Nashville Scene 2-4-21

CITY LIMITS: NEARLY A YEAR INTO THE PANDEMIC, UNEMPLOYMENT HEADACHES ABOUND PAGE 6

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FEBRUARY 4–10, 2021 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 1 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

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Picasso. Figures features approximately 75 paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by one of the most celebrated figures in modern art. The exhibition offers an in-depth look at Pablo Picasso’s careerlong fascination with the human figure as a means of expressing a range of subjects and emotions. The Frist Art Museum is the only U.S. venue to host this incredible collection of his work.

Advance timed tickets are required and can be reserved at FristArtMuseum.org/tickets.

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Exhibition organized in partnership with Musée national Picasso-Paris.

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Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937. Oil on canvas. Musée National Picasso-Paris, Gift of Pablo Picasso, 1979. MP166. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée National Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau. © 2021 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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CONTENTS

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

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Nearly a Year Into the Pandemic, Unemployment Headaches Abound .........6

Crawl Space: February 2021

CITY LIMITS

Thousands seeking help from the state are still dealing with long wait times and other setbacks

ART

This month’s art happenings include Black history and William Eggleston

BY JOE NOLAN

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: Giovanni Rodriguez Looks for the Light Ahead on ‘Esperanza’

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

COVID-19 Is Turning Prison Stints Into Death Sentences........................................6 26-year-old Brandon Miller died in prison months before his scheduled release

BY STEVEN HALE

Reading Into It ...........................................7 The Nashville Adult Literacy Council helps adults achieve their educational goals

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BOOKS

Transit Advocates Remember Pedestrians Who Died in 2020

The Light of Truth Michelle Duster delivers an intimate biography of Ida B. Wells

BY KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM AND CHAPTER 16

Sushi Restaurant Planned for Eastland Café Building

BY KELSEY BEYELER

Pith in the Wind .........................................8 This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

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MUSIC

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Mainstream Dreams ............................... 25

‘The Black Experience: Nashville’ Brings a Walking Tour Into Your Living Room

COVER STORY One Nation Under a Groove

ON THE COVER:

Photos: Daniel Meigs

Untangling queer country’s many connections to country music

BY EDD HURT

A Long Time Coming .............................. 11

Got to Play Your Hand ............................. 26

The National Museum of African American Music is worth the wait

Aaron Lee Tasjan’s gambles pay off on Tasjan!

Tasjan! Tasjan!

BY RON WYNN

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

Setting the Record Straight ................... 13

The Spin ................................................... 27

NMAAM’s celebration of Black art should be a call to action for country music

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Cage the Elephant at Blackbird Studio

BY ANDREA WILLIAMS

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

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Check out Mary McCallum’s Black Butterfly, attend a virtual curator’s talk about the Frist’s Picasso exhibit, stream overlooked 21stcentury Japanese films via Japan Society, order fancy popcorn for the Super Bowl, stream Studio VU lecture with Suzanne Lacy, listen to Carter Glascock’s The Crystal Pistol and more

Primal Stream 41 ................................... 28

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CRITICS’ PICKS

FILM

FOOD AND DRINK The Safe Bar program helps hospitality workers notice the warning signs of sexual assault

Walk a

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BY JASON SHAWHAN

The Poets Are Demanding Their Pay ..... 29 Heartworn Highways remains a powerful document of country music’s outlaw movement

BY NATHAN SMITH

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

Safe and Sound

BY MARGARET LITTMAN

Found-footage horror, a dark-hearted kids’ flick and more, now available to stream

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WHY WOULD GOV. LEE THREATEN A TAKEOVER OF METRO SCHOOLS? It has been a terrible year for students, teachers and school leaders, yet Nashville’s education leaders may face more tribulation.

Concern mounted when Tennessee’s education commissioner Penny Schwinn wrote a letter to MNPS demanding immediate accounting for unspent federal grant funds, simultaneously implying that the school system was not in compliance with federal and state laws. Within hours of MNPS receiving it, Schwinn’s letter was conveniently leaked to The Tennessean, which fueled speculation about the intent of the letter and the leak. Both Lee and Schwinn are posturing for political reasons, which raises questions about their goal.

According to the Tennessean story, Schwinn’s letter sternly “rebuked” MNPS and demanded an immediate accounting for “as much as $110 million in unspent federal grants,” or otherwise face a “delay receiving further aid.” The “further aid” in question is the $123 million allocated to MNPS out of the $1.1 billion the Tennessee Department of Education received from the federal government as part of Congress’ coronavirus relief package.

The letter made it sound as if MNPS is sitting on a pile of money and not taking strides to provide much-needed resources to students. MNPS spokesperson Sean Braisted clarified: “To be clear, there is not a pot of unspent money. There is a distinction between drawing down funds through a formal process and allocation and spending funds to support the needs of our students and staff. Metro Schools leverages its funding in compliance with state and federal laws, to maximize the resources and supports available to students. To suggest otherwise, is false.” MNPS board member Christiane Buggs told Tennessee Lookout there has been “no direct conversation around this with Commissioner Schwinn” and said she looked forward to hearing from Schwinn as to the letter’s intent.

So concerned are education leaders that they sent a letter to Mayor John Cooper asking for him to unite with them and help stave off a state takeover they feel would “harm our city’s students.”

Lee and Cooper have been at odds on multiple occasions. The mayor is part of a lawsuit by urban school districts arguing that Tennessee’s education funding formula doesn’t commit enough money to Memphis

and Nashville. Further, Cooper’s decision to add coronavirus relief funds for MNPS to help the district’s virtual learning program with computers and other resources may not have sat well with the governor, considering his push for students to return to the classroom.

Gov. Lee called MNPS director Adrienne Battle last week to push for in-classroom learning, but Battle reiterated the district’s plan to return based on a decrease in community spread of COVID-19 — not on “arbitrary timelines requested by the governor.” Dr. Battle also asked the governor for direct allocations of the COVID-19 vaccine to MNPS staff to ensure a safer return to in-person learning, but the governor made no commitment. On Monday, Battle announced that a phased monthlong return to in-person learning would begin Feb. 4.

If the governor is planning a district takeover, he should remember that does not ensure success. If anything, the opposite is likely, as new leaders have to be brought up to speed, then create and implement plans they hope will work — all while students suffer. According to education-issues blog The Edvocate, “Many states have technical assistance teams that assist struggling districts in getting back on track,” but often “these teams don’t have the capacity or expertise to foster school reform or change initiatives.” And as a result, “many districts get taken over by the very entity that failed to offer them structural and strategic support in the first place.” And threatening to withhold financial support — especially amid an already tough year — just sounds like sour grapes.

The research indicates that state takeovers by overseers who are unfamiliar with district and student needs do not work. The decisions should remain with Nashville’s education leaders and students’ parents. I hope Gov. Lee will do what is best for our city’s students over pursuing a course that may be guided by politics or sour grapes toward Mayor Cooper or Dr. Battle. Otherwise he could bring even greater detriment to our district’s children.

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 Editors Jack Silverman, Abby White Staff Writers Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Marcus K. Dowling, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Geoffrey Himes, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Chris Parton, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Andrea Williams, Cy Winstanley, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Editorial Intern Diana Leyva 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 Promotions Coordinator Caroline Poole Publisher Mike Smith Senior Advertising Solutions Managers Maggie Bond, Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Stevan Steinhart, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Advertising Solutions Manager Olivia Bellon, William Shutes Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Aya Robinson, Price Waltman Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis For advertising information please contact: Mike Smith, msmith@nashvillescene.com or 615-844-9238 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 4 – FEBRUARY 10, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

NEARLY A YEAR INTO THE PANDEMIC, UNEMPLOYMENT HEADACHES ABOUND Thousands seeking help from the state are still dealing with long wait times and other setbacks

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

J

ohn Minichillo’s story will sound familiar to thousands of Tennesseans: Shortly after the pandemic reached the state, he got laid off.

“I was teaching at Austin Peay, and I had been there for a year [when] the pandemic hit, and a lot of us who were not tenure-track professors were let go,” he tells the Scene. “They projected the enrollments would be down, and it’s pretty much borne out. ... They didn’t have as many students, they couldn’t hire as many teachers.”

Minichillo applied for unemployment in May, and within a few weeks he started receiving benefits. But his situation grew more frustrating in October, after working at an online writing conference hosted

by Middle Tennessee State University. He earned $200 for the one day of work, which he reported to the state.

If a claimant files earnings higher than their weekly benefits, the system interprets it as a return to work — which means freelancers have to file a new claim and restart the process. (The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development notes that this is a federal requirement.)

But that $200 payment was less than Minichillo’s weekly benefits, and the system still made him reapply. Even though an agent from the labor department told him it was an error, Minichillo says the situation went uncorrected for 15 weeks after reporting his earnings.

“Since that time I haven’t been paid,” says Minichillo, adding that the system doesn’t

understand gig work. He tried repeatedly to contact someone from the department, but hours of waiting in an online queue rarely led to him being put in touch with anyone who could address his situation. Sometimes it could take days to reach a person, Minichillo says, because the system can also kick you out of the queue. On Monday, an adjudicator finally contacted him to inform him that payment had been issued.

When it comes to experiencing delays, Minichillo isn’t alone. A quick glance at the state labor department’s Facebook page shows dozens of comments under each post listing complaints about long wait times, trouble reaching staff, people losing their places in virtual lines and other frustrations.

During his weeks of waiting, Minichillo also did what many social media commenters suggest: He contacted a state representative. State legislators have been fielding calls and emails requesting help with their claims throughout the pandemic, and as the unemployment rate ticks upward again, the calls for assistance are also climbing.

“Of the emails that I get about legislation or other issues, unemployment is easily 80 percent,” says state Rep. Harold Love of Nashville’s House District 58. Love has been involved in helping his constituents since the start of the pandemic.

“We did our very best to try to mitigate those problems,” Love says. For example, he held “Zoom calls hosted with the labor department to walk people through the process,” with a particular focus on help-

COVID-19 IS TURNING PRISON STINTS INTO DEATH SENTENCES

26-year-old Brandon Miller died in prison months before his scheduled release

BY STEVEN HALE

B

randon Miller was supposed to come home soon. But not like this.

A 26-year-old man nearing the end of an eight-year stint in prison, Miller was set to be released in May. He would have been free to rejoin his girlfriend Stephanie Murray and their daughter, a little girl born shortly before he went

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BRANDON MILLER AND HIS DAUGHTER

away. But in mid-January, Miller called Murray with the news that he’d tested positive for COVID-19. He’d been moved into an isolated unit at East Tennessee’s Morgan County Correctional Complex with other incarcerated men who had the illness.

ing self-employed Tennesseans. Before the pandemic, independent contractors and self-employed individuals weren’t typically eligible for unemployment benefits.

“I know Labor and Workforce Development has been overwhelmed, and so we’re just trying to do our best to help,” says Love.

The numbers are overwhelming, to be sure — there are 90,000 pending unemployment claims in Tennessee. Among those are 25,000 duplicates, which NewsChannel 5 recently reported were created as the state tried to adapt to the federal unemployment benefits extensions. Chris Cannon, a spokesperson with the labor department, tells the Scene new technology has recently been pushed into production to help process those claims at a faster rate. He says the department also receives an average of 42,000 calls a day.

The number of unemployment claims has been rising in recent weeks as well, possibly fueled by the end of seasonal work.

“The number of initial claims spiked at the start of January and remained at high levels for most of the month,” Cannon says in an email to the Scene. But “during the week ending January 23, the Department saw a marked decrease in the number of new claims coming into the system.”

After peaking in April, Tennessee’s unemployment rate steadily declined throughout 2020 before increasing again in December — that month it reached 6.4 percent, slightly below the national rate of 6.7.

Love notes that it will be a while before

The last time the couple spoke was on Monday, Jan. 18.

“He told me that he had been taking some antibiotics to try to fight the coronavirus, but he didn’t know how serious it was,” Murray tells the Scene. “He didn’t know. He had asthma also, so I just thought with the [prison] being so old, and the coronavirus and the environment he was in, he really didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t fight it.”

Three days later, on Jan. 21, Miller’s mother got a call from a medical examiner telling her that her son had died. Murray spoke to the Scene on the day the family received Miller’s body.

Miller’s family buried him on Jan. 30. It was a financial and emotional burden that the families of dozens of incarcerated people in Tennessee have now carried largely in isolation. As of this writing, 41 incarcerated people have died after testing positive for COVID-19 in Tennessee prisons. Thousands have been infected as rolling outbreaks hit prisons over the past 10 months. Neither Gov. Bill Lee nor the Tennessee Supreme Court has acted on calls to release vulnerable prisoners from these recurring hot spots. While the state recently began vaccinating correctional officers, incarcerated people will be

“I KNOW LABOR AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT HAS BEEN OVERWHELMED, AND SO WE’RE JUST TRYING TO DO OUR BEST TO HELP.” —REP. HAROLD LOVE

things return to normal in Tennessee, and he wants the state budget to address the ongoing workforce issues.

“I would hope that the budget would reflect that there are no personnel cuts in the Department of Labor and Workforce Development,” he says. “I would hope that there is a request for an updated system, that there is a request for new hires, because even with vaccines and social distancing, COVID-19 effects will still be with us throughout 2021, which means people will still be underemployed or unemployed.”

In the meantime, thousands of people around the state continue to wait to speak with someone who can handle their claims.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

among the last to receive the vaccine before it becomes widely available to the general public.

Miller and Murray met when he was 17 and she was 13. From then on, Murray says, they were rarely apart. Soon she gave birth to their baby, but only a few months later Miller was arrested, charged with aggravated burglary and sent to prison.

“He was [with me] when I had the baby, he cut the cord,” Murray says. “He was so happy that he was having a baby, and I was glad that I got to experience that with him. Because he was a great dad, he wanted to be a great dad. He was a good person, he just got caught up in the wrong things at the wrong time.”

Their relationship continued, although he was at that point an adult in prison, and she was still a minor. For several years, Murray wasn’t able to visit Miller because she was so young. But later she moved to be closer to him for a time. The two spoke regularly on the phone. Now Murray lives in Memphis with her 8-year-old daughter.

“He was a good guy,” she says. “He was funny and loving and caring. He was such a joyful person, he’d make you laugh through anything. I loved that about him.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 4 – FEBRUARY 10, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

NASHVILLE ADULT LITERACY COUNCIL’S SHEILA JACOBS WITH LEARNER SANDRA, PRE-PANDEMIC

READING INTO IT The Nashville Adult Literacy Council helps adults achieve their educational goals

BY KELSEY BEYELER

S

peaking and writing well in your community’s dominant language is a privilege that’s easy to take for granted when you’ve been doing it most of your life. But for some, language is an everyday struggle. Marceline Sibomana, a refugee from Burundi, is all too familiar with the difficulties language barriers bring. When she came to Nashville 14 years ago, she was only able to attend one month of school.

“I had to know how to write my name in English, how to greet people in English,” Sibomana says. “I didn’t have a chance to continue because the life was so hard. I had to pay bills, I had a baby to take care of, so I dropped.”

Sibomana’s story echoes those of many other Nashvillians, both immigrants and nonimmigrants, who have had to prioritize survival over education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, one in eight adult Nashvillians lacks basic literacy skills; meanwhile, the population of residents who have immigrated to Nashville

has grown from 2 percent to more than 12 percent over the past two decades.

Though many non-native English speakers can converse well, they may still need assistance with advanced language topics or specialized instruction related to their professions. The Nashville Public Library estimates that 250,000 adult Nashvillians need educational assistance with English language learning, high school equivalency testing and basic literacy skills. According to the NPL, not only could increased literacy help more adults progress, it could also lower unemployment, poverty and crime rates.

Though increased state funding has been allocated to boost literacy in young learners, there is little emphasis on adult education.

A multigenerational approach would better serve families, as — according to the Nashville Adult Literacy Council — children with illiterate parents have a 72 percent chance of falling behind. “The kids they come with homework,” says Sibomana, “you don’t know nothing. You cannot help them.

They bring forms to fill out, you don’t know

how to fill the form. You feel ashamed.”

Tired of struggling with language, Sibomana decided to return to school. “I think, ‘No, I cannot continue for this life. I have to change my life myself.’ That’s why I decided to go to school. Sometimes I feel ashamed when people don’t understand me.”

Sibomana discovered the Nashville Adult Literacy Council, which tutors adults to improve reading, writing and Englishspeaking skills. NALC works alongside a cluster of other local organizations united under the Adult Education Collective Impact to help adults access educational resources. The coalition has a collective objective to “triple the number of adults achieving their educational goals by 2025.”

Full disclosure: I volunteered as an English tutor for NALC until the pandemic paused in-person interactions. When those sessions were halted in early March, NALC shifted its organizational focus from education to crisis response as it helped provide resources for students. “The thing that stood out to me the most was how difficult it must have been for our learners to be taking in information because it was happening so quickly,” says NALC CEO Kim Karesh. “It was so complex, and I needed all of my literacy skills to be able to comprehend and interpret it into action. I was using reading and writing and speaking English to be able to make decisions for myself and then for the agency as well.”

SIBOMANA’S STORY ECHOES THOSE OF MANY OTHER NASHVILLIANS, BOTH IMMIGRANTS AND NONIMMIGRANTS, WHO HAVE HAD TO PRIORITIZE SURVIVAL OVER EDUCATION. These decisions included shutting down in-person learning, providing financial assistance to students who lost their jobs and launching a new online learning platform. Being a part of the AECI collective gave NALC its own network of resources to utilize. “Even in those early decisions, we were able to check in with each other, and it provided community,” says Karesh. “It provided reassurance, but it also just shared resources that made us faster. It made all of us move faster, because we were able to share what we were learning.” >> P. 8

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CITY LIMITS What started off as a huge adjustment has since become normal for both NALC and its students, and it’s creating new opportunities. Before, barriers like traffic and child care prevented people from committing to classes, but the online platform removes those obstacles and provides greater access. In a typical year, NALC serves nearly 600 students across Nashville, with a wait list nearing 300.

Because they’ve suspended volunteer tutoring during the pandemic, they only reached half their normal enrollment in 2020. Once volunteers return, however, NALC will likely work with more learners

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than ever.

These classes give people like Sibomana opportunities to continue learning and progressing. Taking classes at NALC has motivated her to work on getting a GED, a step toward her ultimate goal of becoming a pharmacist. She’ll likely connect with another organization in the AECI to move to the next level of her education, GED classes.

“I have an appreciation for Nashville Adult [Literacy Council],” says Sibomana.

“They are here, they volunteer for free. I want to say thank you for everything that they’ve done for us.”

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THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG: With new cases of COVID-19 declining and now nearly below the summer peak, Metro began allowing bars and restaurants that serve alcohol to stay open an hour later until midnight. The city also announced it will utilize the Music City Center as a vaccination site, which officials say will allow them to ramp up delivery as vaccine supplies are expected to increase. The city had been offering shots at the Lentz Public Health Center and an undisclosed location in East Nashville. …

Facing pressure from Gov. Bill Lee and with the improving COVID-19 numbers, Metro Nashville Public Schools announced a reopening plan. Though some students did return to in-person learning in the fall before the latest surge, almost all learning has been virtual since the pandemic struck the city in March 2020. During a special state legislative session last month, Republican leaders threatened stripping funding from school systems that don’t bring students back to the classroom. Lee reportedly told MNPS Director Adrienne Battle to reopen schools by Feb. 15. … A virtual memorial service honored the 39 pedestrians killed in Nashville in 2020, the deadliest year on record, surpassing the 32 killed in 2019.

“We created this annual event to remember those who were lost, but also to recognize that these tragedies are not random or inevitable,” said Nora Kern, the executive director of transit advocacy organization Walk Bike Nashville. “They are happening on the same high-speed streets, they are happening at night, and they are happening in many of the same parts of our city. And this pattern tells us that pedestrian deaths are not random — pedestrian deaths are preventable. …

We should not accept that there are major transit routes in Nashville without sidewalks, without street lighting or without safe crosswalks.” … Tennessee’s junior senator, Republican Bill Hagerty, began staffing his office, relying heavily on recently unemployed former members of Donald Trump’s White House staff, bringing 13 to the other side

of Pennsylvania Avenue. Among them is senior communications adviser Julia Hahn, who was most recently deputy communications director for Trump. Prior to that Hahn was director of rapid response and surrogate operations for the Trump comms team, and she was previously a press secretary for a Republican congressman, executive producer of The Laura Ingraham Show and a reporter for Breitbart News.

While with Breitbart, Hahn seemed obsessed by the country’s increasing diversity, using it as a cudgel to fearmonger about things as scary as “people speaking Arabic.” “Think you need to do a black on white crime #s story,” Hahn once wrote to a colleague, who leaked the emails to the Southern Poverty Law Center. “How many whites have been killed by blacks since Obama has been in office?” She once wrote a 4,000-word embrace of the famously racist novel The Camp of Saints. Hahn’s ties to famous racists like VDARE’s Peter Brimelow and Scott Greer, who wrote pseudonymously for white nationalist Richard Spencer’s Radix Journal, were uncovered in the emails. Through her Breitbart coverage, she helped anti-Semitic politician Paul Nehlen establish a platform.

In an email to the Scene, Brimelow wrote, “Of course she’s been ‘tied to me,’ because the CultMarx thug groups were desperate to smear Trump (and now, apparently, Hagerty). They just lie, don’t you realize that?” … As of this writing, according to the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, there are 92 people in Nashville jails who have tested positive for COVID-19. Eight DCSO employees have also tested positive. …

Does Nashville need a new flag? Maybe, writes our J.R. Lind, following a tweeted suggestion by Councilmember Colby Sledge.

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PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS

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A LONG TIME COMING The National Museum of African American Music is worth the wait

BY RON WYNN

W

hen word surfaced more than two decades ago that a National Museum of African American Music was being planned for Nashville, reactions ranged from quizzical to skeptical. The idea was even ridiculed in some sectors of the music journalism and criticism community, as well as among some fans, scholars and lovers of various Black musical idioms. “Nashville, not Memphis?” was one of the recurring comments I heard from colleagues. A second:

“That’s not a Black music town.” A third, lesser complaint was that NMAAM wouldn’t get the publicity and recognition it deserves in a city best known as a recording and publishing hotbed of country music.

As a man born here in the 1950s, the son of a Tennessee State University and Meharry Medical College graduate, I had a personal hesitancy about the project. This came from a lengthy history of not seeing the city fully embrace or celebrate its Black milestones.

I wasn’t surprised by the lack of knowledge outsiders had regarding Nashville’s glittering legacy of astonishing Black accomplishments. These range from the Fisk Jubilee Singers to the globe-spanning late-night broadcasts of R&B, soul and blues on WLAC, from the importance of Jefferson Street as a national performance showcase for top acts to the syndicated shows Night Train in 1964 and The !!!! Beat in 1966, both developed

by Nashville TV stations (years before Soul Train, which first aired in 1970).

Despite seeing encouraging changes in that attitude since I returned here to live in 1995, I understood why people in other cities might not think this was the right place for any entity devoted to celebrating Black music. Happily, those fears proved unfounded.

The visually stunning, 56,000-square-foot

NMAAM PRESENTS IN GRAND SCALE THE STORY OF WHAT BLACK AMERICANS HAVE DONE IN AND WITH MUSIC — FROM THEIR ARRIVAL ON THESE SHORES IN THE 17TH CENTURY TO THEIR INDELIBLE INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN MUSIC TODAY. National Museum of African American Music, which opened for public visits on Jan. 30, represents the culmination of other notable citywide efforts to correct the longstanding inequities related to celebrating the complete Music City legacy. These include the superb 2004 exhibit Night Train to Nashville at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and Lorenzo Washington’s essential Jefferson Street Sound museum.

Those endeavors recognize this city’s glorious African American musical heritage.

NMAAM encompasses all that and much

more, documenting the tales of numerous Black music personalities, events and idioms around the nation. No major spot — be it Harlem, Detroit, Chicago’s South Side, Central Avenue in Los Angeles or Beale Street in Memphis — has been overlooked or ignored.

NMAAM presents in grand scale the story of what Black Americans have done in and with music — from their arrival on these shores in the 17th century to their indelible influence on American music today.

Appropriately, the museum is located at the corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue

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directly across from another shrine, the Ryman Auditorium. As soon as visitors walk in, NMAAM instantly and comprehensively fulfills for them what its president and CEO Henry Beecher Hicks III told CBS recently, echoing comments to numerous media visitors: “We’re showing how music, through the prism of the Black experience, has played a vital role in the growth of this country and how it has affected every fabric of its culture in multiple ways.”

The museum’s central corridor, titled Rivers of Rhythm, is the jumping-off point for an incredible journey. The first stop is the Francis S. Guess Roots Theater, which seats 190, where guests view an introductory film that nicely sets the stage for what’s to come.

The trip becomes an excursion through some 50 genres and subgenres of African American musical innovation, development, history and achievement.

Unlike far too many Black Music Month presentations that tend to focus on only the highly familiar and extremely contemporary, NMAAM’s interactive exhibits and artifact showcases cover the past and present, while also beckoning to the future. No matter your personal taste, there’s something that will appeal to it.

The smartly named galleries include rare artifacts — from certificates, contracts, clothing, instruments and beyond — that reaffirm the uniqueness and stylistic flair

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NMAAM CURATOR DR. STEVEN LEWIS

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of Black performers and their sounds.

Whether it’s one of B.B. King’s many “Lucille” guitars or stage costumes worn by jazz, blues, R&B and gospel luminaries, these exhibits create portraits of greatness from slices of life. An array of touchscreen interactive displays lets viewers navigate a timeline that illuminates key dates and figures with photos and audio and video samples, seamlessly linking together ongoing storylines that provide the full picture. They also allow visitors to create playlists for further listening. The interactive experience goes even further.

If you love to sing, you can join in with Dr. Bobby Jones and the Nashville Super Choir in an interactive gospel exhibit. If you’re an instrumentalist, a jazz exhibit gives you a chance to construct a tune with your own personal chord changes and improvisations. Hip-hop fans can create a beat or rap along with one. Visitors receive a radio-frequency identification bracelet on entry that allows them to take playlists and recordings of their own performances with them when they leave.

Among all the perspectives it shares, NMAAM achieves two overarching goals.

It chronicles the remarkable stories of perseverance, achievement and triumph that are the hallmarks of Black music. The space also demonstrates that Black music is — in the words of the late, great jazz multi-

instrumentalist, bandleader and composer Sam Rivers — “a mighty river into which many streams flow.” In a media landscape dominated by corporate interests and social media, it’s easy to get the impression that only a tiny portion of Black music is relevant today — that jazz, blues and gospel are only relics, and that contemporary music in whatever genre has little, if any, connection to what came before it.

Anyone who completes a journey through the halls of NMAAM will constantly see those myths refuted. They’ll also see the record being set straight on a host of other things regarding who Black musicians have influenced, how their impact is reflected in many ways — both well-recognized and undervalued — and how their creations helped pave the way for many other advances in this nation not only culturally, but also politically and socially. A yearly membership is a phenomenal bargain at $25.

My mother made her last trip to Nashville in 2014. It included a stop at Jefferson Street barbecue mainstay Mary’s and return visits to the campuses of TSU and Meharry. I only wish she’d lived to see NMAAM. It’s something she would have loved. There are many reasons to be proud to let folks know I’m a native Nashvillian. The National Museum of African American Music is one of a smaller number of things that tell Nashville’s Black citizens that the city is proud of us. ■

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT NMAAM’s celebration of Black art should be a call to action for country music

A

BY ANDREA WILLIAMS fter touring the National Museum of African American Music during a pre-opening press day, I stopped Henry Beecher Hicks III, the museum’s president and CEO, on my way out the door.

I smiled and told him that I loved it — that the museum exceeded every one of my expectations.

As someone who fashions words into sentences and paragraphs for a living, I winced at my pitiful use of language, though it was the best I could offer at the time.

When I ran into Hicks, my heart was still so full, my breath caught in my chest like a mother hearing her child say “I love you”

for the very first time. I was speechless at the care taken to present this all-important history so thoroughly; my heartbeat quickened at the potential for a more equitable music industry.

Living in a town like Nashville — this music mecca washed white as the newest developments on Jefferson Street — has a way of making you forget. Spend enough time here, at the honky-tonks, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum or even the Ryman, and you really will believe that Ralph Peer is Jesus, that Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family are his most faithful disciples, cataloging their version of the gospel for modern evangelists like Hank, Loretta and Willie on down.

The altars are everywhere here. Bornand-bred country fans and new converts alike flock to town in droves. So your memory fogs and your better judgment fails, and you start to question the skeptics.

They are blasphemous, you believe, as they poke holes in your truth and question your idol worship. But now, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, there is a most brilliant testament to the truth that has been suppressed for so long.

—————————————————— For this piece, I considered writing a virtual tour guide, an inevitably biased start-

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here-and-don’t-miss-this blueprint of sorts.

But I don’t have enough space, nor do I want to print a slew of spoilers that would most certainly diminish that first-time feeling of walking into such a sacred space.

Instead, I will use text taken from three different displays in the exhibit to present the TL;DR version of what that guide would have been.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as work. A silent slave is not liked by masters or overseers.

—Quote attributed to Frederick Douglass, found in the Wade in the Water gallery.

(If you don’t want to serve negroes in your place of business, then do not have negro records on your juke box or listen to negro records on the radio.)

The screaming, idiotic words, and savage music of these records are undermining the morals of our white youth in America.

Call the advertisers of the radio stations that play this type of music and complain to them!

—Poster from the Citizen’s Council of Greater New Orleans, serving notice that white people should stop buying and listening to Black music if they want to “help save the youth of America.”

If I could find a white man who had a Negro sound and a Negro feel, I could make a million dollars.

—Quote from Sam Phillips, owner in the ’50s and ’60s of Memphis’ Sun Records.

Without question, these three passages illuminate the Black experience in both America and American music. They are the through line that connects every artifact displayed and every story told in each of the museum’s five permanent galleries.

If you use your imagination, I’m sure you can fill in at least some of the blanks I’m intentionally leaving here. Yes, the NMAAM pays fitting tribute to the some of the best to ever do it, regardless of genre, blasting the images of Black icons like Prince and James Brown on giant screens so that their majesty may be justly beheld. It’s amazing to see their greatness, to be both awed and inspired. But it’s not the reason to visit the museum.

For me, the lives and legacies of Prince and Brown — along with Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke, Grandmaster Flash and so many others — are only amplified when juxtaposed against the realities of being Black in America. Their ancestors carried the music of their homeland in their spirits as they sailed, shackled, across angry seas. Back then, Black musical expression was both an instrument of rebellion and a tool of oppression. Today, Black creativity is still demanded and exploited for the benefit of others.

Indeed, while the artists displayed in the museum are pioneers and masters of their craft, they are also victims of a society that only ever viewed them through the lens of capitalistic greed. These innovators set the tone and took the stage to share their most precious gifts with the world. Yet even amid

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IN UNDERSTANDING COUNTRY MUSIC — WITH ITS DEEP, DARK ROOTS AND THE TWISTED BRANCHES THAT BEAR ITS BITTER FRUIT — WE CAN NOT ONLY UNDERSTAND THE DIVISIONS OF OUR WORLD. WE CAN ALSO, FINALLY, BEGIN TO ADDRESS THEM. the thundering applause, their sounds were hijacked and co-opted, their technique studied like a 1000-level music theory textbook and replicated with the clarity of a short-circuiting 1970s-era Xerox.

Learning this history — a history that has repeated itself ad nauseum since the commercialization of music in this country — is the reason to visit NMAAM. It’s the most important reason, in my opinion, whether your personal musical tastes veer toward gospel or hip-hop, jazz or funk. But it is especially true for fans of country music.

—————————————————— When we think back on Jan. 20, 2021, to the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, we will all remember different things. Some of us will reflect on the swearing in of Kamala Harris as this country’s first Black female vice president, and some will remember “The Hill We Climb,” the stirring poem delivered

by Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history. Others still will think back on that day, which came on the heels of one of the most challenging years this country has seen, and they will remember it as a moment of change, a hopeful transition from darkness to light.

This, after all, was the idea packaged and sold in bulk by the Biden campaign, the lingering sentiment they want us all to carry for the next four years. It was seen in the fist bump between Biden and Obama and

the multicultural sea of faces that looked on. It was in the words spoken by Biden, his pledge of renewal and resolve. And it was in the musical performances, too.

When I think back on Inauguration Day, to the soundtrack chosen to kickstart this “Presidency for All Americans,” I will mostly remember Tim McGraw and Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard at the post-inauguration concert. I will not think of unity, despite the premise of their country duet “Undivided.”

I will instead remember that two white men stood before hundreds of millions, representing one of the whitest industries in all of America, and asked, “Why’s it gotta be all white or all Black?” Even 10 or 20 years from now, I’m sure, I will think about this. And I will never not be bewildered.

A Jan. 14 article from the Associated Press noted that, before writing the song, Hubbard “felt weighed down with emotion about the division in America in 2020.”

This is understandable, of course. While the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor rocked the Black community and triggered nationwide protests, it was a period of heightened political discord for many in the country music community. When coupled with the racial unrest, it helped bring America’s ever-present division to its zenith.

No longer able to hide in their own bubbles of relative comfort, the country industry was thrust into the fires where the rest of us remain, forced to view our society’s inequities up close. And this, I

understand, is how you get a country song like “Undivided.” More importantly, this is how you get that song from two men who’ve sold millions of records in a genre that was built on the creative backs of Black folk and that continues to support the mining and mimicking of Black culture — even as it snubs actual Black people.

In this industry, people don’t understand that, while Black people took to the streets because of Floyd, Arbery and Taylor, it was never, ever just about Floyd, Arbery and Taylor. Their deaths were simply the most egregious examples of the violence heaved against Black bodies in this country on a daily basis. Their deaths were the beheading that rendered millions and millions of tiny paper cuts irrelevant.

This oversight is actually quite remarkable, because like all of sports and entertainment, the country music industry has always been an ideal microcosm of American society. And in understanding country music — with its deep, dark roots and the twisted branches that bear its bitter fruit — we can not only understand the divisions of our world. We can also, finally, begin to address them.

—————————————————— I don’t imagine that the National Museum of African American Music was built for the sole purpose of educating those who’ve spent their lives in and around country music, whether as artists or execs, songwriters or fans. I would like to believe, however, that it could be — that it should be — a welcome byproduct.

I also want to believe that the people who support country music’s current form do so because they just don’t recognize that they are being used as tools. Perhaps they don’t know that when the history books are written on this era, their names will go down as coconspirators in the ongoing oppression of Black and brown people in this space. Maybe they don’t recognize that every time they walk into a studio surrounded by only white people trained to program hip-hop drum loops and sing in a rap-style cadence, they are part of the problem. Maybe they don’t see that they are Sam Phillips’ wildest dreams come true. I want to believe that.

I also want to believe that they just don’t understand that when they sign to a label that has no Black or brown artists on its roster, or go on radio tours and perform for program directors who flat-out refuse to play artists who aren’t white, they are upholding the mission of the Citizen’s Council of Greater New Orleans, even today.

And I want to believe that, as they cheer for up-and-coming Black artists, praising their style and talent but never helping tear down the walls they will surely face, they don’t see that they are contributing to the modern interpretation of Frederick Douglass’ ominous words.

Still, despite the ignorance and related complicity that has crept into every crack and crevice of this industry, I also believe there is the potential for change. And I know — just as sure as I know that the spirit of Black folk sings from the pocket of every genre of American music — visiting the National Museum of African American Music, right here in Music City, can begin to create that change.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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— Felice Bryant In a note to husband Boudleaux, left inside one of their songwriting ledgers, now part of the Museum’s collection

Boudleaux and Felice Bryant wrote a long list of enduring hits centered around matters of the heart—“All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Bye Bye Love,” and “Love Hurts” among them.

Their own love story both informed and sustained their creativity and success—a success that landed them in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Learn more about the Bryants in the exhibition We Could: The Songwriting Artistry of Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, open now.

DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE Visit CountryMusicHallofFame.org to buy tickets. nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 4 – FEBRUARY 10, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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2ND avenue BRINGING BACK

Help Nashville's Historic Neighborhood Return

In the wake of the Christmas day bombing, the 2nd Avenue community is banding together to restore the historic character and identity of the neighborhood.

The Downtown District and the Metro Historical Commission Foundation are joining together to help raise funds to support the recovery efforts of this historic district.

The money raised will be used to: RESTORE THE IRREPLACEABLE HISTORIC BUILDINGS THAT ARE HOME TO RESIDENTS AND BUSINESSES PRESERVE THE HISTORY, ARCHITECTURE AND HERITAGE OF MUSIC CITY

HOW CAN YOU HELP? By visiting nashvillemhcf.org/2nd-avenue-restoration and donating to this important fund to save historic Nashville.

Both The District Nashville and Metro Historical Commission Foundation are 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations.

CRITICS’ PICKS O F

T H I N G S

AMY STUMPFL [IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD]

STREAM A PANEL DISCUSSION ON HISTORIC BLACK COMMUNITIES

T O

D O

STREAM A PANEL DISCUSSION ON HISTORIC BLACK COMMUNITIES

CHECK OUT MARY MCCALLUM’S BLACK BUTTERFLY

like an instructional book, but it’s actually a fable, in which Wooten and his counterparts do battle against the Phasers, who are trying to eradicate all musical sound from human existence. Wooten will discuss the book with his banjo-playing bandmate Fleck, and despite their positions at the absolute forefront of their respective fields, you’d be hard-pressed to find two more humble, affable and thoughtful human beings. 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5, via Parnassus Books

PHOTO COURTESY OF MEMPHIS PUBLIC LIBRARIES

FILM

JACK SILVERMAN

The panel will feature Orange Mound native Jeneisha C. Harris, Free Hills native Ralph Richardson and Knoxville native Rev. Reneé Kesler. Find more information and register at the Tennessee State Museum’s website (tnmuseum.org) or Facebook page.

6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4, via Tennessee State Museum J.R. LIND [LIFE OF PABLO]

ATTEND A VIRTUAL CURATOR’S TALK ABOUT THE FRIST’S PICASSO EXHIBIT

In the years after the Civil War, newly Attending a curator’s talk is often a helpful emancipated families struck out to way to get a basic understanding of an — finally — make lives of their own unfamiliar artwork’s appeal or an obscure choosing. Of course, emancipation didn’t artist’s place in history. But François mean equality, and it certainly didn’t mean Dareau — the curator for Thursday’s virtual they were embraced with loving arms by lecture about the Frist’s extraordinary a society that had enslaved them Picasso. Figures exhibit — probably for so long. Segregation and won’t have to cover the basics.

EDITOR’S NOTE: a need for security — both Viewers will likely already be AS A RESPONSE TO THE economic and physical — led familiar with Picasso’s style, ONGOING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, to the formation of Black his influence, his legacy. But WE’VE CHANGED THE FOCUS OF communities throughout it’s for that very reason that THE CRITICS’ PICKS SECTION TO INCLUDE ACTIVITIES YOU CAN the South. In their names Thursday’s lecture from PARTAKE IN WHILE YOU’RE persists the hope of these Dareau, the associate curator AT HOME. places — numerous suburbs of Musée Picasso in Paris, will derided, fairly or not, as whitebe such an unmissable event. flight communities feature a Dareau can meet his audience a Free Hill — and the difficulties faced little further along in their understanding by their founders. (The historically of his subject, and from there he’ll be able Black neighborhoods in Franklin and to dig deeper into the specific artworks on Brentwood are known as Hard Bargain and display. And since the selection of more Hardscrabble, respectively.) The Tennessee than 70 paintings, sculptures, drawings and State Museum will share the history of etchings is making a single stop this year the state’s historic Black communities in — our own Frist Art Museum — there will a two-part virtual lecture series, which likely be interest in this event from folks begins on Thursday with a discussion titled outside of Middle Tennessee. All the more Historic Black Communities: Origins and reason to reserve your spot now — it’s free, Possibilities: Part 1. It’s an examination of but you have to register. Find out more at Knoxville’s Black neighborhoods, Memphis’ fristartmuseum.org. 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Orange Mound, and one of those Free Hills Feb. 4, via the Frist LAURA HUTSON HUNTER — specifically the one in rural Clay County.

BOOKS

For more than 50 years, New York’s Amas Musical Theatre has been a key player in the development of new musicals, with a special focus on cultural equity and diverse viewpoints. This week, Amas presents a virtual reading of Black Butterfly — a new television project written by Nashville’s own Mary McCallum, in partnership with award-winning singer and Broadway actor N’Kenge (Motown: The Musical; Caroline, or Change). Billed as a “surreal dramedy TV series with music,” the story centers on an aspiring Black opera singer who leaves everything behind to pursue her dreams at the prestigious Juilliard School. Directed by Jerry Foley, the cast features a number of familiar faces, including N’Kenge, Terence Archie (Rocky: The Musical) and Tamara Tunie (Law & Order: SVU), among others. McCallum says the project — which incorporates both original and licensed music, including musical theater, jazz, hip-hop, opera, blues and soul — has already been signed with television producer Gina Goff, who’s working to bring the show to a network.

The reading is free, but reservations are required — and donations will go to support Amas’ new musical development programs.

To learn more, visit amasmusical.org.

Through Feb. 6 via Amas Musical Theatre

COMMUNITY

R O U N D U P

[BUTTERFLY EFFECT]

ART

THEATER

W E E K L Y

[BASS IS THE PLACE]

WATCH AN AUTHOR EVENT WITH VICTOR WOOTEN AND BÉLA FLECK

Anyone familiar with Victor Wooten knows that, for him, music is not so much an art form as it is a sacred, supernatural force with the power to change lives and heal the world. In his work with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and other projects, Wooten has revolutionized the electric bass like few have since the heyday of Jaco Pastorius four decades ago. Though he could surely make a nice living on his bass playing alone, Wooten is what you might call a musical missionary, devoting his life to spreading the gospel of sound, as demonstrated by the Victor Wooten Center for Music and Nature — a sort of holistic music camp that’s not so much about finding a career as finding your true nature — and by his previous books, like 2008’s The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. The title of Wooten’s latest literary foray, The Spirit of Music: The Lesson Continues, may sound

[JAPANESE ICONS]

STREAM OVERLOOKED 21ST-CENTURY JAPANESE FILMS VIA JAPAN SOCIETY

In the wake of theater closures and lockdown procedures, New York’s Japan Society has been able to reach a new national audience through the virtual cinema format — in addition to moving its annual Japan Cuts festival online, the museum is launching a new streaming program alongside Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, an expertly curated and well-considered selection of Japanese cinema from the 21st century. The main program — which starts on Friday, Feb. 5, and continues through Feb. 25 — consists of overlooked, underseen and undistributed films from the past two decades by certified masters and acclaimed auteurs like Hirokazu Kore-eda (Air Doll), Sion Sono (Red Post on Escher Street) and Naomi Kawase (Still the Water). The program also features a spotlight on emerging new voices, and a three-film sidebar focused on the singular Kiyoshi Kurosawa and his uncanny examinations of human relationships (Bright Future, Journey to the Shore and Real). In particular, a few of the less-recognized films I’d point your attention to are Nobuhiro Yamashita’s The Drudgery Train (2012), a droll portrait of the friendship between two teen day laborers in Tokyo, one a would-be student from the country with high hopes for the future and a desire to escape the past, the other a Holden Caulfield-esque burnout born and bred in the city; Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s Hush! (2001), a landmark of Japanese queer cinema, about the unexpected found family that emerges

RED POST ON ESCHER STREET

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CRITICS’ PICKS

CHECK OUT SHAKESPEARE ALLOWED!

[POP ART]

ORDER FANCY POPCORN FOR THE SUPER BOWL

Look, I don’t care who’s playing in the Super Bowl — I just show up for the snacks. The chips, the dips, that cheesy pull-apart bread thing — they’re all great! But there’s long been a flaw in the Super Bowl snack approach — all the most reached-for carb-heavy snacks are very, very filling. When said snacks are paired with the carbonation from beer and soda, stomachs approach capacity before the national anthem is even over. This year, include some fancy-ass popcorn in your game-day menu — you can eat a literal gallon of it, and those light-as-air little crunch clouds dissolve into practically nothing. There are more than a dozen popcorn flavors to choose from at Kernels Gourmet Popcorn (2501B Gallatin Ave. in East Nashville), and they’re all available to sample. Every popcorn fan has tried Chicago’s famous cheddar-and-caramel corn mix, but Kernels serves it up Nashvillestyle, mixing caramel popcorn with a hotand-spicy cheddar flavor. Sweet, savory, spicy — YUM. Marigold Gourmet Popcorn in L&L Marketplace (3820 Charlotte Ave.) is another must-try. The shop has some great classic flavors — caramel, kettle, cheddar,

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SUZANNE LACY’S ACROSS AND IN-BETWEEN

ART

dill, everything bagel and garlic parmesan — but there are also some popcorn creations that are practically dessert. S’mores is a mix of buttered popcorn and mini marshmallows topped with a milk chocolate drizzle and graham cracker crumbs, and Dirt & Worms is popcorn mixed with crushed Oreos, gummy worms and milk chocolate drizzle.

Genius! Just remember to pace yourself — Super Bowl snacking is a marathon, not a sprint. MEGAN SELING [SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT]

STREAM STUDIO VU LECTURE WITH SUZANNE LACY

L.A.-based artist Suzanne Lacy makes art with big ideas for big audiences — her 2018 project Across and In-Between, for example, involved collaboration with more than 300 residents across five rural regions along the Irish border, and resulted in a three-screen installation and documentary film that tackled the ideas and anxiety surrounding Brexit. The scale of works like these, which she’s been creating since the 1970s, makes the intimacy of Wednesday’s virtual lecture all the more appealing — it’s as if she’s coming into your home to tell you stories that just happen to be international in scope and groundbreaking in quality. Lacy’s specialty is socially engaged and public art installations, videos and performances, and her subjects include sexual violence, rural and urban poverty, incarceration, gender identity, labor and aging. She’ll discuss her career as part of Vanderbilt’s excellent Studio VU series — it’s free and open to the public, but you’ll need to register in advance. Visit vanderbilt.edu/arts for more information. 3 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 10, via Vanderbilt LAURA HUTSON HUNTER [SPEAK, MEMORY]

TUNE IN TO VANDERBILT’S LATINO AND LATINA STUDIES SPRING SYMPOSIUM: WRITING TO LIVE

In her seminal 1987 work Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Chicana poet, writer and feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa described her longing for a selfconstructed identity, free from the gaze of others: “I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face, to staunch the bleeding with ashes, to fashion my own gods out of my entrails.” She did this with language — letting English, Spanish and

Tex-Mex coexist in her work, insisting on the legitimacy of all of them. The visiting writers in Vanderbilt University’s Latino and Latina Studies Spring Symposium (Feb. 10-11) similarly push the boundaries of language and form to explore identity.

The virtual event kicks off with Fred Arroyo, an MTSU professor and the author of Sown in Earth: Essays of Memory and Belonging. Last year, Joy Ramirez wrote for the Scene that “the recollections of childhood in these moving essays have all the sensory detail of someone for whom memory is guided by language.”

The essays orbit Arroyo’s father, an immigrant from Puerto Rico — “a distant father,” writes Ramirez, “... ultimately represents the struggle of every immigrant longing to find his place in a world where he feels he doesn’t belong.” He is joined

by Myriam Gurba. Gurba’s name may be familiar because of her scathing review of Jeanine Cummins’ woefully tone-deaf American Dirt, which Gurba published on the academic blog Tropics of Meta last year.

But she has her own body of work as well, including her true-crime memoir Mean that The New York Times’ Parul Sehgal calls “a scalding memoir that comes with a full accounting of the costs of survival, of being haunted by those you could not save and learning to live with their ghosts.” Gurba’s new book A Letter to a Bigot: Dead But Not Forgotten addresses the mayor of her hometown whose anti-Mexican sentiments became policy, making her adolescence a struggle for survival. On Feb. 11, the symposium will continue with Alex Espinoza (Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime) and Daisy Hernández (A Cup of Water Under My Bed). Learn more and register at as.vanderbilt.edu/latinolatinastudies 7 p.m.

Feb. 10-11 ERICA CICCARONE COMEDY

FOOD & DRINK

It’s often said that Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be seen and heard, not just read. But thanks to Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s popular Shakespeare Allowed! program, you can experience the Bard’s work in a way that promotes both understanding and fun. Established in 2008, the program takes place on the first Saturday of each month, with participants gathering to read a different play out loud in a “reading circle” format — eventually working their way through all 37 of his plays. The group has been meeting via Zoom since March, and is still going strong. There’s no need to commit to the entire canon, and you can choose either to read out loud or simply follow along silently — although you may be asked to jump in for crowd scenes. Either way, it’s a great opportunity to dig into some of Shakespeare’s lesser-known works, or to revisit an old favorite. Shakespeare Allowed! will be reading Troilus and Cressida at noon this Saturday, Feb. 6.

As a courtesy, it’s requested that you join the group online by 11:50 a.m. so that the reading can start promptly at noon. Visit nashvilleshakes.org for complete details.

Saturday, Feb. 6, via Nashville Shakespeare Festival AMY STUMPFL

[CARTER THE GREAT]

LISTEN TO CARTER GLASCOCK’S THE CRYSTAL PISTOL

When your last name has “cock” in it, your only choice is to lean into it. At least that’s how Carter Glascock explains it on his debut comedy album, The Crystal Pistol.

(See what he did there?) Glascock grew up in Birmingham, Ala., but put in his 10,000 hours in Nashville, and before leaving for L.A. in 2019, he recorded Crystal Pistol live to a packed East Room crowd as a parting

gift. To issue a full-length album of stand-up in the social media age is the kind of oldschool move I can get behind, and Pistol hits the mark with its relatable riffs on the indignities of starving-artist life (standing at the Coinstar machine, feeling judged) and meeting your heroes and blowing it (punk icon Bob Mould, in Glascock’s case), plus a childhood tale so mortifying that if it happened to you, you’d want to move to a different state. But impressions may be the 33-year-old comic’s calling card. A few weeks ago, an off-the-cuff Ray Liotta-inGoodfellas voiceover set to a montage of tantrum-throwing Capitol insurrectionists scored him nearly 20,000 retweets and 2.1 million views. (Excerpt: “When they detained Colby in the terminal, he had two duffel bags full of Nancy Pelosi’s vacation Polaroids before they sent him to federal prison.”) Visit Carter Glascock’s site at carterglascock.com, follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @carter_glascock, and stream The Crystal Pistol in full on Spotify.

CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

FILM

[THE PAST IS PROLOGUE]

BOOKS

THEATER

between a withdrawn single woman who wants to have a child and the gay couple she decides should parent it with her; and Fires on the Plain (2015), a harrowing and horrifying adaptation of the World War II novel of the same name that’s something of a departure for director Shinya Tsukamoto, most known for imaginative and unseemly cyberpunk nightmares like Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Bullet Ballet. Every film in the program can be rented individually, or you can purchase a $99 pass to view all 30 films. Feb. 5-25 via Japan Society NATHAN SMITH

[SEE YOU IN THE PIT]

WATCH DOPE, HOOKERS AND PAVEMENT: THE REAL & IMAGINED HISTORY OF DETROIT HARDCORE

The first killer rock doc of 2021 is a whirlwind trip back in time to early’80s Michigan, a jock-and-normie-ruled monoculture anyone who’s ever watched Freaks and Geeks knows wasn’t exactly welcoming to young weirdos. The suburban misfits of director Otto Buj’s Dope, Hookers and Pavement found safe harbor, ironically, in the types of spaces that would give helicopter parents heart attacks. On weekends, they’d carpool en masse from all over the region to skate and thrash in the gnarly burnout dives of inner-city Detroit and neighboring Windsor, Canada, Buj’s bluecollar hometown. Although smaller than the scene in Minneapolis (documented in PBS’ recent Minnesota Hardcore series) — not to mention what was going on in L.A., New York or D.C. — the Motor City metro did produce seminal bands including Negative Approach and Necros, and even planted the seed for influential label Touch & Go. The fact that little to no video documentation exists to prove it is Buj’s impetus for the film. It’s fascinating how time makes people remember certain details differently, and what Dope lacks in footage it makes up for with incredible flyer art, photography and laugh-out-loud anecdotes. The presence of rock-doc Where’s Waldo? Ian MacKaye is justified — Minor Threat’s June 1982 gig at The Freezer Theatre in Detroit’s Cass Corridor was basically The Beatles at Shea Stadium — but Negative Approach’s charismatic John Brannon steals the show with his decidedly non-straight-edge war stories. Dope is niche stuff, but punk and hardcore lovers will eat it up like the Burger King burgers that kept the kids fed between Freezer sets (and cost either 25, 33 or 50 cents apiece, depending who you ask).

Stream Dope, Hookers and Pavement for $10 at detroithardcoremovie.com. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 4 – FEBRUARY 10, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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FOOD AND DRINK

SAFE AND SOUND

The Safe Bar program helps hospitality workers notice the warning signs of sexual assault

BY MARGARET LITTMAN

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

W

hen a woman walks up to a bartender and orders an “angel shot,” the bartender knows it isn’t because she wants a drink. Angel shot is code — a way for someone who feels unsafe to ask for help. The bartender can then help the customer to a taxi or otherwise separate her from whomever is a potential threat, be it a Tinder date, a longtime partner or a stranger in the corner.

In recent years bars, restaurants, music venues and even large event spaces like Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena have occasionally added signage to bathrooms, letting people know about the angel shot.

That’s just one way businesses are working to reduce the incidence of sexual assault.

Since 2017 the Sexual Assault Center has run the Nashville Safe Bar program to train hospitality workers to recognize and prevent sexual violence. New funding and a pandemic pivot are expanding the efforts this year, says Rachel Freeman, president and CEO of SAC. (Disclosure: Freeman is the daughter-in-law of Bill Freeman, owner of the Scene. He was not involved in the reporting or writing of this article.) In addition to Safe Bar, SAC operates several programs, including a SAFE clinic in Metro Center, where victims of sexual assault can receive a medical exam.

The idea behind these programs is to train hospitality workers to pay attention to worrisome behavior, from aggressive comments to overt attacks that can lead to sexual assault, sex trafficking and rape.

Sharon Travis, outreach and advocacy specialist at SAC, was moved by a conversation with a man whose fiancée was sexually assaulted when in town for a bachelorette party. He called SAC looking for resources for her. “If this is a thing in Nashville, what kind of public health response can we provide?” Travis wondered.

SAC launched Safe Bar, modeled after a program in Washington, D.C., called Collective Action for Safe Spaces. In retrospect, Travis says SAC did things backward, starting the program first and then looking for funding. They offered a few trainings, including at Bar Louie in the Gulch, and with Play Dance Bar and others on Church Street. The program was adapted for Nashville’s entertainment culture and has expanded with assistance from the Tennessee Department of Health and the Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence. Other Tennessee cities with similar programs include Memphis, Chattanooga and Johnson City.

SAC is launching new trainings this April, timed with Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Travis’ goal is to see 100 Nashville bars trained by the end of 2021.

BARS ALONG LOWER BROADWAY Such training is free for bars and includes collateral materials such as signage about the angel shot, coasters that change color to reveal the presence of date-rape drugs and window clings to show the public that staff has been through the training. Freeman and Travis hope that over time that decal will come to signal a place where locals and tourists know the bartenders and servers have their backs.

The SAC Safe Bar training includes several tiers, including a six-hour trainthe-trainer program in which staffers learn techniques to then pass on to their co-workers. There’s a three-hour program for bar ambassadors who keep everyone updated on new developments and a 20- to 30-minute course that can be useful for bringing new staff up to speed and offering a refresher for previously trained employees.

Travis likes to see multiple bars do the training together as a collective. When Church Street bars finished the 2017 pilot, they then celebrated with an employee pub crawl to all the participating bars. The hope is that training and the window cling exert positive peer pressure. If 80 percent of bars on a block have the decal, what does it say about the 20 percent that don’t?

“It is naive to hope that all bars would want to do it,” Freeman concedes. But she does think that as Nashville boasts its tourist-centric “It City” moniker, Nashville may be able to also be thought of as “Safe City” — a place people can honky-tonk and drink beer without having to watch their backs, and a place where locals and hospitality workers alike can feel safe.

Super Bowl weekend is typically a

WINDOW CLING INDICATING THAT STAFF HAS BEEN THROUGH SAFE BAR TRAINING

time when reported sexual assault, sex trafficking and domestic violence rates rise. Any weekend with large crowds and widespread alcohol consumption can experience such upticks. Freeman says that when Nashville hosted the NFL Draft in 2019, SAC had triple the number of reported sexual assault cases than it does on a typical weekend.

The national statistics show that more than 50 percent of sexual assaults include one or more parties drinking alcohol, Freeman adds. But it must be underscored that consuming alcohol does not cause sexual assault. “We know there is a connection,” she says, “but it does not happen unless a predator or rapist is present.”

Freeman adds that “assault happens everywhere.” While there may be a preconceived notion that this is an issue for downtown bars, and that only women are at risk of being victimized, in truth, nowhere — and no one — is immune: college bars, neighborhood hangouts, music venues and event spaces.

Johnathan Jones, director of operations at East Nashville event space Studio 615, took his staff through the Safe Bar program and encourages their vendors to do the same. The process, he says, enables his staff to have open conversations about a topic that is often taboo. He has been pleasantly surprised about his employees’ awareness of signs of unsafe interactions. “It is not

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 4 – FEBRUARY 10, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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FOOD AND DRINK

Make Game Day

EA S Y

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SAFE BAR COASTER, WHICH TESTS FOR THE PRESENCE OF DATE-RAPE DRUGS

acts, assuming everyone else is OK with it. just a weird-looking guy with a hoodie who Eron Johnsey, now the front-of-house drops something into a drink,” says Jones. manager at Game Terminal, went through “Everyone has been really receptive to the Safe Bar program when he worked this knowledge. It helps us keep a trustable at Mercy Lounge. Now he and Shane space, a safe space.”

Batchelor, operations manager at Game Ellen Talbot is the lead bartender at Terminal, are working to train staff at their Fable Lounge, and she agrees. “When we new pinball bar. “We have to have these talk about it in Fable, I have never heard conversations,” Batchelor says. “We want anyone say, ‘We don’t need this,’ ” she says. our guests to feel that they are somewhere Talbot went through a similar bystander safe and comfortable and fun 100 percent of training program — Green Dot in Portland, the time.”

Ore. While the specifics are different from Sinema, a restaurant and bar known for Nashville’s Safe Bar training, the basics its Bottomless Brunch, is a destination for are the same. The idea is to let customers groups looking for a good time, as well as — those who may be in uncomfortable for folks on a first date looking for a more situations as well as predators — know that intimate setting. Carly Houison, Sinema’s someone is paying attention. general manager, believes sexual assault is “We bartenders are nosy, and we hear a citywide issue that needs to be addressed, everything,” Talbot says. In one case, for and that hospitality workers are qualified example, a young woman was uncomfortable to help. with the men at the table next to her. She “There is this giant drinking culture couldn’t tell her server without being here,” Houison says. “This is a destination overheard, so she typed it on her phone, centered around drinking. My bartenders and showed the screen to the server, who are incredible at hearing seven then moved her to a different table. conversations at once. The servers Other examples of avoiding are looking out for sections other direct confrontation — which IF YOU, AS A CUSTOMER, than their own.” She says that, may escalate a situation — EMPLOYEE OR OWNER, WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOUR in the past, Sinema staff has are through distraction.

NEIGHBORHOOD WATERING HOLE helped get inebriated guests Something as simple as PARTICIPATE IN SAFE BAR, CALL OR away from friends who didn’t spilling a drink may allow EMAIL SHARON TRAVIS appear to be looking out for someone time to walk away AT 615-259-9055 OR STRAVIS@SACENTER.ORG. them, or helped them get home and get in a Lyft. in a Lyft. The Eighth Avenue “Sometimes, too, I might restaurant and bar has a good assume something is going weird, relationship with Berry Hill police, and and when I ask, everything is fine,” Houison says they respond quickly when Talbot says. “But it is better to check in the bar needs help. Houison has done much than to ignore something dangerous.” What of this training on her own, and now plans to you want to avoid, she says, is “pluralistic enroll in the Safe Bar program. ignorance” — the concept in which lots of EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM people notice something wrong, but no one

Gulch | East Nashville | Charlotte Ave. theturniptruck.com

SCENERY Arts and Culture News From the Nashville Scene

Looking for the latest on art and culture in Nashville?

Subscribe to Scenery, our weekly newsletter that covers visual art, theater, comedy, books, film and more.

Subscribe at nashvillescene.com/subscribe nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 4 – FEBRUARY 10, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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ART

CRAWL SPACE: FEBRUARY 2021

ALICIA HENRY: 2020 AND 2021 AT ZEITGEIST

This month’s art happenings include Black history and William Eggleston

BY JOE NOLAN

In the 21st century, the invisible borders that once separated art from craft have all but dissolved. The ubiquitous presence of sewing, textiles, knitting, crocheting and soft sculptures in contemporary gallery spaces is some of the clearest evidence of this change. That said, all things fabric are not created equal, and not every needle-andthread artist’s work successfully makes the leap from the craft-show space to the exhibition opening. Nashville gallerygoers curious about transcendent textile art will want to catch Alicia Henry’s new exhibition at Zeitgeist.

Henry’s layered, mask-like multimedia portraits offer humorous, disturbing and insightful explorations of identity and beauty rendered in an engaging balance of rough materials and fine detailing. Henry’s new exhibition showcases works made during this time of mass mask-wearing. Alicia Henry: 2020 and 2021 opens on Saturday.

The world’s social and political upheavals have only become more tumultuous during nearly a full year of social distancing during an ongoing global pandemic. This constant chaos has put our day-to-day lives on precarious footing, and predicting the world we’ll inhabit even a few weeks from now can seem like a foolhardy exercise in fortunetelling. Sarah Hobbs’ Twilight Living exhibition at Channel to Channel is all about inhabiting contemporary ambiguities, and the ways we deal with — or avoid — the uncertainty that colors these times. Hobbs’ photographs of interior installations mix and match rugs, chairs, tables and curtains in off-kilter and unsettling combinations that speak to these off-kilter and unsettling days. Twilight Living opened in January, and runs through Saturday, Feb. 20.

In studying history, we use abbreviations like B.C.E and C.E. to differentiate between this common era and the times that came before it. In art history, we might use the abbreviation B.W.E and A.W.E. to describe fine-art photography before and after the ascendancy of William Eggleston and his chromatic compositions. Eggleston is Tennessee’s best-known contemporary artist, and the Memphian shutterbug is credited with single-handedly establishing color photography as a fine art. David Lusk Gallery opens a new show of never-before-seen Eggleston photos on Tuesday, Feb. 16. The images in the For Lucia, Series date back to the 1980s, and the show namechecks Eggleston’s longtime mistress and muse Lucia Burch. The collection of images offers Egglestonian expressions of monumental mundanity captured in the Mississippi Delta.

SV Randall’s Fell Prey at Coop tells a cautionary tale for the digital age. In a time when

22

VANDERBILT

Ashley Mintz’s Resilient Souls: We Rest Then We Rise celebrates Black History Month in a new virtual exhibition hosted by the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. Mintz is a local self-taught artist whose best multimedia drawings look like surreal comic-strip panels — or even muted, psychedelic stainedglass windows. Some of Mintz’s images are packed with text and read like contemporary parables addressing themes of poverty, mental illness, injustice and the loss of innocence. It’s vibrant, cathartic stuff, and Mintz’s flat compositions, spectrum-spanning colors and bold outlines are particularly well-suited for on-screen viewing. The show went live on Feb. 1, and you can find out more and register to view at vanderbilt. edu/religionandarts.

“UNTITLED,” ALICIA HENRY

WEDGEWOOD-HOUSTON

most of our art browsing happens online in virtual exhibition spaces, an IRL installation about the dangers of digital mediation is hilariously contrarian. In Randall’s display, a mirrored medicine cabinet hangs from Coop’s ceiling, there are sculptures of binoculars, and the color yellow symbolizes cowardice and caution in the age of the communications-technology industrial complex. Randall’s installation speaks to how the digital expansion of human communication has also facilitated a narrowing of human experience, and a resulting loss of empathy and connection. What would Marshall McLuhan do?

Unrequited Leisure’s Post: Processing is another mail-art project inspired by nearly a year of social distancing. This art period finds both old-fashioned snail-mail art and digital non-fungible blockchain token art trending simultaneously. Our culture has one foot in Technicolor Oz and one foot in black-and-white Kansas right now, and American traditions like presidential elections have been warped into grotesque rituals. Featuring art from across the country, Post: Processing documents these twilight times since the November election like so many blind men’s hands on the elephant in the room. The show opens online at unrequitedleisure.com, and videos documenting the mail art will be on the screen at the Packing Plant gallery on Saturday, Feb. 13.

science-fiction movie. Finding Calmness in the World is at Tinney Contemporary through Saturday, Feb. 27. Browse the show online at tinneycontemporary.com.

Just down the street from Tinney, Chauvet Arts opens Afterimage: Sensations of Color on

Feb. 20. This spectrum-centric display of boldly colored art feels like the folks at Chauvet are getting the jump on the spring art season, and who can blame them? We’re feeling jumpy, too.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

DOWNTOWN

Alice Zilberberg’s work lives between wildlife photography and digital fantasy painting. She uses layered images and digital tools to create meditative portraits of giraffes, zebras and bears that range from surreal to post-apocalyptic. The photographer claims the work is meant to inspire a meditative state in the viewer. Zilberberg isn’t heavy-handed with environmental messages, but they’re unavoidable in work with these subjects. I’m mostly interested in her aesthetics, and my favorite pieces in this show look like film stills from an intense

TWILIGHT LIVING AT CHANNEL TO CHANNEL

“PRIVATE NATURE,” SARAH HOBBS

Editor’s note: Most of Nashville’s art spaces are open by appointment for in-person viewing. Check the gallery’s website before planning your visit.

NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 4 – FEBRUARY 10, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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BOOKS

THE LIGHT OF TRUTH

Michelle Duster delivers an intimate biography of Ida B. Wells

BY KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM

I

da B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells offers a fresh, relevant take on the anti-lynching activist, who was born into slavery in 1862, first gained fame as a journalist in Memphis, and spent much of her life in Chicago. Author Michelle Duster, who is Wells’ great-granddaughter, moves beyond traditional biography, weaving Wells’ history with her own memoir. She writes flavorful vignettes of middle-class Black life in Chicago and the milieu that pushed her toward IDA B. THE QUEEN: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND LEGACY OF IDA B. WELLS

BY MICHELLE DUSTER ATRIA/ONE SIGNAL PUBLISHERS 176 PAGES, $27 DUSTER WILL DISCUSS HER BOOK AT A VIRTUAL EVENT 6 P.M. THURSDAY, FEB. 4, VIA PARNASSUS BOOKS

her ancestor’s legacy.

She also highlights the way her own existential crisis (not being married by her mid-30s) led her to a deeper kinship with her great-grandmother.

The result is an intimate though not sentimental experience of Wells’ story.

The title of the book appears to have been inspired by Bettiola H. Fortson’s 1913 poem “Queen of Our Race.” It was penned about Wells following that year’s suffragist march on Washington. The Black suffragists were asked to remain at the back of the parade.

Wells pretended to consent until the moment the processional began, at which point she appeared front and center. Thus, Fortson writes: “Who set the nation on fire with her pace / And the Heroine will be the Queen of our race.” Duster chronicles the incident to illustrate Wells’ multifaceted resistance.

Of course, Wells is most widely known for her writing, and Duster emphasizes that she was avant-garde in what would become the field of investigative journalism. Wells began her career as one of a dozen Black female journalists working at approximately 200 Black newspapers nationwide. The book recounts her climb through various aspects of adversity: her gender, class and race. In the same vein, Duster considers Wells an early intersectional thinker, pointing out that she was vocal about the importance of Black women’s involvement in suffrage; white women could not be expected to carry the concerns of all women forward, as tensions around race and class frequently hindered suffrage campaigns.

The writing in Ida B. the Queen is straightforward and accessible, aimed at a wide audience. Each chapter features a few information banners, which serve to prime the reader on a particular theme. They also offer further insight into the sociological and political climate of Wells’ time and how

it differs from our own. For example, a primer on Republicans versus Democrats chronicles the parties’ ideological shifts in the 1960s, as the so-called Southern Strategy drew the region’s white Democrats — who were unhappy about civil rights and integration — into the Republican Party. Readers might approach the text with biographical interest in Wells, but they will likely leave with a fuller understanding of the urgency and legacy of her work.

Serving a similar function are the artfully rendered portraits and photographs of historical figures, offering an iconographic reminder for those far removed from grade school. Readers will encounter skillful profiles of individuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Ella Baker and Jesse Jackson. In several instances, Duster connects Wells’ history with those profiled. And she does so with aplomb; for instance, she juxtaposes a recounting of Wells’ supposed personal impropriety with a profile of Recy Taylor and her 1944 sexual assault. These, in turn, are given further contemporary relevance when Duster compares them to the 2014-15 alleged sexual assault of Black women by police in Oklahoma.

Several of the comparisons might garner raised eyebrows from readers, such as the parallel Duster draws between Wells and modern activist/author/musician Sister Souljah, who offered an unpopular opinion regarding Black militancy in 1992, to the dismay of her political allies. In like manner, Wells lost an early writing position due to her “extremist” views. Duster concludes: “Sister Souljah, like many others, was following in the long tradition set by Black women like Ida B. Wells.”

Duster finds both broad and particular similarities between pressing issues during Wells’ lifetime and those of the present day.

The racial backlash that ended the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1877 is strikingly similar to the “whitelash” that occurred following Barack Obama’s presidency. Particularly apt is Duster’s comparison of the Wilson and Trump administrations. Both presidents, Duster notes, capitalized on working-class Americans’ economic instabilities and racial biases for political gain.

This book arrives at a time when a new kind of journalism is emerging — one that empowers the layperson to become a reporter. Because of camera phones and the live features of social media apps, recent years have seen numerous accounts of brutality captured and transmitted to the public. This is all in the spirit of Ida B. Wells: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

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

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MUSIC MELISSA CARPER

KRISTIAN VEECH

MERCY BELL PHOTO BY CHAD COCHRAN: ; MELISSA CARPER PHOTO BY AISHA GOLLIHER

MERCY BELL

MAINSTREAM DREAMS

Untangling queer country’s many connections to country music

BY EDD HURT

A

t first glance, you might get the impression that the genre called queer country is a kind of country music that exists in its own zone, apart from any concerns about commerciality. Without a doubt, queer country — because of its range of sensibilities and its variety of musical approaches — sounds familiar to fans of FIND LINKS TO STREAM AND BUY Americana, itself MUSIC FROM THESE ARTISTS another capaAND MORE AT cious genre that NASHVILLESCENE.COM/MUSIC seems to connect only fitfully with country music.

Looking at the landscape again, however, you may start to muse about country’s populist impulses and how mainstream country can betray them. In 2021, country music seems like a strictly conservative genre, and queer country artists call into question many of its long-held assumptions. It’s a fast-growing collection of styles, and it’s made its mark as both an expression of cultural and political values and as innovative music.

Taken as a whole, queer country doesn’t feel monolithic. It has musical range, but its politics can sometimes be elusive. As well, queer country isn’t immune to the kind of retro-leaning genrification that can limit the reach of many Americana artists. But that’s only part of the picture. There’s an experimental streak running through the work of artists like Nashville’s Waylon Payne, who is the son of country singer Sammi Smith and songwriter and guitarist Jody Payne. His latest full-length Blue Eyes, the Harlot, the Queer, the Pusher & Me is depressive and lyrical.

Meanwhile, Nashville singer and songwriter Mercy Bell sidesteps country almost entirely on her self-titled 2019 album. Bell’s songs are concise and imagistic, and she is adept at building on the usages of soul

music and ’60s pop. The genre also makes room for artifice and irony, as in the work of Canadian singer Orville Peck, a theatrical performer who masks himself in the manner of 1970s cult singer and Elvis Presley sound-alike Orion.

Still, the demands of genre lay out guidelines many queer country exponents follow.

For veteran singer, songwriter and multiinstrumentalist Melissa Carper, traditional country is a point of departure for a very canny singer-songwriter. Carper inhabits various country-adjacent styles on her full-length Daddy’s Country Gold, recorded with bassist and producer Dennis Crouch at Nashville studio The Bomb Shelter and out March 19.

“It’s got country, Western swing and jazz — kind of a combo of all that,” Carper tells me from her Texas home. She moved from Nashville to Texas in the fall after spending three years in Music City. Carper was born in Kansas and grew up in Nebraska, settling in Nashville after a previous Texas stint, in Austin.

“I guess I’ve been writing what you might call queer country for a long time,” Carper continues. “All of my love songs are about women, and others don’t have any gender in them. I find that a lot of gay people feel like they are excluded from country music. It’s really nice to not feel that way anymore.”

Daddy’s County Gold stays light on its feet, and Carper sings with ease. “Back When,” written as a country two-step, shows off her sly wit as she sings: “Back when you took off my cowboy boots / Why can’t back when happen again?”

Carper is a first-rate songwriter, as her new music demonstrates. One of her signature songs, “Billy & Beau,” first appeared on the 2020 album she recorded as half of the duo Buffalo Gals Band, Where the Heart Wants to Go. Written with Nashville alt-country singer Brennen Leigh, the song

tells the story of the narrator’s love for a farm boy named Beau, who also catches the eye of their mutual friend Billy. A skilled singer and mandolin player, Leigh was born in North Dakota and grew up in Minnesota.

She began writing with Carper a decade ago when both musicians were living in Austin.

Leigh released her version of the song on her 2020 album Prairie Love Letter.

“To me it’s all just stories,” says Leigh.

“To leave out a huge chunk of the population and their stories is ridiculous. I can’t speak from a gay standpoint, but I should have characters that aren’t straight, because there are characters in my life that are gay.”

Meanwhile, Nashville singer Kristian Veech favors pop country on his 2020 single “Running.” Veech grew up in Binghamton, N.Y., and studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music before moving to Nashville in 2019.

“Running” sounds like commercial country, and Veech’s music supports lyrics that describe small-town pressures on a queer man.

“We don’t really have a queer icon on the level of Carrie Underwood,” says Veech.

“For the last few years, there’s definitely been some strides, but we still have a long way to go.” Veech raises a central point about queer country: The genre sports highprofile artists like Ty Herndon and Chely Wright, both of whom have come out as queer, but no single person dominates the conversation.

It’s not an easy genre to untangle, which makes Dale Henry Geist’s California-based online magazine Country Queer a valuable resource for fans. Geist and his staff have covered Carper, Veech and Bell, and the magazine also profiles mainstream artists like Payne. Geist launched Country Queer in September 2019 after working as a web designer for the online version of Americana magazine No Depression, and he’s overseen the rapid expansion of his publication.

“We were doing, I guess, a couple of articles a week, up until I lost my day job in April 2020,” Geist says from his home in Sonoma County, Calif. “I almost quit doing it altogether, because there’s no money in it.

But I started paying attention to it full time,

and pretty soon we were putting out five or six articles a week.”

Country Queer covers the genre efficiently — its monthly podcast has featured performers like Amythyst Kiah, a Black Tennessee singer who plays folk-blues. The magazine’s pluralist approach seems appropriate for a genre that counts Seattle band Lavender Country’s wildly experimental 1973 self-titled album as one of its foundational statements.

Talking to Geist, I get a feel for an aesthetic that makes room for insurgent folk, mainstream country and, say, Lil Nas X’s 2019 hit “Old Town Road,” cut by an Atlanta singer who has since come out as gay. It could be that queer country shares country and Americana’s expansionist goals.

Payne’s critically acclaimed Blue Eyes is one of the genre’s most high-profile current releases, but it may not represent what’s most interesting about queer country. The record seems self-regarding and, at times, insular. As Payne told Sound and Soul writer Aaron Irons in 2020: “I don’t care about being gay. It’s such a small part of my thing.”

It could be that Blue Eyes grapples with Nashville’s strictures as much as it articulates queer country’s politics. The genre, you might say, is well suited to the smallscale and the personal. You can hear how a non-queer-identified artist like Nashville’s Lauryn Peacock addresses queer culture in her song “Cameron,” a track on her forthcoming album Theology. The song calls out queer conversion therapy, and Peacock writes and sings in a post-folk style.

Similarly, Bell’s Mercy Bell has little to do with conventional notions about queer country. A Massachusetts native who has lived in Nashville since 2012, Bell turned the album into a pop masterpiece by harking back to Carole King and British Invasion rock. Her politics are indirect, which doesn’t mean she’s not telling her audience who she is.

“I’ve always said I’m a queer artist,” Bell says in a recent conversation. “My fans have always been OK with that from the get-go. I never had a coming-out moment with it.”

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MUSIC

TASJAN! TASJAN! TASJAN! OUT FRIDAY, FEB. 5, VIA NEW WEST

GOT TO PLAY YOUR HAND

Aaron Lee Tasjan’s gambles pay off on Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

A

Magic School Bus-style trip through the mind of Aaron Lee Tasjan would be a wild one. Floating around inside the singer-songwriter and guitarist’s kaleidoscopic consciousness, one might encounter his encyclopedic knowledge of jazz music, ideas for genderbending stage attire, sage bits of hardearned wisdom, white-hot glam-rock licks and a seemingly infinite well of compassion for others.

Until there really is a way for us to motor around inside Tasjan’s singular mind, his fantastically titled new album Tasjan!

Tasjan! Tasjan! is the next-best thing. Out Friday via New West Records, the new LP picks up where the empathic psychedelia of its predecessor, 2018’s Karma for Cheap, left off. Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!, however, is both broader in its sonic scope and deeper in its lyrical vulnerability. Fittingly, Tasjan produced the album himself, alongside coproducer Gregory Lattimer.

“At the time … either producing or co-producing this record felt important,” Tasjan tells the Scene. “I didn’t know why, at first; it was a gut feeling. So I presented it [to New West] like, ‘What would you think if I produced it?’ The label was like, ‘We certainly have faith in you, but you don’t have any kind of track record as a producer. We’re not really sure that we feel comfortable with that entirely.’ ” Tasjan explains that if he’d heard such feedback earlier in his career, he would have likely heeded his label’s advice and moved on. But now, as a seasoned artist confident in

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his vision and abilities, he decided to make Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! his own way, doing so without New West’s knowledge and coming up with all the necessary funding himself.

“I realized I could basically finance this record up front on my own,” he explains.

“There’s the chance, obviously, I could show it to them and I’d be out however much I’d spent if they didn’t like it. But it felt worth the risk to me, so I did it.”

Tasjan contacted Lattimer to gauge his interest in the project, and he hopped on board immediately. While touring Karma for Cheap, Tasjan would bring a handful of new songs to Lattimer’s Make Sound Good studio during breaks at home, and the pair gradually pieced together what would become the final album.

A prolific writer, Tasjan had no shortage of material for the pair to work with. And with friends in all corners of the music scene, Tasjan had his pick of players for the Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! sessions, with a roster including bassmen Tommy Scifres and Keith Christopher; Spaceship of the Imagination synth wizard Matt Rowland; and drummers Fred Eltringham (k.d. lang, Sheryl Crow, Sadler Vaden), Dom Billett (Andrew Combs, Erin Rae), Dylan Sevey (Ron Gallo) and Jon Radford (Robyn Hitchcock, Steelism, many more).

“I’d call up all kinds of different musicians,” Tasjan says. “We used tons of different drummers, because I love drums. I’d rather hear a cool rhythm guitar solo than some amazing, note-y thing. And there are a bunch of drummers here in town that I love.”

When he felt the album was finished, Tasjan let New West in on his LP-size secret. He sent vice president of A&R Kim Buie four songs.

She and the label loved what they heard.

“To New West’s credit, after saying they weren’t sure about me as a producer and not hearing anything from me for three months, I sent them a bunch of songs I produced and they gave it a chance,” Tasjan says, laughing. “They could have said, ‘Geez, we told this guy we didn’t see him as a producer. Is

he deaf?’ To their credit, instead they said, ‘OK, well, he obviously thinks this is what he needs to do, so let’s give it a listen.’ ” Tasjan’s first release for New West, 2016’s Silver Tears, fit comfortably within the broad confines of Americana. The genre is known for pitching its big tent over seemingly disparate styles of music that showed up on the record, like traditional folk, altcountry and modern blues. Karma for Cheap pushed firmly at those boundaries with a lot more power pop, and Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! eschews them entirely.

“There were questions on the Karma for Cheap record from the label,” he says. “I’d be turning in songs for that and hear things back like, ‘Are you sure these are the songs you want to record?’ But you know, they signed me when I was playing a show at The 5 Spot with my buddy John Moreland.

I was playing an acoustic guitar onstage. I had made my bones, at that point, doing that because it was affordable. You can get in the Volvo station wagon and be in Knoxville in a couple hours to play a gig by yourself.”

Though he’d gotten a record deal on the strength of one facet of his work, Tasjan had many more sides of himself to share. He felt it was important to not get pegged as a singer-songwriter with just one mode, so he included a variety of fare on Silver Tears.

He points to two songs from that album — the first a lush, poppy lament and the second a groovy ballad.

“I’d make songs like ‘Little Movies,’ but I think New West wondered, ‘Is this guy “Little Movies” or “Memphis Rain” ?’ ... But my whole life is like this. I know it looks like a pickle in a peanut butter sandwich on paper, but I can tell you for a fact it’s the truth.”

Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’s opening track “Sunday Women” sounds like a newly unearthed Velvet Underground tune interpreted by Jeff Lynne’s ELO. “Cartoon Music” recalls The Beatles at their trippiest, interspersed with moments of blues and soul. “Dada Bois” is a glam-pop anthem, as well as a rebuke to some of Tasjan’s more

closed-minded critics. “I know I make ’em uncomfortable, but I’m just living my life,” he sings, as he buoyantly declares his love for “dada bois” and “gaga girls.”

Tasjan is one of contemporary music’s most talented ax-slingers, so it’s no surprise that guitar is a focal point on the album. His style is rooted in rhythmic, highly percussive playing — like that of Count Basie Orchestra guitarist Freddie Green, whom Tasjan idolizes — and on this new material, he stretches the limits of his playing, and even what we think a guitar can sound like.

“I thought about people like Annie Clark [aka St. Vincent], and how she’ll do extreme things with the guitar, like tune every string to the same note. … So there was a lot of thought beforehand put into how I say something on the guitar that isn’t something I’ve said a million times before.”

Lyrically, Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! finds the artist plumbing his own depths, frankly exploring gender, sexuality, mental health and self-acceptance. “Feminine Walk” builds outward from a moment in Tasjan’s early childhood when, in a public restroom with his father, a stranger asked if he was a boy or a girl. First single “Up All Night” draws from a relationship Tasjan had with a drag performer, with the second verse that opens: “Broke up with my boyfriend / To go out with my girlfriend / Because love is like that.”

Love — whether for oneself, for others or for art — is always squarely at the heart of the music Tasjan creates. For him, there are few purer ways of sharing love than to be fully open with others. Across Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’s 11 tracks, he’s putting everything he has on the table, with style, grace and generosity of spirit.

“I make music very much in the spirit of asking to be seen,” he says. “This is who I am and this is what I can do. It might be confusing for some people, or it might even turn some people off. But [the goal for me] is to create something that will make people feel something.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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MUSIC

THE SPIN

ROLLING AND TUMBLING

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

C

age the Elephant’s jukebox-

like approach to songcraft has made the band a modern anomaly — a rock band that has enjoyed sustained mainstream success. The pride of Bowling Green, Ky., now residing mostly in Nashville, Cage boasts a deep catalog of energetic, clever tunes dating back to their 2008 self-titled debut, and an electric live show that’s held its own on the road with Beck, Foo Fighters and Metallica. Just before lockdown, the group took home a Best Rock Album Grammy for their fifth and latest LP, 2019’s Social Cues. The involvement of Battle Tapes audio mensch Jeremy Ferguson, who

or pyrotechnics, and only subtle changes in lighting as one tune flowed into the next.

This stripped-down atmosphere let the band dig deep inside the material as Matt Shultz played the part of ruggedly handsome, seasoned rock frontman to perfection, gripping the mic tightly and singing each line with smoldering intensity.

A variety of material showcased CtE’s ability to swing between limbs of the postpunk tree with ease and agility. Highlights included Social Cues’ angular opening salvo “Broken Boy” and buoyant first single “Ready to Let Go.” Also well-represented were the contemplative Costello-esque stylings of “Telescope” from 2013’s Melophobia and manic, noisy Pixies homage “Sabertooth Tiger” from Cage’s 2011 second album Thank You Happy Birthday.

Tunes from 2015’s Dan Auerbachproduced Tell Me I’m Pretty, meanwhile, looked to classic-rock influences: “Cry Baby” and its Beatlesque coda, the slow-

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LET ’EM OUT: CAGE THE ELEPHANT served as lead engineer on the record, made for a moment celebrated across the Nashville rock scene.

On Saturday, roughly a year after the Grammy ceremony, the group — the core four of singer Matt Shultz and his guitarist brother Brad Shultz, bassist Daniel Tichenor and drummer Jared Champion, plus multiinstrumentalists Nick Bockrath and Matthan Minster — reconvened at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio. The occasion was a live webcast benefiting Bay Area arts nonprofit Bread & Roses that was hosted remotely, and amusingly, by none other than Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. The sextet set up on the floor at the vaunted Berry Hill recording complex and plugged in just after 7 p.m. for a rapid-fire, workmanlike 70-minute romp through their songbook.

In the new and still-evolving world of livestreaming, it can be a struggle for bands to conjure the intimacy and electricity of a proper club gig. Having transcended the small-venue circuit long ago, Cage seemed liberated by the absence of a crowd to perform to and the implied responsibility to entertain. There was no stage banter, much less costume changes

burning “Too Late to Say Goodbye” with its Phil Spector spaciousness, and the riff from “Cold Cold Cold,” a dead ringer for Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”

The fire-and-ice lyrical imagery of the latter two songs, played back to back, was a clever touch.

Stylishly moody pitfalls-of-fame meditations from Social Cues — like the cautionary tale “Tokyo Smoke,” philosophical lament “Skin and Bones” and pandemic-relevant “House of Glass” — made up the heart of the set. But the band also nodded to longtime fans when reaching back to Cage the Elephant’s twangy, hip-hop-inflected “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” a strong radio single that helped the album earn a platinum certification in 2016.

Crisply mixed by Ferguson, the 20-song show felt loose but locked in, akin to eavesdropping on one of a band’s final rehearsals before leaving on a world tour. It made clear that as Cage enters their 15th year as a group, neither age nor the forced hiatus has dulled the members’ ability to turn omnivorous tastes into something hooky, cohesive and all their own.

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FILM

PRIMAL STREAM 41 Found-footage horror, a dark-hearted kids’ flick and more, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

M

ovies are great for providing pivot points around which you can readjust your own perspectives. Sometimes it only takes an image to do it. Sometimes it’s a cumulative effect over several different works that hits your emotional reboot button. But this week’s offerings are all about how interesting art can be used as a springboard to launch yourself into all sorts of experiences, and how it can sometimes be good to toggle between the subjective and the objective.

So buckle up, because things get weird this week. As always, there are heaps of things to stream or rent in your home. Feel free to look around, and check out past issues of the Scene for more streaming recommendations.

‘LIFE AND FREAKY TIMES OF UNCLE LUKE’ VIA THE CRITERION CHANNEL Another invaluable offering in The Criterion Channel’s Afrofuturism collection is this psychotropic 10-minute short that serves as a remake of Chris Marker’s “La Jetée” (and Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys).

“Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke” stars Luther Campbell, formerly of The 2 Live Crew and perpetually the incarnation of the Miami bass sound that shakes car stereos and frees asses worldwide. The consistent throughline behind all three films is a reality-twisting whirl through time and space heading full-speed toward the metaphorical brick wall of causality. But here, incorporating aspects of Campbell’s own life and several if-onlys acquired along the way, we’re allowed to see a historical person as more than a punch line. It’s a weird experience — one that is more rewarding if you’ve got some degree of familiarity with the Marker or Gilliam films and Campbell’s hits. But at 10 minutes, “Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke” is near-perfectly paced and brings a lot of discourses together.

step of the way. This feels like a wine o’clock movie (for the kids!) before such a subgenre had even been defined, and as such I can’t help but welcome its cruelly sweet heart back into my life.

BUTTERFLY KISSES ON AMAZON PRIME First and foremost, what distinguishes Butterfly Kisses from the vast majority of found-footage films you’ll find all over the major streaming services (there are hundreds of them, and most are utterly terrible, including several titles I’d hoped to use for a themed approach to this week’s column before abandoning) is an overwhelming amount of ambition.

There’s a central horrific urban legend that spans all kinds of media and claims several youthful victims, but there’s also a rather intense dive into the psyche of people who seek to exploit tragedies and commodify the work of others by selling the aforementioned tragedy to audiences.

Beyond that is a whole other layer that is deeply concerned with where the line between support and exploitation lies, and how low-key polite acknowledgement of an upsetting situation carries with it a degree of being complicit in whatever happens — up to and including supernatural disarticulation.

Found footage is an inherently metatextual genre, and Butterfly Kisses aims to take the genre, its purveyors and its viewers through the looking glass and beyond on as many layers of discourse as you’ll put up with. It depicts several kinds of horrors, all of them at least mostly effective, and some of them scary enough to yield a response that concerns the upstairs neighbors. Peeping Tom, the film’s supernatural big bad, is a mysterious wraith who draws ever closer to all transgressors who bear witness to him.

MOUSE HUNT Tom sticks in the back of your mind with a bit more immediacy than the obsessed filmmaker who’s dismantling his marriage (note: you will hate this guy) or the other documentarian whose moral indecision is muddying all sorts of narrative waters (you will probably feel professional pity for this guy until things start careening out of control). This movie has an urban legend with a great hook as well as four different filmmakers operating on three different projects that are all tied together with blood, flop sweat and a Whitman’s Sampler of anxieties.

Butterfly Kisses is a great tool for teaching about genre mechanics, and also about balancing your insights with properly calibrated scares. But what it demonstrates most capably is why found footage as a genre allows the public to express its hatred of filmmakers. The what or the why is irrelevant, but going all the way back to

1980’s notorious Cannibal Holocaust, every found-footage movie exists to punish those who want to make movies. This one gets at why that happens, time and time again.

Even when these types of narratives try to make the central filmmaker do something noble and heroic, it never reads that way.

(Not for nothing does one of the directors of the original Blair Witch Project show up, as himself, to discuss this phenomenon.) The simple act of making a found-footage film, or finding one and putting it together, is equated to tempting fate, and it’s fascinating that there’s no other genre of film that exists to become its own mea culpa. Butterfly Kisses is a lot to take on. But if you dig horror at all, or if you’re into how narratives are used to raise up or cut down their characters, it’s worth it, and it’s staked out a great deal of space in my subconscious since I saw it, extending its tendrils all around.

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BUTTERFLY KISSES

MOUSE HUNT ON HULU You can look at this astonishing trifle from Gore Verbinski (A Cure for Wellness) as a family-friendly midnight movie, or (as its legacy seems to be writ these days) as the most dark-hearted kids’ movie ever made. Regardless of where you fall regarding that divide, Mouse Hunt is a marvel of production design and physical comedy that is also ripe for rediscovery through the lens of income inequality and class warfare. On paper, it’s as simple as the classic cartoon rivalries: Tom and Jerry; Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner; Spy vs. Spy; Itchy and Scratchy. Only in this instance, it’s endearing character actors Nathan Lane and Lee Evans versus a mouse, and it unfolds in a palatial home that feels designed with the meticulous and exacting hand of someone who wanted to be featured in Architectural Digest but also wanted to allow for maximum hijinks at every possible

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CROSSWORD

FILM

THE POETS ARE DEMANDING THEIR PAY

Heartworn Highways remains a powerful document of country music’s outlaw movement

BY NATHAN SMITH

C

ountry music’s outlaw movement has been mythologized, valorized and criticized time and time again. An essential artifact and document of that scene and sound is filmmaker James Szalapski’s long-inaccessible HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS NR, 92 MINUTES documentary HeartAVAILABLE TO STREAM worn Highways, a FRIDAY, FEB. 5, VIA film with as much BELCOURT.ORG of a devoted cult as the music itself. Most of the more canonized names are just a whisper on the wind here — you won’t find Willie, Waylon or Merle in the doc, nor the faces of the recently departed Jerry Jeff Walker and Billy Joe Shaver. But that allows for a perhaps more honest and authentic depiction of a musical movement, examining not from the top down but from the true underground of the time. Unavailable or only accessible in low quality for many years, this country music landmark has been restored by Kino Lorber, alongside a soundtrack reissue by Light in the Attic Records.

Part concert movie, part behind-the-scenes and backstage documentary, Heartworn Highways is something distinctive, more like a compilation album than a conventional doc.

It follows a certain tendency and mentality across vastly different sectors of the countryWestern spectrum, from the songwriter sound that emerged in intimate clubs like Nashville’s Exit/In and Austin’s Continental Club and Armadillo World Headquarters, in steep opposition to the industry machine of the time, all the way up to the electrified Southern rock of recently deceased fiddler and right-wing conspiracy theorist Charlie Daniels. There’s an almost rambling, unnarrated quality to Szalapski’s direction — it can at times make the film a little difficult if you’re not already familiar with the figures involved, though the musical performances are undeniably impressive. But it’s that fly-on-the-wall quality that makes Heartworn Highways feel so spiritually aligned with the subculture it captures; it’s shaggy and rambling, like a hard-drinking and hard-living songwriter or an unfinished gravel road.

The legends shown here are a dime a dozen, and many before they had even really begun to fully bloom. We see Steve Earle when he was just a shaggy-haired kid jamming at a kitchen table, not yet the musical activist, actor and father of equally legendary and tragically late Justin Townes Earle; we hang with Rodney Crowell as a fresh-faced young guy in an oversized graphic T. Guy Clark sings a handful of his masterpieces, like “L.A. Freeway” and “Texas Cookin’,” brings us into his home, talks us through guitar care and instrument repair. The moments with Townes Van Zandt are particularly tender, both for

his goofy, aw-shucks screen presence and for the real ache you can feel from his personal reflections and performance of “Waiting Around to Die.” When we first meet David Allan Coe, he’s at the helm of his own tour bus, a fitting introduction for a larger-than-life figure who has claimed, at various points, to have lived in a hearse upon first moving to Nashville and hidden out in a cave while avoiding the IRS in the 1980s. Eventually the bus arrives at Nashville’s Tennessee State Prison (closed in 1992 due to overcrowding) for a poignant and climactic performance for the true-blue country raconteur. Coe essentially grew up in the carceral system, spending two decades on and off in various institutions. As the colorful singer explicitly discusses how his time in a juvenile facility drove him toward crime, Szalapski zooms in on the side-eyeing scowls of the armed guards only a few feet away.

The self-styled “original Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy” is something of a strange sight in the cold steel facility, jumping around in sparkly disco-ball boots doing a prog jam with his drugged-out band. The crowd becomes much more actively engaged during DAC’s stage banter, as he tells jokes about sniffing typewriter fluid and attempted prison breakouts in an affect that feels uncannily reminiscent of Richard Pryor. As opposed to the almost tent-revivalist intensity of Johnny Cash’s prison concerts, the air around David Allan Coe is strangely silent and suckedout, almost dead, even though the audience clearly relates and responds positively to his own accounts of years behind bars. There’s maybe the feeling that DAC could go too far at any time, that he might speak too harshly or truthfully to incarcerated experience, that he might rile the men up and provide justification for cruelty from the guards. When he first arrives at the penitentiary, DAC immediately speaks to the issue of overcrowding, of tensions that arise between mixing different generations of convicts, and almost demands some kind of structural change at the facility if he’s going to play.

Though his legitimate art and achievements may have long been overshadowed by the series of racist and all-around offensive novelty songs he infamously and regrettably released on the underground trucker market in the 1980s, the force of nature known as DAC released an incredible, often deeply beautiful body of more respectable — if still transgressive — country work throughout the ’70s and ’80s. He wrote some of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, like “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone),” and sometimes even espoused radically progressive views. In one body, he brings together the absolute best and worst of country music, and there’s maybe no better figure to truly embody the tensions and complications of the outlaw era.

These men were and are effortless poets of ordinary experience, illicit exuberance, and existential pain, but they were still men, insightful but not infallible, often crude or cruel to women. It’s that set of contradictions that Heartworn Highways captures so insightfully; it pierces through the myth of what Waylon would later call the “Outlaw Bit,” examining an era of innovation with unvarnished authenticity, keeping its distance just enough as not to turn real people into icons on a pillar.

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