VISIT NASHVILLESCENE.COM FOR OUR COVERAGE OF THE NOV. 5 LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL ELECTION RESULTS
How Metro schools, the Music City Center and other huge local entities serve thousands of meals when failure is not an option BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN
THE BIGGEST HIDDEN RESTAURANTS IN NASHVILLE
Advocates Worry About Future of Hemp Sales Amid New State Rules
New rules from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture limit the distribution of certain hemp products BY KELSEY BEYELER
Pith in the Wind
This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog
Snip Snip
Plan V to offer education, discounts on vasectomies BY HANNAH HERNER
COVER STORY
The Biggest Hidden Restaurants in Nashville
How Metro schools, the Music City Center and other huge local entities serve thousands of meals when failure is not an option BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN
CRITICS’ PICKS
Rhiannon Giddens, The English Beat , Harpeth Harvest Festival, Moody Joody and more
FOOD AND DRINK
Maiz Runner
Julio Hernandez honors Mexico and Tennessee with his new brick-and-mortar BY KELSEY BEYELER
Veg Out: Autumn Green Dumplings at Fancypants
A vegetable-forward dish at the Dickerson Pike spot, which offers new takes on plants BY MARGARET LITTMAN
In the Club: Nashville Backgammon Association
Weekly tournaments attract longtime aficionados and first-time players alike — including Amanda Shires BY COLE VILLENA
BOOKS
American Dreams
Aaron Robertson weaves personal and political history in The Black Utopians BY HAMILTON CAIN; CHAPTER16.ORG
MUSIC
The Time Has Come to Reappear
The Privates revisit a standout catalog in Nashville rock BY P.J. KINZER
Good Earth
Julie Williams puts down roots with Tennessee Moon BY MADELEINE BRADFORD
The Spin
The Scene’s live-review column checks out Tyler Walker and Friends, Tayls and more at The East Room BY BAILEY BRANTINGHAM
FILM
Coming Out of Her Shell
Stop-motion Memoir of a Snail is a tragicomic gem BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY
Blueberry Blasphemy
Heretic is a religious debate wrapped in a horror thriller BY KEN ARNOLD
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD AND THIS MODERN WORLD
MARKETPLACE
ON THE COVER:
Music City Center kitchen; photo by Eric England
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Chefs at at Maiz de la Vida, from left: Chepe Laredo, Julio Hernandez and Obed Vallejo • PHOTO BY ERIC ENGLAND
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ADVOCATES WORRY ABOUT FUTURE OF HEMP SALES AMID NEW STATE RULES
New rules from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture limit the distribution of certain hemp products
BY KELSEY BEYELER
TENNESSEE HEMP RETAILERS are preparing for significant changes following the release of new rules from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture. The changes stem from 2023 legislation seeking to regulate the hemp industry in Tennessee and tasking the state’s Department of Agriculture with promulgating rules on how to do so. The department’s finalized rules arrived in late September, following a brief period of temporary emergency rules established in June. The official new rules will go into effect on Dec. 26 of this year.
Marijuana is categorized as a Schedule VI controlled substance and is not legal in Tennessee. The production of hemp, however, became federally authorized following the passage of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (also known as the 2018 Farm Bill). While both marijuana and hemp are derived from the cannabis plant, anything that falls at or below a 0.3 percent Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) threshold is considered hemp. Cannabis with a Delta-9-THC content above that threshold is considered marijuana. The distinction allowed a whole industry of hemp-derived products — some of which induce psychoactive effects — to pop up in Tennessee over the past few years. Among the hemp-derived products that have seen a boom are substances containing Delta-8 and THCA, two alternative chemical compounds — or cannabinoids — also found in
the plant.
The new law and the agriculture department’s subsequent rules enact a suite of requirements, from licensing and testing to labeling and taxation. Attorney Alex Little of the Hemp Law Group tells the Scene that many people in the industry were generally supportive of statutory regulations that establish things like age limits, packaging requirements and the testing of products for impurities.
One controversial aspect of the new rules effectively bans a whole category of hemp products — specifically burnable THCA products. The new rules now measure the amount of THC after the process of decarboxylation, which includes heating or burning — but the amount of Delta-9-THC can increase after decarboxylation, meaning THCA products can exceed the legal threshold after burning, and therefore retailers will no longer be able to sell it.
hemp retailers might have to close their stores or take their businesses to other states now that a significant portion of their products will not be legal to sell. Critics also point to the millions of dollars in potential tax revenue that will no longer be generated by these products.
This week’s issue of the Scene went to press before polls closed on Election Day, but you can see our coverage of local, state and federal election results at nashvillescene.com.
“The department’s rules are promulgated in accordance with its statutory authority and legislative directives to administer a regulatory program for hemp and hemp-derived cannabinoid products,” a representative from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture tells the Scene, noting that “the department’s rules are consistent with its statutory authority to regulate, not ban, THC and hemp products.”
Last week, Vanderbilt University sued the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that governs labor law, over a rule requiring the university to disclose certain student information. The new suit comes alongside an NLRB case between Vanderbilt and labor attorneys representing graduate students seeking a union election on campus. The election filing by graduate students on Oct. 4 kicked off a highly regulated legal process overseen by the NLRB. Union lawyers, dismissing Vanderbilt’s arguments as “specious,” point out that students released the required information to Vanderbilt upon enrollment.
The Metro Council’s Public Health & Safety Committee held its third and final special meeting discussing domestic violence last week. Councilmembers heard from representatives of the Metro Nashville Police Department the Davidson County District Attorney’s office and the courts, discussing access to the National Crime Information Center (a national criminal-history index), oversight of firearm dispossession for convicted domestic abusers and more. Following these conversations, the committee is hoping to bring this information to the rest of the Metro Council.
“The edibles aren’t generally impacted by this, but the inhalables are,” says Little. “So both thinking about pre-rolls, thinking about smoking pure hemp products or vapes — those have all contained THCA in the past.”
Critics of the new rules worry that certain
In response to the new rules, Little has filed petitions with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture on behalf of the Tennessee Growers Coalition and two East Tennessee hemp companies. The petitions challenge certain aspects of the rules — “particularly around the THCA testing rules and around the application of the current rules to raw hemp flower,” says Little.
If the department doesn’t grant those petitions, Little says he and his clients will take the matter to chancery court for litigation. ▼
Ahead of the Nov. 5 election, opinion columnist Betsy Phillips wrote about the “Committee to Stop an UnFair Tax” — a curious coalition of people opposed to Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit referendum some of whom don’t even live in Nashville. “Who cares if the people of Belle Meade, Brentwood and Franklin would like Nashville to stay just how it is?” Phillips writes. “We need the voices of people who aren’t from here, who benefit from our floundering, to be a lot quieter.”
SNIP SNIP
BY HANNAH HERNER
KRISTIN CONRAD BRASSELL wants more men to get vasectomies. So much so that she created a nonprofit organization and raised money to help pay for them.
Earlier this month, Plan V partnered with Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi to subsidize the procedures — the organization can offer them at $599 rather than $899 for the uninsured. For Brassell, it’s a tangible solution to Tennessee’s nearly total abortion ban.
“One quick, easy thing that a lot of people can do is get a vasectomy, because second to abstinence, it is the most effective form of birth control,” says Brassell, founder of Plan V. “If you’re living in red states that have extreme bans against abortion in place, and you have the ability to go out and get one, you are helping reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancies, and thus you are reducing the rate of the need for abortion.”
Cost can be one barrier to a vasectomy, as the procedure can cost upwards of $1,000 for people without insurance. Many can’t swing that — especially people earning artists’ salaries or those who fall in Tennessee’s Medicaid expansion gap, Brassell points out. (Tennessee is one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid.) She tells the Scene she’d like to partner with other local providers and someday offer free or “pay what you can” procedures.
Another barrier to vasectomies is misconceptions about the procedure. Brassell says men sometimes even confuse it with circumcision (removal of the foreskin) or castration (removal of the testicles). The latter, she imagines, comes from men who have taken a dog to be neutered. Vasectomies are outpatient procedures that take around 15 minutes. The downtime following the procedure is 48 to 72 hours. Vasectomies should be considered permanent, and they take three to six months to be effective. Erections and sexual pleasure remain fully intact following the procedure.
“The only thing you feel is the injection to numb your testicles,” Brassell says. “Like the pinch that most people are used to when you go to the dentist to get fillings, and you have an excuse for 48 hours to sit on the couch and watch TV.”
Following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade, demand for vasectomies rose. Local clinics told the Scene of an anecdotal rise in interest in male birth control as well.
The local arm of Planned Parenthood, which offered surgical abortions prior to the ban, had to rethink its services following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. They added vasectomies in September 2023, and have done 37 procedures between the organization’s Nashville and Memphis locations during that time. (The Knoxville location
recently reopened following its destruction due to arson.) One provider would travel between locations to offer vasectomies once per month, and the organization is in the process of credentialing another.
Planned Parenthood still offers much of what it always had, including contraception, STD testing, gender-affirming care and HIV care. However, one thing that Planned Parenthood can offer that many other clinics may not is a no-questions-asked policy for the procedure — even for young people who know they don’t want kids. The patient simply must be 18 or older to be eligible.
“For patients of reproductive age, finding a provider who will perform these services if someone is in their 20s … is often difficult, because providers question the patient,” says Aimee Lewis, chief development officer at Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi.
“At Planned Parenthood, we trust people to make the health decisions that are right for them, and so whatever someone’s reason for wanting a vasectomy, we trust that patient to know themselves and to make their own health care decisions.”
Brassell points out another more personal reason to get a vasectomy — it’s a way for men to look out for their female partners. Both tubal ligation (getting one’s “tubes tied”) and vasectomies are pretty low-risk, she says, but comparing the two, the former is higher risk, significantly more expensive and comes with a longer downtime. Women can also sometimes endure years of side effects from birth control, including pain from IUD insertions.
“There’s a lot of cool guys out there that I consider to be feminist, and they stepped up and they said, ‘This is one way I can help in the fight against what’s happening in our country,’” Brassell says. “Unfortunately, men like that are few and far between.” ▼
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THE BIGGEST HIDDEN RESTAURANTS IN NASHVILLE
How Metro schools, the Music City Center and other huge local entities serve thousands of meals when failure is not an option
BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN
PHOTOS BY ERIC ENGLAND
THE FIRST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER was traumatic for Hathorne owner John Stephenson. The ex-chef at Fido and The Family Wash announced on Tuesday of that week that he would shutter his Sylvan Park restaurant after Saturday night service, citing rising costs and staffing issues as the reasons for the closure. The previous week the restaurant had to close temporarily when several members of his staff contracted COVID. He was operating his business on the razor’s edge.
The reservation books immediately filled up for the final planned services, and on that Thursday night Hathorne served 220 guests.
“We didn’t want to wither away,” Stephenson recalls. “We wanted to end on a high note. We saw so many old faces. It was a great night!”
Unfortunately, circumstances conspired to make opening for the final weekend impossible. “We were short in the kitchen, and we can’t run without a dishwasher and a line cook,” he explains. “I had to take care of the health and safety of my employees.”
Attracting employees was an ongoing problem. “We had been looking for line cooks for six to eight months. I figured we’d get 60 candidates and schedule 30 to 40 interviews. Two people showed up for interviews, and one of them flaked before the first shift. That was the final straw when I decided we couldn’t continue.”
That’s the environment many smaller independent restaurants find themselves in during the current hospitality-labor climate. But there are several massive culinary operations in town that most diners never think about, and these businesses continue to thrive in the face of the same competitive staffing situation. Organizations like Metro Nashville Public Schools, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Music City Center manage to serve thousands of meals every week in a situation where failure is not an option. Students, patients and conventioneers
must be fed.
MNPS essentially operates roughly 150 restaurants, and VUMC cooks and distributes 2,000 meals a day to patients. On the MCC’s busiest day, 22,000 Southern Baptist Convention attendees were in the building for multiple sitdown meals, buffets, coffee breaks and box lunches.
If being down a couple of employees can bring down a popular independent restaurant, how do these enormous operations pull it off?
We went to the people in charge to find out.
SCHOOL MEALS
Spencer Taylor is a 30-year veteran of food service with 12 years of experience with MNPS. He’s the executive director of nutrition services and also a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, where he serves as nutrition and dietetics consultant to the Army’s surgeon general. He knows that “an army marches on its stomach,” and so does a school.
Taylor oversees a staff of 600-plus food service employees within the public school system, serving breakfast and lunch at about 150 cafeteria locations. All MNPS meals are free to students, because the majority of schools fall below the family income threshold of the federal Community Eligibility Provision for total meal reimbursement. The Metro Council has chosen to cover the expenses for the eight Metro schools that do not qualify for CEP.
Even with this support, Taylor must work within the reimbursement figure of $2 per meal in raw food costs, with labor doubling the total price to about $4. “We’re dealing with pennies, not dollars,” he explains.
Almost every school prepares food on site, with the exception of a few small alternative schools where food comes from larger nearby cafeteria kitchens. The entire MNPS system is responsible for 70,000 meals per day, including accommodating special dietary needs, allergies and medical issues like diabetes. Forecasting is a crucial part of Taylor’s job. Not every student eats every meal, with some preferring to bring food from home — or maybe they just don’t like what is being offered that day. The key tracking metric within the system is participation. “Menu planning is a major component, and I can look at the participation rate daily and interpret it monthly,” says Taylor.
Taylor points to Andrea “DeeDee” Stratton, nutrition services manager at Madison Middle School, as a real success story.
“Madison has a good team and manager,” Taylor says of Stratton. “[She’s] a manager who can retire any time she wants, and she’s serving 90 percent of her kids, which is amazing for a school. DeeDee has the ‘secret sauce’ that we need to duplicate within our system. The difference is how our customers react to the program and how important that program is to them on a daily basis. I’m just so proud of all our schools, but she is definitely one of our shining stars as an example of what we want to do.”
Taylor’s biggest job is labor management.
With space for 670 employees, MNPS cafeterias usually teeter between 620 and 630 workers, but occasionally the system will find itself as many as 100 employees short. Forget the outmoded stereotype of “lunch ladies” — these are professional culinary workers, and Taylor constantly works to maintain and upgrade his workforce.
“We’ve got some hiring advantages,” he explains. “People know that MNPS is a large-scale employer, and we get excellent word-of-mouth from current employees. I feel like we pay better than most local restaurants.”
THE CAFETERIA STAFF AT MADISON MIDDLE SCHOOL FROM LEFT: WILLITA MATTHEWS, ANNIE PURYEAR, ANDREA “DEEDEE” STRATTON, CALEB BRISCOE, CAROLYN MORROW
MADISON MIDDLE SCHOOL CAFETERIA
But that wasn’t always the case. The starting wage was only about $10 to $11 per hour prior to then-Mayor John Cooper’s initiative to raise the low-end rate to $15 in 2020, and $18 two years later. “Now we’re at about $19 an hour, which I figure is above market,” says Taylor.
The administrator also reacts to new desires from his prospective workforce: “You have to figure out what encourages this generation to stay. It used to be good working hours or benefits and insurance, and possibly a pension. Those things don’t draw in younger folks now.
“They want to be at a place where they get flexibility and there’s joy in coming to work and they’re able to be expressive,” Taylor continues. “We offer a 35-hour week for most employees, a 10-month calendar, full Metro benefits and eligibility for our retirement system. You’ll never work on weekends, and our hours are better than most. If you work from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m., you can enjoy more family time or even take on an additional job.”
Nurturing his workforce is critical, because MNPS rarely uses temp services. “All our employees have to pass a background check, so that means no felonies on your record,” says Taylor. “That’s probably not true at many restaurants in Nashville.”
Taylor wants Nashville to know how hard his department works for the children of the city. “A lot of thought and care goes into the work we do,” he says. “We sometimes find it a challenge to compete in the new food environment because we have to work with a rulebook,” he shares. “We are preparing food every day with care to make it taste good, and we’re trying to help meet a certain health profile for your student.”
HOSPITAL FOOD
The public areas at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are attractive and immaculate — but the basement level is more utilitarian, almost dungeon-like, and probably a good five-minute walk to sunlight. The industrial cinder-block corridors are constantly busy with carts filled with meals being wheeled from the 20,000-square-foot kitchen to patient rooms on any of 30 floors of VUMC’s massive campus. Anyone walking the halls has to be alert for motorized Cushman carts zipping by on their way to deliver meals to the Round Wing annex almost half a mile from the subterranean kitchen.
A new kitchen is under construction, so space in the current production area is crowded with racks of No. 10 cans stacked high, and four walk-in coolers and freezers turn over most of their inventory daily to make room for the 16 to 18 pallets of food delivered four times a week. The new kitchen will actually be a little smaller, but it promises more streamlined production that will allow VUMC to switch to a room-service model where patients will be able to order from a more varied menu and expect delivery within 45 minutes.
Walt McClure is the client executive for Sodexo, the food service management company that works with Vanderbilt employees to feed the hospital. McClure oversees about 225 employees, including 33 cooks, 35 workers in
sanitation and 138 production/procurement employees. The logistics and complications of meal service in a hospital are daunting.
Only about 40 percent of patient orders that come into the kitchen’s call center are standard. The remainder are modified due to medical and dietary requests. Each order is entered into a tracking system, and every tray is scanned before it leaves the kitchen — because doctor requests can change between ordering and delivery, or patients can actually be discharged before the meal arrives.
Menus are different every day within a weekly rotation, and the average patient’s length of stay at VUMC is four days, so they shouldn’t see repeats. (McClure does recommend sticking around for Wednesday — that’s fried chicken day, and he’s really proud of that dish.) Menu planning and ingredient management are the core of what McClure and his head chef Calvin Spencer spend their time on.
“Every meal will have a center plate with a starch, vegetable and the entree,” says Spencer. “Then there will also be a side salad, a beverage, dessert and a roll.” VUMC’s cost per meal, ex-
clusive of labor, is a remarkable $2.75 averaged across breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The logistics of a single meal delivery are complex. Trays are loaded by floor, 30 at a time so nurses can schedule medication protocols around meal times. Plates are placed atop induction pads to keep them hot on their journey from the kitchen, while salads are plated on frozen bases to keep the cold side cold. McClure’s staff makes all the deliveries to rooms, with the exception of patients in isolation. The culinary staff’s interaction is an important part of patient care, and a focus of McClure’s management.
The dedicated staff knows what they signed up for with a career at a hospital, and McClure makes it clear to every employee.
“The hospital runs 24/7, 365 days a year,” he says. “Whether it’s sunny or 10 degrees and icy outside, we have to be here. We tell them that’s a benefit when things like COVID come around, because your employment’s secured here. The flip side is there is no waking up and looking outside, and saying, ‘It’s icy out. I’m not going in.’ You gotta come in!”
Where does McClure find employees? “The
labor climate is tough, like everywhere in the country,” he admits. “We’re competing for the same staff with hotels, restaurants and bars. Vanderbilt has its own temp service, which is crucial because it might take several weeks to get a background clearance on a potential employee, and they’re not getting paid during that time. They could be working the next day somewhere else, so if they have two interviews going on, the other people are probably going to win that one.”
Still, McClure is proud that VUMC maintains, he says, a 70 percent employee retention rate versus the national average of 45 to 50 percent. “I attribute that to Vanderbilt being competitive with their benefits and wages. And the other big piece of it, I think, is the culture and the climate we try to create down here. Just treat people the way they want to be treated and be transparent and fair with everyone. I think those are the big things.”
He admits that the job isn’t for everyone. “It’s kind of like a culture shock,” McClure says. “Restaurants don’t have as much structure as we do. They don’t necessarily have the HR policies
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and procedures in place that hospitals do, but I’ll tell you what [employees] do love. They do love the work-life balance when they come to health care. They realize, ‘I’m not working every weekend and every holiday. I’m working every other weekend, and I know what time I’m gonna start and basically what time I’m gonna leave.’ So no more missed birthday parties for their kids.”
McClure also addresses the elephant in the room: the disparaging attitude toward hospital food.
“Yeah, that’s right up there with airplane food,” he says with a chuckle. “But our food’s good. It looks good, and it tastes good. And we’re cooking it for 600 or 700 people!”
BANQUET SERVICE
Chef Max Knoepfel is a legend within the local culinary community. Not only does the Swiss-born chef execute the largest meals in town in his role as the executive chef at the Music City Center — he has also trained a generation of culinary workers. By his estimate, more than 1,000 employees have worked for him at the MCC during his 11 years there, including a current staff of close to 400 full-time and parttime cooks, stewards and wait staff that represent more than 50 nationalities.
This massive operation serves the 2.1 mil-
lion square feet of convention space out of a 10,000-square-foot kitchen where the busy staff prepares multiple plates for various meals and services at the same time. Each meal can offer seven to eight menus to address allergies and dietary preferences, and prep work for big meals often starts days before the actual event.
Walking through the kitchen, Knoepfel proudly shares the stories of each staff member he introduces, especially beaming over a hardworking cook named Rosa who has just completed cooking 175 trays of bacon as part of the day’s schedule, which included 2,900 meals. Along the way, Knoepfel is always teaching, both cooking techniques and hospitality. The chef’s traditional French brigade system encourages everyone to embrace their role within the team.
MCC CEO Charles Starks understands the importance of recruiting and retaining such a large and talented staff to run the culinary operations at the convention center. “We have some advantages,” says Starks. “Just in sheer numbers, if two people call out, we have 25 ready to step in for them. We just have more resources to pull from.”
Starks gives most of the credit to his chef. “I think I think it all starts with the culture, and I think it’s what you do for folks, how you take
care of them, how you reward them, both financially and emotionally,” he says. “You get the right people to be their leaders, and certainly Max has done a phenomenal job at leading this for 11 years now. Through that, you build a place where people want to be.”
In addition to competitive compensation and benefits that Starks benchmarks through periodic pay studies, the variety of work also attracts employees.
“One day we may be doing 5,000 of this or 2,000 of that, and tomorrow we’re doing something different,” says Starks. “And if we’re not bringing up tomorrow’s culinarians or tomorrow’s salespeople or tomorrow’s finance people or communications people, then shame on us. We want this to be a teaching kitchen.”
Chef Knoepfel is passionately invested in education, serving as an adviser and instructor at The Randy Rayburn School of Culinary Arts at Nashville State Community College. In addition to daily instruction of his own staff, Knoepfel encourages them to take advantage of an online training program called Lobster Ink with a curriculum designed by the Culinary Institute of America.
He blames popular culture for making his job harder. “Food Network screwed it up for our profession by making it look easy,” Knoepfel
says. “At the same time, we created this interest about the chef and the chef being obviously the superstar.”
Knoepfel enjoys teaching students about the realities of the commercial kitchen.
“I had two students come in here for a week to see how we do things,” he says. “We had to do ratatouille for 2,600 people, and I had two-and-a-half skids of zucchini to get cut. I took one case out and showed them how I wanted them cut and put on sheet pans so we could roast them. I came back after 10 minutes, and they’ve done about a third of the case, so they’re all happy. I told everyone to take a break for five minutes, and then we walked into the fridge. There are two-and-a-half skids of zucchini. …. They’re looking at me going, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘That’s the zucchini we need to cut for the ratatouille, and the last one has to look exactly like the first one!’”
Knoepfel sees himself and his staff as ambassadors for Nashville. He wants to be a good steward for the community, sourcing locally whenever possible and holding his kitchen to the highest standards. He constantly reminds himself of his role.
“I go to bed every night and I ask myself, ‘What did I teach, what did I learn, and what can I do tomorrow?’” ▼
MAX KNOEPFEL
MUSIC CITY CENTER KITCHEN
Nov. 9 | 12-6 pm
NASHVILLE SYMPHONY
NOV
Presented
Presented without the
Rhiannon Giddens
FRIDAY, NOV. 8
MUSIC
[WHOLE MOODS] MOODY JOODY EP RELEASE
The synth-kissed sound of dream pop, which had its first heyday in the late 1980s, keeps coming up as a touchstone for new generations of musicians and fans. And it makes sense! The juxtaposition of soft layers of voices, keyboards and guitars and crisp, insistent, danceable rhythms — ripe with opportunity for a sharp lead line to cut through — is attractive to the ear, a wide-open canvas for telling all kinds of stories, and good for dancing. Moody Joody, the pop trio of singer-songwriters Kaitie Forbes (who also plays guitar) and Kayla Hall (whom you also hear on keys) and producer-songwriter-instrumentalist Andrew Pacheco, embraced the power of dream pop right from the start with their debut single “Heat” in 2020, and it’s all over the songs on their new EP Dream Girl. In advance single “Cuts Deep,” the singers warn a partner who shows little interest in commitment that while it would hurt to call it off, it might hurt worse to languish in the doldrums. Whatever you have going on, come dance it out with the group as they celebrate the release. Natalie Madigan, whose No Feeling Is Final should be in your queue if you enjoyed Lorde’s debut Pure Heroine, will support. STEPHEN TRAGESER
8 P.M. AT ROW ONE STAGE AT CANNERY HALL
1 CANNERY ROW
HARPETH HARVEST FESTIVAL
PAGE 16
MACHINE GIRL W/KILL ALTERS & SNOOPER PAGE 18
THE ENGLISH BEAT PAGE 20
THURSDAY / 11.7
MUSIC
[FULL-CIRCLE FINALE] NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND
Country music faithful can bid so long to the enduring songs of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with a two-night run of shows this week in Nashville. Known for time-tested hits like “Fishin’ in the Dark” and the groundbreaking concept album Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band announced its farewell run earlier this year — more than five decades after forming in Long Beach, Calif. (with country-rock artist Jackson Browne as an original member, no less). The band leaves behind a lasting legacy in Nashville and beyond, especially with Will the Circle Be Unbroken — an album that in the early 1970s bridged the gap between country torchbearers like “Mother” Maybelle Carter and Roy Acuff and a group of long-haired pickers who respected the music, if not their predecessors’ barbers. Now showgoers can celebrate the band’s rich history one more time at Music City’s most fitting venue — the Ryman Auditorium.
MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
7:30 P.M. AT THE RYMAN
116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.
ART [SOUTHERN ACCENTS] HERITAGE: SOUTHERN VERNACULAR
The East Coast has Andy Warhol and the Factory, the West Coast has the Light and Space artists, and the South has the quilters of Gee’s Bend. If you’re looking for the quintessential art form of the American South, look no further than the band of quilters who have been perfecting their imperfect, iconic quilts along the Alabama River in the small hamlet of Gee’s Bend. Several of their quilts will hang in Haley Gallery in downtown Nashville through January as part of Heritage: Southern Vernacular. In addition to the quilts, the exhibition will include sculptures, paintings and works on paper by influential outsider artists like Thornton Dial and Mose Tolliver. To celebrate the exhibition’s opening on Thursday, a handful of Gee’s Bend quilters will be at Haley Gallery to discuss their work and its history with guest curator Paul Barrett. On Friday, they will participate in a quilting demonstration — there’s no better way to get to know the art form. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
THROUGH JAN. 7 AT THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME’S HALEY GALLERY
222 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY S.
FRIDAY / 11.8
MUSIC [PLUGGED IN] BENEFIT FOR BELOVED ASHEVILLE FEAT. ELECTRIC PYTHON, THE CRIMINAL KIND & TOWER DEFENSE
In the weeks since Hurricane Helene devastated a wide swath of Western North Carolina, Nashville musicians have been doing one of the things they do best when there’s a need: organizing benefit shows to raise money to help. A name you might have heard is BeLoved Asheville, a nonprofit that does a wide range of good works in the region — including the kind of crisis relief that’s necessary for the area to recover from the hurricane. Several local benefits have generated funds for the organization, but perhaps none as big as the one coming to Eastside Bowl on Friday. Communityminded post-punk thrashers Tower Defense support. Joining them will be The Criminal Kind, heretofore a self-styled “Tom Petty ambassador band” who will play original music (described by a representative of the group in an email as “melodic and fuzzy, Southern, punk and rock, etc.”) for the first time in public at this show. Topping the bill is the mighty Electric Python, the group fronted by amplifier wizard Jeff Hime that contributor P.J. Kinzer described thusly in his 2023 review of their annual Krampus party: “The stoner-rock foursome draws on heavy music that made it to FM radio in the ’70s, like AC/DC and ZZ Top, dragging the sound through the crunchy debris left by ’90s groups like Monster Magnet and Fu Manchu, resulting in a concoction that’ll wallop you like a hit from a well-packed bong.” STEPHEN TRAGESER
8 P.M. AT THE ’58 AT EASTSIDE BOWL
1508 GALLATIN PIKE S.
FILM [WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP] RESTORATION ROUNDUP: THE TIME MASTERS
Janus Films releasing a 4K restoration of René Laloux’s Les Maîtres du Temps (aka The Time Masters) will hopefully jump-start a new appreciation around these parts for the French animator, who made only three features and a handful of shorts before his death in 2004. In this 1982 follow-up to his breakthrough 1973 debut Fantastic Planet, Laloux collaborated with
comics legend Jean “Mœbius” Giraud for this story of a space captain who goes on a rescue mission to retrieve a young boy who’s stranded on a planet with creatures both cute and deadly (as well as gigantic strawberries that squirt alcoholic juice). The captain obviously runs into obstacles along the way, including a villainous, treasure-hoarding prince who gets both of them stuck on a planet with winged minions controlled by an amorphous hive mind. Yeah, a lot of strange shit goes down — I haven’t even gotten to the child-like homunculi sidekicks who can smell people’s thoughts. It’s a trippy, thought-provoking adventure that’ll attract fans of sci-fi, French animation and, of course, weed.
CRAIG D. LINDSEY
NOV. 8 & 10 AT THE BELCOURT
2102 BELCOURT AVE.
[CIVIL RIGHTS — AND WRONGS]
THEATER
WOMEN IN THEATRE NASHVILLE: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME
Women in Theatre Nashville was established in 2023 with a clear mission in mind: “to showcase the incredible talent, stories and voices of women in the performing arts.” Beginning this weekend, WIT is teaming up with the Darkhorse Theater to present Heidi Schreck’s timely work What the Constitution Means to Me. Inspired by Schreck’s own experiences, the action follows a young Heidi as she competes in constitutional debate contests across the country in order to earn college tuition. What the Constitution Means to Me — nominated for two Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize finalist — offers a fascinating look at the founding document by addressing important issues such as women’s rights, domestic violence, immigration and more. Directed by Abby Waddoups, the cast includes Lindsey Patrick-Wright as Heidi, along with Thomas Wehby and Pippy PatrickWesson. Local audiences may recognize PatrickWright, who was thrust into the spotlight as a Democratic advocate and influencer last year when she spoke out on behalf of her bullied teen at a Wilson County school board meeting. But she’s also a busy actor, having recently appeared with Playhouse 615 and Elite Studio Works.
AMY STUMPFL
NOV. 8-16 AT THE DARKHORSE THEATER 4610 CHARLOTTE AVE.
SATURDAY / 11.9
FESTIVAL
[DOWN BY THE RIVER] HARPETH HARVEST FESTIVAL
We have a lot of great parks in and around Nashville, and they have a lot of friends. And by friends, I mean nonprofits that exist solely to support each of those parks. (You’ll never guess which one Friends of Harpeth River State Park supports.) The volunteer-led organization is putting on the annual Harpeth Harvest Festival to support the park system that stretches across 40 river miles, including nine different river access points, plus hiking trails and historic sites. Set along the backdrop of the park’s Hidden Lake entrance (which just so happens to be my favorite hiking spot around here), the Harpeth Harvest Festival is sure to be an event as special as it is beautiful. You can expect all the fixin’s of a good little festival, from food trucks and live music to artisan vendors and children’s activities. While you’ll need to purchase tickets to enter the event, the funds go toward supporting the park — get your ticket at harpethfriends.org. KELSEY BEYELER
10 A.M. TO 3 P.M. AT HARPETH RIVER STATE PARK HIDDEN
BOOKS [ON THE WRITE TRACK] JAMES MCBRIDE
The Nashville Public Library will host celebrated author James McBride at Martin
Luther King Jr. Magnet High School as the featured speaker for the 2024 Literary Award Weekend Public Lecture. McBride, a National Book Award winner for 2013’s The Good Lord Bird, is known for penning works such as the sprawling crime novel Deacon King Kong and Kirkus Award winner The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. McBride is also a musician and screenwriter and has credits on a pair of Spike Lee films — an adaptation of his novel Miracle at St. Anna and an original screenplay for Red Hook
Summer, co-written with Lee The event is free, but registration is required. It will also feature live music, and there will be watch parties at the Bellevue, Donelson, East, Goodlettsville, Green Hills and Hermitage NPL branches. LOGAN BUTTS 10 A.M. AT MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. MAGNET HIGH SCHOOL
613 17TH AVE. N.
ART [A PEACEFUL PAUSE] ART THERAPY AND MEDITATION WORKSHOP
The holiday stress season is here. There’s a lot going on, between people’s increased workload, parties, shopping and trying to believe that we’ve somehow made it to November. When you combine the feeling that everything is happening all at once with a desire to be present for it all, “overwhelmed” doesn’t even begin to capture how most of us are feeling. As silly as it might sound, taking a moment to slow down during this incredibly stressful time is necessary, whether that’s with a walk in Centennial Park or treating yourself to a meditation workshop. If the latter sounds appealing, you’re in luck: Turnip Green Creative Reuse is hosting an art therapy and meditation workshop with local artist Alex Handley. For $30, you get two hours of time to yourself — a moment to rest and reflect that doesn’t come around often. Creativity and expression run free through this guided workshop, making it a helpful way to find a pocket of peace. KATIE BETH CANNON 10 A.M. AT TURNIP GREEN CREATIVE REUSE 1014 THIRD AVE. S.
SUNDAY / 11.10
MUSIC
[EXPANSIVE HISTORY] SILKROAD ENSEMBLE FEAT.
RHIANNON GIDDENS
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma founded Silkroad in 1998 as a multicultural arts organization that strives to connect ideas and art forms from around the world. Acclaimed folk musician Rhiannon Giddens became Silkroad’s artistic director in 2020. Giddens has explored areas adjacent to folk music, as on 2014’s Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, a T Bone Burnett-produced album featuring lyrics by Bob Dylan. With The Silkwood Ensemble — the arts organization’s musical arm — Giddens has created American Railroad, a multidisciplinary work that details the history of the laborers who helped build railroads in North America in the 19th century. Among them were Black, Irish, Chinese and Indigenous peoples, and American Railroad features rearranged folk songs — Giddens adapts the 19th-century tune “Swannanoa Tunnel” as part of the narrative — that tell the story of the rapid national expansion that came as a result of railroad technology and the workers who built the railroads. Acclaimed musicians like harpist Maeve Gilchrist and Wu Man, who is a virtuoso on the pipa, a fourstringed lute, contributed to American Railroad Giddens & Co. have brought necessary history to light with American Railroad. Like the United States at its best, stories that are inclusive give
NOVEMBER 7 & 8
NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND WITH
NOVEMBER 9
KATHLEEN MADIGAN
NOVEMBER 11,
NOVEMBER 14 LUKE GRIMES WITH
NOVEMBER
NOVEMBER
NOVEMBER
credit to forgotten heroes, and that’s something to be proud of. EDD HURT
7:30 P.M. AT THE SCHERMERHORN
1 SYMPHONY PLACE
[DANCE, DANCE REVOLUTION]
MUSIC
MACHINE GIRL W/KILL ALTERS & SNOOPER
Greg Ginn’s SST Records made shirts featuring a punk breaking a baseball bat across the skull of a raver — a big seller in their ’90s mail-order catalog, as a lot of punks had some unnecessary animosity toward the booming rave culture. But German anticapitalist unit Atari Teenage Riot soon came along, coining the term “digital hardcore” to bring ravers and punks into the same mosh pit. Watching YouTube footage of Machine Girl, you can see how the Long Islanders still carry that torch. What ATR did for the Ritalin-prescription generation, Machine Girl is doing for the TikTokdiagnosed neurodivergent kids of today. Their bellicose rhythms and ever-growing catalog of releases have grabbed rabid fans by splicing ideas from extreme metal, anime soundtracks, industrial music and rave culture. The band’s credo for justice echoes the ideas of their outspoken ATR forefather Alec Empire, while their sound has landed them everywhere from dance-club DJ sets to U.K. metal rag Kerrang! Their tour partners, noisy NYC duo Kill Alters, feature Bonnie Baxter (of Machine Girl side project Prolaps) alongside Hisham Bharoocha (of Lightning Bolt and Black Dice) on drums. Zany locals Snooper will also be on the bill, bringing their hyperactive live set through their hometown for only the second time in 2024.
P.J. KINZER
8 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL
925 THIRD AVE. N.
MONDAY / 11.11
THEATER
[JUST ANOTHER CLOWN NOIR COMEDY] GADABOUT THEATER COMPANY: CLOWN BAR 2
For more than a decade, Gadabout Theater Company has been “keeping Nashville theater
weird” while serving up some of the city’s most unconventional and often darkly compelling performances. Its latest effort is no exception, as the company presents Clown Bar 2 at Third Coast Comedy Club. In this immersive follow-up to Adam Szymkowicz’s hit “clown noir” comedy — which Gadabout produced back in 2016 — Third Coast will be transformed into the seedy Clown Bar, “a clown cabaret featuring a mime, a clown crooner and clown burlesque.” Directed by Stephanie Houghton (with musical direction by Lauren Wilson), the cast includes Tanner Bryan, Britt Byrd, Kale Buckman, Caroline Conner, Nick Hodge, Jeremy Holland, Moses James, Lindsay Pfeiffer, Gerald Pitts and Amanda Sullivan. It’s a solid lineup, and it’s great to see so many folks returning from the original 2016 cast. Audiences are encouraged to don their favorite clown or noir styles. But be warned: The “dangerous allure of clown crime life” is often hard to resist.
AMY STUMPFL
NOV. 11-12 AT THIRD COAST COMEDY CLUB
1310 CLINTON ST.
MUSIC
[ELEVEN ELEVEN] LEON BRIDGES W/HERMANOS GUTIERREZ
I first learned about Leon Bridges — who was still relatively unknown at the time — back in 2014 at a cramped show inside beloved, now-defunct West Side venue The Stone Fox. Admittedly, I had shown up there for the Tuesday night burger special, but I somehow got in on the guest list by some kind of Music City luck. I forgot all about my appetite as soon as Bridges hit the stage. Exactly 10 years later to the day, Bridges will kick off a three-night stand headlining the Ryman Auditorium. The Texas-born musician’s evolution from a young and hungry trad-soul performer to a Grammy-winning R&B/pop artist, collaborator and fashion maven continues to astonish.
On his fourth studio album, released in early October and simply titled Leon, he effortlessly blends genres while expanding upon the most vulnerable themes found in his prior work.
“Turn my pain into power / My fear to desire / Fall apart when I try to be strong / Gotta learn how to cry,” sings Bridges on the opening track
“When a Man Cries.” Hermanos Gutierrez are set to open each evening in support of their stellar early-summer release Sonido Cósmico
JASON VERSTEGEN
8 P.M. AT THE RYMAN
116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY. N.
FILM [COZY CHRISTMAS CLASSICS] HOME ALONE , NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION & MORE
When it comes to Christmas, there’s no more “looking forward to it” or “I can’t wait.” It’s here! (If you have opinions about not celebrating until after Thanksgiving, keep them to yourself.) The beginning of the Christmas season means trying to fit in all the activities you can — pulling out the decorations, going to get a tree and trying all the new holiday coffees at your local spots. It also means figuring out the newest Christmas trend or coming up with your own. Maybe you’re over minimalistic, “millennial beige”
yuletide aesthetics and want to reminisce on Christmases of old by breaking out your biggest, brightest, borderline-gaudy decor. The Franklin Theatre is making it even easier to lean into this old-school sentiment by screening holiday classics throughout November and December. Movies including 1989’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, 2000’s live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas and my personal favorite, 1990’s Home Alone, will be on the big screen for all to enjoy. Catch the first screening of Home Alone this Monday, and visit franklintheatre.com for a full schedule of films. KATIE BETH CANNON THROUGH DEC. 26 AT THE FRANKLIN THEATRE 419 MAIN ST., FRANKLIN
TUESDAY
/ 11.12
MUSIC [AND THE OTHER, GOLD] REAL FRIENDS
It’s been a strange road for Midwest emo-
REAL FRIENDS
LEON BRIDGES
RHIANNON GIDDENS
PHOTO: MICHAEL HERRICK
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
DECEMBER
FEBRUARY
rock outfit Real Friends. The band emerged about a decade ago as a formidable addition to the melody-slinging pop-punk scene, pulling shoulder-to-shoulder crowds in beer-soaked rock clubs and filling blacktop lots with skinnyjeaned kids for the annual (and now revived!) Vans Warped Tour. Through three albums and a handful of EPs, the band honed a craft of genuine feel-all-the-feels songwriting (example: 2013 song “I’ve Given Up on You”) and turnit-up-to-11 shows. Then, in 2021, the group re-emerged from a yearlong hiatus with a new lead singer and a sharply produced sound that was as anthemic as ever with the Torn in Two EP. Now the group is touring behind this year’s full-length album Blue Hour, the second proper release from Real Friends since introducing Cody Muraro on vocals. Can’t Swim plays main support on the bill, which also includes Carly Cosgrove and Slow Joy. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
7 P.M. AT THE MIL
1 CANNERY ROW
[LIGHT SOURCE]
MUSIC
ORION SUN W/CRUZA
Being on her own is nothing new for pop star Orion Sun. The New Jersey native was kicked out of her home and estranged from her family at a young age because of her sexuality, a story she’s told to outlets like Vinyl Me Please. Forced to discover what love meant to her as a queer Black woman alone in the world, Sun turned to journaling, using pages upon pages of self-reflection as inspiration for her music. Her latest album Orion entrenches its songs in introspective melancholy. The September release marks Sun’s first collection of new songs since 2022’s Getaway EP. On Orion, Sun contemplates loneliness as she deals with the onset of grief in the absence of love. “Here we are just betting on a dying star / After all, looking up is staring in the past / Laughter flood the hallway / Could we get it back?” sings Sun on the ethereal “Take My Eyes.” She’ll make a stop at The Basement East as a part of her extensive Rising Sun Tour. Miami-based alt-R&B outfit Cruza is set to open the evening. JASON VERSTEGEN
8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.
WEDNESDAY / 11.13
[POLITICAL RIFFS]
MUSIC
GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR
The salad days of post-rock were the late 1990s, when bands like Tortoise, Stereolab and Godspeed You! Black Emperor drew from various rock-adjacent practices to create music that mirrors the preoccupations of the early internet era. While Tortoise riffed on Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack music on 1998’s TNT, Godspeed You! Black Emperor created critiques of late capitalism that sounded like rock music on their 2000 album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. That record stretched to 87 minutes, with compositions that worked variations on simple melodies. Speaking on the 155 podcast in 2021, the band’s bassist, Mauro
Pezzente, talked about the origins of their style: “We never really planned anything. We just kind of let things happen on their own. … A lot of it was slacker attitude, which was kind of popular back then too.” Their new full-length No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead refers to the reported number of deaths in the IsraelHamas conflict as of the date in the title. Like the band’s previous albums, No Title addresses political realities through artful repetition. Alan Sparhawk — guitarist for the band Low whose latest solo album is this year’s White Roses, My God — will open. EDD HURT
8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.
[BEAT HAPPENING]
MUSIC
THE ENGLISH BEAT
I could type a never-ending list of reasons why I love The English Beat. But instead of talking about dub mixes of deep cuts or their roots in the Two-Tone scene, I want to point readers to one of The Beat’s best-loved hits that almost didn’t even make the cut for their third (and final) album. Their smash single “Save It for Later” was a song written by Dave Wakeling as a teenager, though his bandmates protested that the song was too much of a dated rock dinosaur for their bluebeat-tinged new wave. Even as an adult, Wakeling admits he wasn’t a guitar wizard, and that he tuned his instrument to play with one finger. But one day The Beat’s strummer got a call from Pete Townshend (a call that Wakeling believed to be a prank). The Who’s guitar master couldn’t figure out “Save It for Later,” even with the help of his friend David Gilmour. Noting that he knew it was a strange tuning, Townshend asked Wakeling for his secret. The British rock superstar got his answer and performed the song on the Gilmour/ Townshend supergroup Deep End’s live album. Expect to hear this song and others from the band’s four-decade career Nov. 13 at City Winery.
P.J. KINZER
7:30 P.M. AT
609 LAFAYETTE ST.
GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR
From platinum-selling chart-toppers to underground , household names to undiscovered gems, Chief’s Neon Steeple is c bringing the very best national and regional talent back to Broadway.
NOVEMBER LINE UP
11.16 Outlaws Apostles – Free Show
11.17 Eric Church: To Beat The Devil Residency SOLD OUT 11.18 Cigarettes & Pizza w/ Aaron Raitiere, Shelly Fairchild 11.19 SiriusXM Presents Eric Church: One Night Only SOLD OUT
11.20 Tom Douglas – Love, Tom
the Songbird w/ Maggie
Special Guest: Emily Ann Roberts
11.12 Casey Beathard w/ Tucker Beathard
11.13 Eric Church: To Beat The Devil Residency SOLD OUT
11.14 Dwayne O’Brien (Of Little Texas)
11.15 Taylor Hicks
11.21 The Warren Brothers 11.22 BlondMe – A Blondie Tribute
11.24 Pick, Pick, Pass w/ Kevin Mac, Abram Dean, Wyatt Durrette
11.25 Buddy’s Place Writers Round w/ Stevenson Everett, Cyndi Thomson, Chuck Wicks
11.30 William Michael Morgan
TICKETS
T TACO T U
MAIZ RUNNER
Julio Hernandez honors Mexico and Tennessee with his new brick-and-mortar
BY KELSEY BEYELER
THE LONG-AWAITED brick-and-mortar iteration of Maiz de la Vida is finally here, standing as yet another testament to chef Julio Hernandez’s talent, creativity and ambition. Located in the Antiques Building at the border of the Gulch and Pie Town, the new restaurant pays homage to both Mexico and Tennessee — and celebrates what can happen when the two cultures converge.
“I don’t think it would be fair to just do everything Mexico,” Hernandez tells the Scene “As I don’t think it will strike as good if we do everything Nashville. So we’re trying to balance that act, and I think it’s showing.”
It is. Take the beautiful pots that decorate the building. Though they look like they could have been imported from Mexico (as is the case for the restaurant’s stone plates, which are sourced from Oaxaca), the pots are made by local artist Cesar Pita — and they’re available for purchase. And while Maiz de la Vida’s heirloom corn, which is the very soul of Hernandez’s food, is imported from Mexico, the chef has been collaborating with Caney Fork Farms to grow similar varieties here in Middle Tennessee. Though the partnership is compelling, the farm is not yet able to match the demand. Hernandez says that between the new restaurant, the East Nashville food truck, the Bordeaux-area commissary kitchen that sells tortillas and to-go lunches and catering services, Maiz de la Vida goes through a thousand pounds of corn each week.
Another unexpectedly high-demand ingredient is duck. Though duck is served only in the new restaurant’s mole negro, Maiz de la Vida’s demand outgrew the supply of their purveyor just two weeks after opening. If you taste the dish, you’ll understand why. Preparing it is a four-day process including more than 30 ingredients that require different stages of their own prep, from toasting to frying to burning. The ingredients are then passed through the molino — or mill — which makes for a deeply concentrated paste. The rich, velvety mole negro accompanies duck breast, sweet potatoes and a cracker made from sesame seeds and egg whites.
Yet another reflection of Maiz de la Vida’s Tennessee-Mexico union is a grits dish that features a “three sisters” vegetable medley of corn, beans and squash. Though Hernandez had cooked grits in previous jobs, making them from scratch presented a learning curve.
“We had to teach ourselves how to make grits,” says Hernandez. “In the process, we discovered polenta and cornmeal, and we decided to leave it in the grits to add more body — because normally those are three
PHOTO:
MOLE NEGRO
Hernandez has also been teaching a new generation of local chefs to perfect their tortillamaking skills — aside from his employees from Guatemala and Mexico, who already knew how to prepare them and have taught Hernandez a few things. The process presents an entire universe of skill and technique, from achieving the right level of hydration to cooking the tortillas just long enough on each side.
Alongside the dinner service — which provides a more elevated dining experience with dishes like mole, salmon, chicken milanesa and shrimp aguachile (and tacos, of course) — you can also swing by the restaurant for quick, casual lunch options like burritos. Hernandez tells the Scene his team is planning to launch brunch service on Nov. 9.
Hernandez’s path to opening the restaurant has been a long one — from growing up in Tlaxcala, Mexico, where his family harvested maize, to cooking in country clubs and deciding to make and sell tortillas during the pandemic. In the earliest days of Maiz de la Vida, you would have to message Hernandez on social media for a batch of his homemade tortillas, which he would deliver to anyone within a 30-mile radius. From there he started selling tortillas at farmers markets, which turned into a few pop-up
collaborations, and then the permanently parked food truck that still sits outside East Nashville’s Chopper Tiki. Before he even opened the new restaurant, Hernandez’s cooking garnered national attention: He appeared on Netflix’s Somebody Feed Phil and was a 2023 semifinalist in the James Beard Awards’ Emerging Chef category. Hernandez also won the Scene’s Iron Fork contest earlier this year, the trophy for which is displayed in his restaurant.
But Hernandez has by no means done this all alone. Along with Hernandez’s business partner Andy Mumma and general manager Nick Dolan, Chepe Laredo works as the chef de cocina, and Obed Vallejo is the executive sous chef. David Broomhead runs the bar, which includes a bevy of cocktails and a curated selection of mezcal and tequila.
Though the opening of the Maiz de la Vida restaurant is exciting in its own right, it’s just the beginning of a whole era. It’s just a matter of time before we’ll start seeing even more intriguing moves coming from Hernandez and company, from weekly specials to possible collaborations, or perhaps future tasting menus. Regardless of what lies ahead, Hernandez assures us of one thing we can count on.
“Salsas will be spicy, I promise.” ▼
AUTUMN GREEN DUMPLINGS AT FANCYPANTS
A vegetable-forward dish at the Dickerson Pike spot, which offers new takes on plants
BY MARGARET LITTMAN
NASHVILLE HAS OF COURSE had good vegetarian restaurants for a long time. In fact, I pulled together a list of some of the city’s best vegan and vegetarian outposts earlier this year. (See our Feb. 22 issue.) But we haven’t really had a fine-dining vegetarian spot — a place to put on, well, your fanciest pants and have a multicourse plant-centric meal. Until now. Until Fancypants.
The team who brought us Butcher & Bee and Redheaded Stranger also brings us this East Side excuse to eat vegetables. Fancypants is not strictly vegetarian. You can add on a ribeye steak, and I’m sure it is delicious. But I’ve been too focused on the produce-heavy section of the menu to try it. There are nine vegetarian dishes listed, and just like at a meat-and-three, you pick three. The prix fixe is $70 for all three, and they’re coursed out over the evening. It’s a lot of food, but well-plated and well-paced, particularly if you enjoy one of Fancypants’ signature cocktails in between courses. I have yet to taste anything I haven’t liked, but the kitchen’s finesse with root vegetables has produced some of my favorites.
This summer’s turnip-noodle lasagna made me think about turnips differently. Now, this fall’s rutabaga dumpling, served with horseradish oil, is a combination of flavors that is hearty but not heavy. The experience reminds me of New York’s Dirt Candy; Washington, D.C.’s Oyster, Oyster; and my old haunt, Chicago’s Green Zebra (RIP), in that no one is trying to trick you into eating vegetables. This isn’t a bit of “this tastes just like meat!” sleightof-hand. It’s the result of a kitchen that loves vegetables and wants to show you what it can do. While there’s no dress code, the decor and the specialness of the menu make me want to get fancy. ▼
PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND
AUTUMN GREEN DUMPLINGS
CULTURE: IN THE CLUB
IF YOU’RE EVER at the Midtown bar Hi-Fi Clyde’s on a Tuesday evening, you might stumble upon a dozen or so folks thoughtfully gazing at rows of checkers on ornate wooden boards. You might also hear the clatter of dice and the “Aha!” that accompanies a good roll. These are the members of the Nashville Backgammon Association, a club that has met in Music City for 26 years.
I was invited to a meeting by Rollow Mickle, one of the group’s most consistent and colorful members. By the time I left, I had a grasp on the rules — and an urge to search the App Store for a way to play the game on my own time.
Mickle, a Marine Corps veteran, says he learned the game in Hawaii back during its 1970s heyday. He boasts tournament victories over top players and proudly shows me a souvenir game piece from a 1978 tournament billed as backgammon’s “first million-dollar tournament.”
“I play more [based] on having played for 50 years, and I’ve seen every situation,” he says.
I watched him face off against Stephen Trundy, whom even Mickle says is probably the group’s top player. They explained the game to me in excited, almost dizzying tones as they rolled dice and shuffled their pieces around the long, skinny triangles on the board. The goal of backgammon is to race your pieces to the end of a board by rolling two dice, before rolling again to “bear off” your pieces, or remove them from the board. Your opponent races them the opposite way and can try to block your pieces, or “hit” them back to the starting line. There are elements of chance, strategy, probability and even gambling theory thanks to a doubling cube that can raise the stakes of a game. (At the Nashville Backgammon Association, players don’t wager directly on games but contribute a few bucks to a pot that goes to the winner of each week’s knockout tournament. New players usually aren’t asked to pay.)
I got a better grasp on the rules, of course, when I played a game myself. My first opponent was JP White, a retired IT specialist who took an interest in the game when developers first programmed computers to play it in the 1990s. He found places to play backgammon online but wanted to replicate the tactile, community-based experience of playing in person.
“It frustrated me that I couldn’t find a local club,” White says. “I thought, ‘Well, rather than being frustrated, why not just create a club?’”
The more I played, the more I understood his point. I love games and enjoyed picking up strategy and winning good rolls, but I also
NASHVILLE BACKGAMMON ASSOCIATION
Weekly tournaments attract longtime aficionados and first-time players alike — including Amanda Shires BY COLE VILLENA
found that the members of the NBA — the Nashville Backgammon Association, what else? — maintain friendly banter over the board, even occasionally congratulating each other for killer moves. I learned that the term “backgammon” actually refers to a type of particularly deflating way to lose a match, sort of like if we called football “fumble at the goal line” or hockey “shutout.”
I also learned that, since the dice provide an element of luck, you always feel like you have a chance to win.
“It’s referred to by a lot of people as ‘the game of life,’” says White. “You can’t guarantee an outcome by doing the right thing, but you can tip the balance of favor. … That’s just enough to make an edge over time.”
Kristin Westerman, who joined the group earlier this year, joined not just for community, but also to sharpen her skills. Westerman is a former math teacher, and she’s drawn to the probability and strategy elements of the game. One of her “bucket list” items is to play at a major tournament like the Miami Open Backgammon Championship.
“It’s so fun — it’s addictive,” Westerman says. “I’ve been trying to now make my game better, learn more and study it here.”
Westerman got to test her skills at the inaugural Shires Cup, hosted by country singer and fiddler Amanda Shires. Shires is another recent convert to the game who says she picked it up during a difficult personal year.
“I was finding it to where I couldn’t paint or do music,” Shires tells the Scene. “I was like, ‘I need a hobby, something to get me out of the house.’”
Shires found Mickle on Google and started taking lessons from him. “I got a couple of books, like I went all-in,” she says. As she played more, she discovered several people in the Nashville music community already played, from Jack White’s bassist Dominic John Davis to Sugarland’s Annie Clements.
“I encourage people, if they find themselves in the fucking worst pit of their lives, find something to do,” Shires says. “Get yourself some friends! Do something different!”
Westerman finished runner-up in the first Shires Cup, a confidence-boosting win she can build on before heading to major competitions in the future. As for Shires, she was knocked out in the first round — but I’d wager she still considers the event a success.
“It probably took me five months to feel decent at it, but that’s because I’m hard on myself,” Shires says. “I mean, I don’t have to be good at everything. We don’t have to be good at it. We just have to enjoy it.” ▼
PHOTOS:
Nashville Backgammon Association Games every Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Hi-Fi Clyde’s, 1700 Church St.
NASHVILLE BACKGAMMON ASSOCIATION MEMBERS AT THE INAUGURAL SHIRES CUP IN LEIPER’S FORK
Photo by Stephen Reinhardt
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AMERICAN DREAMS
Aaron Robertson weaves personal and political history in The Black Utopians BY
HAMILTON CAIN
ICONOCLASTIC HARVARD
LAW professor Randall Kennedy once posited that Black intellectual history is best understood as a tug-of-war between optimists and pessimists: those like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama who preached hope for racial reconciliation, and those like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael who eschewed it. (Some pessimists, according to Kennedy, switched sides — think Frederick Douglass — and other optimists turned to pessimism, like W.E.B. Du Bois.)
Aaron Robertson’s exacting, poetic The Black Utopians tracks the rise of Black nationalism, skeptical to its core, through a cadre of Detroit activists, knitting their creative and often militant ideas with memoir and his formerly incarcerated father’s letters, centering the question: “What does utopia look like in black?” The book is a marvel of storytelling. A Detroit native, Robertson spent summer vacations in Promise Land, Tenn., a Dickson County enclave of African American farmers and small business owners. Amid “the August heat, the chattering cicadas, the ticks hiding in underbrush,” he reveled in a nurturing community that dated back to Reconstruction, seeding his future research into Albert Cleage Jr., a feisty Detroit pastor who seized the possibilities of justice by advocating for separation. Robertaround Cleage and magnetic figures such as painter Glanton Dowdell, who did much of his work while incarcerated. The author excavates fresh nuggets from the well-trod terrain of the civil rights era. His depiction of engagement among Detroit’s Black congregations is textured and engrossing; he unearths class tensions and rivalries that fu-
Cleage, who was raised in an aspirational, proper family, broke with the peaceful rebellions of Dr. King and his colleagues: a weak tea, in his view. He preferred an explicit confrontation with the scourge of white supremacy. Dispirited by accommodating clergy, Cleage founded the Shrine of the Black Madonna, which morphed into a broad enterprise, with cultural satellites in Kalamazoo, Mich., and the South. “The Shrine of the Black Madonna was to be more than a church. It would be a laboratory for social experiments, open to all who supported black liberation, starting in a maligned, dream-filled city,”
Robertson writes. “The black revolution was not only about tearing things down, or building things up, or letting their hair fly free. It carried within it the wisdom of the divine spirit that moved through each of them, convincing them they were holy because they were common, earthbound.”
In 1967, riots upped the ante in Detroit, cleaving not just white and Black but also moderates and leftists. Although more sinner than saint, Dowdell rigged his own platform; he sketched and painted in prison, stirring interest in his talent, which spread after his release. He sought asylum in Sweden while being investigated for bond forgery — somehow, he’d beaten a murder rap — and became a cause célèbre in Stockholm. Robertson intersperses these less famous stories with his father’s epistolary account of his life while incarcerated, the scales of justice and morality tipped against him. His father, Doe Robertson, had a fierce longing to connect with his child — and to pursue that most American and tenuous of dreams, personal liberty — that adds a beautiful poignancy to the history Robertson crafts here.
Robertson conjures the cultural ferment of the 1970s, with glimpses of Amiri Baraka and Muhammad Ali; a sprig of radical chic flavors The Black Utopians’ consequential themes. The later chapters skew toward Cleage, who’d renamed himself Jaramogi Agyeman, and the desire for separation that led him to invest in Beulah Land, a South Carolina farm isolated from institutionalized bigotry. Jaramogi envi-
sioned a kind of Black homeland embedded in the South: autonomous, communal, inflected with values born of suffering and resilience. After his death in 2000, the Shrine’s influence and income tapered off. Beulah Land never flourished according to plan.
Robertson weaves together his narrative strands as he limns his own reckoning with racial ostracism, how the deck is forever stacked against those who need change — sweeping change — now. “New prisons were being built across the country” at the turn of the new millennium, he notes. “Unions were disappearing. Police brutality and gerrymandering persisted. Black preachers had lost their way by shouting the gospel of prosperity.” Such decay brings us to our fraught moment, which he attributes to a collective failure of imagination and the erosion of e pluribus unum, the concept of a pluralistic republic long past its sell date, or at least overtaken by events.
For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. ▼
The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America By Aaron Robertson Farrar, Straus & Giroux 400 pages, $30
PHOTO: BEOWULF SHEEHAN
UPCOMING EVENTS
PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENTFOR TICKETS & UPDATES
10:00AM- 11:00AM
FRIDAYS WITH ANN
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8
Ann will be at Parnassus to to sign and personalize your books!
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9
10:30AM
SATURDAY STORYTIME
with KRISTI VALIANT at PARNASSUS No Bunny Like You: A Mommy and Me Book
3:00PM- 4:00PM
FRIDAYS WITH ANN
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15
Ann will be at Parnassus to to sign and personalize your books! in time for the Holiday season!
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19
6:30PM
BILLY COLLINS
with ANN PATCHETT at MONTGOMERY BELL ACADEMY Water, Water
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20
6:30PM
PARNASSUS HOLIDAY SPECIAL: VIRTUAL EDITION
Join Ann Patchett and Parnassus booksellers on Zoom for a night of Holiday Book Recommendations.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21
6:30PM PHYLLIS GOBBELL
with LINDA CRENSHAW at PARNASSUS Prodigal
Vincent Neil Emerson w/ leon majcen
The Music of Taylor Swift for Kids (11:30aM) kitchen dwellers w/ shadowgrass (8PM) sasha alex sloan orion sun w/ cruza godspeed you! black emperor w/alansparhawhk Marc Scibilia w/ cassandra coleman BOOM bap w/ dj trayze marc scibilia w/ cassandra coleman wolves of glendale w/ melissa Villaseñor the wild feathers w/ nathan graham dogs in a pile the emo night tour the last waltz tribute beccafest ft. the living situation, good day dean, ryan harris brown, & mr. matty's world sicard hollow guilty pleasures 9th annual post thanksgiving day bash la lom willie watson w/ viv & riley rare hare
jedd hughes w/ Guthrie Trapp, Tom Bukovac, & more! (7PM) the cold stares w/ river ghost (9PM) zach hood (7PM) moondance w/ bluphoria & jaid (9PM) the privates a deer a horse w/ wesley and the boys, oginalii, & fossil creek becca neighbor w/ hannah delynn vinnie paolizzi w/ jack mckeon (7PM)
mojo thunder w/ zachary scott kline & highway natives (9PM) trella (7PM)
elijah johnston, jack and jealous, & liam bauman (9PM) brendan walter w/ scott wolverton (7PM)
demiatrix, zook and the joy of sharing (9pM) the hellp
izzy mahoubi w/ tiffany johnson, dasher, & kikko mai zach meadows (7PM)
MUSIC
THE PRIVATES NEVER made the sort of music one might associate with a greatest hits album. For one thing, they didn’t really have any hits. During their initial run from 2003 to 2010, the quartet of singer-guitarist and songwriter Dave Paulson, keyboardist and guitarist Ryan Norris, bassist Keith Lowen and drummer Rollum Haas released a pair of albums and two five-track EPs. They never toured, and their impact was mostly confined to Nashville. But during a formative period in local rock, they built a devoted fan base in Music City around a catalog that deserves to be celebrated.
“I listen to those records and I’m like, ‘Nothing’s missing,’” Paulson says. Talking with me during recent separate interviews with three-quarters of the band, he has no regrets about their relatively brief tenure. “This is exactly how it was supposed to play out.”
What started as a notion to observe the group’s 20th anniversary led to We Are Really Rocking Now, Haven’t We?, a collection featuring 12 of The Privates’ best studio tracks bookended by two new songs that fit right alongside classics like “You Never Take Me Dancing” and “Pocari Sweat.” Stalwart Nashville indie YK Records released the LP in August. The band will reunite Saturday for their first show since a one-off in 2013 at The Stone Fox that marked their 10th anniversary. It’ll be at The Basement, where The Privates played in 2008 with New York indie-rock legends The Walkmen, the band they’ve been compared to the most.
The Privates belong to a class of musicians who saw the opportunity to fold and bend the conventions and limitations of rock ’n’ roll to fabricate something simultaneously familiar and fresh. They’re pop weirdos in the spiritual lineage of bands like The Kinks, The Feelies and The Strokes — and, yes, The Walkmen — who are skilled at catching listeners off guard with unexpected key changes and twists in the song structure, whose risks somehow always pay off.
“Every group I’ve been a part of has its idiosyncrasies, but The Privates were the group where everyone’s individualities were at their most amplified and over-the-top,” says Haas. “Dave’s writing is very interesting to me, and I never knew what he was going to bring in. Ryan would always screw with the song in the best way possible. Keith is maybe the most melodic bass player I’ve ever been in a band with, and he has a preternatural ability to write melodies within the song and accent the rhythm.”
There’s also a quality to Paulson & Co.’s ringing riffs that feels like they drank just a bit too much coffee on an empty stomach: anxious, angsty and jerky, shifting around to alleviate their uneasiness and occasionally exploding from the tension into a cathartic blast of noise. It
THE TIME HAS COME TO REAPPEAR
The Privates revisit a standout catalog in Nashville rock
BY P.J. KINZER
branded the band with a reputation for intensity onstage.
“Not meaning to flex, but our live shows were always great, in my recollection,” says Haas. “We had this weird frantic energy that seemed to translate well live.”
“I have a memory of Rollum vomiting in the middle of a song while never missing a beat,” recalls Norris. “Our performances were pretty strenuous and high-energy.”
In high school around the turn of the millennium, Paulson fronted his ultra-melodic band Esposito. Lowen was in Lifeboy, another rock outfit that was playing the same all-ages rooms around the same time. Close to the time The Privates came together, Paulson formed Character, an instrumental avant-garde project that included Norris on keyboards; meanwhile, Haas was recording and touring with Murfreesboro dynamos The Features. (Word to the wise: Features frontman Matt Pelham’s new project Matt and the Watt Gives opens Saturday’s show.) Norris points out that his Privates bandmates all came from groups Paulson greatly admired, whom he liked as well. “I guess he was a fan of what I did in Character,” Norris says with a chuckle.
“I obviously chose the band I did because of the things I value,” Paulson says. “I did not choose guys who could just get in a band with me and follow directions so I could pursue my dreams. I chose my friends that I liked being around, who inspired me and were just straight-up the best people I knew for the job. And I felt really blessed to have that, you know?”
The group was active during a time when it was common for Nashville rockers to hop bands or play with multiple acts simultaneously. From The Privates’ inception to their amicable decision to quietly wind down, members were spread out across other active commitments including Lambchop, The Pink Spiders and Stone Jack Jones, which interfered with The Privates’ ability to be any member’s main gig.
“With The Privates always kind of being a sporadic, side-project kind of thing — not ever a full-time thing — my mentality was always kind of like we never really broke up,” says Paulson. “Just every once in a while, we can check in and do it again.”
“What I most wanted out of this whole thing was the new songs and to do some new music,” Paulson continues. “Like your classic greatest hits album from back when we were kids. It would be like, ‘Here’s all the songs, plus one new one to make you buy it.’”
The collage on the cover of We Are Really Rocking Now shares a distinct look with The Beatles’ 1990s Anthology sets. And similar to the way the remaining three of the Fab Four
fleshed out John Lennon’s demos “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” for those releases, The Privates booked time at frequent collaborator Jeremy Ferguson’s Battle Tapes and tracked the ripper “Don’t Take It Out on Me” and the appropriately nostalgic “Old Times.”
I asked Paulson, now a middle-aged father of two, what it’s like reliving emotions he had and lyrics he wrote nearly half a lifetime ago. “That’s harder to muster up in your 40s,” Paulson says. “You want to grow and change
and evolve. But this was a specific thing that you’re trying to preserve — but also not rehash. It’s tricky.”
There are no plans for more Privates shows after Saturday, but they still aren’t calling it quits. “We’re like cicadas,” says Paulson. “We basically come back and do the same thing. I assume when all those cicadas get out of the ground, they’re like, ‘Ah, we still got it. Nothing’s changed.’” ▼
BACK ROW FROM LEFT: MICHAEL EADES, JASON BULLOCK, JEREMY FERGUSON, DAVE PAULSON, KEITH LOWEN FRONT: ROLLUM HAAS, RYAN NORRIS
Playing 9 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9, at The Basement
GOOD EARTH
Julie Williams puts down roots with Tennessee Moon
BY MADELEINE BRADFORD
“I KNOW THAT I’m telling my story on this stage, but I’m also telling somebody else’s story that they get to hear in that time,” says Julie Williams. “I feel stronger every time I play one of those songs.”
On and off the stage, storytelling is a priority for the singer-songwriter. She aims to share her experience through her pointed lyrics and silky vocals while uplifting listeners of all backgrounds.
Williams’ goal for Tennessee Moon, the EP she released Oct. 17, is to channel the “fleeting nature” of her 20s. Each song draws on her 1990s and early-2000s country influences while presenting contemporary perspectives on identity, love and self-acceptance. “It’s really an ode to all the good, bad, all the dirt and mess,” she says, “but also the beauty of these past few years in Nashville.”
Williams started singing as soon as she could talk. While music comes naturally to her, she instead went to college to study public policy, intending to build a career in which she could help people and foster resounding change. While she was a student, Williams began writing songs and discovered that music could further that goal.
She first immersed herself in Nashville’s music scene in 2019. When she went to writers’ rounds, she would seldom see any people of
color performing. She’s since worked to find her groove as a mixed-race queer country artist.
“Being here five years in Nashville,” Williams says, “I feel like I am now just really coming into my own as who I am as an artist and my sound and what I want to say.”
One highlight of Tennessee Moon is a new “Moonlight Version” of “Southern Curls,” which strips back the original piece’s full-band arrangement to solo piano. It’s an important song
in Williams’ catalog that details her experiences growing up as a mixed-race person in Florida. “If you’ve ever had to fight to love yourself because somebody else made you feel like you shouldn’t, then that song is for you,” she says. The release of the original version in 2021 sparked her connection with the Black Opry, which led to her performance on the main stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 2023.
“I wanted to put it out with this EP because it
feels [like] this closing out of the ‘Southern Curls’ chapter,” says Williams. “Without that song, I would have never found the Black Opry. I would have never been a part of CMT’s Next Women of Country. I don’t think I would have stayed in Nashville if I hadn’t written that song.”
As the EP concludes one part of Williams’ journey, it marks the start of another, focused on introspection, acceptance and a surge of inspiration. She recorded Tennessee Moon with her partner and producer Jonathan Smalt, a process she describes as a “labor of love that kind of came together as we were falling in love, too.”
“This record was born from laying on the couch,” she explains, “lighting incense in the living room and just playing records and records and saying, ‘Oh wow, did you hear that piano part? Did you hear this, and did you hear that?’”
“Dirt” is one of Williams’ favorites from the EP. Co-written with Natalie Closner of the band Joseph, the song reflects the vulnerability Williams experienced in therapy experiences and her strengthened self-awareness.
“In that process, when you are digging up all these things from your past, there’s a while where you’re sitting in the dirt,” she says. “You haven’t gotten to see the fruits of your labor, and that’s what I was feeling.”
Williams is especially excited to perform “Dirt” when her tour brings her to The Blue Room at Third Man Records on Friday.
“Every time I sing it live or hear it, I’m reminding myself of its message of trying not to live for other people.” ▼
Playing 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7, at The Blue Room at Third Man Records
UPON AN EVENING DREARY
BY BAILEY BRANTINGHAM
ON HALLOWEEN AT THE EAST ROOM, the sheet ghosts and last-minute Party City fits were left at home. Despite a persistent cold drizzle, the Thursday night crowd turned out for an unofficial gathering of Nashville’s most specialized costumes, with each new outfit seemingly a more niche pop-culture reference than the last. A duo of pre- and post-corruption Jojo Siwas mingled with Lisa Frankenstein, while a human-size pack of cigarettes leaned on the bar and a seemingly endless supply of Robert Smiths was spread out among the pre-show crowd.
The aforementioned Smiths gathered onstage just after 8:30 p.m. as Tayls, kicking off their Cure-dedicated set with “Boys Don’t Cry.” Teased hair, smudged eyeliner and sullen vocals culminated into a perfect emulation of the post-punk pioneers.
“This is Robert, that’s Robert, back here’s Robert, over here’s Robert, I’m Robert,” frontman Taylor Cole said. “We’re all Robert here!”
Tayls experimented with ethereal vocal harmonies to complement classic upbeat ballads like “Just Like Heaven” before careening into The Cure’s darker discography for a few songs that are practically obligatory on All Hallow’s Eve. The band revved up the eerie goth undertones full-throttle for songs like “Lullaby” and “A Forest,” turning the tiny corner stage into a borderline nightmare-fueled fever dream.
The post-Tayls energy was immediately dissipated as the house music cut to “Super Freak” while the band broke down, leaving an empty stage for the next act.
After a brief intermission, Neil Fridd, better known as Terror Pigeon, embraced his inner Count for a round of vampire karaoke. The audience invited him in from the venue’s dark alley threshold, after which he skittered barefoot to the stage for “Death by a Slayer,” a Weird Al-byway-of-Nosferatu parody of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
Fridd scurried around the stage for his supernatural-themed set list, cast in the glow of a projector light displaying homemade Photoshopped clip-art lyric videos behind him. Halfway through the set, Tayls bassist Michael Taylor (also spot-on frontman of Talking Heads tribute
These Slippery People) joined Fridd in a Heads duet aptly reworked as “Let Me in the House.” Still barefoot, Fridd pleaded briefly with the sun before his set drew to a close.
Next, Nashville musical theater group Amm Skellars set up for a hyperpop retelling of The Crucible. Any expectations of a typical reenactment of Arthur Miller’s 20th-century classic were quickly snuffed out, as the projected moonlight background glitched and teasing synth beats thumped.
The quartet spiced up spoken acts with choreographed performances featuring crowd walks and neon lights. Near the end of the set, the group invited audience members onstage to beat a candy-filled poppet doll piñata with a paddle. Goody Proctor & Co. took a group bow before tossing the candy into the audience and disappearing ominously behind a white curtain.
Around 10:30 p.m., a group of Nashville bachelorettes, complete with pink cowboy hats and punny bridesmaid sashes, assembled a panoply of instruments onstage, neon orange Home Depot bucket included. The East Room bachelorettes were Tyler Walker and Friends — aka Meth Dad and/or Sessy — appearing for one night only as LSD Soundsystem. (The last time we saw a version of this LCD Soundsystem tribute was on NYE 2016, and it ruled.) The group took up their respective instruments, giving a few shakes to test out the tambourine and some foreshadowing strokes of analog synth.
The set brought new meaning to the phrase “it takes a village,” with Walker requiring six friends to re-create the eclectic indie-sleaze cadence of LCD Soundsystem. The band opened with the drawn-out bucket-beating intro of “Dance Yrself Clean,” the anticipation making the synthy, drum-heavy beat drop all the more electrifying.
The synth surrendered the spotlight for “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House,” replaced by cowbell and a triple threat of bass. The electrifying early-catalog Soundsystem tune got the crowd headbanging, with one hotdog losing his head in the process.
The group closed with the bittersweet anthem “All My Friends,” mixing New Order-esque guitar in with the song’s original rapid synth and drums. Reflected in rainbow strobe lights, the audience came together for a fitting group hug at the end as Walker belted, “Where are your friends tonight?”
“Thank you, guys, we’re LSD Soundsystem,” Walker said. “We’ll play again in eight years.” ▼
Thursday, November 7 PANEL DISCUSSION Gee’s Bend
Quilters
3:30 pm · FORD THEATER FREE
Thursday, November 7 EXHIBIT OPENING RECEPTION Heritage
Southern Vernacular 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm · HALEY GALLERY FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Saturday, November 9
BLUEGRASS AND BEYOND Tim O’Brien with Jan Fabricius
11:00 am · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 9
BLUEGRASS AND BEYOND Wood Box Heroes 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 9 BLUEGRASS AND BEYOND Jim Hurst Band 3:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, November 10 MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Spencer Cullum 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 16 SONGWRITER SESSION Gary Hannan NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, November 16 NASHVILLE CATS Kristin Wilkinson 2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, November 17 MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Rebecca Frazier 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
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COMING OUT OF HER SHELL
Stop-motion Memoir of a Snail is a tragicomic gem
BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY
THE STOP-MOTION, four-hankie Australian import Memoir of a Snail comes out of the gate ready to tug at your heartstrings.
The movie follows Grace (voiced as an adult by Succession star Sarah Snook), a single Aussie girl whose eyes are both wide and sad — she looks like a three-dimensional version of sadsack comic-strip character Cathy. Grace is a self-professed malacologist (she even rocks a beanie with snail eyes on top), and after the death of her eccentric, elderly BFF Pinky (Jacki Weaver), she reminisces to Sylvia, one of several snails she has collected in her life.
Grace’s life has seen more pain than joy. She takes Sylvia and the viewers all the way back to her own premature birth, when she came out of the womb a few moments before her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Even though Grace is technically the oldest, Gilbert is a protective bro, ready to snap a bully’s middle finger for mocking her stitched-up “floppy lip.” (“Rabbit Face” is unfortunately a taunt Grace is stuck with for most of her childhood.)
The twins are inseparable — that is, until their paraplegic father (Jean-Pierre Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon) dies and they’re forced to split up and live in foster homes on opposite ends of the continent. While Grace is luckily placed with positive (and sex-positive) foster parents, the already-angry-at-the-world Gilbert has to suffer through life with an oppressive, uber-religious clan that’s more about breaking the boy’s spirit than uplifting it.
When adult Grace hits her kleptomaniac lonesome-hoarder era, Pinky comes to the rescue. The Cuban-cigar-smoking golden girl has led one wild life, from working as a tassel-twirling exotic dancer to having sex with John
BLUEBERRY BLASPHEMY
Heretic is a religious debate wrapped in a horror thriller
BY KEN ARNOLD
TWO MORMON MISSIONARIES, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), are going door to door proselytizing when they find themselves at the home of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). He’s a friendly gentleman who invites the young women into his house — a home warm with the smell of blueberry pie. After some initial conversation, they notice that the smell isn’t coming from the pie he promised, but rather a candle. (This is a big part of distributor A24’s Heretic marketing — they’ve even hosted blueberry-pie-scented screenings.) Barnes and Paxton discover that the doors are locked and their phones have no signal. They’re trapped inside the house, and Mr. Reed shows them to a basement
Memoir of a Snail NR, 94 minutes Opening Friday, Nov. 8, at the Belcourt and AMC Thoroughbred 20
Denver in a helicopter. (The movie’s most darkly comedic moments come when she recalls the freak-accident deaths of her two ex-husbands.)
But she’s always there for Grace, encouraging her to stick it out even when things get dire for both of them.
Memoir is another tragicomic gem from Australian animator Adam Elliot, a filmmaker who traffics in making claymated dramedies about people who do everything they can to look on the bright side of life. Made over a period of eight years, Memoir is Elliot giving a pristine view of how ugly things can get for people sometimes. (Fans of Henry Selick’s gothic, sin-
where their faith will be tested.
When dealing with a subject like organized religion, some feathers are bound to be ruffled — even if the filmmaker has the best intentions. But Heretic doesn’t really skate around the issue, diving into it head-on as Mr. Reed and our missionaries debate religion’s merits. Their arguments do have a tendency to devolve into something resembling a Reddit thread: Co-writers/ directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods keep things crass and tacky while staying at a collegiate-introduction-course level of discourse. Religion as a whole is broken down and examined in a manner that might be offensive to some religious viewers — and not just Mormons or other Christians.
The film is definitely carried by its lead performances, especially that of Grant as the film’s antagonist. He’s able to pull off the role of Mr. Reed with a friendly, neighborly demeanor that never breaks, even as he manages to become increasingly twisted over the course of the film — it’s almost as if our protagonists have been kidnapped by Mr. Rogers. This unnerving performance ranks as one of Grant’s career best.
ewy, stop-motion animation may get a sick kick out of this one.) Elliot has no problem making his supporting players look repugnant on the inside and outside. Even the good-hearted Pinky admits she has a head like “a testicle.”
While this cartoon may appeal more to depressed and despondent folks than precious, Pixar-loving tykes, Memoir doesn’t completely descend into hopeless, nihilistic cynicism. Even though there are myriad scenes with droplets of tears coming out of his characters’ teacup eyes, Elliot loves his creations too much to have them completely wallow in misery. The director got some vulnerable, darling voice work out of
Snook and Smit-McPhee, and the three collectively work to have you rooting for these characters, especially when they finally receive some brief moments of happiness.
Ultimately, Elliot is an empathetic softie, and Memoir of a Snail is a somewhat autobiographical (yes, Grace has aspirations of becoming a filmmaker) reminder to those outcast, trauma-plagued moviegoers that life is, indeed, a roller-coaster ride — and the only thing you can do is hold the fuck on and make the most of it.
And just in case you don’t get that message, yes, a roller coaster does show up in the movie. ▼
R, 110 minutes Opening Friday, Nov. 8, at Regal and AMC locations
Heretic scratches the surface of an interesting debate while also bringing genre thrills. Its conversation risks offending some, but for the nonreligious — or those
comfortable enough in their faith to not be offended by some blasphemy — there are foundations for a deeper conversation to be had. ▼
Heretic
1 Strikes, perhaps
6 Animal cry that sounds like a Greek letter
9 Girls, ___ (nonprofit since 1864)
12 Find on the radio
14 Move, in real estate lingo
15 Woman on un árbol genealógico
16 Value
17 More slippery
18 TV channel showing lots of pitches
19 Disclaimer on a sale poster
21 –
23 Contradict
24 Save money on one’s commute home, perhaps
26 Actor who played a character with the same first name on “Two and a Half Men”
28 –
29 You can see right through it
30 Up to ___
31 Like nearly everybody on a Reply All thread
32 Genre influenced by Jamaica’s independence
34 Puts on a Christmas list, say
36 Some young studs
40 Lisbon’s land: Abbr.
41 First name in student loans
42 Louvre Pyramid architect
43 ___ facto
46 Skeptics
48 –
49 Half of a sprinter’s pair
51 One of the four classical elements, along with ignis, aqua and terra
52 53-Across feature, as seen three times in this puzzle
53 Test required for all C.I.A. applicants … or a hint to this puzzle’s theme
57 Major British tabloid, with “The”
58 When sudden death can occur, for short
60 “Understood”
61 Caribbean clock setting: Abbr.
62 New Mexico county or its seat
63 Early bird’s bedtime, maybe
64 Baseball players who only bat, for short
65 Snide chuckle
66 Boardroom support DOWN
1 Cocido or callaloo
2 Luxuriant
3 Like some dog collars
4 Tool used in making applesauce and mashed potatoes
5 Metal marble
6 Human-shaped board game piece
7 Singer/songwriter Goulding
8 Truly awful, with “the”
9 City that’s absolutely “gorges”
10 Leaf maker
11 “There’s no way!”
13 Mantra chants
14 Went door to door for
20 Performer at 2024’s Super Bowl halftime show
22 Wash against, as waves on the shore
25 It fits under a tongue
26 Busy Apr. professional
27 Contracts
28 Derides
31 Budget planner, for short
33 Half sister of Kim, Khloé and Kourtney
35 TV character who said “Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them”
36 City name in Genesis
37 Runs
38 “___ outta here!”
39 Female friend, casually
41 Elitists
43 “What a shame!”
44 Major media campaign, say
45 N.F.L. franchise that went its first 20 seasons without a single winning record
47 “Darn it!”
48 Home to “star-cross’d lovers”
50 Urban artist?
51 Longhorn’s college rival
54 Philosophical darkness
55 Decorate, as a baker might
56 Web code
59 When doubled, dance move accompanying the Whip
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