Nashville Scene 2-3-22

CITY LIMITS: AS EXECUTIONS RETURN, FAMILIES FIGHT FOR MEN ON DEATH ROW

FEBRUARY 3–9, 2022 I VOLUME 41 I NUMBER 1 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

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MUSIC: FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES REMEMBER PIANIST BEEGIE ADAIR PAGE 33

From municipal infrastructure to arts funding and late-night dining options, here are 33 ideas to make Nashville better

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nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CONTENTS

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

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As Executions Return, Families Fight for Men on Death Row ....................................7

Fight Club

CITY LIMITS

The state is seeking an execution date for Gary Sutton, a man who maintains his innocence

BY STEVEN HALE

Pedestrian Memorial Commemorates Those Who Died in 2021...........................7 Annual tribute held the same week as Nashville’s Vision Zero forum — which envisions safer streets for walkers, drivers and cyclists alike

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

CULTURE Nashville Armored Combat trains fighters as friends

BY HANNAH HERNER

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BOOKS

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

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Destiny O. Birdsong’s protagonists are true to themselves in Nobody’s Magic

31

MUSIC

Say the Quiet Part Loud ......................... 31

COVER STORY

Erin Rae amplifies the small voice inside on Lighten Up

What Nashville Needs From municipal infrastructure to arts funding and late-night dining options, here are 33 ideas to make Nashville better

BY THE COMMITTEE OF INSIDERS

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Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins, 1938-2022 Law Enforcement Officers Fatally Shoot Man on I-65

Name Your Own Sweetness

BY JANE MARCELLUS AND CHAPTER 16

Pith in the Wind .........................................8

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB:

Big Restaurant News: Mangia Returns and Rodney Scott’s BBQ Is on the Way They’re Banning Books in Tennessee: McMinn County Bans Pulitzer-Winning Maus ON THE COVER:

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

Illustration by Sarah Parker

Youth of Today ......................................... 32 Amid the resurgence of Aughts-vintage emo and pop punk, confronting the toxic culture beneath the nostalgia trip

BY MEGAN SELING

Beegie Adair, 1937-2022 ....................... 33

CRITICS’ PICKS Cristina Vane February Residency, Inebriated Shakespeare Presents Macbeth, Marcus Finnie and the Art of Listening, Nashville Black Market, Aaron Raitiere and Friends, The Vagina Monologues, Stath Lets Flats, The A24 Podcast and more

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Friends and colleagues remember a phenomenal pianist and pillar of Nashville’s jazz community

BY RON WYNN

34 FILM

X-Ray Vision ............................................. 34 Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché is a complex portrait of a punk icon

FOOD AND DRINK Fine Dining

BY STEVE ERICKSON

The inaugural monthlong Dine Nashville event aims to give restaurants a shot in the arm

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

Some Way Home .................................... 34 Flee is a spectacular sojourn into the life of a refugee

BY CORY WOODROOF

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Primal Stream 75 ................................... 35

ART

Crawl Space: February 2022 This month’s First Saturday features new faces in new spaces

BY JOE NOLAN

A folk-horror box set, grimy possession horror and a Depeche Mode doc, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

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NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

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PET OF THE WEEK! PLEASE MEET “PAT THE CAT”

You may remember Pat The Cat when he lived at NHA back in 2020. He was adopted to a very loving home, but sadly, his person and best friend, passed away recently.

So “PTC” is back with us because once an animal has a home with NHA, they are family, and we’re here if they need us. Even though he’s happy to see some of his old friends here at NHA, this sweet guy is missing a couch to snuggle on with a very special someone close by. He’s an extra friendly FIV+ cat that loves the company of humans and toys!

He’s very vocal and loves to have conversations with his people all day long. Sounds purrfect, right? Who wants to adopt this 6-year-old sweetheart?

Call 615.352.1010 or visit nashvillehumane.org Located at 213 Oceola Ave., Nashville, TN 37209

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FROM BILL FREEMAN POLITICS ASIDE, IT’S GOOD GETTING TO KNOW FOLKS LIKE SEN. MIKE BELL Recently, I had the opportunity to meet Sen. Mike Bell (R-Riceville), who represents the Tennessee Senate’s 9th District. We met during a duck-hunting trip in Arkansas, and I was surprised by his disposition, especially as we don’t have much in common when it comes to politics. Still, I found him to be a man of integrity with a high work ethic, and I believe he has served our state with honor.

Mike was first elected to the state House of Representatives back in 2006, and moved to the state Senate in 2011. He is quick to listen and thoughtful in his responses.

This, no doubt, is part of what makes him a good person to represent the citizens of his district. That said, he is not planning to run for reelection this year. Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said in a statement that Sen. Bell’s absence would be a “tremendous loss for the Senate and the state,” and that Bell “brought a true working-class perspective to the Senate that has been simply invaluable.”

During our trip, I learned that Mike also owns and runs a small business and is a man of faith, a father and a grandfather, a farmer and a hunter. Amid making time for all that, he will have served in the Tennessee General Assembly for a total of 16 years at the end of this session.

When he announced that he would not seek reelection, Bell said serving in the legislature was the highest honor of his life, saying, “I feel it is now time to move to the next chapter of my life and pass the leadership mantle for this district to a new state senator.” He announced his decision

early enough to let prospective candidates in the communities he serves time to get their ducks in a row, and for the district to have a good new representative.

Mike has served in numerous leadership positions in the legislature. Not only does he currently chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, he also served on the Senate Government Operations Committee from 2012 to 2018. He’s the current chair of the Sportsmen’s Caucus and a member of the Executive Council for the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses. He has garnered several awards for his efforts to preserve hunting and fishing, which I find admirable.

As I spent time with the senator, I learned that while we obviously don’t agree on many political issues, I do agree with his faith, family values and his hard-working nature.

Further, I believe he would show bipartisan support if he strongly believed in the issue.

Even so, I believe he is more conservative than moderate.

Mike will leave the legislature when a new state senator is elected in the regular general election on Nov. 8. It’s not too bold to say that he’ll be missed by his constituents.

Because if my experience in meeting and talking with Mike is any indication, he’s just a nice guy.

Editor-in-Chief D. Patrick Rodgers Senior Editor Dana Kopp Franklin Associate Editor Alejandro Ramirez Arts Editor Laura Hutson Hunter Culture Editor Erica Ciccarone Music and Listings Editor Stephen Trageser Contributing Editor Jack Silverman Staff Writers Kelsey Beyeler, Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, Kathryn Rickmeyer, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Daryl Sanders, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Nadine Smith, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Abby White, Andrea Williams, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian 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

Bill Freeman Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and Home Page Media Group in Williamson County.

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

UPCOMING EVENTS PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENT FOR TICKETS & UPDATES

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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Explore the diverse cultural and political landscapes of Cuba and its diaspora through the paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, and installations of fifty Cuban ar tists. We invite you to see how these ar tists connect their own experiences with historical, political, and psychological realities to create works that can resonate with anyone who grapples with questions of freedom, identity, and displacement.

T H R O U G H M AY 1 Downtown Nashville, 919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203 | FristArtMuseum.org | @FristArtMuseum | #CubanArtattheFrist

Organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami Platinum sponsor

Education and community engagement suppor ter

Hospitality sponsor

Program and Spanish translation sponsor

Suppor ted in par t by the 2022 Frist Gala patrons and

3 – FEBRUARY 9,and 2022fishhooks | nashvillescene.com 6 NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY Yoan Capote. Island (see-escape), 2010.

Oil, nails, on jute mounted on plywood, 106 x 315 x 4 in. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by Jorge M. Pérez. Photo: Oriol Tarridas

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CITY LIMITS

AS EXECUTIONS RETURN, FAMILIES FIGHT FOR MEN ON DEATH ROW The state is seeking an execution date for Gary Sutton, a man who maintains his innocence

BY STEVEN HALE

F

or Tennessee’s death row prisoners, the executioner’s clock started ticking again earlier this year when the Tennessee Supreme Court set execution dates for two men. All condemned inmates live with a grim countdown of sorts, but for a time the pandemic brought a pause to Tennessee’s execution schedule. Now the state looks ready to resume regular programming in the death chamber.

The two men set to die next are Oscar Smith and Harold Nichols — on April 21 and June 9, respectively. Both men had been scheduled for execution in 2020 before their dates were called off due to COVID-19. Smith was sentenced to death in Nashville for the 1989 murders of his estranged wife Judy Smith and her two sons, Chad and Jason Burnett. He has always maintained his innocence. Nichols was sentenced to death in 1990 for the rape and murder of 21-year-old Karen Pulley two years earlier. He also confessed to a several other area rapes.

Those men’s legal teams will fight to see their lives spared until the last minute, and advocates — few though they may be — will

urge Gov. Bill Lee to grant them clemency.

But the reappearance of execution dates on the calendar has brought a renewed sense of urgency to everyone on the row.

Gary Sutton was convicted and sentenced to death — along with his uncle James Dellinger — for the 1992 murders of Tommy Griffin and Griffin’s sister Connie Branam.

Authorities said Sutton and Dellinger killed Griffin after a long night of drinking and killed Connie the next day after she’d started looking for her brother. Both men were convicted of Branam’s murder in 1993, and convicted and sentenced to death for Griffin’s murder in 1996.

The state sought an execution date for Sutton, along with eight other men, in 2019, but the Tennessee Supreme Court has yet to set one. Knowing that could happen at any time, Sutton’s family and other advocates have been increasingly desperate to get the word out about his case.

Sutton and his advocates maintain his innocence and argue his trial was unfair because, among other things, he and Dellinger were tried together and his attorneys were inexperienced lawyers who gave him an inadequate defense.

Prosecutors never established a motive for

Griffin’s murder, and their case was largely circumstantial — Dellinger and Sutton were the last people seen with Griffin. Both men’s attorneys have also suggested other possible suspects and argued that Sutton and Dellinger have intellectual disabilities.

Sutton’s attorneys have brought particular attention over the years to the prosecution’s use of discredited medical examiner Charles Harlan. The former doctor was forced to resign as Davidson County’s top medical examiner in 1994, and two years later, the state of Tennessee declined to keep using him as the state’s top forensic expert. In 1996, as he was serving as an expert witness in Sutton and Dellinger’s capital murder trial — testifying about Griffin’s time of death — he was under investigation by the state for misconduct including faulty and dishonest work. In 2005, his medical license was revoked after the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners found him guilty of 20 counts of misconduct.

All of this and more, Sutton’s family and advocates believe, contributed to Sutton being wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a man they say was a close friend.

“I just don’t believe he could do that,” Sutton’s brother Jimmy tells the Scene.

“That boy was one of his best friends. He used to bring him food every night to make sure he ate.”

Carolyn Miller had been dating Sutton for about nine months at the time of his arrest.

She recently reunited with him — she was over at his family’s house for the Super Bowl last year when he called, and has been visiting him again ever since.

“That was all it took, was for me to hear his voice, because he’s innocent and I know he’s innocent,” Miller says. “I knew it then.

I’ve known it all these years, I know it now,

GARY SUTTON

and it’s just not right.”

She says she’s surprised that Sutton isn’t bitter.

“When I reconnected with him and started talking to him again — he doesn’t have any hate in his heart,” she says. “I was surprised. I thought he would be really just cold and angry, but he’s not. He’s just not. I mean, I would be.”

Sutton’s family has now spent decades carrying the belief that he is on death row for a crime he didn’t commit.

“It’s been a burden,” Jimmy Sutton says. “It’s affected us, our kids — when they were growing up at school, it affected them, people looked down on them. It really affected us real bad.”

Now, with executions set to start up again, they know time might be running out.

“Any day,” Jimmy Sutton says, “they could call him up.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

PEDESTRIAN MEMORIAL COMMEMORATES THOSE WHO DIED IN 2021 Annual tribute held the same week as Nashville’s Vision Zero forum — which envisions safer streets for walkers, drivers and cyclists alike

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

O

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

n Saturday, transportation safety advocates gathered at the intersection of Millwood Drive and Murfreesboro Pike to pay tribute to the 38 pedestrians killed while walking Nashville’s streets in 2021. That’s just one death fewer than 2020’s total. There were 132 traffic deaths total in 2020, the most since 1966.

More than half of these deaths occurred on the same seven streets: Dickerson Pike, Gallatin Pike, Old Hickory Boulevard, Charlotte Pike, Rosa Parks Boulevard, Murfreesboro Pike and Buena Vista Road.

This was also the case last year.

Speakers at Saturday’s memorial included family

nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBUARY 9, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CITY LIMITS members of traffic victims. Darlett Sowers, whose son Josh was killed while walking on Antioch Pike in 2020, called for drivers to become more aware of pedestrians, the same way they know to look out for other drivers. She also called for more lights at intersections.

Another speaker was Chuck Isbell, whose son Nate was killed by a driver on Halloween 2020. Isbell has been advocating for lower speed limits in Rutherford County since then.

Several Metro councilmembers attended the memorial and read the names of those killed on Nashville’s roads. Councilmember Angie Henderson spoke at the event and said many of the dangerous streets are state routes, and that the state should also be held accountable for safety improvements.

Walk Bike Nashville also set up a monument featuring a bike and several sets of shoes on an unprotected median on Murfreesboro Pike — the tough-to-access location reflects just how difficult traffic is to navigate for pedestrians.

When asked about the increase in fatal accidents, Cathy Carrillo — manager of Walk Bike Nashville’s schools program — pointed to a lack of “real improvements in infrastructure.” Streets are in rough shape, paint is wearing off of roads, and there aren’t enough lights. Plus, as Nashville’s population grows, the roads get busier. “You add up all the small things, they create really big issues,” said Carrillo.

Mayor John Cooper did not attend this year’s memorial, though he pledged the city to a Vision Zero plan at the 2019 pedestrian memorial during his first year in office. Vision Zero is an international initiative to reduce traffic deaths that has been adopted by U.S. cities over the past decade.

Andrea Fanta, a spokesperson for Cooper’s office,

says the mayor is still committed to Vision Zero and that representatives of the Nashville Department of Transportation had attended the event. Fanta also points to Cooper’s investments in 50 infrastructure projects to support traffic-calming efforts, like reducing speed limits, as well as 28 sidewalk projects that are under construction or close to beginning construction.

Nashville is still drafting its Vision Zero plan and held a public meeting about the draft on Jan. 26.

Participants included NDOT’s new director Diana Alarcon and Lewis Laff, a transportation safety officer from Austin, Texas — a peer city that has seen some success with Vision Zero programs.

Jennifer Baldwin of Alta, a transportation design company that has previously worked with Metro, said at the public meeting that Vision Zero will seek to use data from previous crashes to identify vulnerable communities and dangerous roadways and prevent future crashes. To stress the urgency of improving street safety, Baldwin noted that Nashville sees 14.5 fatalities per 100,000 traffic accidents, a higher rate than peer cities like Austin, Texas, and Charlotte, N.C. Additionally, 1 in 4 pedestrians hit by a vehicle is killed.

Baldwin noted that 6 percent of streets in Nashville accounted for 59 percent of traffic deaths and severe injuries since 2014. “By focusing on those 6 percent of roadways, we can really start to move towards reducing the loss of life that’s currently happening,” she said.

Leah Shahum of the Vision Zero Network noted at the meeting that certain safety trends are national issues. In Nashville and other cities, for example, low-income neighborhoods and communities of color are far more likely to see fatal traffic accidents. Vision Zero comes out of Europe and has seen success

in cities like Helsinki and Oslo. Some U.S. cities have seen promising results as well — for example, Fremont, Calif., saw a 45 percent decrease in traffic deaths after implementing Vision Zero policies.

But other Vision Zero cities are struggling. Los Angeles has seen deaths increase since adoption, and Washington, D.C., reduced deaths only one year — 2019. Some of this reflects a national trend: Over the past year, traffic deaths have increased across the country.

Shahum acknowledged that some cities are “stalling,” but added that change is going to take time.

She pointed to the success Austin is seeing on streets that have received safety improvements. While Austin saw an increase in traffic deaths, the roadways that received safety improvements like new traffic signals have seen far fewer crashes. “If you can take that citywide, we have reason to believe you will see changes, improvements citywide,” said Shahum. “It’s gonna be harder to scale it. It’s gonna be harder to find that money. And let’s be honest, it’s gonna take political will.”

Carrillo echoed the sentiment at the pedestrian memorial. “The Vision Zero action plan is a great place to start,” she said, “but we need actual deadlines and dates for those things.”

Carrillo said the city can tackle smaller projects like installing more advanced traffic signals or repainting roads, and noted that community involvement will be important to holding officials accountable.

The public is invited to submit questions and comments about the Vision Zero draft plan to VisionZero@nashville.gov. The final version is expected to arrive in March.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Five Points at 112 S. 11th St. 615-226-EDGE

1106 Woodland St - Ste. 1 East Nashville | Five Points

in the state legislature sliced Davidson County into three districts. “I explored every

now divide Nashville,” Cooper said in a statement. “There’s no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates.” Cooper had been facing a spirited Democratic primary challenge from Justice Democratsbacked Odessa Kelly. Kelly, who under the redistricting plan now lives in a different district, has not said in which district she plans to run. … Twice-impeached former President Donald Trump endorsed former Fox News commentator and State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus for Tennessee’s now-open 5th Congressional District. Robby Starbuck is the lone Republican already in the 5th District race, though potential candidates including former state House Speaker Beth Harwell and Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles could jump in. … McMinn County’s school board became the target of widespread online opprobrium after banning the graphic novel Maus from its eighth-grade curriculum. The novel is a story of surviving the Holocaust, based on author Art Spiegelman’s interviews with his own father. It is the first and only graphic novel to win the Pulitzer. The McMinn school board voted unanimously to ban the book, citing swearing and illustrations of naked mice women. … A Vanderbilt study found that Black and male teachers receive

possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that

study reports that these findings remain

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG:

B U R G E R &

C O MP A N Y

Your Loving Hand Pattied Local Burger Joint 8

Officers from three law enforcement agencies — from the Metro Nashville Police Department and the Tennessee Highway Patrol, along with an off-duty Mt. Juliet police officer — fatally shot 37-year-old Landon Eastep, who was walking alongside I-65 south of downtown Jan. 27. Eastep died at the scene after he was fired at more than 30 times.

Five of the six MNPD officers who fired shots were put on administrative duty following the shooting, as is standard.

The sixth, 25-year veteran Brian Murphy, was decommissioned. Murphy fired the final two shots at Eastep. Nashville’s Community Oversight Board said footage of the shooting was “gravely disturbing.” …

After 32 years in the United States House of Representatives, including the last 20 representing Nashville, Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper announced he will not seek reelection after the Republican supermajority

consistently lower evaluation scores than their white and female colleagues. The

true “even when they have similar qualifications and their students achieve similar test scores and other outcomes.”

While the study does not indicate any major factors that explain the gender gap, the race gap can be attributed to “the racial isolation of Black teachers, the differing characteristics of students who are assigned to Black and White teachers, and the race of the teacher’s observer.”

“We need to make sure that we internalize this information to get to the root causes,” says Nashville’s Ricky Gibbs, executive principal of Warner Elementary. “Because if we’re going to recruit men of color, men in general, or educators of color, and keep them in our profession, they must know that they’re gonna be treated fairly.” …

Contributor Betsy Phillips is once again diving into the city’s database of enslaved people — this time to explore the history of freeman and Methodist preacher John Pinchum, who wanted his daughter Joyce “forever set free” upon his death, and ultimately died in 1855. “When you think of all of the people who have found Nashville and Memphis safer places for living the kinds of lives they want to live,” writes Phillips, “and realizing that this probably does go back to the 1830s at least, is it really surprising that Republicans would carve Nashville up into districts under more rural control?”

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

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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From municipal infrastructure to arts funding and late-night dining options, here are 33 ideas to make Nashville better

BY THE COMMITTEE OF INSIDERS

B

ILLUSTRATION: SARAH PARKER

ack in May 1990, a scrappy little publication by the name of the Nashville Scene — not quite a year old, at least not in its current form as an alternative-weekly newspaper — published a cover story by the name of “A Master Plan: The 30 things Nashville needs & the people to do them.”

Looking back now, some of the entries on that list are downright charming: “A Bakery”; “More Shopping”; “Something for Tourists to Do.” Needless to say, we’re good to go in those departments. Other, more specific items on the list managed to come to fruition as well. We opined that something needed to be done about the bare stretch of land east of the Cumberland River. “How about putting the stadium there?” we asked. Done and done. “A High School for the Performing Arts”? Nashville School of the Arts arrived three years later. “A Jazz Club”? Now we’ve got a couple. Other items on the list have been accomplished, but with an asterisk: “Curbside Recycling,” for instance. We’ve got it, of course, but glass pickup isn’t included, and we all know about the recent snafu Metro experienced with contractor Red River suspending curbside recycling pickup for a number of weeks.

A quarter-century after that list was published, we revisited it with another cover story: “A (Re)Master Plan: Looking back at a Scene list of 30 things Nashville needed in 1990 — and forward to 30 things we need today.” We’ve accomplished some of the goals we laid out in that 2015 list — opening the National Museum of African American Music, most notably. But vexingly enough, some of the same issues remained, just as they do today: a lack of affordable housing, for instance, as well as a need for better public transit.

Now, 32 years after that first list and six years after our update, we’ve decided to once again put our heads together and come up with a list of what Nashville needs. Some of the items included here cover perennial frustrations (transit, housing and infrastructure, duh), while others are brand-new. Try as we might to once again limit our list to 30 items, we went over a little bit. Cut us some slack.

Dive in, and drop us a line to let us know what we missed.

10

D. Patrick Rodgers

Editor-in-Chief, the Nashville Scene

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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1/31/22 6:17 PM

1.

MORE DIVERSITY ON BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS

Thanks to the laudable efforts of recent mayoral administrations and a Metro Council that’s not afraid to push back on mayoral appointments, Metro’s boards and commissions have grown increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. But this is just the beginning. These bodies, often operating without much public scrutiny, can be incredibly powerful — just consider how the Board of Zoning Appeals can change the entire face of a neighborhood, one case at a time — and it’s important that they reflect all the ways Nashville is diverse. Think fewer corporate lawyers from Green Hills and more gig workers from Antioch. NICOLE WILLIAMS

4.

MORE HOUSING

The mayor’s own affordable housing task force, made up of more than 20 experts, said we needed new housing in a 2019 report. In fact, to meet the housing needs of our quickly growing city, we will specifically have to build 53,758 units of housing — including 18,000 units for low-income families — by 2030. The task force laid out nine pressing recommendations, and the city has met two of them: doubling Barnes Fund money and establishing a catalyst fund for housing. Other recommendations include bolstering PILOT programs and figuring out new zoning ordinances — all work that requires political willpower, especially with a state legislature that has proven itself ready to preempt local zoning laws.

ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

disabled people in infrastructure planning; coordinate with the Office of Veterans Services and much more. The creation of such a hub could help us both enforce compliance and move beyond it. ERICA CICCARONE

7.

LOCAL MASS TRANSIT ASIDE FROM BUSES

Here’s a perennial one. If you’ve ever driven I-24, you know we need another way for people to get from Murfreesboro to Nashville. If people could get on a train from Dickson or from Ashland City to Nashville, a lot of our discussions about affordable housing would be a lot different. Buses are great, but buses are in traffic. We need ways to move people around the city and the region that keep them out of traffic. BETSY

8.

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9.

CITYWIDE WI-FI

MORE INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS

3.

AN LGBTQ COMMUNITY CENTER

In 2019, Nashville Pride embarked on a plan that seeks to collect information about what the queer community wants and needs to thrive. At one meeting I attended, residents discussed the need for affordable and nondiscriminatory health care, employment resources and opportunities for “storytelling moments” that build a sense of belonging and preserve history. Conversations kept leading back to something physical we lack: a central location where LGBTQ folks can gather, access support and share resources. A community center — whether staffed by paid workers or volunteers — would require a lot of funding and rent well below market rate. But it would give us queer folks the place of belonging that other cities have so we can thrive. ERICA

CICCARONE

For years, Nashville International Airport was international in name only — but with direct flights to London now departing BNA, it’s an honest title again. What should come next are more trans-Atlantic

5.

Here’s another infrastructure item we suggested the last time we did one of these issues — a citywide Wi-Fi offering that’s billed as a public utility, just like water and electricity. But hell, why stop there?

Cities around the world have free municipal wireless networks available to locals and visitors — including Boston, which named its free outdoor network Wicked Free Wi-Fi (yes really). Public Wi-Fi hotspots give residents easy access to the internet, whether they need it for work, education, health care or, you know, just doom-scrolling. Use it for whatever you like, we’re not here to judge.

D. PATRICK RODGERS

12.

MAKE LOWER BROAD PEDESTRIAN-ONLY

Consider it a quarantine of sorts. Or an acceptance of what Lower Broadway is. This is not a street that should be treated as a throughway for any vehicle that isn’t a pedal tavern. Making Lower Broad pedestrianonly would make it safer for the tourists stumbling about down there — and perhaps make it easier for locals to avoid it altogether. STEVEN HALE

ONE-STOP SHOP FOR HOUSING RESOURCES

Nearly a decade ago, Metro created a onestop shop for developers at the Richard H. Fulton Campus. You can find a representative from nearly every department involved in permitting at this location, from public works to the urban forester. This has made life easier for people who want to build housing. Now we need to do the same for people who want to find housing. With record investments in affordable housing and the creation of a Housing Division within the Planning Department, now is a great time to invest in a centralized housing hub for Nashvillians of all income levels. NICOLE

WILLIAMS

6.

AN OFFICE FOR DISABILITY SERVICES

While Metro does monitor ADA compliance through the General Services Department, we don’t have an office for disability services. Such an office could do a lot of things: assist various city departments in evaluating their programs and activities to ensure that they are accessible to disabled Nashvillians; conduct training for Metro employees in disability awareness and accommodations; connect disabled residents with resources, job opportunities and health care; support caregivers; advocate for

ILLUSTRATIONS: SARAH PARKER

Every other city with a civil rights history as important as ours — Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta — has a museum dedicated to civil rights. We have the Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library downtown. We need to take the experts we have in that room and give them a building in which to tell the story of Nashville’s long trek toward freedom. BETSY PHILLIPS

MORE BRIDGES OVER THE RIVER

PHILLIPS

No, intercity train travel in general is not terribly fast or efficient, and Amtrak specifically has plenty of problems. But not everything has value that can be expressed with formulae and displayed in the cold arithmetic of a spreadsheet. Trains are the most romantic mode of transportation ever devised by humans, and Nashville’s been without passenger service since Amtrak ended the Chicago-to-Miami Floridian route in 1979. The Biden administration’s infrastructure plan included a Nashvilleto-Savannah, Ga., Amtrak route with stops in Chattanooga, Atlanta and Macon, Ga. Access to the broader network would be made via the Washington, D.C.-to-New Orleans Crescent route via Atlanta. With so much of New Nashville sucking the romance from the city, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a romantic way to get out of town? J.R. LIND

A CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM

10.

There are 10 automobile bridges over the Cumberland in Davidson County.

In 1926, there were two automobile bridges and four permanent ferries. Our population has increased exponentially in a century, but we’ve only added four river crossings. It’s no wonder we all sit in traffic. BETSY PHILLIPS

BRING AMTRAK BACK

2.

routes, at the very least a direct flight to Paris and either Frankfurt or Rome. Flying straight to the Continent opens the traveler up to all the passport-less wonders of the Schengen Area (which flights to Heathrow no longer do — thanks, Brexit) and the intriguing spider web of the European rail system. Oh, and it’d probably be good for Nashville in boring business and tourism ways too. J.R. LIND

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17.

FEWER HOTEL RESTAURANTS, MORE NEIGHBORHOOD ONES

Scanning local business news, you’ve probably noticed that most of the major new restaurant openings lately are in hotels. We get it. Hotels need to offer food as a guest amenity, and spots like Drusie & Darr, Carne Mare, Yolan and The Continental are welcome additions to the dining scene.

However, hotel restaurants usually end up spending an inordinate amount of resources chasing local customers who really don’t like paying $40 to park in a hotel garage before even sitting down to a meal. Please, developers, invest in the neighborhoods we actually live in, like Audrey, Carey Bringle’s Smoking Oasis and Emmy Squared did. We promise to reward you with our patronage!

ILLUSTRATIONS: SARAH PARKER

CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

18.

13.

A RECYCLING SOLUTION

The good news is that recycling has officially resumed after a several-week hiatus. So that’s nice. But this situation was inevitable — notably, councilmember Jeff Syracuse filed a resolution trashing the city’s waste collection contractor Red River back in 2020. But the fact is, Nashvillians aren’t great recyclers regardless of who’s been picking up the cans and cardboard, and who’s been stuffing our landfills to the brim.

Just one-sixth of residential waste actually gets recycled, as the Scene has previously reported, and we have no dedicated glass recycling program. The city is exploring more progressive models, and will argue to a judge to reroute Red River’s contract to a new entity. Hopefully pickup isn’t just more reliable, but more expansive and frequent as well. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

14.

PEOPLE-DRIVEN PARK UPGRADES

departments, which themselves don’t have the resources to invest in grant seekers. We need a team of professionals with the experience and expertise to find money we’re leaving on the table. NICOLE WILLIAMS

16.

MORE LATE-NIGHT DINING OPTIONS

Stumble out of a bar at last call in New York City and you can find virtually any cuisine your heart and stomach desire — foldable pizza slices, cartons of lo mein, piping-hot empanadas. In Nashville? Not so much. Sure, we’ve got some pretty solid bar food and a downtown diner (The Diner) that stays open 24-7 in busy season, and I’d be a bad lifelong Southerner if I didn’t acknowledge Waffle House’s glorious 24-hour offerings. But Music City could use a lot more than that, especially now that the iconic Hermitage Cafe is shuttered (RIP).

D. PATRICK RODGERS

BOLSTER CSA AND COMMUNITY GARDEN PROGRAMS TO COMBAT FOOD INSECURITY

Getting healthy food to people who need it requires lots of simultaneous approaches.

One that could be expanded is providing more resources to community gardens where folks grow their own food, like The Nashville Food Project’s Growing Together program or Nella Pearl Frierson’s Brooklyn Heights Community Garden. Another way to get more healthy ingredients into fridges and pantries: provide a food benefit that covers the cost of enrolling in a communityshared agriculture program. The up-front investment can be difficult to budget for when you don’t have a big income, but the rewards — both in delicious produce and in the adventure of learning to cook whatever shows up in your box — are great. STEPHEN

TRAGESER

19.

MORE STAGES FOR BLACK THEATER MAKERS

It’s no secret that Black theater makers have been creating art in Nashville for generations with projects like SistaStyle Productions, The Destiny Theatre Experi-

ence and TSU’s American Negro Playwright Theatre. But Nashville needs more than that — physical spaces for Black theater makers that are on par with the quality of their visions and capabilities. A prime example of doing this innovatively? The Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s collaboration with Black-led local company Kennie Playhouse Theatre brought a full — and exceptional — run of August Wilson’s Jitney to the stage in August. We need more chances for Black artists to take the lead in ways that don’t tokenize or pander but clear the way for them to reach the broadest audience possible and welcome the next generation of innovators.

ERICA CICCARONE

20.

A BLACK-OWNED MUSIC VENUE IN NORTH NASHVILLE

The rich, deep history of live music in historically Black North Nashville was dealt a major blow when I-40 was built in the 1960s.

It’s long past time to revive it, whether that happens on Jefferson Street, where clubs were historically located, or on Buchanan Street, where arts activity is bubbling.

While there are nightclubs, bars and restaurants owned by Black or brown people in communities across the city, there should be a venue whose primary source of income is ticketed shows, owned and operated by Black music-biz folks. Eric Holt and his partners in concert promotions group Lovenoise have the experience to make it work — someone ought to give them the cash to make it happen. STEPHEN TRAGESER

21.

GIVE TOURISM DOLLARS TO THE ARTS

In Nashville, income from tourism often goes to fund … more tourism.

But in other cities, hotel occupancy tax revenue is often earmarked for arts and cultural programs. Take Chattanooga. Last year, the Chattanooga Tourism Co. used hotel tax collections to award $302,500 in grants to arts, culture and heritage programs, including 26 grants to artists.

In 2018, San Franciscans voted to dedicate

Nashville has a great system of parks — every one of them, from the tiny pocket parks to the gargantuan ones that rival state parks in nature and expanse, with their clutches of supporters and lovers. Even a little green space goes a long way in an evermore paved-over city. Metro has done a better job at maintenance and upgrades and long-term planning for parks (Centennial Park is going to be Tricentennial Park before all its upgrades are done), but every park has its little problems — places where Richland Creek overruns the greenway when it rains, or where the slides are too hot to use in July. A drilled-down but Metro-wide park improvement plan, modeled on the participatory budget process used for Bordeaux and North Nashville this year, would be a boon. J.R. LIND

15.

A DEDICATED GRANTS TEAM

Nashville is one of few large cities without a specialized team dedicated to seeking out and applying for grants and other funding opportunities. Our current Office of Grants Administration works mostly downstream, monitoring grants once they’ve been awarded to ensure compliance.

And in the absence of a more robust grants division, the arduous task of finding and securing new funding sources falls to Metro

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22.

AN ART MUSEUM WITH A PERMANENT COLLECTION

With a permanent collection, a museum can build equity by purchasing work from local artists, and more local artists can have the chance to exhibit museum shows.

While the Frist is a venerable art museum, it doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a permanent collection. Despite that, the Frist is currently hosting a stellar exhibition from LeXander Bryant, a Nashville-based artist who has never had a solo museum show. The quality of the exhibition and the strength of its museum context make a good argument that Nashville can support a collecting museum — what else might be possible if more local artists were afforded the chance to stage museum shows? LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

23.

CHEAP ART-STUDIO AND MUSICIANS’ REHEARSAL SPACE

If you want to be a dynamic destination renowned for art and culture, you’ve got to have places where people can afford to, y’know, make art. The single-family homes and underused commercial buildings that were once within the reach of artists and musicians for these purposes command premium prices in today’s red-hot real estate market, and it seems likely they’ll become more scarce. One partial solution to this complex issue: expand or modify existing grant opportunities like Metro Arts’ Thrive community grants program to channel dollars into dedicated spaces for people to engage in the messy, noisy business of cultural expression. STEPHEN TRAGESER

24.

GET RID OF PSC METALS

This eyesore on the Cumberland has been around long enough to come up time and time again, including in multiple versions of this Scene issue. The argument remains the same. PSC Metals is a big, ugly trash heap in the middle of the city, even if Mick Jagger decided to take a photo there back in October. (Yes, he really did.) Billionaire Carl Icahn sold the company — but not the land — in November. It won’t be easy, but we ought to do whatever it takes to get rid of it. STEVEN HALE

25.

SUPPORT FOR SMALL-BUSINESS OWNERS TO OWN THEIR PROPERTY

The pandemic has exacerbated the pressure from rising real-estate prices that Nashville small-business owners have been facing for years. One way to protect a whole range of cafes, bookstores, venues and other enterprises that contribute so much to the city’s culture and economy is to get the property in the hands of the people running the operation — see crowdfunding campaigns launched in 2021 by East Nashville record store The Groove and historic venue Exit/In to buy their buildings. When he spoke to the Scene last year, Councilmember Jeff Syracuse pointed out that Metro has few tools to help proprietors stay in place.

The Metro Council approved a resolution from Syracuse that could eventually create some tools; the faster that process can move

14

and the more types of small businesses it can serve, the better. The purchase plan Exit/In’s Chris Cobb outlined includes backing from a North Carolina development firm that established a fund specifically designed to get venue proprietors to own their property, and we’d be well-served if more of them took on a similar attitude — think of it as angel investment in culture. STEPHEN TRAGESER

26.

MORE SUPPORT FOR EFFORTS TO ADDRESS THE OVERDOSE CRISIS

27.

MORE NEWS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

2020 was the worst year for drug deaths in Nashville — until 2021 set a new record.

The city (like the state and the country) is in the midst of a devastating epidemic of overdoses driven primarily by fentanyl. And the Metro team dedicated to tracking it and coordinating the city’s response consists of six people. Nashville needs more investment in harm-reduction efforts both within Metro and through organizations like Street Works. STEVEN HALE

More than 140 languages are spoken in Nashville, but finding news outlets in those languages feels like it requires some digging. Many outlets operate on social media, which is savvy and certainly gets results — just look at Nashville Noticias and its founder Vero Salcedo, who was inspired to launch the outlet due to a lack of Spanish news in the city. Facebook has been the main medium for the outlet, with frequent live broadcasts pulling more than 270,000 followers, but partnerships with WPLN and Univision hint at ways Nashville Noticias could grow. Let’s be honest: English-speaking outlets like ours could step up more to get important stories translated. This work feels all the more pressing following the recent death of Eliud González Treviño, who founded the Spanish-language newspaper El Crucero de Tennessee. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

28.

MORE AFFORDABLE DAY CARE OPTIONS

For years, Nashville has had a day care shortage — and like so many things, the problem was exacerbated by the pandemic.

As more people move to Nashville, providers can’t keep up, yielding long wait-lists for day care that can be prohibitively expensive for some families. Metro Nashville Public Schools provides pre-K services at a sliding scale, but it also has a wait-list. In September, the Tennessee Department of Human Services announced its plan to increase child care payment assistance for eligible families, which is great. But unfortunately, that doesn’t open up more spaces for the families who need them. KELSEY BEYELER

29.

MORE STAFF AND SUPPORT FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

A shortage of school staff isn’t just a Nashville problem — it’s a national one. Addressing a staffing shortage on a limited budget is no easy task, and we don’t envy the folks in that position. But Nashville is a city famous for its creativity, and it’s time to get creative and address these shortages.

Current staff and the local teachers union surely have ideas to retain current staffers and attract new ones. Hundreds of millions of dollars of recently approved COVID-19 relief funds should help supplement these costs. KELSEY BEYELER

ILLUSTRATION: SARAH PARKER

1.5 percent of the base hotel tax to support arts and culture programs throughout the city. Even humble Round Rock, Texas, does this! For all that our local artists do to draw tourists to Nashville, we propose that Music City follow suit — call it Room Nights for the Arts. ERICA CICCARONE

30.

A CONTEMPORARY ART NONPROFIT

Nashville needs a dedicated space for contemporary art exhibitions that can push boundaries, change minds and cause fights. That’s not going to happen at the Frist. That’s not a criticism — the Frist exists in a high-culture paradigm that allows it to bring in important, relevant shows by Picasso and Kara Walker and Nick Cave.

But there’s a growing audience for artwork that unsettles and makes waves, and Nashvillians shouldn’t have to leave town to see it. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

31.

A VISUAL ARTS MFA PROGRAM

The paradox about Nashville and an MFA program in visual art is this: The world needs fewer MFA programs, but Nashville needs more. The main benefit of having a local graduate program in studio arts is that talented locals won’t have to leave town to further their education, but an MFA would also raise the caliber of artwork that’s part of Nashville’s visual environment. Imagine the changes that might be possible if locals — not just students and art lovers, but ordinary residents — were exposed to as many senior thesis shows backed by years of formal training and a diverse education as, say, decorative guitars and Johnny Cash murals. The mind reels.

LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

32.

PUBLIC EV CHARGING STATIONS IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME NEIGHBORHOODS

Even the E.U., which has a substantial net-

work of public charging points for electric vehicles, is behind schedule in serving its population, per an audit published last year.

While electric vehicles are making some strong gains here (one close-to-home sign is the massive Ford Motor Co. plant coming to West Tennessee), we’ve got some catching up to do on the charging stations that make EVs a viable alternative to gas-powered cars. Federal funding for this purpose is coming to states as part of President Biden’s infrastructure bill. When some of that gets to Music City, we’ve got to make sure that the wealth spreads further than the Brentwood Target parking lot. Start by identifying the low- and middle-income neighborhoods where at least some EV owners live and take a shot at increasing ownership by installing some rapid chargers. STEPHEN TRAGESER

33.

A NEW FLAG

Don’t get it twisted: Metro Nashville’s seal is amazing. Inscrutable?

Absolutely. Why is that Indigenous man pondering a skull and standing next to some tobacco? Who can know? It rules. Though it features said seal, Metro’s flag nevertheless stinks. Simply sticking a seal on a contrasting background is lazy vexillology. Flags should be bold, distinctive and recognizable at a distance. Gather a working group of artists, designers, community leaders and (ahem) someone who knows something about heraldry, and who might be a beloved local reporter, and fix the flag. J.R. LIND

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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A master of blues-adjacent guitar styles who writes tunes that suggest the influence of old-school singer-songwriters, Cristina Vane has lived in Nashville since 2018. Vane was born in Turin, Italy, and made her bones playing shows in Los Angeles, where she studied fingerstyle guitar and honed her chops. Her 2021 album Nowhere Sounds Lovely reflects her experiences touring the United States. Nowhere is the kind of album that might make you muse upon the almost interstellar distance blues traveled in the 20th century — Skip James never got out of the South as far as I can tell, but his music has settled in places far from the glamorous confines of Tunica, Miss. Caught live, Vane bears down on her instrument, with an immaculate touch that makes every lick resonate. She’s also an interesting songwriter whose tunes often remind me of classic English folk rock. This week, Vane begins a monthlong Thursday night residency at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison. She’s got the stuff to keep on keeping on as a songwriter and singer, and her live performances are the work of a world-class picker. Thursdays in February at 7 p.m. at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, 102 E. Palestine Ave. EDD HURT

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Since my taste tends to the appreciation of eccentricity, creative vulgarity and heedless fusion, I rate Black Pumas as a notable entry in the canon of well-wrought genre pieces — with some undeniably beautiful music included. Also appearing will be Texas singer and songwriter Abraham Alexander. 8 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. EDD HURT

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ANNA HAMILTON, ANX, CARLY BANNISTER & JESSIE CLEMENT

[BLUEBIRD ON YOUR SHOULDER]

A NIGHT AT THE BLUEBIRD FEAT. AMY GRANT, EMMYLOU HARRIS, VINCE GILL & RODNEY CROWELL

There’s never a bad time to catch a show at the Bluebird Cafe, but this Saturday’s songwriter lineup is one for the books.

Amy Grant, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell will come together for a special night of songs and stories, performing together “in the row” to benefit Colby’s Army, a nonprofit organization that offers a number of programs to people in need, including equine therapy and job training. Given the depth of each celebrated artist’s catalog, look for deep cuts, covers and collaborations — a night truly worthy of that overused phrase “only in Nashville.”

The event is sold out, but a handful of lucky walk-up guests will be admitted the night of the show. 9 p.m. at the Bluebird Cafe, 4104 Hillsboro Pike BRITTNEY MCKENNA [EAR TO THE GROUND]

MARCUS FINNIE AND THE ART OF LISTENING

Memphis-raised drum ace Marcus Finnie has kept time for an arm’s-length list of artists in the vicinity of R&B and

soul, including Donna Summer, Billy Preston, Kirk Whalum and India.Arie.

Here in Music City, he’s also well-known as a jazz bandleader whose most recent solo release is a 2020 LP called Live From Layman Studios. Saturday, he’ll bring an improvisational quartet called Marcus Finnie and the Art of Listening to Rudy’s.

Finnie and fellow top-notch drummer Jordan Perlson (whom you might have seen with David Liebman, Adrian Belew or even Matisyahu, among many more) anchor the group on their own separate kits. They’re joined by keyboardist Matt Endahl (who’s played with avant-garde heroes like Henry Grimes and local standouts like Rahsaan Barber) and guitarist Mike Seal (who’s expanded on his jazz chops to enhance the work of lots of bluegrass and roots players like Jerry Douglas and Sierra Hull). Endahl and Seal are composers as well. This night, however, is all about what they can create in the moment by responding to what the others are doing — get over there to see what they come up with. 11 p.m. at Rudy’s Jazz Room, 809 Gleaves St. STEPHEN TRAGESER THEATER

2/3

MUSIC

THU TUNED INTO THIRD FEAT.

[MACBOOZE]

INEBRIATED SHAKESPEARE PRESENTS MACBETH

In its first performance of 2022, Inebriated Shakespeare is as bawdy as ever. For the uninitiated, the setup is simple — eight actors begin the evening by drinking shots, and then attempt to “soliloquy under the influence.” Audience members are encouraged to get in on the fun by purchasing shots for the actors (a $5 donation, which helps support the nonprofit theater company), and maybe even a few for themselves. This weekend’s show features an abbreviated version of Macbeth, and the cast offers a great mix of talent, including Dillon Davis, Angela Gimlin, Jared Taylor, Bryan Royals, Storm Sloan, Logan Dowlen, Kelsie Wallace and Riley Bayer. It’s important to note that Inebriated Shakespeare encourages responsible drinking and designated drivers for both cast and audience. And masks are required to help stop the spread of COVID-19. 8 p.m. at The East Room, 2412 Gallatin Ave. AMY STUMPFL

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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DOWNTOWN

Saturday, February 19

Saturday, February 5 SONGWRITER SESSION

Marc Beeson NOON – 12:45 pm

· FORD THEATER

INTERVIEW AND PERFORMANCE

Florida Georgia Line

Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard

· CMA THEATER

Saturday, February 12 SONGWRITER SESSION

Josh Jenkins NOON – 12:45 pm

NOON – 12:45 pm

· FORD THEATER

Friday, February 25

Sunday, February 6

2:00 – 3:15 pm

SONGWRITER SESSION

Jenn Schott

· FORD THEATER

LIVE IN CONCERT

Colbie Caillat 8:00 pm

· CMA THEATER

Saturday, February 26 SONGWRITER SESSION

Jimmy Fortune NOON – 12:45 pm

· FORD THEATER

Saturday, March 5 SONGWRITER SESSION

Saturday, February 12 CONVERSATION AND PERFORMANCE

Songs of Kacey Musgraves with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk

2:00 – 3:00 pm

· FORD THEATER

Waylon Payne NOON – 12:45 pm

· FORD THEATER

Thursday and Friday, March 10 and 11 LIVE IN CONCERT

Willie Nelson & Family 8:00 pm · CMA THEATER LIMITED AVAILABILITY

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

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Aaron Raitiere plays the early show this Monday at The Basement, and he’s bringing some friends along for the gig. Monday’s show is the first of a three-night Basement residency for the multihyphenate artist and songwriter, who released the new single “Dear Darlin’ ” late

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last year. Raitiere hasn’t yet shared who the friends joining him will be, but given his long list of collaborators and previous tourmates — Anderson East, Brent Cobb and Midland, among many others — it’s likely to be an exciting, dynamic show.

And if you’re looking to make the night a double-header, the excellent Sunny War and Jordan Tice have the night’s 9 p.m. slot. 7 p.m. at The Basement, 1604 Eighth Ave. S. BRITTNEY MCKENNA

THEATER

TUESDAY / 2.08 [STOP TRYING TO MAKE FETCH HAPPEN]

BROADWAY’S MEAN GIRLS

Get in, loser — we’re going to TPAC! Mean Girls arrives at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, and you can bet die-hard fans will show up wearing pink and ready to cheer on some of the show’s most iconic lines. Based on Tina Fey’s hit 2004 film, the story follows Cady, a naive teen who takes on the complicated and cutthroat social hierarchy of a suburban high school after years of being homeschooled by her parents in Africa.

While the Tony-nominated musical promises to hit on much of the same humor we love in the film, it also boasts an award-winning

20

creative team — including book writer Fey, composer Jeff Richmond (Fey’s real-life husband and the musical mind behind Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and 30 Rock), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde), set designer Scott Pask (The Book of Mormon) and director/ choreographer Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon, Spamalot, Something Rotten!). Feb. 8-13 at TPAC’s Jackson Hall, 505 Deaderick St. AMY STUMPFL

WEDNESDAY / 2.09 MUSIC

ENTRANCE AND PARKING LOCATED IN THE BACK OF BUILDING

NASHVILLE BLACK MARKET

In celebration of Black History Month, the Nashville Black Market will set up shop at the Wedge Building this weekend. The annual event, which was first held in 2018, showcases some of the city’s finest makers and creatives, making space for more than 60 Black business owners to sell their goods and services to the public in a lively, communal environment. Look for locally made clothing, artisanal body and beauty products, original artwork and more, all while enjoying DJ sets and a variety of food trucks. And keep an eye out for other Nashville Black Market events throughout the year, like the return of the organization’s Nashville Farmers’ Market residency, which kicks off its 2022 season on March 4.

Admission to this weekend’s market is free.

Noon-6 p.m. Feb. 5-6 at the Wedge Building, 2020 Lindell Ave. BRITTNEY McKENNA

MUSIC

704 18th Ave S. Nashville, TN 37203

[BLACK IS BACK]

[POPPIN’ OFF]

FRAU W/MAJESKA, FRESH LADY & IMY2

The contemporary pop landscape is colorful, with all manner of danceable R&B grooves, electronic production techniques from dance music and hip-hop and plenty of room to blend in the sounds that an artist finds the most inspiring.

Quite a bit of that range is on display at this Wednesday show, so you’ll want to catch the whole thing. Trio IMY2’s most recent single “Kiss” bounces along on a dembow beat, giving a little reggaeton flavor to singer-songwriter Annalise Mahanes’ narrative of confidence.

Majeska, meanwhile, focuses her clear voice on stories of feeling out of place on tracks like “Graceland.” Fresh Lady, who grew up in NYC, leans more into soul with her bluesy voice; “Watermelon,” her 2021 single with Vincent Williams, comes across almost like a lost Janet Jackson tune. Frau has only a few singles on streaming services; while they all feel different, she feels at home in all of them, including last year’s undulating “Pipebomb.” 8 p.m. at The East Room, 2412 Gallatin Ave. STEPHEN TRAGESER THEATER

SHOPPING

Country songs available for artists

[GIMME A “V”]

ACTORS BRIDGE ENSEMBLE PRESENTS THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES

More than 20 years after first introducing Nashville to the global phenomenon that is The Vagina Monologues, Actors Bridge Ensemble is ready to tackle Eve Ensler’s acclaimed play once again. Exploring the female experience from various perspectives, the monologues offer “a wildly divergent gathering of female-identifying voices, including a 6-year-old girl, a 70-something New Yorker, a vagina workshop participant, and a woman who witnessed the birth of her granddaughter.” This year’s cast features a host of familiar faces and local luminaries, including Sharon Gentry, Clare Bowen, Tracy Gershon, Janice Cathey, Heather Hull, Emma Supica, F. Lynne Bachleda, Jenny Littleton, Chelsea Eden Hope, Rachel Agee, Sofia Tosches, Lucy Buchanan, Yemurai Tewogbola, Regina Bell, Heather Lefkowitz, Margaret Morrison Maddux, Candace Jones and Caroline Randall Williams. All proceeds will benefit Act Like a GRRRL — ABE’s groundbreaking writing and performance program for teenage girls.

7 p.m. at City Winery, 609 Lafayette St. AMY STUMPFL

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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WATCH STATH LETS FLATS

British sitcom Stath Lets Flats is among my favorite new-to-me discoveries. Created

by Jamie Demetriou — who co-writes with Robert Popper — the show premiered in 2018 and is streaming on HBO Max. Demetriou stars as Stath Charalambos, a hapless Greek-Cypriot letting agent in his father’s business Michael & Eagle, whose tours of London’s worst flats end in confusion, naps and, in at least one case, a fire. Stath can’t manage to let any flats — that’s accomplished by his more capable co-workers. His sweet if simple sister Sophie — played by the actor’s real-life sis Natasia Demetriou (who also plays vampire Nadja on What We Do in the Shadows) LLE, TN — NASHVI shuffles around with her heart on her THERE’S sleeve and a non sequitur NOT in her pocket.

NOT Stath’s contemporary BOOZEanxieties are not HERE unique, but theirINmanifestation comes via physical comedy, like when he attempts to evict a pigeon from a flat and busts three flat-screen TVs. The series comments on the frightening state of London’s housing market, for sure, but it also has heart. Stath, Sophie and their father Vasos (Christos Stergioglou) are demonstrative in their love and support of one another. When Sophie is called up to an open mic comedy night by her adoring co-worker Al, she tells a long, meandering poop joke without a punch line; but Stath celebrates her performance with gusto, as he does her quiet, tonedeaf freestyling and her graceless dance numbers. It’s hard not to come around to his evaluation, especially when she’s accompanied by her sardonic postwoman best friend Katya. Stath Lets Flats is funny and endearing — but never saccharine.

The show is about getting by, showing up, failing and failing and failing and showing up again anyway. Series three ended with Stath and Michael & Eagle at a crossroads — and there’s still time to pray to the comedy gods that Channel 4 will renew the show for a fourth round. Fingers crossed.

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Despite this, her popularity continued to grow — she even became a streaming sensation when her song “Nobody” was popularized as the soundtrack of a TikTok trend. Mitski recently relocated to Nashville and is making her musical return with Laurel Hell, her sixth studio album and her first since 2018’s Be the Cowboy. Mitski’s signature melancholic and vulnerable lyricism manages to explore an array of genres, from the powerfully poignant ’80s synth-heavy anthems (“Love Me More” and “The Only Heartbreaker”) to tear-jerking ballads (“Heat Lightning” and “Working for the Knife”). Laurel Hell drops Feb. 4 via Dead Oceans. KAHWIT TELA PODCAST

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LISTEN TO THE A24 PODCAST

You might already know A24 for its mastery of unconventional horror and artful indie cinema — but you might not have heard about the entertainment company’s hidden gem that’s just as quirky and refreshing: The A24 Podcast. The Jan. 19 episode features a conversation between Hunter Schafer, who plays the beloved and glittering Jules on the HBO Max series Euphoria, and the radiant entity known as Lorde. There is a nourishing and refreshing stimulation in hearing the two sift through topics ranging from trans-girl magic, the elusiveness of teenagedom, commodification of art, their shared affinity for ’90s magazines, astrological alignment, and otherworldliness in Antarctica. With no hosts and no ads, there’s nothing to disrupt the illusion that you’re sitting in the same room as them, listening to Lorde talk about her poor journaling habits or Schafer discussing her wish to see a trans-girl love story on screen. Enriched with raw and unfiltered conversation, this particular episode is also studded with thoughtful dialogue on existential ideas, like what it means to be an engine for pop culture.

ASHLEY BARRIENTOS

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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1/31/22 2:53 PM

LIVE MUSIC | URBAN WINERY | RESTAURANT | BAR | PRIVATE EVENTS MARCH 8

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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FOOD AND DRINK

FINE DINING The inaugural monthlong Dine Nashville event aims to give restaurants a shot in the arm

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

S

ay what you will about the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp and its chief executive Butch Spyridon — you have to admire, or at least recognize, the NCVC’s laser focus on attracting visitors and creating revenue for local businesses. The week between Christmas and New Year’s used to be a dead period for Nashville hospitality until the Music City Bowl and New Year’s Eve festivities turned Music City into a popular holiday destination. April was another slow time for restaurants and hotels as locals and potential tourists preferred to spend their time on a beach instead of in town — and so the NCVC bundled a few already-existing events into a promotion they named “Awesome April,” smoothing out the spring revenue curve for Nashville’s hospitality industry.

The NCVC’s latest proactive initiative aims at promoting Nashville’s culinary scene during the traditionally sluggish dining month of February. Now that the Nashville Local (née Nashville Originals) group of independent restaurants has essentially abdicated its role as the organizers of Nashville Restaurant Week, the NCVC has stepped into the void to create a monthlong, multipronged celebration named Dine Nashville: The Music City Way. Lots of cities have restaurant weeks, but Nashville’s aims to be a little different thanks to three different options for diners to celebrate local eateries. The usual model features restaurants offering discounted prix-fixe menus to encourage diners to discover new spots or revisit old favorites, and Dine Nashville will indeed feature these sorts of opportunities from Feb. 21 to 27. On Feb. 7, the event website (VisitMusicCity.com/Dine-Nashville) will showcase the menus and open up for reservations, so you can pick from brunch, lunch and dinner deals ranging from $20 to $50 at destinations including stalwarts like The Loveless Cafe, Sinema, Elliston Soda Shop, Urban Grub and Nicky’s Coal Fired, as well as newer options such as Sadie’s, Jane’s Hideaway and The Hart.

In addition to discounted set-price meals, Dine Nashville will also feature discounts and deals during the last week of February at smaller spots you might not typically consider for a full sit-down dining experience. NCVC president Deana Ivey explains how these companies fit into the celebration: “Nashville has so many unique things to enjoy, we just wanted to include places like Goo Goo Clusters and Tennessee Brew Works.” Other dining options included in this tier of Dine Nashville discounts include all Nashville locations of Hattie B’s, 6th & Peabody, the new Cafe at Bobby, Pie Town Taco Company and Diskin Cider.

Undoubtedly, the most exciting component of Dine Nashville will be a series of special chef collaboration dinners

KAHLIL ARNOLD

PAT MARTIN

JULIA SULLIVAN

MANEET CHAUHAN

ANDREW CARMELLINI

DEB PAQUETTE SOME OF THE CHEFS PARTICIPATING IN DINE NASHVILLE

taking place throughout the month. This fun idea came out of a task force of chefs and restaurateurs that the NCVC put together to help plan the experiences. When Ivey met with representatives of Strategic Hospitality and chefs including Maneet Chauhan, Pat Martin and Vivek Surti, they were especially eager to share kitchens with industry friends.

“Nashville is known for being such a creative city,” says Ivey. “The task force came up with the idea of doing it for a month and featuring the chef collaborations. It’s such a great way to celebrate the chefs and the restaurants.”

Some of these collaboration events have already sold out — diners are hungry to see, for instance, the results of chefs Sean Brock and Tyler Brown in the same kitchen for the first time since they worked together at the Capitol Grille at the Hermitage in the early 2000s. Other inspired planned pairings include a Valentine’s dinner featuring Ryan Poli hosting Black Dynasty Secret Ramen House’s Chef Rooney at Bobby, Deb Paquette cooking with Kahlil Arnold at Arnold’s Country Kitchen, Trevor Moran offering the chance for pitmaster

Pat Martin to show off his culinary chops at Moran’s Locust, and James Beard Award winners Gerard Craft of Pastaria and R.J. Cooper cooking together at Saint Stephen.

Maneet Chauhan and Julia Sullivan will showcase newcomers to town as they welcome Andrew Carmellini of Carne Mare and The Dutch and Joshua Walker of Xiao Bao Biscuit to Chaatable and Henrietta Red, respectively. In other cities, some restaurateurs believe one restaurant must lose in order for theirs to win. But Chauhan and Sullivan are welcoming and introducing Carmellini and Walker to their own fans — and that’s the titular Music City Way. Another important element of Dine Nashville is its charitable component, with a portion of the events’ proceeds going to The Giving Kitchen, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that has opened operations in Nashville.

The Giving Kitchen provides emergency assistance to food-service workers through financial support and a network of community resources with the goal of strengthening the community of food-service workers by offering compassionate care.

“The Giving Kitchen has done such a great job helping to prop up service workers

during this difficult time,” says Ivey. “We wanted to make sure to do our part to help support their efforts.”

This is the first edition of Dine Nashville, but Ivey expects it won’t be the last. “We hope it will be ongoing,” she says. “It’s already been great to work with all these restaurants, and the reception has been even better than expected. We’re being realistic about it, but hopefully it will really take off.

As a new event, we weren’t expecting a lot in the first year, but we’re off to a great start!”

Offering discounted meals is always a tricky proposition for restaurants unless it encourages return visits in the future.

(Remember Groupon? Seen much about them lately?) Trading potential profits for accelerated cash flow isn’t really the aim of programs like Dine Out Nashville.

“We want to give locals and tourists a reason to visit our restaurants in February,” says Ivey. “If the restaurant business is better than projected in February, that’s a win. Any added revenue is a success. We’re already receiving a lot of great PR about the event, and with this kind of response, I don’t see how we can’t continue it.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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1/31/22 4:46 PM

ART

This month’s First Saturday features new faces in new spaces

BY JOE NOLAN

L

ast month’s art crawl kicked off the winter arts season a week late due to New Year’s holiday delays, and with some renewed anxieties due to record-breaking COVID numbers. Luckily, February is finding the Omicron spike declining, with case numbers heading back down in the right direction. It also marks the first month of the new shape of the Wedgewood-Houston art scene, which went through a sudden reshuffling in the face of closures, upgrades and expansions at the end of 2021.

WEDGEWOOD-HOUSTON

Some of the biggest art happenings on Saturday night are at the shifting spaces at The Packing Plant in Wedgewood-Houston.

The Packing Plant is the hub of Nashville’s contemporary art scene, and its continually evolving roster of galleries and maker spaces means the location is always serving up new sensations, experiences and services. The big news for Saturday night is Coop’s first show in the building’s large central gallery, which was formerly occupied by Channel to Channel. Coop’s inaugural exhibition in its new digs is the annual New Members display, which actually includes artists who will be familiar to Nashville’s gallery-going regulars. Lisa Bachman Jones is a new Coop member, but she’s already a local art scene veteran whose work was a highlight of Rymer Gallery’s local artist roster.

Jones investigates liminal spaces and states in her multimedia practice, which includes painting, sculpture, video and more. Jones’ borderless explorations of mediums make her work intrinsically interesting regardless of the content. Yanira Vissepo’s work will also be familiar to Coop fans, who will recognize the artist’s Japanese-woodblock-inspired printmaking from her time as a Coop artistin-residence back in 2020. The show also includes Beth Reitmeyer’s colorful, immersive installation work, and a display of digital art by graphic designer Quintin Watkins.

Coop’s former cozy northwest gallery is now a new satellite space for the Grassmere-based Modfellows Gallery. The gallery will christen its new spot in the heart of the city’s must-see art scene with an exhibition

by East Nashville artist Ryan Michael Noble.

In the 1980s, street art aesthetics broke into art galleries, but the influences of artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat have arguably never been greater. Noble’s designer-y colorful abstract compositions once called to mind Kandinsky and Calder, but the artist has taken his penchant for mark-making to an extreme that can’t help but bring Haring’s sure-handed doodling to mind. That said, Haring’s work in New York subway tunnels has been characterized as contemporary cave painting. Noble’s work is ultimately less figurative — it’s the kind of painting that has as much to do with manuscript and calligraphic traditions as it does with modernist abstraction. Noble opens

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Language at Modfellows on Saturday night.

Basquiat’s influence is plainly apparent in the inaugural art gallery show of Nashville comedian Josh Black, who opens Don’t Forget to Laugh at Julia Martin Gallery on Saturday night. Black’s crude, colorful figures borrow generously from Basquiat, but Black also recognizes the often-overlooked humor in Basquiat’s exaggerated scribbles of skulls, bugs, cops and boxers accompanied by the artist’s punning textual asides.

Black injects his own sense of the absurd into his social commentary, and keeps this from being just another activist art show.

And now for something completely different: Vadis Turner opens Window Treatments at Zeitgeist on Saturday. Zeitgeist continues to opt out of evening receptions while these

NEW MEMBERS AT COOP

Omicron numbers are still dropping, but they’ll be open from noon until 6 p.m. for visitors who just have to be the first to see this display of massive sculptures from one of Nashville’s most accomplished creators.

That said, visitors who are choosing to hit evening receptions on Saturday should still plan for an after-hours run by Zeitgeist: Turner won a Current Art Fund/Tri-Star Arts grant to help fund this exhibition, which also includes lighting and projection mapping by Mike Kluge and Jonny Kingsbury, with sound design by Emery Dobyns. Visitors can enjoy the illuminated display and hear its hissing and cracking soundscape from the street, and the installation will be visible through Zeitgeist’s windows 24 hours a day through March 19.

DOWNTOWN

Michael Ray Nott is one of the most productive and enthusiastic creators in Nashville’s broad and diverse street photography scene. While lots of lensers focus on vintage architecture, broken-down barns or demolition, Nott has found a home in the live

music venues, tourist traps, bridal booze busts and protest parades that converge in downtown Nashville. Nott apprenticed under the legendary street photographer Garry Winogrand, and the controlled chaos in Nott’s crowded compositions and his intrinsic empathy for his subjects speak to lessons well-learned. Nott’s Honkytonx exhibition at Chauvet Arts features massive prints of images of the storefront windows of Nashville’s famous Lower Broadway hangs. The pictures recall photographic double exposures, but here, Nott is lensing the dance-floor action inside bootscootin’ country music clubs, while also capturing the surrounding street scenes reflected in the window glass. The results are weirdly immersive flat images that offer panoramic perspectives. The works are installed in LED displays, and recall the glowing nighttime signage that draws thirsty bridesmaids, hopeful songwriters, soapbox preachers and all-purpose hellions down to the river nearly every night of the week.

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“THRESHOLD AND FOLDED FLOOR,” LISA BACHMAN JONES

CRAWL SPACE: FEBRUARY 2022

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CULTURE

FIGHT CLUB

BY HANNAH HERNER

T

he key feature in armored combat is the armor itself — because the hits are real. In Nashville, another key part is the hug that armored fighters share before and after they battle one anNASHVILLE ARMORED COMBAT other.

2416 MUSIC VALLEY DRIVE Armored NASHVILLEARMOREDCOMBAT.COM combat is more jiu-jitsu or mixed martial arts than live-action role play, and requires historically accurate armor from the late-14th to early-17th century. In three rounds lasting two minutes apiece, fighters go at each other one on one, or sometimes in groups. Typically fights are limited to weapon strikes, but in a “pro fight,” punches and kicks are allowed. There’s an elaborate rule system and a judge in the ring to decide the winner, except when someone bows out due to pain.

When Mickey Guida got interested in the sport in fall 2020, there wasn’t much of a community in Nashville. So he traveled to get training from more experienced fighters and brought his knowledge back to Nashville to train fighters in his literal backyard — for free.

Guida says the sport carried him through a time when he was struggling with his mental health. Armored combat, he says, tends to involve a bit of inner-child work for participants — he always dreamed of being a knight. Within a few months of that backyard training, he took a small team to a competition in Ohio and ended up winning gold.

“That’s why I started teaching classes a year ago for free and have been trying to get as many people on board,” Guida says.

“Everybody’s got their issues, right? This is definitely a good sport, a good community, to help you work through those [issues] to make you feel a little less alone.”

On Jan. 15, Nashville Armored Combat celebrated the grand opening of an indoor facility for training. Ten area fighters put up seed money, including co-owner and co-manager Guida. There are already five men’s teams, and one of the priorities of the investor group was to get armor to support a women’s team. The Alicorns, founded in November, became the first women’s armored combat team in the state.

Megan Themm, a roller derby and hurling veteran, was the first woman to join Guida’s backyard training sessions. She soon convinced Kelsey Leta, who’d never participated in any contact sports, to join in. The pair now serve as co-captains of The Alicorns, and invite femme-presenting fighters to join in practices at the new facility on Tuesdays.

“Just like with anything else, people are going to show up once and realize it’s not for them,” Themm says.

“Which is fine because it’s weird as fuck and a lot of work,” Leta adds, laughing.

Before fighters ever enter the ring, they must first strengthen their neck muscles and shoulders just to be able to hold up a heavy

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“JUST LIKE WITH ANYTHING ELSE, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SHOW UP ONCE AND REALIZE IT’S NOT FOR THEM,” THEMM SAYS. “WHICH IS FINE BECAUSE IT’S WEIRD AS FUCK AND A LOT OF WORK,” LETA ADDS.

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

Nashville Armored Combat trains fighters as friends

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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sword and shield and balance a helmet on their head. Then training includes swinging axes at tires, striking one another with foam swords, and practicing picking up and throwing an opponent to the ground. Part of being the only women’s team in the state is inevitably fighting your own teammates — that means there are both words of encouragement (“You’re pretty!”) and playful egging on (“Come on, I was such a bitch to you last practice, I threw you so many times!”).

For the co-captains, getting into the confrontational sport has actually had its healing properties. In the ring and in practice, they’re allowed — and in fact encouraged — to be loud, to be violent and to take up space. Nashville Armored Combat is a place for consensual violence, but hitting and being hit also have the potential to bring up old triggers.

“So far, everyone has felt safe and comfortable enough to express, ‘This is what’s triggering me and why, and this is what I need,’ ” Leta says. “And we’re able to encourage each other. It’s very, very healing.

I probably wouldn’t be as OK as I am today without this.”

As a single mother, Themm also appreciates the fact that training gives her tools to

protect her son should the need arise.

“You don’t have control of what the other person is doing,” she says. “And even sometimes, it’s a pure reaction in what you’re doing. So that loss of control. I mean, I know I have control issues. I don’t like to be in the passenger seat. It’s very, very different and freeing in a way. So for me, that’s what it is.

That’s why it’s so emotional.”

Starting in February, the facility will host fight nights on Wednesdays and broadcast the fights to local bars. Compared to Europe, the United States has some catching up to do as far as interest in the sport — especially from spectators, Guida says. It’s a sport that requires costly equipment and gaining physical strength, but Nashville Armored Combat — which rents out equipment from its armory — makes it doable for more people.

“When I teach my students, I tell them the reason why we work hard and train so hard isn’t to win,” says Guida. “It’s to honor the sacrifices that our opponent makes.

Because it takes a lot to just do the sport. It takes a lot of training and money and time to be able to do this at all. We should give them a good show. So we come out as friends. We usually leave as friends.”

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BOOKS

NAME YOUR OWN SWEETNESS Destiny O. Birdsong’s protagonists are true to themselves in Nobody’s Magic

BY JANE MARCELLUS

RUMOURS: FLEETWOOD MAC TRIBUTE // FEB 11 W/NOMENCLATURE

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Stambaugh, Chris Emmert, & Nick Emmert (9pm) and The Great American Canyon Band

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T

he morning after Agnes Cherie Kirkkendoll first spends the night with her new boyfriend Primus, he comes into the kitchen to announce unceremoniously, “I read up on you.” Agnes, one of three protagonists in Destiny O. Birdsong’s Nobody’s Magic, has reason to believe the police are after her and is afraid she’s been in the news. “What about?” she asks.

“That thing you have. You’re albino, right?”

NOBODY’S MAGIC

BY DESTINY O. BIRDSONG GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING 368 PAGES, $28 BIRDSONG WILL DISCUSS HER NOVEL ONLINE 6:30 P.M. TUESDAY, FEB. 8, VIA THE PARNASSUS BOOKS FACEBOOK PAGE. While Agnes — whose Ph.D. in literature makes her Dr. Kirkkendoll — was cooking his meal, Primus had been on Google, finding out what made her skin so pale, particularly for a Black woman. The magic powers sounded cool, he tells her, especially seeing in the dark.

“We? Magic?” Agnes thinks to herself.

She’s not magic. She is just a woman looking for a little self-respect in a world where extremely light skin means never quite fitting in racially. When she was a child, other Black children called her “KKK” because of the three k’s in her last name, a humiliation her “cinnamon-colored spitfire” sister Berniece never suffered. She doesn’t bother to tell Primus the label offends her, that she is not “albino” but a “person with albinism.”

Described by its publisher as a triptych novel, Nobody’s Magic is three novellalength stories, linked thematically by albinism and the protagonists’ desire to live life on their own terms. Like Agnes in the story titled “Mind the Prompt,” each is young, smart and attuned to the power plays of those around her.

In “Drive,” an only child named Suzette feels smothered by her controlling father and the overprotective love of both parents and her best friend Drina. Homeschooled since age 7 after a classmate’s family threatened her with voodoo because of her albinism, she is, at 20, still rarely allowed to leave the house. She can’t drive a car, both because no one has taught her and because she needs special glasses her father won’t get her. She’s never had a job or dated, but when both a paid position doing work she loves and Doni — a young auto detailer in her father’s body shop — come into her life, she finds a way to renegotiate her situation.

Meanwhile, in “Bottled Water,” Maple has a complicated relationship with her mother Brenda May, who gave birth to her at notquite-15 and named her for the syrup her own mother wouldn’t let her have, “because sometimes you gotta name your own sweetness.” When Brenda May is killed in a driveby shooting, Maple locks herself in a motel room to cope with the loss of her best friend.

Birdsong’s work has appeared in literary publications including Paris Review’s The Daily, African American Review and Catapult — as well as in the Nashville Scene. She is the author of Negotiations, a book of poetry long-listed for the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award. She has also won the Academy of American Poets Prize. Originally from Louisiana, she holds both a Ph.D. and an MFA from Vanderbilt and lives in Nashville.

In a note in the back of Nobody’s Magic, Birdsong, who has albinism, dedicates the book to “every person with albinism on the globe, in sometimes-precarious states of acceptance, love, and safety.” She hopes they will “see the possibility to be beheld in nuanced ways.” The dedication seems suited to Birdsong’s characters. Though each cleareyed, complex protagonist has albinism and hails from Shreveport, La., they are otherwise not at all alike. If we could enter fictional space and move Suzette, Maple and Agnes into the same room at the same time, they might not have much in common.

Suzette would probably talk about hair and the collection of Coach bags her daddy has bought her, while Maple would grieve for her mom and Agnes would talk about the stultifying, low-paid work available to those with a Ph.D. and no tenure-track university job. Despite these differences, I found myself relating to each.

The minor characters are unique too.

Every single person in this book has an understandable — though not always laudable — desire. In “Drive,” Suzette’s father is controlling because he is afraid for his little girl, even though she is now an adult. In “Mind the Prompt,” Primus wants to settle down with “the One,” and Berniece wants to transcend family and cultural difficulties by moving up the social ladder through marriage. Even when, like Agnes, the characters mess up, we’re right there with them, understanding their motivation. Birdsong’s prose sings with a poet’s sensibility, so each story is carried along with pitch-perfect rhythm and nuanced understanding of human foibles. In the end, Agnes, Suzette and Maple are true to themselves, stepping into their own power and defying predictable solutions.

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

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

SAY THE QUIET PART LOUD Erin Rae amplifies the small voice inside on Lighten Up

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

PHOTO: BREE FISH

R

ight before the COVID-19 pandemic forced most of us indoors, Erin Rae decided to get quiet. The locally based singer-songwriter had recently arrived home from tour in support of her LIGHTEN UP OUT FRIDAY, 2018 debut album FEB. 4, VIA GOOD Putting on Airs. She MEMORY/THIRTY TIGERS was looking to get back in touch with herself in the way life on the road, often loud and chaotic, typically doesn’t allow. She also hoped to get some writing done.

So Rae, whose second album Lighten Up is out Friday, carved out a space for herself.

She set up shop in a friend’s new Airstream that just happened to be parked — and vacant — at her house. Inspired by Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals: Women at Work, which offers glimpses at the creative routines of artists like Zadie Smith and Frida Kahlo, Rae devised her own set of rituals and built a “cocoon,” as she describes it, in an effort to reconnect with her own creativity.

“I would just go in and set a timer for a couple of hours, put my phone on airplane mode and just try to write in a stream of consciousness,” she tells the Scene. “I brought some colored pencils in there. I brought my guitar and a notepad and let myself play and didn’t really have super difficult expectations.”

It wasn’t long before the solitude Rae cultivated for herself in early 2020 became the norm for many people, as COVID-19 took hold and ground the music industry to a sudden, screeching halt. Already tending both to a blossoming new album and a personal transformation, Rae took the time the pandemic afforded to dig further into her introspection.

And songs followed. Those initial writing sessions were fruitful, producing four pieces that would end up on Lighten Up. Among those songs is “Cosmic Sigh,” an early single and one of the album’s standout moments. As its title suggests, “Cosmic Sigh” takes cues from psychedelia and cosmic Americana, expanding upon — as does the rest of Lighten Up — the lush folk of Rae’s debut. The result is a heady sonic foundation for her deeply reflective lyrics.

Rae’s journey to that new sound took her through various eras of music — British psych folk of the ’60s and ’70s, like Kevin Ayers and Pete Dello, being an especially potent touchstone — and led her to a new set of collaborators, including the album’s producer, Jonathan Wilson. Wilson performs as a solo artist in addition to producing, and Rae first met him through Hiss Golden Messenger’s MC Taylor at the Newport Folk Festival in 2019. The gentle psychedelia of Wilson’s own music felt akin to what Rae

was creating, and she reached out to see if he would like to work with her.

“I thought it would be really special, and cool and fun, to explore working with someone that I hadn’t worked with before,” she explains. “And somebody I don’t know very well. … It felt like I had gone on a kind of soul journey, basically, to make the decision to go record with different people.

It felt very exciting and magical.”

Guests on the album include Kevin Morby, who lends vocals to the twangily hypnotic “Can’t See Stars,” and Ny Oh, who provides backing vocals throughout the LP. After taking precautions to isolate and test for COVID, the group recorded the album at Wilson’s studio in Topanga Canyon in February of last year. It was, at first, a nerve-wracking prospect for Rae, who was used to recording alongside friends in Nashville. Before long, the environment became fertile ground for collaboration and experimentation.

“By the second day, I could see that they had known each other for a while,” she

says of the album’s band, which includes Jake Blanton (Bedouine, Beck) and Drew Erickson (Lana Del Rey, The Killers). “It just brought this very familiar, fun energy.

It felt like being in the van with my band. It helped relax my whole personal vibe. I was like, ‘I know how to hang with these dudes.’ ” The resulting album is denser and more sonically complex than Putting on Airs.

That evolution matches Lighten Up’s lyrical themes, which trend away from traditional narrative and instead conjure states of mind. The record manages to capture that sense of a stream of consciousness Rae homed in on with those early writing sessions, while maintaining a sort of cleareyed wisdom. Opener “Candy + Curry” is something like spacey bossa nova, lyrically inspired by the slower pace of pandemic living. “Modern Woman” playfully skewers tropes of femininity while a tight rhythm section keeps things moving. And “Lighten Up and Try,” a co-write with Andrew Combs, is a quiet reminder that periods of solitude are best followed by getting back out there.

At its core, Lighten Up is a record about accepting one’s own complex human nature, and how doing so opens us up to the humanity of others. “Lighten up” could mean “chill out,” sure, but taken more literally, it’s an invitation to live an integrated life, one that sees imperfections as parts of a divine whole rather than heavy burdens to be carried around privately.

The fact that Rae wrote Lighten Up while experiencing such personal revelations lends the songs a buoyant immediacy, as though she’s reaching out through the speakers to share a secret.

“At that time, I was doing some healing work and just realizing the severity of criticism I’ve kind of wielded towards myself growing up,” Rae says. “But I was presented with the realization that literally all humans are flawed, and that’s part of what makes this human experience. And I think, for a long time, my go-to system of operating was to try and prevent other people from seeing my imperfections — which ends up, oftentimes, creating more chaos.”

A few hours after our conversation, Rae reached out to share the full version of a quotation from François Fénelon she had referenced. The 17th-century theologian, educator and author — who was Archbishop of Cambrai during the reign of Louis XIV and tutor to the king’s grandson — felt that being compassionate toward yourself is vital.

“As the light increases, we see ourselves to be worse than we thought,” wrote Fénelon. “We are amazed at our former blindness as we see issuing forth from the depths of our heart a whole swarm of shameful feelings, like filthy reptiles crawling from a hidden cave. We never could have believed that we had harbored such things, and we stand aghast as we watch them gradually appear. But while our faults diminish, the light by which we see them waxes brighter, and we are filled with horror. Bear in mind, for your comfort, that we only perceive our malady when the cure begins.”

This “cure” is at the heart of Lighten Up, which encourages you to get quiet alongside Rae so that you might hear your own voice a little better too. As she sings in “Can’t See Stars”: “I spoke until I drew in / Near a thousand other voices / But among the murmuration / Found I could not hear my own / Funny, you would think it would be cause for celebration / Lately, though, I’m finding I prefer to be alone.”

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MUSIC

YOUTH OF TODAY

Amid the resurgence of Aughtsvintage emo and pop punk, confronting the toxic culture beneath the nostalgia trip

BY MEGAN SELING

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PHOTO: BRITTON STRICKLAND

O

n Jan. 18, ticketing and touring giant Live Nation announced a festival called When We Were Young, set for October in Las Vegas. The bill includes more than 65 acts that constitute an “epic lineup of emo and rock bands from the past two decades.” Genre stalwarts like My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Taking Back Sunday and Dashboard Confessional will perform at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, a stadium on the Strip with a capacity of 85,000. More than a million fans liked the announcement posts across various social media. When tickets went on sale, they sold out so quickly that organizers added two additional days to the event to meet demand.

This wasn’t unpredictable. The emo and pop punk of the Aughts is experiencing a resurgence as the fans who were in their teens and 20s at the time revisit the songs that soundtracked some of their most formative years. And I get it. Nostalgia flooded my synapses when I saw the poster, too. When I was young, I saw several of those acts get their start in cramped clubs, community centers and theaters too broken-down to be used for anything but all-ages punk shows. Some of their songs were with me when I thought my entire world was ending — heartache that would pale in comparison to the wrecking balls of adulthood, it turned out. But I still listen to bands like AFI, Bright Eyes, Jimmy Eat World and Alkaline Trio — all of whom are slated to perform — with wistful appreciation.

But when I was young, I was also groped in mosh pits. When I was young, I was treated as a commodity — a groupie at the rock show who could be belittled and dismissed. When I was young, bad behavior in the male-dominated music scene largely went unchecked. Because when I was young, some of the most popular punk and emo bands were contributing to a toxic culture that today’s rose-colored sentimentality has all but erased.

When I was young, the worst thing a woman could do was break a man’s heart.

It was a crime punishable by death. There are multiple revenge fantasies on Senses Fail’s 2004 album Let It Enfold You. In the song “You’re Cute When You Scream,” Buddy Nielsen sings about pushing his heartbreaker off the top of a building and then running down the stairs so he can see her face as it hits the street. In the song “Choke on This,” Nielsen is so resentful over a failed relationship he asks the girl he admires to “play Russian roulette” — “I’ll be your cheap novelty / Blow your brains out on me,” he sings.

Taking Back Sunday loved a bloody

BONNAROO 2019 metaphor too. In the song “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut from the Team),” singer Adam Lazarra equates being cheated on to a bullet through the head. “Which would you prefer? / My finger on the trigger or me face-down, down across your floor?” he asks. The woman who betrayed him gets to choose: commit murder or witness suicide?

Alkaline Trio is guilty of it too. Their creepiness factor is lessened by the fact that the band has long made tongue-incheek morbidity a part of their punk rock shtick, but it’s hard not to feel a small twinge of “What the fuck?” when listening to a song like “Radio,” in which singer Matt Skiba soothes his sorrow by hoping his ex gets electrocuted in the bath.

Are these songs more an example of men awkwardly spilling their guts through clunky metaphors rather than actual threats against real people? Sure. It ain’t called “emo” for nothing. Nielsen never pushed someone off a building; Lazarra never held a gun to his head and dared a woman to pull the trigger. The genre’s flair for drama is partly what makes it so intriguing to young people who are trying to make sense of their own overwhelming emotions.

But what is often forgotten when people recall these good ol’ days is that the fantasies sometimes did bleed over into reality. Young women and girls were often objectified, exploited and abused. Many tried to tell us then, and many more have shared their stories since finding support in movements like #MeToo and Time’s Up. In 2020 Paramore singer Hayley Williams told Vulture about some of the sexism and harassment she experienced on a regular basis in the early and mid-Aughts.

While playing Warped Tour in 2005, fans threw condoms at her. While touring with the band Straylight Run, a friend of the band — who was about a decade older than Williams at the time — made a comment about Williams’ vagina.

“I can’t remember what this guy said because I saw red so fast,” she told Vulture, “but he referred to my pussy. I was literally 16, about to turn 17. Everyone was laughing.

No one paid fucking attention.”

British metal band Bring Me the Horizon is set to co-headline all three days of When We Were Young — theirs is one of the more prominently featured names on the festival’s poster, right below Paramore’s.

The band’s singer Oli Sykes was arrested in 2007 for allegedly peeing on a woman who turned down his advances after a show. She said a member of the band or their party — it was never established exactly who — also threw a bottle of Jägermeister at her head, resulting in a gash above her eyebrow.

Those charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, but Sykes made headlines again in 2016 when his ex-wife Hannah Pixie Snowdon posted on Instagram that he “slapped and spat on” her “on a number of occasions.” In the same statement, she wrote, “I wasn’t the first girl this entire pattern happened to.” Sykes has not been charged, and he’s still performing with Bring Me the Horizon.

Just underneath Bring Me the Horizon on the WWWY poster is A Day to Remember, a band that has toured with Bring Me the Horizon in the past. In 2020, A Day to Remember’s bassist Josh Woodward was accused of sexual misconduct for an incident that allegedly happened years prior. Woodward responded at the time,

writing, “the events described never happened and these allegations are false.”

Woodward threatened legal action, and the tweet containing the allegations was removed. The allegations resurfaced last year and Woodward left the band in October.

Then there’s Pierce the Veil, a hardcore band from San Diego. In 2017, drummer Mike Fuentes left the band after one woman accused him of statutory rape and another alleged he solicited nude pictures from her when she was a minor.

Both incidents allegedly happened in the 2000s. Fuentes performed with Pierce the Veil during a livestream in April 2020, but after fans asked about his presence in the video, band members confirmed he wasn’t involved with current projects. They haven’t announced who will replace him at When We Were Young.

There are also accusations of sexual misconduct or assault against former members of Dance Gavin Dance, Motionless in White and Black Veil Brides, three more bands slated to perform. While the men who stand accused will not be performing with their respective bands, it’s true that many of the alleged incidents happened years ago, when they were in the bands whose names now adorn the flyer, back when we were young.

The festival is being sold as a stroll down Memory Lane — elder emos, gather ’round and relive the days of yore! But when we were young, we ignored the red flags.

When we were young, we turned a blind eye to abusive behavior. Maybe it’s time to recognize that when we were young, things weren’t so great after all.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

BEEGIE ADAIR, 1937-2022

THU 2.03  BROTHER MOSES

Friends and colleagues remember a phenomenal pianist and pillar of Nashville’s jazz community

PHOTO: GREGORY BYERLINE

W/ SPUDDY

BY RON WYNN

H

er magnificent accomplishments as a pianist and bandleader are only part of the reason Bobbe Long Adair, better known as “Beegie,” was so beloved across the Nashville VISIT BEEGIEADAIR.COM musical community FOR MORE ON ADAIR’S — especially among MUSIC jazz musicians and fans. She gave immensely of herself as a performer, to colleagues who became friends and to up-and-coming musicians. Adair died at her home in Franklin on Jan. 23 at age 84.

Over a career of six-and-a-half decades, Adair collaborated with numerous jazz, pop, rock and country greats as a session musician. You hear her on such highly regarded albums as Mickey Newbury’s ’Frisco Mabel Joy and Levon Helm’s American Son, and performing on programs that featured stars singing with a house band, like The Johnny Cash Show and The Ralph Emery Show.

Adair earned more recognition as a bandleader in the 1980s, when she began playing jazz around town more frequently, and she released her first album under her own name, Escape to New York, in 1991. She played on more than 100 releases and made more than 30 records with her namesake trio, which included drummer Chris Brown and bassist and Nashville Jazz Workshop cofounder Roger Spencer. Adair took the trio to Carnegie Hall, and performed at legendary NYC jazz club Birdland in a duo with vocalist, longtime friend and manager Monica Ramey.

Among an array of honors, Adair was one of about 1,600 pianists worldwide named as a Steinway Artist. She was also recognized among the Jazz Journalists Association’s Jazz Heroes in 2013. All these achievements don’t fully convey the admiration and respect she enjoyed among her peers.

“She was someone I was totally in sync with, both musically and otherwise,” Spencer tells the Scene. “We enjoyed the same musical artists, had the same tastes in food. She also was a fantastic storyteller with a wicked sense of humor.”

“It was such an inspiration to stand behind her and watch her put things together,” adds Lori Mechem, also a co-founder of the Nashville Jazz Workshop and Adair’s fellow pianist. “There weren’t many women pianists around when we came here, and there sure weren’t that many playing jazz. She was such a great pianist and made it look so easy.”

Born and raised in Cave City, Ky., Adair graduated from Western Kentucky University with a B.S. in music education. She arrived in Nashville in 1961 and immediately had a major impact on the embryonic local jazz scene. In an email, trumpeter and longtime Nashville jazz mainstay George Tidwell remembers an early meeting with Adair after he relocated here from Memphis in the early 1960s and how it aided his career.

“I sought out Beegie as soon as I was settled, went to hear her playing a solo job in Printers Alley, played a few tunes with her, and was an immediate fan for life,” says Tidwell. “We couldn’t have guessed we’d also become close friends and musical companions over the next 60 years, and that she would go on to be a top-selling jazz recording artist, loved the world over. But as my good luck would have it, we did, and she did.”

Adair teamed up with saxophonist Denis Solee to form the Adair-Solee Quartet, which later became a sextet called the Be-Bop Co-Op. She frequently participated in jam sessions around town with the likes of Boots Randolph and Hank Garland. In addition, Adair played a central role in helping establish the Nashville Jazz Workshop in the late 1990s.

“She was our first board member,” Spencer recalls. “We used to go to Blackstone and sit down over drinks and try to figure out where we were going on different matters.”

In the late ’80s, Adair hosted a music and talk show on NPR called Improvised Thoughts. Masterful pianist Marian McPartland appeared on the show, and even had Adair pinch-hit as host a couple of times on her own long-running, award-winning program Piano Jazz. The Music City jazz scene, though, was where Adair had her greatest impact. She and her late husband, fellow widely loved local musician and educator Billy Adair, were both heavily involved in training future jazz musicians.

“She was a mentor to so many of the young jazz musicians who came through the workshop — Annie Sellick, Christina Watson, Rahsaan and Roland Barber, Liz Johnson, Marcus Finnie among many others,” Mechem adds, reeling off the names of some of the Nashville jazz scene’s key players. “She cared so much about the workshop’s mission, about ensuring that the next generations of jazz musicians would learn and be encouraged.”

It’s Adair’s warmth — a love of people and a love of music that fed off each other — that’s remembered most. Tidwell recalls visiting Adair on her birthday in December, a small gathering that naturally led to an impromptu performance.

“Beeg was in great spirits, but it was late and she was a little tired, having just toasted the arrival of her 84th year,” he says. “But when Chris Brown counted a tune, and Beeg’s now slightly older fingers landed on the keys, I felt the same thrill I had felt that night in 1962. What a legacy she leaves us: tears and laughter, terrible puns and serious discussions — and oh, the music.”

A celebration of Adair’s life will be held on a date TBA. In the meantime, you can make a memorial tribute to the Nashville Jazz Workshop, Vanderbilt University’s Billy Adair Scholarship Fund, the Williamson County Animal Center or the St. Joseph’s Indian School.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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FILM

X-RAY VISION

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché is a complex portrait of a punk icon

BY STEVE ERICKSON

P

oly Styrene stormed her way into punk greatness with the opening lines of X-Ray Spex’s first single: “Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard / But I think, ‘Oh bondage, POLY STYRENE: I AM A up yours.’ ” Her CLICHÉ band’s 1978 album NR, 95 MINUTES SHOWING MONDAY, FEB. 7, Germfree Adolescents is a classic, AT THE BELCOURT avoiding the genre’s traps and clichés and standing out through Styrene’s voice and perspective — as well as the unusual punk-band choice of working with a saxophone. But Spex broke up before they could record a follow-up, and Styrene — born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said to a Somali father and white British mother — released only three solo albums before her death in 2011 from breast cancer.

Her daughter Celeste Bell, who directed Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché with Paul Sng, is well positioned to explore Styrene’s legacy.

Though Styrene left the world with a small body of music, the film shows just how much she accomplished in a short period.

What’s more, in only a few years, she went from a giggly teenager speaking enthusiastically to TV interviewers to a woman reeling from the pressures of fame, repeatedly being hospitalized due to mental illness.

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché — showing Feb. 7 at the Belcourt as part of the theater’s Music City Mondays series — draws on a large archive of drawings, photos and home movies kept by the singer. Bell and Sng made the wise decision to keep their newly shot interviews off screen — while the film incorporates the voices of many musicians as well as DJ/filmmaker Don Letts and

journalists John Robb and Vivien Goldman, their faces are never shown. Actor Ruth Negga reads from Styrene’s diary, and the filmmakers shot new footage of the sea, the presence of which was very important to Styrene. But the balance of words and images is very carefully laid out.

This film shows a perspective that only Styrene’s daughter could have. Bell was born when her mother was 24, so she wasn’t alive during the X-Ray Spex days, but I Am a Cliché nevertheless reflects the fast pace of the punk years. The band had an extended engagement at CBGB in New York, which proved a turning point in Styrene’s life. As big as London is, in the ’70s it felt calm and collected compared to America’s embrace of consumerism and media overload, and Styrene saw the themes she sang about coming to life in the U.S. Her last few songs for

X-Ray Spex go in a stranger direction, picturing sci-fi dystopias and including a hint of psychedelia.

She also developed mental health problems following a bad drug experience in New York. Initially diagnosed as a schizophrenic after hallucinating a UFO that came to her window, Styrene was frequently hospitalized and sedated. Many films about female artists with difficult lives turn into misery porn, but Bell and Sng are careful to highlight the positive elements of their subject’s life. A religious awakening and travel to India turned into an embrace of life in a Hare Krishna ashram, and Styrene finally reconciled with fellow Hare Krishna convert Lora Logic, who was the band’s saxophonist before Styrene threw her out.

Angered in her youth by her mother’s neglectful treatment, Bell also reconciled with

SOME WAY HOME

Flee is a spectacular sojourn into the life of a refugee

BY CORY WOODROOF

A

min Nawabi didn’t do anything to deserve this. That’s the thought that lingers in your mind as you watch Flee, the heartbreaking story of a gay Afghan refugee’s journey.

Amin, telling in hindsight the story of his displaceFLEE ment as a youth, is a PG-13, 90 MINUTES; IN DANISH AND OTHER normal person with very LANGUAGES WITH relatable aspirations. But ENGLISH SUBTITLES like so many people who OPENING FRIDAY, FEB. 4, become political refuAT THE BELCOURT gees, he’s been thrust into a situation he didn’t create in a world that just isn’t concerned with making sure he’s OK. Told through a similar style of hand-drawn anima-

34

tion to the one that brought 2007’s seminal documentary Waltz With Bashir to life, Flee is another reminder that documentaries don’t have to consist solely of talking heads and related B-roll. The way it

merges animation and a nonfiction narrative feels like an exciting step forward for this style of filmmaking, one that never sacrifices the heart of its story. Amin’s tale is a good litmus test — if you don’t feel deeply for

Styrene before her death and worked with her on her final album Generation Indigo.

Styrene’s voice set a pattern for female punk singers to come — play Bikini Kill next to X-Ray Spex and it’s easy to spot the influence. She was an innovator, and the first woman of color to front a British rock band signed to a major label. But Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché shows how she chafed at the sexism of the music industry and other rockers, even as she avoided aligning herself with feminism or any other political movement. Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché achieves an emotional dimension that a director who never knew Styrene would struggle to hit, and transcends her status as a punk icon to show a vulnerable, flawed woman who achieved so much.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

him and his family considering what they had to go through after fleeing their home amid conflict, you likely have a heart of stone. Flee invites its audience to not just sympathize with Amin’s struggles, but to imagine a world where refugees always find a new home without any further strife.

Director Jonas Poher Rasmussen does great work balancing the tragedy of Amin and his family’s displacement with their remarkable spirit, zeroing in on those little moments in the midst of turmoil that help keep you grounded. The documentary resists sensationalism, and shares Amin’s story only how he tells it. Flee could quite possibly become the first film in Oscar history to be nominated for Best Animated Film, Best Documentary and Best International Film, and it represents a step forward in the way we tell refugees’ stories, and how we tell nonfiction stories in general. If you find the journey exhausting by film’s end, just imagine what it was like for Amin.

That’s Flee’s greatest victory: It’s not only a stellar piece of filmmaking — it’s got the power to change hearts.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 3 – FEBUARY 9, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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FILM

AGNES

PRIMAL STREAM 75

A folk-horror box set, grimy possession horror and a Depeche Mode doc, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

I

t’s been a while since our last Primal Stream, what with the holidays, horrifyingly magical (or magically horrifying) weather events, and the ongoing effects of the pandemic — so this week is all about catching up with some of the streaming titles that might have slipped by lately.

First and foremost, 2021’s most essential physical media offering is also 2022’s mother lode in the streaming realm, as several of the features from Severin Films’ superb All the Haunts Be Ours folk-horror box set are now streaming on Shudder. It’s a joyous selection of films, including Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, a documentary on the history of folk horror by Kier-La Janisse (House of Psychotic Women) that won the Graveyard Shift jury award at the 2021 Nashville Film Festival. Janisse’s doc is a good place to start with the genre, and at three hours, it is substantial enough to ground any viewer in the particulars of the subject. Other films from the box set that are streaming in beautiful new HD scans on Shudder include Clearcut, Alison’s Birthday, the vampire butterfly Leptirica and the title of most interest to fans of independent cinema in the early ’80s — Avery Crounse’s Eyes of Fire.

A story of Revolutionary War-era America in territories before they were saddled with white-people names, Eyes of Fire follows renegade preacher Will Smythe, who takes his sect and vamooses down the river after the larger village congregation decides they’re tired of his shameless adultery. Smythe and his crew of followers — including several families, the eventual voice of one of the Animaniacs and an Irish Witchgirl Womanchild named Leah who understands the ways of magic even as the rest of the erstwhile cult are beginning to wonder why — all find themselves in a section of the woods shunned by Natives. There’s something in the land, in the trees. And despite the varied assortment of bad omens they encounter in this process, the Rev. Smythe gets a case of Manifest Destiny and things get real messy, with magic spells and muddy nudity and a truly spectacular bog witch. It’s a landmark of independent film, thankfully rescued from VHS/LaserDisc oblivion with a sterling 4K restoration, as well as (on the Blu-ray) Crounse’s first cut of the film, Crying Blue Sky, which runs about 23 minutes longer and really gives

a much more textured sense of the settlement that Smythe and his band flee. It’s a work of vision and unsettling imagination.

AGNES VIA AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, OTHERS A beautiful and somewhat grimy story about the aftermath of possession stories that horror films tend not to get into, the latest film from Oklahoma auteur Mickey Reece (Mickey Reece’s Alien, Climate of the Hunter, The Arrows of Outrageous Fortune) is both a satisfying genre film and a perceptive character study that gets into unexpected emotional places. Reece always finds something unexpected in the human condition, and anyone looking for an unexpected take on a concept they might think is played out should give Agnes a try. As an added bonus, in addition to an unconventional nose surgery, this film features quite an effective performance from Sean Gunn as a stand-up comic (and a cameo from Nashville’s own Thashana McQuiston). This film also makes for a great companion piece with Hans-Christian Schmid’s 2006 film Requiem.

Find out what’s going on

.com

DEPECHE MODE 101 VIA APPLE TV+ AND ON BLU-RAY Finally out on Blu-ray (and streamable in an HD version), the greatest music documentary of the ’80s is now something within the reach of even casual viewers. This 1989 doc comes to us from D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus and David Dawkins, as well as much of the “bus kid” material that was shot by Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines — though I can’t really get into their documentary Seventeen, just know that it’s the best documentary ever made about America. Whatever your thoughts on Depeche Mode as a band, this is a remarkable touchstone into an era that simultaneously feels like part of modern times but that also feels a lifetime away. The concert footage is great (including the infamous show at Nashville’s long-lost Starwood Amphitheatre that was so tragically underattended that no A-list synth-pop band would play Nashville for decades), and it’s interesting to also see the humanizing touch brought to the band and their British keyboardy ways. (It’s a delight seeing primary songwriter Martin Gore and living mystery Andy Fletcher tooling around Music Row circa 1988, and the classic black-and-white “91 Rock” logo pops up on T-shirts in a couple of scenes.) The big innovation for this film was combining the concert footage and band interviews with a bus of Depeche Mode fans, following the band during the last week of the Tour for the Masses, leading up to the 101st show of the tour at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. That show, without a drummer or guitarist, sold more than 60,000 tickets, and it’s an amazing experience for any fan of music — or anyone who just wants to learn what the process of being a synth-pop artist entails.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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Rental Scene

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ROSELINE DICKSON. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after February 10, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on March 14, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ROSELINE DICKSON. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after February 10, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on March 14, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

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Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 21D1821 STEPHANIE EID vs.

JULIAN RANDI CHIN In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon JULIAN RANDI CHIN. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after February 10, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on March 14, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: January 14, 2022 Robert H. Plummer, Ill Attorney for Plaintiff

dered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: January 14, 2022 Robert H. Plummer, Ill Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 1/20, 1/27, 2/3, 2/10/2022

Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 21D35 GARY DEWAYNE HARRIS vs.

DEBRA ANN HARRIS In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon DEBRA ANN HARRIS. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after February 17, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on March 21, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: January 20, 2022 Mark Sharber Attorneys for Plaintiff NSC 1/27, 2/3, 2/10, 2/17/2022 Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 20D933 JERRY WAYNE CROSSLIN vs.

LEE ANN SMITH In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon LEE ANN SMITH. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after February 17, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on March 21, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

JERRY WAYNE CROSSLIN vs.

LEE ANN SMITH In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon LEE ANN SMITH. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after February 17, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on March 21, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: January 20, 2022 Jennifer L. Honeycutt Attorneys for Plaintiff NSC 1/27, 2/3, 2/10, 2/17/2022

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Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: January 14, 2022 Mike J. Urquhart Attorney for Plaintiff

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3 nearby places you can enjoy the outdoors: · Creekside Riding Academy and Stables · Erwin Park · Self-guided battlefield tour Best place nearby to see a show: · First Bank Amphitheater · Whiskey Room Live · Kimbro’s Pickin Parlor Favorite local neighborhood bar: · Froggy and Jeffro’s

Best local family outing: · Longview Recreation Center · Spring Hill Antique Mall · Evans Park List of amenities from your community: All Coming Soon: · State of the art clubhouse · Resort-style swimming pool · Dog Park · 24-hour fitness center · 24-hour coffee bar

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

100 John Green Place, Spring Hill, TN 37174 | southavenatcommonwealth.com | 629.777.8333 38

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888-531-1192

Jennifer L. Honeycutt Attorneys for Plaintiff

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Top 3 bars and restaurants nearby: · Izzy’s Feel Good Food · Nelly’s Italian Café · The Fainting Goat

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Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: January 20, 2022

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Local attractions nearby: · Rippavilla Mansion · The Crossings of Spring Hill Mall · Kings Creek Golf Club

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

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

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

3 floor plans southavenatcommonwealth.com | 629.777.8333 Colony House 1510 Huntington Drive Nashville, TN 37215 The James 1 bed / 1 bath 708 sq. ft $1360-2026

The Washington 2 bed / 1.5 bath 1029 sq. ft. $1500 - 2202 4 floor

The Franklin 2 bed / 2 bath 908-1019 sq. ft. $1505 - 2258 plans

The Lincoln 3 bed / 2.5 bath 1408-1458 sq. ft. $1719 - 2557

Rental Scene

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 Bedrooms/ 2 baths 1100 sq feet $1490

3 Bedrooms/ 2 baths 1350 sq feet $1900

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

Studio 330 sq feet $900 - $1000

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