the cemetery may include John M. O’Brien (1874 to 1957), Mattie J. O’Brien (1876 to 1952), John Thomas O’Brien (1936 to 1936), and Frances Inez Stephens (1928 to 1930). Petitioner seeks to reinter the graves at a location nearby the current cemetery, but outside of trees and development. The Court entered an Order of Publication that Interested Per-

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Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No.19D2032 Nancy Eileen Duke

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SMITH

Vs.

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon KIARA ALANA BIDDIX. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after December 3, 2020 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 January 4, 2020. 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.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk W. North Deputy Clerk Date: October 15, 2020 Laura Tek Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, 12/3/20

www.residenceatoldhickorylake.com | 615.258.6088

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon Larry Wayne Duke. It is ordered that said Defendant enter His appearance herein with thirty (30) days after December 10, 2020 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 January 11, 2020.

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.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk W. North Deputy Clerk Date: October 30, 2020 Cynthia Bohn Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 11/12, 11/19, 12/3, 12/10/20

Sr. Application Engineer (Business Intelligence Specialist) needed for HCA/Management Services, Nashville, TN. Engage in architecture, design and development of Business Intelligence Applications.

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NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT Sterling Nashville West Property, LLC is pursuing a Petition for Termination of Use of Land as Burial Ground and for Removal and Reinterment of Remains of Decedents in the Chancery Court for Davidson County, Tennessee (case #200166-III). Petitioner seeks to relocate a cemetery at 7114 Charlotte Pike, Nashville, Tennessee in Davidson County. Petitioner believes that persons buried at the cemetery may include John M. O’Brien (1874 to 1957), Mattie J. O’Brien (1876 to 1952), John Thomas O’Brien (1936 to 1936), and Frances Inez Stephens (1928 to 1930). Petitioner seeks to reinter the graves at a location nearby the current cemetery, but outside of trees and development. The Court entered an Order of Publication that Interested Persons enter an appearance on or before 30 days after the last publication of this Notice and file an answer to the Petition, or judgment by default may be taken against them for the relief requested in the Petition.

This Notice will be published for four consecutive weeks.

NSC 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 11/19/20

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon KIARA ALANA BIDDIX. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after December 3, 2020 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 January 4, 2020. 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.

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S U H P I TC

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