Nashville Scene 11-18-21

CITY LIMITS: A JUDGE WILL SOON DECIDE IF PERVIS PAYNE IS TOO INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED TO BE EXECUTED

NOVEMBER 18–24, 2021 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 41 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

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FOOD & DRINK: TWO FOOD CRITICS WEIGH IN ON SEAN BROCK’S THE CONTINENTAL PAGE 29

The Difference a Decade Makes Speaking with Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes as Parnassus Books celebrates 10 years

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CONTENTS

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

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33

Walk a Mile: Madison ................................7

Slow Violence, Then and Now

CITY LIMITS

BOOKS

In the 23rd installment of his column, J.R. Lind journeys to the northeast edge of the county, where the L&N doesn’t stop anymore

Rob Nixon discusses writers, activists and the challenges of the Global South

BY J.R. LIND

34

How the Pervis Payne Case Inspired and Shaped April Frazier Camara’s Legal Career ...................................................... 10

ART

Seeing Stars

BY STEVEN HALE

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

Community schools aim to serve Nashville students most affected by the pandemic

BY KELSEY BEYELER

Talking with legendary painter Judith Linhares about disaster, space and the future

35

MUSIC

Cloud Control: $avvy Blazes His Own Trail .................................................. 35

12

Help Keep The Groove in Place

BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN AND CHAPTER 16

On Dec. 13, a judge will hear arguments over whether Payne is too intellectually disabled to be executed

It Takes a Village ..................................... 10

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: MNPS Continues to Require Masks Despite New State Law Some News About a Trio of Upcoming Food-Centric Events Belfast a Fitting Ode to Branagh’s Hometown

Catching up with the multifaceted rapper and singer as he plans his next moves

COVER STORY

The Difference a Decade Makes

ON THE COVER:

Photo by Daniel Meigs

BY D’LLISHA DAVIS AND 2 L’S ON A CLOUD

Speaking with Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes as Parnassus Books celebrates 10 years

BY MARY LAURA PHILPOTT

Setting Out .............................................. 36 Rashad tha Poet and S-Wrap pen a new hero’s journey on The Other Side

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

19

The Spin ................................................... 37

CRITICS’ PICKS No Limit Reunion Tour, Ingrid Andress w/Georgia Webster, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Cheekwood’s Holiday Lights, Fortune Feimster, Country Westerns w/ Waltzer & Blunt Bangs, William Tyler & Mary Lattimore, Kindred Links and more

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Allison Russell at Third Man Records’ Blue Room

BY EDD HURT

38 FILM

29

Dog Bites Man

It Is Time to Meet … The Continental

Bombed Out

Two food critics weigh in on Sean Brock’s finedining spot at the Grand Hyatt

Tick, Tick… Boom! is unwilling to commit to any serious criticism

BY ASHLEY BRANTLEY AND STEVE CAVENDISH

BY STEVE ERICKSON

The Power of the Dog hits hard in its study of toxic masculinity

FOOD AND DRINK

BY CORY WOODROOF

32

Primal Stream 71

Please Come Down

41

An underwater haunted house, ’90s schlock and ’80s musical madness, now available to stream

CULTURE

BY JASON SHAWHAN

Pod Goals: Adia Victoria’s Call and Response is a study of Southern identity

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

42

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Walk a

Mile

with J.R. Lind

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

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TRUMP’S LEGACY: WORST JOBS RECORD, SUPPORTED RIOTERS, TRAMPLED PRECEDENTS Though I should not be, I am regularly surprised by ongoing revelations about former President Donald Trump’s aberrant views and behavior.

Last week, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl — who is promoting his book Betrayal, which is about the former president — added fuel to the dumpster fire. Karl tweeted teasers, including a note that Trump supported the “murderous chants” of the Capitol rioters targeting former Vice President Mike Pence. The tweet included an audio excerpt from an interview in which Trump called it “common sense” that the rioters wanted to hang the vice president. Calling it a “genuinely shocking interview,” Karl said Trump “didn’t condemn [the rioters], he defended them.”

This report details actions that are just so completely the reverse of what they should be, yet the man continues to be vigorously defended and supported by so many. It’s as though we live in a constant state of Opposite Day — a childhood game that doesn’t seem quite so funny today.

What’s more, Trump continues to toot his own horn over the booming economy under his administration. Even before the pandemic crash, The Washington Post characterized his boasts as overblown rhetoric, giving Trump three “pinocchios” for the repeated claim that he had engineered the best economy in the history of the country.

Fast-forward three years, and the irony is hard to miss. Earlier this year the Post determined that Trump’s record was — don’t be surprised — the opposite of what he claims, concluding that he had the “worst jobs record in modern U.S. history.”

Writing as the Trump administration was coming to its historic and violence-filled end in January, the Post’s Andrew Van Dam wrote: “President Trump took office at the crest of the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. He leaves presiding over the worst labor market in modern U.S. history, as an already-sputtering economic recovery has turned negative.”

Every administration inherits economic success and failure from the administration it replaces, and Trump inherited an economy that was still surging upward

from the depths of the 2008 recession. The true Trump economic legacy is that he is the first president since Herbert Hoover in 1933 to leave the U.S. “with a smaller workforce than it had when they took office.” The article continued: “The awful jobs report from the Labor Department showed there were still 3 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were on Inauguration Day 2017, when Trump stood in front of the Capitol and vowed to reverse the American carnage.”

Of course, defenders of the former president will point to the pandemic as the sole reason for his economic failure, but critics disagree.

The New York Times reported last year that Trump’s handling of the pandemic left the American people uncertain because of his muddled messaging, which turned the pandemic into a partisan issue. A July 2020 op-ed in The Washington Post written by CDC doctors ran under the headline: “We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has.”

In January, an ABC News review of the Trump presidency included this excellent observation: “Economists say Trump’s economic legacy will be defined by his failure in leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic that exacerbated the financial downturn, domestic policies that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, and international trade policies that hurt U.S. industry while simultaneously alienating allies.”

Undeterred by facts, Trump keeps beating the drum that he is the king of economic success. As if living in some kind of fairy tale, he routinely rewrites the past and pretends his behavior after losing the election in November was appropriate.

Donald Trump is a king of lies.

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

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NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

MADISON

Walk a

Mile

BY J.R. LIND | PHOTOS BY ERIC ENGLAND

Old Hickory

Boulevard

Madison

Gallati n Pike Sout

h

Station

Bouleva

rd

with J.R. Lind

In the 23rd installment of his column, J.R. Lind journeys to the northeast edge of the county, where the L&N doesn’t stop anymore

Amqui Station

THE ROUTE: From Amqui Station, east on Madison Street, then left on Gallatin Pike. Left on Old Hickory Boulevard, then left on Madison Station Boulevard to the beginning.

CRANES: 0 (but plenty of road-building equipment) ABANDONED SCOOTERS: 0

Madison St

reet

Once a month, reporter and resident historian J.R. Lind will pick an area in the city to examine while accompanied by a photographer. With his column Walk a Mile, he’ll walk a one-mile stretch of that area, exploring the neighborhood’s history and character, its developments, its current homes and businesses, and what makes it a unique part of Nashville. If you have a suggestion for a future Walk a Mile, email editor@nashvillescene.com.

A

mqui Station is not in Amqui.

In fact, it hasn’t been in Amqui for a long time, but at least in the heart of Madison, it’s closer to its original home now than it was for more than a quarter-century. The station was built by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1910 in Amqui, at the junction of the L&N tracks and those of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad — a little more than a mile north of where it sits now, on Madison Station Boulevard.

Nobody knows the origin of the name “Amqui.” There’s a theory it’s a mispronunciation of the name of the place in an indigenous language — similar to how the only other Amqui on earth, up in Quebec, got its name, which is believed to be a corruption of the Mi’kmaq word for “a place to have fun.”

No Mi’kmaqs lived in Tennessee.

A more popular theory is that Amqui is a minced version of “damn quick.” It was a rapid ride from here downtown, and engineers and conductors were (allegedly) more than happy to make the stop at Amqui a short one. Thus, one had to be damn quick to

catch a damn quick ride to the city.

In any event, the L&N stopped passenger service from Amqui in the 1950s, but the old station had a famous fan: Johnny Cash. In fact, the Man in Black would hang out with the brakemen at Amqui. In the early 1970s, Cash covered Jean Ritchie’s song “The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore.” In 1979, Cash bought the station and had it moved to the House of Cash museum in Hendersonville, where it sat until 2005 when a community effort raised the funds to bring it back (closer to) home.

Now the old station is the centerpiece of a museum and community center in Madison.

(By the way, the origin of Madison’s name is no secret: It was named for the fourth president of the United States.)

The area around the station is buzzing with activity these days, as Madison Station Road is being extended, offering another outlet for traffic, bypassing the steep downhill approach to the often perilous Old Hickory Boulevard-Gallatin Pike intersection. In a city where road repair and maintenance is ongoing (albeit usually at a much slower pace than most drivers would hope for), seeing a wholly new road being built is an intriguing experience.

Nashville Fire Department Station 31 is across Madison Street from the museum. If it’s not the biggest fire station in the city, it has to be close, looking more like an office building than a fire hall. Charmingly, its architecture echoes its older neighbor.

Madison Street is a mishmash of niche businesses: A boat repair shop is next to a drive-through-only Mexican restaurant, which itself sits on property that was clearly a motor lodge at some point in the past.

Along Gallatin Pike, the entrepreneurial spirit spreads. There’s an outpost of the Hair World empire next to the old Madison

Theater, which opened in 1938. The Art Deco theater was lauded as the state’s most modern and elegant cinema (and made

nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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11/15/21 5:57 PM

CITY LIMITS

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG:

much of its air conditioning in advertisements), but it survived for only 12 years, faced with competition from the Loew’s Madison Theater north on Gallatin Pike. It served as an art gallery for decades and was bought by the Seventh Day Adventists in 2008. Now the church offers classes and operates a thrift store. Across the street is George P. Howell & Sons — what may well be Davidson County’s only real estate office in a postcard-perfect Spanish Mission-style building.

Hy’s Pawn Shop (“Since 1973”) neighbors Berry’s Pawn, the former urging passersby to check their prices first. (An unauthorized message in the form of graffiti also insults a variety of ethnicities.) Pawn shops and antique stores were long the main businesses in Madison’s downtown, in the period of time between its midcentury streetcar-suburb

8

heyday and the modern-day mix of immigrants and young families along with oldtimers who remember when Hillbilly Day drew 100,000 people to town.

Now there are Guatemalan bakeries, a Shoe World and yet another Hair World rubbing shoulders with a Firestone — which, based on architecture, has clearly been around for more than 50 years — and Smith Bros., where they’ve been washing cars since 1947. The old Mrs. Winner’s is now a payday loan purveyor (there’s plenty of competition in that business in these parts), and closer to Old Hickory Boulevard, the small businesses give way to the national chains: Kroger, Aldi and the like.

At the OHB intersection (more properly, the intersection is Gallatin Pike North and South, with OHB approaching from the west before it turns into State Route 45, which

most folks call Old Hickory Boulevard, heading east; the actual continuation of Old Hickory Boulevard runs parallel to 45 until it hits the river) sits the Art Deco “Madison” sign. A pair of the signs bookend what longtimers would consider the heart of Madison.

This one’s sister is at the intersection of Neely’s Bend Road and Gallatin Pike.

Old Hickory Boulevard climbs sharply as it heads west, offering a peek of the former Madison High School campus, now home to Stratton Elementary and Madison Middle.

In the early 1960s, Madison High was notable for, among other things, one of the greatest uniform choices in the history of scholastic sports. According to legend, the boys’ basketball coach had a wild theory: His team could confuse the opposition with the hoops equivalent of dazzle camouflage. So, this eccentric genius designed polka-dot basketball uniforms, with various orange and blue spots strewn randomly about.

Allegedly, the fun police at the National Federation of High Schools banned such experimentation a few years later, but not before those glorious uniforms were etched into the memories of Madisonians for decades.

The climb up OHB is rewarded with a steady and welcome downhill stretch on Madison Station Boulevard, passing a variety of body shops and used-tire stores and the beloved Cal’s Country Kitchen, where Carolyn Buggs and her family have been serving up home cooking in a converted pediatrician’s office since 1997. Cal’s fits right in — another small business in a neighborhood where that spirit lives on.

The L&N may not stop here any more — or anywhere, for that matter — but the hustle doesn’t stop either.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

The Davidson County District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit is asking a judge to exonerate two people convicted of the murder and rape of a 4-year-old girl in 1987. Joyce Watkins and her boyfriend Charlie Dunn were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder and rape of Watkins’ great-niece.

The CRU says the wrongful conviction resulted from an aggressive — and at times dishonest — prosecution based on circumstantial evidence, since-discredited methods by since-disgraced medical examiners and unwitting defendants who initially spoke to police without an attorney. Dunn died in prison in 2015 after being granted parole. Watkins was granted parole and released in October 2015 after serving 27 years in prison. … A Nashville judge once again vacated the death sentence of Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, who was convicted of murder in 1987. It’s the second time Judge Monte Watkins has approved a deal between the DA and Abdur’Rahman, but an appeals court tossed the original deal in 2019 after the state attorney general objected. Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk asked the judge to vacate the death sentence because of “overt racial bias” in jury selection, among other alleged misconduct, during the 1987 trial. Abdur’Rahman received notoriously inadequate legal representation at the trial, a fact acknowledged by multiple courts and the trial attorney himself. Under the new deal, Abdur’Rahman agreed to three charges carrying three life sentences. In exchange, his death sentence was set aside. … After nearly 20 years in the state House, former Speaker Glen Casada, a Williamson County Republican, announced he will not seek reelection.

Casada’s tenure as speaker was nasty, brutish and short. His nine month stint with the gavel came crashing down with a scandal involving leaked explicit text messages. … While the Nov. 9 school board meeting itself was relatively calm (certainly by 2021 standards), there was a protest outside, as teachers and support staff, with the backing of their respective unions, rallied, urging passersby to honk in solidarity as educators, bus drivers and other MNPS employees asked for more support from the district. … Does Gov. Bill Lee understand his job? Contributor Betsy Phillips isn’t so sure after the governor said he wouldn’t sign one of the umpteen COVID bills the legislature passed in the most recent special session.

As Phillips points out, the governor only has three choices: sign the bill, veto the bill or let it become law without his signature. Lee said he is returning the bill to the legislature for “necessary updates” before he signs it. But that’s not a thing. … In response to the passage of laws limiting private businesses’ and local governments’ ability to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Metro Nashville Public Schools released a statement to families and staff on Sunday, defying the state’s actions and noting that MNPS will still require masks despite the new law.

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

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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11/15/21 5:58 PM

The Oak Ridge Boys will celebrate the holiday season in Nashville again this year with a 31-show residency as part of Gaylord Opryland’s 38th annual A Country Christmas event. The “Christmas in Tennessee” Dinner Show will feature a delicious holiday meal prepared by the resort’s culinary team followed by the Oaks and their band performing Christmas classics, new favorites and many of the timeless hits that have shaped their legendary career.

NOV. 24 - DEC. 25 | WELCOME TO MORE ChristmasAtGaylordOpryland.com nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

9

CITY LIMITS

HOW THE PERVIS PAYNE CASE INSPIRED AND SHAPED APRIL FRAZIER CAMARA’S LEGAL CAREER On Dec. 13, a judge will hear arguments over whether Payne is too intellectually disabled to be executed

BY STEVEN HALE

A

pril Frazier Camara was just 8 years old when the arrest of Pervis Payne, then 20, shocked her small West Tennessee community outside Shelby County. Frazier Camara’s family knew the Paynes; her mother attended the church where Pervis’ father Carl was a pastor, and Frazier Camara knew Pervis’ sisters Tyrasha and Rolanda.

The case against Payne carried echoes of America’s racist history that did not go unheard by the Black adults around Frazier Camara. Payne was a young Black man accused of the murders of a white woman named Charisse Christopher and her 2-yearold daughter Lacie Jo in 1987. Prosecutors relied heavily on circumstantial evidence and portrayed Payne as a drug-using predator who attacked the family after Christopher rejected his sexual advance. But Payne has always maintained his innocence, saying that he came upon the horrifying murder scene while checking to see if his girlfriend was at her apartment across the hall.

Speaking to the Scene more than 30 years later, Frazier Camara says she still remembers sitting in the beauty shop and hearing grown-ups talk about the case. They couldn’t imagine that Pervis, who had no prior criminal history, had committed the crime, and they frequently discussed the glaring racial

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

Community schools aim to serve Nashville students most affected by the pandemic

BY KELSEY BEYELER

E

ducating children during the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many factors that inhibit student growth. Whether those are lack of access to technology and necessities like healthy food and clothes, or poor social and emotional health, kids need to have their basic needs met before they can learn and progress.

Studies have shown that certain demographics of students — such as students of color, English learners, students with disabilities and those from lowincome households — have been more affected than others by the pandemic. Tennessee students’ state test scores reflect that impact. Many of Tennessee’s students weren’t on track before pandemic-related setbacks, and as challenges continue to manifest, it may be even harder to get them where they need to be — especially with teachers who are spread thin.

One way to set students back on track could be community schools, public schools that rely on community members and organizations to serve

10

APRIL FRAZIER CAMARA

dynamic of the case.

“I just remember being a very young Black girl in Tipton County and just hearing the community of my parents and family talk about — not only did they not think he did it, but just the fact that he was convicted from day one because it was a Black man accused of killing a white woman, and her [child],” Frazier Camara says. “As a child hearing that growing up and actually seeing his family fight for his innocence and never being heard? It led me to where I am today.”

Where she is today is a couple weeks into her new role as president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal Aid and Defender Association. Frazier Camara was recently in Nashville for the organization’s annual conference. Payne is on death row, and his attorneys are still fighting to prove his innocence — DNA testing results in January showed male DNA from an unknown third party on key evidence including the murder weapon — but also to convince the courts or the governor that he should not be executed because of his intellectual disability. They have said in court documents that Payne has a functioning IQ of 68 and should be included among the group of people whom the U.S. Supreme Court has said cannot be put to death. In April, the state legislature passed a bill creating a procedure through which a court

could determine whether that is the case.

Payne’s hearing on the matter is scheduled for Dec. 13. He was scheduled to be executed almost a year ago, on Dec. 3, until Gov. Bill Lee granted him a reprieve due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tennessee Supreme Court has not yet set a new execution date for Payne, but there is nothing stopping them from doing so.

“We know that people with intellectual [disabilities] are at a special risk for wrongful conviction and execution,” Payne’s attorney, Nashville-based supervising assistant federal public defender Kelley Henry tells the Scene. “Almost 20 years after the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute the intellectually disabled, Pervis Payne will finally have his day in court. We look forward to the opportunity to present our evidence as we continue to fight for Pervis and his freedom.”

For Frazier Camara, Payne’s case was a catalyst.

“I was in the third grade when I decided I wanted to be a lawyer,” Frazier Camara says. “But I also decided I wanted to fight for people like my community. People who may come from small towns — underresourced areas — I wanted to be a voice for

people that I felt like did not get a fair shake in the system.”

She adds: “I literally remember being a child and going to church and seeing Pervis’ family, how much they prayed. But I was thinking to myself, ‘Something is missing here, right? Like, we need to be praying. But we also need tools.’ ” Frazier Camara went on to graduate from Tennessee State University before getting her law degree from Howard University and becoming a public defender in Memphis. She spent five years at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., before joining the NLADA. She is more hopeful about the future than one might expect of a person who has seen the bleak insides of the American criminal justice system. But in cases like Payne’s, Frazier Camara says, advocates can see the problems, and thus the ways to fix the system. The law passed this year by the legislature is one such crucial fix, she says, but there’s more work to be done.

“I really, truly think that this case should shock the consciousness of everybody,” she says. “Because it represents everything that’s wrong with the American legal system.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

the specific needs of students and their families both inside and outside the classroom. Community schools provide additional support, through partners and sometimes extra employees, that educators and school staff can’t always provide, such as assisting unhoused students and families or providing education and career support to parents.

Community schools aren’t new to the Metro Nashville Public School system. Since 2012, the district has held an initiative called Community Achieves, which serves 34 schools by bringing in hundreds of partners to support students. Community Achieves director Alison McArthur says the district is planning to use COVID-19 emergency relief funds to reach an additional 25 schools. Community Achieves helps provide what are known as wraparound services to address a range of student needs, from basic necessities to academic enrichment and classes for parents.

Lydia Yousief is the director of Elmahaba Center, which represents Arabic-speaking communities in Nashville. She says that while the district tries to address its students’ needs, there’s a disconnect between MNPS and its families, and that MNPS has a “top-down” culture.

“You could feed a bunch of kids,” says Yousief, “you could do a bunch of vaccines, you could do a bunch of ESL classes, but you’re not going to get anywhere if you are not building a community. And you don’t build a community by [saying], ‘Here, let me give you something.’ It has to be mutual.”

“Our love language is service,” Yousief continues.

“When you offer a service … parents and students should respond twice that fold. And that happens in spaces like churches and mosques, but it doesn’t happen in spaces like schools, and that’s because the service that you’re offering is condescending.”

To address some issues that the overstretched district can’t fully rectify for its diverse array of students, the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association — Nashville’s teachers’ union — is creating its own community schools initiative called Love and Vision. The initiative is a part of its parent organization NEA’s nationwide attempt to establish community schools. In addition to the NEA, MNEA is partnering with Elmahaba Center, Workers’ Dignity, Safer Schools Nashville and SEIU Local 205, the union that represents school support staff.

The goal, according to MNEA organizing director Sara Duran, is to “bring more voices to the schooldecision-making table by identifying and taking down barriers for engagement. We want our schools to become true neighborhood schools.” Love and Vision will work with MNPS’ Community Achieves initiative.

“The work that Community Achieves does is invaluable,” says Duran via email, “and our goal is to add capacity to that work.”

In Love and Vision’s first year, MNEA is focusing on four pilot schools: Glencliff, Antioch, Whites Creek and Maplewood high schools. While these schools already have support from Community Achieves, Duran says the district’s lines of assistance are already

established, and MNEA is working to further engage parents, staff, students and community members by asking, in Duran’s words, “What do you love about your school [and] community, [and] what is your vision for your school [and] community?” This engagement seeks to develop a “common vision” that can drive MNEA’s initiative further and create more community-driven schools that, rather than simply providing extra support, truly engage families.

Nashville’s students need all the support they can get to continue recovering from the academic implications of the pandemic. While there is no onesize-fits-all approach to serve the needs of MNPS’ diverse body of students, the families and partners who work with them understand these needs both inside and outside schools. Initiatives like Community Achieves and Love and Vision — as well as the nonprofit Communities in Schools of Tennessee, which provides similar assistance to students in Nashville and throughout the state — give schools the opportunity to work together to create the best learning pathways for students. Those looking to get involved with schools can volunteer with Community Achieves, donate to Communities in Schools, tutor students and keep an eye on MNEA’s developing Love and Vision initiative.

“It’s really, really simple,” says Yousief. “If you care for community members, parents or people who don’t even have kids there, they’re going to care for you.”

PERVIS PAYNE

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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THESE PRECIOUS DAYS

BY ANN PATCHETT AVAILABLE TUESDAY, NOV. 23, VIA HARPER 320 PAGES, $22.99

ANN PATCHETT (LEFT) AND KAREN HAYES WITH SHOP DOG SPARKY

The Difference a Decade Makes

VISIT PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET FOR DETAILS ON UPCOMING AUTHOR EVENTS AND MORE

Speaking with author Ann Patchett as Parnassus Books celebrates 10 years

BY MARY LAURA PHILPOTT PHOTOS BY DANIEL MEIGS coverstory_11-18-21.indd 12

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n 2011, Ann Patchett published her sixth novel, State of Wonder, amid a disheartening retail trend: One after the other, bookstores were closing all over the country. That experience left Patchett so concerned about the state of bookselling in America that by the time the year was out, she had opened a store of her own. This month that store, Parnassus Books, celebrates its 10th anniversary.

Not only does Patchett no longer need to worry about where locals can buy her books, but neither does any other author hoping to be read in Nashville. Together with her business partner Karen Hayes, Patchett and the staff of Parnassus (full disclosure: that staff used to include me) have grown the Green Hills shop into a mainstay of Nashville’s book-loving community.

Literary luminaries come from afar to make Nashville a stop on their book tours; tourists make the pilgrimage to take “shelfies” with their favorite books and a willing shop dog or two. Meanwhile, neighbors stop by every day to peruse staffrecommended fiction and nonfiction, using the store as a hub for book clubs, story time and collaborations with local organizations such as Humanities Tennessee, The Porch Writers’ Collective and Book’em. While COVID put many of these traditions on hold during 2020 and much of 2021 — and the airport outpost, co-branded with Hudson Booksellers, remains temporarily closed — the shop is again open for browsing and has been carefully adding live events back to its fall calendar.

Since that sixth novel in 2011, Patchett has written seven more books: two additional novels, including Pulitzer Prize finalist The Dutch House; two children’s books; a coffee-table book about Nashville with photographer Heidi Ross; and two essay collections as of this month.

Although she maintains no social media accounts of her own, Patchett makes an appearance on the store’s Instagram account (@parnassusbooks) for each Tuesday’s “Laydown Diaries” post, showand-telling a pile of new book releases. On Tuesday, Nov. 23, the stack will include These Precious Days, Patchett’s new collection of personal essays. She’ll sign books in the store from 9 a.m. to noon on Friday, Nov. 26, and will speak about the book at a virtual event in conversation with novelist Amor Towles on Dec. 7 at 6:30 p.m.

(Get more details at ParnassusBooks.net.)

THIS IS QUITE A NOVEMBER FOR YOU. A NEW BOOK AND THE STORE’S 10TH ANNIVERSARY, ALL AT ONCE. WHAT A HAPPY COINCIDENCE — OR WAS THAT TIMING PLANNED? It certainly looks planned, doesn’t it?

But no. I’ve been interested in when books get published for a long time, and since we started doing the Tuesday posts on social media, I’ve become obsessed. Some weeks are overloaded with amazing books; other Tuesdays there’s practically nothing, and I’m talking about a new book on how to sketch your cat. Why don’t publishers spread things out more evenly? Why are all the beach books in July and the serious novels in September? It would be nice to read something challenging at the beach when you actually have the space in your brain to concentrate.

While we have a ton of customers between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there

aren’t many new books coming out between those two holidays. It’s mostly the season of cookbooks and fitness guides. All books are published on Tuesday, in the same way all the horses leave the gate at the same time in a race. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving is particularly dead because bookstores aren’t open on Thanksgiving, and no one wants to lose a day of sales in the all-important first week. I figured I’d have a chance to be pretty much the only fish in the pond if I published just before Thanksgiving.

SMOOTH. AND IT TURNS OUT TO BE RIGHT AROUND THE STORE’S BIRTHDAY. For the first nine years of Parnassus Books, our anniversary meant Karen Hayes and I exchanging cards or little presents. It has always felt more like the anniversary of our partnership and friendship than a store event. This year, however, is different.

It’s big, and Karen started making real plans. She got Tennessee artist Billy Renkl to design a heart-stoppingly gorgeous broadside poster. She nudged me to come up with a little anniversary book [The Shop Dogs of Parnassus]. She had some great anniversary T-shirts designed. Thanks to Karen, we’re ready to celebrate the store in a big way.

I know that I write books that we sell at the store, but the part of me that’s a writer and the part of me that co-owns Parnassus with Karen have remarkably little overlap, which is how it’s possible for me to realize so late in the game that the publication of These Precious Days is more or less going to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the store.

YOU TOLD THE NEW YORK TIMES AT THE TIME OF THE STORE’S OPENING, “I HAVE NO INTEREST IN RETAIL; I HAVE NO INTEREST IN STARTING A BOOKSTORE,” BUT YOU DIDN’T HAVE AN INTEREST IN LIVING IN A CITY WITH NO BOOKSTORE, EITHER. ARE THERE PARTS OF THIS BUSINESS THAT YOU’VE FOUND MORE INTERESTING THAN YOU THOUGHT YOU WOULD? SURPRISES? All of it has been a surprise, exactly because I’d never envisioned opening a store. I had no expectations. I knew nothing.

My deep, deep love for the staff is the biggest surprise, the sense of community we share. Certain employees leave — I’m looking at you, Mary Laura — and I think, “I will not be able to survive this. We cannot be a store without Mary Laura.” But then here comes Steve Haruch, and he brings a whole other perspective. Mary Laura and Steve can do the same job in very different ways and both be amazing.

But then as soon as I say this, Steve gets a great new job at WPLN, and we wind up promoting the wonderful Sarah Arnold to take his place [managing marketing and communications]. As much as I hate this, I love it too. Things keep getting shaken up, and ready or not, we’re made into something new again and again. I don’t want things to change, I don’t want anyone to go, but that’s the way business works. It’s like the cycle of life in miniature. This goes for the shop dogs as well.

The pandemic is another example of how we’ve had to change: We figured out how to run a business without letting customers in the store, and we got really good at making videos and shipping books.

And then it was time to let customers back in, and we were utterly flummoxed. “Wait,

“Here’s something that surprises me,” Patchett says. “I love sidelines, the little items we sell that aren’t books. When we opened 10 years ago I thought, just books! No coffee cups, no socks! I wanted a very pure bookstore. But then I found these little stuffed hedgehogs and I thought, I want everyone to have a book and a hedgehog. Karen does an amazing job buying cards. I’m always walking out of the store with a stack of cards.”

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what? Real people in the store? Does anybody remember how we did this?” The challenges keep us flexible even when we don’t particularly want to be flexible.

We finally figured out how to do author events virtually, and I hope we’ll always have some events that way; but then I interviewed Lauren Groff [author of the new novel Matrix] in the store recently, and there were about 50 people there, all of them wearing masks, and the event felt downright holy. It meant so much to see people at an author event again. I was so moved by this thing I used to take for granted. How beautiful is that?

OBVIOUSLY THE SHOP HAS CHANGED A LOT IN 10 YEARS, BUT TELL ME THIS: WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT ANN PATCHETT OF A DECADE AGO AND ANN PATCHETT RIGHT NOW, WHAT’S DIFFERENT? The big difference between me a decade ago and me today, aside from general issues of aging, is how I read. Before Parnassus, I used to read around. I’d read a current bestseller, then a Dickens, then something a friend had written, then a little French novel from 1900, then a book two friends had recommended, then I’d go on a Jane Gardam tear, then I’d start thinking about a Roth novel from the ’70s I wanted to read, then I’d read a book someone wanted me to blurb, then I’d re-read some Henry James.

If I woke up thinking about Toni Morrison, I’d read Toni Morrison. I cherry-picked throughout history, tapped into the present day, and then scurried backwards again.

My relationship with books and reading is completely different now.

WHAT CHANGED?

Bookseller Lindsay stocking the shelves Filming “The Laydown Diaries,” the weekly video series presenting new releases in the shop

For the last 10 years I’ve read almost exclusively books that have yet to be published, otherwise known as galleys.

My main responsibility at the store is that I play a big role in picking the books for our First Editions Club. If it’s November, I’m reading for next April. And it never stops, because I need to find a great book for every month of the year. People send books to me constantly. I used to think I got a lot of galleys, but I had no idea what was possible. The downside is I waste a lot of time reading five, 10, 50 pages of things I wind up not finishing.

The great thing about the staff is that we’re always exposing one another to new books and favorite authors. Someone falls in love with a thriller, a middle-grade title, a piece of political nonfiction, and they’re going to push me to read it, because they know I can sell it. And that’s great, because my range is expanding. Sci-fi, dystopian, things I would never touch before, I’ve come to appreciate. The best example was several years ago when our manager Andy Brennan wanted me to read a 500-page galley about surfing called Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan. He said, “I’ve never asked you to read anything.” So I read it, and I really loved it. It went on to win the Pulitzer. We’re still selling that book.

IN THINKING ABOUT TIME, I’M CONTEMPLATING HOW YOUR WRITING CAREER HAS HAD A PATTERN OF SORTS TO IT OVER THE PAST DECADE: WRITE SOME FICTION, THEN A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, THEN FICTION AGAIN, THEN MORE ESSAYS. I don’t feel like there’s any sort of plan in the trajectory of my writing. I know I’ll always write novels, but the essays come as

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more of a surprise. Nonfiction is easier for me than fiction. It’s somewhere between a comfort and a guilty pleasure. During the pandemic, I couldn’t imagine writing fiction, it just wasn’t there for me, so I took solace in essays. Writing about what was going on inside my house and inside my head felt exactly right. I kept looking at my life, the world, and thinking, “Is this an essay?”

I KNOW THAT FEELING. IN THE INTRODUCTION TO THESE PRECIOUS DAYS, YOU WROTE THAT YOU THINK ABOUT DEATH WHENEVER YOU’RE WRITING A NOVEL — BECAUSE IF YOU GET HIT BY A BUS WITH AN UNWRITTEN OR PARTIALLY WRITTEN NOVEL IN YOUR HEAD, ALL THE CHARACTERS DIE WITH YOU. IT MADE ME LAUGH BECAUSE IT’S SO GRIM, BUT IT’S TRUE. DEATH AND LOSS SEEMED TO BE ON YOUR MIND THROUGHOUT THE WRITING OF THESE PRECIOUS DAYS TOO, BUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY. Wasn’t death on everyone’s mind this last year-and-a-half? There was someone on Bowling Avenue who kept a running total of COVID deaths on a handmade sign in their front yard. No commentary, nothing flashy or big, just a number. Sometimes it felt like they must have updated it twice a day. And that’s all they needed to do. Whoever lives in that house kept reminding me that people are dying in the pandemic, but they were also reminding me that eventually, one way or another, we’re all going to be a part of the greater tally. It’s not a bad thing to hold onto, because while keeping your eye on death is heartbreaking, it also has the potential for great joy: We’re here; this is what we have; pay attention; these days are precious.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: THE ESSAY ABOUT YOUR FRIENDSHIP WITH SOOKI RAPHAEL [TOM HANKS’ ASSISTANT, WHOM PATCHETT MET WHILE INTERVIEWING HANKS AT AN EVENT IN 2017 AND WHO DIED IN APRIL OF THIS YEAR], “THESE PRECIOUS DAYS,” PROVIDES THE TITLE OF THE BOOK. DO YOU CONSIDER THAT PIECE THE HEART OF THE COLLECTION? I was just going along writing essays, but once I wrote the essay about my friend Sooki, I knew I wanted to put a book together. In some ways I felt that was the best piece of writing I’d ever done.

Sooki came to stay with us just before the pandemic started. She was someone I barely

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knew, we’d met for just a few minutes two years before and had kept in touch through email. She was looking for a clinical trial for recurrent pancreatic cancer, and the one she needed was at Centennial Hospital, where my husband works.

She thought she’d be here for a few weeks, but once the pandemic came, she was stuck. Sooki and my husband Karl and I were all home together all day. Sooki had cancer, Karl couldn’t go into the hospital, I canceled all my talks. We were so happy together. For so many reasons it was a time of heightened awareness. We knew it wasn’t going to last, but we felt so lucky for what we had.

SHE DID THE COVER ART FOR THE BOOK TOO, DIDN’T SHE? Sooki painted downstairs all day while I was upstairs writing. She was painting what was in front of her or what was in her imagination. She painted me, my dog, herself. She painted the mountains in Topanga where she lived. She worked so hard and so freely. Her work was incredibly vibrant and alive. She gave me two paintings, one of our dog Sparky and one of a woodpecker with a stack of books.

I couldn’t decide which one I wanted on the cover, so I put one on the front and one on the back. She picked the red and the pink for the book jacket. She had such a profound understanding of color. It was her language.

AS THIS BOOK MAKES ITS WAY INTO THE WORLD, THE TIME COMES TO PROMOTE IT. BOOK TOURS HAVE CERTAINLY TAKEN A TURN IN THE PAST YEARAND-A-HALF, THANKS TO COVID. HAVE YOUR OWN FEELINGS ABOUT TOURING CHANGED OVER THE COURSE OF YOUR CAREER? I don’t miss book tour. I don’t miss flying places and sleeping in hotels. What I’ve learned during the pandemic is that I like it at home. I have a very true line of reasoning that’s all about how lucky I am to get to go on book tour — lucky to see my friends in bookstores, lucky that people still want to come out and see me — but it wears me all the way down.

I wonder if I’ve done it long enough.

Maybe the energy I have should go into writing now instead of sales. Maybe I’ve traveled enough. At the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci said, “Only necessary travel,” and I thought, I’m not sure I’ve ever taken a trip in my life that’s been necessary.

People complain about Zoom — and yes, it can be tiresome — but at the end of a Zoom event I get to see my husband and my dog and sleep in our own bed.

YOU’VE CALLED THIS TOWN HOME SINCE YOU WERE 5 YEARS OLD, SO YOU’VE SEEN PLENTY OF NASHVILLE’S PAST. WHAT ARE YOUR WISHES FOR NASHVILLE’S FUTURE? At this point what I wish for Nashville is good stewardship. We’ve had enormous growth. Now we have to think about how to best take care of the people who are here, meaning good schools, good social services.

We have to take care of the land we have left. The city has to deal with so much more than it did when I was a kid, and that means leadership. The pandemic has taught us so many lessons. Here’s hoping we’re learning.

Mary Laura Philpott is the author of I Miss You When I Blink (2019) and Bomb Shelter (forthcoming in April 2022).

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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Teamwork, Making the Dream Work

Parnassus Books managing partner Karen Hayes on a decade of bookstore life

BY MARY LAURA PHILPOTT

MAKING A CAREER PIVOT

SPRINGING FOR THE UPGRADES

I never had the dream of opening a bookstore before 11 years ago. I started working in the book business as a publishing sales rep in 1978. In the 1990s independent bookstores began going out of business one after another. Who would be crazy enough to open a bookstore? On top of that, I lived in Nashville, and the beloved Davis-Kidd Booksellers had been here for decades.

But when Davis-Kidd went out of business too, I did see an opening. I could observe that the majority of stores still left standing around the country were smaller independents. They knew their customers, and their inventories were tailored to their neighborhoods. For the first time, owning a bookstore seemed to be a natural progression for me.

Parnassus has undergone some nice improvements and expansions since its opening. In 2016 we doubled our space from 2,500 square feet to 5,000.

We love having the space to hold larger events in the store. We have had a few events with attendance of over 200 people. What makes me happiest every day is that the children’s section was able to expand. It was and still is the heart of the store.

FINDING A CO-CONSPIRATOR My business partner was the first and best surprise. I had made a list of folks to talk to, hoping to get some investors to help finance the opening of the store. Then I was introduced to Ann, and we meet over lunch at Fido. I told her my ideas for a store and showed her my business plan. Before the lunch was over, she offered to go into business with me. No one could ask for a better partner.

USHERING IN A NEW ERA The biggest difference in bookselling now versus a decade ago is that independents are back! More and more young people are opening stores, which was not the case back then.

FORGING LASTING RELATIONSHIPS I do love the opportunity I’ve had to meet so many great authors, and our customers are amazing, but the booksellers past and present are the reason I love owning a bookstore. They are all smart, caring, quirky in their own ways, and they have become the family this introvert never thought she would have.

LOOKING FORWARD If I could tell people one thing, it would be this simple: Support local businesses. They are what make your city unique. This past year especially has been rough on them. If you want choice and personal service, spend your money with locals, even if that means masking up and getting in a car to go shop. I’m excited to get past this pandemic and start having more author events in person again. And I’ll be glad when the supply chain goes back to normal. Soon, please.

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Brooklyn Bowl on Thursday, where she’ll showcase not just her knack for vulnerability but also an agile voice and melodic approach to crafting pop-country soundscapes. Andress released her debut album, Lady Like, in 2020, and is also known for co-writing hits for artists including Charli XCX, Sam Hunt and Alicia Keys.

Singer-songwriter Georgia Webster, who notched a viral TikTok hit in 2020 with her song “Tell Your Mom,” will open the show.

8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N.

Joel’s “Shameless” and hear something like genius in its transmutation of schlock into art. This week, Brooks plays Thursday night at the Grand Ole Opry House, followed by two nights at the Ryman. He’ll play some of his hits and tell a few stories about how he came up with them. What could be more fascinating than that? 7 p.m.

Thursday at the Grand Ole Opry House, 2804 Opryland Drive; 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. EDD HURT

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MUSIC

FRIDAY / 11.19

HAYES CARLL W/CAROLINE SPENCE

Two decades into a career as an adept of the fabled Texas-to-Nashville singersongwriter tradition, Hayes Carll released his latest full-length You Get It All in October. If you’re hung up on definitions, you might attempt to describe You Get It All as the kind of hybrid music that mainstream Nashville ought to be making.

Carll’s vocals are both wised-up and empathetic, and his songwriterly art is pretty guileful. In the album’s “To Keep From Being Found,” he describes a motel telephone as “the one on which I’m not expecting too many calls from home.” In other words, he’s a humorist with a serious side. You Get It All contains a couple of love songs, which seems appropriate for a married 45-year-old. Still, Carll writes about how things can go very wrong, as you can hear in “Nice Things,” which lands God on earth, where she takes a fishing

GARTH BROOKS

If you’re a Garth Brooks fan, you most likely don’t care what a mere scribe like me has to say about his music. Brooks transcends taste and critical thought, you might think, because he’s been incredibly successful. I’d like to believe this is true, but the notion that any artist escapes close scrutiny simply because their music is omnipresent turns the music in question into a burger from McDonald’s. If you’re a fan of, say, Americana — an authenticity nut who doesn’t believe in pop music — you might find Brooks’ pretensions to superpop insufferable. As one of those scribes who tries to understand the nature of pop music, I feel compelled to say that Brooks has been a positive influence on country.

Of course, he’s also wallowed in schlock and rank emotionalism since he first hit the scene 30 years ago, and he’s partly responsible for turning country into what Americana fans decry today: a version of pop music. But before Brooks, country was still a version of pop — one that was both energized and hobbled by its musical and thematic restrictions. After Brooks, a snob like me — who hates Billy Joel — could listen to Garth’s magnificent 1991 cover of

[OPEN UP AND SAY ‘UHH!’]

NO LIMIT REUNION TOUR FEAT. MASTER P, SILKK THE SHOCKER, MIA X & MORE

In 2021, newer hip-hop fans might know No Limit Records mostly from singles like label founder Master P’s “Make ’Em Say Uhh!” popping up on ’90s throwback playlists — or else for the label’s flamboyant album covers designed by Houston studio Pen & Pixel. But the New Orleans indie was a powerful force in its time, with its artists’ gravitational pull affecting the trajectory of rap. Along with fellow Crescent City label Cash Money and collectives like Atlanta’s Dungeon Family, No Limit is part of why the South is world-renowned as a center for hip-hop. When Snoop Dogg split with Death Row Records, which had released his breakout Doggystyle, he brought his cachet to No Limit in 1998, helping the label grow its influence even bigger. But Master P and the existing crew had tilled the soil already with outstanding records marked by ferocious bars, agile beats and storytelling that resonated on the streets — like Mia X’s Unlady Like, Silkk the Shocker’s Charge It 2 da Game and P’s own Ghetto D and Ice Cream Man. The original No Limit went dormant circa 2003, though a newer incarnation called No Limit Forever launched in 2010. Saturday, a road show with some of those early No Limit

[FEELING IT]

INGRID ANDRESS W/GEORGIA WEBSTER

Ingrid Andress is known for writing confessional, emotive songs, so it’s fitting that the country singer-songwriter would call her latest run of dates the Feeling Things Tour. She’ll bring that tour to

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

[ISLAND IN THE STREAM]

trip in Georgia and ends up getting busted for smoking weed. Co-written with such estimable figures as the Brothers Osborne and Waylon Payne — as well as Carll’s wife, singer Allison Moorer — You Get It All is as well-crafted as Carll’s previous albums. It’s also one of his most musically accomplished, folding in modified Steely Dan blues and outlaw-country stomps. Carll has said he listened to a lot of Kenny Rogers while he was writing the album, and I believe him — You Get It All makes a convincing case for Carll as a pop-influenced inhabitant of an island in the stream of the singer-songwriter continuum. Also appearing will be singersongwriter Caroline Spence. 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. EDD HURT MUSIC

MUSIC

THURSDAY / 11.18

[SHAMELESS]

MUSIC

BRITTNEY MCKENNA

GARTH BROOKS

nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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11/15/21 5:25 PM

CRITICS’ PICKS

[SUGAR DADDY]

WEEKEND CLASSICS: SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG

CRAIG D. LINDSEY

SATURDAY / 11.20 [TURN ON THE BRIGHT LIGHTS]

CHEEKWOOD’S HOLIDAY LIGHTS

As much as I try to resist the dreaded Christmas creep — the merchandising phenomenon that introduces Christmasthemed decor and programming before the traditional start of the holiday shopping season — I must admit I’ve always been a sucker for a big, fat, festive light display.

And as any local will tell you, Cheekwood’s annual Holiday Lights experience is the perfect way to kick off the season.

FORTUNE FEIMSTER Beginning on Saturday, you can grab a hot toddy and stroll the gardens — which are decked out with more than a million glittering lights. While you’re there, you can stop by one of the s’mores pits for a tasty treat, check out the Holiday Marketplace in the Frist Learning Center, or maybe visit the live reindeer. Little ones can even drop off their letters to Santa. Visitors to the historic mansion can also see Manhattan Memories: Soaring Towers and Park Visions of Jefferson Hayman and A.C. Webb — a new exhibition that looks at how “two artists, generations apart, are captivated by New York City.”

Advance timed-entry tickets are required again this year. Visit cheekwood.org for complete details and ticket information.

Through Jan. 9 at Cheekwood, 1200 Forrest Park Drive AMY STUMPFL

PHOTO: NATHAN ZUCKER

COMEDY

It was 50 years ago that Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which screens Friday through Tuesday at the Belcourt, came on the scene as a ballsy, in-your-face provocation. Van Peebles plays a veteran sex worker who goes on the lam from the LAPD after killing two white cops who tried to frame him for murder. Of course, Black audiences responded quite well to Van Peebles and his studly outlaw — the movie had a $150,000 budget and ended up grossing north of $15 million. But the thing people tend to overlook about Sweetback is how it’s also an avant-garde spectacle. From multiple exposures to superimpositions to freezeframes, Sweetback is basically a righteousass art film, the kind of visually psychedelic

CHEEKWOOD’S HOLIDAY LIGHTS

20

shots at herself, organized religion and Southern culture — but she takes pride in who she is and where she comes from too. 6 and 10 p.m. at TPAC’s James K. Polk Theater, 505 Deaderick St. ERICA CICCARONE MUSIC

FILM

STEPHEN TRAGESER

trip that inventive indie filmmakers were churning out regularly back then. (It’s like Van Peebles shot it this way to make sure that it would be a hit in Europe, just in case it didn’t win over U.S. audiences.)

Despite its down-and-dirty artsy-fartsiness, Sweetback basically jumpstarted the Blaxploitation genre and made the late, great Van Peebles (who died in September at age 89) a baadasssss filmmaking icon. Nov. 19-23 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave.

HOLIDAY

soldiers stops in at Municipal Auditorium, with a lineup featuring Mystikal, Silkk the Shocker, Mia X, Fiend, Mercedes, Mr. Serv-On and Master P himself. 8 p.m. at Municipal Auditorium, 417 Fourth Ave. N.

[GROOVE LINE]

POSTER CHILD

Nashville is a music city spilling over with Grateful Dead wannabes, Gram Parsons clones and all manner of chewygranola country-folk-rock enthusiasts. In other words, it’s a city of retro ambitions, and sometimes the combination of Garcia licks and Levon drum kicks can produce some excellent music. Still, if you’re like me and you listen to Chic more than you do Stage Fright or Terrapin Station, you’ll get off on the Nashville disco-funk band Poster Child. The precision of their groove

[SPILL THE TEA-UM]

FORTUNE FEIMSTER: 2 SWEET 2 SALTY

In 2016, as I awaited the headlining comedian, a woman took the stage at Zanies. She wore jeans, a T-shirt and a plaid button-down, and looked just as country as she sounded. Her improbable name — Fortune Feimster — sounded more like it belonged to a minor superhero on a Saturday morning cartoon marketed to young girls than to a stand-up comic. And I saw something heroic in Fortune too. Her jokes were about the contradictions in her identity — growing up gay in a culture that never made it a point to understand gay people, let alone accept them. (Her mother was a debutante intent on turning her tomboy daughter into a “lady.” When Feimster came out to her dad, he earnestly asked her if she would begin wearing a top hat.) I howled through her short set. I caught her again at Zanies — headlining this time on New Year’s Eve in 2016, and was a devotee from there on out. Imagine my pleasure when everyone I knew saw her 2020 Netflix special Sweet & Salty, in which she illuminates a youth filled with almost brazen awkwardness. Throughout the pandemic, she’s kept up a running bit on Instagram wherein she plays the part of a Southern housewife named Brenda who never misses wine o’clock or an opportunity to shout something to her never-seen husband Tim (“Tea-um!”). Fortune takes

POSTER CHILD

recalls the flow of exemplars like Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards. Singer Theresa Gorella — a California native who made the move to Nashville a few years back and figured out creating hedonistic disco was more fun than singing straight country — puts me in mind of the great Cory Daye, who sang with Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band. With South Carolina-born guitarist Andrew Royal providing the Nile Rodgers function, Poster Child writes cheerfully lubricious songs like “Space Camp,” about a science-fiction romance with a space-camp instructor, and “I Need Your Love,” which features Gorella’s imperious vocals. These guys have a concept: I can’t think of another Nashville band that could pull off a track titled “Disco Duck,” which is part of their superb 2019 EP Death Star Cadillac. Their new material, which they’re releasing as singles ahead of a

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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11/15/21 5:25 PM

JANUARY 4

CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE WITH STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES AND FRIENDS

with the Nashville Symphony

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM FEBRUARY 5

2ND SHOW ADDED!

BLACK PUMAS

Enrico Lopez-Yañez, conductor

November 30 & December 1

SERIES PARTNER

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

75 YEARS OF HARMONY

FEBRUARY 9

THE MARSHALL TUCKER BAND ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

This fundraising concert funds our artistic and educational mission.

FEBRUARY 19

December 11

AMERICA

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

MUSIC CITY

Christmas

MARCH 10

with the Nashville Symphony

CHRIS JANSON

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM MARCH 12

JOHN CRIST

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

Enrico Lopez-Yañez, conductor

December 16 to 19

SERIES PARTNER

November 18 to 20

The Muppet Christmas Carol in concert

A Very Dave Barnes Christmas

REVOLUTION: THE MUSIC OF THE BEATLES.

STRINGS ON PARADE WITH JUN IWASAKI

presented without orchestra

December 20

MARCH 25

RUSSELL DICKERSON WITH SPECIAL GUEST BRELAND ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

NO F E ES

December 3 to 5

A SYMPHONIC EXPERIENCE. January 13 to 15

B L A C K F R I D A Y ACT QUICKLY THIS ONLY LASTS THROUGH CYBER MONDAY WITH SUPPORT FROM

NashvilleSymphony.org 615.687.6400 Tickets@NashvilleSymphony.org #NashvilleSymphony nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CRITICS’ PICKS

SUNDAY / 11.21 MUSIC

4210 Charlotte Ave. | 615-678-4086 ottosnashville.com

projected EP called Super Nova, sports slick Steely Dan chord changes and big hooks that will make you smile. All I could ask from Poster Child is a cover of Chic’s “Soup for One” — or maybe “Estimated Prophet.” 9 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. EDD HURT

When it rains, we pour ($6 Margaritas)

True Flavors of Mexico 905 51st Ave N. • Tues. - Sat. 4 pm-close • @elpaseoNashville

UPCOMING EVENTS THURDAY, NOVEMBER 18 6:30PM

PARNASSUS HOLIDAY SPECIAL: VIRTUAL EDITION

PARNASSUS SUBSCRIPTION SHOPBOX OUR DIGITAL CLUBS NOVEMBER CATALOG! SELECTIONS: HOLIDAY

on ZOOM Our best recommendations for your holiday gift giving!

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21 2:00PM - 3:00PM

Country Westerns’ new self-titled foursong EP follows the band’s similarly selftitled debut full-length for Fat Possum. That Country Westerns was a godsend for those of us who were fiending for solid, heartfelt rock ’n’ roll in the middle of last year’s lost summer, but it was also a painful reminder of how much we missed hearing loud music in small rooms with cold beers and good friends. As a result, seeing Country Westerns’ return to the stage in July at Mercy Lounge — playing with Memphis’ Reigning Sound, which sweetened the deal — felt that much more cathartic. On the new EP, singer-guitarist Joey Plunket, bassist Sabrina Rush and drummer Brian Kotzur serve up covers of songs by Dead Moon (“A Miss of You”), Richard and Linda Thompson (“The Wall of Death”) and a deepcut collab between Jad Fair and Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake (“Undeletable”).

But the stopgap EP’s highlight is the lone Country Westerns original “Coming Down,” a gruffly wistful, sneakily catchy midtempo jam that holds its own with the best work of the trio’s sonic forebears Uncle Tupelo and The Replacements. Chicago’s Waltzer and Athens, Ga.’s Blunt Bangs open. 8 p.m. at The Basement, 1604 Eighth Ave. S.

MUSIC

at PARNASSUS So We Meet Again & Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous

[COMMON SENSE]

BRANDY CLARK W/ALEX HALL

A much-honored singer and songwriter who has written for such pop-country artists as Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark is one of the great singer-songwriters of the current era. Her albums, including the fine 2020 release Your Life Is a Record, often sound like countrypop, which means they might come across as a little contrived to country purists. I don’t think there’s anything too slick or

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26

SIGNING with ANN PATCHETT at PARNASSUS These Precious Day THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2 7:00PM

COUNTRY WESTERNS W/WALTZER & BLUNT BANGS

CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

SIGNING with SUZANNE PARK

9:00AM - 12:00PM

[CALLING OVER TIME]

BRENÉ BROWN on ZOOM Atlas of the Heart

mannered about the sonics of Your Life Is a Record, and Clark shows off her smarts by singing a duet with a past master of singersongwriter pop, Randy Newman, on a track titled “Bigger Boat.” Newman’s sardonic bleat meshes with Clark’s almost-country delivery, and the song is political without being overbearing. The rest of Your Life is similarly well-wrought — the emotionalism of Clark’s lyrics never overpowers her commonsense view of life’s vicissitudes.

“Pawn Shop” is situated on Nashville’s glamorous Charlotte Avenue, where a failed songwriter gives up his ax after years of trying to make it in the equally star-studded music business. Meanwhile, “Long Walk” finds Clark taking stock of phonies. She released an expanded edition of Your Life earlier this year — her collaboration with Lindsey Buckingham, “The Past Is the Past,” is a highlight. Also appearing will be singer and guitarist Alex Hall, who released an interesting EP, Six Strings, this year. 8 p.m. at 3rd & Lindsley, 818 Third Ave. S. EDD HURT

MONDAY / 11.22 MUSIC

Cocktails Small Bites Intimate Atmosphere

[AFTER ALL THIS TIME]

RODNEY CROWELL & MARSHALL CHAPMAN

“I write better songs when I let them tell me what they want to be,” Rodney Crowell told the Scene back in July, “when I let them teach me who I am, rather than imposing my will on them.” That’s the approach the legendary songsmith took when making this summer’s Triage, which he co-produced with Dan Knobler. The record opens with “Don’t Leave Me Now,” a deeply vulnerable number that starts with just fingerpicked acoustic guitar and Crowell’s lonesome vocal — before kicking into an Orbison-esque full-band arrangement just past the one-minute mark. Triage is full of stirring moments and poignant lyrics, including those on the poetic “Transient Global Amnesia Blues,” a song inspired by a scary run-in Crowell had with the titular neurological condition. The longtime Nashvillian and Houston native is fine now, thankfully — most cases of transient global amnesia are indeed transient, with the patient making a full recovery and not experiencing such an event again — and on

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7 6:30PM

ANN PATCHETT

with AMOR TOWLES on CROWDCAST These Precious Day THURDAY, DECEMBER 9 6:30PM

PARNASSUS HOLIDAY SPECIAL: IN STORE EDITION at PARNASSUS Our best recommendations for your holiday gift giving!

GET TICKETS & LEARN MORE AT PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENT 3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 ,Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243 Shop online at parnassusbooks.net

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SCAN THE QR CODE OR VISIT: PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/ HOLIDAY-CATALOG-2021

@parnassusbooks @parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks RODNEY CROWELL

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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11/15/21 5:26 PM

818 3RD AVE SOUTH • SOBRO DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE SHOWS NIGHTLY • FULL RESTAURANT FREE PARKING • SMOKE FREE VENUE AND SHOW INFORMATION

3RDANDLINDSLEY.COM

C A N DY C A N E JA N E ' S Roof-top Christmas Pop-Up Bar Heated | BACK FOR 2021

NOW OPEN 209 Printers Alley candycanejanes.com

GREAT MUSIC • GREAT FOOD • GOOD FRIENDS • SINCE 1991 THU

11/8

FRI

11/19

SAT

THIS WEEK

ANOTHER SMITH & SAM EXTRAVAGANZA ROBBEN FORD

8:00

AN EVENING WITH

BACKSTAGE NASHVILLE!

12:30

THE LONG PLAYERS:

8:00

BRANDY CLARK

8:00

THE ROLLING STONES ‘TATTOO YOU’ 11/21 W/ ALEX HALL MON

11/22

Saturday, December 11

FAMILY PROGRAM

SONGWRITER SESSION

10:00 am and 11:30 am

•

FORD THEATER

Carly Pearce

Steve Dean and Bill Whyte NOON – 12:45 pm

•

THE TIME JUMPERS

11/19

8:00

CMA THEATER

•

SOLD OUT

The Soul of Christmas 7:30 pm • CMA THEATER

SONGWRITER SESSION

LIVE IN CONCERT

Bill Anderson’s Co-Writers

Erin Enderlin, Buddy Cannon, and Bobby Tomberlin 11:00 am • FORD THEATER

Saturday, December 4 INTERVIEW AND PERFORMANCE

Bill Anderson FORD THEATER

Thursday and Saturday, December 9 and 11

FRI THE MUSIC OF DON HENLEY AND THE EAGLES 11/26

8:00

RESURRECTION

8:00

PONCÉ

SAT

11/27 SUN

11/28

11/28 PONCÉ

12/5

12/31

A Jazz Celebration of the Allman Brothers Band 8:O0 pm • CMA THEATER

Thursday and Friday, March 10 and 11 LIVE IN CONCERT

Willie Nelson & Family 8:O0 pm

•

CMA THEATER

•

1/16

GUILTY PLEASURES : NEW YEAR’S EVE!

OLIVER WOOD

COMING SOON

Big Band of Brothers

11-29 THE TIME JUMPERS 11-30 BARRY ZITO, TOLAN SHAW, KILEY DEAN : SEED INDIA BENEFIT 12-1 THE RECEPTION : JOE ROBINSON & FRIENDS 12-2 STEF, JON CARYL, & ABE PARKER : TUNED INTO 3RD 12-3 & 4 TIM AKERS’ SMOKING SECTION 12-5 DAVID SHAW W/ THE RIES BROTHERS 12-7 MIKE ZITO W/ HURRICANE RUTH 12-8 SIXWIRE CHRISTMAS SHOW

LIMITED

LIVE IN CONCERT

Keb’ Mo’ 7:30 pm

THE EAGLEMANIACS

THE LONG PLAYERS : THE ROLLING STONES ‘TATTOO YOU’

DAVID SHAW

•

8:00

Mike Farris Sings!

Friday, January 21

•

11/24

W/ SAM HUNTER AND SPECIAL GUESTS BAILLIE & THE BOYS, JENNY GILL

11/20 ROBBEN FORD

FORD THEATER

Saturday, December 4

2:00 pm

WED

LIVE IN CONCERT

LIVE IN CONCERT

•

7:30

Friday, December 17

Thursday, December 2

7:30 pm

AN ALYSSA BONAGURA FRIENDSGIVING

11/23

FEATURED

Friday and Saturday, November 26 and 27

Nashville’s Tradition of Music and Puppetry

TUE

A JOURNEY TRIBUTE

DOWNTOWN

String City

SHANE MCANALLY, CAITLYN SMITH, & MATT JENKINS BENEFITING FOLDED FLAG FOUNDATION

8:00

11/20 DAYTIME HIT SONGWRITERS SHOW

SUN

7:30

CMA THEATER

Check our calendar for a full schedule of upcoming programs and events.

12-9 A BLUE HOLIDAY FEAT. GREG BARNHILL, SHELLY FAIRCHILD, GREG BIECK WITH THE ALL-STAR HOLIDAY BAND 12-10 JONELL MOSSER & FRIENDS 12-11 BETH HART SOLD OUT! 12-14 BENEFIT FOR THE BEAT OF LIFE FEAT. JEFFREY STEELE, BRIDGETTE TATUM, DAMIEN HORNE & MORE 12-16 THE PIANO MEN : THE MUSIC OF ELTON JOHN & BILLY JOEL 12-17 PAT MCLAUGHLIN BAND 12-22 THE CLEVERLYS

12-23 JEREMY LISTER JAZZY CHRISTMAS 12-26 JIMMY HALL & THE PRISONERS OF LOVE 1-8 JEFFREY STEELE BAND 1-14 BARRACUDA : AMERICA’S HEART TRIBUTE W/ CHILD’S ANTHEM: THE MUSIC OF TOTO 1-16 OLIVER WOOD 1-27 CHARLES WESLEY GODWIN 2-10 MCBRIDE & THE RIDE 2-12 LOS COLOGNES 2-24 CLINT PARK

LIVESTREAM | VIDEO | AUDIO Live Stream • Video and Recording • Rehearsal Space 6 CAMERAS AVAILABLE • Packages Starting @ $499 • Cinematic Focus Our partners: Nugs.tv

CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Calendar

Museum Membership Museum members receive unlimited Museum admission, ticket pre-sale opportunities, and much more.

JOIN TODAY: CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Membership

PRIVATE EVENTS

FOR 20-150 GUESTS SHOWCASES • WEDDINGS BIRTHDAYS • CORPORATE EVENTS EVENTSAT3RD@GMAIL.COM

nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CRITICS’ PICKS

[SUCH A NIGHT]

MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: THE LAST WALTZ

Yes, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz is undoubtedly one of the best concert movies ever made. But I would go that extra mile and say it’s also the best Thanksgiving movie. And since the Belcourt is continuing its tradition of screening the film before Turkey Day, it appears the theater agrees with me. Filmed on Thanksgiving Day 1976 at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom and released two years later, Scorsese’s auralvisual feast captures American-Canadian roots-rockers The Band holding a farewell concert, complete with a Thanksgiving dinner for the audience and a revolving door of guest artists (Dylan! Clapton!

Morrison! Young!) popping up onstage to jam. Scorsese rounded up a Murderers’ Row of cinematographers — including Michael Chapman, Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács — to make sure every performance was caught from every angle. The result is quite possibly the most ebullient celebration of people getting together on the holiday ever captured on film. As much as The Last Waltz was The Band’s all-star goodbye to “the road,” it is also the only cinematic swan song that should be played loud. 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY

synonymous Jake and Jamin Orrall’s names are with local underground music — from Jamin’s early days keeping time in Be Your Own Pet to the brothers’ 15-year reign as JEFF the Brotherhood and their indie label Infinity Cat — it barely computes that neither Orrall calls Nashville home anymore. But for one night, JEFF is back.

The band has a raft of great tunes from which to build a set list — from the obstinate skate-punk and guitarmony-heavy power pop of Castle Storm and Heavy Days to the kraut-psych-doom excursions of 2018’s Magick Songs — and an inclination to go allout at local gigs, and so Wednesday’s show promises to be the can’t-miss rock reunion of the season. Genre-smashing rapper Kent Osborne and weird-punk purveyors Snooper — whose set at Memphis’ Gonerfest in September drew rave reviews — support.

8 p.m. at Exit/In, 2208 Elliston Place CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

MUSIC

FILM

Monday he’ll appear at Exit/In alongside another giant of the Nashville songwriting community, Marshall Chapman. It’s an ideal venue for the pair of performers, who came up in the folk and country songwriting scene of the 1970s that was so largely incubated by the now-50-year-old listening room. It’ll be a special spot to watch them play. 7 p.m. at Exit/In, 2208 Elliston Place D. PATRICK RODGERS

[HE’S NOT GONE]

JOHN OATES AND GUTHRIE TRAPP

As half of the pop-rock-soul juggernaut Hall & Oates, John Oates could easily rest on his laurels. But more than 50 years into his fruitful career, he’s still reinventing himself, and finding new outlets to explore his passion for the American roots music that inspired the legendary duo’s evolution.

Now a Nashvillian, Oates released Arkansas in 2018, a delightful album that paid tribute to old-time folk, blues and country and included both original material and some classic tunes written by the likes of Blind

[UNDERSTAND AND DELIVER]

WILLIAM TYLER & MARY LATTIMORE

Six-string traveler William Tyler and harpist extraordinaire Mary Lattimore return to Third Man Records’ Blue Room for Tuesday’s do-over — the show was originally scheduled for the week of the initial pandemic freeze on events in mid-March 2020. They’re playing with avant-garde accordionist Walt McClements assuming guitar-slinger Steve Gunn’s spot from the original bill. Former Nashvillian Tyler’s music has grown increasingly atmospheric as he’s progressed, and Understand, his latest — a collab with Nashville-based pedal-steel-gazer Luke Schneider, whose working relationship with Tyler dates back 20-plus years — verges more on pure ambient than anything in the 41-year-old’s catalog, yet never at the expense of melody.

It’s evocative, cinematic, spellbinding work. 8 p.m. at the Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

MUSIC

WEDNESDAY / 11.24 [BROTHERS GONNA WORK IT OUT]

JEFF THE BROTHERHOOD W/KENT OSBORNE & SNOOPER

Thanksgiving week is a time to break bread with family, but also to visit with chosen family — especially those back in town for the holiday. Given how

24

GUTHRIE TRAPP (LEFT) AND JOHN OATES Blake and Mississippi John Hurt. Among the players on that record was local guitar star Guthrie Trapp, and the two have formed a tight bond over the ensuing years.

“A synergy, a magic happens when Guthrie and I play together,” Oates tells the Scene.

This performance will feature some tunes by the likes of Jimmie Rodgers, Doc Watson, Don Gibson and the aforementioned Hurt, not to mention some of Oates’ original compositions — and of course, there will be some Hall & Oates classics in the mix as well. To get a taste, check out the YouTube livestream Oates and Trapp did in September, which makes a few things clear — Oates’ voice has endured 50-plus years in the music biz surprisingly well, and is a perfect fit for the country blues he favors these days; Trapp is a terrific player, and Oates is a pretty formidable picker himself; and five decades in the grind of the rock music biz have done little to diminish Oates’ enthusiasm for music. 8 p.m. at The Franklin Theatre, 419 Main St., Franklin JACK SILVERMAN

MUSIC

MUSIC

TUESDAY / 11.23

[I WILL FOLLOW]

INHALER

I went in cold to It Won’t Always Be Like This, the debut LP from Irish foursome

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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11/15/21 5:26 PM

THU 11.18  WOLF ALICE

MON 11.22  PUMA BLUE

CANNERY BALLROOM

CRUZA

MERCY LOUNGE

THU 11.18  NIGHT OF ROCK:

MON 11.22  JACKSON WOOTEN

JESSE KRAMER, HER, BEYOND HERE, & THE IVINS

CUJO MOON

THE HIGH WATT

THE HIGH WATT

THU 11.18  HOUSEQUAKE:

WED 11.24  INHALER  SOLD OUT WE

NOVEMBER 2021 EDITION

THE HIGH WATT

MERCY LOUNGE

WED 11.24  CAROLINE POLACHEK:

FRI 11.19  BEACH BUNNY  SOLD OUT

HEART IS UNBREAKING TOUR

MERCY LOUNGE

CANNERY BALLROOM

FRI 11.19  DISNEY POP NIGHT

SUN 11.28  MOM JEANS  SOLD OUT

VIOLET LAVELLE, JENANE, & MORE

ORIGAMI ANGEL, SAVE FACE, & POOL KIDS

THE HIGH WATT

MERCY LOUNGE M

S AT 11.20  ANDREW MCMAHON IN THE WILDERNESS

TUE 11.30  GHOST-NOTE

SAT 11.20  AUGUSTANA: SOLO TOUR

WED 12.1  MAD WELSLEY & ESSY

Nightfall at the Hall AN AFTER-HOURS PARTY FOR TROUBADOUR MEMBERS

MERCY LOUNGE

CANNERY BALLROOM

DJ A LEE

MERCY LOUNGE

THE HIGH WATT

SAT 11.20  HADLEY KENNARY EP RELEASE SHOW

THU 12.2  THE DRIVER ERA  SOLD OUT THE WRECKS

THE HIGH WATT

CANNERY BALLROOM

FRI. 11/19

MON. 11/22

Disney Pop Night

Jackson Wooten

The High Watt · Violet LaVelle, Jenane, & more

cujo moon · the high watt

FEATURING A PERFORMANCE BY

HANNAH DASHER BEER • WINE • LIGHT BITES

SAT. 11/20

Hadley Kennary EP Release Show the high watt

SAT.11/30 2/23 TUE.

kendrick vs drake Ghost-Note

presented by joco shows · mercy mercylounge lounge

DECEMBER 7, 2021 6:00 – 9:00 pm BECOME A TROUBADOUR MEMBER

MON. 11/22 Puma Blue

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nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CRITICS’ PICKS

Adult

INHALER Inhaler, and found the 11-song set to be a solid slice of modern alt-rock in the vein of Muse, Foals and other across-the-pond bands who’ve always written songs for big spaces, even when they were still playing small ones. It turns out 22-year-old frontman Elijah Hewson’s dad is none other than Paul Hewson — better known as Bono — and you certainly don’t have to strain your ears to hear the vocal similarities passed from father to son on fiery, emotive tunes like “My Honest Face” and “When It Breaks.”

Hats off to the young buck, though, for his fearlessness in even entering this arena, let alone asserting himself this well from the jump. That said, my pick from Inhaler’s still-small discography is the tune least reminiscent of his old man’s band — the 2018 single “I Want You,” a shoegazey and propulsive number that could easily pass for a tune from a great, lost early-’90s Manchester band. The show — which lands just a few days after the 30th birthday of U2’s Achtung Baby — is now sold out.

8 p.m. at The High Watt, 1 Cannery Row CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

FUTUREPHILIA SEX AND SCIENCE FICTION IN CONTEMPORARY ART

OPEN THROUGH NOV. 28 MAIN STREET GALLERY 625 MAIN ST., NASHVILLE Curated by Laura Hutson Hunter

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EVERGREEN:

THINGS YOU CAN DO ANY TIME ART

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SEE KINDRED LINKS AT THE PARTHENON

A friend recently reminded me of a piece published in The New York Times Magazine by Colson Whitehead shortly after 9/11. In it, the Pulitzer Prize winner writes about a New York that is both personal and universal. Residents mourn the shuttered pizzeria and the coffee shop turned pharmacy, but what’s built in their stead will close someday too and also be mourned. “Thousands of people pass that storefront every day,” Whitehead writes, “each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing.” It’s an essay that Nashvillians need now as we continue to grapple with our place here, and it pairs nicely with an exhibition in the East Gallery of The Parthenon. Kindred Links by Omari Booker and Henry L. Jones surveys the North Nashville community and investigates the impact of gentrification on the heritage of the historically Black neighborhood.

According to Booker, the collective work is “an exploration of the global microcosm that is North Nashville. Our intention is that, by entering the community through the doorways of history, ancestry, family and legacy, you will engage in conversations that highlight its past, illuminate its present, and reclaim its future.” The exhibition includes paintings, a documentary by local filmmaker Lesa Dowdy and found objects collected by Jones from a demolition site on North Nashville’s Monroe Street. “Our streets are calendars containing who we were and who we will be next,” writes Whitehead. The exhibition invites us to see part of the city through the eyes of these two artists and broaden our view. Through Feb. 13 at The Parthenon, 2500 West End Ave. ERICA CICCARONE

BOOKS/TV

“50 WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR BODY,” BENJY RUSSELL

PHOTO: DAN KENNY

Contemporary

[CHROMOSOME IS WHERE YOU MAKE IT]

READ/WATCH Y: THE LAST MAN

Comic books always seem to get the short end of the stick when it comes to television adaptations. First there was I’m Not Okay With This, then Jupiter’s Legacy, and now FX’s adaptation of Y: The Last Man — the latest comic book adaptation to be canceled after just one season. Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s postapocalyptic saga takes place in a world where a catastrophic phenomenon killed everyone with a Y chromosome. The only survivors of this event are Yorick, an amateur escape artist, and his pet monkey Ampersand. To find the cause of the event, the two must navigate a new and hostile world. As with any adaptation, there are some notable differences between the comics and the show, particularly the show’s redefinition/inclusion of gender as a spectrum rather than as a binary. Y: The Last Man’s well-rounded characters and riveting storyline not only make it one of the best series from Vertigo (DC Comics’ defunct imprint), but also make it worthy of the three Eisner Awards the series won throughout the book’s complete run.

KAHWIT TELA

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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The Phila Awards Nominations are now open!

Celebrate the life of Phila Rawlings Hach by honoring those people and organizations continuing her legacy of using food and cooking virtuously

The Nation United

The Ruth

Celebrates a person, group, or organization using food to bring people together to discuss issues related to justice, equity, and inclusion.

Celebrates a person, group, or organization that uses food to inspire, empower and support women seeking a better future.

The Patti Myint

The Serving Spoon

Celebrates the person, group, or organization that best exemplifies Patti Myint and Phila’s spirit for using their cooking skills to improve, assist, and support their community.

Celebrates a person, group, or organization that uses food to address hunger, food insecurity, and selfsufficiency.

NOMINATIONS CLOSE NOVEMBER 21 www.thephilas.com

PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

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NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

FOOD AND DRINK

IT IS TIME TO MEET … THE CONTINENTAL Two food critics weigh in on Sean Brock’s fine-dining spot at the Grand Hyatt

BY ASHLEY BRANTLEY AND STEVE CAVENDISH

Ashley: Let’s start with the atmosphere. It’s fairly impeccable: upscale yet comfortable, modern with retro roots, a killer bar that feels far from Broadway despite being at the head of it. And it avoids the problems that plague many Nashville hotel restaurants: 1.

It doesn’t feel like it’s been plopped in a lobby (see: Decker & Dyer in The Westin, or Yolan in The Joseph, which seems to have spent more money on art and fixtures than most hotels do in their whole buildings); and 2. it’s not so hidden away that guests may miss it, like the also stunning, Mad Men-chic Ellington’s at Fairlane Hotel. Other than the valet setup — which comps two hours despite it taking a full three to dine there — I think the vibe is pretty flawless. How did it strike you?

Steve: I won’t dwell on the valet situation except to say after standing there 20 minutes after you left, a kid informed me that he “was trying to find your car.” We made it home eventually. Other than that, the setting is pretty wonderful. It’s clear Sean Brock and his hotel partners very much want you to feel like you’re in a different era of dining service — one where carts roll out food tableside while you luxuriate on crushed-velvet banquettes, sipping on something smart from the bar. I kept waiting for it all to feel very twee, but it never did. My calibrations are so out of whack from the pandemic — and 18 months of takeout and fast-casual — that I may be incapable of processing what high-end fine dining is supposed to be anymore. It’s a testament to the staff’s general graciousness that I never felt out of place.

Ashley: Graciousness is spot-on. The staff is on it. And with the tone they’re setting and prices they’re charging (which are completely in line with Nashville fine dining), they should be. My guess is that 95 percent of diners and pretty much every out-of-towner leaves wowed. That’s key considering that hospitality director Sarah Hong says tourists make up half of their bookings, and many people travel to Nashville specifically to dine there (which I’m sure pleases Grand Hyatt mightily).

THE CONTINENTAL 1000 BROADWAY THECONTINENTALNASHVILLE.COM

The one thing I will say is that, while I love the white-glove vibe and tableside pomp, there is no room for deviation from the script. The servers can tell you which local farm the meat or produce came from, and why this forgotten technique is so important to Chef Brock, but it can feel a bit rote, especially on a return visit. One thing I love about Bastion or The Catbird Seat (both on par with this price and experience level) is that you get to engage with the chefs, who are more than happy to get into a story about how they stumbled on this whiskey or why this bologna sandwich changed their lives. At Tailor, which is also necessarily scripted, chefowner Vivek Surti’s stories change with each season and menu. So that’s the one drawback of the more formal, server-driven world for me. But I imagine most diners won’t give that a second thought.

Steve: The menu is a prix-fixe affair.

Basically, you choose a main and a dessert and then settle in for the three-hour show.

Comically, I almost made 8:30 reservations, at which point my bride would have slept through the second half of dinner on that very plush banquette. Now there are a number of, shall we say, enhancements, which may be made at various points in the meal: Imperial golden Russian osetra caviar for $175 per ounce, anyone? Burgundy truffles shaved tableside for $45 per half-ounce? If I hit the Powerball, I may return for those fish eggs, but on the Scene’s dime, we passed.

[Editor’s note: THANKS.] The opening salvo is a perfect oyster bite, a single shellfish loaded with accoutrements, including some non-Russian caviar that was nevertheless delicious. This was followed by a tuna terrine and a small mushroom course featuring hen-of-the-woods that might have been my favorite thing all night — it was just layers of subtle complexity.

Ashley: I enthusiastically cosign that mushroom course — it was somewhere be-

WILD HALIBUT WITH POTATO SCALES tween soup and chawanmushi, hitting all the earthy, salty, umami notes that mushroom soup brings to mind, but much more nuanced. The terrine was a miss for me, which is a bummer because the presentation and description were enticing: sweet potato — in confit and chip form, dusted with lime powder — and bluefin tuna during the short season they gorge themselves on sardines as they swim north, so they’ve got extra minerality and a deep-red color. But the dish lacked flavor and was room temperature, which is a choice, but not one I’d make with raw fish of that caliber. I did enjoy their signature salad — pickled onions, grassy greens, buttermilk dressing, everythingcrusted “alligator pear,” which is a hilarious term for an avocado that I was delighted to learn. But the second real showstopper behind that mushroom course was the pâté en croûte cart.

Now, I am not a girl for whom any old pâté does the trick, but The Continental’s braised beef, venison and root veggie version was a meat orgy inside a pastry party, and it left me sat-is-fied. Part of that comes from how it’s made: Chef de cuisine Colin Shane explained (later via email, not tableside) that they bake the shell first and then fill it with the warm meat mixture. That allows the natural juices to help seal the crevices, binding everything without making the pastry soggy. Then they finish the plate with onion compote, fruit catsup, and a port wine gelée I’d like to mix with a COVID booster and inject everyone with — it was all outstanding, down to the darkly adorable deer plate it’s served on.

Steve: The different catsups with the pâté en croûte was the only part of the service that made me roll my eyes a little. Yes, by all means, please bake all of this delicious organ meat inside of a flaky crust, but the whole bit about catsups of yore being different than the monopoly the Heinz corporation has on things today was a little much. You had me at “onion

compote.” I will slather that on a piece of cardboard and be content, there’s no need to gild the lily with narrative about old-world hotel service. You’ve already got me! I’m here!

My complaining aside, the pâté en croûte, the terrine and even the salad were wonderful displays of technique. I’m sorry some sous chef has carpal tunnel from individually studding all of the seeds on that avocado, but their pain is definitely our gain. The same with whoever was responsible for the delicate knife cuts for the carrots on top of the pâté slices.

My guess is that there are more than a few sets of tweezers at work in the kitchen.

Ashley: There was a catsups-of-yore section?! I totally missed that, which is good since I believe Heinz is flawless, Hunt’s is garbage, and all “house-made ketchups” can kick rocks. Condiment detour done, let’s talk mains. After a couple visits, I’ve ordered two entrées and tasted all four, so I know where my loyalties lie. What was your top choice after tasting them all?

Steve: So, the four mains in rotation currently are the prime rib — sliced tableside and smothered in a luscious au jus — a roasted chicken with sunchokes, venison medallions with sauce Roanne (a super French preparation) and wild halibut with potato scales. Shockingly, I preferred the fish above all of them. The potato scales are just beautiful little rounds that have been torched crisp on top of a truly wonderful piece of fish. I enticed my wife to join us by promising her the prime rib, and I would have bet good money that it would be my favorite. But the fish on a bed of lentil puree and ras el hanout was just subtly magnificent. The only reason I ordered it was because the rest of the table took all of my other options, and yet I was rewarded with greatness. And you?

Ashley: That is a surprise! But I did snag a bite of your fish, and I agree the dish was excellent: crispy, juicy, creamy, light. It was a nice surprise, because my husband got the

nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

A

fter centering his empire in Nashville and then waiting out the pandemic, Sean Brock opened his new place at the Grand Hyatt, The Continental, earlier this summer with an emphasis on classic service and technique. If Joyland is Brock’s take on casual and the newly opened Audrey is a modern look at Appalachian food, The Continental is intended to pay tribute to the grand hotel restaurants of yesterday, with smartly dressed servers pushing carts of food inside a soaring, luxurious space. We based this review upon multiple visits.

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11/15/21 5:19 PM

PRIME RIB CART

ROASTED CHOCOLATE WITH BANANA AND MAPLE fish last time we were there, and it wasn’t as successful (which I think was a one-off). The most recent time I had the chicken, it was served with luscious roasted sunchoke, tart green mandarins, and Belgian endive that got slightly over-charred. The pan sauce was everything it should be — the rich, salty essence of a bird on the plate — but I think the ballotine-ish presentation of the chicken (deboned but reconstructed) was a lot of trouble for little payoff. Still, the flavor was good.

I guess that leaves me carrying the redmeat mantle, which I do gladly. The prime rib is simply perfect. I got it on my first visit, and I ate every morsel of fat, dragging each bit of marbled meat through every drop of jus.

It was a primitive, vanity-free performance that should’ve gotten my public-dining privileges revoked. But on this visit, I have to say, I think my husband’s venison held its own.

Contributor Chris Chamberlain got an early description of the dish for the Scene back in May: “a venison dish with deer sourced from the same Broken Arrow Ranch in Texas that was on Brock’s opening menu way back when at the Hermitage. The deer meat is larded with Iberico ham and served with white asparagus and a sauce Roanne, one of Paul Bocuse’s specialties made with butter and foie gras.”

A sauce that’s made with butter and foie gras? You might as well take a caulk gun to your arteries, but it is worth it. Obscene idea, flawlessly executed. The sauce work at The Continental smacks of old-school decadence, and I am all in.

Steve: The prime rib is indeed great. It was more mellow than I was expecting, as a lot

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of prime rib tends to have a strong flavor on the front end (because of overly salty jus) with a mellow flavor to finish. This just kind of melts in your mouth in a close-your-eyesand-savor-it kind of way. We haven’t even mentioned the bread, a cubed take on Parker House rolls that were stellar. The temptation is to slather them with the butter that’s provided and consume them in the conventional way. But at The Continental, I think the better strategy is to use them as a delivery vehicle for each of the expert sauces on the main courses. Soaked in that sauce Roanne from the venison, every bite turns into a complete umami bomb. When my wife got up for a minute, I stole about half of the jus from her prime rib (along with half of her roll).

They were so expertly made — a little crust on the outside, pillowy soft inside — that I would pay the prix-fixe price for a half-dozen or so rolls and each of the sauces as a main course. Ridiculous? Tell me you wouldn’t do the same.

Ashley: Agreed. And I think the fact that you were dragging your wife’s bread through my husband’s sauce after he got up for a minute just proves how The Continental breeds and breaks down propriety at once. A final note before we move to sweets: Savor the sides. On my first visit I had summer squash in sweet Leysa pepper sauce with aromatic vadouvan that was one of my favorite bites of that night. This time around, we got roasted honeynut squash (a varietal of butternut that’s bred to have less water and a stronger flavor) with sauces of black walnut and smoked squash, zaatar and praline leafshaped garnishes. You can keep your PSL;

this is my kind of fall food.

Next up is the “cream ice cart intermezzo,” which is a fancy way to say a simple, perfect palate cleanser. Vanilla custard is frozen tableside, in some way that’s true to how ice cream was first served during the 19th century but looks a lot like liquid nitrogen to bozos like me. It’s topped with tart cranberry ice and a juicy pear sauce, and the rich, sweet mix of flavors is clear and balanced. The confidence on display is no surprise if you’re familiar with Brock’s pastry directors: Keaton Vasek and Michael Werrell, who are both graduates of the Culinary Institute of America and veterans of Eleven Madison Park.

Steve: For those of you keeping track, I think that’s four different carts that rolled up to our table. I enjoyed the ice cream as a palate cleanser and I was surprised at how much I loved the pear sauce — it was sweet, but not cloying like some pear desserts. The real stars were Vasek and Werrell’s next course. What looked like just a quenelle of ice cream in a bowl of white fluff turned out to be my favorite chocolate-and-banana combo ever. The chocolate was rich and smooth and sat in a pile of banana foam with frozen yuzu granita. For every bad foam I’ve ever tried in the past 20 years, this is the one I’ve been waiting for. Light enough to be a contrast with the thick ice cream, but still with enough heft that it didn’t just float away. My gosh it was good.

It’s funny that you use the word “confidence,” because so much plated pastry work at high-end restaurants requires a minor in studio art to pull off. Swirls of sauce become improvised modern art on a plate when, really, all I want is a couple of perfect sweet bites without the gold leaf making something shiny. To put this bowl in front of customers who have come to expect these over-the-top presentations shows real maturity. This was a bowl of eyes-rolling-backwards pleasure. I know you loved the “apple cider” more, but this was just heaven.

Ashley: I actually loved both! My dessert looked more avant-garde — perfect circular apple-butter beignets, vanilla-mousse and apple-sherbet spheres, clarified apple cider.

But it played up classic tastes — warm fried dough, fresh sharp apples. Pure comfort food. My husband eventually tasted mine and declared he liked it better, at which point I tasted his chocolate-and-banana dish and declared I liked it better. But what our flip-

PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS

FOOD AND DRINK

floppery actually shows is that Vasek and Werrell are so damn good they give themselves a run for their money. Best desserts in town right now.

Steve: So who is going to The Continental?

The bill for the four of us, including gratuity, was north of $700. Because it’s in a luxury hotel, I get that more than half the clientele will be from outside Nashville. I feel like there’s a small-scale arms race among Nashville hotels to put star chefs on their marquees to attract destination diners: Jean-Georges Vongerichten at the Hermitage, Tony Mantuano in The Joseph, Michael Mina in the JW Marriott. Putting Sean Brock’s name on The Continental is sure to bring some folks in, although I have to admit that this meal struck me as less Brockish than other restaurants he has launched.

What would make you come back?

Ashley: That’s the big question. To me, it feels like a place most locals will go once for the experience, then return to a year or two later, likely when they’ve got guests in town.

And that’s fine. I can see myself taking my in-laws there precisely because dining there is an event, and the bar for entry isn’t as high as, say, the snail eggs I’ve had at Catbird (though you could possibly eat at Catbird cheaper at this point). And I agree with you: The meal isn’t as obviously Brock-ian as his other ventures, which is ironic considering his name has probably never been pushed quite so hard as a selling point. But you can still feel his attention to detail, commitment to Southern products and history, and desire to create a specific experience, which I think will set The Continental apart.

Steve: I think, ultimately, Brock groupies are going to seek out Audrey reservations over The Continental if they’re looking for more of the chef’s vision, but The Continental is an interesting piece of restauranting. It would have been really easy (and probably more profitable) for the Grand Hyatt to opt for some kind of steakhouse in this space. I’m grateful that they didn’t, and Brock’s take on classic dining is really interesting and pleasurable. Having a menu this locked down — four mains, limited choices — has given the staff license to push great technique, and it absolutely shows. I’d like to return in a year and see if the vision and execution are still as laser focused, but The Continental, to me, is a unique experience that everyone should try at least once.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CULTURE

PLEASE COME DOWN

Pod Goals: Adia Victoria’s Call and Response is a study of Southern identity

E

ach episode of Adia Victoria’s podcast Call and Response opens with a letter. Victoria, a locally based musician with a far broader following, shares a personal anecdote with each guest — one that connects with a parCALL AND RESPONSE ticular guest’s body IS AVAILABLE ON APPLE PODCASTS, SPOTIFY OR of work and with VicWHEREVER YOUR FAVORITE toria’s own roots as a PODCASTS ARE FOUND Black woman from the South. The show itself is billed as drawing upon the “blues tradition of communal music making and listening,” and Victoria’s letters set the tone for the often vulnerable, farreaching conversations that follow.

In the Season 2 finale, Victoria writes to New Orleans bounce icon Big Freedia: “Dear Big Freedia: This past summer my family celebrated our vaccinated status with a barbecue at my mother Ms. Jackie’s house. It was the first time in over a year we would all be together again, and I already knew what the event would entail.”

Victoria goes on to offer rich details of her family’s barbecues, including her brother Omari’s dry-rubbed ribs, which “make you want to slap yourself,” and the sound of Earth, Wind & Fire records, among other traditions. She adds: “In the South, home isn’t just a house. It is a way of knowing and being known,” before sharing some of the ways Big Freedia, too, has created home and community. “You create church when you give context to Black, Southern stories,” she tells Big Freedia, a sentiment that mirrors the work Victoria herself has done through her music, most recently this year’s acclaimed LP A Southern Gothic.

Call and Response debuted in April of this year, and since then has produced 21 episodes in two seasons. (Four episodes in the first season were recorded live at this year’s Newport Folk Festival.) Guests have included fellow musicians Rhiannon Giddens and Kamasi Washington, poet Caroline Randall Williams, author Kiese Laymon, sociologist and MacArthur fellow Tressie McMillan Cottom and hip-hop scholar Regina N. Bradley.

Victoria got the gig after hosting a radio program for high-end audio equipment maker Sonos, which often taps artists — Thom Yorke and Brittany Howard among them — to DJ a set featuring their favorite songs. Soon after, Sonos got back in touch with Victoria to offer her the chance to host a show of her own.

“I just had so much fun, you know, sharing music and pretending to be a DJ,” Victoria tells the Scene. “They came back and they’re like, ‘We’re actually trying to launch a music and culture podcast. We can link you up with a team and brainstorm up some ideas for a podcast.’ ” Victoria then began working with producers Scott Newman and Jemma Rose

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Brown, both of whom ultimately contributed to Seasons 1 and 2 of Call and Response. “We started thinking about what we wanted to do and what we wanted the show to be,” Victoria explains. “And I was like, ‘I don’t want it to just be me having people on the program to talk about their new record, or, you know, new music that’s out. I would like this to be rooted in the blues, like call and response, and to be more of a communal, intimate space for artists to talk not just about their music but about the land that they’re from.’ ” Call and Response launched with an episode featuring Giddens, another MacArthur fellow known for, among myriad other accomplishments, her work as a singer-songwriter-instrumentalist and her place in the groundbreaking roots band Our Native Daughters. The pair talks about music, but also about the history of the banjo, the whitewashing of American music and how, as Giddens puts it, “Nostalgia is a killer of truth.”

“Being a musician, when you go to do press, you’re often asked the same questions over and over again,” Victoria says.

“But there are always a few interviews during your promotion cycles that spark interest, or the journalist seems genuinely interested in you as a human being. So, I wanted to be that outlet. If you have to do this 50 times, I hope this one time is actually enjoyable for you.”

When asked to pinpoint a particularly memorable episode, Victoria cites her conversation with Jason Isbell, which aired as the second episode of Season 2. As with Victoria’s conversation with Giddens, her talk with Isbell turns to nostalgia, this time in the wake of the removal of a Confederate monument in Richmond, Va. “It was the first time that I’ve heard someone of [Isbell’s] background talking frankly and openly and with vulnerability about the root white Southern male anxiety,” she says. “I always had a hunch that what he was talking about, you know, why Southern white men act the way they do, why they’ve done the things they do, what lies beneath that cruelty — to hear one of them come out and say it, which is, in a way, a class and race betrayal, was huge to me. And I hope that it gave people like him [who were] listening the heart to go out and express it and put a voice to that same feeling. Start speaking about the fact that the reason you want your guns so much is because you’re terrified.

You’re not terrified of the border and you’re not terrified of ‘the outsider.’ You’re terrified of yourself and your own human experience and your own overwhelming feeling of inadequacy.”

At the end of the day, Call and Response — while no doubt steeped in music and the culture of the blues — is, as with the bulk of Victoria’s work, a study of Southern identity.

Accordingly, her opening letters are more

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

“BUT THERE ARE ALWAYS A FEW INTERVIEWS DURING YOUR PROMOTION CYCLES THAT SPARK INTEREST, OR THE JOURNALIST SEEMS GENUINELY INTERESTED IN YOU AS A HUMAN BEING. SO, I WANTED TO BE THAT OUTLET.” than just scene-setting; they themselves are a nod to Southern culture.

“Sure, it gives a little context, and sets the listener up to know what they can anticipate from this conversation,” she says of the letters. “But it’s also manners. I’m from the South. It’s just polite, to me, to properly invite someone into your space.”

Check out the rest of our ongoing Pod Goals series: Versify, Cocaine & Rhinestones: The History of Country Music, Mirror Mirror, Something’s Not Right, The Promise, Nashville Sounding Board, My Fantasy Funeral, Off Ice, Ladyland, Salute the Songbird and The Hills Are Alive.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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11/15/21 5:18 PM

BOOKS

WHERE NASHVILLE WORKS

SLOW VIOLENCE, THEN AND NOW Rob Nixon discusses writers, activists and the challenges of the Global South

BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN

A

chemical explosion in Bhopal, India. The extraction of natural resources from the Niger Delta in Nigeria.

Cluster bombing in the Middle East. The threat of massive evacuation SLOW VIOLENCE AND THE of the Maldives due ENVIRONMENTALISM OF to global climate THE POOR

BY ROB NIXON change. In his 2011 HARVARD UNIVERSITY book, Slow Violence PRESS and the Environ368 PAGES, $23 mentalism of the NIXON WILL DISCUSS HIS BOOK AT A VIRTUAL LECTURE Poor, Rob Nixon 6 P.M. THURSDAY, NOV. 18, chronicles such VIA THE UNIVERSITY OF crises across the MEMPHIS Global South, while also examining how writers can serve as activists, dramatizing these plights to compel action.

Nixon is the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Family Professor in the Humanities and the Environment at Princeton University.

He is the author of four books, including Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and Fortune, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor won a host of prizes, including the American Book Award.

Nixon answered questions via email.

What is “slow violence”? How can it help us understand issues of environmental justice? By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all. For example, climate breakdown, toxic drift, oil spills and Agent Orange. Slow violence is pertinent to environmental justice because the incremental unfolding of threats to human and environmental health is experienced unequally by wealthy and impoverished communities. Time can become a kind of camouflage for long-term damage to society’s most vulnerable, whose full humanity is routinely discounted by developers, politicians and global corporations.

The book analyzes the works of a wide variety of writer-activists, such as Ken Saro-Wiwa and Arundhati Roy. Obviously, their activism shaped their writing. Did their writing shape their activism? Yes, I believe so. Being both a writer and an activist is a difficult balancing act.

The former requires long stretches of immersive solitude, while the latter requires sustained engagement with [nongovernmental organizations], politicians, community groups. It takes great energy and courage to sustain both a writerly privacy and a public-facing, collaborative presence.

You credit the American writer Rachel Carson, author of the famous book Silent Spring, as an inspiration. What can Carson’s example teach us? Because of her familial responsibilities

as a caregiver and breadwinner, Carson never had the chance to complete a Ph.D. That fact, plus the profound prejudice she suffered as a woman scientist (at a time when only 1 percent of tenured scientists in the U.S. were women), shaped her public profile. She had to persuade the American public that the post-WWII proliferation of chemicals — in agriculture, in the home, in the workplace — constituted an unprecedented hazard. But she had to do so while maintaining a calm exterior, given that her corporate adversaries readily dismissed her as a “hysterical” woman. Carson’s success in influencing environmental legislation is a reminder of the value of clear writing and of persistence, no matter what the odds.

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Your mentor was Edward Said, the cultural critic, literary scholar and founder of the field of postcolonial studies. How did Said shape your own approach as a scholar and writer?

He made me less parochial as a thinker and more determined to engage in public-facing writing. At the time — this was the 1980s at Columbia — deconstruction was in vogue.

But Said refused to indulge in the involuted prose, the impenetrable thickets of intellectual self-involvement, that were pervasive at that time. Said, like Carson, was brave in the face of great adversity. He also exposed me, for the first time, to the politics of the Palestinian struggle. Having left South Africa as a political exile, I was immediately struck by the many painful half-echoes between the discrimination leveled against Palestinians and Black South Africans.

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor was originally published in 2011. Have any developments in the past decade reinforced or reshaped your thinking on the issues that you tackled in the book? First, COVID-19 has brought to the fore the way structural inequities can become a form of slow violence. Preexisting vulnerabilities — from, say, racist zoning laws — disproportionately burden minority communities. With COVID, those preexisting vulnerabilities result in another layer of unequal health risks. Second, it is encouraging to see that the current EPA seeks to outlaw so-called “forever chemicals,” which permeate the nation’s water supply. Third, as the scholar Mary Merton notes, all violence — both slow and rapid — places an extra burden on women, who are typically landed with the role of primary caregiver. Whether we’re talking about the intergenerational fallout from Agent Orange or the enduring challenges suffered by COVID long-haulers, it’s women who are most often saddled with the slow work of rehabilitating the physically and psychologically wounded.

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

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11/15/21 5:27 PM

ART

SEEING STARS

Talking with legendary painter Judith Linhares about disaster, space and the future

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

When I was conceptualizing this show, I was considering the galaxy and the vastness of space as this thing we return to in times of crisis. I was living in New York during 9/11, and it’s silly but I remember getting really into Star Trek right after it happened, and I noticed it was like a phenomenon among my friends — looking toward the future. I could see the interest shift too. Basically, I think that when you need to recalculate, you go inward, and that’s where your imagination starts to work. Reconstructing a new world right after a trauma — I can see little indications of it all over the place. I’ve never really been interested in science fiction, but I recently discovered Octavia Butler, who I think is just brilliant beyond. I think of her as being so relevant to the present. But I will say — I’m totally in love with the Frankenstein story. That has been a constant in my whole life — there’s something in that narrative for us. We’re asked to be sympathetic with the monster, and he’s been created just because Dr. Frankenstein could — with no projection into the future of what his life would be like. So there are all these moral implications that are still with us.

Absolutely. So Octavia Butler and Mary Shelley, who was of course the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft — these are all very strong feminist voices.

Yes. I think it’s really crucial and interesting and germane that it was a woman that invented that story.

Can you tell me a little about the influence of the Funk movement in your work? Actually, I don’t identify with Funk.

Oh really? Did you ever, at any point? Well, the story of the Bay Area artists has never fully been told. I grew up in an era when the civil rights [movement] was all around me. Basically, nobody went to school because everybody was in the streets all the time. There were a lot of incredible women artists that are just coming to light now. I mean, Jay DeFeo was a good friend. And Linda Montana is a performance artist who was all around doing performances, and came to my class and did performances with the class. And Bonnie

34

“STAR-LIGHT,” JUDITH LINHARES COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND P.P.O.W., NEW YORK.

I

was lucky to be able to include a painting by New York-based artist Judith Linhares in the Scene-presented exhibit I curated, Futurephilia: Sex and Science Fiction in Contemporary Art. “Star-Light” is a small jewel of a painting that shows FUTUREPHILIA: SEX AND SCIENCE FICTION IN three women, naked CONTEMPORARY ART but not sexualized, THROUGH NOV. 28 AT gazing at the moon. I MAIN STREET GALLERY, was even luckier to 625 MAIN ST. spend an afternoon chatting with Linhares, whose career has spanned five decades. We were both in New York during 9/11 — she was a teacher at NYU, where I was a student — and although our paths had never crossed before this discussion, our conversation was bookended with references to that shared, familiar trauma.

Sherk, who ran for mayor.

So these were my years. I had not much to do with the Funk generation. And anybody that’s from the Bay Area gets labeled as Funk because that’s the only available label, really.

So it’s a story that needs to be told, and it’s very interesting now that there’s a show at Paula Cooper, with Bruce Conner and Jay DeFeo. I feel like it’s maybe the beginning of a fleshing out of that moment. I feel like being from the West and the West Coast certainly formed my identity in a way that’s really different from the people who are my friends in New York. They have much more connection to Europe, for example, and much more realized ideas about World War II and the aftermath. Those dialogues are not as present on the West Coast. It is a different culture.

I’d never thought of that, about the attachment to World War II as an East Coast thing. It shows up in New York, it’s still alive in New York.

The attachment to Abstract Expressionism and those sort of aesthetic values is much stronger in New York then they are in California, for better or for worse. I mean, I left California because I wanted more connection with history and with those languages and those thoughts, but I still acknowledge that I was really formed by the West Coast.

In my experience with being from the South, location really does form your identity early on.

And I’ve noticed of course that you never feel more Southern than when you’re not in the South.

Right! You’re always an outsider, especially in New York.

Your artwork in Futurephilia involves a situation, a theme, that you return to. It’s surprising to me that you’re not interested in science fiction, because some of your work is so star-gazy. So I’d like to talk about the formal qualities of the work, and then the symbolism of its content. Your color, obviously, is so strong. You can use contrasting colors with a really light touch, which is unusual.

Formally, there are all these stripes happening, and it’s almost like you’re setting a stage for these people to act on. It’s important for me that the painting happens in the process. If I have an idea ahead of time, it usually just doesn’t work out for me. So I do a lot of smaller studies. This is a smaller one, and I actually did a giant version of it. And often I work on the studies and the big paintings simultaneously. But often the small works are so great,

because the size of the brush in relation to the format is much bigger, and that usually works out well. There’s more sort of trust and spontaneity in the paint in these smaller studies. I always start trying to find the space. I try to imagine a desert, a forest, a seaside — archetypal kinds of environments.

And I think of this as the desert at night. And this is a band of wild women that are looking at the moon. I mean it comes from actual life. I grew up in the high desert, east and west of L.A. in Newhall. I grew up walking to school with tumbleweeds scraping my legs. And it has this certain kind of beauty in sparseness. And also, the light! I mean this isn’t exactly nighttime, even though the moon is visible, but it’s that moment before it’s really dark. And the experience of looking at the night sky in the desert — it’s a place to project your imagination. So I’m really telling a story about these wild women who’ve gotten together in the desert, and the moon is rising, and they’re kind of lost in the hypnotic experience of looking at the sky.

I love how their different colors show the different qualities of light. The depth of the atmosphere is so present. It’s not unnatural — when it’s dark out, your skin looks blue regardless of what color it is when it’s light out. Right! I have tended toward making images that are atmospheric rather than graphic. And I think the light, or imagining the light, really does animate my imagination. I have no problem making a figure green. I’m thinking about the atmosphere — I’m not thinking particularly about a marine figure.

I think that’s very clear — the colors are about the light. The thingness, or the naturalness, is not something that I’m dedicated to. And personally, I just love serapes. I have a giant crush on Mexican culture. As a friend of mine said recently, it’s a surrealist country.

And as a culture, they’re so uninhibited with the use of color. I’ve been to Frida Kahlo’s house, and it’s painted ultramarine blue!

And I find the serape a good kind of magic carpet for me, because it offers all the colors as a launching pad.

It really does, and your use of different types of textiles is something you’ve always played with that I’ve been interested in. It’s a very nice way of putting a little reference to something that’s familiar to people. Have you been to the MoMA ex-

hibit Surrealist Women? Well, through the ages, every time I would go to MoMA I would be mad, because all my favorite artists were always in the hallway. And now, they all have their own room! It’s so satisfying! It is a revisiting of art history. When I came of age in L.A., and because California used to be part of Mexico, it was so natural that people were going back and forth, and Mexican culture was so much a part of California culture. So you would see Mexican artists a lot in L.A. in the ’50s. And I knew the story of Pollock studying with Mexican artists, and I presumed that they were all going to Mexico. There was a lot of experimentation with materials, there was a lot of interest in indigenous cultures and ways of approaching making an image that was trying to break away from the Western tradition, and Mexico was a touchstone. It was so important to the development of modernism — and all of a sudden, it disappeared. And so it’s really gratifying. But I’m sorry that it took the Museum of Modern Art, like, what? Forty fucking years. ... It’s really something.

How have you fared during the pandemic? Have you stayed in New York this whole time? I have. I think we won’t know the toll for years. It’s kind of like 9/11. I was teaching at NYU when 9/11 happened. And I remember one of my students saying that she’d heard the bang — she was living at the dormitory near the site, and she heard the bang and she touched her window, like there was debris in the air and she couldn’t see, but she touched the window, and it was hot. I mean holy shit, that’s really frightening. And of course it changed everything, really. It had so many repercussions. And this is so extreme. For me, the low point was the statistic of maybe three or four months into [the pandemic], when it was really raging in New York, and it was reported that in the past 10 days, that 3,000 people had died, either in their homes or on the street. This is outside of the hospital, in New York City. And I just thought, how can we ever reckon with this?

Right, and of course, that’s the same number of fatalities as 9/11. Yes. So I don’t know what the repercussions are. As far as thinking about the future, we’re going to have to learn to work together, or we’re toast.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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11/15/21 5:16 PM

MUSIC

$AVVY BLAZES HIS OWN TRAIL Catching up with the multifaceted rapper and singer as he plans his next moves

BY D’LLISHA DAVIS Cloud Control is a collaboration between the Nashville Scene and music news, events and promotions platform 2 L’s on a Cloud.

B

orn in Riverside, Calif., and raised in Huntsville, Ala., $avvy planted his feet in Nashville in January 2019.

The gifted MC and singer has navigated the Music City hiphop community by FOLLOW @OG.SAVVY ON observing the scene’s INSTAGRAM TO KEEP UP culture, building WITH HIS WORK relationships and continuing to push his unique brand as an up-and-coming artist in the city. The spark of his interest in music hit the kindling when he was a teenager. He attended a private school in Huntsville, where he developed a love for music production.

“When I was in high school, I was strictly making beats for my friends’ YouTube channels or those who were rapping,” $avvy recalls with a laugh. He also created edits through graphic design on Instagram, which led to the realization that he had more to offer. “I felt that God had gifted me a lot of different talents, so to round it up, I started going by $avvy.”

Today, he has a performance style that is both energetic and engaging, and he leans into his drawl as he turns a perceptive eye on the complexities of all kinds of relationships. He has a deep appreciation for fans who come out to see him in person, and notes that his performances are meant to make the audience feel like friends. $avvy credits his early love for the stage to being involved with the school drama team and the praise team at his church. He had chances to perform at a variety of venues, and it gave him the drive to book more and bigger shows.

“The whole element of stage fright didn’t exist to me,” he says with a laugh. “I get compliments on my stage presence a lot, and I think that’s from being in front of a congregation and being trained for these moments.”

Creating music and art for his peers felt like more than just something to do for fun.

With that in mind, $avvy zoned in on his future, but settled on a slightly different direction. After conversations with his parents about his aspirations to produce music for television and video games, $avvy set his sights on Middle Tennessee State University. While attending MTSU, his passion for music reached a new level when he attended a sold-out student showcase concert. With the building packed, $avvy took notice of the tremendous love shown to the artists, and he began to see a different side of the music world than he’d witnessed in Huntsville. His confidence in his ability to establish a career as an artist was growing.

“2019 was a new chapter of my life,” he explains. “This was the year that I moved [to Nashville], stepped into myself and began introducing myself as $avvy.”

He began branding himself as $avvy online while he was throwing parties and events with multifaceted collective The Lil Homies. With a new generation of music and culture taking Nashville by storm, the group brought a refreshing, carefree feeling to the hip-hop scene. After developing a cohesive bond with the collective, $avvy began building relationships with other artists and others in creative fields across the city. He made further connections while throwing shows at local eatery Café Coco. After head-

lining their own sold-out show, $avvy and The Lil Homies began getting more opportunities. $avvy worked closely with apparel store Rooted and thrift shop Throwback Thursday, both relationships that helped him meet people across the city. One artist in particular he notes played an important role in his growth: Mike Floss.

“I remember meeting Floss for the first time at [the shoot for] his ‘FOTW’ video,” says $avvy. “I remember being so excited just to attend. I met a lot of the creatives in the scene, and later that night I ended up sneaking into The Back Corner. I snuck in just to talk to him, and he immediately took the time to listen and we exchanged numbers.”

A few months later, the pandemic hit, throwing the whole music ecosystem into limbo. $avvy decided to drop out of MTSU and pursue music on his own.

“It was all about patience, learning the craft and absorbing as much knowledge as I could from music as a whole in the Nashville scene,” he explains. “I trusted myself, my relationships with mentors and peers, my capabilities — and it pushed me to try a different path than the one I originally set out on.”

In summer 2020, he and Floss joined forces on the single “Bag Purse.” The Seckdirected video for the track was a springboard for $avvy, helping lay the groundwork for Boys Wear Pearls, $avvy’s debut record, released Feb. 14 of this year. $avvy initially didn’t want to release an album, feeling he was still too new around the city, despite all the connections he’d made. After talking with Floss and other friends, he set out to release the eight-track offering. The record created traction for the young MC and also showcased the diversity of his abilities as an artist. In the fall, the Scene recognized him as Best R&B Newcomer in the Best of Nashville issue.

At the moment, $avvy has a new multimedia project called POOR in the works that includes new music and a line of apparel.

He’s keeping most of the details close to his chest, but he emphasizes that he plans to step outside traditional boundaries in music to create a new experience for his fans. $avvy’s name is one you hear in many places these days, as people are paying attention to where he is looking to take the Nashville music scene next. As he builds his musical empire, one thing you can expect is that he won’t limit himself to any specific genre.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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11/15/21 5:59 PM

MUSIC

SETTING OUT

Rashad tha Poet and S-Wrap pen a new hero’s journey on The Other Side

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

PHOTO: ANTHONY FERRELL

S

ince his 2005 mixtape Witness to the Truth caught a buzz locally, Nashville-born Rashad Rayford has offered skeptics of poetry’s ability to convey street wisdom a gateway to the medium. Under the moniker Rashad tha Poet, Rayford has hustled tirelessly at bridging the gap between spoken-word poetry and hiphop with his live shows, collabs and boots-onthe-ground outreach.

Rayford and his fellow MC and poet Saran Thompson, alias S-Wrap, met through the Southern Word literacy program, in which they mentored high school students. When Rayford had to decline an invitation to perform as part of a tour of East Africa — focused on HIV advocacy and organized

by Denver PLAYING SUNDAY, NOV. 21, nonprofit Global Livingston Institute AT EXIT/IN, AND NOV. 26 AT CITY WINERY — he passed along S-Wrap’s contact.

For Thompson, the experience of working with crowds of 10,000 or more people changed his career.

Were it not for COVID, the two might not have found time to work together. They have plenty of other day-to-day obligations: Rayford has parlayed his charisma into a career as a motivational speaker and actor with his own firm called Elevate Your Vibe, while Thompson started a poems-ondemand service mid-pandemic called Speak in Flowers. But spurred on by an online effort to get The Recording Academy to consider real-deal spoken-word albums for the Best Spoken-Word Album category at the Grammys — a category often dominated by audiobooks — they developed, wrote and recorded a new spoken-word LP called The Other Side. The result is a 36-minute paean to believing in yourself, about keeping your eyes on the prize while recognizing small victories and remembering that achieving your goals is a marathon, not a sprint.

The Other Side was released in September, but Rayford and Thompson will celebrate it at a pair of upcoming shows: They’ll headline a spoken-word-centric event at Exit/In on Sunday, Nov. 21, and they’ll also be at City Winery on Nov. 26 as part of Soul Food Poetry Cafe’s Black Friday show. The Scene caught up with the duo ahead of the gigs.

It could be printed out and framed, an audio MP3, digital PDF, I could show up telegram-style and perform it … poetry in greeting-card format. I came up with it out of necessity. It started as something cool to make some bread during the pandemic, but it’s blown up.

WHAT WAS PLAYING IN EAST AFRICA LIKE? ST: There’s so much negative stigma

care talks, innovation talks. Whatever information the [client] gives me, I’ll turn into storytelling. They’re tired of it being boring. They want to break up the monotony.

there to unlearn about HIV awareness and healthy sexual education. So the organizers’ mission was to bring out these countries’ superstars to appear. I played with the Drakes and Rihannas of Uganda and Rwanda in Kampala, Kigali and three other cities. Massive free concerts, with testing happening concurrently. Screenings, eye exams, family planning. Absolutely crazy.

SARAN, FILL US IN ON SPEAK IN FLOWERS. Saran Thompson: It’s my custom poetry

HOW’D YOU GUYS MEET? ST: Through the Southern Word nonprofit,

business. Fill out a form, give me info about someone special — a significant other, mom, cousin — for a birthday, graduation, any big milestone. I’ll draft out a compelling poem with different mediums for delivery.

teaching literacy in the schools and making beats. Rashad and I are known as the main guys in the city who freestyle, so we built a relationship.

RR: Southern Word started slow, but

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR MOTIVATIONAL-SPEAKER WORK, RASHAD. Rashad Rayford: I do a lot of health

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after a couple years it became a full-time gig where we were going all over the state, every day. Fifteen counties, 6,000 kids a year, residencies in schools, after-school workshops, colleges, juvenile detention centers.

ST: Working with teens humbles you, keeps you objective about your work. They have no filter. If you can keep their attention, you can keep anyone’s attention.

IS ANYONE YOU MENTORED IN SOUTHERN WORD NOW OUT THERE PLAYING SHOWS, MAKING RECORDS? RR: Yeah. Some have gone on to be contemporaries. The BlackSon, he’s a Southern Word kid. And Nina Donovan, who’s playing with us at Exit/In on the 21st.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO POETRY? RR: Freshman year of college. Fell in love with the craft. Started hosting open mics in school. Came back to Nashville in 2005. Everyone was doing chapbooks, but I wanted to make an album. So I did — Witness to the Truth — and started traveling.

I’d get off work Friday, gas the car up and

drive. To Louisville, to Dallas, to Tampa. No guarantees. Just grinding, kept dropping spoken-word mixtapes. Probably sold 20,000 out the trunk. I’ve performed at the airport, had my own show at the Frist … the Ryman is my only bucket-list item left in Nashville.

WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION BEHIND AND THE INTENT FOR THE OTHER SIDE? WHO PLAYS ON IT? RR: The album is telling the story of getting on the other side of success, figuring out what you need to do with your life. It’s the outline of the hero’s journey, and people getting to a point where they’re realizing their value and don’t want to be treated like machines.

ST: We made it in four weeks, working out the flow, the concept. But there was still a need to take it to the next level. My go-to DJ, Daniel Sauls, a phenomenal artist and producer … we brought him in the mix, and he Rick Rubin’d it. Added the exact right musicians, made the right moves with the arrangements, built it up. What I love most about the project is that everyone on it is here in Nashville.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 – NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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11/15/21 5:59 PM

MUSIC

THE SPIN

BRIDGING THE GAPS

BY EDD HURT

I

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

f you’re looking for a working definition of the manufactured musical genre that’s usually called Americana, you might have found it during singer-songwriter Allison Russell’s sold-out show at Third Man Records’ Blue Room on Thursday night. Without a doubt, Americana isn’t a genre or a style of music, in the sense of those words meaning that it emerged organically from a longstanding tradition. Americana is a sensibility and a view of musical, racial and class history that’s not limited to the American experience.

Because the borders of Americana are so slippery, it makes sense to suggest that Americana didn’t exist 50 years ago, despite its obvious affinities with country-rock, soul music and so-called roots music — all of which did shape popular music in the 1970s.

In some ways, Americana gets used as a convenient fallback position that enables musicians to simulate authenticity for an audience that can be remarkably uncritical about the complexity of the issue.

For Russell, a Canadian-born woman of Scottish, Canadian and Grenadian descent who has worked with similar cosmopolitan innovators like Rhiannon Giddens, the contradictions of her music speak to her audience. Her first solo album, this year’s critically lauded Outside Child, addresses issues of race, gender and class, and her music owes debts to everyone from Joni Mitchell to the Memphis producer Willie Mitchell, the latter of whom produced proto-feminist soul by 1970s singer Ann Peebles.

Russell’s album is a notably original work, and her band showcased commitment to the songs. The ensemble featured three acoustic string players, two electric guitarists and a bassist and drummer. Russell performed on clarinet and banjo. When two of her bandmates on double bass joined with her violinist, the resulting soundscapes were deep and slightly ominous. Some of her compositions echoed soul, as on the superb Outside Child song “4th Day Prayer,” and her guitarists

played very minimally, with virtually no licks and no solos.

The lack of instrumental flamboyance in Russell’s music points to a substantial difference between her work and, say, Joni Mitchell’s. When Mitchell employed funk-jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius on her 1976 album Hejira, the effect was startling, and it added focus to music that was already eccentrically shaped and dauntingly complex.

Still, Russell’s songs, like Mitchell’s, sometimes evoke the isolation of vast spaces. The band did more than back up Russell, but what she brings to Americana isn’t sonics.

She’s essentially a singer-songwriter, and her themes find affirmation in how strongly her audience identifies with her struggles.

Russell is a very elegant stage performer, and she’s also a remarkably unaffected, natural frontperson. She’s a fine singer who knows how to phrase, and she reaches for high notes with utter confidence. She performed “Persephone,” a song from Outside Child that is about her experiences with homelessness in Montreal. It’s one of her most powerful songs, and her reading drew an impassioned response from the audience, who hung on every syllable. Interestingly, Russell also dipped into Americana-rap on one tune, which suggests she might explore more modernist production techniques in the future.

Margo Price, one of the most celebrated of current Americana artists, came out and incorporated herself into the band as an additional singer on “Nightflyer.” Russell also brought on her musical and life partner JT Nero, who performed with her in the duo Birds of Chicago.

It was a satisfying performance, even if it was a bit static; there was never a moment when you felt like the musicians were pushing back at the structures Russell has created. That’s not a knock — Russell is a major talent, and her band played tactfully and often beautifully. It was, indeed, an evening that brought forth the contradictions of one of the era’s dominant non-genres. Can Americana innovate within tradition in the fundamental way that Willie Mitchell and Joni Mitchell did a half-century ago? To answer that question, you’d have to think hard about the relationship between populist and elitist art, and Russell’s music seems like a good place to start pondering that dichotomy.

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FILM

DOG BITES MAN

The Power of the Dog hits hard in its study of toxic masculinity

BY CORY WOODROOF

I

n Jane Campion’s new film The Power of the Dog, being a man means many things. It’s the dirt under your nails after a hard day on the cattle trail; the emotions you hold back to assert your dominance over your peers; the self-control required THE POWER OF THE DOG R, 126 MINUTES to wield a knife. In OPENING FRIDAY, NOV. 19, the West, you need to AT THE BELCOURT; be a man — but the STREAMING VIA NETFLIX kind of man you need WEDNESDAY, DEC. 1 to be is rarely the kind of man anyone chooses to be.

Gruff cowboy Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) is caught in the chokehold of toxic masculinity as he watches over a cattle ranch with his kinder brother George (Jesse Plemons). Phil is prickly with George and firm with his employees, but he’s also a downright terror to George’s new wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst), whom the brothers met when their gaggle of ranch hands passed through her restaurant.

Phil thinks Rose is up to no good because he doesn’t know how else to think. His guard is

always raised, his humanity fading like an old coat of paint. But it’s Rose’s reserved, gentle son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who might be Phil’s biggest match yet. Phil slowly begins to see a bit of himself in Peter, and the audience gets a closer look at Phil’s past — he’s hiding pain that, if discovered, might get him ostracized in his world of macho cowpokes.

This is just Campion’s third film as director in the past two decades, and here she makes it count — The Power of the Dog is head-and-shoulders above most 2021 movies. It’s a study of masculinity in the Old West, and Cumberbatch is a commanding

BOMBED OUT

Tick, Tick… Boom! is unwilling to commit to any serious criticism

BY STEVE ERICKSON

I

n the wake of Hamilton: An American Musical’s success back in 2015, one might have expected the first feature directed by its creator Lin-Manuel Miranda to be an event. The luster has worn off Hamilton a bit since then, especially TICK, TICK… BOOM! PG-13, 115 MINUTES in light of the critiques AVAILABLE FRIDAY, NOV. 19, it has received for its VIA NETFLIX politics and historical inaccuracy, though it remains hugely popular — its cast album has sold more than 8 million copies without the benefit of a pop radio hit. But In the Heights, Jon Chu’s film based on Miranda’s first Broadway success, premiered to a tepid reception from audiences.

Now Miranda’s adaptation of Tick, Tick… Boom!, an autobiographical musical by late Rent playwright Jonathan Larson, brings out his worst instincts, while making some rookie mistakes.

Tick, Tick… Boom! opens with Larson (Andrew Garfield) lamenting the fact that he’s about to turn 30 without feeling like he’s accomplished his goals.

He compares himself to Stephen Sondheim, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but he works as a waiter, living in an apartment with his best friend Michael (Roman de Jesús) and dating Susan (Alexandra Shipp). He prepares to complete his sci-fi musical Superbia, expecting it to launch him into success, and as he comes closer to finishing and previewing it, his ego inflates.

As portrayed in Tick, Tick… Boom!, Larson was a narcissist who felt enlightened to make a living off his musicals and attain recognition for them, and while

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the film is aware of his flaws, it is unwilling to commit to any serious criticism. While told from Larson’s point of view, it suggests that his version of his life was basically correct, especially in its first half. It attacks corporate culture without any systemic critique, blaming the people who work in ad agencies for being jerks or sellouts. (Even so, they think Larson’s contributions are genius.) How privileged do you have to be to think that sitting in a marketing meeting for two hours is too high a price to pay in order to be able to compensate musicians working on your play? Or that irritating but banal aspects of urban apartment living deserve a song suggesting they’re major oppressions?

By its second half, Tick, Tick… Boom! does recognize Larson’s tendency to use the people around him, but the film does little to subvert it. All other characters are marked as accompanists to his talent — Larson’s girlfriend only shows much life of her own when she argues with him, which inspires his depiction of the events in the song “Therapy.” Gay men exist as muses who contract HIV, inspiring Larson, who never seems to worry about getting the virus himself. He mentions not having health insurance at one point,

lead, able to subtly portray a character who hides his true self beneath the veneer of a soulless, dirty cowboy prick. He’s a sensation, and so much is conveyed just in his presence — in cutting and foreboding glances. His long, sorrowful gaze into the beautiful Montana mountains says more than Campion’s dialogue ever could. Watching Phil soften as he finds worth in Peter’s company will break your heart. Phil also enters a delicate tug-of-war with Rose (Dunst is excellent here as well) as she sees her son being dragged into Phil’s world and endures her brother-in-law’s subtle, exhausting jabs.

but he never suffers as a result.

Tick, Tick… Boom! seems to want progressive brownie points for showing Larson’s anger at Jesse Helms’ homophobic rants and feeling empathy for friends with HIV, but ACT UP and other activists remain entirely out of the picture.

Beyond these problems, Tick, Tick… Boom! also features some sloppy filmmaking. The device of cutting back and forth between performances of Larson’s musical and the life events that inspired his songs is overutilized and suffers from clumsy matches of camera angles. Screenwriter Steven Levenson also assumes a level of reverence toward Larson, which might have seemed reasonable at the height of Rent’s popularity but now looks dated. Given the middlebrow, crowd-pleasing nature of Larson’s work and the sub-Jim Steinman results of his mixture of rock music and showtunes, having characters react as though he were scoring his musicals with atonal music and creating avant-garde performance pieces rather than making the ’90s equivalent of Hair is a bit much. The insertion of a hip-hop video shot in Times Square on fuzzy VHS, in which a Black rapper expresses Larson’s thoughts about the compromises of Broadway, is a very Lin-Manuel Miranda touch.

The film’s approving vision of a New York artist who looks down on others for taking corporate work is somewhat ironic, given that this is a Netflix release directed by one of 21st-century American theater’s most popular figures. While Tick, Tick… Boom! isn’t completely unadorned hero worship, its case for Larson’s greatness is disproved by the cornball nature and dated ideas of the play it’s adapting.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

In the end, Campion (who won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1993’s The Piano) stays true to Thomas Savage’s novel, which finds the balance between Phil’s version of manliness and Peter’s. Virtuoso composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s antagonistic score keeps the film’s tone uneasy, and The Power of the Dog never lets you get too comfortable. While guys like Phil may view masculinity as a tool with which to maintain power and suppress emotion, guys like Peter prove that it can be used to achieve something else — justice.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

PRIMAL STREAM 71

An underwater haunted house, ’90s schlock and ’80s musical madness, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

I

’m not going to lie — I’m worried about people. Perhaps it’s just folks’ biochemistry adjusting to the post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving dearth of destructive carb-fueled joy, but it feels like every day brings another moment of social horror that just doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Anyway, with that in mind, this week’s recommended streaming films are all rooted in the feeling you get when what you’re seeing just doesn’t make sense with how you instinctively feel things ought to be. As always, look back at past issues of the Scene for more recommendations of what to stream.

THE DEEP HOUSE ON EPIX AND VIDEO ON DEMAND Underwater haunted house! The filmmakers behind this summer’s Kandisha and the legendary shocker Inside are back, and this time the concept is good enough to lock in an audience sight unseen. There have been a few films involving shunned places concealed

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FILM beneath man-made lakes (the best of which is still 1999’s In Dreams), but none of them have engaged with the concept in the present, active tense. The pair of YouTubers at the center of the new film The Deep House (she’s bilingual, he’s played by Mick Jagger’s son) go into spooky or isolated places for the views, and also to define their imbalanced relationship. I suppose there’s something to be said for how internet personalities are subject to the whims of the public like ancient sacrifices, but the definitive movie about whether the internet has asphyxiated deductive reasoning is going to have to be more strongly constructed than this one. The production design is incredible. The titular house is quite impressive, and the technical side of this film is top-notch, with a great diving and camera team. But its central supernatural menace is a bit too amorphous in motivation, and the pluses to atmosphere and vibe don’t overcome the minuses of pacing. There are some great moments: The way the evil moves underwater is absolutely captivating, the camera drone’s emergency lighting is evocative and distinctive, and the way the impossible is depicted (flickering power currents, an underwater film screening) hints at a much weirder take on the material.

Your mileage may vary.

ARCADE ON TUBI There’s a certain kind of energy to be found in films that were meant to be cuttingedge but have since been relegated to the smokehouse where now-archaic visions of the future are kept. It’s not necessarily an evaluation of quality — just the way in which we perceive attempted prophecy. With this particular 1993 film, traditional attempts at evaluation fall by the wayside, because this is a Charles Band production (Full Moon Entertainment, Empire Pictures), written

by David S. Goyer (the Christopher Nolan Batmen, the Blade trilogy) and directed by enthusiastic schlockmeister Albert Pyun. It is a work of deeply weird madness, encompassing a lot of different concepts (“These kids and their video games,” The Twilight Zone, Polybius/Last Starfighter ideology, Jumanji/Neverending Story mechanics and Elm Street sequel peer group psychology), serving up a casserole with some R-rated dialogue and a complaint-rock soundtrack. Arcade nonetheless incarnates the early-’90s not-too-distant future in a way that either stokes the nostalgia center or provides some good larfs at the way special effects (and our perception of them) evolve.

This is not a good film, but it’s an interesting enough one, though it’s not to be confused with the arcade-themed segment from the omnibus Nightmares starring Emilio Estevez. Arcade’s troubled teens can’t be blamed for seeking out virtualreality thrills involving competing against the A.I.-derived soul of a dead child, because the only other aspect of their lives we see are suburban tragedies metabolizing the fallout of the Reagan era. The cast is an interesting assortment of former child stars and future character actors (though the best turns come from an empathetically intense A.J. “Rayanne Forever” Langer and the always-committed Sharon Farrell, whose one scene is the most provocative and enduring moment in the whole film), and the

effects are primitive, intermittently surreal and ultimately strange. I would love to see a documentary about how this was made (and the re-rendered CGI because of Disney getting litigious about some Tronery). This is not an unsung classic, but it’s an interesting relic that may help you understand some of your VHS friends just a little better.

THE APPLE

THE APPLE ON EPIX, PARAMOUNT+ AND TUBI Along with 1980’s Xanadu and Can’t Stop the Music, The Apple is one of the legendary trio of musical extravaganzas that pretty much killed the musical — until Flashdance and MTV remixed the concept three years later. (Note: Breaking Glass was never meant as an extravaganza and is also generally well-regarded, though very much of an aesthetic piece with its 1980 musical siblings.) Xanadu has the best songs, Can’t Stop the Music has the relentless surreality of trying to take place in the “real” world (which honestly reads even stranger now, since both the Village People’s “YMCA” and Caitlyn Jenner have become part of the right-wing machine), and The Apple sits back and refuses to meet you halfway.

According to legend, on opening night the audience got all Shaun of the Dead and threw promo copies of The Apple’s soundtrack album at the screen like Godfrey Ho ninjas approximating shuriken as best they can. I can kind of see that, because this is a film that feels like it was never made for an actual audience. It’s a cult film insofar as new enthusiasts get brought in on a one-by-one basis by zealots who recognize its cocaine-and-Bible-stories take on Eurovision as something truly special. Cannon Films producer/mogul Menahem Golan made this beautiful and tacky allegory in a way that predicts the whole “dance like there’s no one watching” aspirational mentality, and I grow more grateful for it with each day that passes.

In the future of 1994, pop culture is controlled by Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal), whose BIM company runs all the shows. He’s got the Mark of the Beast and the pulse of the streets, but he wants to remove all threats to his disco-pop hegemony, and that means he must acquire Alphie (George Gilmour, in the tightest of pants) and Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart, with the straightest of hair and laying the groundwork for Night of the Comet and Nightflyers both), a kindly folk duo from Moosejaw, Ontario. Anyway, sex and drugs and fascism happen, and some of the songs are indifferent and some of them are incredible — no respectable movie ever had the guts to deliver something like “Speed,” wherein Bibi sings about America’s addiction to thrills and amphetamines with a dancing chorus of leathermen. An enduring film maudit I keep close to my heart.

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In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon NANCY ANN BIRD. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after December 2, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on January 3, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

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Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: November 4, 2021 Jennifer L.E. Williams Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 11/11,11/18,11/25, 12/2/21

Your Neighborhood Local attractions: · Nashville West Shopping Center · Hillwood Country Club · Cumberland River

Neighborhood dining and drinks: · Tequila’s Mexican Restaurant · Hillwood Pub · Buffalo Wild Wings Enjoy the outdoors: · Elmington Park · Centennial Park · Belle Meade Historic Site & Winery Best place near by to see a show: · Belcourt Theatre

Favorite local neighborhood bar: · Hillwood Pub Best local family outing: · Centennial Park Your new home amenities: · Cumberland River views · Vaulted Ceilings · Washer/Dryer connections · Playground · Sparkling Pool · On-Site Laundry · Renovations coming soon

Call the Rental Scene property you’re interested in and mention this ad to find out about a special promotion for Scene Readers

411 Annex Ave Nashville, TN 37209 | cumberlandretreatapartments.com | 615.356.0257 42

NASHVILLE SCENE | NOVEMBER 18 - NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

Southaven at Commonwealth 100 John Green Place, Spring Hill, TN 37174

The Harper 2 Beds / 2 bath 1265 sq ft $1700

The Hudson 3 Bed / 2 bath 1429 sq ft $1950

3 floor plans southavenatcommonwealth.com | 629.777.8333

British Woods 264 British Woods Drive Nashville, TN 37217 1 bed / 1 bath 725 sq ft $1084+ per month

2 bed 1.5 / 2 bath 1025 to 1150 sq ft $1227+ per month

3 bed / 2.5 bath 1650 sq ft $1670+

Rental Scene

The Jackson 1 Bed / 1 bath 958 sq ft $1400

5 floor plans

britishwoodsapartments.com | 615.205.1862

Gazebo Apartments 141 Neese Drive Nashville TN 37211 1 Bed / 1 Bath 756 sq ft $1,119 +

2 Bed / 1.5 Bath - 2 Bath 1,047 – 1,098 sq ft $1,299 +

3 Bed / 2 Bath 1201 sq ft $1,399 +

5 floor plans

gazeboapts.com | 615.551.3832 Sunrise Apartments 189 Wallace Rd Nashville, TN 37211 1 Bed / 1 bath 600 sq feet $950 - $1150

1 Bed / 1 bath 630 sq feet $999 - $1200

3 floor plans

sunrisenashville.com | 615.333.7733 Cumberland Retreat 411 Annex Ave Nashville, TN 37209 2 Bed /1 Bath 1008 sq ft $1329

1 Bed / 1 Bath 675 sq ft $1049 2 floor plans

cumberlandretreatapartments.com | 615.356.0257 Brighton Valley 500 BrooksBoro Terrace, Nashville, TN 37217 1 Bedroom/1 bath 800 sq feet $1360

2 Bedrooms/ 2 baths 1100 sq feet $1490

3 Bedrooms/ 2 baths 1350 sq feet $1900

To advertise your property available for lease, contact Keith Wright at 615-557-4788 or kwright@fwpublishing.com

Studio 330 sq feet $900 - $1000

3 floor plans

brightonvalley.net | 615.366.5552 nashvillescene.com | NOVEMBER 18 - NOVEMBER 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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S U H P I TC

Nashville is a diverse city, and we want a pool of freelance contributors who reflect that diversity. We’re looking for new freelancers, and we particularly want to encourage writers of color & LGBTQ writers to pitch us.

Read more at our new pitch guide: nashvillescene.com/pitchguide BOTH LOCATIONS OPEN DAILY 11-9 FOR TAKE-OUT YOUR FAVORITE MEXICAN FOOD & ‘RITA, TOO!

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