Nashville Scene 3-14-24

Talking with phenomenal singersongwriter Kacey Musgraves about the power of introspection on her fifth LP Deeper Well

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

What Dreams Are Made Of

NEWS

Thunder on the Mountain Do luxury homesites sit atop environmental catastrophe?

BY MICHAEL RAY TAYLOR

Super Tuesday Paints Davidson County’s Partisan Picture Donors and down-ballot races eclipse a predictable top of ticket

BY ELI MOTYCKA

Pith in the Wind

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

Female Runners Find Safety in Numbers After UGA Student Death

Nashville’s Chicks With Kicks founder wants to see the concept spread

BY HANNAH HERNER

COVER STORY

What Dreams Are Made Of Talking with phenomenal singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves about the power of introspection on her fifth LP Deeper Well

BY BRITTNEY MCKENNA

CRITICS’ PICKS

Sierra Ferrell, The Hypos, Negro Justice, Jonathan Richman, Laura Jane Grace and more

FOOD AND DRINK

Same as It Ever Was

Half a century in, Sperry’s thrives on not changing a thing

BY MARGARET LITTMAN

Group

say live music and community make for a fulfilling Friday

BOOKS

Chasing the Dream

Caroline Frost’s The Last Verse sets a mystery in 1970s Nashville

MUSIC

Genre Is Over (If You Want It) Jack Silverman Quartet’s instrumental music leaves arbitrary style constraints in the dust BY

Setting the Table

Lizzie No commands their space on Halfsies

BY RACHEL CHOLST

Keep on Rolling

Coyote Motel’s The River tells stories too big for just one medium

BY RON WYNN

The Spin

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Olivia Rodrigo at Bridgestone Arena

BY HANNAH CRON

FILM

The Things We Do for Love

Love Lies Bleeding shows how passionate, messy and violent love can be

Fear of a Black Planet

The American Society of Magical Negroes isn’t as pointed as it could be BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD AND THIS MODERN WORLD MARKETPLACE

Kacey Musgraves; photo by Kelly Christine Sutton

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3/19 Create Your Own End-Grain Cutting Board Part 2

3/20 Marquetry - Paint by Numbers

3/21

3/23

The Nashville Country Dancers’ contra dance night • PHOTO BY ANGELINA CASTILLO

FROM BILL FREEMAN

BIDEN SEEKS DECENCY, TRUMP

SEEKS REVENGE — AND OTHER TAKEAWAYS FROM THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN addressed the nation recently in his fourth State of the Union speech, and he didn’t mince words when speaking of his predecessor and the challenges facing our country if Trump were to be reelected to office. “Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today,” declared Biden from the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

While Biden spoke frankly about the misdirection, mistakes and misogyny that defined the Trump administration, he did not focus the entirety of his message on criticism. He spoke confidently of the successes and improvements that have been made during his administration. “Folks, I inherited an economy that was on the brink,” he said. “Now our economy is literally the envy of the world.”

He didn’t make such a statement without hard facts to back it up: “Fifteen million new jobs in just three years. A record. A record. Unemployment at 50-year lows. A record 16 million Americans are starting small businesses, and each one is a literal act of hope, with historic job growth and small-business growth for Black and Hispanics and Asian Americans. Eight-hundred-thousand new manufacturing jobs in America and counting. Where is it written we can’t be the manufacturing capital of the world? We are and we will.” The president went on to describe other successes, including manufacturing, infrastructure, health insurance, wage equality, reproductive health, clean energy, private-sector investments and agricultural support — just a few of the many successes to date of the Biden administration.

President Biden’s speech was frank and honest. He demonstrated his capability and prowess through the speech itself and by hallmarking successes from his administration.

The American people listened, and the rest of the world did too.

The Democratic National Committee had this to say: “During his State of the Union address, President Biden spoke directly to the American people about his work driving the greatest comeback in the world and the inflection point we’re now at. Millions of people across our country saw that the choice they have this November is between an America where everyone gets a fair shot and our freedoms and democracy are protected or Donald Trump’s self-serving, hate-fueled America with less freedoms and more division.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

It appears from the results of Super Tuesday that the economy will be key for President Biden’s administration to continue into his second term. Encouraging Americans to vote

is critical when a race is so hotly contested and demographically divided. Minority votes will be critical. A recent CBS News poll indicates that Black and Hispanic votes, while reduced slightly from their support of Biden in 2020, still support him staunchly over Trump: “A large majority of Black voters says they will vote for Mr. Biden this year. But his current support trails what he got in 2020. The president still has an edge with Hispanic voters now, but his margin over Trump is smaller than it was in 2020.” Getting the truth about the economy to several key voting groups — including minority voters, white voters with college degrees, women and suburban voters — will be critical to ensuring that Biden solidifies his second term.

What I found most interesting in this CBS News poll was not so much what the analysis showed about Biden, but what it showed about Trump’s support. We all know that getting voters to the polls has historically been more important to Democratic candidates than Republicans. This poll shows, however, that Trump’s most staunchly held voting groups haven’t gained an inch over the past four years. His most ardent supporters — white evangelicals, white people with no college degree, men, and voters over 65 — have hardly moved the needle since the 2020 exit polls were taken. For instance, 76 percent of white evangelicals said they voted for Trump in 2020. In CBS News’ 2024 poll, just 77 percent of white evangelicals said they will vote for Trump. In white voters without a college degree, Trump has slightly lost ground — with 67 percent saying they voted for Trump in 2020 and 66 percent saying today that they intend to vote for Trump. Quite telling.

Despite our differences in political ideology, it is my hope that all of America can join together in recognizing that we can do better than returning to an administration intending to seek revenge and retribution. As President Biden said so well in his State of the Union address: “Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back. To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done. … So, let’s build the future together. Let’s remember who we are. We are the United States of America. And there is nothing — nothing — beyond our capacity when we act together.”

Bill Freeman

Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and The News

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In memory of Jim Ridley, editor 2009-2016

WITNESS HISTORY

Patty Loveless used this 1987 Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar extensively for stage work. 1987 was a big year for Loveless— it marked the release of her debut album, prompting the Tennessean to proclaim her the “foremost female new traditionalist.”

From the exhibit Patty Loveless: No Trouble with the Truth

RESERVE TODAY

artifact: Courtesy of Patty Loveless artifact photo: Bob Delevante

AGES 4–10

Explore movement, creativity, and musicality through adventures and classic ballet stories!

9 A.M.–12 P.M. OR 1–4 P.M.

Animal Adventures

May 20–24 and June 10–14

Fairytale Fun

Tues. May 28–Sat. June 1

A Chorus Line

June 3–7 and July 22–26

NashvilleBallet.com/summer-programs

THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN

Do luxury homesites sit atop environmental catastrophe?

BY MICHAEL RAY TAYLOR

TAKE I-24 EAST from Manchester. The dark band of the Cumberland Plateau looms above the horizon, its forests hiding beds of limestone, sandstone, shale and coal. Pastures along the highway glow the neon green of early spring. Near mile marker 125, a double billboard appears. One sign touts Ruby Falls, and the other bears two lines of print: “River Gorge Ranch. A New Mountain Community.” The background is pleasantly artistic, with imagined peaks and a stylized blue stream. It could be the cover of a fantasy novel.

It does not mention coal mines.

Cruise down the Monteagle grade, crossing the impounded Tennessee River near Nickajack Dam. Aetna Mountain looms ahead, a dun-colored scar zig-zagging toward the peak: the future entrance to River Gorge Ranch (RGR). Take the Haletown exit for the visitor center, in a building that once housed Big Daddy’s Fireworks.

The splashy development brochure, disguised as a magazine called Tennessee Mountain Living, shows Gov. Bill Lee breaking ground on the site as proud owner and developer John “Thunder” Thornton looks on. An article boasts the endorsement of “ambassador” Jim Nantz, who in a promotional video calls RGR “a peaceful and luxurious escape.”

Lots at “Tennessee’s Premier Mountain Gated Community” sell for up to $600,000, depending on the view, with approximately 300 sold and more than 2,500 in projected sales. RGR will include three “Amenity Centers” with recreation, shops and restaurants (all run by Thornton).

Prospective buyers can take a Jeep tour up the rutted track — not that there’s much to see. There are no finished roads, electricity, water, sewer or model homes. Instead, after enjoying the Aetna views, customers can see models across the valley in Thornton’s previous development, Jasper Highlands.

The brochure explains: “The first phase of River Gorge Ranch will always be remembered as the Founder’s Phase — a collection of properties for pioneers, adventurers, and visionaries; those who step out onto the land before the first road is paved and yet understand the power of this one-of-a-kind location.”

“Power” is a good word choice. The location sits atop what locals call a “Swiss cheese” of abandoned coal mines, some dating back to the 1840s. Entrances and air shafts — most now hidden by dirt or concrete — line Upper and Lower Strip Mine roads (to be renamed once they become major RGR thoroughfares). For decades, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the collapse of room-and-pillar coal mines. Anyone trying to sell a house above such a site would be required to disclose risks to potential buyers, who might need to purchase subsidence insurance. Tennessee law, however, does not require disclo-

sure for the sale of undeveloped land.

Mike Bailey retired from his role as lead wildlife officer at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency after decades spent working on Aetna Mountain. A biologist by training, he helped remediate some of its former strip mines, bringing back native flora and fauna.

“There’s strip pits and deep shaft mines all over the entire mountain,” Bailey says.

Aetna once held a thriving community with houses, a store, mine headquarters, a church and a cemetery. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, state prisoners were released to the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company as convict labor.

“In the back of the cemetery, graves are either unmarked, or they simply marked the rocks on the ground,” Bailey says. “Those prisoners died mining for coal.”

He recalls a more recent strip mine on the west side of Big Ridge. “It exposed a whole row [of older mines],” he says. “You could look up on the side of the cut and see the old deep shaft mines that went through the ridge, one after the other.” In addition to mines and shafts at the top of the mountain, Bailey has seen “deep mine shafts in the hollers,” referring to canyons like Moroney Gulf, which extends just below the planned location for RGR’s still-unnamed “Amenity Center No. 2.”

IN 2006, photographer John House was hired to shoot Aetna Mountain for a biological survey conducted by a forestry company. He entered and photographed two mines on the mountain, noting that sometime after the mines were abandoned, locals had illegally extracted coal by removing some pillars. To avoid collapse, they propped the ceiling up with tree trunks. House said “bad air” eventually chased him back outside. The log supports he photographed presumably remain, slowly rotting away.

Land subsidence is common above old room-and-pillar mines — especially where pillars have been “robbed,” as at Aetna. As construction industry publication Structure put it in a 2020 article on building over coal mines, “given the investment, having correct risk information is critical to proper decision making.”

Retiree Ronnie Kennedy was determined to share such information with the unsuspecting purchasers of property at RGR. An amateur historian who “knew every inch” of Aetna, in the 1980s he supervised an active strip mine on the mountain. Kennedy had known the owner’s family since the 1950s. After the owner died, his widow gave Kennedy boxes of mine maps and other Aetna historical documents, some dating back well over 100 years. He lives in a trailer on Aetna Mountain Road, just below the property line where the road to the

top became private three years ago.

Many of Kennedy’s neighbors knew of the mines, but most feared reprisals from Thornton should they speak out publicly. Even so, a few concerned citizens decided to help get Kennedy’s maps into the proper hands. The maps reached a mine expert in the U.S. Office of Surface Mining. He combined their data with Aetna topographic and LIDAR maps. These new maps showed that as many as 30 underground mines, some of them enormous, tunneled beneath current and planned development areas. And they depicted dozens more known entrances beyond those shown on the old mine plots.

Armed with the map data, staff of the Land Reclamation Section of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) reached out to Thornton’s consulting firm, Davey Resource Group Environmental Consulting. TDEC offered to visit the site in 2023 to locate and identify mine-related land features. According to TDEC spokesperson Kim Schofinski, “After consulting with their client, the consultant declined our offer.” She says TDEC’s policy is to honor such wishes “unless an imminent health or safety hazard is known.”

The consultant ultimately declined inspection twice.

Undeterred, Kennedy sought to have the maps introduced by the Marion County Commission, saying he was concerned for out-of-state residents spending great sums on dream homes with no knowledge of the potential problems. While some commissioners work frequently with Thornton, others were sympathetic to people helping Kennedy get the word out. At the Jan. 29 county commission meeting, Kennedy planned on introducing his maps, but unrelated complaints from another citizen caused the chair to shut down all public commentary at the meeting before Kennedy could speak. (The chair had the sheriff remove the speaker from the room.) This led a state official to visit commissioners in advance of the February meeting to run a workshop on when and how to allow public commentary.

Before the Feb. 26 meeting, three commissioners agreed to introduce Aetna Mountain as an agenda item, allowing Kennedy to speak. More than an hour into the meeting, Commissioner Paul Schafer spoke before inviting Kennedy to the podium.

“I have received calls from residents regarding issues of closed mines on Aetna Mountain,” Scha-

fer said, adding that he believed the developer should disclose their existence and potential problems to future buyers. With that, he introduced Kennedy as a “longtime resident.”

Kennedy approached the podium slowly, then spoke in a soft Southern voice that the microphone barely picked up. Holding a thick envelope of maps, he described the mining history, pausing as commissioners jumped in to share their own stories.

One mentioned that Billy Gouger, the county attorney, had played in the mines as a boy. Another, a retired state forestry technician, described supervising a crew putting out a forest fire when a sudden collapse swallowed a bulldozer to the top of its treads. A larger bulldozer had to be brought from Prentice Cooper State Forest to extract it.

“I tried to bring this to the right people’s attention,” Kennedy said from the podium. “But who am I, you know?”

“There’s a coal seam up there that burned underneath the ground for years and years,” said Commissioner Gene Hargis, chief detective for the Marion County Sheriff’s Department.

As Hargis continued, county Mayor David Jackson put his hand to his forehead and shook his head in evident disbelief at the direction of the conversation.

Hargis, seated beside him, failed to notice. “I don’t know if it still is up there, but it burned several years.”

“Last I heard, it was still burning,” Kennedy said. “They tried to cap it with concrete.”

“I hadn’t saw any in years on ‘Et-knee,’” Hargis said. “But when I first started working the sheriff’s department, we’d be up there, and you could warm your hands by [the rocks] in the wintertime.”

“Once it gets burning, you can’t never put ’em out,” Kennedy said, mentioning the ruined coal town of Centralia, Pa.

After much discussion, the commission took a recommendation from Gouger to bring the issue to the developer, asking what mitigation efforts he had taken. Gouger expected they would deliver an answer before the next meeting, scheduled for March 25.

The next day Commissioner Ruric Brandt, one of those who had supported putting Kennedy on the agenda, said strangers were calling him to say he should keep asking tough questions.

“Marion County has been kept in the dark,” Brandt said. “The lights are finally turned on.”

Next up: Water, sewer and buyers still in the dark. ▼

See part two of “Thunder on the Mountain” in next week’s issue.

PHOTO: MICHAEL RAY TAYLOR

SUPER TUESDAY PAINTS DAVIDSON COUNTY’S PARTISAN PICTURE

Donors and down-ballot races eclipse a predictable top of ticket

BY ELI MOTYCKA

delegate vote totals.

A RAINY SUPER TUESDAY election on March 5 delivered Tennessee’s delegate haul to the race’s obvious front-runners: Donald Trump and Joe Biden. By the end of the evening, Trump victories across the country dispatched former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, his only viable challenger, from the race, guaranteeing a BidenTrump rematch in November. Down-ballot races gave voters a peek into state party politics and at least one local upset.

Because Nashville is so much more than honky-tonks and bachelorettes...

Trump matched his 2016 vote totals last week with just over 17,000 Davidson County votes (to Haley’s 10,200), up from 15,375 in 2020. Biden bagged 33,000 votes, roughly the same as his 2020 contested primary, when he beat Sen. Bernie Sanders (25,730), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (14,813) and billionaire Michael Bloomberg (12,164). This year, Biden’s biggest local opponent was “uncommitted,” an option chosen by 3,464 Nashvillians that is widely considered a protest vote against White House support of Israel during a military campaign that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. Tuesday’s sleepy turnout further obscures the biggest questions surrounding the 2024 election: How much of Nashville’s left will cohere around mainstream Democrats? And how many voters won’t turn out for Trump, who appears to be shedding centrist voters?

The uniquely American math of the electoral college ensures that November’s race will hinge on just a couple real presidential battlegrounds — North Carolina and Georgia are nearby tossups, along with national prizes Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Tennessee’s strong rightward slant makes a Trump victory here essentially guaranteed. Al Gore, Tennessee political scion and the state’s former U.S. senator, was the last competitive Democratic presidential candidate here when he lost the state to George W. Bush by four points in 2000.

Even with predictable local results, the 2024 election has activated Tennessee’s big partisan spenders. Philanthropist and private equity kingpin Andrew Byrd has spread more than $1 million across Democratic parties and candidates this cycle, surpassed only by real estate magnate (and Nashville Scene owner) Bill Freeman’s $1.5 million. Byrd gave $600,000 directly to the Biden campaign, while Freeman gave $1 million.

Dedicated rapid transit lanes and new WeGo routes are at the center of Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s new transit plan, according to maps presented by his top transportation aides at a meeting with advisers last week. Two major pressure points bear down on the plan: financial hurdles from the state and federal government, and the quickly approaching November ballot, targeted by O’Connell for a transit referendum vote “We are a small team, and we’re pulling this together as quickly as possible,” said new Metro transportation planning director Michael Briggs

Trump megadonors include Lower Broadway baron Steve Smith, who funneled at least $100,000 toward the former president this cycle, and wealthy auto dealer Lee Beaman, who’s put at least $110,000 toward Trump and Trump-related PACs. Accusations of psychological abuse and sexual impropriety revealed in his divorce proceedings jeopardized Beaman’s position on boards for prominent educational and cultural institutions like Cheekwood, Montgomery Bell Academy, Belmont University and the Nashville Zoo. He cashed in his former downtown Toyota property for $110 million in 2021.

Those who did show up elected a slew of local officials. Vivian Wilhoite, a former mayoral candidate, defended her position as Davidson County Assessor of Property after a late challenge from Tomesia Day. Attorney Stephanie Williams walloped incumbent Stan Kweller, appointed in January 2023 by Gov. Bill Lee, by more than 20,000 votes en route to Davidson County’s Circuit Court Division IV judge seat, which oversees cases related to domestic law.

Thursday saw a “spirited” end to the week’s legislative business inside the state Capitol when Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) objected to a resolution honoring Metro Nashville Public Schools — with Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) firing back. “I will not, nor should anyone, tolerate the trashing of our MNPS schools or any other public school in this state,” Clemmons told the Scene Also in the legislature last week: The ELVIS Act passed, making Tennessee the first state to address protections for individuals from artificial intelligence; two very different versions of Gov. Bill Lee’s education voucher legislation passed two key committees in the state House and Senate; bills that would protect contraceptive access and in vitro fertilization were mowed down by the Republican majority in a subcommittee.

Several candidates cruised through school board primaries, including former Metro Councilmember Zach Young of Goodlettsville. Robert Taylor squeaked past LaTonya Winfrey and Dominique McCord-Cotton in District 1 — a large swath of Davidson County that includes Bordeaux, White’s Creek and Joelton. District 1 is also the only race with a Republican challenger, who will face Taylor in a general election.

A lesser-known wealthy local, Michael Hodges, who founded extractive loan giant Advance Financial, has sunk more than $1.5 million into the Trump campaign, related PACs and Republican congressional races. The billionaire Haslam family has supported the GOP with at least $600,000 this cycle, followed by four- or five-figure donations from CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger, Carl’s Jr. CEO (and Trump ally) Andrew Puzder, powerful Republican strategist Ward Baker, Anglophile billionaire heir Orrin Ingram II, health care exec Chris Redlich and the Waltrip family of NASCAR fame.

District 13 Councilmember Russ Bradford presented a resolution to the Metro Council

Republicans use the Super Tuesday ballot to choose who to send to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer as state delegates. With voting already determined, the position puts a few dozen party insiders at the center of the GOP universe for a few days to schmooze and booze alongside national party figures. State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, U.S. Rep. Mark Green aide Steve Allbrooks, former state Sen. Mae Beavers and Chad Blackburn (son of Marsha) all snagged the highest

Stuart McWhorter, currently serving in the Lee administration as Tennessee’s commissioner of economic and community development, showed a break with Tennessee voters in his staunch support for Haley. According to campaign finance documents, McWhorter and his wife poured nearly $50,000 into Haley’s challenge to Trump over the past eight months, including $12,200 in last-minute donations days before Haley dropped out. ▼

Thursday night asking the Metro Nashville Airport Authority to preserve the historic Colemere Mansion, home to restaurant Monell’s at the Manor. The MNAA owns the property, located at 1400 Murfreesboro Road, and told Monell’s in September it would not be renewing the lease for the restaurant after April 30. Also at last week’s meeting, the council voted down a resolution authorizing Metro Legal to settle a “First Amendment retaliation” lawsuit brought by Nashville Fire Department Capt. Tracy Turner for $105,000.

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

PHOTO: HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

REP. JOHN RAY CLEMMONS

FEMALE RUNNERS FIND SAFETY IN NUMBERS AFTER UGA STUDENT DEATH

Nashville’s Chicks With Kicks founder wants to see the concept spread BY

HANNAH HERNER

NINETY-ONE WOMEN and counting have joined a group called “Chicks With Kicks” over the past few weeks.

Caroline Holland is a third-year Vanderbilt University student studying early childhood and special education. She started the group on Feb. 23, one day after University of Georgia student Laken Hope Riley was killed while running on campus.

Tragically, Riley was far from the first female runner to be targeted, but her case stood out to Holland. Riley seemingly followed all the rules: She ran near campus, in daylight; she told someone where she was going; she brought a cellphone and even shared her location through an app.

“She just did everything that I’m told I’m supposed to do when I run, and then — even then — she was a victim,” Holland says. “For me, it was just like, ‘Wow, we really can never be safe.’ The only way is to surround yourself with other people and have a buddy system in running groups. It’s really tragic.”

Vanderbilt has a coed running club that meets daily, but it meets while Holland is in class. Coordinating through messaging app GroupMe, Chicks With Kicks runners can meet at a time that works for them.

Holland started running for the first time during the height of the COVID pandemic, but now she’s training for a marathon. It’s a stress reliever, she says. Though she isn’t angry about

it, Holland admits she is envious of her male friends who run at night — and run through the city, even on Broadway.

“They’re probably just enjoying their run and not thinking twice about it,” she says. “Probably thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner tonight. Every step I take I am turning, looking. I have a routine. I make eye contact with everyone I pass. It’s annoying.”

Holland wants male runners to simply know that female runners are on edge, perceiving a threat until proven otherwise, so it can be helpful to give a friendly expression when passing a lone female runner on a path.

Chicks With Kicks is focused on Vanderbilt students, but Holland says she’d like to see other colleges create their own chapters. She’ll register it to be an official student group next semester, and possibly add selfdefense class meetings. The surge of interest the group has seen demonstrates its need, she says.

Holland is already seeing the group work for its intended purpose, and friendships are forming. It offers some peace of mind and community, especially for runners like herself who spend much of their free time training for races.

“I just feel like maybe if there are more resources like this — I don’t want to say that would not have happened. We don’t know. But it could save lives.” ▼

JUNE 14

JOSH GATES LIVE! AN EVENING OF LEGENDS, MYSTERIES, AND TALES OF ADVENTURE

JUNE 30

ALAN PARSONS LIVE PROJECT

JULY 24

YES EPICS, CLASSICS & MORE FEATURING JON ANDERSON AND THE BAND GEEKS WITH THE RETURN OF EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER

JULY 26 & 27

CHARLEY CROCKETT

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

JULY 30

SCOTT BRADLEE’S POSTMODERN JUKEBOX

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

AUGUST 16

THE OZARK MOUNTAIN DAREDEVILS

OCTOBER 21

JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

CAROLINE HOLLAND

Talking with phenomenal singersongwriter Kacey Musgraves about the power of introspection on her fifth LP Deeper Well

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

What Dreams Are Made Of

Deeper Well out Friday, March 15, via Interscope/MCA Nashville

Playing Dec. 6-7 at Bridgestone Arena

Metaphysically, that is. The seven-time Grammy winner has been in an artistic groove for more than a decade now, gradually expanding the country genre since releasing her debut single, “Merry Go ’Round,” in 2013. But life doesn’t care about your trophies, and Musgraves went on a journey of self-discovery when hers began to feel difficult.

The result of that journey is her fifth album Deeper Well, out Friday. The record is Musgraves’ most assured yet, despite also being her quietest. After 2021’s Star-Crossed, an ambitious album that chronicled her divorce while also playing with genre, Musgraves tuned out the noise and followed her gut.

“I went into this album with no preconceived, hard ideas for songs,” Musgraves tells the Scene, catching up before boarding a flight to New York City to perform on Saturday Night Live alongside host Sydney Sweeney. “I didn’t really even have a timeline. … I knew that I wanted to make a record that was a little softer than Star-Crossed, but other than that I was really open to whatever presented itself.”

What wound up presenting itself is a gentle but potent LP, recorded at New York City’s famed Electric Lady Studios, once home away from home for Jimi Hendrix. As on 2021’s Star-Crossed and 2018’s Golden Hour, Musgraves tapped co-producers Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian to join her for the project, with the trio landing on a sound Tashian calls “future folk.” Thematically, Deeper Well digs into spirituality, healing, death and our inherent interconnectedness, both with one another and with the natural world.

In a world growing louder by the day, Musgraves engages these concepts with a light touch, nestling her insights in lush and verdant production. Lyrically, the record finds spaciousness within simplicity, each idea distilled to its very essence.

“The world is really so chaotic, and it’s nice to have a soft place to come back to that feels soothing,” Musgraves says. “I seek that out in a lot of ways, with either music or meditation or self-care.”

As they did with Star-Crossed, genre obsessives will likely argue over Deeper Well’s country bona fides, a tedious debate

KACEY MUSGRAVES FOUND her flow.

PHOTO: KELLY CHRISTINE SUTTON

that belittles the expansiveness and ambition of both projects. In 2021, a mini controversy erupted online when The Recording Academy deemed Star-Crossed ineligible for country categories on the 2022 Grammy ballot.

The decision felt both arbitrary and targeted. Though Star-Crossed dips into pop (“Breadwinner” is still a banger), songs like “Justified” and “Keep Lookin’ Up” sound more “country” than most songs on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, now or then. Plus, there’s more to country music than a steel guitar.

“Star-Crossed, I believe, was a very adventurous country album,” Tashian tells the Scene “Personally, I felt like, ‘This is the country music of the future.’ People said, ‘Now, you can’t call it that because it doesn’t have fiddles on it,’ or it doesn’t ‘this’ or it doesn’t ‘that,’ and that’s fine. I understand all that. … But I think everything Kacey does has a kernel of the nucleus of country to it, because it’s what she is. She’s from a small town in Texas. She thinks country thoughts. She sings in a country way.”

Musgraves has long defied tidy categorization, though, and seems to grow more genre-agnostic with each record. She’s more interested in how genres can collide than how they differ from one another.

“It’s just fun for me to think without fences,” says Musgraves. “I think I’ll always have things about my music that have a common thread. I mean, I’m from Texas — I don’t think I could shake some of the country aspects even if I really wanted to. But it’s really fun to have total creative freedom to make whatever feels good. I think some of the best artists of all time were genreless. If you really think about it, what were The Beatles? I don’t know. They were kind of all things.”

TO BORROW A phrase from Cody Chesnutt, Deeper Well is a headphone masterpiece. Where Star-Crossed was widescreen and cinematic — it had an accompanying film, after all — Deeper Well is best experienced through your nicest speakers. Its meticulously detailed production is not just gorgeous and complex but often integral to Musgraves’ storytelling. Negative space permeates the record. Near the beginning of the title track, Musgraves sings, “When I turned 27, everything started to change,” in a spot where you expect a rhyming couplet to follow; instead, there’s a quick chord change that’s arpeggiated on multiple acoustic guitars.

That song is the record’s thesis statement, a succinct and relatable accounting of things that no longer serve Musgraves: an ex with “dark energy,” a homemade gravity bong, baggage from growing up in a small town. There’s no ill will here, though, just acknowledgment and release — like we’re privy to her passing thoughts while meditating.

Later in “Deeper Well,” Musgraves admits, “The things I was taught only took me so far / Had to figure the rest out myself.” Asked how she found her way on her own, she answers: “First of all, surrounding myself with people that are truth-tellers, that are honest. I’m lucky to have a really amazing friend group that I made

almost 15 years ago, so we totally trust each other. A good therapist, for sure. And just paying attention along the way — tuning in, trying not to ignore those laws of nature, those things that are feeling wrong.”

Musgraves perks up when the conversation turns to nature, a core source of inspiration that snakes its way through the LP. Opening track “Cardinal” tunes into the symbolism of the everyday, as the appearance of a “scarlet red” cardinal while out on a walk hints at “message[s] from the other side.” “Heart of the Woods” likens the network of mycelia beneath the forest floor to a “neighborhood that can’t be seen,” where trees and plants communicate and “look out for each other” through their roots. Unsurprisingly, Musgraves is a noted fan of the mycologist Paul Stamets.

“I have such a massive reverence and love for nature,” she says. “For me, I would say nature is God, even though a lot of people have different meanings for that word. I heard a quote the other day that I really loved a lot, and it said, ‘The ultimate rich is being in tune with the flow of nature’ — like, being able to pay attention to what nature is telling you.”

Another song drawn from nature is “Sway,” a lush and layered plea for resilience. The track builds slowly to a gorgeous chorus of vocals — performed mostly by Musgraves, though Tashian pitches in, and the inimitable Sarah Buxton joins too. It’s a neat bit of sonic storytelling, as the chorus swells like a passing breeze.

“If you’re in the wrong relationships, or you’re choosing the wrong things, or you’re around the wrong people, or maybe you’re in the wrong job,” Musgraves says, “nature is going to quietly tell you and quietly tell you, and keep whispering and whispering until it’s literally screaming at you to make changes.”

The kind of intentional attention that allows nature’s voice to ring clear is also central to Deeper Well. The slinky standout “Lonely Millionaire,” which interpolates JID’s “Kody Blu 31,” reminds us that the aspirational luxury of a “gold watch” or a “black car” only distracts from what actually makes life meaningful. The dusky “Giver / Taker” opens with the line, “Sundown and I’m lonely in this house,” a motif that recurs throughout the record.

So, too, does a spirit of vulnerable generosity.

In “Giver / Taker,” Musgraves sings: “I’d give you everything that you wanted / And I would never ask for any of it back.” In the first verse of “Lonely Millionaire,” she tells a lover: “When I get paid I wanna spend it on you / Baby, that’s what it’s for / I’d burn it all to keep you warm.” Even the melancholy “Moving Out,” ostensibly about the end of a relationship, expresses a hope to leave a place “better than we found it.”

“Kacey has always been good at writing a wide variety of topics, not just whatever romantic relationship she’s involved with,” Fitchuk says. “I’d like to think it brought out some topics like ‘Dinner With Friends’ or ‘Lonely Millionaire,’ or even ‘Deeper Well,’ for that matter, which weren’t necessarily tied to the beginning or ending of a specific relationship.”

The beating heart of Deeper Well is “The

It’s just fun for me to think without fences. I think I’ll always have things about my music that have a common thread. I mean, I’m from Texas - I don’t think I could shake some of the country aspects even if I really wanted to.

—Kacey Musgraves

Architect,” a Shane McAnally co-write that ponders the intentions — and existence — of a higher power. It’s one of the best songs Musgraves has ever written, neatly encapsulating her ability to distill heady concepts into simple images and to create space by zooming in — a rare skill she shares with one of her foremost inspirations, the late John Prine.

Starting with “something as small as an apple,” Musgraves wonders if the world around us was “thought out at all or just paint on a wall” before questioning her own free will (“Am I shapeable clay / Or is this as good as it gets?”) and acknowledging the mystery and “happenstance” of human connection. She offers no easy answers. Instead, she flips the chorus refrain — “Can I speak to the architect?” becomes “Is there an architect?” in the song’s final seconds.

Musgraves and McAnally wrote “The Architect” in the weeks following the March 2023

Covenant School shooting, which claimed the lives of three students and three staff members in Nashville. Songwriter Josh Osborne was at the session that day too. Musgraves says the three of them “sat and talked for quite a long time before even diving in to write something.”

“It felt so close to home,” she says of the shooting. “It was just so hard to know how to continue how to function after that, especially sitting down to write a song — something that should be joyful. It just felt dumb to be sitting there doing something like that when a truly life-changing, terrible event had just happened in our town.”

The conversation brought to mind a title — “The Architect” — that Musgraves had been mulling over, connecting it to their broader bewilderment at trying to make a life while it feels like the world is falling apart.

“If you say a song title in a room with Josh and

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Shane, it’s gonna get written,” she says. “Josh said, ‘Yeah, you know, what’s going on here?

Can I speak to the architect? Is there a blueprint for any of this?’ It really was born out of organic conversation about things that were happening in the world.”

IT’S CLICHÉ TO liken New York City to a character in a piece of art, but that overused idea wouldn’t apply easily to Deeper Well anyway.

While some artists’ New York eras romanticize bright lights and big dreams, Musgraves celebrates the city’s uncanny ability to spark introspection, doing so not by calling it out explicitly but by sharing the insights she gleaned while commuting to the studio, or during breaks at nearby Washington Square Park, which she calls “a great equalizer, where people from all walks of life are hanging out together, in the same space.”

“New York is relatively a small place, geographically speaking,” she says. “But there are multitudes of humanity stacked on top of each other in one small area, and there’s something to that, I think. Personalities, eccentricities, emotions are all heightened in that sort of environment, so it’s a really inspiring place to create. You walk down the street, even just 30 seconds, and you’re encountering so many different languages and personalities, and thoughts and colors.”

“For a person that tends to skew towards the

ADHD direction of things, which I think both Kacey and I tend to,” says Tashian, echoing her sentiment, “a little bit of hustle and bustle around you is good for creativity.”

There are subtle, NYC-inspired flourishes throughout the record. A bass line in “Deeper Well” recalls Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” a fantastical document of some of the bolder personalities once in the orbit of Andy Warhol and his Factory.

Fitchuk says he’s especially drawn to “Heaven Is,” a gentle, image-rich catalog of the simple pleasures that make life worth living, like “a lavender rose” and “the light” in a loved one’s eyes. The final verse opens with the line, “Nobody knows where we go when we die,” an admission that underscores the fragility and preciousness of our most meaningful human experiences.

The trio wrote “Heaven Is” after a night out at an Irish bar, where the house band played “Ca’ the Yowes,” a pastoral love poem attributed to Scottish poet Robert Burns that’s been set to music and sung for centuries. They worked part of the traditional melody into “Heaven Is,” imbuing the intimate lyric with a sense of old-world timelessness. They even considered adding bagpipes — Fitchuk’s mother is a piper — but chose a simpler route instead, letting the sounds of the city bleed into Tashian’s acoustic guitar.

“We recorded it on the rooftop, her vocal and

the acoustic guitar,” Fitchuk says. “She was just sitting on the rooftop of Electric Lady, and we kept that recording. … That was such a memorable recording experience.”

Folk music has a long history of drawing from the traditional songbook; if it can be categorized, Deeper Well is a folk album. Tashian cites ’90s luminaries like Shawn Colvin, Suzanne Vega and John Gorka as his personal New York folk touchpoints. Meanwhile, Musgraves points to the Greenwich Village scene of the mid-20th century, and Fitchuk namechecks Simon & Garfunkel.

There’s also folk’s blurring of the personal and the political, something Musgraves does on “The Architect” as well as another album highlight, “Dinner With Friends.” The song enumerates things she’ll miss “from the other side,” and she modeled the piece after two famous lists that conclude Nora Ephron’s final essay collection I Remember Nothing from 2010. The New York writer and filmmaker wrote down the things she would and wouldn’t miss after her life was over while quietly battling the aggressive leukemia that would end her life in 2012. Tucked into images of lively gatherings and peaceful quietude, Musgraves says she’ll miss some things about her home state of Texas: “The sky there / The horses and dogs / But none of their laws.” Like her invitation to “Kiss lots

of boys / Or kiss lots of girls / If that’s something you’re into” on her breakout 2013 hit “Follow Your Arrow,” that Texas callout fits seamlessly into the rest of the song. It’s subtle enough that you might miss it, antithetical to the trend of using one’s beliefs as a marketing tactic. She isn’t performing her politics; she embodies them.

MUSGRAVES WILL EMBARK on an international tour in support of Deeper Well at the end of April, kicking things off in Dublin and wrapping with a two-night homecoming at Bridgestone Arena in December. She says she’s excited to bring the visual elements of the new record to life, as her songwriting process also involves figuring out what a song might look like.

“I love bringing the songs to life in a visual sense,” she says. “The second I start writing a song, I’m already thinking about the video. I’m thinking of the world that it’s creating. And touring is no different.”

Musgraves admits that touring life is difficult, but that a live performance also enables the higher, more spiritual kind of communion that’s at the heart of Deeper Well

“It’s a really beautiful way to connect with other people who feel the same thing that you felt, that made you write the songs,” she says. “And I’m really grateful for the opportunity to do that.” ▼

PHOTO: KELLY CHRISTINE SUTTON

TUESDAY, MARCH 19

[THE TEACHER]

MUSIC

ARLO PARKS

I did a double take when I learned that U.K.-born, L.A.-residing singer-songwriter Arlo Parks is only 23 years old. That’s not meant as a backhanded compliment from this elder millennial; in any generation, there are plenty of folks at that age and younger making art that’s perceptive and articulate. Parks makes a sophisticated kind of pop that organically integrates R&B, shoegaze, hip-hop and more. Her mesmerizing voice glides with ease and grace through phrases in ways that feel natural — like it grew there, rather than being put there — and over imagery with a literary texture that reminds you she’s also a poet. (Indeed, she published a poetry collection called The Magic Border alongside her recent second album My Soft Machine.) And she keeps reminding us why we need poets and songwriters to help us keep going on the strange journey we call “life” and figure out how to process what we encounter on the way. Parks returns to Nashville Tuesday. Support comes from Chloe George, Parks’ fellow Angeleno pop songsmith, who has kept building momentum after going viral with a piano-and-vocal rendition of Kanye West’s “Ghost Town.” STEPHEN TRAGESER 8 P.M. AT MARATHON MUSIC WORKS

1402 CLINTON ST.

THURSDAY / 3.14

[PAINT THE TOWN GREEN]

FESTIVAL

MUSIC CITY IRISH FEST

The Music City Irish Fest returns this week, celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with a wide range of events happening all over the city. You can kick things off with some live music, whether it’s The Irish Tenors, The Sternwheelers or one of the many other artists playing venues like McNamara’s Irish Pub, The Lost Paddy, The Pub, 3rd & Lindsley and more. Fans of Irish dance can check out the Nashville Irish Step Dancers at the Grand Ole Opry, and Éireann, A Taste of Ireland at The Franklin Theatre. Look for plenty of shenanigans at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in East Nashville’s Five Points neighborhood on Saturday morning. And on Sunday, the Country Music Hall of Fame will host a panel discussion on “Celtic and Country Music Connections,” featuring the Celtic band Altan, along with legendary dobro master Jerry Douglas. Finally, wrap things up on Sunday afternoon with the St. Patrick’s Day Festival at Geodis Park, where you’ll find Irish music, dancing and the Gaelic Athletic Football Club, plus specialty food items, drinks, vendors and more. For more details, visit musiccityirishfest.com. AMY STUMPFL THROUGH MARCH 17

[MR. SCARFACE IS BACK]

MUSIC

BRAD ‘SCARFACE’ JORDAN: BEHIND THE DESK EXPERIENCE

While Scarface is a household name in the world of Southern hip-hop, not as many folks have heard of Brad Jordan. The 53-yearold community activist is more famous as a member of Houston rap group Geto Boys and for his follow-up solo albums. However, in recent years the pioneering MC and producer has turned his attention to the world of public service. His recent years have seen him running for H-Town’s city council, founding his nonprofit the The Positive Purpose Movement and even shouting out Nashville community organizers

JONATHAN RICHMAN PAGE 18

ENCANTO IN CONCERT PAGE 20

MCLUSKY W/GANSER PAGE 22

— who were trying to stop the takeover of the Rock Block by corporate developers — at his 2019 Exit/In gig. Less than two years ago, the MC performed on his farewell tour at Brooklyn Bowl, but fans will be glad to know that Mr. Scarface is, in fact, back again. The Behind the Desk tour, presented by the Black Promoters Collective, was inspired by his appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts — much like the recent Nashville shows from Jordan’s fellow Gulf Coast rap luminary Juvenile. During the episode, the rapper and blues guitar shredder went deep with stories about Geto Boys, the early Houston underground and the inspirations for the lofty lyricism Jordan has boasted over his lengthy career. P.J. KINZER

7 P.M. AT MARATHON MUSIC WORKS

1402 CLINTON ST.

FRIDAY / 3.15

MUSIC [GET HYPO’D] THE HYPOS

With Dr. Dog, co-frontman Scott McMicken released 10 studio albums full of melodically rich psychedelic indie rock that made for excellent live performances. With Reigning Sound (and Compulsive Gamblers, and Oblivians, and The Parting Gifts, and probably a handful of other outfits I’ve failed to mention), Memphis-born garage-rock legend Greg Cartwright issued a 10-ton catalog of flawless rock ’n’ roll. In 2021, Dr. Dog announced that, though they wouldn’t disband, that year’s tour would be their last. The following year, Cartwright announced he’d be dissolving Reigning Sound after 20-plus years. Both announcements were bummers, to be sure, but little did rock ’n’ roll fans know that McMicken and Cartwright would soon join forces. Featuring a band of Memphis- and Asheville, N.C.-based collaborators and centered on the two frontmen’s superior songwriting, The Hypos issued their self-titled debut LP in January. Featuring slinky, folky arrangements that are often more laid-back than much of

McMicken’s and Cartwright’s previous efforts — but just as melodically transfixing — The Hypos is better than a consolation prize. It’s a vital first effort. They’ll play Friday at East Side DIY space Soft Junk, where they’ll be joined by local garage-rock champs Country Westerns. Don’t miss it.

D. PATRICK RODGERS

8 P.M. AT SOFT JUNK

919 GALLATIN AVE.

MUSIC [GET DOWN ALL THE WAY] NEGRO JUSTICE W/WILLA DUSTICE, BLVCK WIZZLE & SPACECOWBOI

Soulfolks is stellar MC R.A.P. Ferreira’s Madison record store, and it continues its tradition of serving as a kind of hip-hop community center with a can’t-miss show on Friday. The flyer art suggests a kind of superhero team, and that’s not leading you astray. You’ve got two members of the powerhouse Six One Trïbe collective coming out to do their thing. At the top of the bill is Negro Justice, riding high on his grooving 2023 collab with JustVibez called Art of the Craft; then there’s Blvck Wizzle, whose recent single “Indecisive” is here to remind us he’s also a great singer and guitarist. Willa Dustice, who first popped onto our radar a couple years back as a crafter of intriguing beats, keeps expanding her horizons — recent tracks, both rapped and sung, lean into P-Funkiness, and she’s got a bigger project in the works called Willa Dustice Will Have Her Revenge on Warren County. Rounding out the bill is Spacecowboi, a project of Drew D’Oliveira that leans more toward melancholy experimental pop than Braintapes, the alt-rock ensemble you may have seen him play with over the years. STEPHEN TRAGESER 8 P.M. AT SOULFOLKS RECORDS AND TAPES 115 E. OLD HICKORY BLVD.

FILM [TERMINAL] MIDNIGHT MOVIE: FINAL DESTINATION

There is one reason and one reason alone to

revisit X-Files executive producer James Wong’s directorial debut Final Destination: the film’s increasingly absurd, laugh-out-loud-hilarious death sequences, each of which plays out like a Rube Goldberg machine. A perfect snapshot of pre-9/11 American culture, Final Destination — released on St. Patrick’s Day 2000 and starring at-his-peak Canadian heartthrob Devon Sawa — opens with the midair explosion of a Boeing 747 (shot using an extremely realistic 10-foot miniature, which is the sort of practical effect we don’t see enough of anymore). As we all know, the movie launched a franchise that now includes five films (with a sixth in the works) of … uneven quality, to put it generously. But the original was absolutely destined (sorry) to become a Midnight Movie, what with all the aforementioned bonkers death sequences. Laugh in the face of death with your fellow cinephiles at this late-night screening.

D. PATRICK RODGERS

MIDNIGHT AT THE BELCOURT

2102 BELCOURT AVE.

SATURDAY / 3.16

MUSIC [FASTER MILES]

JONATHAN RICHMAN

On tour in Australia in 1983 with rock singer and songwriter Jonathan Richman, producer and former Velvet Underground member John Cale summed up the appeal of Richman’s pioneering early-1970s recordings. “There was this music being presented that was extremely anemic and was highly unlikely to be successful,” he told interviewer Donnie Sutherland about Richman’s early songs. “But because the assumption was made that it was not gonna be successful, it was successful.” Cale produced some of the tracks that ended up on The Modern Lovers’ 1976 self-titled album, which contains some of Richman’s best-known songs and performances. The Modern Lovers helped codify punk rock during a time when most North American fans were still in thrall to Peter Frampton, Bob Seger and Linda Ronstadt. As Cale pointed out, Richman’s songs are minimalist and winningly naive without being over-elaborated, which is the key to the success of now-classic tunes like “Roadrunner,” “Pablo Picasso” and “Government Center.” I have no idea if Richman’s post-Lou Reed music is a forerunner to punk itself, since I view punk as an overtly nihilistic poke at the very idea of having fun. Richman’s best work, which includes 1983’s Jonathan Sings!, is both wide-eyed and oddly sophisticated. That sounds like fun to me, and Richman’s 2021 release Want to Visit My Inner House? contains a bit of self-examination titled “I Had to See the Harm I’d Done Before I Could Change.” The song is about the corrosive aspects of egotism, which is a rock ’n’ roll subject for the ages. EDD HURT

8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST

917 WOODLAND ST.

NEGRO JUSTICE

THE HYPOS

March 23, 2024

MARCH 16

MARCH 21

APRIL 11

• Nashville Ballet in Sylvan Park

March 9th 8am

Nashville St. Paddy’s 5K and Half Marathon

March 10th 1 & 5pm | Capitol Theatre

Celtic Rhythms on Fire

March 12th & 13th 8pm | Station Inn

Tim O’ Brien

March 13th 7:30pm | City Winery

Claire Cunningham Album Launch

March 14th 7:30pm | Schermerhorn Symphony Center

The Irish Tenors with the Nashville Symphony

March 14th 6pm | Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge

Seán O’Meara

March 15th-16th, 6pm & 17th, 10am| McNamara’s Irish Pub

Sean McNamara

March 15th 7pm | Grand Ole Opry

Nashville Irish Step Dancers

March 15th 6:30pm | Analog at Hutton Hotel

Chloe Agnew

March 16th 10am | Five Points East Nashville

St. Patricks Day Parade

March 16th 8:00pm | Franklin Theatre

Eireann, A Taste of Ireland

March 17th 1pm | Country Music Hall of Fame

Panel Discussion

March 17th 1pm | 3rd & Lindsley

JJ&J and Rory Makem

March 17th All Day | The Lost Paddy

Live Music/Specials

March 17th 11am – 5 pm | Geodis Park

St. Patrick’s Day Festival with vendors and games

FRI 3.15 • DRY CAMPUS • TIFFANY JOHNSON

• CAMI

SAT 3.16 • SIDNEY MAYS • SPIRIT RITUAL

• ELLIE GRACE HERROLD

SUN 3.17 • ELECTRIC ABBEY • A-OKAY!

• MERCY HANSON

MON 3.18 • GENEVIEVE HEYWARD • JUNIPER

• TOWER BROTHERS

TUE 3.19 • ULTIMATE COMEDY FREE LOCAL STAND UP!

WED 3.20 • BOOK NOT BROOKE • MASSIE99

• HERLY BERLY • YUCKS

THU 3.21 • SICK RIDE • DRUGSTORE COWBOY

• MAJESKA

FRI 3.22 • COLE WALDREP • BEAN • RYMAN

SUN 3.24 • SHAM JAM 2024 FEAT: THE SEWING

CLUB • TOTAL WIFE • RIG B

2412 GALLATIN AVE @THEEASTROOM

MUSIC [BLUES SHOWCASE]

LUCKY BLUES, BEER AND BBQ FEST FEAT. PIPER AND THE HARD TIMES

SUNDAY / 3.17

[PUNK! AT THE WINERY]

MUSIC

LAURA JANE GRACE

Laura Jane Grace — the punk torchbearer best known for penning anti-establishment and self-actualizing anthems with her band Against Me! — brings a new collection of solo tunes to City Winery this weekend. Grace is on tour in support of Hole in My Head, this year’s Polyvinyl Records LP that finds her hardened, real-life storytelling on full display. Need proof? Press play on the turn-it-up-to-11 debaucherous rock title track. Take a spin with the folk-punk truth-telling of “Dysphoria Hoodie.” Get lost in standout acoustic number “Cuffing Season.” Shout along to the groovy chorus in “I’m Not a Cop.” And take a nostalgic trip back to shoulderto-shoulder gigs with the sticky-catchy “Punk Rock in Basements,” an upbeat tune that’ll leave you asking, “Wait, when was the last time I went to a house show?” For this writer, it’s been far too long. Support on the bill comes from Thelma and the Sleaze and Dikembe. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER

7:30 P.M. AT CITY WINERY

609 LAFAYETTE ST.

2.1

2.2

FILM & MUSIC [MOVIE MAGIC] ENCANTO IN CONCERT

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a cornball, but the man writes good Disney songs. Moana and Encanto are charming stories elevated by Miranda’s expert arrangements, and each features earworms you still embarrassingly hum to yourself weeks later. Encanto — revolving around the supernaturally talented Madrigal family and their magical home — will not just be screened at the Schermerhorn but will also feature a live soundtrack provided by the Nashville Symphony, which will bring to life songs like show-stopper “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” tender-hearted “Dos Oruguitas” and pop anthem “Surface Pressure” (the movie’s best song). The show’s conductor is Anthony Parnther, who is no stranger to performing movie scores. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

MUSIC [READ MY LIPS]

MOUTH READER W/NÜ MANGOS AND ZIP-ZAPP

MARCH 16-17 AT THE SCHERMERHORN 1 SYMPHONY PLACE

The fuzzy-faced folks behind Flooded Sun Liquid Light Show are back with a night of local psych rock draped in their signature visual kaleidoscope of trippy shapes and colors. Mouth Reader is set to headline what marks the far-out surf punks’ first show of 2024 — a year that will also see their Muddy Roots Music Festival debut in August. “Hopefully we’ll put together something a little extra special — extra colorful and drippy,” says guitarist Dylan Frost. Nü Mangos’ synth-pop stylings will provide a danceable interlude in the guitar-laden lineup. (In October, Nü Mangos teamed up with Alexis Saski of Tennessee Muscle Candy for a stellar recording of Brian Eno’s 1973 single “Baby’s on Fire.”) Zip-Zapp will drop a heavy dose of Southern psychedelia to kick things off.

JASON VERSTEGEN

9 P.M. AT THE 5 SPOT

1006 FOREST AVE.

THU 3.14 4-7PM JUBAL LEE AND COMPANY

2.3

THUR FRI SAT SUN

6PM WHITE ANIMALS FREE

6PM WHITE ANIMALS FREE

FRI 3.15 6-7:30PM DAN SPENCER, THE MONTVALES, NICK HARLEY $10 9-12PM THE PHANTOM, PRESTON LEE COOK, DJ MEERKAT $10

4PM KEVIN WOLF FREE

9PM CROCTOPUSS, PUMP ACTION & POPLAR CREEK

SAT 3.16 4-7PM THE MOTONES 9-12PM COLOSSAL HUMAN FAILURE, DREAMILL, BOOMSTICK, OWL KEY $10

4PM JAY PATTEN BAND FREE

2.4

WED

SUN 3.17 SPRING WATER SITIN JAM 4 TO 7 PM

2.7

5PM WRITERS @ THE WATER OPEN MIC

Piper and the Hard Times built a loyal local following when they won October’s Nashville Blues and Roots Alliance band challenge. They took things to another in January, winning the Memphis-based Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge. They took top honors in a grueling competition that saw them triumph over 200 bands from not only across the nation but around the world. Their sound and approach epitomize the idiomatic versatility and musical flexibility needed to thrive in contemporary musical circles. Lead vocalist Al “Piper” Green brings a charismatic presence and energetic fury to every tune, blending the earnestness of gospel with the wit and wisdom of blues storytelling and the dynamic delivery of a great soul singer. Guitarist Steve Eagon can execute with equal ease sophisticated jazz-influenced fills or explosive rock-tinged riffs, while drummer Dave Colella has the percussive savvy and knowledge gained from years of studying with the great jazz drummer Joe Morello (part of Dave Brubeck’s greatest band). Piper and the Hard Times combine the sensibility and flair of vintage blues bands with the entertainment savvy and edge of modern rockers. Their appearance Saturday night as part of the Lucky Blues, Beer and BBQ Fest at Riverside Revival provides those who aren’t yet aware of their music another opportunity to hear them perform selections from their forthcoming new LP, and demonstrate the skills that have made them one of America’s premier new blues groups. RON WYNN

7:30 P.M. AT RIVERSIDE REVIVAL

1600 RIVERSIDE DRIVE

115 27TH AVE N. OPEN WED - SUN 11AM - LATE NIGHT

WED 3.20 5-8PM WRITERS AT THE WATER 9-12PM ANNA MAY, JIM MCGUINN, NICK CROOK, $10

115 27TH AVE. N OPEN WED.-SUN. 11AM-LATE NIGHT

PIPER AND THE HARD TIMES

LAURA JANE GRACE

PHOTO: BELLA PETERSON

BMI AND

Six One Trïbe is pioneering the new sound of modern hip-hop and rap, bringing together classic emcee flows and modern pop-trap crooning over soulful, lush production, creating something wholly original. The Trïbe showcases dozens of rappers, singers, musicians, and visual artists who embody the Nashville culture

M A R

DOORS: 7 PM SHOW: 8 PM

GA: $20 RESERVED: $35

DOORS: 7 PM

SHOW: 8 PM

GA: $15 A

DOORS: 8:30 PM

SHOW: 9 PM

GA: $10 RES: $30

MONDAY / 3.18

MUSIC [MCLUSKY DO NASHVILLE, FOR REAL]

MCLUSKY W/GANSER

Wales’ Mclusky is a band no less lyrically unorthodox than the Butthole Surfers, Foetus and the like — yet musically catchier than those acts by a landslide. In 2022, the post-hardcore trio postponed the second leg of their U.S. tour because of hearing issues experienced by lead singer Andrew “Falco” Falkous. The decision impacted that year’s planned Dec. 12 stop at The Basement East, but Monday, the band is back to make good on their raincheck. You’re likely to hear some fresh material sprinkled amid surrealistic favorites from the ’90s and early 2000s. The double A-side “Unpopular Parts of a Pig” and “The Digger You Deep,” plus two additional tracks, arrived in September, giving us the first new Mclusky songs in 19 years. Per Bandcamp, sales of the digital EP went toward “the ridiculously expensive U.S. visas we require if we’re to finish what we started in that stupid, wonderful country.” As if finally seeing Mclusky in the flesh wasn’t enough, Chicago’s Ganser will open the evening with their own imaginatively empowering and deliciously cynical post-hardcore and postpunk compositions, as last heard on the 2022 EP Nothing You Do Matters. Do yourself a favor and get there early. ADDIE MOORE

7 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.

FILM [COLD COMFORT]

MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: MORRICONE

X3: THE HATEFUL EIGHT

For normal people, a comfort movie is usually something breezy with movie stars that you can throw on at any time. Maybe a rom-com or a caper — preferably something that visits exciting locales so you can be transported to a different world. One of my go-to comfort movies is Quentin Tarantino’s cruel 2015 Western The Hateful Eight. Does that make me sadistic by association? Maybe. But populating an Agatha Christie-esque, slow-burn, locked-room mystery with eccentric Tarantino characters, all stuck

together during a blizzard, is the perfect recipe for me to dial it up for repeated viewings. I often throw on Chapter 4, “Domergue’s Got a Secret,” and watch the ensuing chaos play out as the puzzle pieces fall into place. The film is filled with characteristic Tarantino psychopaths, from Walton Goggins having the time of his life as new-sherrif-in-town Chris Mannix to Samuel L. Jackson commanding the room as Maj. Marquis Warren. But it’s Jennifer Jason Leigh as Daisy Domergue who steals the show in what should have been an Oscar-winning performance. Alas, her performance was too vile for Academy voters. LOGAN BUTTS

4:30 AND 8 P.M. AT THE BELCOURT

2102 BELCOURT AVE.

WEDNESDAY / 3.20

MUSIC

[I’D

DO IT AGAIN]

SIERRA FERRELL

One night inside the so-called Mother Church of Country Music isn’t enough for Sierra Ferrell. This small-town West Virginia troubadour (and yes, she’s a troubadour by the truest definition — Ferrell perfected her stagecraft with street-corner performances, sometimes hopping trains from city to city) continues to barnstorm across the most soughtafter stages in country and roots music with her eccentric showmanship and kaleidoscopic songwriting. At her biggest shows in Nashville to date, the Rounder Records artist plays two nights at the Ryman to celebrate Trail of Flowers, a new full-length album spanning decades of sonic inspiration. Due out March 22, the album was cut primarily at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios, where Ferrell enlisted guest performances from Lukas Nelson, Chris Scruggs and Nikki Lane, among others. Wednesday night, Lane plays main support at the Ryman show. Vaden Landers provides support for Thursday night’s performance. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER

MARCH 20-21 AT THE RYMAN

116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.

SIERRA FERRELL

UPCOMING SHOWS AT THE MUSEUM’S CMA THEATER

APRIL 18 DIXIE DREGS WITH SPECIAL GUEST STEVE MORSE BAND

APRIL 25

ROBERT CRAY BAND

MAY 2 MATTEO BOCELLI A NIGHT WITH MATTEO

MAY 3

ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO

MAY 10

T BONE BURNETT

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

Museum members receive exclusive pre-sale opportunities for CMA Theater concerts. Learn more at CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Membership.

BOOKED BY

WHATEVER YOU’VE HEARD about Sperry’s, it’s probably true.

This month, the Belle Meade English pub/ steakhouse/special-occasion magnet turns 50. And Nashvillians have a lot of opinions about it.

You might have heard that the restaurant has remained basically unchanged over the past 50 years. It’s been in the same small building on Harding Pike, with the same decor and the same menu (don’t come here looking for avocado toast or flash-fried Brussels sprouts), since 1974. That is true. You might have heard that it’s a place people go for anniversaries only. And it is indeed a special-occasion restaurant — a place to celebrate birthdays, weddings and good report cards.

But that’s not all Sperry’s is. Yes, it is a place for people of a certain age. But new generations are flocking to the restaurant, which now has two locations (the original in Belle Meade and a second in Cool Springs), as well as a Sperry’s Mercantile market with dishes to go and another Mercantile and a new coffee shop to open soon in Bellevue. As the restaurant hits the big 5-0, it’s worth a look at how they got here and what’s up next. (Spoiler: still no avocado toast or flash-fried Brussels sprouts.)

Brothers Houston and Dick Thomas opened the business in 1974 on the site of what had once been Garden Gate Garden Center, owned by Houston’s wife Sue. They named their new restaurant after their great-grandfather, Burton Sperry. It wasn’t anything particularly fancy — steaks, seafood and what has been purported to be the city’s first salad bar. The Nashville dining scene then was nothing like the embarrassment of riches it is today, and the menu, plus the existence of a dance floor and a full bar, made Sperry’s the go-to for a night out.

While the brothers had several children, it was Al Thomas, one of Houston’s sons, who was smitten with the restaurant from the beginning. As early as age 13, he was begging to work in the restaurant. His dad said he needed to be at least 14 to do so, so he went to work at Varallo’s until he was old enough to vacuum the floors and execute other clean-up tasks. In those days, Sperry’s was a “party bar,” so there was a lot of cleaning to do — but Al didn’t mind. Eventually, he started washing dishes and busing tables, working his way around the restaurant until he left for college.

“This is in my blood,” Al says. “I’ve always been in the restaurant business. So it’s in my DNA. If you cut me, I bleed au jus.”

Working at a restaurant in college, Al met Trish, the woman who would become his partner in life and in business. They wrote each other daily (on paper — there was no email then) while Al got a degree in hospitality management. They moved 17 times in their first 10 years of marriage, managing, operating and then

SAME AS IT EVER WAS

Half a century in, Sperry’s thrives on not changing a thing

BY MARGARET LITTMAN

5109 Harding Pike sperrys.com

owning restaurants in Texas, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama.

Houston and Dick were getting older, and their employees (some of whom are still with the restaurant, with tenure of more than three decades at this point) told the kids that someone

needed to do something. So Al and Trish started the process of buying the restaurant.

While many second-generation restaurateurs have visions for putting their mark on things, that wasn’t Al’s goal. He and Trish leaned on their experience to implement new processes

to make the restaurant run more smoothly; they didn’t overhaul the menu or the decor.

“I wanted to honor my dad and my uncle by not doing anything — excuse me, by not changing anything,” he says. “I grew up here, and there wasn’t any way I was going to come in

Sperry’s Restaurant

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

TRISH AND AL THOMAS

here and change everything. I want it to be just the way it was.”

In fact, when Al and his team opened a second Sperry’s in Cool Springs in 2006, they replicated as much of the decor as they could. That meant making an exact copy of the art from Belle Meade (being careful only to copy those that they could under copyright law). They did remove two portraits of Confederate generals that the original owners bought. (“Times change,” Al says.) “We didn’t want it to lose the warmth,” Trish says.

Trish was nervous about the expansion at first, but when she learned that the property on Frazier Drive had private dining space, she felt good about it. The small Belle Meade footprint doesn’t have room for weddings or other events, and that’s something that Sperry’s diners want.

The commitment to not changing things is true of the menu too. The menu is filled with dishes that have fed diners for decades, including crab cakes, twice-baked potatoes, prime rib and the salad bar. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t been tweaked at all. Al is proud of the crab cakes recipe, made with 98 percent crab meat. Al calls his favorite order, which includes those crab cakes, “steak and cake.” The kitchen, he says, makes more than 1,000 twice-baked potatoes a day for the restaurant and the Mercantile.

One of Al and Trish’s daughters, Cate Buchanon, works in the business today, having gotten her start early, just like her dad. She remembers stuffing mushrooms (for the popular mango-sausage-mushroom appetizer) at the age of 5 and believes in the brand’s continuity as one of its cornerstones. Friends of her generation like the old-school/retro vibe of the place. In a time when rooftop spots with city views reign, many gravitate toward Sperry’s — it doesn’t have a view at all, with dark stained glass filling the panes.

As the restaurant approached the half-century mark, the Thomas family brainstormed how they could celebrate with their loyal customers. Someone suggested putting some menu items from the past five decades back on the menu. But, Al says, if something has ever been taken off the menu, it is because it didn’t do well. Instead, the team decided that bottles of wine would be half-price during the month

of March. They’re also working on a coffee-table book of tales from customers over the years.

Many of those customers are celebrities. Ask a Nashvillian about Sperry’s and they’ll tell you which celebrity was dining there when they were: Wynonna, Chris Stapleton, Barry Williams (aka Greg Brady) and Post Malone all have been sighted. Dax Shepard detailed a trip with his wife Kristen Bell in an episode of his Armchair Expert podcast last year. (If you’re concerned about the dress code, it’s worth a listen.)

In addition to the restaurants (as well as their other businesses, Sam’s Sports Grill and Sam’s Place), the Thomas family is ready for the Mercantile expansion and the launch of the coffee shop. The first Sperry’s Mercantile opened in 2015. It offers take-home-and-make versions of many of the restaurant’s popular dishes, as well as pimento cheese, cakes and other dishes made by Al’s sister Anne Clayton, a well-known caterer, baker and event maven in Nashville.

The shop, which looks tiny from the outside but is jam-packed inside, is located in the parking area behind the Belle Meade restaurant. It was moderately successful until the pandemic, when cooking food from favorite restaurants at home became a national pastime. Since then, the shelves of refrigerated twice-baked potatoes, frozen signature peppermint stick ice cream, green goddess dressing and other items are in demand. The Mercantile also serves as a butcher shop, selling Sperry’s Meats, which can also be ordered online and shipped nationwide.

“We work together,” Al says of the restaurant and the Mercantile. “We operate as a unit. If we get any fresh fish in the morning over there, we bring it over here to cook it.” Trish adds that the system helps them reduce food waste.

Both the new Mercantile and Cafe Sperry’s will be located in a former Shoney’s, with lots of square footage. Cafe Sperry’s will also have drive-thru service. Buchanon is helping design the coffee shop. The cafe will have a similar look and feel to the restaurants, with dark wood, a library and a fireplace.

“I’m nervous as hell opening this new coffee shop and Mercantile,” Al says of the project coming to Bellevue. “I might have $3.5 million on the line by the time I get that thing open. So it needs to do good.” ▼

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

THE NASHVILLE COUNTRY DANCERS’ CONTRA DANCE NIGHTS

Group members say live music and community make for a fulfilling Friday

BY HANNAH HERNER | PHOTOS BY ANGELINA CASTILLO

In the Club is a recurring series in which the Scene explores Nashville’s social club offerings.

WHEN YOU’RE SWINGING with someone — that is, holding onto them and whirling around for eight counts — it’s helpful to look them in the eyes. Contra dance is a long game, and you don’t want to get dizzy.

It doesn’t matter whether you bring a partner to the Nashville Country Dancers’ contra dance events at Second Presbyterian Church in Green Hills — someone will happily jump in to stand across from you. The group — which meets for contra dancing on the first and third (and when there is one, fifth) Friday nights of the month — starts out in two long lines, and you dance with your partner for only about half the time while also taking a swing with your neighbor (the person next to you), who will change as you shuffle down the line. There’s a caller, who sounds like a very mellow auctioneer and nudges the dancers into pattern.

You could compare contra to swing dance, line dance or square dance, but it’s not quite any of those things. It would feel at home at a Renaissance festival, with old-timey music playing while dancers skip around a maypole. On Friday nights in Nashville, it’s always accompanied by live music, usually with lively fiddle included.

Emma Rushton first started dancing in her home country of England, which is also the home of contra dance. It started there in the 17th century, was brought over to New England in the 1940s and has since gained popularity nationally, picking up influence from Appalachian folk dancing along the way. The Nashville Country Dancers, established in the 1970s, also practice English dance, the older sibling of contra that might remind you of the dancing in the Netflix series Bridgerton, or maybe in a Jane Austen novel. Dancers typically dress in comfortable street clothes, but they do get gussied up for the annual Playford Ball, which takes place March 22-24 at West End Middle School.

Rushton says it’s good for the mind, body and spirit — getting the moves down requires some mental prowess (mind); it provides lowimpact exercise (body); and it’s an opportunity to connect with others (spirit).

“It’s a place where you can hold hands and have physical contact in a safe way,” she says. “You couldn’t hold somebody’s hand at a bar without it meaning a lot. Here it doesn’t mean anything. We’re here to dance.”

Each Friday night meeting begins with a 30-minute beginner’s lesson. You can learn the parts traditionally reserved for either “ladies” or “gents” regardless of gender, and

it’s not uncommon to switch roles throughout the night. In fact, some groups have begun reframing the roles as “robins” and “larks” to make that sentiment even more clear.

When watching the group dance, it’s hard to parse who is experienced and who is new. With people of all ages and experience levels dancing the same parts, it’s equalizing — each person is needed to make the dance work.

“There are no egos here,” says dancer Jaie Tiefenbrunn. “Sure, there are people with more experience, but we all want to help the new people get to be part of the dance because somebody helped us get into it back when we first started dancing.

“There’s no judgment,” she continues. “There’s laughter and acceptance, and you’re creating this thing that’s bigger than your own problems. It takes you out of your head.”

Tiefenbrunn calls contra dancing her “spiritual practice.” And although the Nashville Country Dancers have met consistently at churches and community centers since starting out, it’s not a Christian group.

Tiefenbrunn even says the group saved her life by giving her a safe place to go at night that didn’t involve a bar, alcohol, smoking, drugs or a focus on finding someone to hook up with or date. Admission is on a sliding scale from $5 to $25 — you’d be hard-pressed to find a more economical or sober-friendly night out in Nashville.

Sometimes the dance can feel flirtatious — what with all that eye contact — but save any approaches for the after-dance drinks at M.L. Rose. For the group’s loyal members, contra dance is an antidote to modern times.

Rushton says it’s simple. “Dancing to live music, it just makes you so happy.” ▼

The Nashville Country Dancers’ contra dance nights

Every first, third and fifth Friday at Second Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall, 3511 Belmont Blvd. nashvillecountrydancers.org

The Ultimate Chef Throwdown!

Thursday April 4 | Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum | 5:30 VIP / 6:00 General Admission

We’re turning up the heat on this year’s Iron Fork event — we’re adding in TWO NEW chefs to the all-star lineup!

proudly benefitting

3 Past Champions + 2 New Recruits + 1 Secret Ingredient = The ULTIMATE #IronFork Chef Competition .

Sips and samples

While the chefs throwdown, walk around and enjoy samples from 20+ of the best eateries in Nashville plus sips of cocktails, beer and wine!

HADLEY LONG EXECUTIVE CHEF MARGOT CAFE

JULIO HERNANDEZ EXECUTIVE CHEF & OWNER MAIZ DE LA VIDA

HRANT ARAKELIAN 2022 CHAMPION

DEB PAQUETTE 2008 CHAMPION

CHARLES HUNTER III

2023 CHAMPION

PET OF THE WEEK!

Name: TIGGER

Age: 1 year

Gender: Female

Weight: 8 lbs

Winnie the Pooh once said, “Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart. That’s certainly true when it comes to little Tigger! This itty-bitty baby is coming out of her shell more and more each day, curious to meet people and test out this whole “chin rub” thing. We can’t wait for her to find her new home where she can explore and go on all kinds of adventures with her new family. That could be you! Stop by NHA today!

Call 615.352.1010 or visit nashvillehumane.org

Located at 213 Oceola Ave., Nashville, TN 37209 Adopt. Bark. Meow. Microchip. Neuter. Spay.

CHASING

THE DREAM

BY FAYE JONES

an independent bookstore for independent people

UPCOMING EVENTS

PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENT FOR TICKETS & UPDATES

6:30PM

MICAIAH JOHNSON

FRIDAY, MARCH 15

with MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL at PARNASSUS

Those Beyond the Wall

10:30AM

SATURDAY, MARCH 16

SATURDAY STORYTIME

with MATTHEW PAUL TURNER, TYLER MERRITT & MARIANNE RICHMOND at PARNASSUS

You Will Always Belong

4:00PM

TUESDAY, MARCH 19

DOG MAN DAY CELEBRATION at PARNASSUS

Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20

6:30PM

JOHN SCHU with LINDSEY KIMERY at PARNASSUS

Louder Than Hunger

6:30PM

TUESDAY, MARCH 26

ANITA KELLY with KAITLYN HILL at PARNASSUS

How You Get the Girl

6:30PM

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27

REBECCA SERLE with HANNAH BROWN at PARNASSUS

CAROLINE FROST’S SECOND novel, The Last Verse, looks at Nashville in the 1970s through the eyes of a young woman trying to make it in the music industry.

Twyla Higgins, 19, longs to break away from the oppressive atmosphere of her small Texas town. Since the death of Twyla’s musician father, her mother has become obsessed with religion, changing her name to Faith and burning all the records in their home:

It was around this time that Twyla came home from school to a bonfire in her front yard. The smell of burning plastic and thick black smoke had drawn the neighbors outside to watch Faith as she tossed her ladies’ magazines, lingerie, bottles of booze, and Harlequin books into the fire. … Then Faith opened a cardboard box full of records. … To Twyla’s horror, she lifted the box and set the whole thing on the bonfire, shaking up orange sparks and embers.

the hundreds of young people who come to Nashville each year. Her first view of Broadway is probably as true today as it was 50 years ago (except for the prices):

Country music floated out of the open doors of bars and honky-tonks. A clock tower read ten after seven. Twyla counted her money. After paying for food and pitching in for gas, she had forty-seven dollars left, enough for a few nights in a motel or a ticket back. She started walking, hoping the movement would ward off the nerves. She told herself to keep it simple. First, she’d have to find a place to stay. Then she’d try to get a job.

but a way to get her badge back. As Struthers gets closer to that goal, Twyla is in danger of losing everything.

The Last Verse reflects many of the themes of country music itself: longing, love, betrayal, death and redemption. Frost depicts the Nashville of a half-century ago, and longtime residents will enjoy the memories. But the novel also reveals that the more things change, the more they stay the same. There are still young people who arrive hoping to make it in the music business. A lot of them get chewed up and return home. There are those who care only about becoming famous, and those who care deeply about the music. Even as Twyla becomes more desperate, she has to make the same choices today’s striving musicians do, and it’s her choices that will stay with readers after they turn the novel’s last page.

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

3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 | Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243

Shop online at parnassusbooks.net

Expiration Dates parnassusbooks parnassusbooksnashville parnassusbooks parnassusbooks1

Saving money from her job at the church day care center, Twyla plans to get her own place and start her own life as soon as she can. But when Faith insists that Twyla go on a mission trip to Costa Rica and use her saved money to do so, Twyla realizes she must break away. The death of Elvis Presley provides the impetus. She escapes from home, takes a bus to Memphis for the King’s funeral, then hitches a ride to Nashville to make it as a songwriter.

Twyla, armed with only a small suitcase and her daddy’s guitar, will remind readers of

At first, things seem to be going Twyla’s way. She gets a job as a live-in nanny. She goes out to various small bars and puts her name in the draw on writers’ nights. And she meets another musician and falls in love. But then in a turn worthy of Edith Wharton, Twyla faces a series of challenges that threaten not only her dream of being a professional songwriter, but her very freedom and life. A song of hers is stolen, and she becomes involved in a crime.

It’s then that Twyla’s story intersects with that of 52-year-old T. Lynn Struthers. Struthers, after being fired from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, is forced to take workman’s comp cases, making her a “professional tattletale” and unable to pay her bills. When a Belle Meade couple asks her to look for their missing son, she sees not only a way to pay those bills

The Last Verse By Caroline Frost

William Morrow

368 pages, $30

Frost will discuss The Last Verse at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at The Bookshop

PHOTO: BOB TURTON

40+

3.26

3.15 AN EVENING WITH ALYSSA JACEY

3.16 DRAG BRUNCH

3.16 HBCU -  PR EXPERIENCE PRESENTS: “HBCU & GREEK CELEBRATION” WITH SPECIAL GUEST MELVIN MILLER

3.16 NASHVILLE IMPROV COMEDY PRESENTS: MARCH MADNESS

3.17 LAURA JANE GRACE BACKED BY MATT PATTON & MIKEY ERG WITH SPECIAL GUESTS THELMA AND THE SLEAZE AND DIKEMBE

3.18 GIVING GUITARS FOUNDATION BENEFIT CONCERT FEATURING STEVEN CADE, BEN CALHOUN, SANDRA LEE & DANNY FALLIO WOMEN WITH SOUL: CELEBRATING WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH WITH SARAH

3.21 AN EVENING WITH INDIGENOUS

3.22 AN EVENING WITH PETER MULVEY

4.02

3.23 CITY OF LAUGHS PRESENTS JOSH PRAY (FEAT. J.MCNUTT) (2 SHOWS)

3.24 NASHVILLE BEATLES BRUNCH FT. FOREVER ABBEY ROAD AND FRIENDS

3.24 ERIC HAGEN WITH CLAIRE KELLY

3.24 WEBB WILDER

3.26 NINTH HOUR THE MUSICAL: A ROCK NOIR REIMAGINING OF THE EPIC POEM BEOWULF

3.27 JAKE BLOUNT

3.28 COMEDIAN DISCOVERY PRESENTS BRENDAN SAGALOW

3.28 3.29 AN EVENING OF NEW STANDUP WITH AL FRANKEN

3.29 AN EVENING WITH PIERRE BENSUSAN

Make a

SPRING BREAK 2024 featuring MILES CONNOR, CONNOR FIEHLER & CLAIRE ERNST

WMOT Roots Radio Presents Finally Fridays featuring COYOTE MOTEL, THE MONTVALES & STEPHANIE CHAPMAN

SIXWIRE & FRIENDS

Backstage Nashville Daytime Hit Songwriters Show feat. MARK D. SANDERS, DANNY FLOWERS, RAY STEPHENSON & MAE ESTES + GLORIA ANDERSON

WORLD TURNING BAND “The Live Fleetwood Mac Experience” with SAM MULLENS

3/27 JEDD HUGHES WITH THE DANBERRYS

3/28 FIGHTER FEST

3/31 SARAH SHOOK & THE DISARMERS WITH MALI VELASQUEZ

4/6 PAT MCLAUGHLIN BAND

Music City Irish Festival Presents JOY, JAIR & JOSH w/ RORY MAKEM

PHOSPHORESCENT with JO SCHORNIKOW

SOLDOUT!

Bluebird on 3rd feat. MARK IRWIN, JENN SCHOTT & ADAM HAMBRICK with REGAN STEWART & JANIE WADDELL

THE TIME JUMPERS

THE FRENCH CONNEXION featuring FRENCH FAMILY BAND, JIMMY FORTUNE, MIKE ROGERS, JENEE FLEENOR, BEN ISAACS & JEFF TAYLOR

Nashville Night for DIRK JOHNSON feat. JAMEY JOHNSON, GENE WATSON, 45 RPM, JIM “MOOSE” BROWN, ERIN ENDERLIN, TEEA GOANS, MO PITNEY and very special guests!

4/9

SOLDOUT!

HEADCOUNT 20TH ANNIVERSARY W/ DEEOHGEE, PIPER

HARD TIMES & MORE!

mar 14

mar 15

mar 16

mar 18

mar 19

mar 21

mar 22

mar 23

mar 25

mar 26

mar 27

mar 28

mar 29

LOUISIANA FEST FEAT. AMANDA SHAW & ALEX SMITH

4/7 LOCKELAND STRINGS FEAT. NATALIE PRASS, CAITLIN ROSE, JOHANNA SAMUELS & LYDIA LUCE

4/10 EMILY WEST

4/11 BACKSTAGE AT 3RD: RHETT MCDANIEL

4/11 GRADY SPENCER & THE WORK

4/12 THE FLOATING MEN SOLD OUT!

4/13 THE FLOATING MEN SOLD OUT! 4/14 THE FLOATING MEN SOLD OUT! 4/16 FASTBALL CELEBRATING 30 YEARS WITH HEFFNER 4/17 AUGUST CHRISTOPHER 25TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR 4/18 SANDRA MCCRACKEN 4/21 ROBBY HECHT

4/23 SHINYRIBS 4/25 LIGHTNING 100’S MUSIC CITY MAYHEM - THE LIVE FINALE 4/26 CHALK DINOSAUR WITH THE AFTERNOONERS 4/27 JEFFREY STEELE 4/28 JOHNNYSWIM

5/3 LARRY CAMPBELL & TERESA WILLIAMS

5/4 VINYL RADIO

5/8 DUSTBOWL REVIVAL

5/10 CANAAN COX

5/11 MIKE FARRIS

5/12 POKEY LAFARGE

5/15 THE OLSON BROS BAND

5/18 THE CLEVERLYS

mar 30

Mar 31

apr 1

apr 2

apr 3

apr 4

Tanner Usrey w/ Kat Hasty qdp jonathan richman ft. tommy larkins on drums mclusky w/ ganser Em Beihold w/ Will Linley bendigo fletcher w/ free range nikki lane w/ kaitlin butts sierra hull w/ gabe lee donna missal w/ banoffee between the buried and me w/ the acacia strain between the buried and me w/ the acacia strain jervis campbell w/ Nathan Colberg & Ivan Theva a plea for purging w/ Orthodox, Alert the Sky, Alcina & Get Your Guns a plea for purging w/ Orthodox, Alert the Sky, Alcina & No Cure 69 eyes w/ The Bites & Budderside tiny habits w/ Beane maren morris w/ joy oladokun maoli w/ Andrew Duhon & Lindsay James stop light observations w/ Easy Honey

apr 5

apr 6

apr 7

apr 8

apr 9

apr 10

apr 12

apr 13

apr 14

apr 15

apr 17

apr 18

apr 20

apr 22

apr 23

apr 24

apr 25

apr 26

apr 27

apr 28

caleb hearon & annie dirusso guided by voices w/ John P. Strohm smallpools x grayscale w/ Moody Joody and The Romance

the crane wives w/ Rachel Bobbitt payton smith

the strumbellas w/ certainly so nolan taylor w/ Zandi Holup

Willi Carlisle w/ Nat Myers

taylor acorn w/ World's First Cinema mannequin pussy w/ Soul Glo alice phoebe lou w/ sam burton

Darren Kiely giant rooks

soft kill w/ Gumm and Liberty & Justice dylan leblanc w/ airpark ytb fatt

birdtalker w/ Michael Logen the secret sisters twrp

rock & roll playhouse: The music of dolly parton for kids

oct

mar 14

mar 14

mar 15

mar 15

My Politic, Sophie Gault (7pm)

Philip Bowen w/ Donny Van Slee (9pm) harvey street collective w/ molly forbese (7pm)

Jacuzzi Suite, Extravision, Pressure Heaven (9pm)

mar 21

hayden helms (7pm)

mar 21

mar 22

trash panda Connor Kelly & The Time Warp (9pm) the atomic age (7pm)

mar 22

mar 16

mar 16

mar 17

Colton Sturtz w/ Hal O'Dell and Jamie Adamson (7pm) Case Bloom, DJ Day (9pm) St. Owsley

mar 23

mar 23

mar 24

pretty jane w/ Doug & The Dying, Crystal Rose (9pm) keller cox w/ Aniston Pate & Delaney Ramsdell (7pm)

JK Johns, Jac Thompson, The Forgettables (9pm) harper mundy w/ Eleni Iglesias

mar 18

Jonathan Plevyak, Cam G & The Tasty Soul, Amanda Shaw (7pm)

mar 18

Sam Weber & Max Helgemo (10pm)

mar 20

mar 25

mar 25

mar 26

Caleb Lee Hutchinson & Callum Kerr (7pm)

mar 27

mar 20

king lazy eye w/ High King Kai (7pm) cody brooks & co. (9pm)

Kiernan McMullan w/ Eva Cassel & Carter Hulsey (9pm) abigail rose ben chapman's peach jam ft. Corey Smith, Dee White, Elvie Shane, Ashland Craft

3/24 4/2-4/5

4/11 5/5

5/7

& THE

GENRE IS OVER (IF YOU WANT IT)

Jack Silverman Quartet’s instrumental music leaves arbitrary style constraints in the dust

BY SEAN L. MALONEY

ON PRINCE OF SHADOWS, Nashville improv adventurers Jack Silverman Quartet deconstruct genre conventions to find deep grooves and way-out sounds. Their full-length debut via Centripetal Force Records straddles signifiers of a kaleidoscopic array of subgenres of psychedelia — crossing the I’s and microdotting the T’s, if you will, to create a thoroughly modern, unmistakably 21st-century moment in American improvisational music. Saturday, Silverman & Co. return to The Blue Room at Third Man Records to celebrate the release.

“I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had,” says Silverman, the group’s guitarist and bandleader (as well as a contributing editor to the Scene and a former staffer). “At the risk of sounding hokey, it’s almost like a spiritual connection. … Almost every gig I play with this band, I’m having a blast, because I feel like we’re so comfortable with each other that we can just let go and not worry.”

That connection between players — that mystical goo that makes these mutant tunes shine — pulses through the songs, giving the affair a “Don Buchla meets the Dead” vibe, a voltage-controlled oscillation between the experimental ether and the corporeal groove. With Brook Sutton on bass, Robert Crawford on drums and multi-instrumentalist Matt Glassmeyer acting as a one-man Arkestra, it’s tough not to have fun.

The quartet has a heady but not migraine-inducing approach to evolving riffs and rhythms. It’s less about flashy chops and solos and more about tonal interplay and responsive listening. You can feel all four players laying back in the pocket of the beat, like a cuddle puddle of kittens on a big bean bag chair — it’s clear they’re listening deeply and intently to each other. The sound is fuzzy and enveloping, shifting subtly; not in a hurry to be anywhere particular, except to be here now.

“We play the same songs totally differently

SETTING THE TABLE

from time to time,” says Silverman, “just spontaneously without any discussion of it.”

Despite being a veteran player and longtime fixture of the Nashville music community, Silverman has a giddy excitement in his voice when he talks about his bandmates. He’s in awe of the musicianship surrounding him.

“Sometimes I’ll have a set list, but someone will just start playing part of another tune — and we just start playing it, but maybe in a completely different groove,” he says. “You can take these motifs … that are the same song and approach [them] totally differently. I kind of always lean to more psychedelic music, because it is music that I feel like is more transporting and immersive.”

After a 2022 show at The Blue Room, filmmaker Greg Mallozzi reached out to Silverman about contributing to the soundtrack of his forthcoming documentary Mind Traveler. The doc follows Andrija Puharich, a fringe scientist who studied parapsychology and extrasensory perception — for a portion of his career, at the behest of the U.S. government.

“I realized that some of my favorite music is movie soundtrack music, and so that was kind of the impetus,” says Silverman. “We got a little money and we’re like, ‘Oh, OK, we can go in the studio and work on this tune for the movie’ — and thus came the album.”

While an obvious touchstone is the dusty spaghetti-Western symphonics of Ennio Morricone, the quartet’s melodic approach recalls Henry Mancini’s tautness and Lalo Schrifin’s sense of effortless cool. Produced by Roger Moutenout and featuring guest fiddle player John Mailander, Prince of Shadows explores its tonal ideas in a circular manner befitting a film — and indeed the far-out character at the center of this film — with patterns that dissolve and return in new forms. The quartet shows off their sense of humor in how they play with this: The slippery, catchy and distinctive modal motifs in

Lizzie No commands their space on Halfsies

BY RACHEL CHOLST

LIZZIE NO MAKES taking the world by storm look easy. Maybe it’s because their new album Halfsies is effortlessly beautiful: a commanding examination of trauma and self-liberation that draws influences from country music, indie rock and contemporary classical music.

No’s soothing voice and razor-sharp lyrics carry us through the semi-autobiographical world of a character named Miss Freedomland. No hopes that listeners will experience the immersive story like a video game, in which we inhabit Miss Freedomland’s decision points: How do we turn toward the potential we know we have, the life we deserve? There are no easy answers. No brings that to their music and their approach to navigating Nashville, where

the the titular tune show up in new contexts in two other compositions, and their titles are anagrams of the original: “Phasic Fernwoods” and “ESP Fashion Crowd.”

From the gnarly rumble of “Transliminal Criminal” to the old-school jazz bass lines and dubby reverberant space of “Nightfall on the Nile,” Prince of Shadows connects with undersung guitar explorers of the past — think George Benson’s CTI Records catalog or Funk Brother Dennis Coffey’s solo work — without getting caught in the formalism of nostalgia. Even separate from the context of the film, the LP offers

up a deep text to engage with and explore, but never discourages the listener from just vibing. The ensemble slips big ideas into interstitial spaces, gliding gleefully into a future where genre and the constriction of categorization are a thing of the past. ▼

Prince of Shadows out now via Centripetal Force Playing 8 p.m. Saturday, March 16, at The Blue Room at Third Man Records

PHOTO: COLE NIELSON

they recently moved.

“There are so many great artists and professionals working in mainstream country, but the process of getting a song on radio airplay relies so much on politicking and money,” says No. “And that’s one of the biggest reasons why we don’t see more women, Black artists or queer artists on the radio.”

No observes that the “filtering process” privileges people who are “able to fit an image of what some of the most powerful capitalists in America think represent country music,” they say. “It’s not about what listeners want to hear or what artists want to say. It’s about a particular segregated vision of Southern white artistry that maybe never existed and certainly doesn’t exist now.”

Nashville, of course, has its own rich history of Black culture and Black music. No points to Making Noise, Nashville Public Radio’s new podcast series hosted by Jewly Hight, which offers proof that Nashville music has long been far more than what Lower Broadway has to offer.

On Halfsies, No demonstrates one way to break barriers by playing alongside the Attacca Quartet, one of the most in-demand ensembles in the contemporary classical world. Initially, No and producer Graham Richman arranged the songs to have a more traditional bluegrass sound, but No hoped to take advantage of the quartet’s cinematic approach to music, leading to the otherworldly results on Halfsies

That decision was a flying leap for No, and so was their recent relocation to Nashville. They moved to Music City in December, though they barely had time to get settled before they headed back to New York to kick off their tour. No chose to move to Nashville both for the musical community they have found here and to dive into their new role as president of the board of directors of Abortion Care Tennessee. The nonprofit distributes funds to clinics in neighboring states specifically to assist in providing abortions for clients coming from Tennessee. Abortion has been banned in Tennessee with very limited exceptions since 2022.

No became involved with the organization when they played Third Man Records’ Blue Room during AmericanaFest in 2022. The organization approached No about sending volunteers out with her on tour to help spread information and awareness. This experience deepened No’s commitment from “being pro-abortion to being for reproductive justice, which includes access to health care and affordable child care.”

No will be back at The Blue Room on March 14, their first hometown show as a Nashvillian. Their band is electrifying, transforming the spacious explorations on the album into tight arrangements that will make your hair stand on end.

“I want people to step into my shoes and see there’s so much that we have in common, even though these stories are specific to my life and cultural context. I hope that the live versions bring it closer to home for people.” ▼

KEEP ON ROLLING

Coyote Motel’s The River tells stories too big for just one medium

BY RON WYNN

GUITARIST, BANDLEADER and journalist Ted Drozdowski has spent more than three decades performing, celebrating and commemorating the South’s greatest music. He’s done it with bands including the Scissormen and his current ensemble Coyote Motel, in occasional contributions to the Scene in times past, and in comprehensive interviews with numerous great players in Premier Guitar, where he’s now a senior editor.

His latest project is both a cinematic portrait and career retrospective. The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South is a song cycle about the history that continues to unfold — per the liner notes, the “lives, lore and locales” — along three great rivers of the American South, the Cumberland, the Mississippi and the Tallahatchie. The accompanying film adeptly blends music and a wealth of other modes of expression into a visually stunning presentation. The River makes its official premiere Tuesday night at the Belcourt.

Man Records

The River also proves a fine showcase for Coyote Motel, which differs from its predecessor the Scissormen in both thematic concerns and personnel. Coyote Motel features Drozdowski

on vocals and guitars, Sean Zywick on bass and Kyra Lachelle Curenton on drums and backing vocals, as well as Luella on vocals, guitar, and percussion and Laurie Hoffma on theremin and glockenspiel. Though the foundation remains the blues, Coyote Motel ventures into other edgy, experimental styles. The film is an outgrowth of that expansion, and its mixture of elements reflects the group’s broad performance scope.

“Laurie and I started raising money in early 2022, and we recorded the soundtrack in June 2022,” Drozdowski explains. “All the collaborators came together for three intense days of filming in November 2022. I also spent months collecting still and historic photos and footage for the narrative sequences. The director Richie Owens and I put in 450 hours editing the movie.”

There are performance sequences that include the band, aerial dancers and light-show artists working together in a kind of psychedelic ballet. They were all filmed at La Vergne soundstage NOZ Entertainment.

“There were 20 people altogether there for three 14-hour days of setup and shooting,” says

Drozdowski. “The director and I also did a 36hour marathon to shoot B-roll, traveling from Nashville to north Mississippi, to the Delta, to Helena, Ark., to Memphis. We spent 24 of those 36 hours filming.”

Drozdowski certainly hopes The River finds an audience through the network of indie film houses, film festivals and the like. But he has a larger goal in mind.

“I feel like the last 30 years of my work as a musician, journalist and music historian have been a rehearsal for this film. And I’d like people to be touched by its honesty, beauty and authenticity — and moved and entertained by the songs and visuals and aerialists. Every one of the 10 connected songs and narratives is a story. And all together, they create a bigger story that’s about being human.” ▼

PHOTO: BONNIE ALDCROFT

LIKE A STORM INTO YOUR TOWN

BY HANNAH CRON

DISNEY CHANNEL MAINSTAY turned poprock maven Olivia Rodrigo’s second album Guts is a cultural phenomenon — simultaneously immensely popular, exceptionally fun and profoundly meaningful. The tour in its wake, which rolled into Bridgestone Arena on Saturday, followed suit.

If you hadn’t known 1980s-pop-schooled singer-songwriter Chappell Roan was the opening act, it would have been hard to deduce from her set, or from the way the crowd engaged with it. Anyone who came expecting to sit and ignore the opener was surely disappointed. Between her natural stage presence, powerful vocals and danceable set list, the Midwest Princess demonstrated her command of the massive audience with ease. The entire arena lit up with cellphone lights as she sang her devastating ballad “Casual,” and people from the pit to the nosebleeds joined in for the YMCA-inspired dance to “Hot to Go!” Expect Roan to be selling out arenas on her own very soon.

It’s worth noting, too, that Roan’s presence on this tour is a beautiful move of solidarity. She and Rodrigo share a producer, Dan Nigro, who once dropped Roan’s project to work with Rodrigo. It seems that Rodrigo wants careful critics to know they are on the same team — no bad blood, no competition, just mutual support. Rodrigo has made it clear that she wants the Guts Tour to work for good, too: Her Fund 4 Good raises money for local reproductive justice organizations in each city she visits. Abortion Care Tennessee and Mountain Access Brigade were the chosen recipients for Nashville’s show, and both set up booths in the concourse.

Beyond her obvious magnetism and accessibility, Rodrigo’s greatest weapon might just be her tastemaking power. The midshow set change was soundtracked with hits by The Clash and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts; odds are strong this was a first concert for a decent portion of the young audience, and this might be the first time they were hearing those artists outside of classic-rock radio. Then Rodrigo took the stage to spill her guts to rapturous applause.

Backed by a stellar all-female band, Rodrigo expertly bounced between pop-punk-flavored rockers and songs of emotional confession. Her growth in the years since her debut release of “Driver’s License” is easy to hear — her vocals are much stronger, and her songwriting has matured to match. Songs from her debut LP Sour ring truer now, with her more confident delivery and in the context of a diversified catalog. From tickling the keys of a baby grand on her aforementioned chart-topping breakout single to strumming pretty purple guitars, it seems there is nothing Rodrigo can’t do.

The set list was masterfully constructed, with Rodrigo’s spunkiest bangers giving way to tender

HOW’S THE CASTLE: OLIVIA RODRIGO

acoustic reprieve. Between her Hunger Games hit “Can’t Catch Me Now” and her bombastic finale, Rodrigo was joined by Nashville-residing guitarist Daisy Spencer for a campfire-style cross-legged sing-along of two of her most heartfelt songs, “Happier” and “Favorite Crime.” One hair-metal-inspired transition later, Rodrigo was bursting through “Brutal” and the sexy Guts secret bonus track “Obsessed.”

Don’t be mistaken: Olivia Rodrigo isn’t just great for a 21-year-old performer — she’s great, full stop. Her delivery on “Vampire” deserves to be studied, if for no other reason than how perfectly her cadence matches Jennifer Garner’s in Juno when transmitting the sickest “cool guy” burn. I’ve never seen a crowd so captivated by an artist as all the little girls were when Rodrigo floated around the arena on a crescent moon surrounded by glittering stars. And I’ve never seen so many grown women screaming with such passion as when Rodrigo burned through “All American Bitch.” The song is womanhood itself: a beautifully wrapped package with a perfectly neat bow, filled to the brim with worms.

Midway through, Rodrigo surprised the crowd with a special guest, a first on the tour. Sheryl Crow, the cornerstone of late ’90s and early Aughts radio-friendly rock, joined Olivia onstage for her most cathartic hit, “If It Makes You Happy.”

If there is a woman who hasn’t screamed the lyrics to that song in her car at least once, I haven’t met her yet.

The youthful majority of the audience might not have a frame of reference for the weight of this moment, but that’s OK. For now, they have the joy of seeing a young Filipina American succeed, along with the fun of singing along to their favorite pop songs. Someday, after growing up on Rodrigo, they will find her inspirations. They will know every word of Live Through This, Jagged Little Pill and Riot! They will bawl their eyes out to Carrie and Jennifer’s Body. Maybe not today, but someday, they will ache like I ache — like Olivia aches. ▼

Saturday, March 16

HATCH SHOW PRINT Block Party

9:30 am, NOON, and 2:30 pm

HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP

Saturday, March 16

SONGWRITER ROUND Pat Alger with the Entrepreneur Latina Leaders of America

NOON · FORD THEATER

Sunday, March 17

PANEL DISCUSSION Celtic and Country Music Connections

With Altan and Jerry Douglas

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, March 23 SONGWRITER SESSION

Ashley Cooke NOON · FORD THEATER

WITNESS HISTORY

Museum Membership

Receive free admission, access to weekly programming, concert ticket presale opportunities, and more.

Sunday, March 24

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Striking Matches

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, April 6

SONGWRITER ROUND Acoustic Guitar Project

11:30 am · FORD THEATER

Saturday, April 6

POETS AND PROPHETS

Jackie DeShannon

2:30 pm · CMA THEATER

Saturday, April 6

HATCH SHOW PRINT Block Party

9:30 am, NOON, and 2:30 pm

HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP

Saturday, April 13

SONGWRITER SESSION

Tia Sillers

NOON · FORD THEATER

FULL CALENDAR

PHOTO: DIANA LEE ZADLO

LOVE IS LIKE a drug. When you find someone you really care about — whether it’s a friend, a family member or a romantic partner — it changes you in certain specific ways. There are the highs of being with them, the withdrawals when they’re gone for a long time, and that blistering anger you feel when something threatens them. It’s one of the strongest emotions the human brain can muster, and it’s one that can be dangerous. You can lose yourself in these feelings, and do things you wouldn’t with a calm mind — things that feel right but have serious consequences. That relationship — the interplay of love and hate — is constantly throttled in Rose Glass’ sophomore feature Love Lies Bleeding Jackie (Katy O’Brian) is a bodybuilder passing through Albuquerque, N.M., on her way to a competition in Las Vegas. She takes a job at a gun range to earn a bit more money for the road. One night she stops in at a local gym, where she meets the reclusive gym manager, Lou (Kristen Stewart), who is also her boss’s daughter. The two jump quickly into a relationship, and Lou begins supplying Jackie with performance-enhancing drugs. After a tragic event, Jackie enters a fit of rage and in an act of passion, does something that lands her in trouble with her boss (Ed Harris) and the local

THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

Love

BY KEN ARNOLD

criminal underworld. The two then battle their circumstances, attempting to survive the mob and each other.

LLB shines as a gritty revenge thriller, but also as a tender romance. The neon-drenched setting of 1980s Albuquerque has an air of lawlessness and open hostility, from its vast deserts to its dingy street corners. Lou is quiet and standoffish, while Jackie is a towering figure, musclebound and moving through the town with ease. Together they find a love that is tender but de-

FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET

The American Society of Magical Negroes isn’t as pointed as it could be

BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

WE APPEAR to be in a new era of cinematic satires — written by, directed by and starring Black folks — that take aim at white people’s general perception of African Americans while also telling stories about African Americans that are sympathetic and free of stereotypes.

Writer-director Cord Jefferson’s debut American Fiction received five Oscar nods — including Best Picture — for its tale of a frustrated Black author (Jeffrey Wright) who becomes a star among white readers after penning a fraudulent ’hood memoir. And now we have The American Society of Magical Negroes, which finally sends up the cinematic device/cliché that white critic Matt Zoller Seitz once described as “a glorified walk-on role, a narrative device with a pulse” and “a glorified hood ornament attached to the end of a car that’s being driven by white society, vigorously turning a little steering wheel that’s not attached to anything.”

Struggling yarn artist Aren (Justice Smith) becomes a member of the titular society after being recruited by longtime member Roger (David Alan Grier). Aren learns that magical negroes have been around for a long time, keeping white folks’ fear of a Black planet at bay by helping them succeed — whether it’s giving a frustrated athlete tips on how to excel at a sport or getting rid of a prison guard’s painful urinary infection. (Sound familiar?)

Aren’s first assignment has him serving as the wisdom-spewing work buddy to a clueless, privileged white guy (Drew Tarver) at a supposedly hipstery tech company. Aren also develops a crush on a female co-worker (An-Li Bogan, looking like Patti Harrison here). Unfortunately, since the white dude is sweet on the co-worker too, Aren has to hide his feelings and play that other insufferable cinematic trope: the Black best friend.

fensive, with danger looming all around them. Jackie has violent outbursts when Lou is harmed or distressed, her muscles bulging and popping like she’s Bruce Banner morphing into the Hulk. As with director Glass’ first film, Saint Maud, there are a lot of magical-realist moments — not magical as far as what’s happening, exactly, but rather in visual manifestations of the character’s point of view, or the internalization of a bad drug trip.

Despite its many successes, Love Lies Bleeding

features content that might disturb viewers — blood and gore, domestic violence, drug abuse, sexual manipulation and neglect. The previously mentioned magical-realist elements also see Glass dipping a toe into absurdism in an otherwise serious movie; these moments might make sense for the characters and the headspace they are in, but they result in tonal whiplash. In the end, love conquers all. So if you are able to make it through the abuse and violence, you are rewarded with a romance that is satisfying because of everything the characters have been through.

Love Lies Bleeding is a blood-soaked romance that will keep you on the edge of your seat, as long as all the violence doesn’t send you running for the exit. It’s a solid piece of genre filmmaking from an up-and-coming director who keeps improving and is one to keep an eye on. ▼

Love Lies Bleeding R, 104 minutes

Opening at the Belcourt and Regal and AMC theaters

Thursday, March 14

When it comes to bringing the satirical pain, Negroes has even less bite than the ultimately softhearted Fiction Actor/Yale graduate Kobi Libii pulls a lot of punches in his debut as a writer/producer/director. The whole magical-negro element (the society chambers — secretly hidden behind a barbershop but somehow stationed next to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello — look like Hogwarts if it were populated by people who use shea butter, with Nicole Byer adding a couple chuckles as the floating leader) becomes less integral as the movie wears on. Libii seems more concerned with giving us a romantic dramedy in which the two young, attractive leads — despite having off-the-charts chemistry — are presumably doomed to never hook up. Although he essentially made a film about how Black people are tired of having to calm white people’s nerves all the damn time, it seems Libii isn’t out to make Negroes uncomfortable for audiences. He takes white people to task for being clueless when it comes to diversity (and that also goes for people in the film industry, who have been giving white people sage,

The American Society of Magical Negroes

PG-13, 104 minutes

Opening Friday, March 15, at Regal and AMC locations

harmless Black pals since Uncle Remus first sang “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” in the disgraced Disney movie Song of the South), but he doesn’t go about scorching the earth.

He gives both Smith and Grier emotional, Black-lives-definitely-matter monologues for certain scenes — reminders to white audiences that Black people are just as afraid of them as they are of us. The always reliable Grier serves as a stern but supportive mentor, but the lanky, biracial Smith seems miscast. Although he displays some determined vigor as a fed-up Black dude, I had trouble seeing him as someone who could make white people uneasy. (A bulky but charming brotha like Aldis Hodge or Yahya Abdul-Mateen II could’ve easily made this work.)

Light on snarl and heavy on sentimentality, The American Society of Magical Negroes fails to be the nail that finally seals the magical-negro coffin. Instead it’s the most twee fuck-you to racist white people since Disney hired Halle Bailey to play Ariel in its Little Mermaid remake. ▼

ACROSS

1 Reality checks?

9 Raze

16 Austin Powers catchphrase

17 Family tree

18 Highway crossing

19 Fail

20 N.B.A. impossibility

21 Perp alert

23 Mob man

24 Sequentially arranged

28 Explains in detail

32 Container weight allowances

33 Clever quip

35 LAX scanners (but not lax ones, one hopes)

36 Unit of cellphone reception

37 Uncle Sam’s land, informally

40 Dating axiom … or a hint to interpreting four pairs of answers in this puzzle

46 “Natural” at the craps table

47 “Unbelievable!,” in internet shorthand

48 Hypothetical degree

49 Road runners?

52 Jazz great Shaw

54 Like an impromptu remark

56 Keep wearing

58 Name for two Spice Girls

59 Well-seasoned

61 Mobile ___

62 Rehearsed to perfection

66 Excite, as a crowd

71 Conforming to accepted values

72 Some desert dwellers

73 Eerie

74 Many country-and-western dances

DOWN

1 Admit (to)

2 “Now I remember who sang ‘Take On Me’!”

3 “Washington Week” airer

4 One being quizzed

5 Conductors may conduct them

6 “Never ___ ever ...”

7 Boston’s Mass. ___

8 Lab liquids

9 It goes viral in winter

10 Director Justin of the “Fast & Furious” franchise

11 “Wait, there’s more …”

12 Prop used for kickoffs

13 Entering after the bell

14 Food items originally called Froffles

15 It may glow in the dark

22 Luau side dish

24 Title role for Tom Hanks in 2022

25 Scraping tools

26 Arrange loosely

27 Without ice or mixer

29 “Agreed!”

30 Where trailers wind up

31 Spanish love

34 Start to fix?

36 “You got it!”

38 Colorful Coke brand

39 End of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”

41 Place to put the dough

42 Email function depicted with a paper plane icon

43 Brasilia-to-Rio dir.

44 Playground retort

45 “America” pronoun

50 “I wish!”

51 Jets pass in it, for short

52 Lead dogs

53 Split hairs again?

54 Where Lear exclaims “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!”

55 Despite the fact that, informally

57 ___ cheese

58 Video format

60 Tidy up, in a way

63 Bad-mouth

64 L.G.B.T. History Mo.

65 Mart start

67 Dog on a cat?

68 Emmy-nominated Issa

69 Economic fig.

70 End of days?

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MAHA F. ALHASSAN VS.

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MAHA F. ALHASSAN VS. NADER ALHASSAN

Which has been filed in Fourth Circuit Court, Davidson County, Tennessee, And your defense must be made within thirty (30) days from the date of the last Publication of this notice, which shall be published for four consecutive weeks in the Nashville Scene newspaper. You are further directed to file your defense with the Clerk of the Court and send a copy to the Plaintiff’s attorney at the address listed below. In case of your failure to defend this action by the above date, a judgment by default may be ren dered against you for the relief demanded in the complaint.

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Nicole Giometti-Black

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Over $10K in debt?

Be debt free in 24-48 months. Pay nothing to enroll. Call National Debt Relief at

844-977-3935 (CAN AAN)

WATER DAMAGE CLEANUP & RESTORATION:

A small amount of water can lead to major damage and mold growth in your home. Our trusted professionals do complete repairs to protect your family and your home’s value!

Call 24/7:

1-888-290-2264

Have zip code of service location ready when you call!

(CAN AAN)

AGING ROOF? NEW HOMEOWNER? STORM DAMAGE?

You need a local expert provider that proudly stands behind their work. Fast, free estimate. Financing available.

Call 1-888-292-8225

Have zip code of property ready when calling!

(CAN AAN)

24/7 LOCKSMITH

We are there when you need us for home & car lockouts. We’ll get you back up and running quickly!

Also, key reproductions, lock installs and repairs, vehicle fobs. Call us for your home, commercial and auto locksmith needs!

1-833-237-1233 (CAN AAN)

NEED NEW WINDOWS?

Drafty rooms? Chipped or damaged frames?

Need outside noise reduction? New, energy ef cient windows may be the answer!

Call for a consultation & FREE quote today.

1-877-248-9944. You will be asked for the zip code of the property when connecting.

(CAN AAN)

BEAUTIFY YOUR HOME

with energy ef cient new windows! They will increase your home’s value & decrease your energy bills. Replace all or a few! Call now to get your free, noobligation quote.

866-366-0252 (CAN AAN)

YOU MAY QUALIFY for disability bene ts if you have are between 52-63 years old and under a doctor’s care for a health condition that prevents you from working for a year or more.

1-877-247-6750 (CAN AAN)

Attention:

VIAGRA and CIALIS USERS!

A cheaper alternative to high drugstore prices!

50 Pill Special - Only $99! 100% guaranteed.

CALL NOW:

888-531-1192 (CAN AAN)

PEST CONTROL: PROTECT YOUR HOME

from pests safely and affordably. Roaches, Bed Bugs, Rodent, Termite, Spiders and other pests. Locally owned and affordable. Call for service or an inspection today!

1-833-237-1199 (CAN AAN)

BATH & SHOWER UPDATES

in as little as ONE

DAY! Affordable prices - No payments for 18 months! Lifetime warranty & professional installs. Senior & Military Discounts available.

Call:

855-977-4240 (CAN AAN)

TOP CA$H PAID FOR OLD GUITARS!

1920-1980 Gibson, Martin, Fender, Gretsch, Epiphone, Guild, Mosrite, Rickenbacker, Prairie State, D’Angelico, Stromberg. And Gibson Mandolins / Banjos.

877-589-0747 (CAN AAN)

NEARBY TO SEE A SHOW

Opryland

FAVORITE LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD BAR

Inglewood Lounge

Henry James

BEST LOCAL FAMILY OUTING

Adventure Science Center

Sid Gold’s Request Room

The Underdog

Tennessee Central Railway Museum