STREET VIEW: HOME-FLIPPING AND THE PLAGUE OF POOR RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION
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CITY LIMITS: STATE LAWMAKERS ARE TARGETING
NASHVILLE’S FINANCES
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Despite some high-profile closures, Nashville’s iconic meat-and-threes are thriving and adapting — and yes, you’re going to have to wait for a table
BY MARGARET LITTMAN
Featuring the work of one of today’s most dynamic artists, Jeffrey Gibson: The Body Electric combines aspects of traditional Indigenous arts and cultures with modern visuals. Featuring vibrant paintings, sculpture, video, and installations, Gibson’s work is a call for empowerment, environmental sustainability, and visibility for all.
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CITY LIMITS
Street View: Home-Flipping and the Plague of Poor Residential Construction ....6 Says attorney Jean Harrison, poor construction is widespread and systemic, in part due to the state’s lax construction regulations
BY LENA MAZELJudge Blasts Former DA, MNPD
In rare rebuke from the bench, Mark Fishburn calls law enforcement actions in Paul Shane Garrett case ‘malfeasance’ that led to $1.2 million settlement with Metro
BY STEVE CAVENDISH, NASHVILLE BANNER
is committed to a 984-acre golf program
BY ELI MOTYCKA
This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog State Lawmakers Are Targeting
‘The danger and volume of threats and conflicts this year is unprecedented,’ says Democrat Yarbro
BY CONNOR DARYANI
COVER STORY
Three’s Company
Despite some high-profile closures, Nashville’s iconic meat-and-threes are thriving and adapting — and yes, you’re going to have to wait for a table
BY MARGARET LITTMAN
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CRITICS’ PICKS
The Nashville Shakespeare Festival Presents Love’s Labor’s Lost, Love Bites: A Valentine’s Haunted House, Dre Day, Reportin’ for Duty: A Tribute to Leslie Jordan, Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras Drag Celebration at City Winery and more 25
FOOD AND DRINK
The 2023 Gyro Wrap-Up
Here are five of Nashville’s best gyro makers
BY ALIJAH POINDEXTER
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BOOKS
Ministering to the Least of These
A family learns about grace from a death row prisoner in He Called Me Sister
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VODKA YONIC
Ode to Dad
My father’s finest skill is simply opening the car door and letting his children run
BY MARY LIZA HARTONG
The Lie at the Heart of AntiAbortion ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’
Republicans File Covert Bills Targeting Transgender Community
‘The Outwaters’ Director Robbie Banfitch on Found Footage, Real Housewives and Donkeys
Former Soho House Employee Files Discrimination Suit
ON THE COVER:
FILM
Here are 10 standouts from the 2023 Sundance Film Festival — some of which will hopefully hit Nashville screens in the coming year
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Says attorney Jean Harrison, poor construction is widespread and systemic, in part due to the state’s lax construction regulations
BY LENA MAZELStreet View is a monthly column in which we’ll take a close look at developmentrelated issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
Aweek after Michelle Semple closed on her new home, her downstairs toilet backed up and her shower flooded. Semple called a plumber, who found a dropped plumbing cap had fallen into a drain during previous renovations. That first issue cost her about $650. But soon, the problems would become more significant.
Semple bought her home in December 2021 for $555,000 from 508 Investors LLC, who had purchased the home in June for $395,000 and “flipped” it over the next six months using construction company BMK Building Group. (It’s worth noting that BMK and 508 are managed by the same family: Logan King, the head of BMK Building Group, is the son-in-law of Ted Bertuca Jr., the president of 508.) The home had previously been owned by the same family since 1963. In online photos, it looks like a typical Nashville renovation: BMK turned the 1960s-style pink bathroom white; the entire home’s fixtures are whites and light grays.
After the first leak, Semple’s real estate agent called 508’s real estate agent. “They refused to pay for it, saying it was now my responsibility,” Semple says.
About a month later, water leaked through the downstairs ceiling. “The main water pipe under the kitchen sink had a hole in the top of it, and the dishwasher water was pushing through the existing hole,” she says. The leak meant numerous repairs: removal of kitchen cabinets and countertops, ceiling replacement, snaking the main water line, installing new plumbing and more.
When contractors removed Semple’s ceiling, they discovered an exposed 220volt line with frayed wires and a missing electric box. “I missed the entire house going up in flames by mere feet when the kitchen sink leaked,” Semple says.
Then Semple’s main water line broke off due to an improper connector. At the time, she already had contractors in her home working on the plumbing and electrical issues. Because of the water damage, “the ground began to break away from the house and a large vacant area under my sidewalk,” Semple says. At that point, she called BMK again.
BMK injected foam under the sidewalk and replaced dirt under the house. But
Semple says they did so improperly, causing the sidewalk to slant toward the foundation. She says BMK offered to reimburse her more than $900 for the plumber to fix the main water line and install the proper connector, but never sent the money.
To date, Semple says she has spent more than $50,000 on home repairs. “I’ve had to drain my savings, take loans from family, and put a lot on my credit cards. I also work from home, and I had constant noise and construction,” she says.
Semple filed a lawsuit against 508 Investors and BMK in December.
Jean Harrison, who’s been practicing construction law for more than 25 years, is Semple’s attorney. Harrison says poor residential construction is widespread and systemic, caused in part by Tennessee’s lax construction regulations. “Passing the building code is like getting a D minus,” she says. “It just means that your house won’t fall over in 100-mile-an-hour winds.” Home inspections also have limitations, and can miss issues like Semple’s frayed wiring.
Harrison has a wide range of residential clients, and she says no price point is safe from poor construction. Blake Saltaformaggio, another client, is currently suing Arnold Homes LLC for $2 million. Saltaformaggio bought his $1.3 million home in 2018, and issues emerged about a year later. When he noticed sloping floors, bending columns, bowing walls and other issues, he hired a structural engineering firm to assess the home. They found “extensive load path errors, structural deficiencies and code violations,” he says.
After finding the structural issues, Saltaformaggio initially contacted Arnold Homes, and he says they apologized and agreed to solve the issues. But months went by and they didn’t pursue further action to complete repairs. Faced with a high estimated repair cost, Saltaformaggio filed a lawsuit.
Saltaformaggio’s Brentwood home is
his primary residence, and the repairs presented a dilemma. “We have no good options,” he says. “We cannot sell the home without disclosing these problems and repair costs to potential buyers, and the cost to repair is estimated at $2-plusmillion. I have spent many days over the course of the past few years meeting with attorneys, engineers and builders, paired with many sleepless nights. Sacred time I should be spending with my wife and two young kids is spent with this massive burden in the back of my mind. I can never get this time back.”
Home-flipping slightly declined in the U.S. during the last quarter of 2022, but flipped homes still accounted for about 1 in 13 of those sold. Tennessee’s current laws make it challenging for some homebuyers to take action against poor construction, and Harrison doesn’t believe that will change. “It’s really about the legislature’s unwillingness to put teeth into the laws relative to construction,” she says.
Harrison says there’s a “cyclical” influx of new contractors in each housing boom. “When we had the buildup in the early 2000s, there were all kinds of insane building things going on then as well,” she says. She’s seen some “really good contractors that are in it for the long haul.” But each boom also attracts people who “had not built so much as a doghouse … yet felt completely qualified to build a home,” says Harrison. “Somebody who thinks that being a contractor is having a Rolodex and making calls.”
“They don’t understand the building science, they don’t understand the process,” Harrison says. “And they don’t understand the potential pitfalls. By the time they learn those lessons, it’s usually at the expense of the person they built for.”
Semple’s case against 508 Investors and BMK is currently in Chancery Court. After the initial plumbing issues, she found “significant movement” in her foundation. “Every wall in the house is cracking, and nails are popping,” she says. “The upper kitchen cabinets are pulling away from the wall.” Her upstairs doors no longer close, and her windows no longer work properly.
Semple obtained pictures of the house before 508 bought it, and found evidence of foundation issues that builders had covered with decorative wood. She says radon gas has leaked into her HVAC unit, and her tiles began to break because the grout was not attached to the subfloor.
“As a single woman, I sought out a house that was renovated, new roof, new HVAC, minimum repairs and something I could manage on my own,” she says. “I am petrified every single day what will happen next. Who knows what continues to lurk in the walls.”
The Scene scheduled an interview with BMK Building Group, but they did not answer calls at the scheduled interview time, nor did they respond to multiple requests to comment afterward.
Randy Arnold did not respond to a request to comment on Saltaformaggio’s case.
The Scene also reached a representative from Arnold Homes, who said they would pass on the request for comment to the appropriate parties, but they did not send any follow-up response.
This story is a partnership between the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Scene The Banner is a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization focused on civic news and will launch later this year. For more information, visit NashvilleBanner.com.
Paul Shane Garrett was incarcerated for 10 years for a crime former District Attorney Torry Johnson’s office and the Metro Nashville Police Department later concluded there was “no credible evidence” he had committed. And now their actions have drawn a stinging rebuke from the bench and a $1.2 million court settlement.
In one of his final acts on the bench, Criminal Court Judge Mark Fishburn blasted both the police and Johnson for their role in the 2004 conviction of Garrett, accusing them of knowingly leaving an innocent man in jail for a decade.
“Their intentional decisions were the act of cowards to hide the truth for fear of public humiliation and legal retribution that might arise if their wrongdoing saw the light of day,” Fishburn wrote in an extraordinary six-page opinion in December in the case of Calvin Atchison, the man police now say killed sex worker Velma Tharpe in 2000.
Fishburn said the case highlighted “intentional wrongdoing on so many occasions and at all levels of local law enforcement.”
In 2021, the Conviction Review Unit of DA Glenn Funk’s office vacated Garrett’s conviction after an investigation found numerous problems with the case:
Police detectives Roy Dunaway and E.J. Bernard engaged in questionable interrogation practices to concoct a “confession” that Dunaway later testified to in court. Dunaway was later demoted for false testimony in another case, and Bernard later resigned for falsifying information in a different homicide investigation.
DNA tests conducted in 2001 repeatedly excluded Garrett as a suspect.
As early as 2004, police were informed of a positive match in the national CODIS database to Atchison’s DNA in semen both in and on Tharpe’s body. Neither Garrett nor his counsel were notified of the match.
As early as 2001, the DA’s office concluded that Garrett had not confessed and assistant district attorneys did not believe “we could make the case.” But based on the testimony of jailhouse informants, Garrett was indicted for murder at the direction of then-Deputy DA Tom Thurman.
Garrett filed suit against Metro and the police officers in 2022. The Metro Council approved a settlement agreement worth $1.2 million Tuesday night, the second-highest the city has paid for police misconduct and the most for a wrongful conviction.
But according to Fishburn, all of those
problems were well known to then-DA Johnson a decade before.
In 2011, two of MNPD’s top detectives, Mike Roland and Pat Postiglione, were investigating a set of cold cases involving sex workers who were murdered in the same period as Tharpe. In the process, they reviewed the case of Garrett, a tow truck driver who had pleaded guilty after sitting in jail during a two-year investigation. According to Roland, the Garrett file was a mess because of poor documentation, shaky informants, deceptive interviews and a pair of problematic officers at the center of the investigation.
Confronted with this problem, Johnson convened what Judge Fishburn describes as a “clandestine” meeting in 2011. Roland and Postiglione presented their findings of Garrett’s innocence to Johnson, MNPD Chief Steve Anderson, Deputy DA Thurman and ADA Kathy Morante. The potential fallout from the case was serious enough that the public relations leaders for the police and district attorney’s office, Don Aaron and Susan Niland respectively, also were there. If Roland was right and Garrett was not the killer, an innocent man had been in prison for almost a decade.
Johnson dispatched Morante to investigate. Within weeks, she filed a 10-page report that reached three conclusions: First, there was “no credible evidence that Garrett murdered Tharpe.” Second, to the contrary, there was “some indication of Garrett’s innocence.” And finally, there was “evidence that Atchison murdered Tharpe.”
Fishburn describes Johnson’s actions after receiving the report as “malfeasance.” Johnson’s only action was to send a letter to the parole board saying that there were “serious questions” about the case, but a year later, in a 2012 court hearing, Johnson’s office defended Garrett’s conviction.
Because of the elapsed time, Fishburn says, the state’s ability to prosecute Atchison for the murder has been imperiled.
“There is no question that the delay was an intentional decision that was overtly made as early as January 2001, when Mr. Garrett was excluded as a contributor of the DNA found on Ms. Tharpe, yet prosecution and even persecution of him continued until he was psychologically beaten into submission by Detectives Dunaway and Bernard,” Fishburn wrote. “An intentional decision to further delay the initiation of adversarial proceedings was again emphatically made when Det. Dunaway destroyed the CODIS report received from the TBI in December 2004. But the most damning and unconscionable intentional decision to further delay indictment of Mr. Atchison occurred when the highest levels of law enforcement within Davidson County refused to take any legal action to undo an egregious affront to the entire legal system.”
Civil rights attorney Kyle Mothershead says he hasn’t seen anything like Fishburn’s order.
“[I’ve] never seen a judge do that in a written ruling,” Mothershead says. “I have never seen anything like that before. That’s unique in my 20-year career, for a judge to put those words to paper.”
In a 2021 letter to Funk at the time Garrett’s conviction was vacated, Johnson said he would change his mind if there were someone else held responsible.
“Given the history of this case, it is fair to say that I do not have confidence in Mr. Garrett’s conviction and that there are genuine concerns about his guilt, but I remain unaware of compelling evidence that he should be exonerated,” Johnson wrote. “Of course, that could change if your office were to charge and convict another suspect for the death of Ms. Tharpe.”
Vanessa Potkin, the director of special litigation at The Innocence Project, says this kind of view of innocence by prosecutors is “a cop-out” borne of politics.
“This is an attitude that we frequently experience, and it is completely misguided, this notion that there can be an exoneration if you’re literally swapping out one person, the wrongfully convicted person for another,” Potkin says. “It’s not a perspective that’s rooted in the law. There’s no legal burden that says that in order to demonstrate innocence, you have to identify who actually committed the crime.”
Mothershead agrees.
“That is horrifying, to say that you must trade in another body in order to release this innocent man,” he says. “You know, the old scapegoat: Someone has to pay the price. That’s horrible. That is not the American system.”
In an interview with the Nashville Banner, Johnson says he was unsure if Garrett should have been exonerated.
“I have no idea,” Johnson says. “I’m happy if the courts are satisfied with that. Then that’s fine. And then that’s where we
Despite substantial operating losses and growing public scrutiny of the resource-intensive pastime, the city is doubling down on its extensive golf program, investing millions to keep facilities in playing shape.
Nashville’s golf program consistently loses money, claiming about 10 percent of the total Metro Parks and Recreation budget. Its six public courses cover 984 acres of the city’s most soughtafter land, particularly on the West Side, where developers have struggled to build housing amid neighborhood backlash. Over in East Nashville,
are. I mean, listen, if he’s wrongfully convicted, more power to him. And absolutely, he should get a settlement. I just haven’t been involved in any of that.”
One of the impediments to Garrett’s settlement was the 2012 post-conviction hearing. The Banner asked Johnson if, given Morante’s 2011 report and a subsequent letter that Johnson wrote to the parole board asking for Garrett’s release, his office should have defended the conviction.
“Probably not,” he says. “I mean, you know, I frankly have no recollection of that piece of it at the time, or at least contemporaneously. I know that happened. I don’t recall that being something that we discussed or that I was aware of. But no, I would agree with that. I think that certainly that is something we should probably have not done.”
In a statement, Metro Legal’s associate director for litigation, Allison Bussell, says the city was pleased to settle the case in which Garrett was seeking $18 million.
“Wrongful conviction litigation is complex, and the cost of defense alone would have exceeded the amount of the settlement,” says Bussell. “The circumstances that led to this wrongful conviction never should have occurred. We are thankful for the work of the Metro Police Department’s Cold Case Unit that brought the injustice to light and caused the conviction to be vacated.”
Released in 2012, Garrett fought for 10 years to clear his name.
Of the attendees at that “clandestine meeting,” several remain in law enforcement. Deputy DA Thurman retired in 2016, and MNPD Chief Anderson retired in 2020. Kathy Morante now is the director of the Office of Professional Accountability for MNPD. Susan Niland is a senior public information officer with the TBI. Don Aaron is MNPD’s public affairs director.
And Torry Johnson is a professor at Belmont University’s law school, where he teaches criminal law and, alternating semesters, a course on wrongful convictions.
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dog owners from Lockeland Springs to Riverside regularly encroach on Metro’s Shelby Golf Course. In response to a Scene inquiry, Parks shared financial breakdowns for Ted Rhodes, Harpeth Hills, Two Rivers, Shelby, Percy Warner and McCabe, the city’s six main courses. (Metro turned over operations of a seventh, junior course, VinnyLinks near Shelby Park, to youth golf development organization First Tee of Tennessee in 2016.)
Metro golf course funding increased from $4.2 million in 2019 to $6.6 million in 2022. Over the same period, courses lost $2.4 million (2020), $1.3 million (2021) and $1.8 million (2022). Set in the heart of Sylvan Park and hemmed by a popular greenway loop, the 27-hole McCabe Golf Course is both the most expensive to run and the course that brings in the most money. The industry itself is subject to high standards of beauty: smooth fairways, trimmed greens, manicured tee boxes. Like the game itself, golf course maintenance is a constant exercise in patience and creative problem-solving that pits groundskeepers against grass, water, divots, sprinkler systems and rodents (currently a scourge at McCabe) in an eternal — and expensive — struggle toward perfection.
On a mild Friday afternoon in February, Demarkcus Harmon and Aaron Duncan squeezed in nine holes
between work and child care duties. Though McCabe is noticeably more racially diverse than the city’s private country club courses, middle-aged men rule the course.
“You can usually walk on and team up with other guys; it’s reasonably priced and typically in pretty good shape,” says Duncan. “I’ve got four kids, so it’s not easy to find time. They’re in school so I can come get nine holes in.” On this February afternoon, Duncan walked, shot nine over and paid $17.
“This game is transcendent for me, and it has a lot to do with my newfound enjoyment of walking,” says Harmon. “The course is straightforward and walkable, and has an excellent driving range. And I can get nine holes in because it’s right near day care.”
Fresh from a quick session at McCabe’s driving range, Dan Cohen compares square contact on a golf ball with various types of addictive drugs. That high keeps him on the course year-round.
“There is a sensation that goes through my body when I hit it absolutely perfectly,” says Cohen. “I love golf. Yes, there might be better uses of Parks land, and yes, they are a terrible use of resources. They have 27 holes here. Do we need 27 holes? Probably not. But I hate country clubs and fancy golf courses like that. I’ve always been a public-golf guy.”
All of the golfers who spoke with the Scene tout McCabe for its driving range and convenient location — near work for Duncan, day care for Harmon, and Cohen’s front door — and superior course condition. They frequent Metro’s other courses, which they say are noticeably less busy.
Despite million-dollar losses and day-to-day headwinds, Metro Parks has doubled down on making Nashville a golf city. It has upped budget requests and
initiated an overhaul at Percy Warner, which will remain closed until Sept. 1 while it undergoes a $2 million redesign by nationally renowned course architect Bruce Hepner. The project was funded in part by Friends of Warner Parks, a group of well-connected boosters that subsidizes improvements and maintenance for the beloved West Side park system. This year’s budget included an additional $138,000 to control golf course vegetation and $70,000 for an assistant manager at Percy Warner, which, according to the Metro Parks Department, doesn’t have the staff to meet operating hours.
City-planning critics from California to China have slammed golf courses as resource-intensive services that lock up huge swaths of land for a narrow recreational use. The quintessential country club sport, golf has a base that skews old, white and male. Municipal options offer cheaper alternatives to invitation-only courses like Belle Meade and Richland, where dues can hit six figures.
Housing advocates say the sport is a comically inefficient use of urban land, carrying high maintenance costs and restricted accessibility. Right now, the elite (private) Hong Kong Golf Club faces a government proposal that would repurpose course land for housing — Beijing’s solution on an island strapped for livable space and flush with wealth. A bill that would help convert public courses into housing annually divides the state legislature in California, where water — groundskeepers’ most critical resource — is about as scarce as affordable rent.
A spokesperson for the Parks Department says Nashville has never considered closing any courses and has no plans to repurpose any golf course land.
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Gov. Bill Lee announced a raft of new spending in his Feb. 7 State of the State address, including $3 billion for state roads and $1 billion for six new technical colleges. Lee will also support “crisis pregnancy centers,” anti-abortion facilities often tied to evangelical Christianity, with $100 million in public funds. One beneficiary, the Hope Clinic for Women, was co-founded by Lee, who still serves on its all-male board — a glaring conflict of interest for Lee’s vanity project, writes Scene contributor Betsy Phillips. … State lawmakers want to eliminate runoffs in local elections, a procedural tweak that could pave the way for more Republican wins in blue cities like Knoxville and Nashville. Instead of needing a majority, candidates who capture a plurality of votes would win outright, giving an edge to the leader of a crowded field. … Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, a veteran GOP leader who heads the state Senate, was hospitalized last week with a heart condition. He was first elected to the Senate in 1986. … Tennesseans wagered $3.8 billion on sports in 2022, the highest reported total since legal sports betting started in 2020. December clocked $440 million in bets, the state’s highest single-month total yet. … The Metro Council debated its response to a state legislature looking to take tighter control over a slate of issues ranging from Nashville’s Airport Authority to reducing the size of the council itself. The body overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing council reduction, leaving a few members squirming about potentially “poking the bear.”
Scene columnist Nicole Williams gaveled in the meeting. … Kroll, a leading bond rating agency, upgraded Nashville’s borrowing rating, an apparent response to a new city policy requiring Metro to keep two months of cash reserves on hand. … Public school parents and teachers met at Woodbine United Methodist to oppose a new state policy that would hold students to strict, test-based criteria in order to continue past third grade. … Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston raised nearly $50,000 for reelection in District 26, a slice of South Nashville that includes Crieve Hall and Paragon Mills. District races usually cost a fraction of that amount, and Johnston’s totals are a peek into 2023 elections that might command historic levels of campaign spending. … Former AllianceBernstein executive Jim Gingrich has announced a run for Nashville mayor, joining an increasingly crowded field. In late January, incumbent John Cooper announced that he will not seek reelection. … State House Speaker Cameron Sexton is rallying colleagues to reject $1.8 billion in federal funding for schools, a costly ploy to sidestep regulatory oversight from the U.S. Department of Education. The legislature is also considering a handful of other bills targeting trans Tennesseans, termed the “Slate of Hate” by the Tennessee Equality Project. … A former employee at Soho House Nashville has filed suit against the club, alleging racial discrimination, retaliation and unlawful wage practices while he was employed there as a membership manager.
Power struggles between the dominantly Republican Tennessee General Assembly and the left-leaning Metro Nashville government are nothing new. But a recent spate of legislation at the state Capitol seems to indicate that conservative legislators are willing to take the battle to places it has never been before, with the potential for harmful fiscal consequences.
A number of bills have been filed during this legislative session that seem to have the express purpose of retaliating against Nashville for the Metro Council’s rejection of hosting the 2024 Republican National Convention. One such bill aims to cut the council in half, one aims to take control of Metro’s Sports Authority and Airport Authority, and yet another would eliminate local runoff elections. The latter, which would let a plurality of votes determine an election’s winner rather than a majority, could open up a pathway for a conservative to win Nashville’s mayoral race.
“During my years in the legislature, there are always areas of cooperation, but also definitely conflict between the state and Metro,” says Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville). “The danger and volume of threats and conflicts this year is unprecedented and moves beyond the political to the financial and economic stability of both the city and the state.”
One particularly disruptive bill aims to cut Metro’s so-called privilege taxes, which place an extra sales tax on areas and services heavily trafficked by tourists. These taxes are largely used to pay off bonds that funded the Music City Center. But with tax collections in the area surpassing expectations, MCC and Metro leaders have in recent years sought to redirect some of the excess funds to other uses in the city.
It’s unclear what the effects of such a bill could be. Financial experts have weighed in, lamenting the plan as mutually destructive, saying it could cause damage not only to Nashville’s bond rating, but also the bond ratings of cities statewide.
“Honestly since no such thing has ever happened, it’s very hard for any of us to know the full extent of what this will mean,” former Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell tells the Scene. “But there is no question that it puts a significant instability into not just the governance of this city, but the governance of all cities and the future of the state.”
Purcell and Metro Councilmember AtLarge Bob Mendes are less concerned with the potential for damage to bond ratings and more concerned with other implications of this legislation. Mendes explains that as part
of the deal to fund the convention center, Metro promised to back up the bonds in case of a scenario such as this one — so regardless of where the funding comes from, those bonds will get paid.
“Most likely property taxes would have to go up to cover the shortfall,” Mendes tells the Scene. “So I think bonds will get paid, but it’ll be a direct impact on Metro taxpayers paying for it directly rather than having these dedicated revenue sources to pay for it.”
Since the legislation’s initial introduction, Republican leadership has indicated that the bill will likely need to be changed due to legal issues. Contracts were signed, and cutting this revenue source could be a breach of those contracts. State House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) has hinted that rather than cut the funding, the General Assembly could instead take control of the revenue and decide for itself how money not spent on the convention center could be allocated.
“That’s not nearly as egregious as us losing out on $80 million a year of revenue,” says Mendes. “But that’s still $25 million a year that we’ll have to find a different way to cover.”
The plan used to fund the convention center is similar to the funding plan being proposed for a new Titans stadium. Mendes points out that the willingness of the state’s Republican supermajority to play with that funding stream as part of a power struggle should give Metro pause about pursuing similar projects.
“The state has pulled the pin on a substantial grenade,” says Mendes. “A major premise of the argument from the mayor’s office for a new stadium has been using these revenue streams, and now we’re seeing that may not be reliable.”
In an increasingly politically polarized country, feuds between city and state governments are becoming more aggressive. The GOP has begun searching for a city to host the 2028 RNC, and some have speculated that the Metro Council could put in a bid to host the event in an attempt to mend Nashville’s relationship with the state. But Mendes says it will take a lot to make things better, and Purcell believes there’s much more at stake than the city’s finances.
“I think from a practical standpoint and a political standpoint, the question is the control of the destiny of the city,” says Purcell. “And obviously, at its core, this is an effort that diminishes and perhaps removes the city’s ability to both take care of what we have and also plan for the future.”
EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
‘The danger and volume of threats and conflicts this year is unprecedented,’ says Democrat Yarbro
Despite some high-profile closures, Nashville’s iconic meat-and-threes are thriving and adapting — and yes, you’re going to have to wait for a table
BY MARGARET LITTMAN
When restaurateur Michael Gilbert moved to Nashville, he’d hear people talking about “meat-and-threes” and ask, “What’s that?”
When someone explained that meat-and-threes are classic restaurants serving a menu where people can select a protein (the meat) and sides (the three), he said to himself, “Where I am from in South Carolina, we just call that lunch.”
“This is the food everyone in the South grew up on,” explains Benji Cook, owner of Wendell Smith’s Restaurant. “This is what moms and grandmas cooked.”
Call it a meat-and-three, or a “plate lunch,” or — like Gilbert — just call it lunch. The meat-and-three is an essential part of Nashville’s culinary legacy. Perhaps as much if not more so than hot chicken. The plate lunch exists elsewhere, of course. Since the end of World War II in particular, it has been a staple for dining out in the South. Sometimes it’s set up cafeteria-style, like at the recently closed Arnold’s Country Kitchen or the beloved and still-cookin’ Swett’s restaurant. Sometimes it is delivered through table service, like the nowclosed Rotier’s or the still-cookin’ Elliston Place Soda Shop.
The way in which the food is delivered isn’t all that important. What’s important is the food itself, and the way in which the meat-and-three is an equalizer. No matter how much the New Nashville skyline changes, one thing remains the same: Everyone in town, from mayoral candidates to Grammy winners to college students, will wait for their turn for the comfort food that soothes their soul — be it fried chicken, neck bones or beef tips, with green beans, turnip greens or squash casserole.
Some thought the highly lamented closure of Nashville’s beloved Arnold’s — which followed the closings of Rotier’s, Dandgure’s Cafeteria, Katie’s Meat & Three and The Pie Wagon — sounded the death knell for the local meat-and-three. But those who run them say that’s not the case. That includes Gilbert, who eventually learned the proper terminology before opening MacHenry’s Meat & Three with chef Stephen Wilkerson in March 2020 as an outgrowth of their catering business. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the death of the meat-and-three have been greatly exaggerated.
Cook started washing dishes (“pearl diving,” as they call it) at his family’s Charlotte Avenue meat-and-three at age 12, more than four decades ago. He would get paid at the end of his shift and remembers heading to Phillips Toy Mart to spend his earnings. When Cook talks about Wendell Smith’s current restaurant regulars, he’s not talking about people who come in once a month or even once a week.
“The regulars I have come in twice a day,” Cook says. “I don’t know if they have a kitchen at home. Widows and bachelors, they come in because the food is great. As my dad used to say, ‘They don’t come in to see me.’ ”
To accommodate them, Cook roasts more than 500 pounds of beef a week. “This used to be a blue-collar neighborhood,” he says. “It’s changed, but there are still a lot of Old Nashvillians who are alive and well and eating.” Cook himself eats Wendell Smith’s fried chicken — made by dipping in egg and
buttermilk — every day.
MacHenry’s Gilbert has regulars who stop in multiple times a week — unlike Wendell Smith’s, MacHenry’s is open for lunch only. Bailey & Cato, the meat-and-three that moved from Riverside Village in Inglewood to Madison a few years back, offers diners a punch card: Buy 12 plates and get the 13th free. Do these customers become regulars because of the consistency and the predictability of the menus? Do they like knowing what to expect and when to expect it? Or is it
because of the variety? They can build their own plate with a large number of permutations. At MacHenry’s, it’s six different proteins and 12 sides, plus specials.
While there are certain similarities to a meat-and-three menu, it isn’t exactly the same at each restaurant or even the same at each restaurant every day. The classic meatand-three has a menu that rotates daily, so you know that if you want oxtails at Silver Sands Cafe in North Nashville, you need to go Thursday or Friday. Red meatloaf? That’s
Tuesday at Bailey & Cato. But Gilbert finds that this model leads to complications in managing food waste. He didn’t want leftovers to sit in the refrigerator if that item was no longer on the daily menu, so at MacHenry’s, the menu changes quarterly.
Alphonso Anderson, owner of and chef at Big Al’s Deli in Salemtown, says his regulars know the daily lineup. But they also know if he has leftover meatloaf in the fridge, he’ll heat it up if asked, even if it isn’t on the menu that day.
Most meat-and-threes serve a steady diet of soul food, slow-cooked meats and sides, plus add-ons of classic Southern desserts, such as chess pie, banana pudding and frosted cakes. Sides are heavy on cooked and pickled vegetables, plus mashed potatoes, with the occasional sliced tomato as an option. The meat-and-three is one of few places in the world where both baked apples and mac-and-cheese count as vegetables. While the name persists, most restaurants let you choose a meat-and-one or a meat-and-two or even all sides, forgoing the meat altogether.
“You gotta have sweet tea and some variety of bread or biscuits there too,” adds Carole Bucy, Metro Nashville’s official Davidson County Historian. At Silver Sands Cafe, you can choose between hot-water cornbread or flat (buttermilk) cornbread.
As demographics in the city have shifted and people’s eating habits have changed, so too has there been some evolution of the meat-and-three menu, albeit incremental. While culinary historians suggest the decline of the Jewish deli is due to generational shifts in eating heathier, the meat-andthree seems to be adapting. Big Al’s Deli offers jalapeño-orange marmalade chicken, chipotle-raspberry chicken and chickenfried banana pork loin. Anderson rarely makes mac-and-cheese, he says, preferring a healthier pineapple-cilantro rice. Many restaurants have added salmon options and other healthier dishes. On Thursdays, Bishop’s serves fish almondine as an option.
Traditionally, the vegetables at a meat-
and-three were stewed with meat products, making even the all-sides option off-limits for vegans and vegetarians. At MacHenry’s there are sides made to satisfy vegans, vegetarians and those who avoid gluten. The fifth-best-selling item on the menu, Gilbert points out, is a large garden salad. Other places specialize in a twist on the traditional. Berry Hill’s Sunflower Cafe is designed to look and feel like a classic meat-and-three. As you slide your tray down the cafeteria line, you’ll note that everything on the menu is plant-based. Jamaicaway Restaurant in the Nashville Farmers Market includes a variety of tofu and seitan on the menu, as well as vegetable sides that are, in fact, vegetarian. None of Big Al’s vegetables contain pork, although some have chicken or turkey. Congregation Sherith Israel is hosting a kosher meat-and-three event next week. Other 21st-century adaptations are evident too. Puckett’s and MacHenry’s host live music. Many old-school meat-and-threes serve food in Styrofoam containers, even if you are dining in, but Gilbert uses compostable takeout containers.
No one knows for certain when or where the term “meat-and-three” first came into being. Some credit the late Hap Townes, whose Hap Townes Restaurant was a lunch tradition in one form or another from 1921 to 1985. Even the Southern Foodways Alliance, the source of all things related to culinary history in the South, doesn’t have a definitive answer.
“Our founder, Lynn Chandler, proclaimed
himself ‘the king of meat-and-threes,’ ” says Jim Myers, Minister of Culture at Elliston Place Soda Shop. Chandler was one of the first to use the term in the promotion of his restaurant. In 1987, Chandler sold his Eighth Avenue South restaurant to his employee Jack Arnold. That restaurant became Arnold’s Country Kitchen, further cementing Chandler’s role in birthing the meat-and-three that symbolizes Nashville’s dining essence.
As suggested by its alternate plate-lunch name, some meat-and-threes are open for
lunch, weekdays only. Gilbert loves this, because it allows him to balance owning a restaurant and a catering company with spending time with his family. “A lot of restaurant people are nocturnal,” he says, referring to the typical kitchen job that has employees working past midnight. “I get to be a husband and a dad too.”
Others, like Wendell Smith’s, are open longer hours, serving hot breakfasts to the before-work crowd and hot dinner before they head home. Jay’s Family Restaurant, Puckett’s and Ramzy’s Meat & Three are
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open seven days a week. Barbara’s Home Cooking in Franklin is open on Sundays. Many meat-and-threes, including Swett’s, Puckett’s, MacHenry’s and Big Al’s, offer catering as well.
For Cook, the community of meat-andthrees extends beyond the customers. He counts other plate-lunch restaurateurs as friends. David Swett, he says, let him borrow chicken when he was low during the pandemic. “He would give me the shirt off his back, and I would do the same for him,” he says. “I would loan him a case of eggs if he needed it.” (That’s saying something, given the current pricing and demand for eggs.)
Silver Sands Cafe reliably has lines of locals waiting for their plates. For more than 70 years, the family-owned restaurant has been a community staple and a favorite of other area chefs who want to eat good food and show off good food to their friends coming in from out of town. When Silver Sands suffered roof damage after the March 2020 tornado, local chefs including City House’s Tandy Wilson and Sean Brock helped raise funds to keep Silver Sands cooking.
For all the loyalty, it’s not easy running a restaurant. Even without an egg shortage, a pandemic or a tornado, margins are slim, and labor is tight. That said, there’s one expense Cook refuses to skimp on: neon repair. The Wendell Smith’s Restaurant signage is some of the city’s best and most iconic neon, and Cook does his best to keep it in working order — though he laments that some of the blue is currently not functional. While the signage has come to symbolize the West Side establishment, Cook says his grandfather originally repurposed the sign from a neighboring shoe store called Wendell’s.
“That is our baby,” Cook says. “I treasure my neon, for sure. If I ever closed the restaurant, I would cut that down and take it to my house.” But rest easy! Wendell Smith’s is in no danger of closing. One of Cook’s sons is in training to take over the business, and Cook is thrilled to have a succession plan.
“Meat-and-threes are an important part of Nashville tourism,” historian Bucy says. “People come here for a certain type of culinary experience, and it is sort of unique.”
Indeed, while Wendell Smith’s and others draw folks from their neighborhoods on a regular basis, others rely on out-of-towners to keep the steam tables hot. Anderson says the majority of his business — aside from his popular catering business — comes from visitors rather than those from the surrounding Salemtown and Germantown areas. “It is not unusual for me to get customers who tell me that they came to see me from Canada or Australia, from all over the world.”
To continue the meat-and-three education, the Soda Shop’s Myers is in the process of starting a Meat-and-Three Alliance, with plans for a passport to be released later this year. Once diners have all the pages stamped in the enviably grease-stained book, they’ll get some kind of prize, maybe a T-shirt. Myers hopes the organization will draw attention to Nashville’s beloved comfort food, much like former Mayor Bill Purcell did with the Music City Hot Chicken Festival.
But it all boils down to this, says Myers, who gives everyone an excuse to go out to lunch as often as possible: “You gotta eat it, to save it.”
EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
Looking to build your own plate? Here’s a list of nearly two dozen standout meat-and-threes in the greater Nashville area.
Most meat-and-threes are focused, without much else on the menu. For the purposes of this list, we’ve also included restaurants with more extensive offerings, as long as chooseyour-own-plate is an essential part of the offerings.
55 South, 7031 Executive Center Drive, Brentwood (and other locations)
Bailey & Cato, 1130 Gallatin Pike S., Madison
Barbara’s Home Cooking, 1232 Old Hillsboro Road, Franklin
Belle Meade Meat and Three, 110 Leake Ave. (Note: The restaurant is located at the Belle Meade Historic Site, formerly known as the Belle Meade Plantation. Some readers may not feel comfortable casually dining at a site built by enslaved people.)
Big Al’s Deli, 1828 Fourth Ave. N.
Bishop’s Meat & Three, 3065 Mallory Lane, Franklin City Cafe East, 1455 Lebanon Pike
Dalton’s Grill Bellevue, 79061 Highway 70 S.
Doll’s Family Cafe, 2501 Gallatin Ave. Elliston Place Soda Shop, 2105 Elliston Place
Jay’s Family Restaurant, 3037 Dickerson Pike
Jamaicaway Restaurant, 900 Rosa L. Parks Blvd.
Lil Cee’s, 605 Douglas Ave.
MacHenry’s Meat & Three, 581 Murfreesboro Pike
Monell’s, 1235 Sixth Ave. N.
Puckett’s Restaurant, 500 Church St. (and other locations)
Ramzy’s Meat & Three, 306 Thompson Lane
Silver Sands Cafe, 937 Locklayer St. Simply Southern Cafe, 1749 Highway 41, Pelham
Sunflower Cafe, 2834 Azalea Place (Note: This plant-based restaurant refers to itself as a “beet-and-three.”)
Swett’s Restaurant, 2725 Clifton Ave.
Wendell Smith’s Restaurant, 407 53rd Ave. N.
FOR COOK, THE COMMUNITY OF MEAT-AND-THREES EXTENDS BEYOND THE CUSTOMERS. HE COUNTS OTHER PLATE-LUNCH RESTAURATEURS AS FRIENDS. DAVID SWETT, HE SAYS, LET HIM BORROW CHICKEN WHEN HE WAS LOW DURING THE PANDEMIC. “HE WOULD GIVE ME THE SHIRT OFF HIS BACK, AND I WOULD DO THE SAME FOR HIM,” HE SAYS. “I WOULD LOAN HIM A CASE OF EGGS IF HE NEEDED IT.”PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND WENDELL SMITH’S RESTAURANT
CELTIC JOURNEY
March 14
WAR
March 15*
RATATOUILLE IN CONCERT
March 17 to 19
TROUPE VERTIGO
March 23 to 25
THE AARON DIEHL TRIO
April 2*
THE JONAH PEOPLE: A LEGACY OF STRUGGLE AND TRIUMPH
April 13 to 16
BÉLA FLECK, ZAKIR HUSSAIN, EDGAR MEYER & RAKESH CHAURASIA
THE JACKSONS
April 21*
April 19* BUY MORE SAVE
CHILDREN
One of my favorite memories from 2022: My partner and I started building with LEGO together. I spent hours building Star Wars armies and my own blocky spaceship designs as a kid, and it’s been special to pick up the hobby again by building cute little restaurants, creatively designed models of plants (seriously, LEGO sets have gotten way more intricate since I stopped buying them years ago) and minifigure re-creations of ourselves together alongside a tiny model we built of our house. We even got tiny roller skates and a skateboard so our mini-mes can keep up their hobbies. The Nashville Public Library knows you’re never too old to start building, and they’re bringing back their LEGO building contest with prizes for several age groups. Last year’s winning models ranged from re-creations of landmarks (including the recently opened Geodis Park), Indiana Jonesesque adventure scenes, colorful animal sculptures and a particularly cool vinyl turntable. The first-prize winner for the adult category was a conservatory with lush LEGO greenery and intricate glass work that is frankly way cooler than anything I’ve built. Check out this year’s finalists at the downtown library branch Feb. 16 through 18, vote for your favorites online, then check out the awards ceremony on the 18th. Feb. 16-18 at the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church St. COLE VILLENA
[MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL]
queer aesthetic. Their performances are part heavy rock show, part standup comedy and part burlesque, and although their trashiness is self-aware, their unhinged stage presence is never an affectation.
to open for her. 8 p.m. at Springwater, 115 27th Ave. N. WILLIAM HOOKER
[A FAMILIAR LOVE]
[EASY SLEAZY]
With state lawmakers back in session, Tennesseans are witnessing GOP legislators obsess over non-issues, forming a government around persecuting trans people and hindering Nashville’s ability to function as a city. Seven Black women will bring the focus back to real politics on Thursday, convened by Jerome Moore of YouTube’s Deep Dish Conversations. Cyntoia Brown Long, whose high-profile story of her own incarceration at age 16 interrogates the American legal system, joins judges Rachel Bell, Khadija Babb, Robin Kimbrough-Hayes, Sheila Calloway, Allegra Walker-Birdine and I’Ashea L. Myles to talk courts, jails, prisons and the people and families caught between them. If Moore’s online interviews are any indication, the live show promises flowing conversation, well-timed humor, informative tangents and incisive discussion. 7:15 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. ELI MOTYCKA MUSIC
Local rockers Thelma and the Sleaze have an unambiguously feminist and
Leader, singer and guitarist Lauren Gilbert (aka “LG,” whose lineup has featured a dozen different members since forming in 2010) often delivers between-song banter — like the time she introduced a song as being about “being born poor and staying poor because whenever you get money, you waste it on a boat that needs work instead of your 401(k)!” Performing biker-bar music with a sapphic twist is like LG’s drug, and the results are hilarious and entertaining — no wonder Brittany Howard has invited them
THEATER
FESTIVAL PRESENTS LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST
If Cupid is a DJ, life is a dance floor, and love is the rhythm. Or at least that’s the case in Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s new production of Love’s Labor’s Lost, produced in collaboration with Belmont University. The play dates back to the 1590s and is one of the earliest Shakespearean comedies, but the story of Love’s Labor’s Lost is a tale as old as time itself. When the King of Navarre and his three best friends decide
to swear off women for a year to focus on their studies, they quickly fail. A visiting princess and her attendants capture their attention, and typical Shakespearean chaos ensues. Director Denice Hicks brings this classic to a modern college campus with plenty of dancing and, of course, a cherubic DJ. Whether you love classic ’90s rom-coms or just want to hear someone say the word “honorificabilitudinitatibus,” Love’s Labor’s Lost is sure to provide a laugh. Feb. 16-26 at Belmont’s Troutt Theater Complex, 2100 Belmont Blvd. HANNAH CRON
HAUNTED HOUSE
[HEART-STOPPING]
Was this week’s holiday of handholding and tête-à-têtes at your neighborhood bistro a nightmare for your psyche?
Nashville Nightmare has a weekend activity made specifically for your cold, jaded heart. Love Bites: A Valentine’s Haunted House will open its spooky doors for a three-day run. As with haunted houses in October, you’ll find vampires stalking you in the dark (just like your last Hinge date) and terrifying monsters around every corner (again, like Hinge). Organizers add a caveat that this event may be too intense for children younger than 12, but that’s OK; they’re still at the age when Valentine’s Day is conversation hearts and school cupcakes.
Grab tickets to get your heart pumping by going through the Valentine’s haunted house, either on your own, with friends or, if you’re not jaded but instead have a sense of adventure, with your sweetie. Tickets are available online for $19.99, cheaper than a box of candy and a bottle of wine. Speaking of wine, Bar Nightmare will have themed cocktails for guests 21 and older. Feb. 1719 at Nashville Nightmare, 1016 Madison Square, Madison MARGARET LITTMAN
MUSIC
[DON’T
One of the biggest questions in life is that of nature versus nurture. I guess it’s impossible to be born already inclined toward ’80s New Wave music, but I was given access to a DVD of every Duran Duran music video at a very young age. Needless to say, it’s stuck with me. Eighties nights are one thing, but New Wave Order promises a slightly more specific set list. Local musicians are set to take on ABC, Depeche Mode, Devo, Tears for Fears, David Bowie, The Cars, Naked Eyes, Erasure and New Order, among others — this brave cover band has its work cut out for it. What I love about New Wave music is that it’s inextricable from the music videos and fashion that went along with it. It’s fun, bold, lighthearted. And New Wave Order’s upcoming show offers a chance to dress up! Will I be the only person younger than about 50 there? Remains to be seen. 8 p.m. at Eastside Bowl, at 1508 Gallatin Pike S.
while “Le Pupille (The Pupils),” an Alfonso Cuarón-produced coming-of-age tale set in a Catholic boarding school during Christmas, is over on Disney+. Activist and Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai is an executive producer of the documentary-short Oscar lock “Stranger at the Gate,” which chronicles what happened when a Marine planned a terrorist attack on a mosque. But I would give anything to see some moviestar presenter give the animated-short Oscar to “My Year of Dicks,” an endlessly trippy chronicle of one girl’s mission to lose her virginity. I just need to hear someone say that title onstage. Opens Feb. 17 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY
COMEDY [LUCK OF THE IRISH] KATHLEEN MADIGAN
Comics don’t get much more accomplished than Kathleen Madigan.
movie I haven’t checked out since its 2000 release. And I forgot how much this sucka slays when you see it on the big screen. After the ’90s had Jackie Chan, John Woo and other Tarantino-approved Hong Kong filmmakers infiltrating Hollywood and dropping high-octane actioners, Sense and Sensibility director Lee went to China and came back with an old-school wuxia epic — a sweeping, romantic period piece in which the drama is as high as the high-flying fight sequences. He also showed Hollywood how to properly use Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh. The Hong Kong icons are at their finest as 19th-century warriors keeping their feelings for each other on the low while also going after Zhang Ziyi’s thieving rebel princess. As a 4K DCP restoration plays all this week at the Belcourt as part of the theater’s Restoration Roundup, catch the movie that made a jealous-ass Harvey Weinstein spend the Aughts snapping up overseas martial-arts flicks, trying (and failing) to capture that same Oscar-winning worldwide-hit glory. Feb. 17-23 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY
HANNAH HERNER MUSIC
[BREAK
If you’re not a musical theater student, you may not know that John Kander and Fred Ebb were an iconic musicalwriting duo. You’ve probably heard of their musicals Chicago; Cabaret; New York, New York or maybe their songs “All that Jazz,” “Maybe This Time” and of course “New York, New York.” If those are still somehow not ringing a bell, these Belmont musical theater students will do it for you. The World Goes ’Round, an upcoming musical revue of the greatest Kander and Ebb hits, sounds ideal, because sometimes in musical theater I think too much plot gets in the way of the dance numbers. At this event, the audience can, in a way, skim-read the productions. I love musical theater people. They have a very special bravery that I do not have, and they possess the power to lighten any mood. Jazz hands are practically guaranteed. Start spreading the news, etc., etc. 7:30 p.m. at Belmont’s Massey Concert Hall, 1922 Belmont Blvd. HANNAH HERNER FILM
For those who still care about the animated, live-action and documentary shorts that still get nominated for Oscars, the Belcourt will once again screen this year’s nominees in three separate programming blocks. As always, it’s a colorful bunch. A couple of them you can already see on streaming platforms: “The Martha Mitchell Effect,” a doc about the outspoken politician’s wife who tipped everyone off on Watergate, is on Netflix,
The St. Louis native has been a touring stand-up for more than three decades, performing hundreds of gigs per year and logging dozens of late-night appearances, not to mention a half-dozen stand-up specials and more than 100 episodes of her podcast Madigan’s Pubcast. She’s probably gotten so damn good because, as she puts it, she didn’t get into comedy “to become an actor on a sitcom or in a TV commercial. … I just want to tell jokes.” Madigan has been known to skewer Americans’ propensity for laziness and ineptitude, particularly when it comes to our goofball elected officials on both sides of the aisle. She also opens up about her aging parents and her experiences overseas performing as part of USO tours, all with the ribald energy of your neighborhood bar’s most well-liked regular. Madigan’s sixth stand-up special, Hunting Bigfoot, debuts Feb. 21 on Amazon Prime Video, and just a few days ahead of its release she’ll headline the Mother Church of Country Music. 8 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. D. PATRICK RODGERS
FILM [GREEN DESTINY]
Not too long ago I caught a 35 mm screening of Ang Lee’s multiple-Oscarwinning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a
Dre Day has been an East Nashville institution for so long that you would think G-Funk was born from Music Row rather than Death Row. But for those diehards who love the Compton organ sound, white Air Force 1s and “deez nuts” jokes, it’s a day to celebrate the West Coast’s premier hip-hop producer. Founded at the original location of The Groove in Five Points, the gig is at The 5 Spot these days. But vibes are still curated to highlight the work of Dr. Dre. Though he’s not a true medical professional, Andre Young’s fingerprints are all over the California gangsta-rap world, marked with George Clinton keyboards and Indonesian cannabis. The event is presented by the dedicated crate-diggers at Funk Night Nashville and features DJ Ken Sable and live jams with the G.E.D. Soul All-Stars. 9 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave.
P.J. KINZERThe Belcourt’s Beloved: A Spotlight Series on Black Female Directors, programmed by Sheronica Hayes, continues
this weekend with Julie Dash’s 1991 film Daughters of the Dust. As the first feature written and directed by a Black woman to receive a wide theatrical release, Daughters broke ground for the Black women and their films that came after. The film takes place in 1902 on a small island off the coast of Georgia, where a family has lived for centuries. As some members prepare to leave the island for the mainland and to go north, others must decide what to do. Dash shows the perspectives of the women and girls on the island as they wrestle with the significance of leaving their home, honoring their ancestors and putting their hopes in the promise of a country that viewers know will not necessarily provide them with opportunity. By centering Black women and their relationships, Dash created something novel on screen. Viewers may recognize the production design and wardrobe from Beyoncé’s stunning film Lemonade; Bey was inspired by Daughters, and the themes of the film ring true in her work. The Saturday screening will include an introduction from Tracy SharpleyWhiting, who is a Vanderbilt professor and the director of the Callie House Research Center for the Study of Global Black Cultures and Politics. And following the screening, you can join Nashville treasure Ciona Rouse in an ekphrastic poetry workshop. Rouse makes poetry approachable and fun, and it will be a great way to reflect on Dash’s gorgeous film. Noon Saturday and 5:30 p.m. Sunday at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. ERICA CICCARONE
SPORTS
[CRITICS’ KICKS] USWNT VS. JAPAN
Get hyped for this summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup (the one where America usually wins a trophy) when Geodis Park hosts the United States vs. Japan and Canada vs. Brazil in back-to-back rounds on Sunday. The Japanese-American rivalry is a clash of two historic national programs and a rematch of the 2011 and 2015 World Cup finals. Japan won the 2011 matchup on penalties in Frankfurt, but the USWNT won the 2015 rematch 5-2 and defeated the Netherlands for the 2019 trophy. The Nashville matches are the second round of the annual invitational SheBelieves Cup, considered a final chance for players to earn their spots on World Cup rosters before teams head to New Zealand and Australia this summer. The games bring the international spotlight to the country’s largest soccer-specific pitch; a week later Nashville SC opens its 2023 campaign against New York. Are we (kind of) a soccer town? 2:30 p.m. at Geodis Park, 501 Benton Ave. ELI MOTYCKA
[RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS]
MUSIC
REPORTIN’ FOR DUTY: A TRIBUTE TO LESLIE JORDAN
Company’s Comin’, the 2021 debut album by the late actor and social media star Leslie Jordan, is something more than a celebrity record by a great comic actor with good taste in high-level singing partners. Jordan, who died in Los Angeles in October, was indeed a superb character actor whose roles
in the television series Will & Grace and Call Me Kat spotlighted his charming Tennessee drawl — he was born in Chattanooga in 1955 — and his scene-stealing abilities. Because he was self-deprecating and honest, Jordan was also able to become a TikTok star who made his many fans feel like they knew him. Jordan applied his distinctive voice to a set of hymns on Company’s Comin’, which includes vocals by Tanya Tucker, Chris Stapleton and Brandi Carlile. He sounds great on my favorite tune on the album, “Angel Band,” which features Carlile. Many of his Company’s Comin’ collaborators will appear Sunday at the Opry House along with Billy Strings, Eddie Vedder and Maren Morris in a tribute to an actor — and singer — who managed the trick of being both acerbic and lovable. His Call Me Kat co-star Mayim Bialik is also set to take the stage, and turns by comedian Margaret Cho and actor Jim Parsons are sure to round out the picture of a multitalented entertainer. As Leslie often said in interviews: “I have, I believe, a huge capacity for happiness.” He did, and that’s a big part of the reason he’ll be remembered. 7:30 p.m. at the Grand Ole Opry House, 2804 Opryland Drive
EDD HURT[DEEP WELLS]
MUSIC
AMY RAY BAND W/KEVN KINNEY
I usually look askance at overtly polemical, problem-solving music because the efforts of sincere folkies and rockers in that vein aren’t always that good — sure, I have a certain respect for Phil Ochs, say, but I don’t want to listen to him. Still, I’d like to believe I’m wrong about the split between unexceptionable content and boring formal elements in protest music, and a couple of recent releases by veteran Southern folk-rock artists give me hope. Indigo Girls co-founder Amy Ray released an interesting album, If It All Goes South, in 2022. It’s a typical Nashville product, right down to guest shots by the likes of Brandi Carlile, Allison Russell, Sarah Jarosz and Natalie Hemby. Ray’s critiques of institutional racism and the pull of patriarchal religion transcend the standard folkie music she favors, and the songs stick with you. Meanwhile, another Georgiaidentified rocker, Kevn Kinney, steps out of his role as leader of Drivin N Cryin on 2022’s Think About It, on which he attempts
to make sense of our current post-political era. Since I find Kinney’s usages more compelling than Ray’s — he draws from the deep well of guitar rock that includes The Byrds and Big Star — Think About It gains resonance on fine tunes like “Down in the City,” which jangles like prime R.E.M. Both albums falter at times, but that’s something I can live with. 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. EDD HURT
MUSIC
[LEAVE IT TO BEAVER] OTOBOKE BEAVER W/LEGGY
For Kyoto’s Otoboke Beaver, there are only two speeds: fast and really fast. The foursome plays powerviolence velocities while somehow creating silly and hooky pop-punk songs. Their hyperfeminist gang-vocal lyrics trade off with drastic, whiplash-inducing tempo changes. Their Day-Glo aesthetic makes them look like art-rock cartoon characters come to life. OB is the sort of band that could only come from Japan. Get to The Beast on time, because Cincinnati’s Leggy is opening. The band’s big, echoing bubblegum post-punk has been a favorite of mine for the past few years after a run of really cleverly crafted records. The show promises to be one of
the most fun nights out for rock ’n’ roll in this young Year of the Rabbit. 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. P.J. KINZER
COMEDY
Gentry, Justine Cande Blair, Cya Inhale and Shelby La Banks. Bring dollars to show your love to the performers. They can’t eat throws. 7:30 p.m. at City Winery, 609 Lafayette St. TOBY LOWENFELS
[IT’S ALL IN FUN]
MEGAN MURPHY CHAMBERS’ FUNNER
What could be more fun than an evening with Nashville stage favorite Megan Murphy Chambers? We’ll find out Feb. 20, as this versatile performer returns to the Belcourt for FUNNER. Following up on the sold-out success of her 2018 solo show (appropriately called FUN), FUNNER promises an even bigger party packed with fabulous talent, bawdy humor and maybe a few surprises. Showcasing a wide range of musical styles, Chambers is backed by a stellar band (featuring music director Jamey Green on piano, plus Lindsey Miller on guitar, Steve Haan on bass, Anthony Matula on percussion and Jordan Frederick on saxophone). And audiences can also look forward to special guests like Rachel Agee, Ryan Greenawalt, Jack Chambers, Meggan Utech and the always delightful ladies of MAS Nashville (including Erin Parker, Laura Matula, Cori Anne Laemmel and Melodie Madden Adams). It’s sure to be a great time, but FUNNER is rated R — so best to leave the kiddies at home. 7:30 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave.
AMY STUMPFL
DRAG
[LIFE OF THE MARDI]
FAT TUESDAY MARDI GRAS DRAG CELEBRATION AT CITY WINERY
Let’s start on the right stiletto: What do you wear to a Mardi Gras drag party? There’s no dress code, and everyone is welcome, but you’ll feel more fabulous wearing a ’fit that includes a plunging neckline, sequins, body paint or, at the very least, carnival colors and feathers. Even if you won’t be gracing the stage, you’ll still want to dress the part. Basically, if your headdress can’t fit in the car, you’ve done it right. The City Winery Mardi Gras-themed Drag Celebration will be a night of wild frivolity with king cakes, hurricane drinks and live drag queen performers. The lineup includes Britney Banks, Vidalia Anne
With the worst of the pandemic blues firmly in their rearview mirror, The Smokeshows continue to deliver an electrifying live experience. I first encountered the group at the legendary garage turned music venue the Mouthhole in 2019 and was blown away by their explosive vitality. Lead singer Ash Nolan is a fire-breathing rock ’n’ roll siren, wailing and shrieking with sensual ferocity that would make PJ Harvey’s toes curl. Her captivating vocals soar over the band’s most recent single “I Know,” released in 2021. Anchored by guitarist Brendan Krieg’s heavy and haunting riffs — à la Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Jane’s Addiction — The Smokeshows deliver psychedelia with a gut punch. Castle Black arrives from New York City to open, while Titans of Siren and I Am the Polish Army kick off the evening. 9 p.m. at The Cobra, 2511 Gallatin Ave.
JASON VERSTEGEN“Don’t Lose Ur Head,” Nashville, but the Tony Award-winning musical SIX finally arrives at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center on Feb. 21, balancing its playful premise with a hefty dose of girl power. The hit musical reimagines the six wives of Henry VIII as a pop girl group, with members battling to see who should be crowned the lead singer based on which wife has the most unfortunate backstory. Sidestepping more conventional formats, SIX offers something of an immersive concert experience, complete with powerhouse vocals, bright lights and glittering costumes. The fast-paced lyrics include plenty of clever references, and music lovers will enjoy the nods to real-life pop queens such as Adele, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Alicia Keys and Rihanna. Created by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss (who captured the Tony for Best Original Score), SIX also serves up some pretty dazzling choreography, courtesy of Carrie-Anne Ingrouille. Feb. 21-26 at TPAC’s Jackson Hall, 505 Deaderick St. AMY STUMPFL
ART [OBJECT OF DESIRE]
Curated by artist and Vanderbilt ceramics professor Raheleh Filsoofi, Revive | احیا investigates how artifacts and identities can gain new meaning through experimental rediscovery. The exhibition is part of the Tennessee Triennial, which is centered around the concept of Re-Pair, and it began when Filsoofi asked seven women with links to Middle Eastern culture to select an artifact from the university’s art collection and write its description. These essays were given to seven Middle Eastern and West Asian artists — including Nashville-based artists Beizar Aradini, Kimia Ferdowsi Kline and Nuveen Barwari — who created new pieces based solely on the item’s description. Revive | احیا
Saturday, February 18
CONVERSATION AND PERFORMANCE
of Dick Curless
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, February 19
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Rachel Loy
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, February 25
SONGWRITER SESSION
Jerry Salley
NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, February 26
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Lisa Horngren
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 4
SONGWRITER SESSION
Kelly Archer
NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, March 5
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 11
SONGWRITER SESSION
Miko Marks
NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 11
SONGWRITER SESSION
Sunny Sweeney
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Check our calendar for a full schedule of upcoming programs and events.
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FEBRUARY 19 LIVE AT THE OPRY HOUSE
A TRIBUTE TO LESLIE JORDAN
WITH EDDIE VEDDER, MAREN MORRIS, BILLY STRINGS & MORE
MARCH 1
ROCK THE RYMAN WITH CHARLIE WORSHAM, THE WAR AND TREATY, GAVIN DEGRAW, MADDIE &
MAY 14 THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM
WITH EMILY WOLFE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
JUNE 17
STYX WITH EDWIN McCAIN ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
JUNE 19
RODRIGO Y GABRIELA ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
JUNE 27 BEN FOLDS ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
SEPTEMBER 1 & 2 VANCE JOY ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
Nashville’s ONLY vinyl record store with full bar and 24 seasonal craft beers on tap.
16 Paul Burch & WPA Ballclub
17 A Good Ol Time w/ DJ Poboy
18 Mostly Local w/ DJ Claire Steele
19 DJ Val Hoyt
21 Friends of Mine ft. Hannah Delynn, Zdan, Guetts (of Crumbsnatchers), and Carl Anderson
22 Austin Manuel, Matthew Rice Campbell, and friends
23 Spiral Groove Hip Hop Showcase
includes more than 15 multidisciplinary artworks, from ceramics and textiles to sculpture. Each new work is displayed next to the artifact that provided its artistic inspiration. The original essays are available at the gallery, and reading through them allows a deeper dive into the work. The cultural magnitude of the exhibition is a result of Filsoofi’s efforts to build a dialogue about the importance of interplay between literature and visual art. Exhibition on view through June 4. At Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Ave. S. RACHEL
EBIO
[INSPIRATION INFORMATION]
an independent bookstore for independent people
UPCOMING EVENTS
PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENT FOR TICKETS & UPDATES
10:30AM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18
SATURDAY STORYTIME with PARNASSUS STAFF
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20
6:30PM
J.T. ELLISON
with REA FREY at PARNASSUS
It’s One of Us
6:30PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22
VERONICA ROTH
with MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL at PARNASSUS Arch-Conspirator
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27
6:30PM
DR. YASMINE ALI
with SAMAR S. ALI, ESQ at PARNASSUS Walk Through Fire
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28
Improvisational music doesn’t resonate with everyone — either audiences or musicians — to the point that if making music in the moment is something that inspires you, it can be tough to find others to enjoy it with. Enter Pulled From the Sky, an occasional series organized by musician Caleb Breaux, whose goal is to build community around improv music in Nashville. The folks playing at Wednesday’s installment of the series aren’t exclusively improvisers, and they bring lots of different perspectives to the process. The bill includes a solo performance by guitarist (and Scene contributing editor) Jack Silverman, whose style includes lots of modal melodies and ideas from jazz. Tommy Stangroom performs here as Tommy C; among other things, you might have seen him playing drums with punk and psych bands like Roadblock and Supermelt, or heard him as one-half of harp-centric duo Glimmering. Images in Silence is a project of Jesse Weilburg, another longtime local musician who also co-founded the Trance // Furnace label; IIS leans toward soundscapes inspired by industrial music. Breaux himself will also perform under the moniker Brainweight, his name for his multifaceted artistic undertaking that includes electronic composition, original field recordings of natural sounds, live drumming and more. Filmmaker and Butthole bandleader Helen Gilley, aka VJJ Helly, will improvise projected visuals along with the show. Come to enjoy the music and meet like-minded folks — maybe even your next improv collab partner. 8 p.m. at Betty’s Grill, 407 49th Ave. N. STEPHEN TRAGESER
to hear lots of tunes from the brand-new Norm, including album standouts like the sunshiny “Wasted on You.” Show up on time — Nashville’s own Katy Kirby opens. 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St.
D. PATRICK RODGERS[EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN]
WEYES BLOOD
If Cat Power and Jewel had a baby — oh, what a world that would be — she’d turn out to be Natalie Mering, aka Weyes Blood, the brains and heart behind the indie-folk outfit out of Los Angeles. With a robustly romantic voice, she throws in a dash of rock that’s more Mazzy Star than Joan Baez. Currently on tour in support of her new album And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, Mering can be found with her acoustic guitar or sitting at the piano, accompanied by her band. A Weyes Blood set is warm and inviting, each song a shimmering invitation to be more tender-hearted with each other. As she sings in “The Worst Is Done,” a pandemic-era reflection: “It’s time to go out / Pick up where we left off from / They say the worst is done / And it’s time to find out what we’ve all become.” 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N. TOBY LOWENFELS
MUSIC
6:30PM
AMY PORTERFIELD at PARNASSUS Two Weeks Notice
6:30PM
KEM HINTON at PARNASSUS Tennessee’s Bicentennial Mall
10:30AM
[SOMETHING BORROWED]
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1
SATURDAY, MARCH 4
SPECIAL SATURDAY STORYTIME
with SUSANNA CHAPMAN Busy Feet
3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 | Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243
Shop online at parnassusbooks.net
@parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks @parnassusbooks1 Parnassus Books
Over the past six or seven years, songster Andy Shauf has been steadily building an extremely solid catalog of introspective, instrumentally and melodically rich baroque pop. The 35-year-old native Canuck got his start well before that — he played in a Christian pop-punk band in his teenage years in Saskatchewan, as a matter of fact. But his four-album run from 2016’s The Party to this month’s Norm — plus a 2018 record with his group Foxwarren — stands on its own as an excellent collection of poppy, tender, sometimes melancholy indie rock that owes a debt to the likes of Elliott Smith and even, on occasion, Big Star. Attendees at Wednesday’s show can likely expect
New takes on older sounds can themselves get old after a while, but there’s no rule that it must be so. For proof, look no further than rockers Banditos, longtime Nashvillians by way of Birmingham, Ala. Back in the summer, they released their third LP, Right On, which amps up and resynthesizes pop, soul and psych-rock influences from places like Memphis, Muscle Shoals and Detroit in the mid- and late ’60s. After a busy season of touring, they’re back on home turf at the newish home of beloved karaoke dive bar Fran’s Eastside, with support from three groups who share some common ground but very much do their own thing. Psych rockers Chrome Pony, anchored by brothers Tyler and Kyle Davis, will roll through, as will Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears, the country- and psych-schooled project of superb and in-demand six-stringer Sean Thompson. Wild and wooly rock singersongwriter and bandleader Justin Collins rounds out the bill. 8 p.m. at Fran’s Eastside, 2504 Dickerson Pike STEPHEN TRAGESER
BY ALIJAH POINDEXTER
Nashville is many different things to many different people. But a few things about our city cannot be debated: It’s located on the Cumberland River; it’s the home of the Tennessee Titans; the rent is too damn high; and the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food scene is one of the best in the Southeast. But lamb chops, falafel, grape leaves and baklava aside, what about the humble gyro?
Nashville has dozens of gyro joints, of which very few are bad, and most are very good. This makes the job of identifying the hands-down-best gyro in Nashville nearly impossible. The five spots listed below may not be the undeniable best, but they are some of the most notable, consistent and original. Find a special note at the end for the best restaurants specializing in shawarma, a spicier pita-based sandwich often confused for the gyro.
1716 Charlotte Ave.
Fattoush Cafe has been around for as long as I can remember, and going back for the first time in years, I was reminded why. While the prices aren’t the lowest in the city, the flavor, quality and variety at Fattoush are simply superb. The menu is impressive,
spanning the gamut from shawarma, falafel and hummus to fish casserole, lamb chops and oven-roasted rosemary chicken, but the gyro is a real winner. The lamb-and-chicken mix is the best option here, with spicy chicken and thick chunks of lamb complementing each other on a bed of tabbouleh, served in a fresh Lebanese pita pocket with a chew and sweetness much better than what you’ll get with the standard bleachedwhite version. And I have to make a special mention of the spicy tzatziki, a take on the go-to gyro condiment that seems obvious enough, but is sadly underrepresented at the city’s Mediterranean restaurants. The spicy tzatziki here is legitimately fiery, but if you can handle it, it’s the piece that really brings the whole thing together.
15118 Old Hickory Blvd.
There’s no time to rest at Gyro Spot, one of Brentioch’s favorite makers of the oldschool gyro. The first thing you’ll notice here is the intense eye contact you’ll be making with the staff. But secondly, and far more important, is Gyro Spot’s pairing of excellent customer service (jokes and witticisms abound) with solid prices and a gargantuan take on the standard food-courtstyle gyro. I could hardly believe just how much meat, salad and tzatziki were packed and rolled into my pita bread on a recent visit. And while Gyro Spot isn’t exactly farm-to-table, the ingredients are indeed high-quality, and there’s a spicy complexity in the gyro seasoning that really elevates the experience. If you’re on the South Side and in the mood for a supercharged gyro, Gyro Spot is the place.
GREKO
704 Main St.
While something of a NKOTB, Greko is by all accounts a mainstay in East Nashville’s food scene. Greko bridges the gap between street food and casual, classy dining (wine list and open kitchen included), and is the only place in our roundup with an interior that isn’t best described as barebones. The ingredients are super high-quality — pasture-raised lamb and free-range chicken. When flame-grilled, topped with tzatziki and green herbs, and nestled in a cocoon of homemade pita, these meat options make for a fantastic lunch if you’re in the area. Other options include shrimp (!), swordfish (!!!) and pork collar, and the menu doesn’t stop there. The Athenian
Chicken in honey-lemon sauce, seasonal Greek greens and hyper-authentic souvlaki skewers are worth a try as well.
4630 Lebanon Pike, Hermitage
Hermitage’s Koftaky Grill earns a spot both for having one of the better lamb gyros in Nashville and for its surprisingly diverse Egyptian-tinged menu. The gyros here are always great, but consider swapping out the side of fries for the ful medames (written as “Egyptian beans and bread” on the menu), a delicious plate of fava beans stewed in olive oil, lemon juice and spices. Another favorite is the hawawshi, a pita pocket stuffed with spicy minced meat and topped with cheese. And if you’re in the mood for kabobs, the chargrilled lamb kofta will scratch the itch.
BEST GYROS
5814 Nolensville Pike #103
A good gyro should be quick, tasty and never stingy with the meat or toppings. But how often do you go in for what should be a pain-free cheap meal, and walk out spending $15 plus tax for a sandwich, fries and soda?
Best Gyro is the remedy. For just $10.50 after tax, Best Gyros hooks you up with a whopper of a gyro, a bucketful of Cajun fries and, in the words of the pizza parlor owner from The Sopranos, “a soft drink of choice.” The menu is nothing special, but sometimes the price is what really matters.
An honorable mention goes out to Newroz Market and King Tut’s, two Woodbine spots battling for Nashville’s shawarma crown. Newroz (393 Elysian Fields Court) is a grocery with an eatery in the back that serves up exceptional shawarma alongside freshly baked bread and an aromatic array of sides and condiments. King Tut’s (3716 Nolensville Pike), a food truck just a few miles away, is an Egyptian spot with a colorful presentation and a focus on the chicken shawarma and falafel. Both tend to get crowded around lunchtime, but if you can beat the rush, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better shawarma in the city.
EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COMIt took Suzanne Craig Robertson about a decade to write He Called Me Sister, which documents the relationship between death row inmate Cecil Johnson and the Robertson family as Johnson’s case winds its way to his execution by lethal injection on Dec. 2, 2009. Johnson was convicted of killing three people, one a 12-year-boy, after robbing a convenience store in Nashville.
The author’s husband, Alan Robertson, met Johnson through an inmate visitation program headed by the Rev. Joe Ingle, a
influence the death row prisoner had on her daughters:
He set an example, like remembering every one of our birthdays — every time — with personal homemade cards, and his ability to laugh and keep a heart full of joy in the face of a hard existence. He shaped their thinking in ways none of us realized, increased their compassion, and caused them to notice injustice in a way no book or lecture ever could have.
The Robertsons were advised by Rev. Ingle not to get involved or even ask about the murders that had doomed Johnson. Guilt or innocence is not supposed to be a factor when it comes to visiting inmates.
“We see this from a religious point of view, whether it’s Jewish or Christian or whatever,” says Ingle in an interview. “You’re there to visit someone who is your brother, whatever his fate may be. This is a human being, created in the image of God just like you. That’s your focus.”
Nashville United Church of Christ minister who has been working against the death penalty for nearly 50 years. Over time, Suzanne and their two young daughters also befriended and visited Johnson.
“I did not consider writing about it until several years after his death,” Robertson says. Johnson had taken up writing poetry and a memoir in prison and asked for her help in getting published. She got that done by quoting Johnson’s work extensively in He Called Me Sister
“It has been wrenching to deal with the topic,” Robertson says. “I had the idea, or at least got the gumption to start thinking about it, a couple of years after he died. Then, you know, I had a job and a family, so it’s not like I was working on it full time. So it came and went and kind of evolved over time.”
Johnson’s childhood is a sordid tale. The beatings, abuse and poverty he suffered border on the surreal. He Called Me Sister quotes a passage by Johnson about being beaten by his father:
He went beyond the normal and he kept beating me and beating me. My pain had reached the point where I couldn’t bear it any longer, my father lost it and soon I was seeing flashes of light. I wanted to go and die, so I started shouting at my father to go on and KILL ME! KILL ME! KILL ME! I don’t remember when he stopped.
In contrast, the Cecil Johnson the Robertsons got to know was a gentle man who doted on their daughters and accepted his lot in life with remarkable equanimity. Such was his faith that he didn’t believe he would be executed right up until it finally happened.
In the book, Robertson writes about the
Despite that, He Called Me Sister makes a convincing case for Johnson’s innocence. His guilty verdict relied on questionable witness testimony.
“I didn’t set out to prove him innocent. … I’m not a lawyer and I’m not an investigative journalist. … I’m a believer in the rule of law,” says Robertson, former editor of the Tennessee Bar Journal, published by the Tennessee Bar Association. “I think it’s the best thing that we have. But when you look at [the Johnson case] up close, it does kind of give us pause, like how did that happen? … I wouldn’t say my faith is completely destroyed in the system, but that was hard to see.”
Ingle, who has counseled many death row prisoners, sums it up like this: “It’s the person who has the worst lawyer who gets the death penalty, not the person who commits the worst murder.”
According to Ingle, Robertson’s book details with “great skill” the pain and the rewards of forging relationships with prisoners. “I would just urge everybody to get a copy, because it really is a window into a reality that most people don’t want to know about or even examine,” he says.
For Robertson, the experience was transformative. In He Called Me Sister, she writes: “My relationship with Cecil was teaching me a deeper understanding of forgiveness, which was frustrating. I mean, a lot of times I want others to pay, to hurt, to suffer when they hurt me or my people.”
Already a believer when she met Johnson, Robertson found that the friendship changed her. “I went in having faith,” she says. “Watching him be able to [have a strong Christian faith] in the circumstances he was in helped strengthen it.”
For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.
My father’s finest skill is simply opening the car door and letting his children run
BY MARY LIZA HARTONG
Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of women and nonbinary writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find in this column, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.
In the days when I was still thoroughly invested in the Tooth Fairy and my dad still boasted a full head of dark hair, we’d spend Saturday mornings at Percy Warner Park. Dad’s car always rattled with empty coffee cups and loosely tied bags of soy nuts. He let his tennis shoes sour in the back seat. While you wouldn’t want to drive to church in this car, it was the perfect Saturday morning chariot for me, of baggy T-shirts and bare feet, and for our cairn terrier, Gloria, who always smelled of pennies.
Clutching a bag of Krystal cheeseburgers, I’d open the car door and let her run, praying that once I unfurled the greasy paper bag, she’d come back. This was a part of the park we dubbed the Big Wide Open Field. If I were to return now, I’m not sure it would be so big or so wide-open, but in those days, it seemed to go on forever. As Gloria sprinted up and down the hill, tearing across the newly green grass, my family shared sliders on a checkered picnic blanket and enjoyed the blue of the sky.
Sometimes we’d fly a kite or toss one of those baseballs with a silky rainbow tail billowing behind it. My sisters might attempt to tan. All the while, Gloria ran.
Dad would shout her name when it was time to go. “Gloria! Gloria!”
If the cheeseburgers didn’t work, we’d have to chase her down, asking nearby joggers to corner her if they could. Scraggly bodied, she ran and ran. Funny, I don’t remember being scared to lose her. I probably should have been. There were woods upon woods for our small brown dog to get lost in, but there was also my dad, jogging into them wearing a coffee-stained YMCA T-shirt, unafraid to be scratched to high heaven by the bushes and trees.
He always found the dog. She lived to eat another Krystal cheeseburger. She lived to nearly 16.
The other day my dad came over for coffee. He didn’t bring me a cup, but rather a bag — a very my-dad thing to do. In fact, he FaceTimed me from the grocery store to ask which kind was my favorite, and when he couldn’t find it, chased down a clerk.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, embarrassed. “Any of those would be good.”
“No, no. We’ll find it. Excuse me, young man, do you know where I can find gingerbread-flavored coffee?”
I brewed the gingerbread coffee while we sat in my crowded home office, me on the squished red couch, him on the faded floral
chair. On the bookshelf sits a stuffed dog that looks just like Gloria, which is to say, like a used hairbrush with a tongue. Beside it, there are dozens of knickknacks, little glass dragons and broken pocket watches, wooden houses and porcelain pigs. On the desk I keep a typewriter and a sewing machine. Like my father with his soy nuts, I find it hard to let go of things.
“I wish your great-grandmother could see this,” he said, gesturing with his coffee cup, his dark hair snowy at the ears. “She was just like you. She could do anything.”
I smiled. We drank our coffee — mine with milk, his black — and talked about our lives. How he’d quit eating sugar and hoped I could tell, how I would be getting engaged soon and hoped everybody would stop asking if we both planned to wear dresses.
“Wear whatever you want!” he said. Dad was always of the wear-whatever-you-want camp, even when what I wanted to wear were bright-blue pirate shirts and throngs of beaded necklaces or billowy green basketball shorts and pink bandanas. My favorite necklace in sixth grade was a drain cover hung on a length of string. He approved.
As the coffee dwindled, I read him a few pages from my latest project, a strange book that might never see the light of day.
“I like the father character,” he said. “Especially how much he loves the cat.”
My father is not a writer. In fact, he majored in math. But his finest skill, I think, is simply opening the car door and letting his children run. After all these years, he is still content to watch from the picnic blanket as we explore parts unknown. He settles in with his cheeseburgers and a sense of ease, unafraid of us getting a little lost. He has been divorced. He has fallen in love again. He has given up sugar. My father knows that no matter what happens, there will always be Krystal cheeseburgers and second chances.
How lucky I am to learn this from him. And to know that at the end of the day, whether I am 9 or 29, he will always be there waiting to gather me into his joyfully messy car, turn up the radio, and ferry me safely home.
EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
HOWARD & FRIENDS
2.25 DILLON CAMPBELL
2.26 NASHVILLE BEATLES BRUNCH FEATURING: JOHN SALAWAY & FRIENDS
2.26 ANDREW DUHON
2.26 ANDERS OSBORNE SOLO ACOUSTIC
2.28 COCKTAILS + COMEDY
2.28 NASHVILLE SONGWRITERS’ NIGHT TO BENEFIT YOUTH VILLAGES
3.2 JOSIE TONEY AND THE EXTRAS RESIDENCY
3.2 COCKTALES: DIRTY DISCUSSIONS LIVE WITH KIKI SAID SO & MEDINAH MONROE
3.3 ILYSM WITH KENZIE ELIZABETH
AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, HE IS STILL CONTENT TO WATCH FROM THE PICNIC BLANKET AS WE EXPLORE PARTS UNKNOWN.
WITH THE LOCAL HONEYS & TONY KAMEL
RICKY YOUNG & JOEL KING (OF THE WILD FEATHERS) + MAGNOLIA BOULEVARD
THE TIME JUMPERS
PFR w/ Leigh Nash
Dylan LeBlanc & David Ramirez
Dark Side of The Moon 50th Anniversary Tribute
My So-Called Band
Sarah
BERNARD, JONATHAN CRONE, MARK HALL, JIMMY HALL & VERY SPECIAL GUESTS
BACKSTAGE NASHVILLE FEAT. DYLAN ALTMAN, PORTER HOWELL, ANDY ALBERT AND KARLI &
VINNIE & THE HITMEN WITH
ELLISON
Dalton & The Sheriffs (7pm)
Dalton & The Sheriffs (9pm)
Roberta Lea (7pm)
Happy Landing, Lo Noom (9pm)
James Leprettre, Why Bother, Miles Squires (7pm)
The Dead Deads, The Ivins, Through The Motions (7pm)
Eliza Edens, Brennan Wedl (7pm)
PJ And The Bear, Eli Howard (7pm)
The Kinks Tribute (9pm)
Echo Pilot w/ Nehoda (7pm)
Emily Justin & The Tuff Cookies, Caleb Smucker (9pm)
Johnny Sam Hall And His Big Bad Wolves, LoneHollow, Collin Nash (9pm)
Lowen w/ Olivia Barton (7pm)
GETDOWN for Matt Wiltshire for Mayor Campaign Fundraiser (7pm)
Tommy Prine (7pm)
Meg McRee w/ Harper O'Neill (9pm)
Patzy, Turtledoves (7pm)
Karma Vulture, Omenbringer, Mother Maiden Crone (9pm)
Each year, the International Folk Music Awards — a program of Folk Alliance International — gives the People’s Voice Award to a community member who “unabashedly embraces social and political commentary in their creative work and public careers.” This year’s recipient, announced at a Feb. 1 ceremony in Kansas City, Mo., is Leyla McCalla, a critically acclaimed singersongwriter known both for her solo work and for being part of boundary-pushing roots ensembles The Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters. Her work, grounded in storytelling and historic preservation, certainly meets those criteria, making it an especially meaningful win for McCalla.
“I’ve been attending Folk Alliance for years, and have definitely been a part of the community,” McCalla tells the Scene “I think a lot of people have gotten to know my music through the showcasing and participation that I’ve done over the years. I described it as life-affirming — and validating — to receive some recognition.”
Last year, McCalla released Breaking the Thermometer, a genre-defying collection of original and traditional songs that also incorporates archival recordings, and celebrates and preserves the history of Radio Haiti. From the late 1960s through the early 2000s, the Haitian independent radio station broadcast news and spoke out against oppressive regimes in Haitian Creole, the primary language spoken by most citizens despite the longstanding post-colonial use of French for most official business. McCalla, who is Haitian American, first made the music on the album in collaboration with Duke University as part of a multidisciplinary theater piece called Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever, which premiered in early 2020. She has toured the album — organically funky, with an athletic rhythm section, a variety of stringed instruments and many lyrics in Haitian Creole — intermittently since it was released in May, finding catharsis each time she is able to revisit the music in a live setting.
“It’s been very liberating,” McCalla says. “I feel like it’s connected me with the stories that I want to continue telling and the things that really matter to me. It’s made me more curious about the way forward for us all. And, you know, I haven’t toured it in a super conventional way. I’m a single mom with three kids, so I don’t go on ginormous tours in the way that some people do with their album releases. That’s made every performance more urgent and really special.”
Part of the urgency McCalla feels stems from her commitment to unearthing and preserving musical history and traditions that otherwise might be lost to time and systemic erasure. She sees marginalized
stories as being especially vulnerable to that erasure, and music as a vehicle not just for preservation but for education. And as red states continue to ban books and other media that present uncomfortable truths about history, finding alternate means for sharing marginalized perspectives is more vital than ever.
“If we can’t access the truth, how are we supposed to know how to navigate our lives?” she asks. “I feel like it is also very much my generation putting the pieces together — like, ‘Wait a minute, why don’t we know about this? Why didn’t we learn about slavery when we were growing up? And why didn’t we learn about the Haitian Revolution?’ My parents were human rights activists, working on human rights activism issues in Haiti and in the diaspora, and I didn’t learn about the Haitian Revolution until I was, like, 25.”
You might not believe in astrology, but it’s hard to deny that the stars have aligned for Roberta Lea in the past few months. Back in October, Brandi Carlile and Allison Russell championed the Kickstarter for Lea’s solo debut album Too Much of a Woman, pushing the fundraiser over its initial goal. Just as the Virginia-based singer-songwriter entered the studio this winter, she got the call that she would be included in the 2023 class of CMT’s Next Women of Country. And right after that announcement broke, respondents to the Journalists’ Survey in the Scene’s Country
McCalla will bring the music and stories of Breaking the Thermometer to Analog at the Hutton Hotel on Thursday, her first headlining performance in Nashville with her band. She and the group appeared at AmericanaFest in September and returned to open one of Jason Isbell’s Ryman residency shows in October; a few months earlier, she appeared in collaboration with contemporary classical ensemble chatterbird for a reimagining of her 2014 album, a tribute to Langston Hughes called VariColored Songs. While McCalla doesn’t call Nashville home, she has a rich community of friends and collaborators in town, and looks forward to celebrating Breaking the Thermometer as a complete work of art.
When McCalla was recognized at the International Folk Music Awards ceremony, she also performed with Josh White Jr., in
Music Almanac issue pointed to Lea as an artist to watch this year.
Amid the run-up to the record, she and her band will stop in at The Basement on Saturday. When the Scene caught up with her, she was at a hotel near Roswell, Ga., as she prepared for a performance at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center. With just a moment to take a breath, Lea described her joyously hectic 2023 and how she reflects that back to her audience.
“I’m an extrovert,” Lea says with a laugh. Having grown up the youngest of three children, she derives energy from being around people and working together. She carried this energy into the classroom when she taught high school Spanish. “I was very aware that for a lot of kids, my classroom might be their only safe space. I was the person they would come talk to during lunch, and just hang out with me. I think that translates to my performances too. I enjoy genuinely connecting to the audience and making them welcome.”
Some members of Lea’s audience need that sense of safety. It cannot be overstated that country music is often unwelcoming for Black audiences and artists. Whether it’s at her solo shows or her performances
a tribute to his father. The Folk Alliance honored Josh White, who died in 1969, with a Lifetime Achievement Legacy Award. White was a trailblazing multihyphenate musician, actor and activist who spent the final years of his prolific career and astonishing life blacklisted from the American folk music community due to McCarthyist anticommunism. McCalla views both the award and her performance alongside White Jr. as another form of preservation.
“[White] is not an artist that I knew a lot about. They made a really beautiful video that was about his life, and it just made me realize the power of music — what it means to be able to preserve our stories and to share our lives with people, to share what we’re processing and thinking. That feels very much in line with what my work is about.”
EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
with members of the Black Opry collective, Lea often hears from audience members that they didn’t think they’d like country music.
“They say that country music is three chords and the truth,” she notes. “But for so long, there’s only been a one-sided version of the truth. And it’s almost as if the truth is like a die, where you have sides to this cube. So you have your traditional small-town, Southern side of the cube, and that’s the only part of the cube that we’ve seen. And now we’re rolling the dice and seeing the Black side of the cube, and we hope to see the brown side of that cube of what it means to grow up in a Latin American country, or the LGBTQ+ side. There’s so many sides to that story, and those truths that haven’t been expressed yet.”
For Lea, representation is not just about her physical presence on the stage, but the content of her songs as well. The video for her track “Ghetto Country Streets” premiered on CMT. Lea points out that her use of the word “ghetto” is strategic. After all, country music often represents the stories of poor white communities. “Growing up in the struggle and having to make your way — it’s all the same, but it’s just expressed differently,” she says. And those universal experiences of hardship, like making up one’s own games, can bring multiple identities together. “People get it,” Lea says, “and they’re just ready to receive the story in a new perspective.”
Lea’s approach clearly resonates with fans. Her Kickstarter project validated the 37-year-old, who hesitated to do music full time because she felt she would be lost in the crowd. When she connected with Black Opry founder Holly G via the Twitter account for singer-songwriter Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country Radio, Lea felt for the first time like she had an artistic community to support her.
“If anything, there’s at least 316 people who are ready to listen to my album, and that’s something that I need to know,” Lea says, referring to the number of backers of her Kickstarter. “Having support from my local neighbors to global community artists like Brandi Carlile and Allison Russell — that’s a great range of people to prepare music for.”
It means a lot for Lea to represent Norfolk, Va. As far as Lea can tell, she is the first Black woman from the area to pursue a career as a country musician, and she’s honored to represent her musical community back home when she comes to Nashville. “I feel like I’m very privileged to be in a position that allows me to stretch between these two communities,” she says.
Lea is hesitant to uproot her family to move to Music City, though. For now, she enjoys her home life and traveling “when Nashville calls.” For an example of the support of her community back home, she looks back on a show in January, right after the Next Women of Country announcement. She was playing near home in Virginia Beach in the middle of a three-band bill, and she put out a call on her social media profiles to invite fans from across her area code. They answered, packing the venue.
“When I tell you my 757 family showed up, I really was shocked,” says Lea. “I get in my own head sometimes. I enjoy playing music. I enjoy writing songs. But are people enjoying it too? And when they come to a show, singing my songs and buying my merch, the answer is clearly yes! It’s been overwhelmingly beautiful.”
Lea hopes to carry that energy over to her show at The Basement.
“I’m bringing my band, and we just wanna show up and show out! We’re looking forward to tapping into that Nashville energy.”
EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
The last time Paramore played in their hometown was at 2018’s Art + Friends, a mini festival at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium meant as a final send-off after a year of touring their fifth studio album After Laughter. On Monday, Feb. 6, the band returned to Music City for the inverse: an album release party for This Is Why, due for release that Friday.
“Do you know how much has changed since 2018?” said frontwoman Hayley Williams, surveying the crowd at the Grand Ole Opry House. “Frankly, in this city, not enough.”
It’d be silly to try to describe how true that statement was for the out-of-town audience members, as Nashville has a confusing recent history of rapid development combined with slow social reform (see: the Scene’s news section). Fortunately, Paramore’s performing chops remained unchanged since their Nashville farewell. The band — which has also remained relatively stable since the last album cycle by maintaining its core of Williams, guitarist Taylor York and drummer Zac Farro — looked comfortable and raring to go on the Opry stage as they prepared to launch their sixth LP.
Following a warmup set from Nashville indie-rockers Louis Prince, whose 2022 album Flounder rides a post-disco groove, Paramore’s two-hour set kicked off with two new songs. The crowd already knew the words to “This Is Why,” the titular lead single for the new record, and if anyone in the stands didn’t know the words to recent release “C’est Comme Ça,” the song has enough “nah-nahnahs” that they were able to fake it. Both recall the danceable, syncopated rhythms of After Laughter, tinged with the dark, distorted guitar tones of early Paramore.
As the band played a festival-esque set of hits and fan favorites from nearly every Paramore release (except their 2004 debut All We Know Is Falling), it became clear that the album release show wasn’t necessarily an album debut event. That would come Feb. 7, as the band scheduled several listening parties at record stores across the country, including at Grimey’s over on the East Side. That wasn’t a problem for most fans, who alternatively danced (to After Laughter tunes like “Rose Colored Boy”) or rocked (to songs like 2007’s “That’s What You Get”) their little emo butts off. Among the visuals projected behind the group were clips of a dilapidated-looking Rivergate Mall, presumably chosen to evoke a sort of bummed-out nostalgia as Williams & Co. sang through more than 15 years of angst-ridden lyrics.
Paramore has been delivering stellar, high-energy live performances since its members were teenagers, but there was an easy, confident chemistry in the air as the current group interacted onstage on the 6th. Past Paramore tours and releases have brought lineup changes and often-messy interpersonal drama for the band, but This Is Why marks a Paramore first in that realm: The core lineup has not changed since the previous release. Much of the touring band remains the same
from previous tours too, with newcomer Brian Robert Jones taking up rhythm guitar alongside bassist Joey Howard, Logan MacKenzie on keys and guitar and Joseph Mullen on percussion. York in particular looked infectiously in the zone, with enough hops and headbangs for the rest of the band combined. His brother Justin York, who previously toured with the band on rhythm guitar but left amicably in 2022, was spotted in the Opry House crowd.
There was still room for some twists, though. Midway through the set, the instrumentalists slipped away to allow Williams to perform two acoustic songs solo on the legendary Opry stage.
“This is something that I wanted to do,” she said, “and I’ll be honest with you: I’m scared shitless right now.”
Her first song, “In the Mourning,” was a lesser-heard track from the 2011 Singles Club EP. The EP, best known for the Transformers: Dark of the Moon soundtrack song “Monster,” was the band’s first release after Zac and brother Josh Farro left the band and left the future of the group in doubt.
“When I was telling the guys that I wanted to play [this song], Zac was like, ‘I don’t know that song,’ ” Williams said. “I was like, ‘Bro, that’s because it’s about you, man.’ When Zac originally left the band, it was my first real brush with grief, and it just fell like the world was falling apart.”
The second was another treat for longtime fans and a tribute to a recently departed legend. Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough” featured in Paramore live sets as far back as 2009, when the band first played the Ryman, and Williams strummed away with a smile as she belted the 1966 hit. It was her first time playing solo since she was 16, she said, noting that her hands were shaking during soundcheck earlier in the day.
“I was like, there’s never been a better portrayal for why I never want to be a solo artist,” Williams recalled with a laugh. “I love playing with my band, with my guys.”
The group then rapidly shifted gears into “Boogie Juice” from Farro’s solo project HalfNoise. Farro hammed it up as the lead singer, donning a sparkly Western shirt, black cowboy hat and Garth Brooks-style headset mic as Williams banged away on some congas. He slid back onto the drum kit for “Told You So,” recent release “The News” and the Grammy-winning “Ain’t It Fun” before the band left the stage for a
quick wardrobe change and counted in for After Laughter’s “Caught in the Middle.”
Then came “Running Out of Time,” the only This Is Why song Paramore played at the Opry House that hadn’t been released before the show. Lyrically, the track is about Williams’ chronic tardiness: “It’s really not that deep, unless you want to think about the planet dying,” she said. Musically, the song fit in with the others we had heard so far from This Is Why, dripping with Aughts rock moodiness. In pre-album interviews, Williams noted that on the new record, the band drew from early influences including English rockers Bloc Party.
“Number six — we did it,” she said. “I hope you love it, and I hope you make all the best memories to it.”
Five years ago at Art + Friends, Paramore retired arguably their most memorable song, “Misery Business,” with Williams explaining that she was uncomfortable singing a song with the line “Once a whore / You’re nothing more.” After reflecting on the song’s legacy and ultimately deciding that it still held value as one that so many fans loved, Williams unretired the song during a duet with Billie Eilish last spring at Coachella.
“Just about five minutes after I got canceled for saying the word ‘whore’ in a song, all of TikTok decided that it was OK,” Williams said during an October performance. “Make it make sense.”
Williams leaned into the past controversy when teasing their finale at the Opry House.
“You know we got one more.” Bated breath. “You ready to get canceled with us?” Expectant cheers. Then: “I’m about to be such a whore for this song.”
Williams quoted Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “W.A.P.” — “There’s some whores in this house!” — over the instrumental intro to “Misery Business,” and together she and the band showcased why the song sent them rocketing into the upper echelons of poppunk royalty. The performance had everything: Farro’s effortlessly chunky drumming, York inexplicably appearing in massivelegged JNCOs, the band reviving their tradition of inviting a fan up to sing the bridge, Williams flashing her bra at the crowd at the chorus. Paramore was back home, and in their final tune-up before This Is Why and the start of another massive tour, they looked ready to take on the world once again.
EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
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BY CORY WOODROOF
The 2023 Sundance Film Festival has come and gone, leaving the film world plenty to chew on for how the year’s independent catalog is shaping up. The Sundance schedule can be tricky: While a 2023 film like Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool premiered at this year’s festival for a quick theatrical turnaround, the Bill Nighy vehicle Living premiered at last year’s Sundance and just hit the Belcourt in Nashville a few weeks ago. While we’re not quite sure when you’ll get to see some of the movies on this list, you’ll want to take note of these 10 films from last month’s Sundance — they’re worth catching when they make their way to us.
Imagine Spotlight if it were a documentary about the fight for freedom of the press in the tribal nations, and you’ll have a good idea of how Bad Press plays out. It’s one of the best American films about journalism to come along in the past decade, a genuinely shocking study on how the First Amendment isn’t a guarantee for all U.S. citizens. If you care about journalism or government transparency even in the slightest, this is a must-see documentary. Awaiting distribution.
Beyond Utopia is a breathless documentary with startling footage of a South Korean pastor who works to help dissidents escape North Korea. For most of the film, director Madeleine Gavin follows pastor Seungeun Kim as he embarks on a life-threatening journey to help one North Korean family navigate a treacherous journey to freedom. None of the footage is re-created, leaving you stunned with how they were able to not only pull off the movie, but the actual journey itself. Awaiting distribution.
Lily Gladstone is about to have a big year with her upcoming starring role in Martin
Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and Fancy Dance is a heck of a showcase for what the actress does well. Here she turns in a careful, laser-focused performance as a Native American woman who must look for her missing sister while trying to take care of her niece. It’s a stirring family drama that gives Gladstone a wonderful platform. Awaiting distribution.
Fremont is the kind of unexpected gem that makes Sundance worthwhile. A quirky dramedy about an Afghan woman who tries to assimilate in America by working at a fortune cookie factory, Fremont is a deeply humane, surprisingly funny tale about what it’s like to build a new life. Gregg Turkington (aka Neil Hamburger) turns up in a key supporting role as a therapist, proving his ability to breathe awkward humor and remarkable pathos into his performances. Awaiting distribution.
Southern businessman who begins to realize his son has a dark side. Jane Levy also impresses as Strathairn’s daughter-in-law. Sony Pictures Classics picked this one up for a likely awards push later this year.
Jonathan Majors could snag his first Oscar nomination next year thanks to his astonishingly gritty turn in Magazine Dreams At once an homage to Taxi Driver, Pumping Iron, Nightcrawler and The King of Comedy, the somber drama follows Majors’ troubled bodybuilder as he tries to make a name for himself with his competitive hobby. Majors’ breathtaking physicality and uncomfortable intensity might make this one of the standout performances of the decade when all is said and done. Awaiting distribution.
Playing against type from her Rey/Star Wars days, Daisy Ridley establishes herself with Sometimes, I Think About Dying. She brings a lot of restraint and quirkiness to her portrayal of a reclusive office worker who begins an in-office romance with a new co-worker. The whimsical, delightfully off-kilter film feels like something ripped off of Adult Swim at times, just with a more refined filter. It’s ultimately a moving story about breaking out of your shell, and Ridley has never been better. Awaiting distribution.
If you’re a fan of Michael J. Fox or documentaries about actors, you cannot miss Davis Guggenheim’s Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. It’s a deeply profound meditation on the life and career of one of America’s most beloved actors. Fox bares his soul as he tells us the story of his life, warts and all, in vivid detail. Guggenheim uses well-considered recreations to help add to the drama of his narrative. This one will be on Apple TV+ later this year, and it’s a can’t-miss experience.
Theater Camp is a bit like Waiting for Guffman meets TikTok meets your favorite camp comedy. It’s a hilarious underdog story about an unlikely group of theater nerds (featuring Ben Platt and Molly Gordon) and one very uncultured finance bro (Jimmy Tatro) who try to save a struggling theater camp from foreclosure. Hilarious, bittersweet and grounded, Theater Camp should stand as one of the year’s better comedies. Searchlight picked this one up for theatrical release.
Veteran actor David Strathairn delivers what might be the defining performance of his career with A Little Prayer. The latest from Junebug writer Angus MacLachlan, the compelling film follows Strathairn as a
The best film of Sundance 2023 was Nicole Holofcener’s surprisingly resonant You Hurt My Feelings, which might be the best film ever made about our societal inability to handle various forms of criticism. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and The Crown’s Tobias Menzies are just fantastic as a married couple who must overcome a hurdle when LouisDreyfus’ writer overhears her therapist husband Menzies say he doesn’t like her new book. A24 should release this one later in the year, and it’s just an absolute requirement for anyone who loves Holofcener and her character-focused dramedies.
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ACROSS
1 Royal Catherine
5 All-day, in a way
9 Rides
13 Agave lookalike
14 Spring, for one
15 Fancy summer home
16 Grocery store worker on the days leading up to Thanksgiving?
19 Dress (up)
20 Cheesemaking town
21 Salty expanses
22 Incense residue
23 One who’s acting out?
24 Some trimmings
25 Pamphlets on how to use marinara?
31 Lecherous sort
33 Beginning of time?
34 When doubled, mouse-bopping bunny in a children’s song
35 Sporty Pontiac
38 One with a tattoo of a band’s name, say
41 Oxygen makes up only one-fifth of this on the earth
42 Gossip, slangily
44 Part of some musical keys
45 Bookie?
50 Card game shout
51 Winners of a 1932 Australian “war”
52 Org. using millimeter wave scanners
55 Inedible jelly on a buffet table
58 49-Down’s city, familiarly
59 Shubert of Broadway’s Shubert Theatre
60 Devices that help dentists monitor anesthesia?
63 En pointe
64 Its flag has “Allahu Akbar” written 22 times
65 Repeated words in an analogy
66 Common catch
67 Hunt and peck, say
68 Pronto DOWN
1 It gets into hot water
2 Chorus section
3 Inauspicious beginning
4 Certain whistleblower
5 Hardly basic
6 Personal friend in France
7 Something cephalopods control for camouflage
8 Units on a graduated cylinder: Abbr.
9 Fine point
10 ___-Seltzer
11 Campbell with the 1975 #1 hit “Rhinestone Cowboy”
12 2003 outbreak
15 Outspoken
17 Pelvis/patella connectors
18 Sticky ___ pudding
26 Author Rand
27 It’s set in a ring
28 Easy-peasy
29 Speckled
30 Maker of the first portable music player
31 Guess
32 Grammy winner India.___
36 When both hands are up
37 Unit of RAM
39 Passes, but not with flying colors
40 Shinzo ___, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister
43 Representative’s work
46 Powerful engines
47 Feature of many a belly
48 Angsty hip-hop subgenre
49 Prestigious university in 58-Across
53 Company whose mascots are sheep with numbers painted on them
54 Author whose titles often feature two animals
55 One with an upturned nose, so to speak
56 Common catch
57 CPR specialists
61 “Scram!”
62 Car once advertised with the slogan “The power to surprise”
Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/ crosswords ($39.95 a year).
Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.
Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/ studentcrosswords.
ADRIAN EUGENE LAVENDER,
vs. DESTINY RENEE WAKEFIELD
In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon DESTINY RENEE WAKEFIELD. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after MARCH 2, 2023, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on April 3, 2023.
It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day, Clerk
M. De Jesus , Deputy Clerk
Date: February 3, 2023
Wende Rutherford Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 2/9, 2/16, 2/23, 3/2 /23
Application Systems Specialists. Analyze user requests to design, code, test, maintain, and document highly complex computer programs for a major hospital corporation.
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Specialists. Analyze user requests to design, code, test, maintain, and document highly complex computer programs for a major hospital corporation.
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UBS Business Solutions US LLC is seeking an Associate Director, Group Internal Consulting, Management Consulting Practice in Nashville, TN. Design, drive, and implement projects and strategy that solve business challenges as part of the Management Consulting Practice of Group Internal Consulting. Analyze IT business practices to accelerate UBS digital transformation. Qualified Applicants apply through SHProfRecruitingcc@ubs.com. Please reference 000635. NO CALLS PLEASE. EOE/M/F/D/V.
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