Nashville Scene 2-24-22

FEBRUARY 24–MARCH 2, 2022 I VOLUME 41 I NUMBER 4 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

CITY LIMITS: POLICE CO-RESPONSE PROGRAM EYES EXPANSION — BUT IS IT TOO LITTLE TOO LATE? PAGE 7

WALK A MILE: J.R. LIND HEADS TO ANTIOCH PIKE — SOUTH NASHVILLE’S MELTING POT PAGE 8

EXAMINING LEXANDER BRYANT’S POWERFUL NEW SOLO EXHIBITION FORGET ME NOTS, NOW ON DISPLAY AT THE FRIST

THE TIMES MAKE THE MAN

By KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM and LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

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2/21/22 5:43 PM

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

CONTENTS

FEBRUARY 24, 2022

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Police Co-Response Program Eyes Expansion — but Is It Too Little Too Late? ..........................................................7

Clever Darlings

CITY LIMITS

Data on Partners in Care was released one week after Landon Eastep was killed by local law enforcement

BY HANNAH HERNER

Pith in the Wind .........................................7

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

Walk a Mile: Antioch Pike .........................8 In the 26th installment of his column, J.R. Lind heads to South Nashville’s melting pot — with loads of great restaurants and too few sidewalks

BY J.R. LIND

THEATER

Adventure awaits with NCT’s delightful Peter Pan: Wendy’s Adventure to Neverland

BY AMY STUMPFL

26 ART

From the Archives

Beizar Aradini uncovers her Kurdish roots through painterly embroidered portraits

BY ERICA CICCARONE

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BOOKS

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Call of the Wild

COVER STORY

The Times Make the Man I Want You to Remember ....................... 11 LeXander Bryant on memory, childhood, God and everything

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

Memories of a Native Son ...................... 12 LeXander Bryant’s solo exhibition Forget Me Nots resists the act of forgetting

BY KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM

David George Haskell explores all things acoustic within the natural world

BY MICHAEL RAY TAYLOR AND CHAPTER 16

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THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: Jimmy Fallon Sits In With The Stolen Faces at Brooklyn Bowl Republican Legislators Propose Slate of Concerning Bills Founder of The Nashville Food Project Tallu Schuyler Quinn Has Died Rep. Powell Proposes Formation of Train Travel Caucus ON THE COVER:

LeXander Bryant Photo by Daniel Meigs

MUSIC

To the Point ............................................. 29 Prolific rapper Petty is ready to get back to the stage

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

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Heart Beat Here ...................................... 30

Seven at Z. Alexander Looby Theater, Southern Word’s BlackLift Poetry House, Ryan Hurd, Samia, Dear Evan Hansen at TPAC and more

BY STEVEN HALE AND MEGAN SELING

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BY P.J. KINZER

Barrels of Fun

FILM

Ahead of Dashboard Confessional’s new LP, two emo fans discuss Chris Carrabba’s lasting power

CRITICS’ PICKS

The Spin ................................................... 31 The Scene’s live-review column checks out Daisha McBride at Acme Feed and Seed

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FOOD AND DRINK Nashville Barrel Co.’s Michael Hinds is making lots of moves

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

National Anthems ................................... 32 Joe Wright’s Cyrano brings Peter Dinklage and The National together

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BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

OK Computer

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

Gone Astray ............................................. 32 On bringing local independent thriller Best Laid Plans to fruition during a pandemic

VODKA YONIC Goodbye to mixing the personal and the professional

BY AMANDA HAGGARD

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YO. MEET STALLONE.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP WITH GOV. BILL LEE IN 2020

GOV. LEE’S PARTNERSHIP WITH HILLSDALE COLLEGE IS MISGUIDED AND WILL HURT OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS I found myself nodding along to some of the points Holly McCall made in her Feb. 14 Tennessee Lookout column about yet another controversial move being made by Gov. Bill Lee that will affect children throughout our state.

The governor proposed in his State of the State address to add $1 billion to the education budget — and that sounded good. However, he also announced that he is planning a partnership with Hillsdale College, a private conservative college in Michigan with close ties to former President Donald Trump’s administration. Once the partnership commences, Hillsdale’s people would develop civics curricula for K-12 students in Tennessee. Additionally, there would be a “creation of 50 Hillsdale-backed charter schools.”

As reported by Chalkbeat Tennessee, the day following Lee’s address, Hillsdale announced its plans to bring “classical charter schools” to Tennessee. “Through its affiliate American Classical Education Inc.,” Chalkbeat wrote, “the organization has filed applications to open three schools in 2023 through school systems in the growing suburban towns of Clarksville, Jackson, and Murfreesboro.”

Until the governor’s address, few Tennesseans knew much about Michigan’s Hillsdale College or its characteristics. Though charter schools have long been a topic of debate in our state, this situation is vastly different.

Tennesseans are concerned, and we get the feeling the governor is pushing his own agenda over the well-being and development of our children.

Remember in 2019, when the governor tried to push his school voucher program that would have allowed parents to use allotted public school funds toward private school tuition? Multiple courts blocked the program.

In the minds of many, and as written by the Scene’s own Betsy Phillips, this new Hillsdale move is just a means for the governor to use taxpayers’ money to fund private schools over public school education.

Tennessee does a terrible job funding our schools, ranking in the bottom five states when it comes to per-student funding. According to the Tennessee Education Report, schools are underfunded by nearly $2 billion a year, an amount Lee’s $1 billion increase to education won’t cover. So the $32 million allotted for these charter schools would be much better spent on current public schools’ needs, rather than sending the money to a private college in Michigan, or spending public money to set up private Christian charter

schools that will likely detract even more funds from our public schools.

Gov. Lee has said, “Hillsdale’s charter schools in our state will be public secular classical education schools.” But many Tennesseans see a problem with that claim.

In her column, McCall notes that Hillsdale’s website says the school “maintains by precept and example the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith.” Since 2000, Hillsdale has been creating a network of charter schools and developing a conservative curriculum for them. McCall concludes, and many likely agree, that the governor won’t be happy until “he’s created a network of publicly funded, private Christian schools to drain resources from our public schools.”

There is obviously nothing wrong with Christian or private schools. Many students have benefited from them over the years.

The problem comes when the powers that be behind these schools feel everyone should walk, talk and worship the same way. That’s not true freedom. Further, as Holly asks, “Why on earth is Tennessee’s governor sending our money to a private college in another state to develop curriculum for our kids?”

Rep. Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville) tells WKRN: “At the end of the day it’s an endaround to try to get vouchers instituted in Tennessee. I think he wants to create a new brand of private school that’s going to be Christian-based indoctrinating kids.” Amy Frogge, executive director of Pastors for Tennessee Children, tells the station, “Over time, as charter schools cause existing schools to become both under-enrolled and underfunded, districts are left with the difficult discussion of whether to close neighborhood schools to try to offset the cost of funding charter schools.” And the Rev. Dr. Kevin Riggs, pastor at Franklin Community Church, says, “Gov. Lee is funding his pet project by using taxpayer dollars to fund Christian charter schools.”

It’s a slap in the face — not just to Tennesseans in general, but to those whose religious beliefs may not coincide with those being pushed by the governor via Hillsdale. As McCall reminds us, a “government-sanctioned religious takeover” of our public schools is not to be taken lightly. Intolerance of those who do not worship the same way as the governor is certainly not the answer.

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

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

POLICE CO-RESPONSE PROGRAM EYES EXPANSION — BUT IS IT TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?

center to look for Partners in Care first, if they’re available. But for now, if you call 911, you’re most likely going to have a police officer on your doorstep — DEC director Stephen Martini says it’s a liability to send only mobile crisis when someone dials 911.

Denver takes requests for its non-police response program both through 911 and through a separate non-emergency number, but advocacy group Nashville Community Crisis Response would like to see Nashville’s program housed completely separately from the police department.

The mayor’s office has not yet said where the non-police alternative would be housed.

“We want to train people in the community to be able to recognize and handle mental health crises in their families, with their neighbors,” says Theeda Murphy, a member of Nashville Community Crisis Response who has experience working in mobile crisis counseling outside of Davidson County.

“And then we also want them to have a place to go where they can ask for help and do what mobile crisis is supposed to do, which is to provide the clinician who comes on site and does the intervention without police involvement, unless the clinician decides after they have assessed the situation that the police need to be involved.”

MNPD Cmdr. David Imhof says the department is eyeing Central Precinct for expansion of the Partners in Care program and will be announcing plans in the coming weeks, well before the pilot’s first year is up. The expanded program will require the same 40-hour crisis intervention training that Partners in Care officers underwent for all of the direct service officers — a get the ball rolling toward a program that task that will take three years at eight doesn’t involve police at all — it would intrainings per year. stead see a medic and a mental health clini“Having many people trained to at least cian responding to crises. The approach is triage those situations, to de-escalate those modeled after Denver programming, which situations, to understand and recognize started with co-response efforts in 2016, and signs of behavioral health crisis and be continued with a non-police response group able to make the appropriate phone calls to called Support Team Assisted Response mobile crisis if the team’s not availthat debuted in June 2020. able,” says Imhof, “I think it’s With calls answered by the gonna be extremely beneficial Partners in Care team, the poto the department long lice officer will secure the term.” premises first. The cliniMNPD is still very cian waits in the car, but TAKE A SURVEY ON POLICE INTERACTIONS AT much a part of this cothe officer may let the NASHVILLECOMMUNITYCRISISRESPONSE.COM; REACH THE MENTAL HEALTH COOPERATIVE response model, and it person they’re respondCRISIS TEAM 24/7 AT 615-726-0125 will be some time before ing to know that a cliniOR 855-274-7471 options outside of law encian is there. When given forcement become more the OK, the clinician steps available in Nashville. The in to introduce themselves. debate remains on what is the “We want that person that right response when a weapon we are seeing in crisis to be is involved in a mental health crisis. a partner in deciding what they Eastep — who was holding a box cutter need,” says Randolph. “And we want to do a when he was shot to death by several law least restrictive alternative.” enforcement officers — wasn’t the first to Partners in Care are also responding to be denied the opportunity for treatment. calls that may not reach the acuity level “The first responders who respond to of mobile crisis calls, a program by the those calls where weapons are involved, Mental Health Coop that can be summoned they do get special training,” Randolph to the scene of a mental health crisis. Ransays. “They do have a clinician on scene to dolph estimates that around 40 percent of consult with. When it is safe for that clinithe pilot program’s calls were crisis calls cian to talk to that person, they will talk — for situations like psychosis or threat of to that person and get plenty of help. And sucicide — and 60 percent were more genwe’re giving those first responders, and eral mental-health-related calls. especially that person in crisis, all the tools From the dispatch side of things, Nashwe can to safely resolve that crisis moment ville’s Department of Emergency Comand get them into treatment.” munications codes eight different types of EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM calls in its computer-assisted dispatching

Data on Partners in Care was released one week after Landon Eastep was killed by local law enforcement

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

BY HANNAH HERNER

MICHAEL RANDOLPH, MENTAL HEALTH COOPERATIVE

W

hen Landon Eastep was killed by law enforcement officers on Jan. 27, it sparked outcry. Many community members said they simply want to see someone with a history of mental health struggles like Eastep helped, not hurt.

A week after the shooting, on Feb. 3, the Metro Nashville Police Department and Mental Health Cooperative released statistics on the first six months of its pilot program, Partners in Care, which pairs a police officer and a mental health clinician to respond to calls together. According to the report, of the 821 calls handled by the team in two pilot precincts — Hermitage and North — only 3.7 percent were taken to jail, while 21 percent were taken to the emergency room, and 6.5 percent were taken to crisis treatment. The most common outcomes were “support and rapport building” and referral to community resources, at 25 and 22 percent respectively. The program received $561,816 from federal funds for pandemic response.

Partners in Care is small, with just four full-time clinicians. In addition to those four staffers, Michael Randolph fills in while heading up the program on the Mental Health Coop side, and another clinician fills in as needed and does all the follow-up calls.

Partners in Care is active Monday through Friday from around 6:30 a.m. until around 11 p.m.

On Feb. 4, Mayor John Cooper’s office announced that it’s applying for a federal technical assistance grant, which would

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG: The state legislature, as it is wont to do, is taking up a number of bills that have activists concerned. One, sponsored by Rep. William Lamberth (R-Portland), would expand the definition of aggravated assault to include displaying “any article used or fashioned to lead the victim to reasonably believe it to be a deadly weapon.” Because studies show that people are more likely to perceive an object as a deadly weapon if it’s being held by a Black person, activists are concerned that it opens up police officers to even broader protections when using deadly force. Another bill would expand documentation requirements in E-Verify and would also protect employers from retaliatory or wrongful discharge complaints if the employer was not aware that an employee was not authorized to work in the United States. Opponents, including the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, say E-Verify is ineffective and riddled with errors, with its database often including people who are in fact authorized to work in the U.S., including citizens. … Contributor Betsy Phillips says another of these concerning bills — a measure sponsored by Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) that would expand the definition of “law enforcement officer” to anyone with an enhanced handgun carry permit — is not just concerning, but absurd, opening up “a can of worms who are each opening their own can of worms,” as it essentially deputizes hundreds of people who haven’t had a moment of law enforcement training and possibly granting them qualified immunity. … State Rep. Mike Stewart (D-Nashville) announced that he would not seek reelection in 2022. In his 14 years as a legislator, Stewart became one of the loudest anti-GOP voices in an increasingly shrinking Democratic Party presence, eventually becoming chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. … Tallu Schuyler Quinn, the founder of The Nashville Food Project, succumbed last week to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. She died in hospice, surrounded by her family. She was 42. … Vanderbilt student group Dores Divest filed a complaint with state Attorney General Herbert Slatery III regarding Vanderbilt University’s Board of Trust, arguing that the university’s investments in the fossil fuel industry violate the Tennessee Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act. The Vanderbilt group joins groups at four other prominent universities — Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT — in filing such complaints, which essentially argue that because the board essentially runs a charity, it has a duty to promote the public interest, which is not served by fossil fuel investment. Similar strategies at Harvard and Cornell led to those schools’ governing bodies beginning the divestment process. … Local street paper The Contributor announced that the former director of the Metro Homeless Impact Division will be joining as a columnist. Judith Tackett served as the director for the division from 2017 to 2021, and had been involved in the city’s efforts to help its unhoused populations years before that.

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

nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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2/21/22 5:41 PM

CITY LIMITS

ANTIOCH PIKE In the 26th installment of his column, Walk a

Mile

J.R. Lind heads to South Nashville’s melting pot — with loads of great restaurants and too few sidewalks

BY J.R. LIND | PHOTOS BY ERIC ENGLAND

with J.R. Lind ch tio An e Pik

THE ROUTE: From the Mill Creek Greenway parking lot on Blue Hole Road, north on Blue Hole. Then left on Antioch Pike to the intersection with Haywood Lane and Richards Road.

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

T

here’s no getting away from Mill Creek.

It flows nearly 28 miles from where it rises just outside Nolensville, winding through Antioch and Donelson, skirting downtown and joining the Cumberland River across from Shelby Park.

Before 2010, the watercourse mostly made headlines as the only habitat on earth for the highly endangered Faxonius shoupi, better known (maybe?) as the Nashville crayfish. But in 2010, Mill Creek became infamous. When the floods came in May of that year, they struck there first, killing five people, destroying countless homes and sweeping buildings from Lighthouse Christian School’s campus down Interstate 24. Now seemingly every time the rain falls, our eyes turn south to Mill Creek — our canary in the coal mine for flooding.

On a bright and chilly February morning, Mill Creek looks threatening once again.

Heavy rains the day before have it muddy and turbulent as it rushes under the bridge that carries Blue Hole Road over its waters.

In the time before swimming pools, aquatic recreation was, of course, confined to suitable spots — “swimming holes” or “blue holes” — in creeks and lakes. There was one in Mill Creek, thus the road name.

On this particular morning, there’s plenty of blue in the sky, but only café-aulait brown in the water. There’s an effort underway to mitigate heavy stormwater flow from the absolutely massive parking lot for the greenway. There are saplings to hold back erosion and channels to divert the runoff properly. And there’s one perfectly round, bright-green shrub. It doesn’t belong, and so a parks worker tosses it in his pickup.

There’s a little clutch of commerce at the intersection of Blue Hole Road and Antioch Pike. Snuggled next to the bridge in a windowless brick building, Las Vias offers a tantalizing variety of Mexican food. Across Antioch Pike, British Bee Tea Co. pours cups for customers in a building that nailed the teahouse aesthetic as best it could for its location. Next to that, a mattress concern.

There are seemingly acres of parking lots

on Antioch Pike, perhaps the cause of Mill Creek’s propensity to exceed its banks, and plenty of vacant land, a by-product of that propensity. At the rear of one such parking lot, next to the mattress place, is a two-story office building, though it serves as the home to a church and a barber shop.

The rail line runs tight against the back property lines on the north side of Antioch Pike, and Mill Creek presses hard against the rear of the properties on the south. Both are roaring on this February morning, the trains running to Radnor Yard and points beyond, the creek making its noisy way to the Cumberland.

With those aesthetics — the creek, the whistle of the train, the relatively significant amount of open space — Antioch Pike does sometimes feel like a country backroad. But it’s far too busy for that. It’s a critical pathway for folks trying to dodge the inevitable traffic jam on I-24, and it connects Hickory Hollow with Antioch proper, besides. Add in Antioch High and Antioch Middle, and there are plenty of cars.

What there aren’t, though, are sidewalks — making it a perilous walk indeed.

Walking is safest when passing one of the aforementioned massive parking lots. But more often than not, there are mere inches between the white line of the road and what passes as a shoulder — a narrow strip on the edge of a ditch.

Antioch Pike dates to a time before the Complete Street movement. It was built by the Mill Creek Valley Turnpike Co., which was chartered by the General Assembly in 1846. It ran from the “four mile mark of Nolensville Pike,” crossing Mill Creek at Rains’ Mill (more or less where the oddball intersection of Haywood Lane, Richards Road and Antioch Pike is today) and then turning south. It follows the same route today — though the stretch between Sevenmile Creek and Nolensville Pike in Glencliff is known as McCall Street now.

The history also explains why it abruptly changes to Una-Antioch Pike at Blue Hole Road. The old turnpike stopped there when it was built.

Much of this information would be available from the Antioch Pike historical marker, which is supposed to be located at the front edge of the Metro Parks property just west of Goodwin Road. The marker

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

is not there. And if this is a Metro Park, it’s a very odd one, as it looks more like an abandoned trailer park (which is what it used to be).

As Antioch Pike makes its way northwest, it bifurcates the International Indoor Soccer Complex, which is a bit of a misnomer, because there are plenty of outdoor fields too. The privately run complex is impressive and includes a good-sized outdoor stadium, which, eyeballing it, seats as many people as a decent high school football facility. Behind that is the indoor facility, checking in at 33,000 square feet.

And next to Antioch Pike? A quaint ticket booth that looks like it may have come out of a Fairgrounds Nashville surplus sale.

The creek creeps closer to the road here, making it impossible to ignore the chirping of the concupiscent frogs who are thumbing their little frog noses at the chilly morning and singing their springtime songs anyway.

Antioch Pike is now mostly devoid of residential properties, years and floods each doing their part to send homeowners elsewhere. A strong patch of bamboo, thicktrunked trees and a bricked-up well on an otherwise flat and vacant tract just beyond the soccer complex are signs that there once was a home here, likely even a substantial one. A more modest home, dating from the

late 1940s, is next door.

The creek bends in tight at Antioch Pike’s intersection with Reeves Road, but the land rises up defiantly in its face. The only substantial hill on this whole stretch is on the edge of the Antioch Church of Christ’s property, and it looms so high and steep it’s hard to see what’s up there. Chastened, the creek turns away, running behind the usedtire/used-car lot across the street from the church. Next to that? A trailer park, where one resident has charmingly painted their trailer caution-sign yellow, whereas all the others are battleship gray.

Two 1920s stone houses with high-peaked roofs — architecture more common to Madison and Inglewood than here — break up the run of auto-parts stores and tiny shops as Antioch Pike makes its way to that bizarre intersection with Haywood and Richards.

But that strange intersection offers a tantalizing array of international cuisine options: Chinese, Mexican, Salvadoran, Korean. South Nashville in general, and Antioch in particular, is Davidson County’s melting pot, and everybody’s pot is hot here.

And they’ll make their way on Antioch Pike, good Lord willing … and the creek don’t rise.

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LEXANDER BRYANT: FORGET ME NOTS THROUGH MAY 1 AT THE FRIST

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

THE TIMES MAKE THE MAN

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BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER LeXANDER BRYANT’S exhibition Forget Me Nots is the Nashville artist’s first solo museum show, but it isn’t the first time he’s had work at the Frist Art Museum. He was part of the group show Murals of North Nashville Now in 2019, and before that he was involved in the 2017 exhibit Nick Cave: Feat.

Forget Me Nots is a triumph. It includes three galleries of the 32-year-old’s artwork — one focuses on Bryant’s photo-based practice, and another contextualizes his wheatpaste posters with an installation and documentary set to music by frequent collaborator Mike Floss. The third gallery features a monolithic concrete slab covered in plastic forget-me-not flowers peeking through cracks. Bryant joined the Scene for a walk through the entire exhibition. We began at the cluster of photographs Bryant calls the “memory wall.”

“I call it the ‘memory wall’ because they all reference some moment, some experience, some idea that I can relate back to my childhood,” says Bryant. “I feel like they’re small moments that you don’t really pay attention to, but over the course of time, they kind of make up a larger picture. Every one has a different story. Some are documentary style, others are in a studio setting. They all relate to a moment or idea.”

Read our interview below.

I SEE A LOT OF CONTRAST BETWEEN CITY AND COUNTRY, BUT ALSO CARS, BIKES, SUBWAYS — WAYS TO GET OUT OF WHERE YOU’RE FROM OR MOVE TO SOMEWHERE ELSE. That’s right. The New York taxi cab, for instance — that one just tells the story of this country boy who grows up thinking that everything he needs, everything he wants, is in the big city. And that I don’t have the resources in a small town to survive, or to make something of myself that I can be proud of. The shoes that hang on the power line — it’s this love for city life, and the desire to live in a big city when you grow up in a small town.

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

THE ONE WITH THE EYES — “NEIGHBORHOOD SURVEILLANCE’’ — IS INTERESTING. YOU THINK OF A PHOTOGRAPHER AS SOMEONE WHO IS BEING THE VOYEUR, BUT THESE ARE YOU CAPTURING PEOPLE LOOKING BACK AT YOU. THERE’S AN IDEA OF BEING LOOKED AT EVEN AS YOU’RE TAKING THE PHOTOS. That’s a great point, because a lot of this is based on self-reflection. I like to say that my work serves as a kind of self-help book for me. It’s a moment to reflect and sit back and think about what you’ve captured, and think about what your mindset was at the time of the photo. I feel like looking at the eyes is almost like looking at myself.

With any of these subjects, I see a piece of myself. Even if I’m seeing a nostalgic version of my parents, or myself in my childhood, my cousins and uncles — we have a similar theme in our lives of trying to make

who I am. I mean, I don’t consider myself religious today, but I would be lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge the influence of Southern religion — being at church as a child, hearing the music, seeing the way people love each other, the way we support each other, the way we dress when we come to church, the things we do after church.

Family, Southern Black tradition and community — it’s all the same thing.

THIS MAIN IMAGE, “THE MOST KNOWN, UNKNOWN,” IS OUT OF FOCUS, ALMOST LIKE HE NEEDS YOU TO STAND AWAY FROM HIM A LITTLE TO REALLY SEE HIM. It wasn’t captured blurry on purpose — it was more of a misfire. But out of all the photos in this sequence, it stood out the most. The story I was able to apply to it is that this is the relationship that I have always had with religion — you see this figure and it’s powerful, but you don’t always know a lot about it. You don’t trust it. So I titled this piece “The Most Known, Unknown.”

I think that’s the relationship that a lot of people have with religion with whatever deity you choose. It’s taboo to talk about, especially in the South, especially in a Black family that loves Jesus.

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

LeXander Bryant on memory, childhood, God and everything

THERE’S ALSO A LOT OF RELIGIOUS IMAGERY HERE. The church has a strong influence on

LEXANDER BRYANT LEADING A TOUR AT THE FRIST ART MUSEUM

I LOVE HOW THE WHEATPASTE POSTERS ARE INSTALLED. STREET ART IN A GALLERY SETTING IS SO HARD TO GET RIGHT, AND I LIKE HOW IT’S FUCKED-UP ON PURPOSE. THE DESIGN IS REALLY SIMPLE. IT REMINDS ME OF THE OVERLAP BETWEEN STREET ART AND ADVERTISING, AND HOW GRAFFITI IS REALLY JUST ADVERTISING YOURSELF. The wheatpaste work was inspired by corporate advertising — those big posters for Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar that I was seeing all over the streets in L.A. I just feel like, man, it’s hard not to see that. So how can I flip that? How can I create something that’s just as powerful, just as impactful — and just as hard not to notice.

SO YOUR INSPIRATION WAS WHEATPASTE ADS, NOT WHEATPASTE GRAFFITI? Right. And once I figured out what it was, I did research into all these artists who were using it — Shepard Fairey and everybody. But they don’t do it like I do it, and I couldn’t find anyone Black doing it. That’s usually the issue — whenever you’re looking up wheatpaste, or even photography, or sculpture. It’s always good to see someone who looks like you. That’s the inspiration for a lot of my work — representation, and making sure we have a seat at the table.

And pretty soon, we own the table.

AND PEOPLE LIKE SHEPARD FAIREY MIGHT BE ABLE TO PUT UP THE WORK WITH RELATIVELY LITTLE FEAR. WORST CASE, THE COPS WILL RUN THEM OFF, SO THE STAKES ARE LOWER. That’s another reason I wanted to get into it — the stakes are lower across the board, because it’s posters. It’s not as permanent as graffiti.

I don’t see it as vandalism.

RIGHT, BUT I WAS THINKING THAT MAYBE THE STAKES WERE LOWER BECAUSE HE’S A WHITE MAN WITH A CERTAIN LEVEL OF FAME. SO THERE’S NO REAL DANGER. Right, and they’re not threatened by his message either. I think that’s where a lot of it comes from — being willing to put these bold statements up.

PHOTO: JOHN SCHWEIKERT

I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER

it, family community supporting each other.

I think you can feel that through the work.

“MEMORY WALL”

THAT MAKES ME THINK ABOUT THIS BABY JESUS POSTER. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT IT? That might be the first wheatpaste poster that I ever designed. It’s one of my cousins — Julian, from Walker Springs, Ala. I took it in my uncle’s front yard. Having it here is a good feeling, because now he gets to see how art can be used for good, and how you can use it to change your life, and just where you can take it. It’s a firsthand experience.

Like, “Wow, he took my photo, and now I’m in a museum.” He can tell that story.

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO ASSOCIATE HIM WITH JESUS? I just felt like he had this strong Black presence in the photo. Even as a child.

THE SERIOUSNESS IN THAT EYEBROW! And he still looks like that! He still has a very composed way about him, he looks comfortable.

The reason I included “Baby Jesus” is just tying back to Southern spirituality and my roots. You never see a version of Jesus that looks like you. No matter where you grow up in the South, it’s usually the same version of Jesus that you see. So I wanted to create one that looked like me, that was created in my likeness, and that other people like me can relate to.

DO YOU CREATE WORK INTENTIONALLY FOR A PRIMARILY BLACK AUDIENCE? I don’t think it’s my intention, but based on the work, that’s who’s going to be seeing it. I don’t ever want

it to feel watered-down. I don’t want to be politically correct with my work. I want it to be like a conversation you might have with your friends about how you see the world and what your ideas are and where you want things to go, the problems that you’re having. Everyday talking.

IT REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING I SAW ON SOCIAL MEDIA WHERE A GROUP OF BLACK WOMEN HELD UP PICTURES OF THEIR SONS AND ASKED, “AT WHAT AGE DID MY SON BECOME A THREAT TO YOU? WAS IT AT THIS AGE? OR AT THIS AGE?” BECAUSE I SEE THESE POSTERS AND THINK ABOUT HOW THIS IS A SWEET PERSON WHO I’M READY TO CARE ABOUT. For sure, and the image — that same lovely spirit and charisma — it never really goes anywhere. But what does change is my appearance as a Black man. As I get older, my appearance changes. And so if you only think of what you see on TV — that’s where the fear comes from.

RIGHT, BUT THAT WASN’T YOUR INTENTION WITH THIS? No, not at all. It’s a good point though.

AND THESE POSTERS — “WHO ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU HERE?” ARE YOU DIRECTING THAT QUESTION TOWARD GENTRIFICATION IN NORTH NASHVILLE? No, it’s just a personal question. I think it’s just a good question to ask. It gives clarity about who you have around you. >> P. 12

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“WASH AWAY MY FEARS 001,” LEXANDER BRYANT

that’s the beauty of it — it’s direct, but it’s also loose enough to where everyone has their own interpretation of it. That’s what it’s about — just making you stop and think.

THE WAY THE VIDEO INCLUDES DOCUMENTATION OF THE KIDS PUTTING UP THE WHEATPASTE POSTER THAT’S ON THE “MEMORY WALL” REALLY CONNECTS THE STORY IN THESE ROOMS. It was the kids that lived on my street that were the kids who helped me put up the eyes.

Even before COVID, they would just be out in the streets playing basketball, baseball, riding bikes. And I was always engaged with them, just talking to them or playing basketball with them. So when I shot the picture, I told them I would pay them to help me. I wanted them to be involved in the process and see how it works, and I wanted to pay them so they would be like, “Whatever he’s doing, he’s making money off of it, so let’s pay attention.” They were all impressionable ages — 9 or 11 to 17. And they really listened. So I knew they would be great for the project, and we set a date for it. I even had their moms’ numbers; their parents trusted me. And we went out one night, it was super cold, and we put it up, and documented the whole thing. I just wanted them to see that this is what I do every day.

DID YOU MIX THE WHEATPASTE YOURSELF? I let the kids mix it, actually. I wanted to show them how to mix it, and what the process would be like. And when we did it, the sun was going down, and it was cold — it was January last year, if I’m not mistaken.

And the sun was going down as we’re putting up the first few panels. So by the time we finish, it’s already dark. I let the kids do most of it, just so they could really see what it all feels like.

WE’RE TALKING ABOUT YOUR INTENDED AUDIENCE FOR A LOT OF THIS WORK, AND IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF THE INTENDED AUDIENCE IS KIDS, OR YOUNG PEOPLE. YOU SEEM AWARE THAT WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE WATCHING YOU. AND IT’S ALSO SMART TO

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HAVE KIDS INVOLVED BECAUSE IT MAKES THE WHEATPASTE SEEM ABOVE-BOARD. People loved it. People were literally stopping by to say, “We love what you’re doing! Keep it up!” And that’s what I want — I want people to see that we don’t have to depend on people to come and do all this fake charity stuff. We can just kind of build this ecosystem amongst ourselves and we can have a good time.

So I wouldn’t say the work is intentionally geared to kids as the audience, but a lot of it is about me reflecting, and that innocence you have as a youth, how impressionable you are — that’s kind of when you figure out who you want to be. Even if you’re too afraid to voice it, to say it out loud, you know what you want to be, and you know how you want to live your life. Sometimes the circumstances don’t really work out in your favor. So if there’s an age when I want to have an impact on someone, it’s definitely at a young age.

“THE MOST KNOWN, UNKNOWN,” LEXANDER BRYANT

I THINK MAYBE IT’S A BYPRODUCT OF USING THE MEDIUM OF ADVERTISING, WHERE THE MESSAGE IS ALWAYS DIRECTED AT THE INDIVIDUAL, BECAUSE I SEE THIS AS AN ALMOST ACCUSATORY STATEMENT, AND I’M NOT SURE THAT A DIFFERENT MEDIUM WOULD HAVE SO MANY DIVERGENT INTERPRETATIONS. I think

AND YOU CALLED THIS PIECE “NEIGHBORHOOD SURVEILLANCE,” LIKE THIS KID IS WATCHING THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD. It’s funny because I didn’t name it that because of the eyes. I named it that because — at this intersection, on every corner there are police cameras. I just felt like everyone was watching, even when you’re just trying to get home, you see these cameras. I can’t even walk to the end of the street with my son without knowing that someone is watching.

AND THE DOUBLE MEANING THERE — THAT HE’S WATCHING HIMSELF BEING WATCHED. HE SEES HIMSELF AS SOMEONE WHO NEEDS TO BE WATCHED, OR HAS TO BE WATCHED, AND ALSO SOMEONE WHO HAS TO WATCH. Yes. The title of the show was originally going to be Things We Can’t See. But there was a day that I was just sitting with my son, and we were listening to music, and Patrice Rushen came on.

She’s an ’80s pianist, but she’s also an R&B singer. And she has a song titled “Forget Me Nots.” It’s a cool song, and every time I hear it, it makes me feel good. And I just knew when I heard it that that needed to be the title. When I heard it, and my son was right there, he asked, “What song is this?” He was so curious about what the song was. It speaks to memories and moments that don’t need to be forgotten. Or more so, events that relate back, and how you can’t forget them. The small things that happen as a child, the good and the bad. How eventually it just makes you who you are.

MEMORIES OF A NATIVE SON LeXander Bryant’s solo exhibition Forget Me Nots resists the act of forgetting

BY KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM MEMORIES FADE. This is a truism. We find, by imperceptible degrees, the edges of what we can remember about our early years disintegrating like brittle paper.

Sometimes the more we try to probe our minds for details, the more elusive those particulars become.

But memories can also take on new acuities. We buy perfume or cologne because it brings us back to a bed, or a hand, or a

bench. Spurred on by the smell of leather, we remember names and faces. Fuller scenes of sunsets, valleys, malls light up the cinemas of our minds. In the Old Testament, Lot’s wife looked back to remember a valley where she had eaten and loved.

And for her sin of refusing to forget, she was turned into a pillar of salt. Lest we find ourselves on the wrong side of that story, it would do us Americans good to recall that we are no better than the saltmaking Divine. For all of our private acts of reminiscence, we often criticize revisiting the sweetness of the past; we call this nostalgia, and have instilled in it a negative connotation.

LeXander Bryant’s debut solo museum exhibition, Forget Me Nots — currently on display at the Frist’s Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery — is a visual and ethical resistance to the act of forgetting. On display through May 1, the multimedia show features Bryant’s photography, wheatpaste posters, a concrete sculpture centerpiece and a documentary.

With this multifaceted approach, Bryant hopes to enhance the visual identity of the South — a noble and necessary ef-

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PHOTO: JOHN SCHWEIKERT

fort, since Black people are largely being forgotten amid the boom of the New South.

Bryant’s creative process is all about feeling, a spiritual act of creation, investing his art with the communal laughter, pain and luxury that he remembers.

In the photography room, a full-scale image demands immediate attention. This is not due to its crisp detail, but because it is entirely blurred. “The Most Known, Unknown” depicts a Black man against a cinder-block wall. But you can’t appreciate this figure up close. You must back up, give him space. And then, the texture of his Aegeanblue fedora can be absorbed. Around his neck is a dagger of a cross, representing, it seems, both piety and protection. The structure of the photograph evokes the paintings of Kerry James Marshall, who often renders his Black subjects as shadow people, as if hollowed out by American fear.

The uniform blurriness of the photograph is disconcerting on two levels. White people socialized into white supremacy may experience a visceral fright at this enigma.

Without clarity of features, they cannot assess the potential threat level. And for Black viewers, we feel fear for him because we know the corporal danger of being mysterious in white America. The Most Known — which is also to say, “the devil you think you

know,” the devil about which you have written your miles of monographs, conducted your multitude of studies — has rendered himself unknown; the blurriness is an act of defiance. A removal of labels. It is to say, “You won’t see me, until perhaps by some divine act, your vision is righted” — like in the New Testament’s Book of Mark, when Christ spits into the eyes of a man three times before he finally stops seeing “men as trees.” There are times, in the inferno of national violence, in which Black Americans must want to ask their white counterparts, “Why is it that you see people as trees, to use or cut down or campaign for or save?”

This line of questioning follows in Bryant’s room of wheatpaste posters. Emblazoned in red and yellow, the posters conjure up a dilapidated McDonald’s in the hood. It is quixotic and clownish, as though we are asking each other one of the poster’s questions over hamburgers and fries: “Who are you and why are you here?” reads one. In Nashville, Black folks are asking this of the white people who jog through our neighborhoods. In America, white people are asking this of whomever they decide is breaking the status quo. This question is asked of that sole Black woman living in a white neighborhood who thinks she has made it. At social gatherings with her white liberal peers,

the questions wear new clothes. What do you do? How long have you had that car? Are you married? How did you hear about this neighborhood? These, she discovers, are all variations on that ancient and loaded query: Why are you here?

Hanging in the same room is a poster that seems to depict Christ as a Black boy. On his face is the sheen of shea butter, like his mother has generously anointed his whole body. Beneath this image, the moniker “baby jesus” explodes in black-letter font — echoing both the King James Bible and a certain hip-hop Négritude.

For us Black viewers, we must accept our identity with this Black baby Jesus. We must remember our mothers or grandmothers, who became like God when they created luxury in the manger. They protected us from the Herod-like police, offering us trust funds of laughter and full bellies. This inheritance is what Bryant admonishes us to remember; the smoke of onions and meat during a days-long power outage — how our Black parents alchemized jeopardy into jubilee. We know, by the texture of our experience, that in no thesaurus are wealth and love synonyms. Remembering the rich childhoods that our working- and middleclass families stitched together is to resist overarching narratives about Black parent-

ing in this country. We too were baby Jesus; our parents put their hope in us.

“Forget me not” is the groan of the memories. Those communal recollections are the buds that push up through the concrete in Bryant’s centerpiece. They cry out, not to developers, who have bottomless ideas for what to do with other people’s land in Nashville. Not to the scores of newcomers setting up homes in formerly Black neighborhoods.

They cry out in blue and white wisps like spirits. To those of us who were there, like they used to say in the Black church, as a cloud of witnesses. Our ears still ring with the good noise of tambourines, still burn from the sizzle of the hot comb. The waves of the river that washed away our fears, yet lap against our waists. Our attempts at freestyling boomerang in the red-brick corners where we left them.

Bryant’s Forget Me Nots is a visual testimony to the South. Each work is a breadcrumb back to the people and the hours. When we are lost, we find a way. Back to Black Nashville. Back past the many thousands gone. Maybe all the way back to 1619, to the hush harbors where enslaved Blacks met in secret to have church. There, we may find our families, eating good dark fruit that will stain our fingers as indelible reminders of home.

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THE DOO WOP PROJECT March 11

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS

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STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS IN CONCERT

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hour, and no doubt Hurd will venture into more fraught zones of culture as his career progresses. Conner Smith opens. 8 p.m. at Marathon Music Works, 1402 Clinton St.

FILM

EDD HURT [RAIDER NATION]

INDEPENDENT LENS: NIGHT RAIDERS

This Canadian thriller from 2021 almost brazenly flaunts its post-apocalyptic influences. Night Raiders starts off all Cormac McCarthy-ish with a mother (ElleMáijá Tailfeathers) and her young injured daughter (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) keeping a low profile as they search for a safe haven in a war-torn, damn-near-desolate wasteland. The movie eventually gets its Matrix on when the mother becomes a reluctant savior, leading a mission to liberate minors who’ve been thrown into forced-education camps and trained as soldiers. Underneath its dystopian veneer, this story is steeped in tragic reality.

Between the 1830s and 1990s, Canada’s federal government took more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families and dumped them in church-run residential schools, and the remains of those kids continue to be discovered all over the country. Indigenous writer-director Danis Goulet basically made this holocaust horror show to bring awareness to the shocking genocidal atrocities that have been inflicted on Indigenous people in the Great White North. Lutz Koepnick, professor of German and Cinema & Media Arts at Vanderbilt University, will present the film as part of Vandy’s International Lens series. 7:30 p.m. at Sarratt Cinema, 2301 Vanderbilt Place CRAIG D. LINDSEY

MUSIC

R O U N D U P

[SHE’S BABY]

SAMIA

Singer-songwriter Samia’s latest project, The Baby Reimagined, is a lively, popinfused remix of her debut album, The Baby. While the two albums contain the same 11 tracks, The Baby Reimagined serves as a space that allows featured artists — including Briston Maroney, MICHELLE and The Districts — to reshape Samia’s songs. Both albums exhibit an exploration of nostalgia, young adulthood and angst, and Samia’s vulnerable poetic lyricism effectively communicates the trials and tribulations of being in love and lost in your early 20s. The NYC-born artist — who now resides in Nashville — also recently released two new intimate singles: covers of the Eagles’ “Desperado” and Magnetic Fields’ “Born on a Train.” Both are rendered with the sort of heavy, melancholy hues that her fans know and love dearly. There is a corner of the universe where it’s OK to still be trying to make sense of things — and you can find it within Samia’s music. Thursday’s performance with Annie DiRusso and Brennan Wedl in Nashville will be the last stop on Samia’s Loving U, Thanking U tour.

7 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. ASHLEY BARRIENTOS

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Marathon Music Works

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THURSDAY / 2.24 [HURD THAT]

RYAN HURD

If you want to understand mainstream country — the carefully produced stuff that traditionalists love to hate — it might be useful to look at it as a manifestation of culture that also has something to do with music. The 20-plus songwriters who helped up-and-coming country star Ryan Hurd assemble the tunes, or concepts, that compose his new album Pelago didn’t achieve anything you would call a classic song. In other words, Pelago is a collection of recordings — you can’t imagine anyone covering, say, “Pass It On” in the manner of Gary Stewart cutting Guy Clark’s “Broken Hearted People” or your cousin who sings

DUE TO CONCERNS

ABOUT COVID-19 “Jolene” in the shower.

TRANSMISSION, PLEASE Hurd, who is married to CHECK WITH VENUES ABOUT country-pop star Maren POTENTIAL CANCELLATIONS BEFORE MAKING PLANS. Morris, sings Pelago in a normal-guy voice that sounds tweaked by studio tricks. Speaking of that culture stuff I mentioned earlier, I hear two references to Bob Marley, a nod to John Lennon, an allusion to the film Almost Famous, a Lowell George-style slide-guitar lick, and several songs about hanging out at the beach. “Palm Trees in Ohio” addresses climate change, sort of: “I’ll be yours and you’ll be mine / Until there’s palm trees in Ohio / No traffic in L.A. / No snow in Colorado / And no cold beer on a Saturday,” Hurd sings. As apolitical Nashville country goes, Pelago is a pleasant way to pass a halfSAMIA

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BLACKLIFT POETRY HOUSE

This weekend the literary and performing arts nonprofit Southern Word will host its annual BlackLift Poetry House, a freestyle poetry gallery.

The event, held at the Nashville Public Library’s East Branch, will showcase young artists giving their spins on the past, present and future while taking prompts from

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LILLIE MAE

BATS ALBUM RELEASE

POETRY

AMANDA HAGGARD [POETIC LICENSE RENEWAL]

ALL POETS TO THE STAGE

It’s hard to beat the raw energy and spirit of an open mic event — especially in a city so brimming with talent.

This weekend, you can check out some of the best with All Poets to the Stage at The Barbershop Theater. Hosted by The BlackSon and Aubrey The Poet, some of Nashville’s finest spoken-word artists (including both veteran and emerging poets) will take to the stage for a one-of-akind experience, exploring a wide range of topics and perspectives. The event is part of the fifth annual BlackLift Music & Poetry Festival — a free, multiday, multivenue experience that blends “poetry and music to celebrate the power, influence and potential of Black culture past, present and future.”

All guests must be 21 and older, and masks are required. 7 p.m. at The Barbershop Theater, 4003 Indiana Ave. AMY STUMPFL [ALL IN THE FAMILY]

LILLIE MAE AND THE RISCHE FAMILY BAND W/DAVID QUINN & MALLORY EAGLE

Though Lillie Mae Rische and various incarnations of her folk- and country-

[JAZZ CITY]

WEEKEND CLASSICS: PARIS BLUES

The Belcourt closes out its Sidney Poitier retrospective with this 1961 bopper, a prime example of old-school Hollywood whitewashing. Poitier and Paul Newman star as a pair of jazz-playing expats living and loving it up in the City of Light. United Artists made the movie stray far away from the 1957 novel it’s based on (in which Poitier’s character is the protagonist and Newman’s character doesn’t exist). While Poitier’s romance

SUNDAY / 2.27 FOOD & DRINK

schooled family band have been playing in Nashville for the past two decades — since Lillie Mae was very young — there’s still a chance they’ll be fairly new to you. It’s worth mentioning that powerful figures have recognized their prodigious talent.

They worked in various capacities with legendary producer Cowboy Jack Clement and mainstream country kingmaker Joe Galante, and many contemporary audiences will know Lillie Mae from her tenure singing and playing fiddle in Jack White’s band.

White produced her solo debut Forever and Then Some and Dave Cobb produced the follow-up Other Girls; both records are marked by resonant songwriting and superb playing. But it’s important to let the Risches stand on their own merit, and if you haven’t seen them in person, Saturday’s show is a great chance to get acquainted. Come for the songs, stay for their electrified take on wicked old-school string-band chops. And don’t show up late, or you’ll miss out on country singer-songwriters David Quinn and Mallory Eagle. 9 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. STEPHEN TRAGESER FILM

the audience. Organizers say the gallery is a place where “new and established poets and songwriters lift their voices to elevate the beauty and triumphs of Black culture.” The kids are all right, indeed. The freestyle gallery will be livestreamed. Sign up in advance to watch if you can’t make it in person. 2 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library’s East Branch, 206 Gallatin Ave.

KELSEY BEYELER

[MISSED CONNECTIONS]

HEARTBREAK HAPPY HOUR

Dearly beloved, we are living in modern history’s worst time to be single. As we enter into the third year of this socialdistancing, contact-tracing, masked-up bullshit, I can’t help but wonder what the ceaseless march of time is doing to lonely hearts. The Porch Writers’ Collective’s annual Heartbreak Happy Hour offers whip-smart sob stories and epic tales of romance gone awry. This year’s event will feature Alesha Handy, Chloe Stillwell, Cortney Warner, Marcus Lustig and Marie Anderson. The event will take place at Jackalope’s spacious Wedgewood-Houston outpost, and the Mac Shack food truck will be outside loaded with comfort food. Go ahead and drown your sorrows in cheese and beer. While the event is free to attend, The Porch encourages a $10 donation, and proof of vaccination or a negative test is required. 7 p.m. at Jackalope’s The Ranch Taproom + Brewery, 429B Houston St. ERICA CICCARONE

MUSIC

[ELEVATE BLACK CULTURE]

[BATS MITZVAH]

Bats will appear at East Side show space Drkmttr this weekend to celebrate the release of the sophomore album Blue Cabinet. Bats is the stage name of local Jess Awh, and her music is the product of someone sufficiently steeped in Nashville’s DIY scene. Bats’ latest single “Golden Spoon” and first album There’s a River Up High feature alt-country and indierock sonics that showcase Awh’s lovely crooning. Bats will be joined by Morgan — aka Morgan Conners, also known as “The Omnichord Slinging Bog Witch” — and Full Mood, the atmospheric indie project of Miranda McLaughlin and Nick Morelly.

8 p.m. at Drkmttr, 1111 Dickerson Pike

ALMA W. THOMAS: EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL

SATURDAY / 2.26 POETRY

CRAIG D. LINDSEY

[IN ITS OWN WAY]

This major retrospective of the work of Alma W. Thomas — the first Black woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum, which took place when she was 80 in 1972 — is a big deal. Not only does Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful showcase an unprecedented amount of work by one of the most important painters of the 20th century, but its presence at the Frist gives an opportunity to remember the important role Nashville played in Thomas’ career.

Her 1971 exhibition at Fisk University’s Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery was organized

by David Driskell, and that’s what sparked interest from the Whitney. Indeed, the checklists of the two shows are remarkably similar. But even without that extraordinary historical relevance, this show would be one to see: Thomas’ colorful abstract paintings are informed by her interest in flora and fauna, music, space travel and spirituality. Plus, rarely seen ephemera like letters, photographs, marionettes and sculptures will be on display. Check out fristartmuseum.org for additional programming around this show, which includes curators’ tours and educators’ workshops. Feb. 25-June 5 at the Frist, 919 Broadway LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

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with a vacationing schoolteacher (Diahann Carroll) is still in the movie, it’s downsized to a B story. The focus is more on Newman’s caddish trombonist, trying hard not to fall for the schoolteacher’s travel buddy (Joanne Woodward, Newman’s real-life wife), also a divorced mom of two. An earlier script had Poitier dating Woodward and Newman dating Carroll. But once again, the studio got cold feet and nixed that version. As cowardly as that move was, director and frequent Newman collaborator Martin Ritt sure does capture Paris in all its picaresque splendor. Catch it on the big screen this weekend — in freakin’ 35 mm! Feb. 2627 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave.

MUSIC

ART

me, it’s more effective to take the issue head on — to not sugarcoat it, because that is confusing to people.” Nashville audiences could use some exposure to healthy confrontation, and Whitcomb-Olivia is eager to get the job done. She has long been taking to stages in Middle Tennessee, and recent years have found her helming her own radical, provocative works. Last year she debuted her first film, Seven, at Kindling Arts Festival, and the nonprofit is hosting another screening this week. In seven tight vignettes, Whitcomb-Oliva opens conversations on mental health, sexual health and spirituality that uniquely relate to Black women. She acts out the seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues, sometimes with discomfiting results. But that’s par for the course with WhitcombOliva. As with her excellent one-woman play The Darkness and Other Black Things, she disarms her audience to make us vulnerable and more receptive to her often raw material. This translates surprisingly well to film. Seven is an exceptional achievement for anyone — let alone a first-time filmmaker. She’s raised the bar. Fingers crossed that the city’s theater makers take notice and rise to the challenge. 8 p.m. at the Z. Alexander Looby Theater, 2301 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. ERICA CICCARONE

[COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS]

BRENT COBB

Because the Georgia-born country singer Brent Cobb doesn’t favor the tensed-up style of classic country vocalists like George Jones, he puts across his mildly fatalistic message without excess strain.

Cobb sounds relaxed on his 2020 album Keep ’Em on They Toes, which is lightweight but hardly insubstantial. Producer Brad Cook’s sonic palette favors Garth Hudson-

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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2/21/22 2:17 PM

BE THE PEN. B E T H E PA P E R .

Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present EXHIBIT NOW OPEN

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2/18/22 1:23 PM

CRITICS’ PICKS variety of instruments and rich, bright singing voice have made her a much-loved collaborator in the studio, in the writing room and on the road. You might have seen and heard her on tour with folk- and rock-schooled songsmith Katie Pruitt, with whom she’s co-written songs. That kind of work can fill up your life, in a good way.

But it would be a shame if Nolan hadn’t still made time and room for her own music.

Her conversational approach to lyrics helps her peel apart the layers of complex human interactions — something that stands out strongly on her most recent LP, 2020’s From Blue to Gold. Snooping a few recent Instagram posts reveals Nolan has both a new recording project in the works and a bunch of new songs to share. There’s no cover for Tuesday’s early show at the original Basement, making it an even better opportunity to get to know her work. 7 p.m. at The Basement, 1604 Eighth Ave. S.

Nashville’s ONLY vinyl record store with full bar and 24 seasonal craft beers on tap.

MUSIC

[ECHO IN THE PARTHENON]

PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

If you’ve ever visited the Parthenon at Centennial Park, you’re no doubt familiar with the unusual acoustics of the iconic space. The ECHO chamber music series features a cool selection of new classical and choral music composed specifically with this unique reverb in mind.

It’s the perfect setting for the premiere of People, Places, Things — a new film by artist Lesa Dowdy, scored by composer Benjamin Chakoian Jones, and performed live by the contemporary ensemble Intersection. The film will be presented in the Parthenon’s Naos room, with Intersection providing a live soundtrack for the audience in real time. The project represents an ambitious collaboration between Dowdy and the Nashville Metro Archives’ Audiovisual Heritage Center, and features a host of rarely seen, endangered analog materials. Feb. 27 at The Parthenon, Centennial Park, 2500 West End Ave.

MONDAY / 2.28 MUSIC

esque organ parts and acoustic guitars, though something titled “Shut Up and Sing” features a pair of fractured fiddle breaks. In fact, “Shut Up and Sing” might sum up the virtues of Keep ’Em on They Toes: The message of the song seems to be that weighty issues are best addressed in song and not in conversation, so it doesn’t come across as one of those country songs that implore artists to keep their mouths shut about politics. Meanwhile, “The World Is Ending” nods to ’70s-style progressive country, complete with Dan Fogelbergmeets-America chord changes. Keep ’Em rides the fence lines that separate folk from country and country from Americana, and Cobb’s songwriting is sly enough to include a reference to “collective consciousness” without coming across like he’s equivocating about his beliefs. I like his new collection of gospel-country-rock tunes, And Now Let’s Turn to Page…, which isn’t as dispiriting as you might expect. I say Cobb needs to make a record with Kanye West — modern Christianity needs all the help it can get. Gabe Lee opens. 8 p.m. at City Winery, 609 Lafayette St. EDD HURT

[RETURN OF THE KING]

ELLE KING W/FANCY HAGOOD

Earlier this month, rowdy singersongwriter Elle King kicked off her Drunk and I Don’t Wanna Go Home Tour, a string of headlining dates in between stints opening for acts like Chris Stapleton. The tour name is a nod to King’s latest hit, a Miranda Lambert-featuring smash of the same name. King brings the tour to the Ryman on Monday for a show that’s sure to live up to the spirit and swagger of that single, with older King hits (like her 2016 breakout “Ex’s and Oh’s”) all but guaranteed to be crowd-pleasers. Don’t be late, as opener and local Fancy Hagood — whose 2021 album Southern Curiosity was one of the year’s best — is sure to bring the house down too, with his singular take on melodic Southern pop. 7:30 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. BRITTNEY MCKENNA

TUESDAY / 3.01 [GROUND FLOOR]

JESS NOLAN

Jess Nolan’s top-notch skills on a

[HOPE HE’S STONED]

CHARLIE WORSHAM

A Charlie Worsham show is not one to be missed, and that’s especially true when the locally based songwriter and guitarslinger brings his talent to the storied, intimate room at the Station Inn. Worsham is a frequent performer there, often bringing surprise guests or working up new tunes and covers to keep audiences on their toes. Worsham’s most recent release is the 2021 EP Sugarcane, a six-track showcase of his many strengths: narrative, imagerich songwriting; highly melodic, often soulful vocal performances; and of course masterful guitar playing. If you plan to go, go early — seats are first come, first served.

8 p.m. at the Station Inn, 402 12th Ave. S. BRITTNEY MCKENNA

WEDNESDAY / 3.02 THEATER

BRENT COBB

MUSIC

STEPHEN TRAGESER

MUSIC

vin

nashville .c

om

ta p yl

PHOTO: ALYSSE GAFKJEN

2.24 Intergalactic Soul/Funk/ Jazz with DJ ZimZam 2.25 A Gool Ol’ Time with DJ Poboy 2.26 Sweet Time Presents: DJ Sweeney 3.1 Extra Packet Jazz Trio 3.2 Queerfolk Showcase

[YOU WILL BE FOUND]

DEAR EVAN HANSEN

It’s rare to find a Broadway musical that so successfully walks the line between comedy and tragedy. But that’s the power of Dear Evan Hansen, which returns to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center March 2 through 6. Featuring an engaging book by Steven Levenson (who most recently penned the big-screen

JESS NOLAN

AMY STUMPFL

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DOWNTOWN

Saturday, February 26

Saturday, March 19

SONGWRITER SESSION

POETS AND PROPHETS

Jimmy Fortune

Rodney Crowell

NOON – 12:45 pm · FORD THEATER

Salute to Songwriter

2:30 pm · FORD THEATER Saturday, March 5 SONGWRITER SESSION

Sunday, March 20

NOON – 12:45 pm · FORD THEATER

Graham Nash

Waylon Payne

LIVE IN CONCERT

7:30 pm · CMA THEATER Saturday, March 12 SONGWRITER SESSION

Saturday, March 26

NOON – 12:45 pm · FORD THEATER

Acoustic Guitar Project

Stephanie Quayle and Anna Vaus

SONGWRITER SESSION

NOON – 12:45 pm · FORD THEATER Saturday, March 19 SONGWRITER SESSION

Saturday, April 2

NOON – 12:45 pm · FORD THEATER

Teddy Robb

Ryan Larkins

SONGWRITER SESSION

NOON – 12:45 pm · FORD THEATER

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

CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Calendar

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

JOIN TODAY: CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Membership

nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CRITICS’ PICKS

LIVE MUSIC | URBAN WINERY | RESTAURANT | BAR | PRIVATE EVENTS

2.25

2.27

Slim Gambill

Brent Cobb

ft. Latavius Mulzac, Jeremy Roberson, and Dennis Edwards in the Lounge

PHOTO: MATTHEW MURPHY

When It’s My Time Tour

DEAR EVAN HANSEN

Katie Boeck Sings Blue Celebrating Joni Mitchell

3.03

Edwin McCain

3.04 Al Stewart

With His Band The Empty Pockets

3.12

SUCH

3.13

NASHVILLE BEATLES BRUNCH FEATURING FOREVER ABBEY ROAD

3.13

TIME OUT TOUR FEATURING KIM RICHEY, BETH NIELSEN CHAPMAN, MAIA SHARP & THE ACCIDENTALS

SKYLINE SESSIONS IN THE LOUNGE FEATURING SWEET JOSEPHINE & ZOE CUMMINS

3.14

GILBERT O’SULLIVAN

3.14

JERRY JOSEPH IN THE LOUNGE

3.9

LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO

3.15

BMI PRESENTS STEVE DORFF & FRIENDS

3.10

THE YOUNG FABLES “PAGES” ALBUM RELEASE SHOW

3.17

WRABEL & FRIENDS FEATURING CAM AND JAMIE FLOYD

3.11

KEVIN GRIFFIN OF BETTER THAN EZRA

3.18

OLETA ADAMS

3.1

JOHN SPLITHOFF IN THE LOUNGE

3.5

AURAL FIXATION LIVE MUSIC & POETRY PRESENTS: MATTERS OF THE HEART - A RED AND BLACK AFFAIR

3.6

DONNA THE BUFFALO

3.8

SOLD OUT

MARCH 9 · 13 · 22

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[NICEAGE]

ICEAGE W/SLOPPY JANE

Nearly a half-dozen albums in, Iceage has left the obstinate, brutalist postpunk origins and Gun Club-indebted middle period in the rearview. Produced by Sonic Boom from Spacemen 3, the debonair Danish combo’s maximalist fifth LP, 2021’s Seek Shelter, is meant for big rooms, not basements. The band tracked the nine-song set in the pre-COVID halcyon days of ’19, and in spite of it all, wisely kept it as is. As we crawl out from our collective malaise, Seek Shelter meets the moment with a sweeping, stadium-ready sound evoking Oasis, Spiritualized, Verve and others who’ve been there. Several tracks on the record, which was recorded in Portugal, feature drop-ins from the Lisbon Gospel Collective, while intermittent thrashier sections ensure the listener knows that Iceage — which has never had a member change in 14 years together — hasn’t surrendered its punk credentials. L.A.based opener Sloppy Jane’s name suggests riot grrrl fare, but bandleader Haley Dahl’s chamber-pop ensemble regularly includes more than a dozen players — sometimes even more, depending on the show. 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St.

EVERGREEN:

THINGS YOU CAN DO ANY TIME MUSIC

KCL

Wayne Krantz, Keith Carlock, Tim Lefebvre

3.02

MUSIC

3.01

adaptation of Tick, Tick ... Boom!) and beautifully layered music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman), this fan favorite follows a lonely teen who gets caught up in a well-meaning lie after the suicide of a troubled classmate named Connor. And while that may seem an unlikely subject for musical theater, director Michael Greif (Rent, Next to Normal) offers a potent exploration of modern life — tackling everything from anxiety and isolation to the perils of social media. Winner of six Tony Awards (including Best Musical), Dear Evan Hansen — which of course inspired a very divisive 2021 film adaptation — enjoyed a sold-out premiere at TPAC back in 2019.

March 2-6 at TPAC’s Jackson Hall, 505 Deaderick St. AMY STUMPFL

[CRITICAL MASS]

WATCH A VIDEO ABOUT CRITIC ROBERT CHRISTGAU’S A-PLUS ALBUMS

Robert Christgau has been writing about rock albums since the late ’60s, and he’s at his knotty, aphoristic best in his capsule record reviews. What Christgau — an influential editor and prolific journalist who’s still cooking at age 79 — has done is grade albums, a practice that seems as logical as pricing albums themselves. Music obsessives — and normal people — could benefit from going through his list of A-plus albums, and, you know, discussing them or getting into a fistfight about his choices.

Mostly, I think his picks are defensible: He gives his highest grade to The Beach Boys’ Wild Honey, M.I.A.’s Kala and DeBarge’s beyond-gorgeous In a Special Way, among about 120 others. A group of Christgau acolytes that includes writer Scott Woods has put together a funny retrospective video that features a selection of Christgau’s A-plus picks, with some images of the critic and a couple sound bites of him speaking in New Yorkese. It’s called “A+ Christgau,” available on YouTube, and at 21 minutes, it’s a perfect way to get acquainted with his work. The snippets of music by A-plus artists like Miles Davis, the New York Dolls and Wussy might remind you of the way art and high-level criticism are meant to intertwine. EDD HURT

CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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2/21/22 2:18 PM

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FOOD AND DRINK

BARRELS OF FUN

Nashville Barrel Co.’s Michael Hinds is making lots of moves

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

MICHAEL HINDS Bolus of The 404 Kitchen, to assist in the project. Lewisburg, Tenn., beekeeper Grant Clarke brings pails of honey from five different hives at his apiary.

Hinds and Bolus tasted through a selection of sourced bourbons and ryes to determine dominant flavor components, then through all five honeys to match them up with the spirits. Then the whiskey was dumped from the casks into tanks, and the barrels were filled with the honey to take on the characteristics of the whiskey and the barrel for a few months before bottling for sale at Nashville Barrel Co.’s tasting room.

When that’s done, the spirits will be replaced in their original barrels for a unique honey finishing. After the rye and bourbon have been bottled, a fourth collaborator will use the empty barrels — Kevin Antoon of Southern Grist Brewing Co. will age stout beer in them for release in his brewery’s two taprooms. When all that is complete, Antoon plans to chop up the well-used barrels into chips and use them to smoke meat.

In the end, this mad-scientist collaboration will result in single-hive honey finished in whiskey barrels, single-barrel spirits finished in honey barrels, and a unique honeyand whiskey-finished stout beer. And that’s not to mention what should prove to be some pretty special barbecue!

Hinds recently made national whiskey news thanks to a project that took him back to his original roots in the industry, selecting special spirits for charitable causes. After December’s deadly tornado outbreak swept through Kentucky, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association and bourbon writer/curator Fred Minnick put together an auction of rare spirits and special experiences to raise money for recovery efforts. In just three days, they assembled a list of auction items that ultimately raised more than $3 million

to help those affected by the storms. One of those lots was the chance to purchase a single barrel of Four Roses Bourbon in the 17- to 24-year-old range — the oldest whiskey the distillery had ever offered up as part of a single-barrel pick. Hinds was immediately intrigued. He had been involved with a group of serious whiskey collectors in previous mega auctions before, and it wasn’t long before the group text became active again. “Are we getting the band back together?” they asked.

Hinds took the lead in organizing and handling the bidding for the group, despite all the uncertainties involved. “You don’t even know how many gallons there will be,” he explains.

“With something that old, we just hoped there would be something in the barrel!”

The group determined their maximum bid beforehand, and advance proxy bids for the lot reached $200,000 before it even went live. “It was pretty crazy,” Hinds says. “The price went from $200 to $270,000 in less than a minute!” In the end, the consortium purchased the chance to select a barrel for an astonishing $278,000.

All 10 members of the bidding group traveled to Lawrenceburg, Ky., to have dinner with Four Roses master distiller Brent Elliott and sample the barrels, which Elliott pulled from his rickhouses. “We decided we were going to pick what tasted best, now matter how much whiskey there was in the barrel,” says Hinds.

“They really rolled out the red carpet for us at Four Roses,” he says. “We got to try whiskey from 18 to 24 years old.”

But Hinds and his crew found the very oldest to be a little too tannic and bitter.

“One of the barrels we tried may have had 12 bottles in it at the most,” he says. “The extra age didn’t do it well.”

In the end, the group agreed on a barrel of

Four Roses OBSF yeast and mashbill combination that had been aging for 19 years and four months. “It was complex with dark leather and dark oak qualities, and we estimate we’ll get 50 to 60 bottles out of it,” he says. “They were kind enough to offer us the sister barrel as well, which was beyond our expectations!”

So at least that could possibly cut the price per bottle in half to a paltry $2,300 apiece. But these scarce bottles won’t appear on the secondary market — this is a group of bourbon drinkers, after all.

“I’ll probably use a couple bottles to donate to charitable auctions to continue to raise money,” Hinds says. “Cancer is a big charitable emphasis for me. We got numerous calls from friends around Kentucky thanking us for helping out. We just wanted to be a part of something cool and loved the chance to be able to do something special for our sister state.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS

W

hen the Scene profiled Michael Hinds back in 2020, he had just begun transitioning his hobby — picking out exceptional barrels of whiskeys to bottle and donate to charitable auctions — into a going concern named Nashville Barrel Co. Quickly, his special releases of rum, rye and bourbon became cult favorites, often selling out entire runs in a single day.

Now that he has built up industry connections and a loyal clientele, Hinds has expanded Nashville Barrel Co. to include a barrelhouse and tasting room at 222 Fesslers Lane. There, Hinds stores and ages the barrels that he selects and purchases from distilleries around the country until he determines the proper moment to bottle the spirits for retail release.

In the tasting room, visitors can sample flights of Nashville Barrel Co. spirits ranging from their regular releases to more exotic offerings. Another special opportunity is what Hinds calls the Bottle Pick Experience. Until recently, it was rare for individuals to take part in single-barrel selections.

This was for several reasons. First, the chance to pick a barrel was usually reserved for restaurant chains or retail liquor stores, because they had relationships with the distillers and local wholesalers. Secondly, buying a barrel means that purchasers have to take the entire barrel at once. This is a five-figure investment, often without the knowledge of exactly how many bottles remain in the barrel after years of the effect of the “angel’s share” — the annual loss of whiskey from the barrel thanks to evaporation. Lastly, not everyone has a talented palate like Hinds and the ability to predict what a whiskey might evolve into after more time in the barrel.

With the Bottle Pick Experience, visitors can enjoy a mock barrel pick, with up to 12 participants sampling cask-strength pours from four different barrels. “We saw a void in the ‘Bourbontunity’ experience options in Nashville,” says Hinds. “We have more than 80 single barrels that guests can taste from, and they never have to leave our tasting room.”

During the 60- to 90-minute session, groups can decide on the best barrel from the quartet and go home with their own bottle.

The Bottle Pick Experience concludes with a behind-the-scenes tour of Nashville Barrel Co.’s barrel rooms and bottling facilities.

Hinds has put his palate to good use with another innovative project, this time revolving around honey. The best casks in a stillhouse are sometimes referred to as “honey barrels,” but Hinds has taken that concept a step further by creating the first singlehive/single-barrel honey. He recruited another local barrel-picking expert, chef Matt

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2/21/22 2:18 PM

VODKA YONIC

Get the beer so hashy, we can't legally say the name.

OK COMPUTER

Goodbye to mixing the personal and the professional

Vodka Yonic

(True story.)

Hop heads gather round.

Yes, the cease and desist came down but the beer’s still in town. This Imperial Black IPA rocks a 9% ABV and boasts so much Hop Hash every hop head around will ask to pass the glass.

Co m e g r a b a

black IPA

TWO LOCATIONS

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BY AMANDA HAGGARD

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.

I

t’s my last day of work, and I sit in my empty office in my empty building past sunset.

After I put in my notice two weeks earlier, I started grabbing my personal items at the end of each day. One evening, some family photos. The next, a shelf my husband built that held my flowers and plants. Another day, a globe of unknown origin that has been in my possession long enough to be considered mine. I wanted to avoid the lastminute, box-in-arms departure with items representing my life as a journalist over the past eight years.

What I’d considered less was one item I would leave behind: a banged-up 2011 MacBook Pro. In the way that would infuriate IT people all over the world, the contents of that computer were a stupid mashup of personal and professional. I applied for child care between editing and writing stories on that computer. I scheduled dentist appointments and combed through lawsuit documents and looked up recipes for dinner and wrote my grandfather’s obituary. When the pandemic started, I learned how to turn a small room in my house into an office with that computer.

When I first received it, I turned it upside down and sand shook loose from the keyboard — a gift from the previous owner’s beach vacation. I’d told that story a lot while toting the laptop around — showcasing my gritty, underdog spirit like a badge.

Like saying, Yes, this thing might need to be restarted in the middle of a contentious school board meeting, but important work can still be done on it.

Toward the end, I could only work on the laptop if I turned on the fan plug-in and cranked it full blast. As these things go, the computer would work fine — never great — until I really needed it. It was too encumbered by the past — photos and stories and tax forms — to work the way it needed to in the high-pressure moments of my life and job.

At times I’d forget to get my fan going, open a couple tabs and then realize my mistake. I’d curse as I rushed to close windows and save my work before the inevitable rainbow wheel of death would begin spinning, making me late for a parentteacher Zoom meeting or putting me 20 minutes behind editing a breaking news story. I knew that part of what was killing my computer was that it never got a break,

I KNEW THAT PART OF WHAT WAS KILLING MY COMPUTER WAS THAT IT NEVER GOT A BREAK, BUT THAT NEVER SEEMED TO STOP ME. but that never seemed to stop me.

On my last day, I should expect the computer to revolt when I start cleaning up the hard drive, but I don’t. That’s probably why I save this task for my last hours on the job.

Move some files onto an external drive.

Wait while the rainbow wheel spins. Buy more storage. Wait while the rainbow wheel spins. At 6:45 p.m., I send a panicked text to my company’s sole IT person. “I’m not sure I can clear this laptop the way I thought.”

Right as the text sends, the computer freezes completely, now doing none of the three tasks I asked it to do.

I’m in tears when I realize the text was more of a revelation than I intended. What I meant was that the logistics of transferring and deleting at this particular pace was bogging me down. But it also pinpointed something deeper: I don’t know if I can make myself reset this computer to factory settings. I don’t know if I can undo how personal I’ve made this.

Around 7:15 p.m., my husband texts me, trying to give me an out: “Maybe you could just take it home over the weekend and clear it off and drop it off next week.”

It reminds me of so many late nights working at the office, grudgingly deciding to take my work home with me. This thought spurs me on. I begin deleting, sorting and transferring files again. As it inches along, I look around my empty office, suddenly grateful that I had already taken everything home — my favorite books, the photobooth strips of my husband and me drunk at company Christmas parties, the stacks of magazines and newspapers from my desk.

With nothing else to steal my attention, I look at the laptop and realize the fan is whirring full blast, the rainbow wheel has stopped moving and the final files are done transferring. A few clicks later and I close the top and walk out with just my purse, briefcase and coffee mug.

There’s a new work computer in my home office. There’s a different one for my personal life. And I’m starting to believe it’s a separation that should’ve happened a long time ago.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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2/21/22 2:19 PM

THEATER

CLEVER DARLINGS Adventure awaits with NCT’s delightful Peter Pan: Wendy’s Adventure to Neverland

BY AMY STUMPFL

G

iven that the story is packed with high-flying adventure and plenty of pirates, mermaids and fairies, it’s no wonder Peter Pan continues to enchant audiences young and old. J.M. Barrie’s PETER PAN: WENDY’S ADVENTURE TO NEVERLAND time-honored THROUGH MARCH 27 AT NASHVILLE tale has been CHILDREN’S THEATRE, reworked in 25 MIDDLETON ST. NASHVILLECHILDRENSTHEATRE.ORG many ways over the years — from animated and live-action films to ballets, operas and even a few video games.

But with its world premiere of Peter Pan: Wendy’s Adventure to Neverland, Nashville Children’s Theatre delivers a refreshing approach that explores the wonders of Neverland from Wendy’s perspective, touching on themes of courage, loyalty and empowerment along the way.

With an engaging book (and smart direction) from NCT executive artistic director Ernie Nolan, plus catchy music and lyrics

by David Weinstein, this new musical opens with a group of actors preparing to stage Barrie’s beloved Peter Pan. But when a spirited young audience member declares that she most certainly does not believe in fairies, she’s immediately cast in the role of Wendy Darling and swept up in a fast-paced adventure to Neverland. It’s a clever device, and one that makes us all feel like stakeholders in the story. After all, if this rather

unwilling Wendy can learn to embrace the magic, perhaps we can do the same. Weinstein’s lively score adds to the fun, with songs that help set each scene and move the story along.

While a fair bit of Neverland’s landscape is left to our imagination, the design team provides ample inspiration. There’s a lovely storybook quality to Scott Boyd’s scenery, with simple cutout clouds enhancing Peter and Wendy’s daring flight and billowing teal fabric doubling as the ocean waves. Scott Leathers’ lighting is crucial in helping realize the twinkling stars and looming shadows, and Tommy Macon’s costumes are appropriately campy and colorful.

But one of the things that really sets this production apart is Jesse Mooney-Bullock’s whimsical puppet design — from the sassy fairy Tinker Bell to a courageous canine character named Athena. Mooney-Bullock’s beautifully detailed creations offer a striking blend of artistic form and function that adds incredible depth to the storytelling.

Of course, much of the production’s success can also be ascribed to the tireless ensemble, which tackles the material with joy and playful energy. Amanda Rodriguez is particularly strong as the young “Girl” who becomes Wendy, channeling a great deal of strength and confidence even when confronting her character’s doubts. (Her Wendy provides a worthy heroine, who doesn’t sit around waiting to be rescued. But she still has a lesson or two to learn about the power

of her own words.) Rodriguez’s clear vocals soar throughout, but I especially enjoyed her rendition of “Do You Believe in Fairies,” in which she enlists the audience’s help to revive poor Tinker Bell.

Megan Murphy Chambers also shines, balancing the dual roles of the wise leader of the acting troupe and the scheming Captain Hook. Her cheeky “Right Hand Man” is especially fun, and together with a host of bumbling pirates, she serves up a comical “If I Had a Mother.” Gerold Oliver is excellent as Peter Pan, making the most of the role’s physical comedy. And there’s some wonderful support from the always versatile Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva (terrific as the groveling pirate Smee), along with Piper Jones (picture-perfect as the Never Bird, she nearly steals the show with her big number “Never Say Never”). Sarah Zanotti, Jonah Jackson and Alex Pineiro complete the cast. And whether they’re singing, dancing or bringing their myriad puppet creatures to life, this crew keeps the action moving in seamless style.

With thoughtful design and good old-fashioned storytelling, NCT’s Peter Pan sparks the imagination while warming our hearts.

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2/21/22 5:42 PM

ART BEIZAR ARADINI IN HER STUDIO

SCENERY Arts and Culture News From the Nashville Scene

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Looking for the latest on art and culture in Nashville? Subscribe to Scenery, our weekly newsletter that covers visual art, theater, comedy, books, film and more.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Beizar Aradini uncovers her Kurdish roots through painterly embroidered portraits

BY ERICA CICCARONE

W

hen I visit Beizar Aradini’s studio, she’s working on a commission — stretched across the embroidery hoop on her desk is fabric stitched with a grinning couple BEIZARARADINI.COM posed with their heads together. It’s based on a snapshot hanging above. But on a nearby table is another work in progress.

This one is based on a photo of Aradini’s aunt and other women in a Kurdish refugee camp. They wear colorful dresses and pose confidently, as if they are standing in front of some tourist attraction on vacation, documenting the moment to remember for years to come.

“It’s just amazing how my family would still celebrate their culture, even in such an intense time of their lives,” says Aradini, whose work was awarded Best in Show at the Best of Tennessee Craft exhibition last year at the Tennessee State Museum. “Not having anything, they would still just dress up and celebrate.”

By stitching painterly scenes based on family photos, she’s creating touchstones to connect with that culture and time. Her portraits are incredibly detailed, with the shading and depth you’d find in a well-executed oil painting. The vivid colors speak to a desire to

26

bring her family’s past to life before her eyes.

The documentation of these scenes is an act of preservation. “If you look at the history of Kurds,” she explains, “we’ve just dealt with so much ethnic erasure in our stories, in our culture and even in language. This becomes my way of finding and rediscovering our roots in a way and telling these stories.”

Kurdish civilization dates back to the 10th century, but Kurds have no internationally recognized nation to call their own. On maps, the Kurdish-majority region known as Kurdistan appears as parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Though documents from late antiquity exist that name the region “Land of the Kurds,” empires, treaties and colonial powers continually split up the territory, named and renamed it. In the late’80s, Aradini’s family fled for their lives from Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaigns to a refugee camp in Mardin, a city in southeastern Turkey. Aradini was born there and lived the first two years of her life in the camp before her family settled in Nashville in 1992.

Calling the region “Kurdistan” is important to Kurds, despite how the rest of the world draws its maps. Doing so legitimizes their culture, history, language and identity.

In the same way, Aradini’s embroidered portraits of Kurdish people validate her heritage.

She grew up without her extended family.

“My grandparents, my uncles, my aunts, everyone else was back in Kurdistan,” she says. “I never had those relationships. …

The only ways I’ve known them are literally through photos.”

As a first-generation Kurdish American child, Aradini always felt like she was living between two cultures. Her parents rarely talked about Kurdistan. “It was just too traumatic,” she says, “and they’re just trying to survive with seven children in America.”

This widened the cultural divide she felt from her roots and put up barriers between herself and her parents.

In college, she started asking her mother about her life before coming to the U.S., and her mother was ready to answer her questions. “I would ask her about her experience of coming to America,” says Aradini. “And like, ‘What would you do in refugee camps?’

And she would talk about taking rice sacks and cross-stitching with her friends as a way to pass time, because there was literally nothing to do other than try to get through the day. And so I just started researching more about rug weaving in Kurdistan, and thinking about fibers and thinking about embroidery as a way of storytelling. And so it honestly reconnected me with my family in so many ways.”

The craft of embroidery is painstaking.

Aradini often uses tulle as her canvas — a slippery fabric that is delicate but strong.

Other times, she uses wash-away embroidery sheets that disintegrate when put in water, leaving only the layers of thread to hold the design together. She works by hand and with her sewing machine. The process has proven important to her emotionally.

“I was avoiding so much of my past,” she explains, “like literally blocking it out. [Embroidery] became a way of centering myself and really paying attention to these stories and to myself and to my background that really got me feeling more grounded. There’s a lot of concentration and patience that goes into it. I can’t rush it.”

Lately, she’s focusing on photos from when her family first came to Nashville.

“My parents don’t have heirlooms to pass down,” Aradini adds, but they can pass down stories. “I think about how important storytelling is. I think about the preservation of our culture.”

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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2/21/22 6:23 PM

books_2

BOOKS

CALL OF THE WILD David George Haskell explores all things acoustic within the natural world

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917 Woodland Street Nashville, TN 37206 thebasementnashville.com

BY MICHAEL RAY TAYLOR

“S

ound is ephemeral,” writes David George Haskell, a professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of South, SOUNDS WILD AND BROKEN: SONIC MARVELS, in his preface to EVOLUTION’S CREATIVITY, Sounds Wild and AND THE CRISIS OF Broken: Sonic MarSENSORY EXTINCTION vels, Evolution’s

BY DAVID GEORGE HASKELL Creativity, and the VIKING Crisis of Sensory 448 PAGES, $29 Extinction. “Yet in HASKELL WILL DISCUSS its passage, sound HIS BOOK 6:30 P.M. TUESDAY, MARCH 1, AT links living beings PARNASSUS. REGISTER AT and wakes the latent PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET. powers of biological and cultural evolution. These generative powers, acting over hundreds of millions of years, produced the astonishingly diverse sounds of the living Earth.”

Over the next 400-plus pages, Haskell introduces readers to almost all of them, diving deep into the evolutionary physics of natural sound, from bacteria to crickets, dinosaurs to birds, whales to humans, and pretty much every creature that ever swam, walked or flew. Beyond the tales he coaxes from widely varied creatures and their noisemaking instruments, Haskell devotes much discussion to unnatural sound: the diverse cultural and physical history of human music; the cacophony of noise pollution in cities and oceans; human-wielded banshee saws destroying rainforests, filling their spaces with silence. (In his acknowledgments, the author pledges that half of this book’s net profits will go to organizations fighting to ease the “acoustic crises” he documents.)

Haskell’s celebrated first book, The Forest Unseen — which was published in 2012 and was a finalist for both a Pulitzer Prize and PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award — focused on a small circle of forest (just over a meter) on the Cumberland Plateau near his home in Sewanee. His second, 2017’s The Songs of Trees, circled the globe, each chapter alighting on a specific tree to explain evolution, sounds and the interconnectedness of living things.

The structure of Sounds Wild and Broken is more ambitious still, covering nearly all life throughout and beyond the history of Earth, reaching into the Big Bang and harmonic waves of creation rippling through galaxies — a physicist’s rendering of the music of the spheres. All the while, Haskell enumerates global threats civilization imposes on our natural environment and its vanishing soundscape.

Yet the book is neither a natural encyclopedia nor an impassioned conservationist’s appeal — at least, not so you’d notice on any given page. Rather, Haskell creates a pleasing poetry of nature, his carefully crafted sentences luring readers in for the long haul. Open the book to any page, let your

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Before you know it, hours have passed.

As Haskell points out, writing is itself a cultural and evolutionary consequence of sound. After explaining how the calls of bats and whales fire the regions of their brains “concerned with memory, analysis, and production of sound,” he notes: In reading these words, you take this human talent for integration one step further. Black-and-white glyphs are crystallizations of what was, until the invention of written language, ephemeral.

Breath turned to ink. Vibrations in air frozen onto the page.

Reading ignites the brain centers associated with listening, Haskell explains, such that we cannot help but “hear” writing in our head. The physical details of this process might become technical and muddy in the hands of a lesser writer, but Haskell’s voice fills the reader’s auditory pathways with echoes of Wordsworth and Tennyson.

Whether describing the human brain or the ways different conifer forests change the voices and crooked beaks of red crossbills, Haskell speaks a celebratory poetry of nature. At times it may resemble the cadence familiar to modern ears from the wildlife documentaries of Sir David Attenborough, but Haskell’s voice is unique in contemporary nature writing.

“The Earth’s sounds matter in part because they are ephemeral manifestations of order and narrative,” he writes near the end of the book. The same might be said of the glorious music of Sounds Wild and Broken.

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

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

L

ong before Nashville’s hiphop scene began to get the wider recognition that it’s been enjoying over the past couple of years, Petty was one of the best known and most respected rapPLAYING THURSDAY, pers around. One FEB. 24, AT of the reasons he’s MERCY LOUNGE become such a celebrated figure is his prolificacy — it’s not uncommon for him to release several fulllength projects in a given year. Another is his dynamic stage presence. Of course, COVID-19 put a stop to live music in early 2020, and it’s been nearly two years since he’s set foot on a stage.

“Performing has definitely slowed down a lot,” Petty tells the Scene, stepping outside to hop on the phone on an unseasonably warm February afternoon. “Whether it’s just been things not lining up or just reading the room and realizing it’s not a good time. I like to put together shows on my own, so it’s, ‘Do you want to take the risk of putting up your own bread to fund an event that may or may not have the same turnout?’ ”

On Thursday, Petty will co-headline a stacked show at Mercy Lounge with FU Stan and Namir Blade. The bill, assembled and presented by Black Sheep’s Society Enterprises, also includes up-and-comers SeddyMac, VibeOut and CamFerg, and AC Noel serves as host. Looking ahead to the show, the master MC plans to focus his performance on recent songs.

“Putting together my set list was a lot more challenging than usual,” he says. “I have all these extra songs to choose from.

I just really want to perform new songs.

Not being onstage gave me a lot more time to think and just be more intentional with everything.”

One project among the several he released in 2021 would provide him enough material for a lengthy residency gig without repeating a single tune. On each Friday of 2021, he released a new track. The series — appropriately enough, called #53 Fridays — was one of the year’s best and most interesting hip-hop projects, and the Scene called it “appointment listening” when recognizing Petty for Best Hip Hop Hustle in 2021’s Best of Nashville issue. The tracks vary, sometimes wildly, in style and subject matter. Some songs are heavily influenced by old-school jazz and soul and draw an intimate and confessional flow out of Petty; others lean more toward a spare and menacing trap sound, supporting him as he lyrically struts and flexes. There are even some melancholy piano ballads. The clear through line is Petty’s steadfast commitment to pushing himself and his artistry.

“It helped me, mentally, to get out of my own way more,” he says of #53 Fridays.

“Because I feel like, as artists, we don’t want to release something until it’s perfect. Or at least perfect in our eyes. Most of those records — if not all of them — they had just a light mix on them but they were not really mastered. Sometimes just letting things not be perfect can make you start to develop different feelings about your approach to music. It felt like a lot of weight was lifted just by trusting the music and putting it out.”

In addition to beefing up his set list, that batch of tracks has Petty looking forward to releasing a new proper album. It would follow Bubba, a 2019 LP he made in memory of his grandfather. Petty is excited to start the next phase of his career, but he says he’s in no rush to make major moves.

While he let go of some of his perfectionism with #53 Fridays, the pandemic also gave him space to slow down. In being forced to take it a bit easier, he realized he could be patient with his projects — spending a little more time, perhaps, to polish a bar to perfection or get the vibe of his delivery just right. For Petty, being patient and insisting on perfection aren’t intertwined.

“When just ‘work, work, work’ is the most important thing, I miss out on a lot,” he says. “I don’t want my music to reflect that. I don’t want my music to sound like the things I’m missing out on. That’s something that I can hear in my music, because I know what I could be putting in. Even if it’s received well … I know I can raise my bar a little more and strive for better quality.”

At the moment, the spotlight on Nashville hip-hop is the brightest it’s been yet.

This array of communities within a community has been celebrated well beyond the city limits for its diversity of style and wealth of talent, which only seems to grow by the year. Petty’s work has played an integral role in this rising tide, in part because of his love for collaborating with a wide range of producers and other artists, as you can hear across the #53 Fridays project.

“It’s been dope to be part of [the local rap scene’s growth],” he says. “It’s been even better just to witness it from an active perspective. And to see where it was when I first came in, where it is now and how it’s pushed its limits and turned into something that nobody could have imagined 10 years ago. We had a time when the sound was more similar, and now we have a variety of artists. You got people like Reaux Marquez, Quez Cantrell, Gee Slab, FU Stan — it’s a bunch of different styles. Now I feel like everybody has a different quality to their own work. And I feel like that’s the best thing to witness.”

Ultimately, Petty’s newfound sense of freedom and new opportunities to get in front of an in-person audience have him excited in a very distinctive way.

“You know when you were a kid, and you were about to draw and had your pencil real sharp, everything’s feeling right, like, ‘What am I gonna do?’ There wasn’t a sense of worry. It was an inspirational feeling.

That’s the best way I can describe it.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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MUSIC

HEART BEAT HERE

Ahead of Dashboard Confessional’s new LP, two emo fans discuss Chris Carrabba’s lasting power

BY STEVEN HALE AND MEGAN SELING

“D

ashboard Confessional” is the name of a band, but the one constant in its two-decade history is singersongwriter Chris Carrabba, so the ALL THE TRUTH THAT I phrase effectively CAN TELL OUT FRIDAY, represents him as FEB. 25, VIA AWAL well. The heyday for Dashboard’s emotionally wrought acousticcentered rock was in the Aughts, after which Carrabba turned to other pursuits for a bit, including releasing a covers album — featuring his versions of songs by Big Star, The Replacements, Justin Townes Earle and others — called Covered in the Flood under his own name. In 2018, a little while after Carrabba moved to the Nashville area, Dashboard came back to life with Crooked Shadows, its first record since 2009’s Alter the Ending.

Thousands of fans have eagerly jumped back on the sadwagon, packing venues for Carrabba & Co.’s shows and singing along wildly to their stark, impassioned ballads.

Despite that success, others have dismissed Carrabba as a one-trick Eeyore, a grown man clinging to his emo-poster-boy persona by singing self-satisfying songs for impressionable young hearts — a kind of solipsistic Pied Piper, if you will.

As is generally the case, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Ahead of the release of Dashboard Confessional’s eighth full-length All the Truth That I Can Tell, two emo fans discuss Dashboard and what it is about his music that has such lasting power.

For better or worse.

Megan Seling: Steven, before we get too deep into the discussion, I’m curious about your history with Dashboard Confessional.

When did you first start listening to Carrabba and what was appealing to you at the time?

Steven Hale: I must have first encountered Dashboard when I was in middle school.

Swiss Army Romance came out just before I turned 12. For a time, I also quite liked Further Seems Forever, a much louder emo band that Carrabba sang in briefly before Dashboard took off. The truth is, back then — and through most of my early teenage years — my main exposure to acoustic music was through pop-punk or posthardcore bands having that one soft song on a record. Dashboard was a revelation to me in that sense. Chris Carrabba had all the emotion of the harder music I was listening to but over these percussive acousticguitar songs. So in a bizarre way, my path to Bob Dylan and John Prine went through Dashboard Confessional.

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MS: Oh, wow. I wonder what Bob Dylan thinks about Dashboard Confessional. Carrabba was just one of many to make the leap from hardcore to brokenhearted songs on their acoustic guitar, and lots of fans followed all of them. A band I really loved around that same time (and still do), Good Clean Fun, has a great song about this phenomenon called “A Little Bit Emo, a Little Bit Hardcore” on their record Between Christian Rock and a Hard Place. It’s a story about two kids falling in love and learning, as the song goes, “Both their scenes are one big family / And if it wasn’t for hardcore / Then emo would never be.”

Anyway, I think I was a tad too old to really get aboard the Dashboard train. I was 20 when Swiss Army Romance came out.

By then I had experienced heartbreak, I experienced the very complicated loss of a friend, and I lived with severe depression, but I managed to make it out of all that alive.

I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea of, say, unrequited love (in “Again I Go Unnoticed,” for example) being as big of a deal as Carrabba made it out to be.

I was like, “Oh no, does that girl not like you as much as you hoped she would? CRY EMOJI! SO SAD! My best friend is in a coma, and I have Paxil pumping through my brain in order to stay alive, but man, that must be rough.”

Is that insensitive? That makes me sound like such a jerk!

SH: It is insensitive and you should feel bad. But it also makes sense. I think so much of our reaction to art is tied up with where

we are in life when we encounter it. When I first heard “Again I Go Unnoticed,” I had basically experienced nothing in life. But, man, there sure as hell were girls I liked who didn’t seem to care about me. This is silly, of course, but also a real feeling. Carrabba was writing about these things but in a way that — to my young ears — sounded poetic and cool. I think, as you’ve written, that the emo scene has lots of misogyny and other bad things that need reckoning with. But I’ll also say that this era of emo-or-whateveryou-want-to-call-it music also exposed me to dudes having and expressing feelings. Not a completely bad thing!

MS: That’s a great point. I think a lot of that sexism and misogyny in the genre is rooted in men either not knowing how to deal or refusing to deal with their feelings — hence lyrics about wanting to literally kill a woman — or using that perception of “safe and understanding man” as a trap. To Carrabba’s credit, he at least seems sincere in his feelings. And feeling feelings is OK! He definitely has the formula down. Listening to the new album, All the Truth That I Can Tell, after not really staying on top of Dashboard’s more recent material, I’m surprised by how familiar it sounds. I feel like while he may have evolved as a musician, the root of the songs and the sound is still very much the same.

It sort of feels like the musical equivalent of Seventeen magazine. I flipped through one of those the other day — it’s the same as I remember! A little more woke, thankfully, but very much the same formula. Some

fans will absolutely age out of his songs, but there will always be a new crop of 17-yearolds. There will always be emotionally awkward and sad people looking for someone to help them find the words they can’t find.

SH: So, I don’t know if this counts as praise of the new songs or criticism of them, but I had an experience at Dashboard’s recent Ryman show that your comment made me think of. I don’t know if you’ve seen Dashboard live, but this was like a sing-along all night. I mean, he stepped away from the mic during every song. It was pretty amazing.

And in this context, Chris played the song “Burning Heart” off the new record during the encore. And it fit in perfectly. I mean, I felt like I heard it before but I obviously hadn’t.

The funny thing is, I’ve listened to it now in isolation on the record, and I still think it’s a fine song. But it didn’t hit me nearly the same. At the show, it felt nostalgic even though it’s a new song. I suppose that just means, for me, Chris Carrabba singing over an acoustic guitar is always going to make me feel like I’m 16 again, driving around aimlessly at night, listening to Dashboard with my windows down. On the one hand, maybe that means he’s not breaking new ground. But on the other hand, damn, that’s an accomplishment for any artist, surely.

And Chris is obviously aware of and at least somewhat OK with this nostalgic appeal — at the Ryman show they were selling Dashboard T-shirts that say “Emo Is Dead, Long Live Emo.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

PHOTO: STEVE CROSS

MARCH 13

DREAM THEATER

WITH ARCH ECHO IN HER ELEMENT: DAISHA McBRIDE

THE SPIN

EARTH, WIND AND FIRE

BY P.J. KINZER

A

t this point, just about anyone in Nashville (and if we’re being honest, in plenty of other places) knows exactly who The Rap Girl is. Though Daisha McBride claimed that title for herself while she was still in school, the MTSU grad has gotten cosigns from quite a few authorities. Take it from Missy Elliott, whose retweet helped one of McBride’s early freestyles go viral. Or take it from longtime Nashville rap standout Mike Floss, who made a featured appearance on her single “Nothing Else” in 2018. Though Bonnaroo got rained out last year, McBride was the lone MC on the planned Women of Nashville showcase at the festival. Nashville music discovery radio station WNXP picked McBride’s LP Let Me Get This Off My Chest, which dropped in November, as their Record of the Week. Near the end of the year, McBride announced that she had placed multiple songs in major Black TV shows.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that the new album shows the Knoxville-born artist expanding lyrically, exposing complicated emotions about relationships and bleeding out a lot of dark personal pain. On top of all the other things that make it great, the record is important because it normalizes talking about queer relationships in hip-hop — which like so many other realms of pop music has been outright homophobic at times. McBride got a lot of attention for the talent she displayed as a very young person, and the new material has made it clear that her more mature, fully realized self is an even stronger rapper. Saturday night, she took over the third floor of Acme Feed and Seed for an event called Element, a celebration of the person she’s grown into.

Walking into the space felt a bit like strolling up to a swank wedding reception. To my left was a photo booth inside an inflatable igloo. To my right was a roped-off VIP section.

Across the room I spotted a merch table with T-shirts that replicated the Element poster.

Directly ahead was a bar featuring three cocktails named for Let Me Get This Off My Chest tracks — “FWB,” “Loyal” and “Bounce Back” — being mixed by a trio of bartenders dressed in banquet black. Generally speak-

ing, I’m more accustomed to showing up at a club and feeling my sneakers stick to the floor from an accumulation of spilled beer that even repeated mopping won’t entirely eradicate. This was a bit different from your run-of-the-mill Saturday dive bar gig.

Not long after 8 p.m., DJ duo GAS!**, the neon-headed twosome of Nashville rhymesmith $avvy and collaborative partner Enigma, powered up their laptops and began blasting a patchwork of jumbled squeals and obnoxious samples. It was weirdly engaging and the mark of something I was going to dig.

After a minute or two, the cacophony resolved itself into Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body.” Their set lasted almost an hour, packed solidly with hits by Kendrick Lamar, Yeat, Jay-Z and Tyler, the Creator. Between each track, GAS!** blasted sirens and air horns, something you might expect as a running gag in some ’90s retro-disco bar or an SNL sketch. These dudes are a lot of fun.

When the lights went off, three screens behind the stage ignited to introduce The Rap Girl herself, as if she were a pro wrestler about to burst out from backstage. Phones went up all through the densely packed crowd, feeding video into the social media world in real time. The full band set to back McBride — including drummer Darren King, who played in shapeshifting rock outfit Mutemath and has contributed to tracks by Kanye West and Travis Scott among others — wound itself into a prog-rock crescendo, signaling the crowd that she was ready.

McBride took the stage with a confident energy that she kept up through her entire hourlong set. Along with the Let Me Get This songs that inspired the cocktails of the night, she tagged in others from the album including the supremely melancholy “Ur Free.”

The new album was the focus of this show, but she took the opportunity for a throwback as well. Jess, who sang on McBride’s 2017 grooving R&B-schooled track “Crazy,” was in the house, and she jumped onstage to join in on a live rendition.

Once the set was through, producer and scene booster extraordinaire A.B. Eastwood took over the decks for the after-party. I made the call to bounce before Lyft fares escalated to late-night tourist pricing. In the end, the night was about McBride and the whole crew rightfully commemorating some major steps in her career. While she enriches the vibrant hip-hop scene we’ve got in Nashville, she’s also playing a big role in bringing what we have to the rest of the world.

EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

MARCH 16

SLASH

FEATURING MYLES KENNEDY &

THE CONSPIRATORS

MARCH 27

CASTING CROWNS

WITH WE ARE MESSENGERS AND JONATHAN TRAYLOR APRIL 7

DISNEY PRINCESS: THE CONCERT APRIL 13

JOHNNYSWIM

WITH KATELYN TARVER APRIL 21

BERT KREISCHER AUGUST 28

FRANKIE VALLI

& THE FOUR SEASONS

nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 24 – MARCH 2, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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FILM

NATIONAL ANTHEMS

Joe Wright’s Cyrano brings Peter Dinklage and The National together

BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

T

GONE ASTRAY

On bringing local independent thriller Best Laid Plans to fruition during a pandemic

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

R

oughly two years ago, Nashvillian filmmakers — and spouses — Kyler Wilson and Natalie Ruffino Wilson were pumped. They had a project they were ready to film, and it looked like their funding was going to work BEST LAID PLANS out. It was going to be NR, 83 MINUTES Kyler’s first feature as a AVAILABLE TO RENT VIA APPLE TV+, ITUNES AND director.

AMAZON PRIME VIDEO; “And then, you know, PURCHASE THE DVD VIA 2020 happened,” says RANDOMMEDIA.COM Ruffino Wilson.

The couple has done freelance film production work in Nashville for the past decade. He’s a first assistant director and works on lots of commercials.

She describes herself as a jack-of-all trades, an actor who’s also done camera operator work, props and more. They did their first short film together for 2018’s 48 Hour Film Project, and had been working toward this feature project for a long time. But with COVID-19 cases spiking and film and television production shut down, the project ground to a halt.

“So we licked our wounds and said, ‘OK, well, do

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CYRANO PG-13, 124 MINUTES OPENING FRIDAY, FEB. 25, AT THE BELCOURT AND AMC THOROUGHBRED 20

Wright’s wife Haley Bennett, also a veteran of the stage play, portrays the legendary Roxanne, the object of Cyrano’s love and poetry who instead falls for a member of Cyrano’s military unit.

The story, which is as much about poetry and lyricism as it is about love, is perfectly suited for the musical treatment. Members of acclaimed indie-rock band The National wrote the songs for both the play and the film, and though Dinklage’s voice won’t blow anyone away, it’s in a sense just right for the realm of Matt Berninger, The National’s baritone lead singer. Close your eyes and Dinklage’s low, talky growl could

we just wait?’ ” says Ruffino Wilson. They considered holding off until 2021 and seeing if they could shoot their feature then. Instead, they landed on putting together something else entirely. “We said screw it, and we just wrote Best Laid Plans with the concept of — [with] it being a pandemic — keep it a small cast, keep it a small crew, keep it centrally located. Something that we could control, no big events.”

The pair penned a script late in the summer of 2020. By fall, they had gathered up a crew of fellow Nashvillian filmmakers, and they went into production on Oct. 25, 2020 — the couple’s one-year wedding anniversary. With a crew of roughly two dozen people and a very small cast, Kyler and Natalie managed to shoot in eight days total, primarily in a single location.

“It was a whirlwind,” says Ruffino Wilson. “We never went over 12 hours [of shooting in a single day]. Our goal was to do 10, which is mainly what we kept to.”

The result is Best Laid Plans, now available to rent via multiple platforms or to purchase on DVD. It’s a home-invasion thriller that lands in roughly the same ballpark as, say, Eli Roth’s Knock Knock or Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. Ruffino Wilson stars as Remy, a housecleaner and single mom who stumbles onto a hostage situation at a client’s home. Longtime local actor and filmmaker Dean Shortland plays the client, and Wilson plays the desperate man who takes him hostage. Aside from a handful of scenes with one or two other performers, that’s pretty much it — a tension-building three-hander that plays out over the course of a lean hour and 23 minutes.

“One of the things that I was really excited about

be mistaken for Berninger’s, or maybe a cousin’s. (It also made me wish that Game of Thrones produced a one-off musical episode like Scrubs or The Simpsons.) Bennett’s voice, on the other hand, is the ideal companion to her character’s narratively required beauty.

Rounding out the relatively small cast are Ben Mendelsohn and Kelvin Harrison Jr. Mendelsohn plays the dastardly De Guiche — a delicious portrayal by the king of such villainy — while up-and-comer Harrison is easy to believe as the source of Roxanne’s palpitations.

There’s a reason Cyrano de Bergerac

has been adapted and riffed on repeatedly for generations. The story itself — of a hot person teaming with a brilliant person to woo a person who is both hot and brilliant — feels like one that has always existed, in some form or another. And this latest version achieves that; it’s entertaining simply because it’s Cyrano. But Dinklage’s acting, Bennett’s singing and the National-adjacent music all add to the experience.

If you can appreciate Peter Dinklage sword fighting and singing The National songs as part of “the avant-garde tradition,” you’ll get a kick out of Joe Wright’s Cyrano.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

FILMING BEST LAID PLANS

PHOTO: HANNAH POLK

he best way to enjoy a musical is to embrace the surrealism of regular-seeming people suddenly breaking into choreographed song in the middle of their day. Filmmaker Damien Chazelle, during the press tour for his 2016 musical La La Land, told Vogue that he didn’t like musicals until he started to understand them as part of “the avant-garde tradition.”

“It was willful defiance,” he said. “Fuck it, we’re going to break into song.”

That brings us to Cyrano, the new release from Pride & Prejudice director Joe Wright. It’s definitely a musical — unlike most of the other adaptations of the century-old story. Indeed, people stop their conversations and military drills to sing, and the sets are stage-like.

But taking into consideration Chazelle’s outlook on the genre, it’s not an altogether unpleasant experience.

The adaptation is itself based on an adaptation — a musical first staged in 2018 with some of the same cast members and music.

Erica Schmidt wrote both the stage play and the film, and her husband, Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage, reprises his role as Cyrano de Bergerac. Here Dinklage’s dwarfism stands in for the original character’s outsized nose as the driver of narrative tension.

The production is a full-on family affair:

was we got to use a lot of our friends who are professionals in town,” says Ruffino Wilson. “So it was really important since they had signed on to do this with us during the pandemic, that it not be excruciatingly painful for them [laughs].”

Ruffino Wilson is quick to point to director of photography Tim Sutherland — a Steadicam operator with “oodles and oodles” of experience — as key in inspiring other crew members to come on board. Our city’s film production scene is packed with talent, and

a lot larger than many Nashvillians likely realize. Ruffino Wilson is grateful she and her husband were able to lean on that community to bring their first feature film to fruition.

“It was just such a great experience,” she says. “Everyone was just at the top of their game in what they were doing at that time. We got to [make the movie] with people who took it seriously and really cared about the art.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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Columbia 1006 Carmack Blvd Columbia, TN 931-398-3350

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2/21/22 2:22 PM

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EMPLOYMENT

Rental Scene

Director of Campus Operations.

Plan and coordinate selected operations and departments of Historically Black College. Provide leadership, direction, coordination and administration of maintenance, custodial, and campus security services. Employer: The American Baptist Theological Seminary.

Location: Nashville, TN. Mail resume (no calls/emails) to R. Jackson, 1800 Baptist World Center Drive, Nashville, TN 37207.

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Grants and Scholarships available for certain programs for qualified applicants.

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Your Neighborhood Local attractions nearby: · Nashboro Golf Course · BNA airport

Nearby places you can enjoy the outdoors: · Percy Priest Lake · Long Hunter’s State Park Best place near by to see a show: · Ascend Amphitheater

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Favorite local neighborhood bar: · Larry’s Karaoke lounge List of amenities from your community: · Indoor swimming pool and hot tub · Outdoor swimming pool · Ping pong table · Fitness center · Gated community

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24, - MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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FEATURED APARTMENT LIVING

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

500 BrooksBoro Terrace, Nashville, TN 37217 | www.brightonvalley.net | 615.366.5552 34

Call 866-535-9689

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

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

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3 floor plans southavenatcommonwealth.com | 629.777.8333 Colony House 1510 Huntington Drive Nashville, TN 37215 The James

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Rental Scene

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

4 floor plans

liveatcolonyhouse.com | 615.488.4720

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

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

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

5 floor plans

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

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

3 floor plans

sunrisenashville.com | 615.333.7733 River West 411 Annex Ave Nashville, TN 37209 2 Bed /1 Bath 1008 sq ft from $1349

1 Bed / 1 Bath 675 sq ft from $1159 2 floor plans

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

2 Bedrooms/ 2 baths 1100 sq feet from $1490

3 Bedrooms/ 2 baths 1350 sq feet from $1900

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

Studio 330 sq feet from $900 - $1000

3 floor plans

brightonvalley.net | 615.366.5552 nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 24 - MARCH 2, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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S U H P I TC

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

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

Happy Hour monday - Thursday 3-6 taco tuesday 3-6

2330 8th AVE. SOUTH 615-988-0404

EAST/Five Points: 972 Main St. (615) 434-6000

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Nashv il stron le g!

MUSIC CITY

PSYCHIC

Sweetheart Special 10% off Tarot Reading 615-915-0515

284 White Bridge Rd

Reach more than

Flat.

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Apartment.

Home.

400,000

Scene readers. Plugged-in, educated, active consumers who support local businesses.

Whatever you call it, find yours in the Rental Scene.

Email Mike at msmith@nashvillescene.com to get started planning for a BIG 2022!

Nashville Scene’s Marketplace on pages 34 - 35.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 24 - MARCH 2, 2022 | nashvillescene.com