Nashville Scene 3-28-21

MARCH 18–24, 2021 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 7 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

CITY LIMITS: CORONAVIRUS AID? TENNESSEE REPUBLICANS SAY “WE DIDN’T NEED IT.”

CULTURE: TREACHEROUS JOY — POET TIANA CLARK’S EPISTLE TO THE SOUTH

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N O S K C A J H T I W G N I L T WRES , REEXAMINING THE MESSY

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DARK AND

N’S SEVENTH IO AT N E TH F O Y C A G LE COMPLICATED

PRESIDENT

3/15/21 3:55 PM

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NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

CONTENTS

MARCH 18, 2021

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20

Coronavirus Aid? ‘We Didn’t Need It.’

Treacherous Joy: An Epistle to the South

CITY LIMITS

CULTURE

Tennessee Republicans bash congressional plan that will send an estimated $30 billion to Tennessee

Everywhere has a history of hurt slicing through the soil, so I want to come back home to the hurt I know best

BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

BY TIANA CLARK

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

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COVER STORY

Wrestling With Jackson .............................9 Reexamining the messy, dark and complicated legacy of the nation’s seventh president

BY J.R. LIND

Reevaluating Old Hickory’s Legacy ....... 10 There is no question that Americans mythologize Jackson, and understanding why is not difficult

BY MARK CHEATHEM

The Cruel Enslaver .................................. 12 Until the destruction of the Confederacy, enslaved African Americans were the largest group of residents to call The Hermitage home

BY LEAROTHA WILLIAMS

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BOOKS

C.T. Vivian recounts a life devoted to justice and nonviolence

BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN AND CHAPTER 16

‘After the Plain Day Becomes Magnificent to Her’ A poem illustrated by XPayne

BY TIANA CLARK

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BY ALBERT BENDER

Klyp Art .................................................... 24

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

Multimedia artist Klypi brings a unique vision of dance pop to life on Black

BY MEGAN SELING

The Spin ................................................... 26 The Scene’s live-review column checks out Circuit Bender’s Ball

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Explore the Constellation Records back catalog, build your own David Fincher film festival, listen to The Best of Car Talk, check out The Whimsical World of Wishing Chair, do a Heaven’s Gate deep dive, buy fancy pastries at Trēt Baking Co., watch Nate Bargatze’s The Greatest Average American on Netflix and more

FILM

FOOD AND DRINK

The People’s Places: Osborne’s Bi-Rite This longtime Belmont Boulevard staple maintains a small-town feel in ever-changing Nashville

ON THE COVER:

Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States On stone by Albert Newsam, courtesy of the Library of Congress

Sky Blue Sky ............................................ 23

BY CHARLIE ZALLIAN

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The Belcourt to Take This Year’s Red Carpet Evening Oscars Celebration Online

Anana Kaye and the late David Olney’s Whispers and Sighs is a high-art exercise in darkness, beauty and hope

On Cerulean, the seven-piece Nashville Ambient Ensemble lets the music flow

CRITICS’ PICKS

TailGate Brewery Launches New ‘Mutt Club’

The Coda .................................................. 23

Jackson pushed forward the most murderous campaign against Native Americans in U.S. history

BY HOWARD J. KITTELL

Tennessee Republicans Suddenly Care About Women’s Safety

MUSIC

BY SKIP ANDERSON

Jackson’s victories were stunning and his transgressions dreadful, but both shaped the nation

Brittany Howard, John Prine Among Array of Nashville Grammy Honorees

Reaching Others at a Deeper Level

Conductor on the Train of Native American Genocide ................................ 12

At The Hermitage, the Full Story Must Be Told ............................................ 13

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB:

28 Primal Stream 46 Wojnarowicz and Slaxx, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

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NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

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MARKETPLACE

BY JENNIFER JUSTUS

SCENERY

Arts and Culture News From the Nashville Scene Looking for the latest on art and culture in Nashville?

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

Subscribe at nashvillescene.com/subscribe nashvillescene.com | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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3/15/21 6:52 PM

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With feet on the street, we discover Nashville’s own unique beat – one mile at awith time

Walk a

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J.R. Lind

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FROM BILL FREEMAN IS NASCAR BACK IN NASHVILLE? METRO, BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY DEAL OPENS DOOR FOR 2022 RETURN. Racing fans have been advocating for the NASCAR Cup Series’ return to the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway almost since the last Grand National/Winston Cup race was held there in 1984.

Their wish may be granted.

Earlier this month, Mayor John Cooper and Speedway Motorsports Inc. — owners of Bristol Motor Speedway — signed a letter of intent giving the speedway company a long-term lease and shifting to the group financial responsibility for renovations. If a permanent agreement is reached, the fairgrounds track could have NASCAR events as soon as 2022!

The speedway itself, however, is not the only portion of the grounds needing renovations — the entire property has been in need of improvements for a long time. When Nashville bidders won a Major League Soccer franchise, it was on the shoulders of a dedicated soccer stadium at the fairgrounds. It took longer than anticipated, but Nashville SC signed an agreement with Metro to build a stadium, parking and other renovations in 2020. Cooper held out on closing the MLS deal until Nashville SC’s majority owner agreed to accommodate a pending proposal from Speedway Motorsports — a plan that offered track and property renovations, a 30,000 seat grandstand, expanding the concourse, implementing sound barriers and more.

Speedway Motorsports is one of the nation’s top racetrack operators, founded

by Bruton Smith. Smith originally started as a track promoter in the 1950s and later built the Charlotte Motor Speedway. He incorporated Speedway Motorsports in 1994, and within two years had purchased Bristol Motor Speedway here in Tennessee as well as Sonoma Raceway in California. Today Speedway owns nine racing facilities — eight of which host major racing series, including NASCAR, IndyCar and NHRA races. Speedway Motorsports having an interest in our fairgrounds’ speedway is extremely exciting.

Even as it stands, the Nashville Speedway is a fun, affordable, familyfriendly night out. Tickets are reasonably priced and children under 5 are admitted free. The reason our Nashville track has a schedule now is thanks to current track promoter, Bob Sargent of Track Enterprises. Sargent has promoted ARCA races at the fairgrounds for more than five years and continues to work with local and national events, allowing the track to put races on the schedule as the COVID-19 pandemic begins to subside.

Sargent will continue promoting ARCA races and the upcoming national SRX racing event in July. Meanwhile, he has a “wait and see” approach to the future of the track and his role in it. Holly McCall of the Fair Board told The Tennessean in 2019 that the “fair board wants a full and successful racing schedule, whether it is with Bob Sargent or SMI or a combination.” Sargent is happy to facilitate the return of NASCAR, but wanted to ensure the facility “kept going

while all this was going on.”

If NASCAR does return to Nashville, it should have a very positive economic impact. According to RacingNews.co, the positive economic impact from NASCAR can be tremendous. Auto Club Speedway, Southern California’s premier motorsports facility, contributes more than $105 million annually in economic impact to San Bernardino County.

If a permanent deal is inked here in Nashville, Bristol Motor Speedway would act as a de facto promoter, and NASCAR events could become a light at the end of our fairgrounds recovery tunnel. So there is hope for good things to come, though several obstacles must be navigated for a deal to be sealed. Motorsportsnews reports “the most prominent complication moving forward … is the continued development of a neighboring Major League Soccer stadium.” There are concerns about noise levels and concerns over exceeding the number of races currently allowed at the track. The Fair Board is seeking a financial guarantee to protect local taxpayers — and a referendum from 2011 states that any construction, demolition or changes to the property must be passed by 27 Metro Councilmembers rather than the usual 21of-40 majority.

I am hopeful that Cooper and Speedway Motorsports executives will work out a deal — one that will give Nashville financial benefits and give fans a great place to take their family for a race and a great game of soccer, right here in our backyard.

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

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

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In memory of Jim Ridley, editor 2009-2016

NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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3/15/21 6:27 PM

— Chet Atkins Journal of Country Music vol. 10, no. 3

No single country instrumentalist has achieved the renown and respect of Country Music Hall of Fame member Chet Atkins. His immense influence on country, rock, and jazz musicians from Jerry Reed to George Harrison, Duane Eddy to Earl Klugh, and countless others continues to resonate today. As a producer, he transformed many country RCA artists with crossover hits, backing them with neutral rhythm sections and vocal choruses—a style immortalized as the Nashville Sound.

To learn more about his monumental career, and impact around the world, visit the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

OUR DOORS ARE OPEN DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE Visit CountryMusicHallofFame.org to buy tickets. photo: from the collection of the country music hall of fame and museum

nashvillescene.com | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CITY LIMITS

CORONAVIRUS AID? ‘WE DIDN’T NEED IT.’ Tennessee Republicans bash congressional plan that will send an estimated $30 billion to Tennessee

BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG: Metro Police Chief John Drake vowed transparency after two police shootings in one day. Nika Holbert, a 31-year-old woman, died after she was shot by East Precinct Officer Josh Baker the morning of March 12. MNPD spokesperson Don Aaron said Baker was conducting a traffic stop on a black Camaro, the owner of which has six outstanding warrants. Aaron said Holbert did not own the car but was driving. That’s when a shootout ensued, Aaron said, alleging that Holbert fired at the officer. Baker was shot, and as of press time he is in stable condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Also on March 12, a 33-year-old

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in a co-authored Fox News opinion piece — Tennessee Republicans sidestepped a fact they often fail to mention: that Tennessee is one of the most federally dependent states, while many of the larger blue states Tennessee Republicans love to hate contribute more to federal coffers than they receive in return.

And though Tennessee Republicans spent the week savaging Biden and Washington Democrats over the plan, they aren’t going to turn the funding away — as they have for years with the Affordable Care Act due to

sembly said they wished an initial proposal to increase the minimum wage to $15 had remained in the stimulus plan but otherwise were pleased with its line items.

House Minority Leader Karen Camper (D-Memphis) compared the scope of the recovery act to the New Deal and the Great Society, some of the most expansive pieces of legislation in American history. Camper said she was “truly excited about the possibility it has of impacting the lives of Tennesseans.”

Like Camper, Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Raumesh Akbari of Memphis said she hopes the state takes the federal government up on an offer included in the recovery package that incentivizes the few holdout states, including Tennessee, to expand Medicaid. But Lee and current Republican leadership have been unyielding in their opposition to expansion.

“If not now, when?” Akbari asked.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

GOV. BILL LEE

PHOTO COURTESY OF TN.GOV

P

resident Joe Biden last week signed into law the American Rescue Plan, through which Tennessee is expected to receive more than $30 billion, including more than $6 billion in direct aid.

The wide-ranging pool of new funding includes a round of $1,400 stimulus checks for millions of Americans, tax credits for families with kids, a $300 boost to unemployment payments, funding for school districts, billions of dollars in funding for struggling bars, restaurants and entertainment venues, funding for vaccine distribution and more.

The tax credits and stimulus payments alone are expected to elevate an estimated 25,000 kids in Nashville out of poverty, U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) said last week.

Even so, dominant Tennessee Republicans are bashing the plan, on which the Tennessee congressional delegation split along party lines.

“We didn’t need it,” Republican Gov. Bill Lee said during a discussion with the Millennial Debt Foundation.

State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson called the aid “abhorrent” and “a disgrace” during a meeting with Williamson Inc., the county’s chamber of commerce. (Lt. Gov. Randy McNally was a little kinder, acknowledging that the bill “does many good things” even if he believes it to be too expansive.)

One Republican criticism of the plan is its funding formula, which allocates money to states based on their unemployment rates rather than their total populations. That means Tennessee is expected to receive less than its proportional share of the pie, based on population, though by less than 3 percent of its total allocation according to estimates.

In criticizing the funding formula — as Lee and Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn did

stated similar concerns over its supposed unwieldiness.

“We will be happy to take the money and determine how to spend it wisely,” Lee said.

Democrats in Tennessee are celebrating the bill’s passage. For state-level Democrats, it’s a rare win, as they languish in the superminority in both the House and Senate and haven’t won a statewide office in more than a decade. The state’s two congressional Democrats, Steve Cohen of Memphis and Cooper of Nashville, cheered its passage and touted its potential effect for Tennesseans.

“It’s a colossal effort to end the pandemic,” Cooper said, “so people can get back to life as normal, so they can recover from their job loss, so they can recover from missing school, so they can recover from everything that’s happened to them in the last year. It’s a huge help, particularly to poor people and lower- and middle-income people.”

Democrats in the Tennessee General As-

woman was hospitalized in critical condition after she was shot twice by Officer Brandon Lopez.

MNPD said the woman charged Lopez and other officers with a pickax and baseball bat. The TBI is investigating both incidents. At a news conference, Drake said he is working on a “co-response model for crisis intervention where we can have mental health experts and police officers respond simultaneously.” … Despite widespread support among the Republican supermajority, an effort in the state legislature to remove respected Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle fizzled in a House subcommittee. GOP lawmakers wanted the judge off the bench following a series of rulings loosening absentee voting eligibility during the 2020 election. Retired Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Joe Riley, who also served as chief disciplinary counsel for the Tennessee Court of the Judiciary, compared the effort to disgruntled litigants filing complaints. “It sounds eerily familiar with what I used to receive when I was chief

disciplinary counsel,” the retired judge said in his testimony before the House Civil Justice Subcommittee. “Someone lost, they don’t like it, they believe the judge is biased, it wasn’t fair, and the judge didn’t follow the law.” The subcommittee defeated the resolution on a voice vote; the resolution remains alive in the Senate, where it has just one sponsor — Frank Niceley. … Two prominent Nashville restaurant ownership groups settled wage lawsuits last week, agreeing to pay a combined $1 million to dismiss claims made by workers at the hospitality businesses. Neither M Street nor Strategic Hospitality admitted wrongdoing in the respective settlements. M Street will pay $600,000 to settle a lawsuit filed in 2020, with $400,000 of the total going to pay back wages and damages and $204,000 to cover attorneys’ fees. Strategic Hospitality will pay $140,000 in attorneys’ fees and $274,000 in back wages and damages. …

Chris Hogan, a radio personality and bestselling author from Ramsey Solutions, is out of the com-

pany in what he says is the result of “personal” failings. “Recently it’s come to light that I’ve done some things personally that are not in line with Ramsey Solutions, and as a result I’m no longer a team member at Ramsey,” Hogan said in a video announcement. Although he did not elaborate about the personal behavior that led to his exit, Hogan’s extramarital affairs — and the company’s handling of them — were at the center of an investigation from Religion News Service earlier this year. … State Reps. Glen Casada and Brandon Ogles recently noted their opposition to an open letter that businesses in the state have signed in support of LGBTQ rights. Contributor Betsy Phillips says the pair want to make it look as though they are really concerned about the rights of women in bathrooms — but they sure haven’t concerned themselves with the rights of women in the past.

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

NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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3/15/21 3:49 PM

Live in Concert!

July 29, 2021 Tickets available at LIFEST.COM

Passover at The Temple Join The Temple as we celebrate Passover virtually.

Saturday, March 27 at 5:00pm Temple Seder – 1st night

Sunday, March 28 at 5:00pm Family Seder – 2nd night

Tuesday, March 30 at 6:00pm LGBTQ+ & Allies Seder

These virtual events are open to the entire community at no charge.

Please access The Temple Hub (thetemplehub.org) to RSVP. For more information on all of our Passover Programming please visit thetemplehub.org or www.templenashville.org nashvillescene.com | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS coverstory_3-18-21.indd 8

3/15/21 6:23 PM

WRESTLING WITH JACKSON

REEXAMINING THE MESSY, DARK AND COMPLICATED LEGACY OF THE NATION’S SEVENTH PRESIDENT

BY J.R. LIND started the forced displacement of Native Americans with his Indian Removal Act. Jackson was the first of the imperial presidents, telling the chief justice of the Supreme Court to enforce his own decisions, spitting in the face of separation of powers.

Jackson also pulled political power from the elite, giving less well-born Americans a voice (so long as they were white and male, of course). He proved that even a backwoods-born orphan without much of a formal education could ascend to the heights of power (so long as they were white and male, of course). His victory at New Orleans cemented the U.S. as a great power.

And here is humanity — he famously loved Rachel, he adopted two Native Ameri-

can orphans (one, Lyncoya, he’d hoped would be the first Native American cadet at West Point) in addition to his nephew, who took the name Andrew Jackson Jr. (Junior’s great-great-grandson, Andrew Jackson VI, is a General Sessions judge in Knox County … and a Republican.) He fostered eight other children in his extended family.

Wrestling with Jackson isn’t new. His first biographer, James Parton, wrote in 1859: “Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and a traitor. He was one of the greatest generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. A brilliant writer, elegant, eloquent, without being able to compose a correct sentence or spell words of four syllables. The first of statesmen, he

never devised, he never framed, a measure.

He was the most candid of men, and was capable of the most profound dissimulation.

A most law-defying law-obeying citizen. A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior. A democratic autocrat.

An urbane savage. An atrocious saint.”

Marking the 254th anniversary of his birth on March 15, the Scene asked historians and activists, scholars and curators about Old Hickory’s legacy.

It is messy. It is complicated. It is dark. It is inspiring and it is despairing. It is not the best of America, but it is essential to understanding America — where we were, where we are and where we are going.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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n Nashville, you just can’t escape Andrew Jackson.

Not only in a metaphorical way, but quite literally.

Old Hickory Boulevard, the infamously roundabout road that rings much of the city, is named for him — or at least named for the community that took his nickname as its own. A 15-ton equestrian statue dominates the east side of the Tennessee State Capitol. The city’s largest theater, at TPAC, is named for him. One of the largest state office buildings is too — and another is named for his wife, Rachel.

Nearly a quarter-million people tour Jackson’s home, The Hermitage, annually. The Andrew Jackson Foundation (formerly the Ladies’ Hermitage Association) is one of the county’s largest private landowners. Heck, Jackson was the sixth-most-popular name for boys born in Tennessee in 2020 (and Jaxon was 16th).

As difficult as it is for America to wrest itself from Jackson, it’s harder for Tennesseans, and nigh on impossible for Nashvillians.

From the mundane (every ATM that pays out in multiples of 20 delivers a 6-by-2-inch portrait) to the musical (“In 1814, we took a little trip …”), Jackson — the only president who historians use to designate a period of American history — casts a long and dark shadow.

He’s, at the least, the symbolic founder of the Democratic Party, and opposition to Jacksonianism spawned the Whig Party, which eventually formed the nucleus of the Republican Party. Jackson’s appeal to the common man won him the election of 1828 (and nearly 1824), and it’s been the blueprint for every populist campaign since.

Even though he has an inextricable link to the Party Opposite, he was revered by Republican President Donald Trump and his followers. Democrats, who for decades have held Jackson Day fundraising dinners, are starting to shy away from his legacy; even the Tennessee Democratic Party rebranded its fete as the Three Star Celebration.

The Hero of New Orleans, the orphan who climbed from poverty to the presidency — a brash and bold and arrogant figure, hellbent on holding a fragile country together, for whom preservation of the young union was his overriding concern — is no longer the exemplar of the American character.

He, like so many others, is reexamined as society changes.

Jackson was an owner of hundreds of enslaved people. Jackson was the man who

nashvillescene.com | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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3/15/21 6:24 PM

REEVALUATING OLD HICKORY’S LEGACY There is no question that Americans mythologize Jackson, and understanding why is not difficult

BY MARK CHEATHEM

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ANDREW JACKSON STATUE AT THE TENNESSEE STATE CAPITOL

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

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ineteenth-century historian James Parton described Andrew Jackson as “a democratic aristocrat. An urbane savage. An atrocious saint.” These oxymoronic identities have fascinated Americans since Old Hickory’s army defeated British forces in New Orleans in 1815. Those contradictions are part of what drew me to study Jackson and the period attached to his name.

Besides these incongruities, another reason many Americans continue to be drawn to Jackson is because they have not fully wrestled with the mythology that envelops his life and shapes his legacy. Americans have more often come to see the founding generation — Washington, Jefferson and company — as flawed humans, not demigods.

More recently, white Southerners have slowly begun to accept that the Confederate States of America was not fighting for the continuation of a romanticized version of “moonlight and magnolias,” but for the preservation of a white supremacist society built on the brutal enslavement of African Americans.

Jackson, however, continues to elude this same type of reevaluation among too many Americans. A spin around the web turns up all kinds of misunderstandings and outright lies. The most prominent fiction is probably the number of duels Jackson fought. Blog posts and serious articles cite the dozens or hundreds of duels he was allegedly involved in. In truth, Jackson fought three duels, although even one of those could be thrown out on a technicality. While Jackson was involved in many personal quarrels, resorting to pistols was the exception, not the rule.

To cite another example, most Americans have probably learned that Jackson was motivated by a lifelong hatred of the British that stemmed from the death of his mother and two brothers during the American Revolution. His triumph on the grounds of the Chalmette plantation that early, fog-covered January morning in 1815 did not just produce a national celebration — it also brought closure to the emotional pain he suffered from losing his family.

In reality, Jackson had a complicated relationship with Great Britain. His Revolutionary War experiences unquestionably planted the seeds of anti-British resentment, but he also used the British throughout his life as a convenient vehicle for expressing other prejudices against Native Americans, enslaved African Americans and abolitionists. These groups threatened to weaken the society, built on the backs of enslaved laborers and on the land of displaced indigenous people, that allowed him to be a member of the elite ruling class. They were more of an immediate concern throughout Jackson’s life than the British were.

There is no question that we mythologize Jackson, and understanding why is not difficult. It fits with the theory propagated by Frederick Jackson Turner — that the American character was shaped by frontier violence. Scholars debunked this theory long ago, but it remains an integral part of how Americans see their history and themselves. Just like Jackson was supposedly a no-holds-barred fighter who would take out any enemy who insulted him or who stood in his — or the nation’s — way, Americans view themselves in the same way.

To use more recent political language, we are counter-punchers. If someone hits us with a different perspective, if someone challenges our worldview, our tendency is to hit back and hit harder, like Jackson allegedly did.

Understanding that Jackson usually did not settle individual disputes with violence and that he used a socially acceptable scapegoat out of fear should lead us to consider our own actions when faced with personal slights or consumed with fear of change around us. Instead of escalating perceived or real insults into verbal or actual violence, we could deescalate and try a more noncombative approach. Instead of masking our personal worries by invoking widely accepted prejudices, we could examine the sources of our fears and reflect on what they truly mean.

That is why these fabrications about Andrew Jackson, intentional or not, matter: They keep us from confronting the truth about ourselves.

Mark Cheathem is a professor of history at Cumberland University in Lebanon. He has written or edited seven books about Andrew Jackson and the Age of Jackson and is the project director of the Papers of Martin Van Buren.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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3/15/21 6:25 PM

A BROADCAST & LIVESTREAM BENEFIT CONCERT FOR HOSTED BY NATALIE STOVALL & FEATURING

ASHLEY MCBRYDE • BRELAND • DEREK ST HOLMES • LEE BRICE LINDSAY ELL • OLD DOMINION • PHIL VASSAR • PHILLIP PHILLIPS MCCREERY • SHENANDOAH W/ SPECIAL GUEST GYTH RIGDON SIXWIRE • TYLER RICH

MARCH 26, 2021 7PM - 9PM CST

WHERE TO WATCH

NewsChannel 5 & 2ndAveStrong.com

nashvillescene.com | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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the Confederacy, enslaved African Americans were the largest group of residents to call The Hermitage home

BY LEAROTHA WILLIAMS

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s I reflect on Andrew Jackson’s relationship with the population of African Americans he enslaved at the The Hermitage, I tend to not focus on the life and times of Alfred Jackson, the enslaved man who holds the distinction of having called the The Hermitage home longer than any other resident.

Indeed, my mind fixates on the number 300 — although it is not my intent to create an image of Jackson as King Leonidas, or compare the struggle for freedom in the Athens of the South to the Battle of Thermopylae.

The number 300 is significant because it represents the number of African Americans Andrew Jackson and his family compelled to call The Hermitage home, and it also relates to one of the most disturbing advertisements

CONDUCTOR ON THE TRAIN OF NATIVE AMERICAN GENOCIDE Jackson pushed forward the most murderous campaign against Native Americans in U.S. history

BY ALBERT BENDER

A

ndrew Jackson remains an arch villain in the history of Native America.

We, the indigenous people of the United States, continue to live with his deadly legacy. When Donald Trump assumed the presidency and hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office, we knew exactly where we stood in his eyes.

Jackson, the Indian killer, was directly responsible for the agonizing deaths of thousands of Native people — Cherokees, Muscogee Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles — in the death marches, collectively known as the “Trail of Tears,” of the 1830s. He was a prime conductor on the murderous genocide train that roared from coast to coast. That train, when it stopped in the late 1890s, left alive — according to U.S. government statistics — only 237,196 Natives out of a population that numbered upwards of 60 million when the Pilgrims landed.

What part did Jackson play in this sordid history? Let’s take a look at the real history of this early-day Hitler. Actually, Jackson’s

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so-called Indian-fighting career began rather late in life. Jackson moved to Nashville in 1788, at a time when battles between white settlers and allied Cherokees and Creeks were raging in the area. But there is no record of his having fought any Indians at all during this period. This seems somewhat odd in light of his later advocacy.

Jackson was 46 when the Creek War began in 1813. In the first two campaigns against the Creek Nation, his armies were actually repulsed by the intrepid, grimly determined Creek warriors who were vastly outnumbered and massively outgunned by Jackson’s forces. According to mainstream Anglo history, Jackson defeated the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, with the Native forces losing more than 800 warriors.

But there is a Creek version that Jackson’s forces actually slaughtered hundreds of women and children after making sure that most of the warriors were absent from the fortified village in the bend of the Tallapoosa River.

As for the Trail of Tears, Jackson was the evil architect and enforcer of Indian removal. He signed the Indian Removal Act on May 28, 1830, and saw to the carrying out of fraudulent treaties resulting in the hideous deaths of tens of thousands of indigenous men, women, children and elderly.

Jackson pushed forward the most murderous campaign against Native Americans in U.S. history. So bent was he on Indian genocide that he even tried to prevent the issuance of soap to Cherokees on the Trail of Tears. This was after he’d left the presidency and his successor, Martin Van Buren, was carrying out his wishes. When Cherokee leaders were finally able to prevail upon the Army for the issuance of soap, Jackson — upon hearing of this humanitarian concession — flew into a rage at The Hermitage

One thing that needs to be clear to anyone assessing the relationship between Jackson and the African American community at The Hermitage: None of the enslaved was there by choice. to spare as he considered dueling Thomas Hart Benton, John Sevier, Henry Clay and others whom society viewed as his equals. It is difficult to believe that he would interact with an insolent enslaved man or woman on better terms than he would these esteemed gentlemen. It is also inconceivable that he would allow anyone to beat any of the horses he owned 300 times.

One thing that needs to be clear to anyone assessing the relationship between Jackson and the African American community at The Hermitage: None of the enslaved was there by choice. Until the destruction of the Confederacy in 1865, African Americans were the largest group of residents to call

The Hermitage home. Nevertheless, a bill of sale provided their admittance to Jackson’s estate, and Jackson’s whips, guns and clubs — along with a constant fear for the lives and safety of themselves and their loved ones — compelled them to stay.

Learotha Williams Jr. is a scholar of African American, Civil War and Reconstruction, and public history at Tennessee State University.

He also spearheads the North Nashville Heritage Project, an effort that seeks to encourage a greater understanding of the history of North Nashville — including but not limited to Jefferson Street and its historic relationship to the greater Nashville community.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

ENGRAVING OF ANDREW JACKSON SPEAKING WITH WILLIAM WEATHERFORD and demanded that the order for the issuance for soap be rescinded.

Jackson was a racist devil incarnate, an early-day American Hitler whose deadly legacy for Native Americans remains extant to this very day. The genocide train continues still, but in more subtle forms — and if it were possible, I am sure Jackson would be looking down smiling.

Albert Bender is a Cherokee activist, historian, political columnist and freelance reporter for Native and non-Native publications. He was an organizer and delegate to the First and Second Intercontinental Indian Conferences held in Quito, Ecuador,

W. RIDGWAY, ENGRAVER, AND JOHN REUBEN CHAPIN, ARTIST. COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

THE CRUEL ENSLAVER Until the destruction of

for help capturing an enslaved person who ran away seeking freedom that I have read as a scholar of African American history.

In an 1804 advertisement, Jackson sought assistance in acquiring an enslaved man who had recently absconded from his farm.

In the ad, Jackson does not provide much information about the man aside from the fact that he stood a bit over 6-foot-1 and may have had some freedom papers in his possession. Jackson offered a $50 reward for the man, and he added that if the man was captured out of the state, he would pay the slave catchers $10 extra for every 100 lashes they gave him, up to 300 lashes.

As I read this, I became curious about the significance of the number 300. Were the 300 lashes representative of Jackson’s anger, and was that number sufficient to prove his authority and satiate his anger? One has to wonder — as the freedom-seeking man recovered from the lacerations, infections and mental anguish — about the message Jackson intended to deliver to the other enslaved people at The Hermitage who witnessed his painful recovery. In looking at this one advertisement, it is difficult to imagine that Jackson’s temperament toward his enslaved community — people whose lives he claimed complete authority over — improved as his fortunes changed and he became more established in American politics. Indeed, Jackson would have rage

and Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Recently, he has been an active participant and reporter in the Standing Rock struggle in North Dakota. He is an attorney and is currently writing a legal treatise on Native American sovereignty. He is also writing a book on the war crimes committed by the U.S. against the Maya people in the Guatemalan civil war of the late 20th century.

Bender is the recipient of several Eagle Awards by the Tennessee Native American Eagle Organization and a former director of Native American Legal Departments and a Tribal Public Defender.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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and his transgressions dreadful, but both shaped the nation

BY HOWARD J. KITTELL

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irthdays often prompt reflection.

They are convenient milestones by which to measure our progress over the past year, what we have accomplished and where we might improve. They are also an opportunity to look ahead, set goals and make plans based on the needs and priorities of the moment.

This year, Andrew Jackson’s birthday — commemorated each March 15 at The Hermitage — arrives during a time of earnest reflection and planning for the Andrew Jackson Foundation. Jackson’s 253rd birthday in 2020 marked a major turning point for our organization. It was the first event changed dramatically by the COVID-19 outbreak and a precursor to the site’s full closure just two days later. In the year since, our leadership and staff have produced outstanding results, introducing new ticket offerings, rolling out robust digital programming and pivoting development and marketing efforts to generate support for the immediate needs of the site’s operation.

The story of Andrew Jackson is important. His heroics — and his flaws — bear relevance and speak to our contemporary triumphs and struggles as a nation. Continuing to share the story of our seventh president in a fair and unbiased way remains at the center of our priorities. We do not shy away from Jackson. He was a consequential American president who fought fiercely for his country, won the popular vote for our nation’s highest office in three consecutive elections and molded democracy and the presidency into institutions more closely resembling their modern definitions.

But The Hermitage story is not just about Andrew Jackson and his family. Our mission to preserve and interpret Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage extends beyond our namesake to the many individuals and families who lived and worked on the property. The stories of the enslaved community and freedmen who remained after emancipation are woven into the fabric of this National Historic Landmark. That is why this important part of our work remains active, even in the throes of the pandemic. For more than 40 years, we have conducted exhaustive research of the enslaved community, and for more than 20 years, it has been a focal point of our publicfacing interpretive efforts. The Hermitage was one of the very first Southern historical sites to address slavery with original archaeology, and we remain an active member of the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery. The stories we have learned about over the past several decades now figure prominently into our interactive audio tours, guided interpretation and, most

THE HERMITAGE

HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

AT THE HERMITAGE, THE FULL STORY MUST BE TOLD Jackson’s victories were stunning

recently, our newest tour, In Their Footsteps: Lives of The Hermitage Enslaved — a comprehensive look at the lives of the enslaved men and women of The Hermitage, the operation of the Hermitage farm and the harsh reality of the enslaved system.

Our efforts to bring inclusivity to the narrative of The Hermitage, to tell the full story of the triumphs and tragedies tied to Andrew Jackson, have yielded encouraging results. Prior to COVID-19’s arrival, Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage was the third-mostvisited presidential home museum in the United States, welcoming more than 235,000 guests annually and boasting growing attendance and fundraising numbers as Jackson’s story entered the mainstream once again. In addition to the historical significance of our work, Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage is a key part of Nashville’s tourism industry and a major contributor to the region’s economic success each year.

Jackson has received a lot of press in recent years. Concentrated efforts by the AJF to reintroduce the full story of Jackson to the public, the affinity held for him by President Donald Trump (who visited The Hermitage in 2017 and hung Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office) and a public more mindful of the flaws of political leaders, past and present, and their impact have all contributed to a resurgence in the coverage of Jackson and heated debate as to how he should be remembered. In his own time, Andrew Jackson inspired both fierce loyalty and intense disapproval, and the same remains true today.

I believe Jon Meacham, presidential historian and former AJF trustee, said it best: “Anyone who believes in democracy, anyone who believes in the future, has to grapple with Jackson.” There is no avoiding Andrew Jackson in an honest study of American history. His victories were stunning and his transgressions dreadful, but both shaped the United States of America and continue to have an impact on our nation. For that reason, the story of Andrew Jackson is worth telling. It must be told.

As his 254th birthday is commemorated, we will remember Jackson as a consequential figure in American history and continue to share the full story of his life, educating the next generation and allowing them to decide for themselves how they will grapple with Jackson. Our mission — to preserve, educate and inspire — has endured for 132 years and counting, and we will continue the core work of The Hermitage, telling the stories of all who called it home.

Howard J. Kittell has been the president and CEO of The Hermitage since 2008.

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SEE THAD COCKRELL AT 3RD AND LINDSLEY

By now, you may know Thad Cockrell’s story, but in case you don’t: Encouraged by friends and fellow musicians Becca Mancari and Brittany Howard, the veteran singer-songwriter put a lot of sweat equity into If In Case You Feel the Same. Powerhouse indie ATO Records released the LP, the most ambitious album of Cockrell’s two-decade career, in June 2020. But little fanfare ensued, and Cockrell spent the early part of this year preparing himself to look for a new career. However, as recounted in Rolling Stone, The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon took a trip to the hardware store, where he happened to hear “Swingin’,” a funked-up ELO-esque anthem

to perseverance from If in Case. At the end of January, Cockrell appeared on The Tonight Show performing “Swingin’ ” from home while The Roots played along, and the single went to No. 1 on the iTunes chart. It’s a feel-good story, and it has the potential to get even better. “Swingin’ ” is a standout, but the album is packed with songs that benefit from Cockrell’s keen ear and eye as a narrator, with exciting sonic textures that add to the storytelling. “Love Moves In” examines how relationships reshape your whole existence over an elevated take on post-new jack swing R&B, while “Next Thing You Know” contemplates patience paying off with a shape-shifting groove that’s easy to follow but hard to predict. On Sunday, you have a chance to see Cockrell

FILM

[AFTER KISMET]

MUSIC

THAD COCKRELL MUSIC

PHOTO: ERIC RYAN ANDERSON

ART

on their 2021 dance card? Mogwai — Glasgow’s masters of all things cinematic, dynamic and mostly instrumental — just scored their first U.K. No. 1 album with their 10th LP, the stellar As the Love Continues. Even weirder was seeing this headline making the rounds (and it’s not from The Onion or The Hard Times): “How STEPHEN TRAGESER an Old Silver Mt. Zion Song Tricked TikTok Into Believing They Had Found Real [I NEED YOUR SKULL] SEE JONATHAN EDELHUBER’S SKULLS Recordings of ‘Angel Sounds’ ” (reported by Canada’s Exclaim! magazine). Zion is one AT ZIEHERSMITH of many offshoots of Montreal post-rock The memento mori is ripe for a comeback. royalty Godspeed You Black Emperor!, The old-school art-historical trope that whose seventh LP of string-laden leftist stood in as a reminder of every human’s hymns, G_d’s Pee at State’s End, drops April inevitable death was oddly uplifting, in 2. Another is the underrated Fly Pan Am, a its way. Think of it as a coded version of a flagship band of Constellation Records — motivational poster — “Hang in there, kitty! the house Godspeed built — whose latest You’ll be dead soon enough!” Arkansascollection of tripped-out Francophone born Nashville-based artist Jonathan found-soundscapes, Frontera (Spanish for Edelhuber is hip to the memento mori jive, “border”), comes out May 21. Not only is and his collection of expressionistic skull Constellation’s catalog littered with hints paintings and carved wood silhouettes about the coming collapse (see “BBF3” he calls “skullptures” is currently on from Godspeed’s 2000 EP Slow view at ZieherSmith’s exhibition Riot for New Zero Kanada), space in downtown Nashville.

EDITOR’S NOTE: AS A its trademark silk-screened, From the curatorial statement: RESPONSE TO THE ONGOING foil-stamped CD sleeves and “The traditional symbolisms COVID-19 PANDEMIC, WE’VE eco-friendly packaging — now are here processed by way CHANGED THE FOCUS OF THE CRITICS’ PICKS SECTION TO the norm in the indie world of technical reckoning, INCLUDE ACTIVITIES YOU CAN — are straight-up iconic. contemporary gestures PARTAKE IN WHILE YOU’RE AT So when you’re sampling mix with heroic midcentury HOME. and preordering State’s End maneuvers, making use of and Frontera on the label’s site the canon — Horace Pippin, Cy (cstrecords.com), don’t sleep on its Twombly and Alice Neal vie for space lesser-known offerings. I recommend the with Tal R, Katherine Bernhardt and Bendix cello-and-drums duo Hangedup, whose Harms. Surprising color combinations, 2002 LP Kicker in Tow absolutely rips, enlivened by surfaces from glossy sheen to and everything by Do Make Say Think, distressed furrows, the well-worn, roughGodspeed’s jazzier, chiller cousins from hewn template animates itself, urging the down the road in Toronto — that rarest of viewer that with death this close, we best bands that, seven albums in, is still batting a get busy being born.” Visit ziehersmith.com thousand. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN for details and installation shots. Through April 3 by appointment at ZieherSmith, 509 Third Ave. S. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER [WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!]

[CONSTELLATION PRIZES]

EXPLORE THE CONSTELLATION RECORDS BACK CATALOG

Who had post-rock regaining relevance

BUILD YOUR OWN DAVID FINCHER FILM FESTIVAL

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CRITICS’ PICKS brought to the original staging (under the direction of Carolyn German), but also benefits from a new original score by Keri’s brother, Joe Pisapia. There’s also a bonus episode, in which Senjanovic sits down with the playwright and actor to discuss the genesis of the project, its themes, and why Ethel’s story continues to challenge and resonate. The Passion of Ethel Rosenberg (a Radio Play) is now available via Podbean, along with other popular podcast streaming services. You can check it out at passionofethelrosenberg.podbean.com.

CULTURE

AMY STUMPFL

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[NOW HE SINGS, NOW HE SAABS]

LISTEN TO THE BEST OF CAR TALK

There are few things in this world more comforting than listening to people who care about each other goofing off, and that’s why I keep listening to The Best of Car Talk.

Ray Magliozzi and his older brother Tom retired from Car Talk in 2012, 35 years after they first began hosting it on Boston public radio station WBUR and 25 years after NPR put it into national syndication. They left behind hundreds of hours of listeners’ calls about cars and car repair. In some ways, the show is genuinely about practical automotive advice, seasoned with generous heaps of running gags tied to the brothers’ distinct flavors of genially erudite wise-guy persona. (Ray, who’s still the face of the family business Good News Garage, comes across as the practical everyman. Tom, who sadly died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2014, plays the bullheaded, absent-minded professor to the hilt.) Of course, what the show is really about is navigating people’s complex relationships with each other and with their ever-more-mystifying cars — determining the relative importance of their loved ones’ odd habits or their car’s unusual noises. Most NPR stations stopped airing re-edited episodes in 2017, but a new one appears most Saturday mornings on cartalk.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Anytime I’ve got a stack of chores to do, or any other reason I need to vaporize a perfectly good hour, I’m eager to load one up. STEPHEN TRAGESER [A WHOLE NEW WORLD]

CHECK OUT THE WHIMSICAL WORLD OF WISHING CHAIR

March 21 is World Puppetry Day, but you don’t need to wait for a special occasion to check out Wishing Chair Productions’ charming new online variety show The Whimsical World of Wishing Chair. Featuring familiar Wishing Chair friends — including the Professor, Library Pete, Mary Mary and Mr. B.,

this weekly, 30-minute show offers fun songs, stories and, of course, plenty of puppets (Tommy Dog, Cedric the Dragon and JJ the Lamb among them). There are recurring segments — such as Mary Mary’s book recommendations and visits to the Enchanted Alphabet Tree — plus interactive games, special guests and more. It’s a welcome treat for little ones who’ve been missing live, in-person story times at the Nashville Public Library. The virtual series kicked off earlier this month, and audiences can look forward to a new episode at 10:30 a.m. every Tuesday via Facebook. After that, episodes will be available on NPL’s YouTube channel. To learn more about Wishing Chair Productions and NPL’s rich tradition of puppetry, visit library.nashville.org. 10:30 a.m. Tuesdays via Nashville Public Library AMY STUMPFL

RADIO

RADIO

week that both Mank and Chicago 7 are up for Best Picture Oscars, so maybe Fincher will get the last laugh.) If somehow, bless you, you haven’t had your fill of Fincher at this point, queue up some episodes of the Netflix series Mindhunter, which the filmmaker executive produced and directed several episodes of. D. PATRICK RODGERS

CHILDREN

let’s focus on an acclaimed writer-director who made a splash at the Golden Globes a couple weeks back: David Fincher. (The 58-year-old filmmaker didn’t win in his categories, but was something of a hit when he was seen taking a shot of liquor in his little Zoom window every time he lost.)

While there are many sci-fi fans — and indeed, at least one Scene film critic — who will absolutely go to bat for Fincher’s 1992 directorial debut Alien 3, the director himself has expressed frustration and disappointment over the end result. (Chalk that up to “studio interference.”) So let’s start with 1995’s fantastic neo-noir effort Seven ($4 via Amazon Prime, iTunes and YouTube), which — if you can stomach a small amount of screen time from real-life villain Kevin Spacey — is about the most stylish and satisfying ’90s crime thriller you’re likely to find. Then take your pick from one of Fincher’s late-’90s/early-Aughts selections: 1997’s The Game (free via Amazon Prime), 1999’s Fight Club ($4 on Prime and iTunes, if bro culture hasn’t ruined that one for you), or 2002’s Panic Room ($4 on Prime, YouTube and iTunes, and featuring a lovely turn from the one and only Dwight Yoakam). If you’re only able to get to one title from all the films mentioned here, I insist you make it 2007’s painstakingly constructed 157-minute Zodiac (free on Prime), a staggering effort that, for my money, features career-best performances from both Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. (Sorry Marvel fans, it’s true.) I personally have mixed feelings about 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and 2011’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, so I’ll instead direct you to 2010’s The Social Network (on Netflix), which features just the right amount of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s general Sorkinness (rare). If you’re up for a bit more murder intrigue, hit 2014’s Gone Girl (available via Hulu, and possibly the best use of Ben Affleck ever committed to celluloid) before bringing your Fincher fest home with last year’s Mank (Netflix).

Centering on screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz’s development of the Citizen Kane script, Mank is based on a screenplay

by Fincher’s father Jack Fincher. The Mank script earned the elder Fincher, who died in 2003, one of those aforementioned Golden Globe nominations, but he lost out to — guess who — Aaron Sorkin and his The Trial of the Chicago 7. (It was announced this

[PASSION PLAY]

LISTEN TO THE PASSION OF ETHEL ROSENBERG (A RADIO PLAY)

Back in 2017, I had the pleasure of taking in a workshop production of The Passion of Ethel Rosenberg — a powerful one-person play written by Nashville journalist Edward Morris and starring versatile voice, stage and screen actor Keri Pagetta. The piece follows the plight of Ethel Rosenberg — rather than turn over the names of fellow communists and communist sympathizers, she followed her husband to the electric chair on June 19, 1953. Now, Pagetta and her husband Joe have produced a terrific new three-act/episode podcast version of the play. Hosted by sometime Scene contributor Natasha Senjanovic, the podcast captures all the complexity and drama that Keri

DO A HEAVEN’S GATE DEEP DIVE

Apocalyptic thinking has felt mildly inevitable this pandemic year. Maybe it’s cabin fever, maybe it’s a doom-scrolling side effect, maybe it’s a stage of grief.

Whatever the cause, it’s not helping. One way to alleviate the feelings of impending doom — other than therapy or drugs — is getting fully invested in the saga of Heaven’s Gate, because those guys thought the world was ending too. Seeing people fully invested in deluding themselves about the world’s end is oddly comforting — from our vantage point, it seems silly, dangerous, sad. I suggest starting with the excellent HBO docuseries Heaven’s Gate: Cult of Cults. It’s incredibly well done and brimming with revelatory interviews with participants. There’s also a moving 10-episode podcast about the cult by WNYC’s Snap Judgment host Glynn Washington — his own experience growing up inside a different apocalyptic faith organization makes him uniquely qualified to examine the phenomenon.

Washington’s Heaven’s Gate podcast came out a few years ago, but is definitely worth your time — listen via Stitcher, iTunes or Spotify.

I went down a few odd rabbit holes that are tangentially related to the cult, like exploring the background of the members’ matching Nike Decades sneakers — the ones sticking out from beneath the shrouds in that video taken days after their deaths. The design was discontinued as a result of the tragedy, but the shoes remain collectible among some weirdo sneakerheads. And of course there’s the actual heavensgate.com website, which is still operational in all its cyberwave glory. A glimpse of the belief system from the section purported to describe the group’s mission: “An ‘away team’ from an Evolutionary Level Above Human, an ‘Admiral,’ and His ‘Captain’ and crew, during the 1920’s to 1950’s picked and prepped the human bodies which they would wear for the task we are about to describe.” Truly wild, and a great way to put things in perspective. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER COMEDY

SEVEN

[DO, A DEAR]

[THE TENNESSEE KID]

WATCH NATE BARGATZE’S THE GREATEST AVERAGE AMERICAN ON NETFLIX

Nate Bargatze is a comedy anomaly.

The Tennessee native is a clean comic — no cursing, and he generally stays away from politics — but his material doesn’t feel stale or gutless. His observational storytelling draws heavily on a never-ending tendency for getting caught in dumb situations, but he doesn’t come across as stupid. Even throughout one of the most upsetting years in modern American history, Bargatze

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NATE BARGATZE

THURSDAY MAR 18 stuck to this plan on Twitter, talking about video games, armpits and whether or not McDonald’s mascot Grimace is an antivaxxer. What the hell, man — even Jim Gaffigan cracked in 2020! Bargatze’s new stand-up special The Greatest Average American premieres on Netflix Thursday, March 18, and it might be the best chance we Nashvillians have to see him anytime soon — now that vaccines are being widely distributed and comedy clubs are beginning to reopen, Bargatze is hitting the road to make up last year’s canceled Good Problem to Have tour dates. He doesn’t have anything booked in Music City until Oct. 28 at the Ryman — and that performance is very close to being sold out. So set your dials to Netflix and get ready for greatness.

FOOD & DRINK

MEGAN SELING

— BUY FANCY PASTRIES AT TRE T BAKING CO.

[ALWAYS AFTER ME LUCKY CHARMS]

Michael Werrell and Keaton Vasek are pastry geniuses. Between them, the Culinary Institute of America grads have more than two decades of experience at some of America’s most highly respected kitchens, including Eleven Madison Park (three Michelin stars!) and the Dominique Ansel Bakery (home of the original cronut). The couple moved to

town last year with plans to elevate chef Sean Brock’s pastries at Aubrey and The Continental, but the pandemic forced them to quickly pivot. So while the restaurant industry works to get back on its feet, Werrell and Vasek are offering their expertly made goodies at Trēt (pronounced “treat”) at the Nashville Farmers’ Market.

The menu changes with the seasons — there were cookies around Christmastime and chocolate bonbons for Valentine’s Day. This month, the pair has turned everything green: A striped croissant is stuffed with cereal-milk-flavored custard and topped with colorful cereal marshmallows; green macarons are filled with white chocolate and matcha ganache and a dollop of lemon curd. Even their dog treats — yes, they make dog treats — have been given a St. Patty’s Day makeover. If you’re a purist, don’t worry — they almost always have the classics on hand too. Custardy canelé, flaky and sweet kouign-amann, and plain croissants with the most perfect honeycomb cross section you’ve ever seen. They’re at the market Wednesdays through Sundays, but I recommend preordering a day in advance at tretbakingco.com to ensure you get your favorites, and follow them on Instagram at @tretbakingco to get a peek at specials. MEGAN SELING

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FOOD AND DRINK

THE PEOPLE’S PLACES: OSBORNE’S BI-RITE

This longtime Belmont Boulevard staple maintains a small-town feel in ever-changing Nashville

BY JENNIFER JUSTUS With her series “The People’s Places,” contributor Jennifer Justus provides short takes on longtime local restaurants, markets and bars that deserve another look. See more installments at nashvillescene.com.

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PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

T

ricia Compton, store manager at Osborne’s Bi-Rite on Belmont Boulevard, says the past year has been “kind of like a snow day that goes on and on and on.”

The shopping frenzy of those early pandemic days at the grocery preceded a long year of increased home cooking. Then — a few weeks ago as we neared the anniversary of the start of lockdown — a string of actual snow days hit too.

“We had people bringing their kids’ sleds to just drag their groceries back home during all that craziness,” says Compton.

Compton praises customers’ kindness to her staff — whether that means wearing a mask like the sign on the front door asks, or being understanding when Bi-Rite needed to close early because second-shift employees couldn’t get to work in the snow. “It’s kind of nice to be in the middle of a residential area,” she says — that’s as opposed to, for instance, big-box stores that tend to be located on busier commercial thoroughfares.

To locals who know about the hidden gem in the back, this Bi-Rite is part of Nashville meat-and-three legend. The hot bar along the back wall existed long before the Osborne family bought the store in 2005.

(Within this company, smaller stores are called Bi-Rite, and larger supermarkets are known as Piggly Wiggly.) For years, the steam table has been offering a colorful patchwork of comfort — pans of red-sauce meatloaf next to turnip greens, golden fried catfish alongside okra. For dessert, the bakers in the back turn out chess and pecan pies, sold whole and by the slice. In the cold case, tubs of pimento cheese sit next to chicken salad, deviled eggs and oldfashioned country-ham salad. “Those hams are monsters,” Compton says, describing how dishes get made from fresh in-store ingredients. “You need a huge pot and a very big stove.”

In many ways, Osborne’s Bi-Rite is a bastion of homier Nashville plopped amid a neighborhood deep into an ongoing metamorphosis. Less than a mile from the market, for example, tourists tromp up and down 12th Avenue South, a quieter street not too long ago. And sure, Compton says she sees all the growth on her drive into work, taking the back way from where she lives

in Antioch. But she doesn’t see it so much in the store with its brick front, red awning and sign advertising specials for ground round and T-bone steaks. “As far as customers and consistency and the types of folks we have had,” she says, “that doesn’t really seem to have changed.”

Compton transferred to the Bi-Rite location on Belmont 16 years ago when the Osborne family bought it. The hot bar already existed, and many employees stayed on through the transition, giving the food

familiar flavor over the years. We’ve lost some meat-and-threes in Nashville — a city famous for its plate lunches — but Bi-Rite’s version remains popular, offering homestyle meals to take on the go.

On a recent Monday, David Bixon stopped by the Bi-Rite for one of his almost-daily visits to the hot bar. Why does he come so regularly? “Because I can get a meat-and-three for this,” he says, pointing to the top of his Styrofoam container with “$6.50” scrawled across the top and snug in plastic wrap to

keep any drippings from spilling. “The food is good too.”

Compton says consistency of menu feels important. The Bi-Rite employees used to have food ready by 10 a.m., but that began to feel too late — landscaping crews who start work at dawn would already be lined up by that time. Now they have the food hot and ready to be served by 9:30 a.m.

“We don’t change stuff up randomly on a whim,” Compton says. “It’s always the same menu, every day of the week.” That means

NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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FOOD AND DRINK

AN EXHIBIT OPENING EVENT WITH BILLY STRINGS, PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

LUKE COMBS, RISSI PALMER, AND VINCE GILL

fried chicken on Tuesdays, catfish on Fridays. “I think the consistency helps people plan a little bit — especially the people who are out working and have 30 or 45 minutes and don’t have the time to drive all over town to decide what they want.”

As the day goes on, the hot bar draws “all walks,” Compton says, from white-collar businesspeople to construction crews in paint-splattered Dickies. She sees neighborhood folks, often seniors, who pick up a lunchtime meal to have for dinner to save them from a night of cooking. A local funeral home orders lunch for its employees two or three times a week.

Many of the Bi-Rite’s recipes originated with longtime cook Mary King, who has since retired and passed away. When I bring up the deli’s popular Coke cake, for example, Compton nods and smiles. “That’s Mary.”

The dessert gets its name from Coca-Cola, a key ingredient in the chocolate cake with a hint of spice and a thick layer of fudge frosting. According to American Cake, a cookbook by local author Anne Byrn, the cake first appeared in print in the 1950s.

That’s the same decade the Bi-Rite building was constructed, Compton says, though it originally operated as an H.G. Hill grocery store. The Osborne family, who have been in the grocery business for 35 years, bought the Belmont location in 2005, and now they own four stores in the area.

Noted chef Arnold Myint grew up down the street, where his family opened the groundbreaking International Market & Restaurant in the 1970s and later served Thai and other cuisines from a steam table.

“I would walk or bike past [Bi-Rite] weekly,” Myint says. “My fondest memories are of course food ones.”

He remembers the smell of roasting chickens as he picked up a carton of Purity lemonade. As his palate matured, Myint’s preferred treats became banana pudding or Sara Lee pound cakes from the frozen-foods section. But to this day, his favorite is the pimento-cheese sandwiches from Bi-Rite’s deli case.

“I still stop in and get them on occasion,”

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EXHIBIT NOW OPEN TICKETS TO THE MUSEUM AVAILABLE ONLINE CountryMusicHallofFame.org | Limited Availability Myint says. “Sadly, they never make it home onto a plate. I always devour them in my car in the parking lot. To me, Bi-Rite introduced me to food culture unfamiliar in my household. And I guess since I would wander in there on my own, it was integral in my self-discovery and appreciation for food as a whole. I think it was also the first place I bought a coconut cake.” It was a Pepperidge Farm one, as he recalls.

Beth Downey lived in the neighborhood for about eight years and also has strong Bi-Rite memories — particularly of the homemade chicken and dumplings. “I was probably there at least daily,” she says.

Bi-Rite reminded her of the local grocery in her rural Mississippi hometown, Downey says. “I’d see neighbors and friends, and if a long white Cadillac was parked outside, Cowboy Jack Clement was inside.”

In fact, when Cowboy’s house caught fire just down the street, Downey heard the news at Bi-Rite. It’s a detail that probably wouldn’t surprise Compton.

“Everybody knows a little bit about what everybody else has got going on,” she says.

“It kind of has a small-town feel.”

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SHOWCASING:

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Underwritten in part by

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CULTURE

TREACHEROUS JOY: AN EPISTLE TO THE SOUTH

TIANA CLARK

Everywhere has a history of hurt slicing through the soil, so I want to come back home to the hurt I know best

BY TIANA CLARK

Tiana Clark is a poet and an author living in Nashville. A previous version of this essay ran in last year’s anthology A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South, edited by Cinelle Barnes.

The ache for home lives in all of us.

— Dr. Maya Angelou

I thought I hated you — I didn’t love you until I left you.

I wasn’t born in the South, which was the initial problem. I was born in Los Angeles near the lip of the Pacific Ocean.

I said California was my home even after I moved to Nashville at 7. I wanted to be from somewhere else. I loved being from the West Coast, and I said it for years and years after I moved. I said it for so long, even when it didn’t make sense, because I had lived in Nashville longer. My friends made fun of me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to lose the soundtrack of waves in my ears.

The seashells I kept in my pocket.

I remember hearing “y’all” and thinking it sounded like a twang of something familiar, a musical note I couldn’t pinpoint.

It was slow and viscous — not like honey or molasses, but more like fresh mud — and I wanted to repeat it under my breath each time I heard it, but my mother wouldn’t let me. I wasn’t allowed to say “ain’t” or “ma’am” either, each contraction possessing a Southern, syrupy sway.

Tennessee, your geography was strange and claustrophobic to me in 1991 — the trees like broccoli tops bunched on every hill — hills everywhere, fertile and close like breasts jutting from the earth in patterns that seemed particular to this region; bumpy braille from the terrain, so many golden whorls of pollen clouds, divots and dots, lines of greenery, and so many trees — trees for miles. I didn’t know their names. Still don’t, besides the magnolia. I know that tree for its wide, waxy leaves and creamy blooms. To love a landscape felt elusive and abstract to me as a kid. Still does. What does it mean to be tethered to the psyche of a state? California smeared into dream logic, vague and faraway, hard to remember each day, just bluish watercolors blossoming at the rim of my early memories — dissolving — except for the lone cactus in our backyard. I remember our neighbors asked for the nopales when the spines started poking through the jade-colored pads.

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

Dear Tennessee,

NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CULTURE The South seemed lush and stuffed with churches, but hostile and impenetrable, too.

Do you remember the first time I was called a nigger? I was roller-skating at my church’s day care. There were two white Southern boys on roller skates, spinning around my small circumference, calling me this new, burning word. I didn’t know what the word meant, but my body blackened wrong with heat, and I knew this little song was only meant for me. I felt those two-barbed G’s stinging my 8-yearold skin — and poof — just like that, I knew I was different. The change was immediate, and my mouth tasted like fresh blood and pennies. I wasn’t bleeding, but something akin to despair loosened and leaked inside me, made me feel dizzy.

The word was personal and singular in its spectacular aim. The shrapnel of that speech shattered something slightly unspeakable in me, something I still can’t fully articulate. My skin started to itch and sweat. This wild word made me want to weep but I didn’t. This wild word made me want to hate myself. I think this might have been the first time I wanted to die or felt like dying, or maybe I just wanted to disappear.

How do you become unseen once you’ve been seen so clearly? I was standing in the middle of their spinning, caught in their invisible web, static. I remember wishing my skin had a zipper, so that I could shed myself from the mud. This two-syllable word had heft and history, because it felt heavier each time the two boys punched the epithet at my face, penetrating the dark juice in my delicate bones. They kept laughing and pointing, their pinched, white faces repeating nigger, nigger, nigger like a little song, taunting. I can still hear them singing if I want to hurt myself again.

I had this early inkling that I wanted to escape, to run away and live in fantastical New York or move back to Los Angeles.

In my prepubescent mind, things would be better somewhere else, somewhere outside the geometric shape of your state, a parallelogram tilting east, a four-sided figure. I thought the shape of another state was what was missing in me.

I wanted to escape the South and the two nooses left on our back porch (one for mom and one for me). My mom didn’t tell me about the nooses till I was much older. She didn’t want to terrify me as a child. Years later she said they were hung up in sloppy knots after the first night we moved into our one-bedroom apartment in Brentwood, a housewarming gift from our new white neighbors. Sometimes I still imagine her there on our small back porch — alone, a single Black mother — looking at those crude death symbols swaying, imagining my little neck and then hers, breaking, thinking everything she had ever thought about the South coming true before her like two pendulous omens exploding. She called her friends who took them down and prayed for our protection. My mother never touched the ropes.

Tennessee, I wanted to leave and escape the origins of the KKK in Pulaski and the 80 oxidized Confederate monuments, some weathered by the tint of pea-green patina. I wanted to escape the Jacuzzi steam of summer heat and plantation weddings. I wanted to leave the rapid-paced gentrification of East and North Nashville

There is no promised land — anywhere. No heaven for Black folks hovering above the Mason-Dixon line. If I am not safe anywhere, then why don’t I just come back home? Why not keep fighting where I flourish? and Wedgewood-Houston or, rather, WeHo. Nashville was becoming the new Nashville, which meant it was whiter and richer with more cranes slicing the ever-changing skyline; streets I’d known for years became less recognizable to me. The constant development was annoying, but after the 2016 election, I was actively looking for a way out of the South, away from the river of blood-red counties engulfing Davidson County, the lone blue-dot. Racists weren’t afraid anymore. They had a megaphone in the White House, and I didn’t know how to carry myself in public (or in private, really).

The Midwest was my volta, the turn inside the rhetorical cage of a sonnet, which became my turn to veer away from the South. I leapt at the chance to move to Madison, Wis., in the summer of 2017 for a poetry fellowship. I was ready for squeaky cheese curds and cold winters.

I wanted to follow what seemed like the concrete drinking gourd up north. I wanted to be carried away toward freedom in my U-Haul, which sounded like a massive garbage disposal on wheels, droning on I-57 through Effingham and Champaign, then Bloomington and Rockford. The night breeze was perfect when we finally arrived; just warm enough with no thickness to it, thin as water, and just as refreshing, too. I remember thinking this was a good sign.

But in the morning, I didn’t trust all the Black Lives Matter signs stippled across the manicured lawns of my white neighborhood.

I wrote a poem while I was living there called “Virtue Signaling,” where I say, “There is a sign you buy because you want so badly to believe in what it has to say, and then there is a sign you buy because you want others to believe you are brave. A sign can’t save my life.” In the sunshine, the pseudo-liberal town seemed to have a selfsatisfied sheen to it.

During my year living in Wisconsin, an employee at a fancy grocery store followed me around as if I was stealing. I was ogled at restaurants. I often had to change seats with my spouse at the time so I wouldn’t have to watch old white people gawking at me. Their glare wasn’t out of disgust, but rather with googly eyes, and I was the big, Black “fish out of water” at a bougie restaurant staring back, unashamed but annoyed. I hardly saw or interacted with any Black people outside of the university. I was lonely, but this was a different brand of isolation that blossomed, bloated and made walking the edge of the isthmus hazy and apocalyptic, especially when the lakes froze over and the horizon was creamy and you couldn’t tell where the hard water ended and the vague milk-

filled sky began. The racism in Madison was opaque, more psychological. I didn’t see any Confederate flags, but I felt more uncomfortable in my hyper-visible body as if I were 20 feet tall. I was never called the N-word while I lived there, but why was I starting to feel like one?

Oh, Tennessee — I began to miss you.

I was starting to look back at the South, longing like Lot’s wife, except this time I didn’t transform into a monument made of salt. I didn’t want to be punished for my regret or curiosity. Nashville was suddenly home, and I scared myself with how much I wanted to go back.

“Racism Is Everywhere, So Why Not Move South?” is the title of Reniqua Allen’s brilliant New York Times op-ed, which traces this recent migratory trend back South for Black millennials. Allen speaks with Jessica M. Barron, a demographer and sociologist out of Durham, N.C., who says, “There is something about black millennials wanting to find some type of reclaiming or resurgence in terms of moving back to the South, reclaiming the South as a place where black folks can thrive.”

There is no promised land — anywhere.

No heaven for Black folks hovering above the Mason-Dixon line. If I am not safe anywhere, then why don’t I just come back home? Why not keep fighting where I flourish? At least I can be close to my mom in Chattanooga and restaurants that serve real sweet tea split by fresh lemons and sweet potato pie that makes you stomp your feet, as well as the original hot chicken recipe from Prince’s that stains the soppy, white bread underneath with hallelujah heat. Dear Tennessee, racism sure does make you hungry, and I haven’t been wellfed since I left two years ago.

I want Jacob Lawrence to paint a reverse Migration Series, but he is dead now and his paintings are divided by the odd and even numbers between two museums. Instead, I imagine the new paintings: the repetition of Black folks flattened and abstracted by casein tempera and gesso on wood panels, this time coming back down South on airplanes and in cars, phones in our hands, crowned with headphones and vibrant colors — hot pinks and lime greens instead of Lawrence’s warm, earthy tones. We are a murmuration of glossy black starlings coming back home now. The Southern cities at the top of the first panel would read: Atlanta, Miami and New Orleans. It would continue with narratives detailing a thriving Black middle class with snatched, slick edges, box braids and afro puffs. Black executives and Black-owned businesses

like Slim & Husky’s Pizza Beeria, started by three Tennessee State University graduates in North Nashville, or Cupcake Collection in Germantown, opened by a family displaced

by Hurricane Katrina.

I’m ready to come back home — not necessarily to a real house or a home state — but back to wrestle with that fountainhead idea from James Baldwin, that “home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition,” not a location but an immutable state of being, an irreparable safety that I carry within my own consciousness. I harbor a treacherous joy no matter where I reside.

This is why I keep returning obsessively to the happy disobedience of Icarus and my indifference to him failing and falling.

Meaning, we’ve gotten the story all wrong.

We’ve focused too much on the end of the myth. Maybe the lesson was that he escaped, took a risk, and tried to fly. I forgot about the glee and giddiness of freedom and what that does to a newly freed body in flight.

It’s true — the sweltering sun in the South feels hotter than anywhere else in July. I thought home wasn’t supposed to hurt, but everywhere has a history of hurt slicing through the soil, so I want to come back home to the hurt I know best. The hurt I know how to circumvent and map, trace the contours of its familiar face with my two index fingers.

I’m coming back to driving up and down the long guitar neck of I-65, ordering hashbrown casserole at Cracker Barrel, where I worked one summer in Antioch when I was 15 with a name tag that said Jesús, but people still called me Jesus. I’m coming back to the pain I can alchemize through words, which is another type of salvation, right? I’m still reaching for joy at the end, reaching inside for a homegrown healing.

I don’t have a sense of the resolution just yet, but I feel this ember for Nashville flickering a red glow inside me. I think of Cane by Jean Toomer, on returning: “If I could feel that I came to the South to face it.

If I, the dream (not what is weak and afraid in me) could become the face of the South.

How my lips would sing for it, my songs being the lips of its soul. Soul. Soul hell.”

Tennessee — I just like the way my Blackness, my Black ache and bliss, my Black imagination, my Black way of being in the South sifts through you like a gospel choir when the Holy Ghost thunderclaps on Sunday mornings, but I’m listening from outside the building, the reckoning out of reach. I can’t make out every word, just the swell of divine, Black voices rapt — which is to say that is the best way I can describe my tenderness for you.

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BOOKS

REACHING OTHERS AT A DEEPER LEVEL

C.T. Vivian recounts a life devoted to justice and nonviolence

BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN

22

ILLUSTRATION: XPAYNE

I

magine a punch to your face.

Imagine that it is 1965, and you have led a march from Brown Chapel to the Dallas County Courthouse in Selma, Ala., with the intention of registering 40 African Americans to vote. Imagine that you are met

by Sheriff Jim Clark, a notoriously violent enforcer of the white supremacist order.

He denies you entry. You challenge his principles. He clubs you with his meaty left fist, and you tumble down the courthouse steps.

Now imagine your reaction. For most humans — whatever their age, gender or skin color — such violence will trigger a fight-or-flight instinct. But you are C.T. Vivian, the legendary civil rights activist. If you fight back, you lose. If you run, you abandon your people. Because you have forged your discipline in the fires of the Black freedom movement, you dust yourself off, climb the courthouse steps and once again confront the violent soul of Sheriff Clark.

The dramatic episode, captured by television cameras, transmitted the moral justice of the Selma movement to the nation. It helped build the political momentum that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “This is the beauty of nonviolence,” reflects Vivian in the posthumous memoir It’s in the IT’S IN THE ACTION: MEMORIES OF A Action: Memories NONVIOLENT WARRIOR of a Nonviolent

BY C.T. VIVIAN WITH Warrior. “By being STEVE FIFFER your best self you NEWSOUTH BOOKS 224 PAGES, $25.95 reach others at a deeper level than they thought they could be reached. And so, the truth becomes the predominant force in what you are doing.”

In his memoir, Vivian weaves his activism into a longer history. His great-greatgrandfather left slavery by fighting for the Union during the Civil War, and in freedom his forebears worked as farmers and teachers in Missouri. His family moved to Peoria, Ill., and despite repeated episodes of racial prejudice, the young Vivian displayed his intelligence and leadership skills. In the late 1940s, while still in his early 20s, he joined demonstrations that integrated Peoria’s cafeterias and opened job opportunities for African Americans.

In 1955, Vivian moved to Nashville to attend American Baptist Theological Seminary. Alongside the legendary minister Kelly Miller Smith, he soon started the first regional chapter of Martin Luther King Jr.’s new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He began attending the Rev. James Lawson’s workshops on nonviolent protest. He immersed himself in the civil rights movement.

Vivian had gifts: He lived by his noble principles, and he preached with extraordinary power. In 1960, he joined Nashville’s robust sit-in movement. In 1961, he boarded a bus for Jackson, Miss., to support the Freedom Rides and endured a harrowing

‘AFTER THE PLAIN DAY BECOMES MAGNIFICENT TO HER’ A poem illustrated by XPayne

BY TIANA CLARK

stint in jail. In 1962, he took a leadership role with SCLC. By 1963, he was organizing in Birmingham, Ala., where the protests for Black freedom garnered national and international attention.

Throughout the book, Vivian emphasizes the discipline of nonviolent protest. “Movements need more than a justifiable anger,” he argues. “There needs to be a strategy and a goal. What you want for yourself and your children and the next generation is more important than having some bad feelings. That is why we were able to enact nonviolent direct action as opposed to swinging back. You have to ask: What are you willing to commit in order to make something happen?”

Vivian was 94 years old when he began collaborating on the book with writer Steve Fiffer. Over time, his mind’s power eroded, but Fiffer had collected the stories that carry Vivian’s narrative from his childhood through the mid-1960s. Fiffer supplements the narrative with press accounts and other interviews, and he employs these sources to keep Vivian’s story marching onward. In the late 1960s, in the South Side of Chicago, Vivian founded Vision, the organization that became Upward Bound, preparing disadvantaged teenagers for college. In the 1970s, at Shaw University, he founded Seminary Without Walls, a program that sought to democratize ministerial training. In Atlanta, he founded BASIC, a consulting firm for managing diverse workforces.

Until his death in July 2020, C.T. Vivian represented the best of America. President Barack Obama considered him an inspiration.

As reinforced by It’s in the Action, he fostered racial justice with a vision, conscience and discipline that we can only imagine.

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

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Someone I know is about to receive a marriage proposal. It’s January 30, 2021 in Nashville, TN. It’s cold. It’s Saturday.

It’s still the pandemic. The weather spits freezing rain, almost hail, but sadder. Sloppier?

Outside my window bare winter branches beckon the soft white bulb in the sky diffused in low relief. This day could be so ordinary, could just slip by like a blip with just my laundry folded and a few answered emails, but someone I know is getting good news today, and I, with a small group of people wearing masks will wait in her backyard after she says yes, after the plain day becomes magnificent to her. We will coo and ogle at her sparkling ring like cockatoos. I will rub my thumb at the back of my ring finger where my wedding ring used to be, a sapphire heated to a deep and gleaming purple. My thumb will rub that little pillow of skin underneath the knuckle, ghosting the loss and the feeling of cool metal there, but ultimately thankful. I stopped wearing my ring long before my divorce, a foreshadow and then the real shadow I had to confront and welcome and wade through on my knees in supplication.

But I still believe in love, which is why I am bringing her flowers from Amelia’s, which is why she brought me flowers from Amelia’s when my divorce was final.

The card read: Congratulations on taking a brave step!

I think it all takes courage: falling in love, staying in love, leaving love that no longer serves you, loving yourself— No, I mean really loving yourself, really looking at yourself in the mirror and accepting everything you see there, your whole beautifully flawed body, drinking yourself in like a lake in love with its wateriness, getting verbal with it—You, yourself saying: I love you. I love you. I accept you exactly as you are right now. You are so easy to love. You are so loveable and wonderful. It’s astonishing, isn’t it? Loving yourself like that. But, just now two cardinals darted outside of my window while I was making black tea with a giant squeeze from half of a fat lemon. I was taking a quick break from writing this poem, and I remember researching that cardinals mate for life and I think that’s a good sign for today, especially for sweet Emily and Ben, a sweet day to celebrate your new rung in the ladder of love going up and up and up and up and up!

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood and Equilibrium.

XPayne is an illustrator, designer and painter based in Nashville. Find more work at xpayne.com.

NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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THE CODA

Anana Kaye and the late David Olney’s Whispers and Sighs is a high-art exercise in darkness, beauty and hope

BY SKIP ANDERSON

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PHOTO: DUENDE VISION

T

he 21-second cello passage that serves as the on-ramp to Anana Kaye and the late David Olney’s album Whispers and Sighs signals that dark themes lie ahead.

The lush, 13-track record explores WHISPERS AND SIGHS death, longing, OUT FRIDAY, MARCH 19, VIA SCHOOLKIDS isolation, regret RECORDS and closure. Yet Kaye and Olney don’t leave listeners to languish in despair.

They and their co-writers, Irakli Gabriel and John Hadley, weave tendrils of optimism throughout — even as many of the songs’ characters search for what they are doomed never to find. This achievement elevates the ambitious album into what is arguably Olney’s best work.

“Working with David and [co-writer Hadley] was a liberating experience,” Kaye tells the Scene. “David was a kindred spirit. We just connected. And John is such a classic songwriter in the truest sense, and he writes beautiful melodies and lyrics.

David, Irakli and I tend to be dark with our lyrics, then John would add something that would bring balance to the songs.”

Olney, a pillar of Nashville’s songwriting community for decades, died onstage in early 2020 at age 71. As much as this album is a farewell to Olney, to many listeners it will also be an introduction to Kaye, a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from the Eastern European country of Georgia. Her emergence as an insightful songwriter and powerhouse vocalist is among the many surprises embedded within Whispers and Sighs. Other surprises include horns, Olney rapping and a bona fide pop song called “Last Days of Rome” — an outlier among the bulk of Olney’s story songs.

Kaye’s performance instills passion throughout Whispers and Sighs, delivering

FROM LEFT: DAVID OLNEY, ANANA KAYE AND IRAKLI GABRIEL multifaceted depth to a layered, lovely and poignant coda to Olney’s catalog while expanding her reputation as a creative force. Kaye and Gabriel, who are married, have lived in Nashville since 2017. She says her upbringing during a time of extreme political turmoil informs her songwriting.

“I was born in 1994, and the Soviet Union had just collapsed,” Kaye says. “There was a lot of personal loss and trauma in my family. I had the realization very young of what death meant. You can’t cover that up with glitter. That’s why I’ve always approached songs that explore sorrow. And through that process, that’s really only how you can find hope.”

Kaye and Gabriel were listening to mixes in the studio with producer Brett Ryan Stewart when Stewart received a text about Olney’s death.

According to Gabriel, Olney himself had only gotten to listen to the album in its entirety hours before he died.

“Fuck yeah, this is good,” Gabriel recalls Olney saying. “I’m as proud of it as anything I’ve done.”

Several of the lyrics Olney sings on Whispers and Sighs take on an aura of foresight, especially in light of his passing. “My Favorite Goodbye” is poignant in

its starkness: “She didn’t say a word / She just walked away / It’s always been my favorite goodbye.” But there’s a romantic counterbalance at the end of the song that speaks to what outlasts even our time on Earth: “Time takes everything but love.”

“The World We Used to Know” is told from the perspective of a soldier writing a letter home. Musically, it shifts between the minorkey depictions of the grim reality in the theater of war and a hopeful, major-key waltz that underscores the soldier imagining flying over the mountains to be with his love.

“There’s no hope, and the song doesn’t end on a happy note at all,” Kaye says. “It’s dark, but it also conveys that there’s always some form of light, even in the hardness of the darkness.”

Therein lies much of the brilliance of Olney, Kaye, Gabriel and Hadley’s collaboration. The narrative counterbalance

builds tension while also soothing it. The centerpiece of the album, however, is a full-tilt pop song from the group. “Last Days of Rome” opens with a guitar riff that sounds as if it could have fallen from Keith Richards’ Telecaster. Horns blare and swing like a Motown staple, perhaps filtered through the lens of Richards’ late pal Bobby Keys. The song contains a future-looking passage written in 2018 that could just as easily speak to President Trump mugging with a Bible in front of a church in 2020.

“Wrapped in a flag, holy book in his hand / The leader stands on his pedestal,” Kaye sings. “We came here for / diamonds / And the golden fleece / But if they ask, it’s all about peace.”

“This album was never meant to be a farewell,” says Kaye. “But after what happened last year, it’s hard not to see it that way.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

SKY BLUE SKY On Cerulean, the sevenpiece Nashville Ambient Ensemble lets the music flow

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

C

omposer, musician and Nashville Ambient Ensemble leader Michael Hix fell in love with experimental electronic music in the early 2000s, when avant-garde guru William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops came out. The four-volume series “blew my mind,”

NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

says Hix, who was a student at Belmont at the time.

“Basinski was a big inspiration to me because he’d built up this big community in Brooklyn in his loft, which he called Arcadia. I felt like if I moved to New York, I could build that kind of thing there.”

Hix left Music City for New York City in 2011. He lived there seven years, and might’ve stayed if he hadn’t become a father at the end of 2018. During his earlier tenure in Nashville, Hix hadn’t managed to make inroads into the city’s experimental music scene, so on returning home with his wife and son, he was pleasantly surprised at what he found. “I knew I’d be reconnecting with old friends,” he says, “but I met so many new people making amazing music.”

Over time, Hix — who CERULEAN OUT plays a modular syntheFRIDAY, MARCH 19, VIA sizer — formed a group CENTRIPETAL FORCE of like-minded players called Nashville Ambient Ensemble, who release their debut Cerulean Friday via WXNA “Psych Out!” host Mike Mannix’s label Centripetal Force. The foundation for the outfit was laid one night in January 2019, when Hix shared a bill with electronic-acoustic songsmith Diatom Deli (aka Deli Paloma-Sisk) at The Crying Wolf in East Nashville. That evening, Hix also met Jack Silverman — a seasoned guitarist and regular performer in Nashville’s leading Grateful Dead tribute band The Stolen Faces, as well as a contributing editor to the Scene — and reconnected with an old friend, indie-rock axman Timon Kaple.

Envisioning “a nonhierarchical musical group, where no one person was the centerpiece,” Hix found a match in Kaple, who you might recognize from his main band Daniel Ellsworth & The Great Lakes.

Describing that group as a “pop-rock, Phoenix-meetsWilco’s Sky Blue Sky kinda thing,” Kaple explains that he welcomed the chance to engage a different side of his musical brain in Nashville Ambient Ensemble.

“I wasn’t that experienced with the more exploratory world of music Michael is a part of,” says Kaple, “where you can play without pop conventions in a band that is comfortable with dissonance, noise and odd time signatures — but that you can still dance to if you want to. There’s no rules, compared to what I’m used to. I was like, ‘This rules.’ ” With Hix composing and conducting, PalomaSisk singing, and Silverman and Kaple on guitar, the seven-piece coterie is rounded out by three fellow players with an inclination toward ambient music, but other fields of expertise beyond it. There’s Cynthia

24

Cárdenas, a heavy-metal bassist and teacher who plays guitar synthesizer on the album; Luke Schneider, pedal-steel savant; and Kim Rueger, alias Belly Full of Stars, a found-sound artist with a classical piano background. Behind the boards for Cerulean: Battle Tapes Recording’s tireless Jeremy Ferguson.

The result is a collection of six lush, atmospheric soundscapes with shades of postrock, dream pop and New Age music. With the exception of the Silverman-penned title track (which appears in an alternate form on his forthcoming YK Records solo EP Now What), Hix laid the groundwork for each one. But at rehearsals and in the studio, he explains, “We went in a round where each soloist could step out into the forefront.” That led to happy accidents like the unplanned call-and-response between Kaple and Silverman’s twin guitars on the album-closing “Coda,” mirrored by Paloma-Sisk’s wordless incantations dancing with Schneider’s quivering pedal steel. Hix calls that particular take of “Coda” his favorite moment of the sessions. “We were really in tune — the jitters were totally gone,” he remembers. “It was almost like we were all on the same recliner.”

Though the record was filtered through eight minds before reaching your ears, if you zone out enough, Cerulean can easily pass for one fluid piece. It’s geared at deep listening — “I mixed it with headphones in mind,” Hix points out — but soothing in any context. You’d never guess the ensemble had only two full-band practices before entering Battle Tapes and tracking with Ferguson right under the wire, pre-COVID. It took leaving and coming back for Hix to finally find his own Arcadia in the form of the Nashville Ambient Ensemble. There’s a paradoxical quality to the moniker: Ambient music tends to be the domain of solo home recordists, and Nashville isn’t known as a stronghold for it. “There’s seven musicians involved, a lot of instrumentation, rhythms, melodic movement,” Hix says. “I don’t think those things are really a part of what purists would call ambient music.” Wherever one wishes to file it, Cerulean is a testament to the collective nature of Nashville music-making, and a time capsule of the city’s experimental scene as it continues to evolve.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

PHOTO: KIRT BARNETT

NASHVILLE AMBIENT ENSEMBLE

KLYP ART

Multimedia artist Klypi brings a unique vision of dance pop to life on Consensual Hits

BY MEGAN SELING

I

t’s hard to say who Klypi is exactly.

They’re an electro-pop musician. Klypi is another name for A.C. Carter — who uses they/them pronouns and under their former moniker Lambda Celsius has shared stages with Molly Nilsson, Algiers and CONSENSUAL HITS OUT Girlpool. They’re an FRIDAY, MARCH 19, VIA POPNIHIL RECORDS accomplished visual artist who graduated from the University of Georgia with a master’s in fine arts and a designer who helped create the colorful costumes seen in Of Montreal’s dizzying “Plateau Phase / No Careerism No Corruption” music video.

More important than all of that, though: Klypi is a beginning.

In February 2020, before most Ameri-

cans had heard of COVID-19, Klypi had just wrapped up recording their debut fulllength album Consensual Hits with Los Angeles musician and producer Precious Child.

The plan was to release it a few months later, in May, but — well, you know.

“I remember Precious being like, ‘Have you heard about coronavirus?’ ” Klypi says with a slight laugh from across a patio table outside East Nashville’s Ugly Mugs. “Of course, I was clueless. I was like, ‘Huh, what? The beer?’ ” We’re wearing masks and sitting outside, because sitting indoors increases the likelihood of contracting the virus that we both now know has nothing to do with beer. It’s been a hell of a year. But, Klypi says, Consensual Hits is finally ready to see the light of day.

The album is a banger, a collection of punchy dance tracks full of unapologetic candor. The opening song “High Life” is a self-deprecating jam about partying and drinking that winks at dance-pop royalty like Kesha and Robyn. Klypi quips, “I can’t take it at all / You are so boring / I can’t take it anymore / You are so annoying,” with the

NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC same restless impatience as an 8-yearold. Other times, they’re more vulnerable.

“Notice Me” beeps and bubbles with playful and cartoonish flourishes, but vocally Klypi captures the nagging disappointment that accompanies an unrequited crush. They all but tear their heart out and hand it over on a silver platter in the tender “Will It Be Today,” a song that leaves Klypi asking no one in particular, “Will it be today that I feel OK?” During the year of uncertainty, Klypi turned to their artistic inclinations to bring their music to life in creative ways. For the “High Life” video — in which Klypi’s namesake, the obnoxious Microsoft office assistant Clippy, makes an appearance — Klypi went to Chattanooga to film at Stove Works with artist pals C.C. Calloway and Nicholette Milhoan. In the video for “Not for You” — a snarky song seasoned with industrial synthesizer and the LOL-inducing line, “Wearing my lucky Sauconys / When you ask me on a date to Shoney’s” — we get a taste of what a Klypi live show might be like. The singer dances and strikes dramatic poses in a variety of costumes and outfits including elf ears, a sheer tailored suit and several feet of colorful chain.

Performing appears to come naturally, but Klypi insists that hasn’t always been the case.

“I remember my sixth-grade play, I’m wearing all green because it’s The Wizard of Oz,” they recall with a laugh. “I was a citizen of Oz and mortified because I’m onstage in front of people singing and dancing, but onstage I started my period, my first ever. Like, wow! I’m wearing this green outfit, I’m bleeding red, those are complementary colors, and my mom was late to pick me up. It was like, ‘I hate performing! I hate this shit! I don’t like doing this!’ ” To accompany the song “Notice Me,” Klypi plans to create a hotline people can text or call to share their own stories about trying to get noticed by somebody.

We all have a few of those. And for the song “You See Me,” Klypi dreams about creating a limited-edition eyeshadow palette that would be about the size of a CD case and come with a QR code for a digital download.

“I’m really interested in colors, in visual art and also identity,” they say. “Being able to express yourself with makeup doesn’t have to be gendered in a particular way[laughs]. It’s really silly but that’s where my brain goes. “ ‘Whoa, it’s so conceptual,’ ” they add in a goofy voice as if to mock their own (brilliant) idea. “But a Klypi eyeshadow sounds so much fun!”

So often, a record feels like the definitive end to an artist’s process. Consensual Hits, though, feels like the start of something new. It’s a musical, visual and sometimes even edible — for Valentine’s Day, Klypi made limited-edition candy hearts — interactive artistic experiment.

“I feel like I have so many more records I want to put out in me. I think I have a knack for being able to use my skills as a visual artist and my knowledge of visual language to make that part of the other art that I do.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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THE SPIN AS THE CIRCUIT IS BENT

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

C

ircuit Benders’ Ball — Nashville’s biennial summit for noiseniks, synth obsessives and gear builders and tinkerers of all stripes — took its act online over the weekend. CBB is the brainchild of Tony Youngblood, who founded it in 2010 and curated the first three editions before handing the reins to current organizer and master of ceremonies Tyler Blankenship in 2017. But CBB’s overarching aim — to break down formalist, academic notions about what is and isn’t avant-garde music — has stayed consistent through the years, lending a hand in fostering a fertile, eclectic and exponentially growing crop of outside-the-box music makers across the South.

Most of Friday and Saturday’s programming — hosted on CBB’s Twitch channel — was pretaped, allowing for close-up looks at performers’ modified rigs and giving the proceedings the air of an experimental short-film fest. Labrys Light Show’s Kari Leigh Ames — whose Far Out Fest we recognized as Best Virtual Festival in 2020’s Best of Nashville issue — provided eye-popping, vibe-capturing visual accompaniment for several sets. Artists kicked back and hung out in the chat box while their performances aired, soak-

SMOOTH OPERATOR: DREAM CHAMBERS

ing in kind words and gladly answering gear-related questions.

Frenetic, metallic jazz-punk from Nashville twopiece Skin Tension kicked off Friday’s audiovisual buffet. Later, the three blindfolded men of Spectrum of Light to Bring in the Horizon 2020 droned deep against a bright-hued backdrop of slow-moving, Magic Eye-like patterns. Chattanooga’s Amanda Haswell (alias Slow Blink) followed, matching blanket-warm monophonic piano-and-guitar tape loops up to grainy but evocative Super 8 home movies.

The night’s most eclectic performance came courtesy of Birmingham, Ala., duo M.U.A.D. (aka Modular Units of the Analog Domain), returning to CBB after playing in 2017. Silver-haired band members James Carr and O.Z. Hall welcomed viewers into a dimly lit lair packed with a museum-worthy collection of vintage analog synthesizers. They used their gear to make everything from nocturnal Tangerine Dream-scapes to energetic vocoder-powered pop, long-form ambient improv, and even a reinterpretation of a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young number, “Cost of Freedom.”

Exemplifying circuit bending as an art form were a pair of shadowy out-of-towners: Ereh Saw from Odessa, Ukraine, whose instruments included sound generators made to look (and sound like) electronic cicadas, and Echo Lightwave Unspeakable (aka Jonathan Hodges), a maker extraordinaire out of Pittsburgh who in 2020 went viral with a video in which he ran an electrical current through a hot dog.

Here, the masked performer’s noisemaking setup was spearheaded by a jury-rigged model train set. “There’s eight reed switches under the track that are triggered by a magnet on the tank car,” he explained to inquiring minds in the chat box. “They send signals to three banks of eight switches that cause chaos.”

Saturday’s sets further proved the point that in adventurous hands, anything can be an instrument.

Billy Prosise, alias OK Housecat, showcased pieces from his laboratory of brilliantly colored homemade sequencers and toy keyboards circuit-bent beyond recognition. One of the most eye-catching: the Meowsic, a cat-shaped piano that retails at Target for $26.99 — buy one and you can commission Prosise to modify it. Also spotted: an EBowed zither (played by wkujater, aka Chris Rueger), a pair of remotely controlled Discmans (Anthony T. Marasco and Nick Hwang) and a speaker made out of IKEA packing cardboard and disused earbuds (Belly Full of Stars, aka Kim Rueger).

Among the other standouts was Middle Ear, aka Mirina van der Veen, a violinist and composer based in Nanaimo, British Columbia, whose piece “Simulacrum of a Dreamer in the Philosophical Realm” consisted of looped, improvised violin parts intricately stitched together to spooky, cacophonous effect.

Dream Chambers’ moniker plays on songwriter-producer Jess Chambers’ surname but also describes her dreamlike, ethereal and cavernous sound. The coolly dark, soundtrack-worthy minimal techno of Ben Marcantel, alias Sugar Sk*-*lls, contrasted with the work of Klypi, fka Lambda Celsius, whose emotive electro-pop earworms “Notice Me” and “Get Over You” provided an unexpected jolt of energy and melody before the night drew to a close. (See our interview with Klypi about their new album Consensual Hits on p. 24.)

As is the case at most niche music festivals, CBB’s audience seemed to consist largely of people who were also performing. The fest gave artists who might find themselves feeling like fish out of water a chance to play for an audience that not only gets it, but is also interested in comparing notes about the technical aspects. At the end of a week filled with cautious optimism about live music’s future, the CBB crew thrived in the virtual realm. It was a reminder how far livestreams have come in the past year, and an affirmation of the format’s validity going forward — even as in-person shows return.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

ALL MAD HERE: OK HOUSECAT

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FILM

PRIMAL STREAM 46 Wojnarowicz and Slaxx, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

where they simply cut away at arts funding in general until there was barely anything left, but via the donors who fund museums and arts centers. If the folks who sign the checks don’t want art of a certain type, well … just look around. Economics is the ultimate form of censorship, which is exactly how the powers that be want it. (Look at what’s happened to the Scene’s alt-weekly brethren LA Weekly, or to the reanimated corpse of The Village Voice.) It oversees hand-in-hand with the obscene money that greases the gears of the art world, where art auctions become their own kind of cryptocurrency. (What Christie’s just did with Man Ray is merely the most egregious of examples.) It’s a dark, dark time when so many forms of organized power are focused on stripping physical art away from its meaning, and this film is like a resonant scream into the back of the skull. This is essential viewing for everyone, especially people who maintain they can’t handle it. It is utterly impossible to look around and not hail David Wojnarowicz as a prophet who saw exactly what was happening.

SLAXX VIA SHUDDER

WOJNAROWICZ

I

t’s a very political week here in the Primal Stream. The vaccine is being administered to many more Nashvillians, which is a relief. But it’s also a time to figure out where to put your energy when it’s not immediately focused on staying as alive as possible. “Anger is an energy,” John Lydon said during the time before his Trumpist rebirth, and he wasn’t wrong then. (Nor was he wrong in the 1988 Public Image Ltd tune “Disappointed” — he just didn’t let us know he was addressing his future self.) And this is an unconventional pairing of films: a visceral documentary about art and AIDS, and a vicious bouquet of murderous pants. But so is life.

WOJNAROWICZ VIA THE BELCOURT’S VIRTUAL CINEMA The full title of this film — Wojnarowicz: Fuck You Faggot Fucker — lets you know upfront that the journey is going to be confrontational. And though the late artist David Wojnarowicz was for a time best known because of a connection to the single cover and video for U2’s plaintive and reconciliatory “One,” there are few social and political ills that don’t find their way into the crosshairs at some point during this bracing and essential document of the 20th century.

What’s most impressive is how director Chris McKim and the World of Wonder production team of Bailey and Barbato use the work and audio recordings of Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992 from complications from AIDS, to find the through lines that tie it all

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together — how homophobia and economic stratification and inequality all feed the same machine that devours the other, and how very little has actually changed in the intervening decades.

A painter, photographer, recorder, documentarian, actor (alongside Karen Finley and Nick Zedd!), sculptor, sex worker, musician (his time in the No Wave band/experience 3 Teens Kill 4, back in print via the lovable freaks at Dark Entries Records, is essential), and thorn in the side of complacency, David Wojnarowicz fled an abusive father into a world that desperately needed him. Finding a nurturing space in decaying downtown New York City and with genius photographer Peter Hujar, Wojnarowciz was the kind of artistic polymath who just kept finding new ways to explore his corrosive rage at the illusions American society had built itself on. He was a first-person chronicler of how the 1980s saw the government abandon its gay population to the ravages of a pandemic still with us today — mediated and managed by medication, and fundraising, and forgotten red ribbons, but still with us in the world.

There’s an amazing little roundabout in the last third of the film that explores how the reactionary habits of legislators like Jesse Helms found a new strength — not through continued legislation, SLAXX

There is an ideological and aesthetic continuum for this movie (and any movie that wants to tackle a “ridiculous” concept). At one end are the gritty, deeply political exploitation films of Larry Cohen that linger in the back of the subconscious decades after their release. At the other end of that continuum are the disposable “Made for Syfy” films, which can offer moments of genuine subversion or wit, but are hamstrung by indifferent effects work and disappear in the glut of quantity. So Slaxx is doing its thing, delightfully and openly Canadian (not just in terms of accents and funding). Big-box clothing retailer CCC, known for its fair-trade manufacturing and large-format Benetton-style ad philosophy, is about to launch the SuperShaper, a new line of jeans that will supposedly change the world as we know it.

Of course, they’re right about these jeans changing the world, but it’s not because of their ability to conceal and redistribute assfat or similar bulk. When the opening sequence has an Indian child harvesting

experimental cotton near giant threshers, you can imagine where we’re heading. At its best, Slaxx is The Mangler for the 2020s — a possession narrative playing out as a microcosm of socioeconomic warfare.

It’s not hard to pick up on the hypocrisy of upper-middle fashion, where bureaucracy and insecurity have every employee using passive aggression and whatever corporate policy minutiae they can against everyone else around them. This store is a toxic environment long before the murderpants show up. And when those pants do show up, they’re like a rampaging id bent on the annihilation of capitalism. And it’s awesome. If it had just been 80 minutes of denim murderscapes, this would be a frontrunner for the best thing to come out of 2021.

But director Elza Kephart and her cowriter Patricia Gomez make a very deliberate choice that makes the transgressions of the fashion industry queasily specific while shaking the whole film off its axis. Focusing on the horrors that global industries inflict on non-Western workers is correct, and it’s a time-honored inciting event for the murderscape that unfolds. But the way the film utilizes Indian culture feels way off, trying to walk a tightrope between jousting with stereotypes and fulfilling them. Slaxx feels like it’s having an internal dialogue with itself about representation and appropriation (which is a worthy pursuit), but it’s at odds with the momentum it’s built as a disassembling of modern social structures.

Star Romane Denis is appropriately idealistic and effective as a force of moral rectitude. Store manager Brett Donahue is as unctuous and odious as a power-hungry retail manager would be. The rest of the cast is game for the very odd blend of sloppy satire and helpless rage aimed for. It’s no In Fabric (few films are), but Slaxx has moments that stay with you (a base influencer strangled on camera by a pair of jeans going full Famke Janssen-in-Goldeneye, a pallet of jeans sipping at the blood from a pile of workers like gazelles, the grand finale) — even as it occasionally takes off some of its own limbs with the machete it wields on its satirical targets.

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Actress Anne with four Emmy nominations

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May day celebrant

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Sing under pressure

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Talk a big game

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Movie magnate Marcus

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Entities with passthrough taxation, briefly

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Rental Scene

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NASHVILLE SCENE | MARCH 18 - MARCH 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

IN THE JUVENILE COURT FOR DICKSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE No. 05-20-043-DN FURLONG SMITH East End Village MICKIE Townhomes 307 E Village Lane Nashville, TN 37216 GUARDIAN AD LITEM

3 bed 3.5 bath

JESSICA SPROUSE 1700-1820 sq ft plus 400 sq ft attached garage Whereabouts Unknown

$1950-$2400

AND

4 floor plans

MATTHEW GRAY Whereabouts Unknown

eastendvillageapartmentsnashville.com | 629.205.9131 Respondents.

IN THE MATTER OF: Emily Gray, DOB: 3/9/2017 A Child Under Eighteen (18) Years of Age

Fairfax Flats 206 Fairfax Ave Nashville, TN 37212 It appearing to the Court from the sworn allegations of the Pro Se Petition for Dependency and Neglect and Custody that the whereabouts of the Respondent, Matthew Gray, is unknown and cannot be ascertained with reasonable diligence, it is, therefore, ORDERED that Respondent be served by publication of the following notice for four (4) consecutive weeks in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper of general circulation published in Davidson County, Tennessee.

It is further ORDERED that if Respondents do not enter an appearance or otherwise answer the petition, further personal service or service by further publication shall be dispensed with and service of any future notices, motions, orders or other legal documents in this matter may be made upon Respondent by filing the same with the Clerk of the Juvenile Court of Dickson County, Tennessee.

1 bed / 1 bath

$1200 to $1375 634 sq ft

Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 20D1887 TRISA SOSA

1 floor plan

vs.

fairfaxflats.com | 629.702.2840

ORLIN GARMENDIA

Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 18D1629 LAKESHA MICHELLE DORSEY Vs. TONY MAURICE DORSEY

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www.rockylawfirm.com LEGALS Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 18D1629

LAKESHA MICHELLE DORSEY Vs. TONY MAURICE DORSEY In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon Tony Maurice Dorsey.

It is ordered that said Defendant enter his appearance herein with thirty (30) days after April 1, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on May 3, 2021.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk W. North, Deputy Clerk Date: March 􀀗􀀗, 2021 David Kozlowski Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 3/11, 3/18, 3/25 & 4/1/2021

Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 20D1887 TRISA SOSA vs.

ORLIN GARMENDIA In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ORLIN GARMENDIA. It is ordered that said Defendant enter his appearance herein with thirty (30) days after April 8, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on May 10, 2021.

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

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk W. North, Deputy Clerk Date: March11, 2021 Jesse P. Lords Plaintiff NSC 3/18, 3/25, 4/1 & 4/8/2021 Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 20D1226 IRASEMA ESPARZA HERNANDEZ vs.

JOSE DOMINGO ECHEVARRIA FUENTES In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon JOSE DOMINGO ECHEVARRIA FUENTES. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after April 8, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on May 10, 2021.

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

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: March 11, 2021 Crystal Etue Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 3/18, 3/25, 4/1 & 4/8/2021

IN THE JUVENILE COURT FOR DICKSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE No. 05-20-043-DN

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk W. North, Deputy Clerk Date: March11, 2021

MICKIE FURLONG SMITH GUARDIAN AD LITEM

Jesse P. Lords Plaintiff

EVELYN RENOLDS Petitioners.

V.

NSC 3/18, 3/25, 4/1 & 4/8/2021

JESSICA SPROUSE Whereabouts Unknown AND

2100 Acklen Flats 2104 Acklen Avenue, Nashville, TN 37212 Studio / 1 Bath 517 sq ft $1600 - $1625NOTICE

MATTHEW GRAY

IN THE JUVENILE COURT FOR DICKSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE No. 05-20-043-DN

1 Bed / 1 Bath 700 sq ft $1825 - $1975

2 Bed / 2 Bath 1036-1215 sq ft $2400 - $2800

12 floor plans

Evelyn Reynolds, has filed a petition seeking custody of Emily Gray.

You are hereby ORDERED to appear for trial on that petition on April 20, 2021, at 1:00 PM, at Dickson County Juvenile Court, 500 Spring St., Charlotte, 37036, phone number 615-789-0250, or to otherwise enter an appearance in this matter.

If you fail to do so, an order may be entered against you for the relief requested in the petition. You may view and obtain a copy of the petition and any other subsequently filed legal documents in the Juvenile Court Clerk’s Office at the address shown above.

ENTER this the 22nd day of October, 2021.

Judge: Honorable Michael Meise

2100acklenflats.com | 615.499.5979

MICKIE FURLONG SMITH GUARDIAN AD LITEM EVELYN RENOLDS Petitioners.

V. JESSICA SPROUSE Whereabouts Unknown AND MATTHEW GRAY Whereabouts Unknown Respondents.

IN THE MATTER OF: Emily Gray, DOB: 3/9/2017 A Child Under Eighteen (18) Years of Age It appearing to the Court from the sworn allegations of the Pro Se Petition for Dependency and Neglect and Custody that the whereabouts of the Respondent, Matthew Gray, is unknown and cannot be ascertained with reasonable diligence, it is, therefore, ORDERED that Respondent be served by publication of the following notice for four (4) consecutive weeks in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper of general circulation published in Davidson County, Tennessee.

It is further ORDERED that if Respondents do not enter an appearance or otherwise answer the petition, further personal service or service by further publication shall be dispensed with and service of any future notices, motions, orders or other legal documents in this matter may be made upon Respondent by filing the same with the Clerk of the Juvenile Court of Dickson County, Tennessee.

NOTICE MATTHEW GRAY Evelyn Reynolds, has filed a petition seeking custody of Emily Gray.

You are hereby ORDERED to appear for trial on that petition on April 20, 2021, at 1:00 PM, at Dickson County Juvenile Court, 500 Spring St., Charlotte, 37036, phone number 615-789-0250, or to otherwise enter an appearance in this matter.

If you fail to do so, an order may be entered against you for the relief requested in the petition. You may view and obtain a copy of the petition and any other subsequently filed legal documents in the Juvenile Court Clerk’s Office at the address shown above.

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In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon Tony Maurice Dorsey.

It is ordered that said Defendant enter his appearance herein with thirty (30) days after April 1, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on May 3, 2021.

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

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ORLIN GARMENDIA. It is ordered that said Defendant enter his appearance herein with thirty (30) days after April 8, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on May 10, 2021.

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

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EVELYN RENOLDS Petitioners.

V.

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