“We’re
Still Here”
Photographing this year’s NAIA Pow Wow and discussing Nashville’s future with members of the Indigenous community
WITNESS HISTORY
This “Silver Fox” themed suit was designed by Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors for Charlie Rich, who acquired the nickname because of his trademark gray hair and silky-smooth singing style.
From the exhibit Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present artifact
: Courtesy of Charlie Rich Jr. artifact photo: Bob Delevante
TODAY
Metropolitik: Interests Align to Deliver O’Connell an Early Victory Mayor shifts focus to housing policy after transit referendum victory BY ELI MOTYCKA
Budget Roundup: TennCare Needs $118
Million More to Cover Drugs Like Ozempic State departments ask for funds for Alzheimer’s programming, provider pay, wait lists BY HANNAH HERNER
Universal Voucher Legislation Returns
Republican leaders Jack Johnson and William Lamberth spearhead efforts to create ‘Education Freedom Scholarships’ BY KELSEY BEYELER
COVER PACKAGE: “WE’RE STILL HERE”
Something’s Happening Here
Shayna Hobbs believes Nashville is ready for IndigeNash BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
Scenes From the Native American Indian Association of Tennessee Pow Wow
The 43rd annual event took place Oct. 18-20 at Long Hunter State Park PHOTOS BY ANGELINA CASTILLO, CAPTIONS BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
The Journey to Wasioto
Talking to the Indigenous Peoples Coalition’s Albert Bender about changing the name of Cumberland Park BY D. PATRICK RODGERS
Believe What You See
In Choctaw artist Benjy Russell’s eyes, the rural South becomes a utopia BY CAT ACREE
CRITICS’ PICKS
Zoolumination, Marc Scibilia, Megan Murphy Chambers, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and more
FOOD AND DRINK
Date Night: Green Hour and Star Rover Sound
Cocktails and chocolates followed by steak dinner and a show in Germantown BY DANNY BONVISSUTO
OPERA
Home-Cooked
Nashville Opera presents the world premiere of The Cook-Off BY AMY STUMPFL
BOOKS
Tragicomic Collaboration
Nashville’s Tyler Mahan Coe limns a legendary country music marriage in Cocaine & Rhinestones BY EDD HURT; CHAPTER16.ORG
MUSIC
Rhythm Changes
The Phil Schaap Jazz Collection and Blair Big Band keep growing the reputation of Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music
BY RON WYNN
Time Ripper
Veteran rocker Richie Kirkpatrick returns from the brink with Silver & Gold
BY SEAN L. MALONEY
From the Top
Punk champion Anthony Raneri chronicles Everyday Royalty BY MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
The Spin
The Privates’ reunion show at The Basement BY THE SPIN
FILM
A Dispatch From the 62nd
New York Film Festival
From Queer to Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist here’s the best of this year’s fest BY JASON SHAWHAN
Magical Misery Tour
With A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg allows us a moment to be sad BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD AND THIS MODERN WORLD
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Native American Indian Association of Tennessee’s Pow Wow; Oct. 19, 2024
PHOTO BY ANGELINA CASTILLO
Kathryn Monk from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is crowned this year’s NAIA Princess. Photo by Angelina Castillo.
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INTERESTS ALIGN TO DELIVER O’CONNELL AN EARLY VICTORY
Mayor shifts focus to housing policy after transit referendum victory
BY ELI MOTYCKA
Metropolitik is a recurring column featuring the Scene’s analysis of Metro dealings.
A FEW DULL Red yard signs still dot Davidson County neighborhoods a week after Election Day. In block letters, the plain message — “VOTE NO TRANSIT TAX” — blares into the void. For months, these rare lawn decorations were the only visible opposition to Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s proposed, and now passed, sales tax hike dedicating funding to the city bus system and roadway upgrades to modernize stoplights and sidewalks.
On the pro-referendum side was a rare alignment of pretty much everyone else. Downtown business interests raised millions for the transit campaign, spending as the Nashville Moves Action Fund, a federally regulated 501(c)4 that successfully avoided disclosing specific donors until after votes were counted. The majority of the Metro Council became vocal advocates after ushering the plan through the chamber over the summer. Two exceptions — District 26’s Courtney Johnston and District 2’s Joy Kimbrough — made brief public efforts to contest it. Popular advocacy organizations Stand Up Nashville, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and The Equity Alliance banded together as the SHIFT coalition to canvas politically engaged constituencies, briefly joining the business lobby they’ve historically mobilized against. O’Connell used the podium to tell and retell his own transit folktale about ditching his car to save money as a young Nashvillian. There were flashy press conferences, including a fairgrounds expo in front of a signature purple
BUDGET ROUNDUP: TENNCARE
NEEDS
$118 MILLION MORE TO COVER
DRUGS LIKE
OZEMPIC
State departments ask for funds for Alzheimer’s programming, provider pay, wait lists
BY HANNAH HERNER
LAST WEEK , the state’s many departments sat before Gov. Bill Lee and his staff to ask for millions of dollars to
WeGo bus.
The decisive electoral victory, in which “FOR” beat “AGAINST” nearly 2 to 1, has already put gears in motion for a transit makeover that will last more than a decade. O’Connell is hiring a new “Choose How You Move” chief program officer for $265,000 to $295,000 annually — Metro’s top salary tier. The ballot language approved direct tax-to-program funding, the legal reason why this went in front of voters, securing “dedicated funding” that O’Connell has wanted for WeGo since his time on the Metro Transit Authority Board. That accounting shift also means the council won’t have the same pressure to allocate funding for WeGo every year, freeing up operating-budget dollars.
O’Connell’s victory also boosts his personal brand. He was once a wonky councilmember considered an outside candidate to unseat thenMayor John Cooper, who eventually declined to seek reelection. But the political dominoes have consistently fallen in O’Connell’s favor since he announced his candidacy in spring 2022. Thirteen months into governing, he’s scored a substantial victory with most of the city on his side. Public messaging has shifted away from the construction continuing on the East Bank and a partially publicly funded $2.1 billion Titans stadium, which emerged as a singular priority for Cooper in his waning days. O’Connell handed the massive development project over to former Councilmember Bob Mendes, now a mayor’s office executive. The council confirmed Scott Tift and Nathaniel Carter as the first two members of the new East Bank Development Authority last week.
use in fiscal year 2026.
Whether these departments get the money will be decided later, but the Scene listened in on requests from the Department of Health, the Department of Disability and Aging, the Division of TennCare and the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Below are some takeaways from the presentations.
TENNCARE NEEDS $118 MILLION MORE TO COVER GLP-1S
The highest requests came from the Division of TennCare. Just behind TennCare’s largest budget item — $165 million total for the cost of doing business — is $118 million to pay for GLP-1 drugs ($41.5 million from the state and $76.8 million from the federal government).
The state’s Medicaid program is federally required to cover such drugs — commonly known by brand names Ozempic and Mounjaro — for diabetes and heart disease, and expects to be covering more prescriptions in
MAYOR FREDDIE O’CONNELL CELEBRATES HIS TRANSIT WIN AT CO-WORKING SPACE THE MALIN IN THE GULCH
At a press conference the day after the vote, O’Connell started laying out next steps.
“The easiest thing we have to get started on are some sidewalks,” he said. “We started multiple conversations with the Finance Department today to see what will be immediately eligible for funding and how quickly we could, for instance, go to ground on some of this. Sidewalks in the easiest places to build them. We think on all three — sidewalks, signals and service — you’ll start to see improvements in year one.”
The transit improvement plan that passed through the council estimated $3.1 billion in capital spending, a massive bill for projects that will span the county. Capital spending means new stuff — it also means annoying construction, but visible improvements that O’Connell will point to when voters ask what he’s done for them lately.
Three days after the vote, at the mayor’s weekly press roundtable, O’Connell hinted at even more ambition, referencing affordable housing as transit’s complement.
“Metro Housing division will also be releasing their Unified Housing Strategy in the coming weeks that will set goals, outline strategies and provide policy and program recommendations
the coming fiscal year.
It’s been three years since the insurance program switched to the TennCare III waiver system. Tennessee is given more flexibility in Medicaid rules while promising to save the federal government money (claiming $1 billion in the past three years). It is also one of eight states that has not expanded Medicaid coverage.
While the first year of the waiver focused on adding children, pregnant women and parents to the roll and the second year focused on behavioral health and rural health, the third year thus far has focused on hurricane relief — giving $100 million.
Lee thanked TennCare deputy commissioner Stephen Smith for the “innovative idea.”
“There is no question that these funds will impact the health of the people we serve,” Smith says. “What is more basic to health than water and wastewater systems?”
to advance access to affordable, safe and stable housing for more Nashvillians,” O’Connell told reporters. “Every bit helps. We had early established affordable housing and transportation as two of our top priorities. Moving forward, as we try to address cost of living in Nashville, we’ll be expanding that affordability tool kit.”
Once the office fills an executive role over transit, expect conversation to shift toward progressive housing policy. In the early spring, Councilmembers Quin Evans Segall and Rollin Horton pushed a slate of zoning- and codes-related reform with mixed results. Members hit fierce community opposition to certain measures that would have upzoned single-family neighborhoods. Both Horton and Segall tell the Scene they will continue to push policy that facilitates greater residential density.
At a panel on homelessness last week, District 14 Councilmember Jordan Huffman said the chamber has a lingering appetite for zoning reform.
“Expect more policy related to zoning reform in the coming year,” Huffman told the crowd at Vine Street Christian Church. Fellow legislators Burkley Allen, a councilmember at-large, and Angie Henderson, vice mayor, sat in the pews. ▼
PAYING SUPPORT PROFESSIONALS MORE
The newly minted Department of Disability and Aging, which combined the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities with the Tennessee Commission on Aging and Disability in July, asked its highest amount (just over $20 million) to support its Tennessee Early Intervention System. The program is for young children with developmental delays or disabilities. The money is broken down into $13.4 million for more applicants and $6.7 million for rate increases for its staff. An additional $17.9 million would increase wages for direct support professionals in the department’s various programs.
In addition, the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services asked for $11.5 million to pay addiction treatment providers more and $4 million to assist in retaining staff for the behavioral health safety net program.
PHOTO: KATIE BETH CANNON
PROVIDING SUPPORT FOR KIDS
The Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services asked for $5.9 million in recurring funding to support school-based behavioral health liaisons, which would add 85 positions.
“We know through our work with [state program] Safe Schools that if kids are bullied, there’s a high likelihood of becoming that kid that turns around and wants to hurt someone else,” said commissioner Marie Williams.
The Department of Disability and Aging asked for a total of $11.6 million to support a joint program with the Department of Children’s Services that serves children with intellectual or developmental disabilities in the foster care program. The funding would add additional beds for medically fragile children under DCS care in an effort to keep them out of hospital settings as well as pay for positions supporting these children.
When the Department of Disability and Aging opened up applications for inclusive playgrounds in the state, they received 86, and were able to fund only seven of them with $2.5 million. A requested $6.3 million would fund 14 more.
The Department of Health also requested to use $2.6 million of its settlement with electronic cigarette manufacturer Juul to make a media campaign and offer vape cessation programs for teens.
ESTABLISHING THE TENNESSEE MEMORY ASSESSMENT NETWORK
Much of the Department of Health’s presentation focused on Alzheimer’s, one of commissioner Ralph Alvarado’s passions as a physician. The department requests $7 million in recurring state funding to establish the Tennessee Memory Assessment Network to improve early diagnosis and treatment. An additional $3.7 million would offer grants for the network to stand up five assessment clinics in rural areas to connect to a research center in Nashville. He anticipates 300 participants in the first year and 2,000 to 3,000 in the second year.
“Now if a patient would come in to a doctor, they could get referred to a specialist and it might be a year or 15 months before they get seen,” Alvarado says. “In that time the disease has progressed so far that there’s no point. They’ve missed that magic window.”
Both the Department of Health and the Department of Disability and Aging asked for money to support the state’s dementia navigator program, requesting $3.1 million and $1.6 million, respectively.
CLEARING WAIT LISTS
The Division of TennCare claimed challenges to getting people off the state’s Employment and Community First CHOICES wait list, which offers at-home care for people with disabilities. The current wait list is 1,500 people long. A requested total of $74.7 million ($26.2 in state funding and $48.5 in federal funding) would clear that wait list.
In addition, there are 3,500 on the Department of Disability and Aging’s senior nutrition program wait list. They’re asking for $8.4 million to fix that. In addition, there are 4,500 people on the wait list for its OPTIONS home care program — $8.2 million would address half of it. ▼
UNIVERSAL VOUCHER LEGISLATION RETURNS
Republican leaders Jack Johnson and William Lamberth spearhead efforts to create ‘Education Freedom Scholarships’
BY KELSEY BEYELER
GOV. BILL LEE’S universal voucher push is back via newly filed legislation from House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin). The legislation is the first bill filed for Tennessee’s 114th General Assembly, which will begin in January, and an attempt to revitalize the previous session’s unsuccessful attempt to pass similar legislation to allow students across the state to use public dollars to attend private schools.
Last November, Gov. Lee announced his desire to bring a universal voucher program to Tennessee. Though the legislature passed this year’s state budget with $144 million earmarked for such a program, corresponding legislation was not ultimately voted through — Democrats outright opposed it, and Republicans in the House and Senate couldn’t agree on how to go about it.
Lamberth and Johnson have filed identical bills to be considered in 2025, indicating more unity among Republican leadership — though there will also be a new lineup of legislators voting on the bills in the wake of the Nov. 5 election.
“I’m very confident we have the votes,” Johnson told Williamson Scene reporter Hamilton Matthew Masters on election night. “We have the votes in the Senate. We have the votes in the House. Like with many complicated pieces of legislation, we have to work out some differences.”
The Education Freedom Scholarship Act of 2025 would award 20,000 scholarships in its first year to families across the state, regardless of income. Half of those scholarships, however, would be set aside to prioritize students with disabilities, those who are eligible for the preexisting Education Savings Account Program and those whose “annual household income does not exceed three hundred percent (300%) of the amount required for the student to qualify for free or reduced price lunch.” Five-thousand additional scholarships would be added each year, assuming that 75 percent of the previous year’s scholarships were utilized. The per-pupil scholarship amount aligns with that of the state’s public school funding formula base amount, which was most recently $7,075. The new legislation would also require students in third through 11th grades who utilize the program to take a
nationally standardized achievement test or the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program Test.
Included in the legislation is a $2,000 bonus for Tennessee public school teachers and the allocation of 80 percent of sports wagering dollars committed to improving K-12 public school facilities and infrastructure, with an emphasis on distressed and at-risk counties. The legislation also claims that a public school’s funding would not decrease if a student decides to disenroll for the Education Freedom Scholarship.
“We’re gonna continue to support and promote and improve public education,” said Johnson on Nov. 5. “But while we’re doing that, we should also get parents who have their kids trapped in a failing school a different alternative — and that’s the reason for the bill.”
Newly reelected state Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) calls the legislation the “same scam, different language” and “an attempt to privatize education and completely dismantle and defund our public schools.” Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) shared a similar sentiment via a press release last week, and education advocacy group EdTrust-Tennessee has already publicly opposed the legislation.
“This legislation threatens to direct crucial public funds to private institutions, undermining the very foundation of an equitable, accessible public education across our state,” reads the EdTrust’s organizational statement in part. The group also points to voucher-related ballot measures failing in Kentucky, Nebraska and Colorado in last week’s election.
While universal vouchers would be new, students in Davidson, Shelby and Hamilton counties already have access to a similar program via the state’s Education Savings Account pilot program, which started in 2022 after years of being held up in courts. Though the state’s education commissioner Lizzette Reynolds has said achievement results of the ESA program “aren’t anything to write home about,” Lee told reporters last week that 91 percent of the 3,500 families utilizing the program are satisfied with it. With no sure end date for the ESA pilot program, Lee said he’s unsure of any legislative plans around ending it, but he plans for it to “operate alongside” Education Freedom Scholarships.
Despite rumblings that Gov. Lee might call a special session to address vouchers, he told reporters he isn’t planning to call a session to address vouchers or hurricane relief.
“We’re going to work with the legislature to make sure that we give parents choice,” he said. “That we give relief to those in upper East [Tennessee], and that the legislature will determine what’s the best way forward there.”
Hamilton Matthew Masters contributed to this article. ▼
“We’re Still Here”
Photographing this year’s NAIA Pow Wow and discussing Nashville’s future with members of the Indigenous community
Something’s Happening Here
Shayna Hobbs believes Nashville is ready for IndigeNash
BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
SHAYNA HOBBS HAS something to say.
The Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican musician, mother and activist grew up in Nashville. Her Grammy-winning musician father, Bill Miller, moved the family from their Wisconsin reservation in the early 1980s so he could pursue his career, and her childhood was peppered with interactions with country music stars. She remembers times when musicians like Vince Gill and Waylon Jennings would call the family home, and being excited to meet Tori Amos when her dad opened for her throughout the Under the Pink tour.
But throughout all her father’s successes, Hobbs was aware of a difference. She recalls an incident at Christ Presbyterian Church, where she also went to school, when a church elder called her dad a disgrace, ridiculing him for his long hair and Native jewelry. In recent years, however, Hobbs says she’s begun to notice a shift. She performed the land acknowledgement onstage at the boygenius concert in Centennial Park in June of last year, and was shocked by how attentively people listened as she spoke of the Indian Removal Act, and the Native artists who are still here despite all that.
Hobbs developed IndigeNash as a way to harness that energy and direct it back toward the Native community. IndigeNash is a Native-led three-day art and music festival that celebrates multi-tribal Native cultures, and will take place at The Forge Nov. 22 through 24. It is rooted in a traditional pow wow, but instead of focusing on those more traditional aspects of Native life, it also incorporates contemporary music, art exhibitions and cultural discussions. Bands like A Tribe of Horsman, who play 1960s-inspired electric blues and are led by charismatic frontman Dhalton Horsman, will perform alongside Trenton Wheeler, a singer-songwriter who also performs traditional grass dance. Ryan Toll, the Apache chef who co-owned the now-closed Wild Cow, will serve up Native-inspired foods and specialty cocktails.
In a recent series of conversations with the Scene, Hobbs spoke about how she hopes IndigeNash will educate people about Native culture, and how it’s been here all along.
Find excerpts from our conversation below.
ON GROWING UP IN NASHVILLE:
“I really struggled with finding my identity, being an Indigenous girl here in the South. My culture was erased, and my identity was misunderstood. I didn’t have a place where I ever felt like that same feeling that I felt with my family on the rez. We never really found that Native community here, and I saw how it impacted my dad a lot. My dad has always been like a pioneer for Native music, and he really inspired me a ton. But I saw again that he had no place to belong. And even though he helped everybody in every genre, he was the token Native guy. So as I’ve developed as a young woman and gone on all of my journeys, my passion has always been to create music and art, and use my voice to bring healing and hope.
“There’s something stirring in the city of Nashville. Something’s happening here. It’s growing. I will say that there’s kind of, there’s some heavy, hard stuff, and stuff that I don’t agree with that’s happening here. I’m not happy about the way buildings keep being put up and the way that they’re just forgetting the land in a lot of ways, and forgetting the water.”
ON THE ROOTS OF INDIGENASH:
“I’ve always seen this vision for a Native festival that has the echoes of the pow wow, but it’s a little more modern. It’s the other generation that sometimes people forget about when they’re talking to us. They want to over-roman-
ticize us. There is a beautiful side of us as Native people, and a lot of us have those deep spiritual roots, but we also just want to be seen as just modern-day people the same way. … We want to be heard, but it is a long process to get there, because we carry this generational trauma — only if you’re Indigenous do you truly know what that means. And so when I meet Indigenous people, they become brothers and sisters because we share that in common.
“So it’s this blend of honoring our traditions and the tribes that we come from, our family, everything, but it’s also about expressing who we are right now, because that’s also valid. That is Native, whether it’s traditional or not. I am Native, so what I create is Native, and I really want to bring back that narrative as a people. We need that power, because it has been stolen from us. Everything has been taken from us. I mean, no wonder it’s so fucking hard for us to even rise up from that, because our children were taken, our language was taken, our hair was cut, our traditions were outlawed. Like all these things, they took everything away, took our land, everything, and then now all of us are living on what is not even our land. The reservations are like concentration camps. It’s like they push us to the other side. So this is a powerful reclaiming, because I believe that representation really matters, and it’s time that we can create our art and our music again.”
ON BEING NATIVE IN 2024:
“You know, people talk about the civil rights movement, and they don’t realize that our Native people are still fighting for that. We’re still fighting, and the irony is, this is our land. It’s insane. Think about going to Japan or Switzerland. You’re gonna experience the culture, and you’re gonna experience the people, their land, their food, their music, everything that makes them them. For Natives, where do you go? A reservation doesn’t quite show who we are. That’s us after we’ve been wiped out. So what I dreamed of, ever since I was a little girl, is to have places and spaces for us as Natives to come and just be all that we are, so we can be safe to share that with others. I feel like IndigeNash is going to be the start of that.
“It’s like, ‘Hey, we’re still here, and we’re gonna rise up, and we have things to share with you.’ And the world needs to hear these messages right now, in big ways, because it’s about land. It’s about honoring the earth and land, our resources, natural resources. It’s about protecting the voices of minorities. It’s about giving a platform for those who haven’t been heard. It’s about restoring balance. It’s about reclamation, healing, redemption, all of that. It’s a super, super exciting time to be Indigenous right now, and I have a big passion for bringing that vibe and that awareness to the city of Nashville.” ▼
SHAYNA HOBBS
IndigeNash Nov. 22-24 at The Forge, 217 Willow St.
PHOTO: ALAINA K MULLIN
Scenes From the Native American Indian Association of Tennessee
Pow Wow
The 43rd annual event took place Oct. 18-20 at Long Hunter State Park
PHOTOS BY ANGELINA CASTILLO
CAPTIONS BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
A member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee does the chicken dance. As the crowd watches the dancer prepare, an announcer gives a history of the dance over the loudspeaker. “It represents that prairie chicken out West, how it dances for its mate,” she says. “It’s very flashy. These dancers are showy, and make all these quick and sudden moves. It honors the sun. He also has eagle feathers in a beautiful regalia, most of it he makes himself.”
Twelve-year-old Caiden performs men’s traditional dancing, which the dancers refer to informally as “men’s tradish.” It is the oldest form of pow wow dancing. Caiden’s outfit is notable for its many eagle feathers, as well as for the roach on top of his head, which is made from the guard hairs of a porcupine.
“We’re
The type of dance known as women’s fancy is said to represent coming out as a woman, just as a butterfly comes out of its cocoon. The fringed shawls the dancers hold up throughout their dances feature ornate ribbon work and embroidery, which move in rhythm with their steps.
A circle of drummers gathers at the center of the arena to play “Veteran’s Song,” a tribute to Bill Wells — the longtime chairman of the NAIA Pow Wow, who died in September. “He will be remembered for his genuine Southern hospitality,” one of the drummers says of Wells at the outset of the performance. “Let’s make this the best pow wow yet in his memory.”
“We’re Still Here”
The Journey to Wasioto
Talking to the Indigenous Peoples Coalition’s Albert Bender about changing the name of Cumberland Park
BY D. PATRICK RODGERS
RETIRED ATTORNEY ALBERT BENDER is an author, historian, community activist, member of the Cherokee Nation and, in his words, “philosopher, if you will.” He’s even a one-time Scene contributor, having written a 2021 essay on the dark and damning legacy of President Andrew Jackson, whom Bender described as “a prime conductor on the murderous genocide train that roared from coast to coast.”
As the chair of Nashville’s Indigenous Peoples Coalition, Bender has recently been advocating for the renaming of Cumberland Park, the public green space that stretches along the bend of the Cumberland River near Nissan Stadium. With the coming of a new Tennessee Titans stadium and the associated development of hundreds of acres along the East Bank, lots of eyes are on the area — and alongside that attention, Bender and his colleagues hope to give the park a new name.
“Wasioto” is a Shawnee word that, according to some sources, means “mountains where the deer are plentiful.” It’s also the name the Shawnee people gave to the Cumberland River many generations before white people arrived in what is now known as Tennessee. Since August, Bender and the IPC have been engaging with the Metro Board of Parks and Recreation in an effort to rename the space Wasioto Park. At a Nov. 5 meeting of the Parks and Recreation Board, Bender and several of his fellow advocates expressed frustration that the process to rename the park has stretched on as long as it has, urging the board to move the final meeting in the process to rename the park — currently set for Tuesday, Dec. 3 — up to November, which is Native American Heritage Month.
Jackie Jones, community affairs superintendent of the Parks and Recreation Board, tells the Scene that while there are no plans to move the Dec. 3 meeting forward to November, that will indeed be the “final step in the process toward renaming Cumberland Park.” Bender and the IPC have continued to ask the board to reconsider, and as of press time, the group is planning a press conference and protest action in the coming days.
On a recent weekday morning, Bender joined the Scene at Cumberland Park to discuss his efforts to change the park’s name and Wasioto’s meaning to the local Indigenous community. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me a little bit about the history of the park, and the proposed name change to Wasioto Park. Cumberland Park comes from the name of the Cumberland River, and the Cumberland River was given that name by a European explorer, Thomas Walker, in 1758. Prior to that,
or even during that time, there were numerous Shawnee villages all up and down this part of the Cumberland River in the vicinity of Nashville. In fact, there were so many Shawnee villages that this part of the river was referred to as the River of the Shawnees. But the ancient Shawnee name for the river is Wasioto. And even after Thomas Walker gave the name of Cumberland to the river, the river was for years and years after that still referred to as the River of the Shawnees.
Were the Shawnee very prevalent in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky? I would say that they were the most prevalent in the 1670s to the 1680s. … And the Shawnees, of course, inhabited parts of Kentucky and also Ohio. But throughout the history of the Shawnee people, they moved around a lot, and history records that at different times, they lived in 23 different states.
Regarding the public input process, was there a lot of feedback? It was overwhelmingly positive in favor of the name change. There was not one person who expressed an opinion that was in opposition to the name change. … It was very diverse. People showed up, of course, from the Indigenous community, and people from the African American community, and there were a number of white people who showed up and also spoke in favor of the name change. So far as I know, there is no credible opposition.
Why are name-change efforts like this one so important? Why is it something that you feel called to personally? Well, one [reason] we feel that it is so significant and so important is because throughout the history of this country, there has been the process of genocide against Indigenous people — ethnic cleansing, if you will, of Indigenous people. Ethnic cleansing of the history of Indigenous people from the history books in the educational system. We feel that
by having the park renamed, this is part of the start of a significant milestone in the history of Nashville for the further recognition and preservation of Indigenous history, both ancient and contemporary in the Middle Tennessee area.
And do you think seeing Indigenous words and names puts that front-of-mind for people? Knowing that we’re on land that white settlers didn’t come to until just two or three centuries ago? Yes, I think it does very much so, and it helps people to realize that we are the first people in this land. And it also helps people to realize, when they look into the history of this land [and see] numerous cities and public spaces that are named after European explorers and the like, they can see that this is something that happened unjustly, unfairly. This is still, when you look at it from the standpoint of the land being illegally taken, this is still our land, and we want to assert that.
Also it’s part of a nationwide campaign on the part of Indigenous people to have public spaces, rivers and other public areas given their original Indigenous names. Because when we talk about Cumberland Park being named Wasioto Park, we’re not talking about just the change of name. We’re talking about the name being changed to its original designation, and the original designation of the Cumberland River was Wasioto River. … There have been numerous instances of name changes of public spaces, and public areas being given Indigenous names all throughout the country, particularly west of the Mississippi.
Obviously the East Bank is going to be transformed over the next few years. Do you see it as being important for the Indigenous community and for Nashville at large for conversations about Indigenous spaces to be a part of the growth? Yes, very much so, because the East Bank, to us as Indigenous people, is a sacred area.
The East Bank encompasses what was, 1,000 years ago, a huge, huge Indigenous, Native American city that Nashville sits on top of. All of downtown Nashville sits on top of an ancient Indigenous city that covered not just all of downtown Nashville, but extended to the East Bank, into significant parts of East Nashville, with a population of over 400,000. When I first stumbled upon this fact, I was just astounded. I mean, 400,000 is more than half the size of the city today. Yeah. And in fact, the population of what’s called Metropolitan Nashville did not eclipse the population of ancient Nashville until at least the 1960s. And during that time — the year, I would say, 1300 — the area that now is covered by modern-day Nashville had a population of 400,000 within the immediate area, but counting the surrounding areas of Middle Tennessee, it had a population of over 1 million Indigenous residents, making it the largest Indigenous population in all the Southeast.
What else would you like to share about the meaning of changing this park’s name to Wasioto? I mentioned how Native American people throughout the country were requesting and achieving the renaming of different public areas to original Indigenous names. A perfect example of that is the renaming of Clingmans Dome, which is the highest mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which only a month or so ago was renamed, given its original name, its Cherokee name of Kuwohi, which means “mulberry place.” And this was at the request of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which we consider as being a great victory for the east-of-the-Mississippi campaign for the renaming of different public spaces and the like with their original Indigenous designation. ▼
PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND
ALBERT BENDER
Albert Bender will appear on a panel 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, at The Forge. The panel is part of the #CineTVLatino Program, taking place Nov. 15-16 and presented by the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Find more information at nashvillehispanicchamber.com.
Believe What You See
In Choctaw artist Benjy Russell’s eyes, the rural South becomes a utopia BY
CAT ACREE
DYSTOPIAN VISIONS OF resistance and rage — this is often where imagining the future leads us, to worsening versions of our present fears. But artists working within Indigenous futurism can see things differently, like Choctaw artist Benjy Russell. With fishing line, flowers, mirrors and light, in photography, gardening and sculpture, he divines queer utopias. Floral arrangements appear like altars in the night, and a forest gleams with sparkles.
“I feel a sense of joy and hope in the future,” Russell tells the Scene. “When given present-day circumstances, there’s not a lot of joy to be found.” He creates his art from the perspective of a future where all these problems have been solved.
“The ideas of gender and sexuality labels are something for now because it’s something we’ve had, and I feel like rage is definitely for now. But building toward queer utopia, you have to realize that we’re going to be past a lot of that, hopefully.”
In rural DeKalb County, Russell has an idyllic cabin and a stretch of land where his riotous, rhapsodic garden is the subject and setting for his art, as well as backdrop for the portraiture he provides pro bono to queer sex workers. His yard is a quarter-acre of flowers that he planted after his husband Sterling died, the seeds mixed with his ashes. From 2021 to 2022, Russell invited people to visit his garden installation A Cowboy Riding a Beam of Light, for which he printed and hung 15 of his photographs on enormous pieces of fabric. In the near future, he will host a residency for LGBTQ artists on the property, called the Sterling Residency.
A self-described redneck, Russell has lived in rural Tennessee for 16 years, but he’s originally from Oklahoma. He grew up on the Chickasaw Nation reservation “in a very conservative, very small, one-stoplight town.” As an artist, he is well-practiced in keeping his emotions close to the surface, and his generous honesty is best met in kind.
“I have to experience every single emotion, every single experience that I possibly can to its fullest extent, so that when I make work, I am able to talk about it with the language that I need, whether that’s the emotional language or the visual language,” he says. “Your job as an artist is to experience every emotion possible so you can use it whenever you have to.”
To create such a sense of magic, Russell uses a lighting technique similar to what was used to illuminate Hollywood stars in the 1950s and ’60s. “I started to think about the filters that get used in photographs as a layer of reality that you’re removing,” he says. “Adding a soft focus or stacking a star filter removes the overall image a little more from reality. People think my work is Photo-
shopped or digital collage, because the lighting on the subject doesn’t match the lighting of the environment. I think that really messes with the brain and how people perceive things.”
Russell currently has a piece included in Horizon Scanning, a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington outside Washington, D.C., which will run through the presidential inauguration. The work, titled “This Is How the Garden Grows,” is a massive photographic backdrop of his garden, with dried floral arrangements from the gardens of sex workers, as well as four glass vitrines containing elements of earth, air, fire and water. The fire vessel contains burnt copies of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U.S. military budget for 2024 and the annual bill for Russell’s HIV medications, totaling nearly $90,000.
“It’s basically a spell,” he says. “Once they told me [the work] was going to be in Washington, D.C., during the election, I was less concerned about being able to show my art there and more concerned with being able to cast a spell on the town while the election was going on.”
In May, Russell will have his first solo show in a gallery in more than a decade. Hosted by Tinney Contemporary, Dark Big Bang finds the artist engaging deeply and directly with his family’s history. “A couple of years ago there was a really intense falling-out that I had with my biological family, and then also some of my queer chosen family,” he explains. “It was pretty devastating. I was also researching a lot on quantum theory at the time. The Dark Big Bang is the leading theory in quantum physics on the origin of dark matter in the universe. It became very apparent that there was a parallel between how dark matter was released into the universe and how it affects our reality, and how root traumas happen and how they affect our existence as well.
He continues: “The work is seeking to unpack root traumas that I’ve experienced — familial, queer family, my family coming from Choctaw land in Alabama, being forced to walk the Trail of Tears, our land allotment that we were given and then immediately had to sell off, my grandmother and her sibling going to Indian boarding schools, how that affected my father’s side of the family, how they interact with each other — and using that to give empathy and space for others to heal.”
For Dark Big Bang, Russell is building structures out of materials like reflective glass beads used on interstates, colored gel tubes found in club lighting, and a composition of wood
shavings and mycelium. All of these pieces will reference and deconstruct traditional Choctaw basket weaving, embroidery and pottery designs. And thanks to a Current Art Fund grant he received from the Andy Warhol Foundation, “everything’s not going to be held together by duct tape,” he says with a laugh.
“Most [Indigenous stories] are taught as historical. All of our culture is something that ‘used to be,’ as seen in films or old black-and-white tintypes,” he says. “The idea of taking the culture and the ancestors into the future and showing that [this is what] is going to happen is so beautiful, so hopeful and uplifting.” ▼
PHOTO:
VIVIAN MARIE DOERING
“THIS IS HOW THE GARDEN GROWS” INSTALLATION
A COWBOY RIDING A BEAM OF LIGHT INSTALLATION “We’re
JANUARY
DECEMBER
DECEMBER
FEBRUARY
FEBRUARY 26
MARCH
MARCH
MAY
NASHVILLE SYMPHONY
NOV 14 TO 16 | 7:30
Stuart Chafetz, conductor
Aaron Finley, vocals
Brook Wood, vocals
NOV 22 & 23 | 7:30
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor Ray Chen, violin
Visit calendar.nashvillescene.com for more event listings
THURSDAY, NOV. 14
[CHASING A DREAM]
MUSIC
MARC SCIBILIA
Butch Walker’s plush production of singer and songwriter Marc Scibilia’s 2015 album Out of Style gave Scibilia a heartland-of-America style that included lots of background vocals, keyboards and handclaps. Born and raised in Grand Island, N.Y., near Buffalo, Scibilia moved to Nashville after he graduated from high school. Out of Style established him as an ultra-pop songwriter who writes about his struggles with a decidedly optimistic bent. His new album Human continues in that vein, but I hear echoes of Coldplay in its ornate arrangements. Scibilia’s songs register as pop without a sense of place, which means Human doesn’t come across like a typical Nashville album. Scibilia has a way with big hooks, and Human peaks with “Halfway There,” which rides on an equally big beat and lyrics that describe his efforts to chase his dreams, aided by the excellent sonics he’s favored throughout his career. Scibilia has also found success via his work with German DJ and producer Robin Schulz, who took “Unforgettable” — a song co-written by Scibilia, who also lent his voice to the hit recording — onto the European charts in 2017. Scibilia plays two shows this week at The Basement East to mark the release of Human. (The Thursday gig appeared to be sold out at press time.) Cassandra Coleman, who released her debut EP Coming of Age in 2023, opens.
EDD HURT
NOV. 14 & 17 AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.
THURSDAY / 11.14
COMMUNITY
[RECKONING AND RECONCILIATION] RUBY BRIDGES FOUNDATION WALK TO SCHOOL DAY
If you paid attention in history class, you’ll remember the name Ruby Bridges. Though she continues to be a prominent civil rights figure, Bridges is best known for her courageous childhood act: In 1960, when she was 6, she enrolled in an all-white school in the American South, making her the first Black child to attend William Frantz Elementary School. Though the school was in Louisiana, Bridges was part of a larger school desegregation movement that reached Nashville and beyond. As we have our own desegregation history to reckon with (which includes the Hattie Cotton Elementary
School bombing of 1957, the day after school desegregation began in Nashville), it remains important for Nashvillians to reflect and learn about our history and how it shapes where we are today. In an effort to promote community involvement, Friends of Mill Ridge Park is hosting a community walk and art installation to celebrate the Ruby Bridges Foundation’s Walk to School Day. It’s a chance to create new solutions, observe our present, learn about our past and do it all with our fellow members of the community.
KATIE BETH CANNON
4 P.M. AT MILL RIDGE PARK
12924 OLD HICKORY BLVD., ANTIOCH
FAMILY
[BRIGHT LIGHTS]
ZOOLUMINATION
The nation’s largest Chinese lantern festival is finally back: The Nashville Zoo is hosting Zoolumination through Feb. 9. This enchanting event features more than 1,000 custom-made silk lanterns displayed throughout the zoo, with some reaching heights of up to 100 feet. Light artists have worked hard to shape these lanterns into mythical creatures and wildlife, creating beautiful, brightly lit scenes that stretch across the entire zoo. There will be live entertainment at the zoo’s Ajax Amphitheater, as well as — of course — plenty of animal friends to meet throughout the grounds: Be sure to keep an eye out for the Sumatran tiger and the flamingos, who get to stay up a little later than their daytime companions. And this year, for the first time, visitors can enjoy the outdoor Smashville Ice Rink, where attendees can skate under the dazzling lanterns for a unique holiday experience. There will be plenty of food and beverage stations throughout the park, so you won’t go hungry after a round of skating.
KELSEY YOUNG
THROUGH FEB. 9 AT THE NASHVILLE ZOO AT GRASSMERE
3777 NOLENSVILLE PIKE
MUSIC
[ARE YOU FREAKIN’ OUT?]
BRISTON MARONEY’S PARADISE FESTIVAL
Is alternative and indie music your jam? Then you might be in paradise at Briston Maroney’s three-night festival at Brooklyn Bowl. The third annual Paradise Festival arrives as Maroney reaps the benefits of “making it” in the music industry and tours to promote his second studio album, last year’s Ultrapure. His 2018 hit “Freakin’ Out on the Interstate” might have been what catapulted Maroney into an upward trajectory, but he’s since maintained his growing audience thanks to his EP Indiana and his debut studio album Sunflower. Though he’s now based in Los Angeles, Maroney speaks fondly of his time in Nashville and the supportive music scene here, and he returns to host Paradise Festival each year. Maroney will naturally be the headliner, but he’s lined up an impressive roster of support for each night. My personal favorite, Yoke Lore (architect behind indie classic “Beige”), will join Maroney on Friday night. Gus Dapperton, Krooked Kings, Clover County, BNNY, Hana Eid, The Moss, Sun June and Noah Pope fill out the rest of the lineup
— come
KATIE BETH CANNON
THROUGH NOV. 16 AT BROOKLYN BOWL 925 THIRD AVE. N.
FRIDAY / 11.15
COMEDY
[THE JORDAN RULES] JORDAN JENSEN
If humor is a method of self-defense, Jordan Jensen uses it like a suicide bomber. Her 20-minute YouTube-available comedy special Death Chunk begins with three seconds of lo-fi blast beats before ripping into her Electra complex and her father dying on his couch. She’s unconventionally crass and almost unbearably honest, but Jensen is also incredibly funny. While confessing about topics like shoplifting, intoxication and blackened depression, she doesn’t hold back her morbidly dark side. But her comedy balances the nihilism with the kindness and warmth you can find only in truly empathetic people. The comic also co-hosts the ruthless humor podcast Bein’ Ian
artistic director emeritus of Nashville Ballet, to create a more personal response that blends striking movement with live music and often cheeky multimedia projections. Developed through a series of workshops in New York, Nashville and Sandall’s hometown of Sydney, Australia, An Ambivalent Woman of 37 features an original score from acclaimed Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin. The piece premiered at the Sydney Fringe Festival in September, and the U.S. premiere is happening this weekend at OZ Arts, featuring Sandall accompanied by pianist Alessandra Volpi. Marked by great humor and vulnerability, An Ambivalent Woman of 37 offers a unique look at what it means to be a woman today. AMY STUMPFL NOV. 15-16 AT OZ ARTS
6172 COCKRILL BEND CIRCLE
SATURDAY / 11.16
MUSIC
[GETTING YOUR KICKS] LADYBIRD
With Jordan alongside Ian Fidance, the wellknown jokester with a thick mustache and a passion for mediocre hardcore bands. Jensen, a 5-foot-9 former woodworker and contractor, relocated from upstate New York to Nashville before moving back up to Brooklyn recently. At press time, tickets are selling rapidly for all three shows over the weekend, when Jensen will have the opportunity to release her uncouth comedy on her former Southern home once again.
P.J. KINZER
NOV. 15-17 AT ZANIES
2505 EIGHTH AVE. S.
THEATER
[WOMEN’S
WORK]
EMMA SANDALL: AN AMBIVALENT WOMAN OF 37
Like many women, Emma Sandall was quite moved by Sheila Heti’s 2018 novel Motherhood, which considers the rather weighty question of whether to have children. As an awardwinning dancer and choreographer, Sandall also recognized the work’s potential as a piece of theater. Rather than adapting the story as a straight play, she worked with Paul Vasterling,
What’s called alt-country had its moment nearly three decades ago, when bands like Old 97’s and Uncle Tupelo made their moves to supplant pop country. The Milwaukee, Wis., band Ladybird revives the sound of altcountry-rock auteurs like Rhett Miller and Paul Westerberg on their debut album Amy Come on Home, which the group released this year. Singer and songwriter Pete McDermott writes in the abrasive style that fans of The Replacements and Uncle Tupelo regard as an alternative to the fakery of mainstream country. Alt-country fans might be right — at his most trenchant, McDermott gets into the head of a sincere guy who derives his kicks from hanging around the bar scene without falling into the traps that scene is famous for. The Amy Come on Home track “Kemp Lane” finds McDermott singing: “You were the queen of Market Street / But the sidewalk stayed exactly the same size.” McDermott’s attempts to write in John Prine’s folk-country style aren’t as interesting as his fullout rockers, and you’ll probably want to dance to tunes like “Rollin’ & Ramblin’” and “Short King Shuffle.” Amy Come on Home manages to be both nuanced and somewhat obvious, which describes a lot of alt-country. EDD HURT
6 P.M. AT DEE’S COUNTRY COCKTAIL LOUNGE
102 E. PALESTINE AVE., MADISON
MUSIC
[ALL IN THE FAMILY] BABY WAVE & TOTAL WIFE
Local indie-rock darlings Baby Wave dropped one of the best earworms of 2023 with the release of their You Me & EP last December.
discover your next favorite indie act.
JORDAN JENSEN
EMMA SANDALL: AN AMBIVALENT WOMAN OF 37 PHOTO: STEPHEN REINHARDT
PHOTO: MINDY TUCKER
PAUL VASTERLING
“A sometimes absurdist, often darkly comic and always deeply compassionate ride” — Dance Australia “An extraordinary feat” — Sydney Arts Guide
NOVEMBER 15 & 16 TICKETS FROM $25 AT OZARTSNASHVILLE.ORG
Muggles have their holiday parties. This one is for us wizards. Get in the holiday spirit as you reside at Hogwarts over the winter break.
Plus, potion-masters from Rosemary & Beauty Queen will be joining us to craft specialty cocktails and mocktails for you to sip on thru the night.
Friday, December 6 | 21+
Get your tickets today!
Photo by Stephen Reinhardt
Live Music at ON BROADWAY
Dustin Davis and LaDarra Jackel. Tickets are sure to go quickly on this one, folks, so don’t delay.
AMY STUMPFL
7:30 P.M. AT W.O. SMITH MUSIC SCHOOL
1125 EIGHTH AVE. S.
DANCE [FLAMENCO! AT THE FISHER] AUTHENTIC FLAMENCO
The opening track “Car??” deserves a mention in popular music’s canon of great car songs — if only for immortalizing Inglewood’s storied Kwik Sak gas station in the lyrics. The quartet has been on the road playing shows since October with fellow Nashville noisemakers Total Wife in tow. With a band as prolific as Total Wife, it’s a challenge to pin down their music as any particular sound. Take for example the stark difference between the melancholy guitar-gaze single “still asleep” and the glitchy electro-pop rhythms of “naoisa,” found on their most recent EP O. The combined bill at Soft Junk will wrap up what’s been dubbed the Nuke Town 2024 Fall Tour, culminating with the release of a Baby Wave/Total Wife split EP, Still Life. “We recorded at [Total Wife’s] Luna Kupper’s home studio over the course of a month leading up to the tour — stemming from improvisational, first-take and guitar recordings,” says drummer/vocalist Jake Bibb. It’s a promising teaser — I’m excited to join the happy family of friends in welcoming Still Life to the world. JASON VERSTEGEN
8 P.M. AT SOFT JUNK
919 GALLATIN AVE.
[WHAT A BROAD!]
THEATER
MEGAN MURPHY CHAMBERS: BROAD
NOVEMBER LINE UP
the Songbird w/ Maggie Rose, Special Guest: Emily Ann Roberts
11.12 Casey Beathard w/ Tucker Beathard
11.15 Taylor Hicks
11.16 Outlaws Apostles – Free Show
11.17 Eric Church: To Beat The Devil Residency SOLD OUT
11.18 Cigarettes & Pizza w/ Aaron Raitiere, Shelly Fairchild
11.19 SiriusXM Presents Eric Church: One Night Only SOLD OUT
11.20 Tom Douglas – Love, Tom
11.21 The Warren Brothers
11.22 BlondMe – A Blondie Tribute
11.24 Pick, Pick, Pass w/ Kevin Mac, Abram Dean, Wyatt Durrette
11.25 Buddy’s Place Writers Round w/ Stevenson Everett, Cyndi Thomson, Chuck Wicks
11.30 William Michael Morgan GET TICKETS AT CHIEFSONBROADWAY.COM FOLLOW US @ChiefSBROADWAY om cha ons, t s, eeple committed mmi
Megan Murphy Chambers has been a driving force in the local theater scene for years, known for her big voice and razor-sharp wit. This weekend, she’s back and ready to help Nashville Repertory Theatre kick off its 40th Anniversary Concert Series with Broad Nashville Rep audiences will certainly recognize Chambers from her recent performances in 9 to 5: The Musical, The Cake and Ragtime. She also performs regularly with companies such as
Synchronized dancers float across the stage to the sound of a guitar, or claps, or chants, mesmerizing their audience. Maybe you don’t know what’s happening, but you certainly feel it — the grief, the love, the hope. The performance carries a weight with it. This is what it’s like to watch flamenco, a traditional dance and musical genre from Spain. Dance companies across the world have given more and more people access to this beautiful art form, and one of those companies is coming to Nashville. Authentic Flamenco is stopping in Music City on its international tour, headlined by flamenco musician Ricardo Fernández del Moral. The production from the Royal Opera of Madrid is an opportunity to step outside of what you might think of as classic musical and arts performances and into another culture’s exploration of life, passion and the full range of the human experience. Additional performers include dancer Juan Fernández and vocalist and dancer Manu Soto. KATIE BETH CANNON
4:30 & 8 P.M. AT BELMONT’S FISHER CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
2020 BELMONT BLVD.
SUNDAY / 11.17
FILM [UKRAINE’S
FINEST]
RESTORATION ROUNDUP: SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS
Studio Tenn, Nashville Children’s Theatre and more. But her considerable gifts are perhaps most vibrant on the cabaret stage. Her sold-out solo shows at the Belcourt are fairly legendary, and I have a feeling Broad will deliver much of the same fun, irreverent vibe. Guests can look forward to an eclectic mix of music — from pop to folk, plus plenty of show tunes. Chambers will be backed by a terrific band, including MicahShane Brewer on piano, Jeff Pope on drums and David Weinstein on bass. Special guests include
It’s kind of apt that Sergei Parajanov’s 1965 film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors has gotten the 4K restoration treatment from Janus Films and is now making the revival rounds at repertory theaters. This movie’s title now feels like it’s referencing Soviet-era filmmakers like Parajanov, a maverick bisexual whose sexual orientation eventually led to him getting a five-year sentence at a hard labor camp in 1973. With Ancestors, Parajanov broke away from the socialist realism that culturally ruled the Soviet Union and created a visually audacious adaptation of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s 1912 novel, a rural, folklorish take on Romeo and Juliet in which two young Ukrainian villagers fall in love, even though the girl’s dad killed the boy’s dad. Although it’s been hailed as a landmark of Ukrainian cinema, the film never received a proper theatrical rollout around these parts. But you can now view this sumptuous bit of magical realism (I’ve never taken peyote before, but the film’s sprawling, surreal tone may make you feel you’re on one helluva trip) in brand-spankingnew 4K. Visit belcourt.org for showtimes.
CRAIG D. LINDSEY
NOV. 17 & 20 AT THE
UPCOMING EVENTS
PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENTFOR TICKETS & UPDATES
3:00PM- 4:00PM
FRIDAYS WITH ANN
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15
Ann will be at Parnassus to to sign and personalize your books! in time for the Holiday season!
6:30PM
BILLY COLLINS
with ANN PATCHETT at MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY Water, Water
6:30PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20
PARNASSUS HOLIDAY SPECIAL: VIRTUAL EDITION
Join Ann Patchett and Parnassus booksellers on Zoom for a night of Holiday Book Recommendations.
6:30PM
PHYLLIS GOBBELL
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21
with LINDA CRENSHAW at PARNASSUS Prodigal
10:30AM SATURDAY STORYTIME with ANIKA ORROCK at PARNASSUS Socks: A Kid's Christmas Lament
6:30PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4
PARNASSUS HOLIDAY SPECIAL: IN STORE EDITION
Join Ann Patchett and Parnassus booksellers in store for a night of Holiday Book Recommendations.
3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 | Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243 Shop online at parnassusbooks.net an independent bookstore for independent people @parnassusbooks @parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks @parnassusbooksnashville
MONDAY / 11.18
FILM
[MUSEUM
OF KITSCH]
MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ALLEE WILLIS
WEDNESDAY / 11.20
MUSIC
[THE DEATH POD IS PISSED] GWAR
Saturday, November 16
SONGWRITER SESSION
Gary Hannan NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 16
NASHVILLE CATS
Kristin Wilkinson
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, November 17
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Rebecca Frazier
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 23
SONGWRITER SESSION
Smithfield
NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 30
SONGWRITER ROUND
Tribute to David Olney
NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, December 1
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT David Dorn
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, December 7 FAMILY PROGRAM
String City
Nashville’s Tradition of Music and Puppetry 10:00 am and 11:30 am · FORD THEATER FREE
Sunday, December 8
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Whit
NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, December 8
INTERVIEW AND PERFORMANCE
Rosanne Cash
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, December 14
SONGWRITER SESSION
Jamie Floyd NOON · FORD THEATER
WITNESS HISTORY
Museum Membership
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Here’s a formula for a decent documentary: Find a non-famous artist whose work is famous and explore their “untold story.” This works better the more famous that person’s work is; if they co-wrote something like, say, “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire or the Friends theme song, you’re onto something. With The World According to Allee Willis, director Alexis Spraic rises beyond these easy tropes to craft a fascinating, inspiring watch. Part of that is due to its exuberant, bafflingly creative subject. Willis was a genuinely fascinating woman who blazed a trail for women, and queer women especially, in the male-dominated world of pop songwriting — and yes, she wrote both those songs, decorated MTV sets and built an early online art community alongside Mark Cuban. She also archived and cataloged an enormous amount of her own life both on tape and in her eccentrically decorated home, motivated by a belief that she would never achieve fame in her own lifetime. “I’ve always known that my final art piece would be someone putting together the trail I’ve left behind,” she says in the film’s intro. The World According to Allee Willis offers a chance to follow that trail — and find buckets of creative inspiration along the way. COLE VILLENA
8 P.M. AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
TUESDAY / 11.19
MUSIC
[POCKET CHANGE] ANDY
PEAKE
Tuesday at The 5 Spot, in-demand drummer Andy Peake will celebrate his funky new album Pocket Change, which was released in late September. It will be Peake’s first live performance of the material from the album. “I set out to create something unique both lyrically and musically,” Peake tells the Scene. “I hoped to make people think while they’re dancing.” Like his debut Mood Swings, the new record features a variety of rock ’n’ roll styles to get you dancing, from swamp to swing, all performed with both soul and precision. While he handled drums and percussion on the album, the gravellyvoiced Peake will step out from behind the drum kit Tuesday night and into the spotlight center stage to front his new band The Peake Pockets: guitarists Joe Davies and Randy Barker, keyboardist Phil Wolfe, bassist Paul Ossola and drummer Rob Lee. Best known as a longtime member of the Muscle Shoals session band The Swampers, guitarist-vocalist Will McFarlane will open the show with his wife, vocalist Janet McFarlane. McFarlane, whose stellar guitar work is all over Pocket Change, will also sit in with Peake and his band during their set. DARYL SANDERS
6 P.M. AT THE 5 SPOT
1006 FOREST AVE.
About four decades ago, intergalactic warlords Gwar — which some fools still maintain is actually a band of heavy-metal performance-art provocateurs that began as a multimedia collective in the vicinity of Virginia Commonwealth University — first made themselves known on Earth. (That’s the “insignificant shitball” of a planet these disgraced members of elite military force Scumdogs of the Universe were assigned to conquer eons ago as punishment for their failures.) Backstage at Bonnaroo this year, the entire current lineup crammed into a single port-a-potty for a photo op; “Gwar loves tiny houses!” one member shouted. Onstage, they were as sharp and hilariously gross as ever. Topics they poked, prodded and eviscerated to a pulp — amid fountains of stage gore and pummeling riffage — included celebrity social media disputes and Israel’s invasion of Gaza. And that was just the first 15 minutes; with the outcome of the presidential election, it’s reasonable to expect some, er, especially pointed electoral lampooning. Strap on your stoutest poncho and squelch into the splash zone as they return to Music City on Wednesday, when they’ll defile Brooklyn Bowl with help from Dark Funeral and Squid Pisser. STEPHEN TRAGESER
7:30 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL
925 THIRD AVE. N.
[HOUGH-ING IT]
DANCE
DEREK HOUGH
I never regret spending my money on a ticket to watch one of the greatest living dancers, Derek Hough. He’s risen through the ranks, from being a professional dancer on Dancing With the Stars to being on the show’s panel of judges, but he can still serve on the dance floor. Dance for the Holidays, touted as his first solo tour, promises ballroom, tap, salsa and hip-hop, supported by his wife Hayley Erbert Hough and a troupe of dancers. As a tap person, I couldn’t be more impressed with Hough’s ability to pick up the art form for dance film Make Your Move, which combines tap and Japanese taiko drums. (Watching this film is its own Critic’s Pick for me.) I saw Hough’s Symphony of Dance show at the Grand Ole Opry last year, and it did not disappoint. The group I attended with agreed that we’d do it all again just to see him shimmy around in those fringe pants. HANNAH HERNER
7:30 P.M. AT THE RYMAN
116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.
DECEMBER 6 A
DECEMBER 9 JASON
DECEMBER 19
FEBRUARY
GREEN HOUR AND STAR ROVER SOUND
Cocktails and chocolates followed by steak dinner and a show in Germantown
BY DANNY BONVISSUTO
Date Night is a multipart road map for everyone who wants a nice evening out, but has no time to plan it. It’s for people who want to do more than just go to one restaurant and call it a night. It’s for overwhelmed parents who don’t get out often; for friends who visit the same three restaurants because they’re too afraid to try someplace new; and for busy folks who keep forgetting all the places they’ve driven past, heard about, seen on social and said, “Let’s remember that place next time we go out.”
IT TOOK A FEW DAYS of getting my next-door neighbors’ mail while they were out of town to realize that the daily stack of envelopes — same size, stamp and script on the front — were RSVP cards. It took three seconds of Googling to figure out they’d eloped and were hosting a big celebration here in town. It took a lot longer to scroll through their registry.
Oh, the marble serving board with glass cloche for keeping bugs at bay! Are you even an adult if you don’t have a cloche over your farmstead cheddar and runny brie? I was equally jealous of the deviled egg platter with handpainted bees in the divots and the amber-swirl glass decanter — even though I have never, in almost two decades of marriage, decanted wine or made deviled eggs.
While everything is shiny and new next door, the situation differs ever so slightly on my side of the fence. We don’t need platters — we need a will and increased retirement contributions. We could also use some time away to remember that we like each other, especially since I seriously considered making my husband Dom an anniversary card that read, “At least I don’t hate you as much as I did last year.”
In an effort to reconnect to our newlywed days, on our recent Date Night in Germantown (which doubled as our 19th anniversary celebration), I asked Dom to park in front of the church where we got married. I thought being there might somehow infuse us with the spirit of our younger, lighter, less serious selves, but there was no magical, transformative moment. The closest we can come to feeling new to each other again is having new experiences together, and the next one was three blocks away.
STOP 1: GREEN HOUR AT TEMPERED FINE CHOCOLATES
At 7 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Tempered Fine Chocolates, the chocolatier and coffee shop near the corner of Madison Street and Fifth Avenue North, becomes Green Hour. It’s an absinthe and cocktail bar where the bartenders pair their house-made truffles with your drink, if you so desire — and I totally desire. Each table at Green Hour (and there are only a few) has an absinthe fountain, which is a glass water dispenser with slender spouts. When you
twist the spout, water drips over a sugar cube that sits on an absinthe spoon set atop a glass of the anise-flavored liquor that’s potent enough to burn your taste buds if you sip it straight. I wanted so badly to participate in this ritual and visit with the infamous Green Fairy, but as romanced as I was by this sliver of a bar that feels like a secret, and the subtle green lighting that mirrors absinthe’s natural color, I knew that even a few sips of absinthe would be a one-way ticket to Headache Town. And no one here has time for that.
Green Hour’s cocktail and absinthe menu isn’t a piece of paper you squint at in the dark bar. It’s a screen on the wall made to look like movie credits. I ordered the Monkey’s Paw (toasted coconut rum, house butternut-sage shrub, white miso syrup, falernum, red wine syrup, dark rum float), and Dom went with the Far From the Tree (bourbon, lemon juice, Granny Smith apple syrup, honey). We had the option to pick our own chocolate pairings or have the bartenders do it, and I struggled with that: I like the idea of leaving it up to chance but might have a teeny tiny control problem. I related this to our server, Nate.
“Let go,” he urged me. “This is your chance to let the universe guide you.”
Nate was right. It was fun to watch the bartenders stick a straw into each drink, release a few drops on their tongues and discuss what went best with each. We each received two
truffles: orange balsamic and cassis to complement my rum cocktail and bourbon praline and sangria with Dom’s bourbon drink. Both of mine were too sweet and fruity for my personal taste, but it was fun to try flavors I never would’ve picked out myself.
Dom liked the bourbon praline more than the sangria, but it didn’t stop him from wolfing both down. When he realized I bit each of my truffles in half so he could taste them too, he jabbed his thumb, which had a smudge of bourbon chocolate truffle on it, at me.
“Here,” he said. “Lick this.”
I declined his generous offer and instead picked out a few truffles to go: pumpkin pie, one of Tempered’s seasonal flavors, plus an Uncle Nearest Whiskey dark chocolate for Dom and two peanut butter milk chocolates for our teen, all of which were packaged in the most adorable box that fit easily in my clutch. And we walked toward the Cumberland River.
STOP 2: STAR ROVER SOUND
I’ve been curious about Star Rover Sound since our visit last summer to Jacqueline, the seasonal raw bar outside The Optimist. A hallway of bathrooms separates the swanky seafood restaurant from a … what is this place? A Thursday-to-Sunday space where you can: A. have dinner and not see a show, B. have dinner and see a show, or C. just see a show. Choose your own adventure.
To be clear, that dinner is going to be steak or chicken. Earlier this year, Star Rover Sound switched from a taqueria-style menu to a steak-dinner concept in which all you do is choose a cut — chopped steak, filet, ribeye, skirt steak, T-bone — or a double-cut chicken breast. Out of curiosity, I asked our server if there were any vegetarian options.
“If you’re a vegetarian,” she said, “you probably shouldn’t go to a steakhouse.”
Every steakhouse I can think of offers at least one fish and vegetable option, but OK. After overhearing this exchange, the hostess checked
PHOTO:
GREEN HOUR
in with the kitchen and said they could do a vegetable plate or do a piece of fish from The Optimist for pescatarians.
We went with the filet and ribeye, which were well-seasoned and well-cooked and all the things they should be, even if they were the least memorable part of the meal. Salty, buttery “Opti rolls” and a massive dinner salad that comes out beforehand and a basket of steak fries and onion rings that’s served with it are all included in the price of the meal.
Dom is a vinaigrette guy who snubs creamy salad dressings, so I thought the buttermilk dill with chunks of blue cheese — which covered a piled-high platter of lettuce with big rings of red onion, half moons of cucumber, bacon bits and butter-fried croutons — would get the thumbsdown from him.
“This is exactly the kind of salad I want in a place like this,” he said.
There is something very nostalgic about Star Rover Sound’s steak dinners. It’s the kind of meal I imagine my parents having on the rare times they went out to dinner in the early ’80s, leaving my sister and me at home with Three’s Company and a high school babysitter.
Here’s something I’ve never said about a restaurant before: I want it to feel a little dirtier. Grittier. If I’m eating steak and onion rings and am about to see a band, I don’t want to hear A-Ha, Fine Young Cannibals and Blondie. Warm me up with some Mickey Gilley, George Jones and Hank Jr.
I got my classic country thanks to that evening’s performers, Boo Ray and his band, who played “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink,”
“Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” and the like before rolling out their own stuff. The room wasn’t full by any stretch, which is a shame, because Boo and the boys were a fine time. There were a handful of occupied tables — a group of ladies, two older gentlemen, a few couples who wandered down from The Optimist — plus a real-deal cowboy and his lady who looked like they were born with their boots on.
This is exactly how I want to hear live music: in a small venue far from downtown with plenty of elbow room and a slice of chocolate chess pie on the table to share. Dom scooted his chair around next to mine and we watched and ate sidesaddle, like lovers do. ▼
PHOTO:
STAR ROVER SOUND
HOME-COOKED
Nashville Opera presents the world premiere of The Cook-Off BY
AMY STUMPFL
A TELEVISED COOKING show might seem a rather unusual setting for an opera. But as Nashville Opera prepares to unveil the world premiere of The Cook-Off this weekend — which will show as part of a double bill with Bon Appétit! The Julia Child Opera — artistic director John Hoomes says this offbeat one-act comedy offers more than just a recipe for fun.
Featuring music from acclaimed Nigerian American composer Shawn E. Okpebholo and a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mark Campbell, The Cook-Off follows a competitive cooking show in which three contestants battle to make the best macaroni-and-cheese. But beyond the playful premise, this fast-paced opera touches on the origins of the beloved comfort food — often wrongly attributed to Thomas Jefferson — and the “erasure of Black Americans’ contributions to America’s culture.” is absolutely a comedy,” says Hoomes, “but the set-up is really clever.” Hoomes is a frequent champion of The Cook-Off is Nashville Opera’s ninth world premiere. “I mean, we’ve all tuned into the Food Network, so the structure is very familiar and accessible. But there’s also a subtle message, as we get into the history behind macaroni-and-cheese and where it really comes from. For so long, Thomas Jefferson was credited with bringing the dish to America, when in fact it was his enslaved cook James Hemings who had traveled to France with Jefferson, and studied cooking while there. So talks about that. It talks about the importance of acknowledging our history and giving credit where credit is due. It’s not heavyhanded, but it’s there. And I think that adds an important layer to the storytelling.” was developed through the Chicago Opera Theater’s Vanguard Initiative, an
innovative training program for emerging opera composers. Established in 2018, the program offers participants a wide range of realworld experience and support, matching each composer with a more established librettist to create a full-length opera.
“My residency with Chicago Opera Theater was incredibly valuable in helping me grow as a composer,” says Okpebholo, a Chicago-based artist who received a Grammy nomination for his 2022 album Lord, How Come Me Here? — a thoughtful collection of reimagined Negro spirituals. “Because no matter how good a composer you may be, an opera is just a whole new ball game. You have to be able to think beyond the composition itself, thinking about the story and characters and stage directions — all the ins and outs of opera.”
Interestingly enough, Okpebholo says The Cook-Off not only represents his first foray into opera, but also his first comedy.
“I must admit that comedy is really hard,” says Okpebholo, who’s perhaps best known for his Two Black Churches, a haunting song cycle that contemplates both the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., and the 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, S.C. “It’s honestly much easier to make people cry. Comedy is tricky, especially in terms of timing and pacing, and making room for those laughs — you really have to think about the music in a different way. But it’s also really rewarding to create a piece of art that I think so many people will be able to relate to. And working with Mark [Campbell] has been an absolute dream. He’s just brilliant.”
One might also assume that comedy would be a bit of a departure for Campbell, who has written 41 opera librettos, along with lyrics for seven musicals, and text for many song cycles
and oratorios. After all, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Silent Night, which was adapted from the film Joyeux Noël, and offers a tender account of the 1914 Christmas truces during World War I. And some of his other notable works include The Shining, Stonewall, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (which received a 2018 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording) and As One — a chamber opera that follows a transgender woman’s journey.
“Comedy has always sort of been my default,” he says. “Even in works like Silent Night or The Shining, comedy is very important. It offers a great way for the characters to connect with the audience. Plus, I guess I just have a very irreverent view of opera — so to take something as unextraordinary as a televised cooking show and make it operatic is just immediately funny to me.
“I really hope that people enjoy it,” he adds. “Because The Cook-Off is, first and foremost, an entertainment. But I also hope that they walk away really thinking about our nation’s history and things like slavery and racial legacy. John [Hoomes] has put together a wonderful cast, and has been so terrific to work with. I appreciate his commitment to new and unusual works. I feel like so many people have a very narrow view of what opera can be — all kings and queens and mythology. That’s why I’m so happy to be working with Nashville Opera — they’re breaking down those perceptions, and moving the art forward.” ▼
The Cook-Off and Bon Appétit!
Nov. 15-17 at the Noah Liff Opera Center
PHOTO: WILL SHUTES
THE COOK-OFF
FRANKLIN THEATER
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TRAGICOMIC COLLABORATION
Nashville’s Tyler Mahan Coe limns a legendary country music marriage in Cocaine & Rhinestones
BY EDD HURT
THE STORY TYLER MAHAN COE tells in Cocaine & Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette is about how the two greatest singers in country music history balanced conservatism and innovation in a blatantly commercial genre.
George Jones made some of his best music with the record producer Billy Sherrill, an intellectual working in a form that prizes the authentic moment. Tammy Wynette achieved fame by singing an anti-feminist song, “Stand by Your Man,” that Sherrill had been working on for years and that came to life when Wynette helped him finish writing it in August 1968. She delivered it in a voice that was tinged with the bravura of the eternal victim. Like Jones, she was a vocalist whose interpretations verged on the uncanny. They were almost as famous for their vocal duets as they were for their tumultuous marriage and subsequent divorce, and their intertwined stories encapsulate a highly charged moment — the late 1960s and early 1970s — in country history.
Tyler Mahan Coe, who is the son of country singer and songwriter David Allan Coe, came to fame in 2017 when he began releasing episodes of his podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones. A researcher of genius, Coe is also a myth-buster in a field that seems to encourage writers to believe what Coe deems misconceptions. Coe went deeply into the lives and careers of figures like Spade Cooley and Jeannie C. Riley during the first season of Cocaine & Rhinestones. He devoted most of Season 2 to telling the story of Jones and Wynette, and his book is based on those podcasts.
Because Coe understands the dynamics that propelled Alabama-born Billy Sherrill to create pop music in a country style, his book comes with a built-in intellectual framework. Coe sees the work of Jones and Wynette with Sherrill in the 1970s as crossover music that tends to confound rock and pop critics who look at country from the outside:
Therefore, it is often fans, journalists and even artists approaching country from backgrounds in pop (or rock) music who themselves have this authenticity fetish, which they project onto fans of whatever subculture they’ve just discovered and hope to join. That is how and why producers like Chet Atkins and Billy Sherrill were able to consciously and deliberately sell the country genre to such fans in a pop crossover package, by taking country singers, giving them compelling personas and placing them within a sonic context that metropolitan listeners found compelling.
What this process means is that Sherrill — drawing from the work of pioneering Nashville producer Owen Bradley, who worked with Patsy Cline and many others — created a series of brilliant records for Jones and Wynette (and to a lesser degree, Tanya Tucker) that capitalized on the vivid personalities of the singers themselves. Music journalist Robert Christgau succinctly describes this strategy in his review of Jones’ 1982 Anniversary: Ten Years of Hits: “Sherrill gives up on forcing Jones into the mold, instead encouraging his prize to be what he is, the greatest country singer in history — not so much with arrangements, though they do get sparer, as with increasingly hyperbolic and goofy material.”
Sherrill, Jones and Wynette produced art that was tragicomic, as in Jones’ sublime “The Grand Tour,” or postmodernist, as in 1976’s “Billy Ray Wrote a Song,” where a Jones-like character’s antics on the road inspire a fictional professional songwriter named Billy Ray to create the stories the real George Jones sings. Wynette’s 1970 hit “He Loves Me All the Way” is, like “Stand by Your Man,” a musically brilliant and lyrically conservative masterpiece. Still, both Jones and Wynette were inconsistent artists who also produced forgettable music — the inevitable result of the commercial pressures they felt.
Coe is a discursive writer who lines out the parallel lives of Jones and Wynette by examining the fabulist tendencies of the most famous married couple in country history. For every tall tale of marital strife Wynette spins, Coe finds a
conflicting narrative, and thus is truth served. (Coe regularly cites Jimmy McDonough’s indispensable 2010 Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen, a thoroughly researched biography.) Some of Coe’s discursions seem peripheral to the story, and why he chooses to write about Catherine de’ Medici and medieval jousting remains opaque to me. On the other hand, his concise chapter on the history of moonshine whiskey makes sense in a book about a singer who sang a tune called “White Lightning.” Tennessee-born artist Wayne White’s accompanying drawings for Cocaine & Rhinestones are appropriately droll and dark — pop culture gone gently askew. For anyone who wants to know how and why country music gets made, Coe’s deep dive leads you to a huge number of recordings created by quintessential American artists who stayed country by going pop all the way.
For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. ▼
Cocaine & Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette By Tyler Mahan Coe, illustrated by Wayne White Simon & Schuster 512 pages, $35
The Long Players performing Cheap Trick at Budokan with special guests TOM PETERSSON + guest artists ROBERT KEARNS, TISH WOLF, LILAH PETERSSON, JAMES RUBIN, JONATHAN BRIGHT, CHRIS CHURCH, MIKE VARGO, RICK SCHELL & BRAD JONES!
trayze marc scibilia w/ cassandra coleman wolves of glendale w/ melissa Villaseñor the wild feathers w/ nathan graham dogs in a pile the emo night tour the last waltz tribute beccafest ft. the living situation, good day dean, ryan harris brown, & mr. matty's world sicard hollow w/ sugarlegg guilty pleasures 9th annual post thanksgiving day bash la lom willie watson w/ viv & riley rare hare the weeks w/ the watson twins the bygones w/ emma harner duke jones ben chapman's peach jam nashville is dead
trella (7PM) elijah johnston, jack and jealous, & liam bauman (9PM) brendan walter w/ scott wolverton (7PM) demiatrix, zook and the joy of sharing (9pM) the hellp (7PM) the ritualists w/ marco with love & i am the polish army (9PM) izzy mahoubi w/ tiffany johnson, dasher, & kikko mai zach meadows (6PM) emblem3 (9PM) ethan regan (7PM) secret formula, karma vulture, the dangerous method (9PM)
sam greenfield (7PM) sierra annie w/ chloey indica (9PM)
vienna:
RHYTHM CHANGES
The Phil Schaap Jazz Collection and Blair Big Band keep growing the reputation of Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music
BY RON WYNN
THE FACT THAT Nashville has long been home to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the nation’s premier facility devoted to country music history, is shocking to no one. Though the decision to build the National Museum of African American Music here raised some eyebrows, it makes perfect sense. But what might surprise folks even more is that one of America’s largest collections of jazz memorabilia and recordings is located here, as is a collegiate big band universally recognized among the nation’s best.
Specifically, that’s the Phil Schaap Jazz Collection and the Blair School of Music’s Blair Big Band, both situated at Vanderbilt University. Holling Smith-Borne is director of the school’s Anne Potter Wilson Music Library, and Ryan Middagh is chair of the Department of Jazz and Global Music in addition to directing the big band. Together, they have helped make Music City a destination for jazz research, education and performance that rivals New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Kansas City, New Orleans or Los Angeles.
The late Phil Schaap spent more than five decades as a disc jockey at WKCR-FM, Columbia University’s radio station, a curator of programs at Jazz at Lincoln Center and an instructor at Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton and Juilliard. During that time, he not only did hundreds of amazing radio programs that chronicled his encyclopedic knowledge of the art form, but also amassed an incredible collection of jazz-related items. Smith-Borne credits Vanderbilt’s academic stature and Blair’s reputation within the jazz community as the reasons Schaap selected it to house this massive collection.
“Our jazz pedagogy at Blair matched Schaap’s
philosophy,” Smith-Borne tells the Scene. “I also think Schaap was looking for a jazz program that wasn’t already saturated with jazz resources that would duplicate parts of his collection. There are also issues of space and staff time needed to process the collection. Several of the institutions that Phil was evaluating didn’t have the space to house the collection or staff that could process it in a reasonable amount of time. Steven Lewis, former curator at [National Museum of African American Music], was a student of Schaap’s, and he recommended us to Phil. Vanderbilt Libraries and NMAAM currently have a collaboration going to build archival collections that are of use to both institutions.”
The collection includes 12,000 vinyl LPs, 10,000 78s, 2,000 CDs, 3,000 45s and 2,100 oral histories of jazz musicians that are primarily on reel-to-reel tape but are currently being digitized. There are also scholarly papers and three cases of discographical information, plus photos, music scores and other miscellaneous items.
“This could easily be one of the largest oral histories of jazz,” says Smith-Borne. “[Schaap] recorded full interviews with more jazz musicians than any other single person, going back to some of the earliest figures in jazz to the present.”
The library has already been working on the collection for 18 months, and estimates it will take five full years to totally incorporate it. You can follow the progress and view or listen to materials via the university library’s website. But the collection represents only one part of the jazz excitement happening at the school.
The other is the Blair Big Band, an ensemble composed entirely of undergraduate students that Middagh has been leading for 11 years as
TIME RIPPER
Veteran rocker Richie Kirkpatrick returns from the brink with Silver & Gold
BY SEAN L. MALONEY
SILVER & GOLD the new album Richie Kirkpatrick is releasing Friday, almost didn’t happen. Recorded and shelved years ago while he was coping with intense illness and dramatic life changes, this LP marks a shift for Kirkpatrick — aka Ri¢hie, leader of much-loved Aughts rockers Ghostfinger and an ace side player for folks like Bobby Bare Jr., Langhorne Slim and Kesha — toward retooling and reexamining his party-forward tunes for a postparty life. The Scene caught up with Kirkpatrick ahead of Friday’s shindig at Soft Junk to talk recovery, recording and recentering creativity and community for a healthier life.
“So much went down in my life,” says Kirkpatrick, whose last full-length album was 2014’s Night Game. “There wasn’t an album coming out for a number of years because … I ended up being busy, then ended up getting really sick. I was sick for a long time.”
part of Blair’s extensive, celebrated jazz education program. The band has won multiple awards in venerable jazz magazine DownBeat’s yearly student band competitions.
“The ensemble plays approximately 100 pieces of repertoire each year, and I feel we are very well-balanced across traditional and contemporary styles,” says Middagh. “I conceptualize ‘jazz’ as an inclusive umbrella of a wide variety of styles that flow logically into preparing our students for diverse careers as 21st-century musicians. When addressing the band’s sound and approach, we must first serve the music we are playing. Different works, styles and periods demand different sound concepts and approaches — working to be flexible, thoughtful musicians who understand and hear the big picture of the music.”
The big band averages 10 or more performances per year, which range from on-campus shows, community concerts and collaborations with local schools to conferences and tours on behalf of the U.S. Department of State (the next one of which is planned for Colombia in 2026).
The band’s next performance on home turf is Thursday, Nov. 14, at Vanderbilt’s Ingram Hall.
“We continue to build a diverse and inclusive jazz scene, and our students get involved early in their education,” says Middagh. “They draw inspiration from all the great music they hear at the Nashville Jazz Workshop, Rudy’s Jazz Room or other venues that host jazz music. Students also build relationships with local pros on and off our campus, working to develop their professional network. Nashville has some of the best musicians in the world, and the students get so much from when I invite Nashville pros to sit in on a rehearsal or give a master class.” ▼
Kirkpatrick first became a local music staple amid the mid-Aughts creative foment in Middle Tennessee that centered on places like the back room at Springwater and Murfreesboro’s Red Rose Cafe. Back then, tragic poets were easier to find than tourists on these streets, and he was a perfect fit for the hard-partying final moments of Old Nashville. The affable, often goofy guitar wizard’s lyricism was marked by a flair for the absurd and a
Blair Big Band playing Thursday, Nov. 14, at Ingram Hall
Find details on accessing the Phil Schaap Jazz Collection at researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu
BLAIR BIG BAND
RICHIE KIRKPATRICK
penchant for intellectual anarchy. His early work fit so well within the anything-goes aesthetic of that pre-corporate-interest era that it’s difficult to imagine a Music City without it. Over time, he played with bigger and bigger names, and sometimes his own music took a backseat. By the time Kirkpatrick got to work on what became Silver & Gold, he was struggling with alcoholism, and his life was in danger.
“These are songs that I wrote and did the vast majority of the recording of before I got sober,” he says. “I can point to specific vocal stuff where it’s like, ‘That’s delirium tremens, kids.’ Getting this album out is a step in me moving on from a chapter of my life that was really heavy. It was done before I even started that process of getting away from the alcohol that was killing me. But I was so desperately wanting to get away from it, and it was impossible. [The album] should be called I Can’t Stop Drinking and I’m Dying.”
The write drunk/edit sober dichotomy the record presents feels like cleaning fingerprintcovered glasses and realizing just how blurry everything was before. Kirkpatrick’s knack for a hook and speed with a quip give songs like “Chinese Pills” and “Natural Light” a cheerful veneer over an existential tumult that is a little terrifying and a lot relatable. Joe V. McMahan’s echo-laden production lands between the Stones and The Flaming Lips, grounding songs like “Time Ripper” and launching tunes like “All of You” and “I Don’t Even Know Your Name” into the stratosphere.
“When you see things as a reflection of you and you hold it too close, you’re like, ‘I’m going to control the narrative of my life by not putting out this really personal stuff,’ even though that’s impossible,” Kirkpatrick says. “Holding onto it too much, identifying with it too much — this is moving past that. There’s a couple things on [Silver & Gold] that have made me cry now, listening back, knowing that that’s where I was. But then you have to get over that.”
It becomes clear as we talk that Kirkpatrick’s passion for music and the music community is a sustaining force in his life. His enthusiasm for New Nashville — “It’s a whole new audience!” — and old guitars (including a recently restored Martin) are invigorating his creative life at a time when he’d be absolutely forgiven for hanging it up. He’s got new songs, a growing home studio and excitement about the future that can only be described as joie de vivre.
“I was just sick. I was too sick to do anything. I’m just so thankful to be able to live a life and be productive and have a future, whereas I didn’t for a second.” ▼
SILVER & GOLD OUT FRIDAY, NOV. 15, VIA MOUNTAIN LION ISLAND PLAYING 7:30 P.M. NOV. 15 AT SOFT JUNK
FROM THE TOP
Punk champion Anthony Raneri chronicles Everyday Royalty
BY MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
ANTHONY RANERI IS starting over — sort of.
A 42-year-old native of Queens, New York, Raneri may be best known as the frontman of Bayside, a tenured punk rock outfit that chronicles life’s down-but-never-out moments with downtuned riffs and sticky-sharp phrases. He founded the band in 2000 when he was still a teenager. The scrappy DIY four-piece cut their teeth in sweaty VFW halls, but grew over the past two decades to become one of the most reliable rock groups to fill concert halls and festival fields. Now living in Middle Tennessee, Raneri has set his sights on a new challenge: releasing a collection of solo songs that include folk storytelling, moments of country influence and touches of road-worn balladeering. Friday, his seven-song solo EP Everyday Royalty hits streaming services and record store shelves.
Working in Nashville songwriting circles?
Releasing a collection of songs with a new label and backed by a new team? For Raneri, it feels like being a kid again, jumping in the back of a van to find out what may be waiting in the next city.
“I’m really treating this like [I’m] a new artist,” Raneri says. “It reminds me of the excitement of the early years of my career.”
The solo record is his first proper release with a backing of Nashville co-writers and collaborators. He relocated from New York to Franklin about a decade ago, but didn’t properly dip his toes into the waters of local songwriting circles until work for Everyday Royalty began in earnest
about a year ago. With Bayside, Raneri can spend months workshopping an album with bandmates before decamping for an extended stay at a studio with a trusted producer. As a solo artist, he adopted a pattern familiar to Music City: wake up, write, record, repeat. For Everyday Royalty, Raneri co-wrote with alt-rocker Sam Tinnesz and country songwriter Joey Hyde, among others. Austin Bianco was in the producer’s chair for the lead single “Bones.”
“Me and Sam and Austin, our kids were in school, and we had a few hours before we had to pick them up to go back to Sam’s house and work on something,” Raneri says. “We wrote and recorded ‘Bones’ in those few hours. That process is very fun. … That’s not how I’ve ever worked before.”
Raneri’s origin story isn’t what you might expect from someone who came to Nashville and started making music. As a kid, he didn’t spend afternoons in Queens stalking the FM dial for country radio hits, although he did fall for the songwriting charm of Tim McGraw’s hits in the ’90s. He wasn’t a traditional student of Americana forebears, either. But Raneri was raised on Simon & Garfunkel and Billy Joel, plus storytelling of a different kind: showtunes. This bold, emphatic influence — mixed with an appreciation for the likes of Kacey Musgraves, Elliott Smith and Roy Orbison — soaks into Everyday Royalty
In addition to the ground-shaking Tinnesz collaboration “Bones,” the EP includes the
riffy, country-tinged love tune “Boston” and indie-folk road song “Cleveland.” The pensive old-school ballad “Fall Out of Favor” closes the record, and it comes with touches of sobering steel guitar. But no song stands out quite like “Over Time,” a shuffling, banjo-featuring story about changing seasons that offers the perfect addition to a late-autumn soundtrack. With most songs, Raneri hopes to capture life’s hardships, but not without a bit of hope.
“If I’m writing a song about the world, or life, or a relationship — anything being hard — I always want there to be a ‘but …,’” he says, noting that the story doesn’t need to end at its bleakest moment.
Next year, Bayside celebrates its 25th anniversary, but that doesn’t mean the singer-songwriter wants to put Everyday Royalty on a shelf. Between planned events marking the anticipated anniversary, Raneri hopes to squeeze in short runs of solo dates — not unlike the weekend jaunts a new band makes when feeling out the road for the first time.
Or in his words: “I made a record I love, and I don’t want it to be a hobby.” ▼
Everyday Royalty out Friday, Nov. 15, via Equal Vision
PHOTO: ACACIA EVANS
HAVEN’T THEY?
BY THE SPIN
THE SPIN ROLLED UP to The Privates’ reunion show at The Basement late on Saturday night.
Just kidding. During the local indie-rock band’s heyday, the team behind the Scene’s live-review column was not known for its promptness. But in the decade-and-a-half since then, The Spin, like much of Saturday night’s crowd, has gotten a little older, a little grayer, a little more punctual. Despite the weekend’s nonstop rain and a post-election sense of malaise that just won’t seem to wash away, The Spin arrived right on time for the release party celebrating the long-awaited first vinyl album from your favorite local band’s favorite local band.
The evening’s first dose of nostalgia came courtesy of Matt and the Watt Gives, the new project from former Features frontman Matt Pelham. Pelham — whose fellow former Feature, Privates drummer Rollum Haas, was also part of the ensemble — spent much of the set seated behind a Wurlitzer. But that didn’t stop him from belting out tunes like “Strange Devotion” in the gravelly, high-power voice that fans came to know well during The Features’ two-decade dance with regional stardom and major label flirtation. Some songs were peppered with occasional blasts of Sgt. Pepper-y trumpet, while others — like the choogling debut single “Cutting Ties” — were hard-charging thumpers with shades of Dire Straits.
“It took us about 11 years, but we’re ready,” said Privates frontman and principal songwriter Dave Paulson just a few minutes later, looking out at a roomful of familiar faces transported straight from the local rock scene circa 2008. Though The Privates technically never officially called it quits, it has indeed been just over a decade since the group’s last show — another oneoff at the since-shuttered Stone Fox in 2013. But the foursome locked in quickly with power-pop bangers like the 20-year-old “Karate and Explosions.” That song, 11 other classics and a pair of newly recorded tunes are all featured on We Are Really Rocking Now, Haven’t We?, the August release from longtime scene-booster Michael
Eades’ august YK Records.
The two new songs, “Don’t Take It Out on Me” and “Old Times,” both slipped in seamlessly among The Privates’ vintage numbers on Saturday night. But two older songs in particular — “I’ll Be Honest” and “You Never Take Me Dancing,” a pair of nervy, off-kilter punk-pop offerings — showed perhaps better than any others just how well The Privates’ individual pieces snap together when everyone is firing on all cylinders. From behind a Bronson-esque mustache, Haas offered his impossibly athletic beats, while polymath Ryan Norris (now a Chicago resident) bounced between keys and guitar, and Keith Lowen stayed locked in at stage left, grounding it all with his melodic bass lines.
Set highlights included a playfully grumpy spat between Haas and Paulson over tempos, a cameo from local multi-instrumentalist Dan Sommers on trumpet, and lots of new-to-us Privates lore provided by an effusive Paulson. (For instance: He lifted the title “You Never Take Me Dancing” from a billboard advertising Travis Tritt’s 2007 song of the same name.) The band closed its main set with the explosive “Pocari Sweat” before Paulson told us they were going to just slip straight into their encore since, of course, there’s no backstage to sneak off to in a packed and sweaty Basement. The boys encored with “Song 2” — no, not that “Song 2,” but rather their own “Song 2” from 2005’s Louder Than Lightning That transitioned into a cover of “Song 2” — yes, that “Song 2” — the sort of meta, funny but genuinely rad surprise The Privates have been known to pull. (We can’t say for certain that the Blur song has been played by Paulson’s prolific ’90s cover ensemble My So-Called Band at some point over the years, but we wouldn’t be surprised.)
There was a lot of lingering near the merch table post-show. Some of that was due to folks waiting out the rain, giving side-hugs to old friends and commiserating about the state of American politics — or perhaps just getting their money’s worth from the babysitter before the clock struck midnight. Even though Paulson says there are no current plans to extend the reunion past the release show, it was a feel-good ending to a feel-bad week, and the sort of treat we hope we don’t have to wait another 11 years to experience again. ▼
A DISPATCH FROM THE 62ND NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
From Queer to Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist, here’s the best of this year’s fest
BY JASON SHAWHAN
IN ADDITION TO getting a feel for the upcoming patterns in world cinema and becoming aware of potential awards traction (because everything, even arthouse film criticism, is part of the global machine), the thing you learn from the film festival experience is where people are — artists, activists, thinkers, weirdos — and how things are going in their world. There’s not a lot of hope in the air at the moment, and we know this because smoking is back. Not vaping, but full-on lighting up butts, because who cares? It’s something that stays with you, this sense that the failure of the carbon sink really has been steeping and we’re all just sort of tidying up for extinction. Ironically, this year’s 62nd New York Film Festival offerings are pretty superb. No stinkers to be found, though a surprising number of these films don’t have American distribution, so it doesn’t hurt to reach out to the theaters, festivals and film companies you like and respect to try to get these films screened locally.
Payal Kapadia’s Malayalam-language All We Imagine as Light (coming this winter) is a marvel. It’s a Sirkian melodrama told with a delicate and deliberate touch that feels very different from the Indian cinema we regularly get access to in the U.S., though it is emblematic of a kind of cinema that finds its own path. Also, you’ve got to respect a film in which a character buys a burqa as part of a scheme to get laid properly.
having a dialogue with David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch and Wong Kar-wai’s 2046
Though Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature The Room Next Door (coming in January) never quite attains greatness — and leads Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore put their ankles into some sincerely felt moments — it hits full-strength when John Turturro pops up to get real about the state of the planet. That moment is so disarming and devastating that you can’t help but wish the rest of the film were up to that same level. (As with last year’s gay cowboy short “A Strange Way of Life,” I think Almodóvar could use a collaborator on Anglophone scripts. The first reel in particular is almost a disaster, with characters just speaking subtext, though it does right itself.)
Luca Guadagnino, not content just to elevate cultural interest in bisexuality and tennis with Challengers, is back with Queer (opening Dec. 9 at the Belcourt), a William S. Burroughs adaptation that’s equally versed in the hope, the horny and the heroin that WSB’s milieu is built on. With a staggeringly great lead performance from Daniel Craig and a Jason Schwartzman turn that’ll find him drinking for free at every bear bar on the planet, this is like a magickal spell that confounds and caresses, somehow
You can do just about anything in a musical, and Emilia Pérez, which won an unprecedented quadruple Best Actress award at Cannes earlier this summer and featured at both the NYFF and NewFest, aims to prove it, following a murderous narco cartel boss who, in transitioning, finds herself in a position to mitigate some of the damage she previously did. It’s a mess, but it’s never boring, and it hews unpredictable (except when it decides to embrace the hoariest of clichés). It’s not my place to evaluate it as a trans film, but I am capable of evaluating it as a musical, and the musical numbers are creative and well-choreographed, and you are simply not ready for Selena Gomez’s achievement in wig acting. Also coming to Netflix this awards season is Maria, Pablo Larraín’s portrait of the legendary diva Maria Callas, with a stellar lead performance from Angelina Jolie. I’ve never been a huge opera fan, but I love drama, and I love films that understand that by-the-book realism is boring and played-out. If anything, this is a subtler film than you might expect, but Larraín is 3 for 3 with his portraits of fascinating 20th-century women. And this film’s consumption of Fernet-Branca is nigh heroic.
Oh, Canada, the latest from Paul Schrader, is an intense reverie that diagrams the impetuousness of youth in reaction to the cruel assaults of cancer and dementia, as well as digging into what the Vietnam War did to whole swaths of American youth. Jacob Elordi makes for a great young Richard Gere. (There’s also an unexpected momentary Looking for Mister Goodbar tribute.)
One of the year’s finest performances is delivered by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths (coming in early 2025), a return to collaborating with director Mike Leigh. Her Pansy is a scabrous, often viciously funny turn fueled by rage and regret. The rest of the cast delivers remarkable work in helping an audience understand the how of the situation, and there could be an entire spinoff set in the salon belonging to Pansy’s sister Chantal (Michele Austin) — I would watch religiously.
I am still confounded by David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds (coming in 2025). He’s still my fa-
vorite living director, and this film is one I’ve been wrestling with since I saw it in October. It’s always wriggling out of reach, refusing to be diagnosed, an uncontrollable, unqualifiable organism feeding on conspiracies and earth freshly fertilized by human decomposition that seems to be in dialogue not only with his body of work, but also with the director’s own life and reputation.
People have been talking about The Brutalist (opening Jan. 17 at the Belcourt) from Brady Corbet (possibly the only person to both star in a season of 24 and win Best Director at Venice) since it first popped up overseas. It is a triumph of ambition in American cinema. You’re not going to see a brisker three-and-a-half-hour film — and it’s shot in VistaVision as well. The first half is masterpiece territory, with the second half going weirder and more diffuse in a way that seems at odds with what’s gone before. But there’s an epilogue that not only makes the whole thing cohere, but also gets into your whole perception of the role architecture plays in human history. And when this thing is available to a wider audience, the discourse is going to be unhinged. I can’t wait.
Among 2024’s most controversial films (look into what happened to it at the Berlinale), No Other Land is doing everything that documentary cinema is supposed to do — giving voice to those whose voice is suppressed, bearing witness to unspeakable violence and bureaucratized cruelty, and finding some sparkle of possibility for a different way. What happens, and what has continuously happened, in the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank is difficult to process. An ongoing cycle of destruction, rebuilding and resistance has been simply part of life for so long, which we see in the primary source footage made across generations. The fact that strong relationships can develop among multiple cultural circumstances is mordantly funny, inspiring in very visceral capacities, and ultimately a glimmer that maybe there’s the tiniest bit of hope.
And then there’s My Undesirable Friends — Part 1: Last Air in Moscow. Sometimes a documentary happens to be in the right place at the right time, capturing a major moment in history
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
Read more of
with a depth and range that we don’t normally expect. Director Julia Loktev hopped over to Russia toward the end of 2021 to talk to journalist friends who’d found themselves on the “foreign agent” list that anyone going against the Putinist line more often than not would end up on. And this is the context in which we get to know several journalists, freethinkers and activists, most at least tangentially working with TV Rain, one of the last independent news sources in Rus-
sia. And then the invasion of Ukraine happens, and everything gets so much worse. Loktev was incredibly fortunate to get access to and the trust of her subjects, and the five hours and change of part one are among the most riveting and intense experiences in any film, narrative or nonfiction, this year. Here’s hoping that it and No Other Land will get the distribution they deserve, and that they can help the world we live in. ▼
MAGICAL MISERY TOUR
With A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg allows us a moment to be sad
BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY
WITH A REAL PAIN, Jesse Eisenberg, that jittery mensch of an actor, continues his journey of writing and directing films in which family members try to figure their shit out in front of others. A couple years ago, Eisenberg had Julianne Moore and Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard play an awkward, contentious mother-and-son duo in his debut When You Finish Saving the World. If you never heard about that one, that’s because A24 dumped it in a few theaters and on VOD a year after it played the Sundance Film Festival.
Pain, which played at this year’s Sundance, is a more personal film for Eisenberg, who also stars. He’s David, an OCD-plagued family man who travels to Warsaw with his outgoing cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin). Once thick as thieves, they’ve reunited to visit landmarks and learn more about the Holocaust as part of a heritage tour led by a highly informative Brit (Will Sharpe). They’re also there to visit the former home of their grandmother, who recently passed away.
As the trip goes on, we eventually learn that David is not the only one with mental issues. Benji initially charms the tour group (which includes Dirty Dancing’s Baby herself, Jennifer Grey, as an attractive tourist and English actor Kurt Egyiawan as a Rwandan who converted to Judaism) with his easygoing demeanor and spur-of-the-moment photo ops. But his mood swings suggest that he has a bipolar disorder, which has led him down some dark paths.
You could say Pain is Sideways without the wine. (There are a couple of rooftop scenes of David and Benji smoking weed that Benji had delivered to their hotel.) Eisenberg and Culkin go all-in on their polar-opposite chemistry, with Eisenberg serving as the neurotic, nonconfrontational yin to Culkin’s extroverted, touchy-feely
A Real Pain
R, 90 minutes
Opening wide Friday, Nov. 15
yang. Toning down the brattiness that got him an Emmy win for Succession, Culkin displays a brotastic jocularity that makes me think he’s angling to be his generation’s Sam Rockwell.
In addition to stealthily enlightening the audience on Jewish culture before the Holocaust, Eisenberg uses Pain to address the ways people cope with their own personal struggles. It’s apparent David and Benji are clearly going through it. But David obviously chooses to internalize, keeping his emotions in check (there are a couple moments when he overshares while holding back tears), while the emotionally unpredictable Benji can’t help but hit people with how he’s feeling at any given moment.
It’s a risky but well-intentioned move for Eisenberg to make a dramedy with privileged but flawed characters dealing with their inner turmoil while going on a trip where concentration camps are a main attraction. (A film-critic pal of mine who saw A Real Pain at Sundance said viewers will find all of this either deeply profound or kinda gross.) Thankfully, Eisenberg handles this magical misery tour in a delicate, comforting manner.
Even as tension bubbles between our two leads, Eisenberg makes sure the audience still has a pleasant time enjoying the sights. Cinematographer Michal Dymek captures all of the locales they visit with crisp, scenic sharpness, and the soundtrack is littered with melancholy classical piano pieces. (Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 9: No. 2 in E-Flat Major, which I distinctly remember being used for the opening credits of Bad Santa, also opens this film.)
With A Real Pain, Eisenberg shows how trauma, whether it’s personal or generational, is something that should be acknowledged, but never dismissed or forgotten. Upsetting, tragic shit happens whenever and wherever. Yet time marches on, and you must march along with it. There’s nothing wrong with finding the right time and place to recognize pain and suffering. As Taylor Tomlinson said on an episode of After Midnight the day after a very depressing Election Day, let’s take a fucking second to be sad. ▼
1 Site for a light bite
5 Cy Young winners, e.g.
9 Dog leg terminus
12 Like many Keats works
13 Swahili honorific
14 “Lucy and ___” (2022 documentary)
15 Instrument panels
17 Landed
18 Sweatshirt style
19 Syllables of laughter
21 Word on a nutrition label
23 “Educated insolence,” per Aristotle
24 Gesture of reassurance
25 Long time span
26 Subject to damages
28 Trademark of deadpan stand-ups
30 Lou Grant’s wife on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”
31 Bugs, perhaps
33 Areas that are lower than their surrounding terrain
35 “I’m flexible”
36 Toss out
40 Like the femur, among all bones in the body
43 Quiet period
44 What lies before you, with “the”
47 Not ruling out
49 Black ___
50 Stopover
51 What makes a sticker stickier?
52 Do some garden work
53 Dance floor lighting option
55 Text massager
57 Ungulate feature
58 Author’s concern that, when parsed as four parts, provides a hint to this puzzle’s theme
62 Sufficient, informally
63 Bold, energetic and ambitious type, it’s said
64 Speed
65 Collector’s goal
66 Give, but expect back
67 Words to a betrayer DOWN
1 Major food source animal
2 Computing pioneer Lovelace
3 Swerve wildly from side to side, as a car
4 ___ Park, neighborhood of Los Angeles
5 Anticipate
6 Mind
7 Burnt bit of brisket
8 Confidently struts
9 ___ Bay, neighborhood of the Bronx
10 Italian cheese
11 Fail to act decisively in the face of a challenge
13 Legislative collectives
14 One of three in an SOS message
16 Part of a pipe
20 Melancholy Musketeer
21 Raced, as away from danger
22 Right hand
24 Feeds (on)
27 “Twilight” protagonist
28 Lavishly regaled, in a way
29 Scooby-Doo, to Scrappy-Doo
32 Druid, e.g.
34 Indian honorific
37 Goes hog-wild
38 Prefix with cumulus
39 Move forward resolutely
41 Fountain of Youth’s promise
42 Old-timey medicines
44 Things listed on a wedding registry
45 Play opener
46 “Stee-RIKE three!” follower
48 Essence
51 Put two and two together, say
54 Not quite right
55 Whistle-blower Brockovich
56 Sludge
59 Rich rock
60 Private sleeping accommodations?
61 Big bird
PUZZLE BY GRANT BOROUGHS
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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA Case No. CV-23 -02470 -PHX-DLR NOTICE OF PUBLIC SALE OF:
Men’s Wearhouse 1921 Gallatin Pike North, Madison, TN 37115
United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Plaintiff, v. Jonathan Larmore, et al. Defendants, and Michelle Larmore; Marcia Larmore; CSL Investments, LLC; MML Investments, LLC; Spike Holdings, LLC; and JMMAL Investments, LLC, Relief Defendants.
TO ALL PARTIES IN INTEREST: Notice is hereby given that Allen D. Applbaum, as Receiver for ArciTerra Companies, LLC and related entities, intends to sell, through his broker, Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services (“Marcus & Millichap”), a multi-use retail center located in [1921 Gallatin Pike North, Madison, TN 37115], and owned by [1921 Gallatin Pike Nashville TN, LLC] (the “Property”), free and clear of all liens, claims, interests and encumbrances (the “Sale”).
Relief Defendants.
TO ALL PARTIES IN INTEREST:
Notice is hereby given that Allen D. Applbaum, as Receiver for ArciTerra Companies, LLC and related entities, intends to sell, through his broker, Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services (“Marcus & Millichap”), a multi-use retail center located in [1921 Gallatin Pike North, Madison, TN 37115], and owned by [1921 Gallatin Pike Nashville TN, LLC] (the “Property”), free and clear of all liens, claims, interests and encumbrances (the “Sale”).
Pursuant to the Motion for Entry of an Orders: (A) approving (i) the Receiver’s engagement and compensation of Marcus & Millichap as broker for the sale of the Property, and (ii) the proposed sale and auction procedures for the sale of the Property (the “Sale Procedures”), including the scheduling of an Auction and Sale Hearing to consider the sale of the Property; (B) approving the sale of the Property to the bidders who submit the highest and best offers at a public auction to be conducted on RealINSIGHT Marketplace Auction Platform at https://rimarketplace.com (the “Marketplace Auction Platform”), free and clear of all liens, claims, encumbrances and interests; and (C) granting related relief (the “Sale Motion”), the Receiver is soliciting higher and bett er offers for the Property.
The Receiver is soliciting higher and better offers by means of an Auction to be conducted on the Marketplace Auction Platform, which shall be governed by the terms and conditions of the order establishing sale and auction procedures (the “Sale Procedures Order”) approved by the Court on October 17, 2024 [ECF No. 246].
Heritage Park Advertise
The Sale Motion and the Sale Procedures Order are on file with the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse, 401 W. Washington St., Suite 130, SPC 1, Phoenix, Arizona 85003 -2118 (the “Court”), and are available for review during regular business hours. Copies of the Sale Motion, the Sale Procedures Order, and the proposed Purchase Agreement to be executed by the Successful Bidders are also available upon request from the undersigned or by visiting the Receiver’s website at www.arciterrareceivership.com.
“Court”), and are av view during regular business hours. Copies of the Sale Motion, the Sale Procedures Order, and the proposed Purchase Agreement to be executed by the Successful Bidders are also available upon request from the undersigned or by visiting the Receiver’s website at www.arciterrareceivership.com.
OBJECTIONS, if any, to the relief requested in the Sale Motion or to final approval of the proposed Sale of the Property must be filed in writing with the Clerk of the Court on or before November 6, 2024 at 5:00 p.m., Phoenix Time (the “Objection Deadline”). A copy of the objection must also be served on all of the following so as to be received by the Objection Deadline: counsel to the Receiver, Archer & Greiner, P.C., Attn: Allen G. Kadish and Harrison H.D. Breakstone, 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10036.
Through this Notice, HIGHER AND BETTER OFFERS to purchase the Property are hereby solicited The Auction will be held on the Marketplace Auction Platform beginning on October 29, 2024 at 12:00 Noon (Eastern Standard Time) and ending on October 31, 2024 at Noon (Eastern Standard Time). Instructions for attending the Auction are available at: at h ttps://rimarketplace.com.
A FINAL HEARING on the Sale Motion will take place on November 13, 2024 at 10:00 a.m., Phoenix Time, at the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse, 401 W. Washington St., Suite 130, SPC 1, Phoenix, Arizona 85003 -2118, before the Honorable Douglas L. Rayes.
Please be advised that any of the foregoing dates may be changed by the Court without further notice.
If you have any questions regarding or would like copies of materials relating to the information in this Notice, please make such request in writing to Counsel for the Receiver, Archer & Greiner, P.C., 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10036 Attn: Allen G. Kadish and Harrison H.D. Breakstone.
NSC: 11/14, 11/21, 11/28, 12/5/24
G. Kadish and Harrison H.D. Breakstone.
NSC: 11/14, 11/21, 11/28, 12/5/24
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Pursuant to the Motion for Entry of an Orders: (A) approving (i) the Receiver’s engagement and compensation of Marcus & Millichap as broker for the sale of the Property, and (ii) the proposed sale and auction procedures for the sale of the Property (the “Sale Procedures”), including the scheduling of an Auction and Sale Hearing to consider the sale of the Property; (B) approving the sale of the Property to the bidders who submit the highest and best offers at a public auction to be conducted on RealINSIGHT Marketplace Auction Platform at https://rimarketplace.com (the “Marketplace Auction Platform”), free and clear of all liens, claims, encumbrances and interests; and (C) granting related relief (the “Sale Motion”), the Receiver is soliciting higher and bett er offers for the Property.
The Receiver is soliciting higher and better offers by means of an Auction to be conducted on the Marketplace Auction Platform, which shall be governed by the terms and conditions of the order establishing sale and auction procedures (the “Sale Procedures Order”) approved by the Court on October 17, 2024 [ECF No. 246].
The Sale Motion and the Sale Procedures Order are on file with the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse, 401 W. Washington St., Suite 130, SPC 1, Phoenix, Arizona 85003 -2118 (the “Court”), and are available for review during regular business hours. Copies of the Sale Motion, the Sale Procedures Order, and the proposed Purchase Agreement to be executed by the Successful Bidders are also available upon request from the undersigned or by visiting the Receiver’s website at www.arciterrareceivership.com.
OBJECTIONS, if any, to the relief requested in the Sale Motion or to
OBJECTIONS, if any, to the relief requested in the Sale Motion or to final approval of the proposed Sale of the Property must be filed in writing with the Clerk of the Court on or before November 6, 2024 at 5:00 p.m., Phoenix Time (the “Objection Deadline”). A copy of the objection must also be served on all of the following so as to be received by the Objection Deadline: counsel to the Receiver, Archer & Greiner, P.C., Attn: Allen G. Kadish and Harrison H.D. Breakstone, 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10036.
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Through this Notice, HIGHER AND BETTER OFFERS to purchase the Property are hereby solicited . The Auction will be held on the Marketplace Auction Platform beginning on October 29, 2024 at 12:00 Noon (Eastern Standard Time) and ending on October 31, 2024 at Noon (Eastern Standard Time). Instructions for attending the Auction are available at: at h ttps://rimarketplace.com.
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Sarah Benson Park
FAVORITE
A FINAL HEARING on the Sale Motion will take place on November 13, 2024 at 10:00 a.m., Phoenix Time, at the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse, 401 W. Washington St., Suite 130, SPC 1, Phoenix, Arizona 85003 -2118, before the Honorable Douglas L. Rayes.
Soar
COMMUNITY AMENITIES
