Nashville Scene 3-7-24

The People Issue 2024

ALLISON RUSSELL

February Bills Target Pride Flags, Abortion and Judicial Oversight

Conservative supermajority advances controversial legislative slate with session at halfway point

BY ELI MOTYCKA

Pith in the Wind

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

State Board of Education Urges Lawmakers to Change Third-Grade Retention Law District-level frustrations remain as students prepare for another stressful year of testing

BY KELSEY BEYELER

COVER PACKAGE: THE PEOPLE ISSUE

Americana Star Allison Russell

The Grammy-winning singer calls Nashville home — and she isn’t going anywhere

BY ELI MOTYCKA

Renaissance Woman Bebe Buell

The longtime rock ’n’ roller has landed her spaceship in Nashville, and she intends to stay

BY KELSEY BEYELER

Community Sports Organizer Darrell Downs

The founder of East Nashville Athletics would ‘much rather be significant than successful’

BY LOGAN BUTTS

Public Historian T. Minton

Leader of the Belcourt Stories Project discovers truth and fiction in history

BY HANNAH HERNER

DJ Afrosheen

The Antioch native and in-demand DJ is all about community, resistance and music

Car Man David Tinsley

Meet the owner of Lebanon’s Ragtop Picture Cars and his fleet of impeccable autos

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

Pops Conductor Enrico Lopez-Yañez

The composer and conductor strives to make the symphony accessible to all BY HANNAH HERNER

Community Amplifier DJ Erica

Host of WXNA’s Soul of the City wants to expand the power of community radio

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

Archivist and Historian Caitlan Fleurette Dillingham

With Nashville History X, Dillingham makes Music City’s history accessible to everyone

Artist and Advocate Sally Wells

The Choctaw elder serves as president of the Native American Indian Association of Tennessee

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

Advocate Joseph Gutierrez

The executive director of API Middle Tennessee builds community with his fellow Asian and Pacific Islander neighbors

BY COLE VILLENA

CRITICS’ PICKS

Olivia Rodrigo, Flyana Boss, Us, Beetlejuice A Supper That Sustains Us, Styrofoam Winos and more

BOOKS

All Shook Up

Michael Bertrand examines how rock ’n’ roll united and divided Southerners across the color line

BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN; CHAPTER16.ORG

MUSIC

A Shot of Good Luck

Jenny Lewis embraces Nashville’s wide range of sounds on Joy’All BY ELI MOTYCKA

That Ringing Sound

Northern Irish punks Protex get ready for their Nashville debut BY P.J. KINZER

The Spin

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Pale Lungs at The End BY ADDIE MOORE

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD AND THIS MODERN WORLD MARKETPLACE ON THE COVER:

Allison Russell; photo by Dana Trippe

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Bebe

MITCH McCONNELL’S RESIGNATION: A SHIFT IN GOP LEADERSHIP DYNAMICS

IN THE EVER-SHIFTING landscape of American politics, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent announcement that he is stepping down from his GOP leadership position after a 17-year tenure is a momentous development. As a Democrat and a longtime businessman in Tennessee, I’ve observed McConnell’s political maneuvers with a nuanced perspective. It speaks to McConnell’s strategic skill that even individuals with opposing political views can recognize his impact, though even he admits he is not without his faults.

McConnell’s decision to step down reflects a change in the Republican Party’s beliefs. As recently reported by the Associated Press, “His decision punctuates a powerful ideological transition underway in the Republican Party, from Ronald Reagan’s brand of traditional conservatism and strong international alliances, to the fiery, often isolationist populism of former President Donald Trump.” It is likely not easy to keep the party together when everyone is headed in different directions.

Despite being a staunch Republican, McConnell has exhibited a knack for reaching across the aisle when necessary. His collaboration with President Biden on various legislative initiatives reflects the art of compromise in the Senate. The same AP article notes President Biden’s acknowledgment that the two “fight like hell,” but that he recognizes McConnell has “never misrepresented anything.” Biden also said he trusted McConnell.

I cannot say I am an avid fan of McConnell’s, but I do find it noteworthy that he took a principled stand against Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. In a time when loyalty to party often trumps integrity, McConnell’s refusal to endorse the voter fraud theory spoke volumes. But his stance has not come without consequences, as McConnell weathered criticism and hostility from within his own party when he showed his priorities to be the interests of the American people over partisan rhetoric. McConnell condemned Trump after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. So I have to give McConnell at least some credit — for basic common sense if nothing else.

McConnell’s decision to step down was accompanied by reflection on his long and impactful career. He has noted that the recent loss of his wife’s sister prompted introspection. Even seasoned politicians grapple with personal moments that elicit significant life decisions.

“The end of my contributions are closer than I’d prefer,” McConnell said, adding that he’ll remain in the Senate until the end of his term — “albeit from a different seat in the chamber.” In the wake of McConnell’s announcement, tributes have poured in from both sides of the aisle.

As a Democrat, I find myself appreciating McConnell’s role in steering the Republican Party through significant policy initiatives,

particularly during Trump’s presidency. From remaking the Supreme Court to pushing tax legislation, McConnell has left an indelible mark on judiciary and economic policies. His tenacity in securing Republican votes for critical bipartisan packages, such as aid for Ukraine, shows a leader who prioritizes national interests over party divisions.

Although some may have been surprised by McConnell’s announcement, I believe his decision to step down aligns with the norm for leaders his age (82). His resilience and influence, however, do stand out, and he’s had an exceptional career — one that isn’t over yet. As he eloquently put it, “I still have enough gas in the tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics, and I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they have become accustomed.”

McConnell’s departure as Senate minority leader marks the end of an era, but it also serves as a reminder of the importance of statesmanship and integrity in the realm of American politics. In addition to being the longest-serving Senate GOP leader, McConnell has been the longest-serving senator from Kentucky. “To serve Kentucky in the Senate has been the honor of my life,” he recently said, “to lead my Republican colleagues has been the highest privilege.”

May all our political leaders remember that serving is a privilege. It’s an opportunity to introduce change, value and growth. Further, may all of us, as fortunate residents of this beautiful country, take whatever opportunities come our way to serve those around us to the best of our abilities — and to the betterment of America.

Bill Freeman

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

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In memory of Jim Ridley, editor 2009-2016

The Greg Brady (and a fried Oreo) at Jack Brown’s

MITCH Mc CONNELL PHOTO: U.S. CONGRESS

FEBRUARY BILLS TARGET PRIDE FLAGS, ABORTION AND JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT

Conservative supermajority advances controversial legislative slate with session at halfway point

REPUBLICANS’ TRIFECTA command of the state government now stretches past the decade mark. Durable supermajorities in the Tennessee House and Senate have enabled GOP lawmakers to push issues like abortion restrictions and LGBTQ rights into territory legally uncharted and politically unchecked. The state Capitol currently doubles as a legal laboratory for bills that violate federal and state constitutions and dismantle civil protections for women, immigrants, transgender people, queer people, Black Tennesseans, Tennesseans seeking health care and low-income Tennesseans, among other groups. One bill from first-term Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) tries to protect internal regulations and rules passed by the legislature from being challenged in court.

On Monday, activists and state Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) condemned a slate of 18 bills targeting LGBTQ rights, banning books and undermining diversity and inclusion efforts at public colleges and universities. Below we highlight a small amount of legislation advanced by state leaders in February. Bills we don’t mention here include efforts by Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) to expand access to child care vouchers (mostly wiped out last month), Republicans’ mission to vacate Tennessee State University’s board of trustees and Gov. Bill Lee’s ongoing obsession with turning tax dollars into vouchers for private school tuition.

ENGLISH-ONLY DRIVER’S LICENSE TESTS (SB1717/HB1730)

Not only would this bill require all written driver’s license exams to be in English — it would explicitly prohibit translation or interpretation. Last month, House Republicans piled on to co-sponsor the bill, which was introduced by Rep. Kip Capley (R-Summertown). It hasn’t come up for a vote on the House floor, but a press conference last week headlined by House Majority Leader William Lamberth — a vocal co-sponsor — indicates Republicans’ intent to push it through before the end of the session. Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) is steering the bill in the Senate. Supporters say road signs are in English, so the test should be too. Opponents like Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) call the bill blatant discrimination against immigrants. Tennessee currently offers the standard driver’s license test in English and Spanish. (As of press time, the bill was set to go before the Senate Transportation and Safety Commission on March 6.)

PRIDE FLAG BAN (SB1722/HB1605)

Under this bill, Tennessee’s public schools can fly only specified flags, like the state flag, the American flag, a POW/MIA flag and flags related

BY ELI MOTYCKA

to curriculum. Its text extends the right to sue to all parents whose children are eligible to attend a school. These restrictions come from the mind of Rep. Gino Bulso, a first-term representative from Williamson County seemingly seeking notice among conservatives on culture-war issues. Contentious discussion on the House floor centered on Bulso’s real target — the rainbow-striped Pride flag. GOP legislators in the House, known to vamp about their commitments to free speech, easily approved Bulso’s bill at the end of February. Hensley is carrying it in the Senate, where the legislation passed the Education Committee 5-4 on Feb. 21, picking up nay votes from Republican Sens. Bill Powers, Jon Lundberg and Todd Gardenhire. A more divided upper chamber and the bill’s potential First Amendment violations could keep the bill off the Senate floor.

ABORTION CRIMINALIZATION (SB1971/ HB1895)

Republicans shot down exceptions for the state’s strict abortion ban with multiple House votes on several bills related to reproductive health. With the controversial “abortion trafficking“ bill from Rep. Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) resembling an Idaho law blocked in federal court, the state could bring felony charges against an adult for helping transport or procure abortion medication for a minor. It’s already cleared many hurdles in the House, where co-sponsors include Lamberth, though no floor vote has been scheduled as of publication. Movement has stalled across the hall in the Senate, where the bill waits for air time

PITH IN THE WIND

Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Green hopes to keep his seat in Congress, recanting an announcement in mid-February that he wouldn’t seek reelection in Tennessee’s 7th District. Green says he has received calls from constituents, colleagues and former President Donald Trump urging him to stay. Green heads the powerful House Homeland Security Committee and spent much of the past year pushing impeachment articles against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. Former state Rep. Brandon Ogles, a Republican and cousin of U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles filed paperwork for Green’s seat, while former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry remains the only Democrat in the race.

in the chamber’s Judiciary Committee. House Republicans nixed bills brought by Reps. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) and Yusuf Hakeem (D-Chattanooga) that would have secured abortion exceptions for people under 13 and victims of rape and incest. Neither was considered in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans’ extreme stances against abortion have cost the party at a national level since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Polling has shown that most Tennesseans support abortion-ban exceptions.

A GOP LEGAL SHIELD (SB2225/HB1652)

Another move from Bulso seeks to shield House rules and regulations from Tennessee courts. During August’s special session of the legislature — ostensibly called to consider gun reform — the House passed rules limiting “material disruptions” from members and allowing attendees in the gallery to be cleared for “disorderly conduct,” including for displaying signs. After a suit filed by the ACLU, a court granted a temporary restraining order against Republicans’ ban on signs in the chamber. Bulso’s brief bill states that no “circuit, chancery, or other court has subject matter jurisdiction over any legal action, challenging any rule, regulation, or procedure of the senate or house of representatives.” House Republicans appear overwhelmingly supportive, though the bill picked up a detractor — Rep. Tom Leatherwood (R-Arlington) — in the House State Government Committee. Like so many other controversial bills, this one awaits scheduling in the Senate Judiciary Committee. ▼

PODCAS T

In her latest column, contributor Betsy Phillips asks why Lizzette Reynolds is Tennessee’s education commissioner The state’s education chief is facing calls to resign because she doesn’t meet the clear standard of being able to teach at the highest level of education that she oversees, and apparently doesn’t live in the state. Writes Phillips, “Why would Reynolds take a job that she knew she didn’t qualify for? Why did she think that getting the credentials she needs was something she could just do while also doing the job?”

In the second episode of the Nashville Scene Podcast, co-hosts Jerome Moore and D. Patrick Rodgers talk with staff reporter Eli Motycka about his Feb. 29 cover story, “Technical Difficulties: How Much Surveillance Power Will Nashville Give Its Police?” The three dive into details about license plate readers and other forms of technology that are being considered by the Metro Nashville Police Department

PHOTO: HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

PHOTO: HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

MARK GREEN

STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION URGES LAWMAKERS TO CHANGE THIRD-GRADE RETENTION LAW

District-level frustrations remain as students prepare for another stressful year of testing

BY KELSEY BEYELER

While state-level considerations about Tennessee’s controversial third- and fourthgrade retention law continue, so do district-level frustrations as parents and educators prepare students for another stressful year of testing.

A 2021 law requires that third-graders who don’t pass the English language arts portion of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program receive learning interventions and demonstrate growth in order to advance to the fourth grade. Certain students — such as those with disabilities, English learners or those who have already been retained — are exempt from the law. Families can also appeal retention decisions to the Tennessee Department of Education.

While 1.2 percent of third-graders statewide (898 in total) were retained last year, thousands of students who advanced on the condition they’d receive tutoring in fourth grade are again facing retention if they don’t show enough improvement. The state Board of Education formally defined that measure at a Feb. 16 meeting. Affected students can be promoted to fifth grade if they score “met expectations” or “exceeded expectations” on the ELA portion of the TCAP. Otherwise, their ability to move on will be determined by whether they meet an “adequate growth target,” which is calculated through a complicated individualized formula that factors in aspects like state test scores and their probability of becoming proficient in ELA.

“Failing a fourth-grader is not the answer,” said former fourth-grade teacher and current state Board of Education representative Krissi McInturff during the February meeting. While McInturff — who represents Tennessee’s 1st Congressional District on the board — voiced support for the intention of the law, she also listed negative effects associated with retaining students, including academic struggles, stress, increased dropout rates among students who have been retained and emotional impact.

Drue Allison is the parent of an MNPS fourthgrade student who, despite having straight A’s and later qualifying for the district’s Gifted and Talented Education program, didn’t score high enough on last year’s TCAP to automatically move to fourth grade. Allison enrolled him in tutoring and administered practice tests at home, but her son didn’t pass the initial TCAP test or the makeup test. Because he scored high enough on a benchmark test, however, Allison successfully applied for an exemption for her son.

Allison says the experience “has absolutely

WHILE 1.2 PERCENT OF THIRD-GRADERS STATEWIDE (898 IN TOTAL) WERE RETAINED LAST YEAR, THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS WHO ADVANCED ON THE CONDITION THEY’D RECEIVE TUTORING IN FOURTH GRADE ARE AGAIN FACING RETENTION IF THEY DON’T SHOW ENOUGH IMPROVEMENT.

affected his self-esteem — that is really hard to recover from.”

On March 4, the state board convened for a special-called meeting to approve an appeals pathway for third-graders. The board-approved pathway allows students who score in the 40th percentile and higher on a universal reading screener to appeal a retention decision if they also enter an academic remediation plan, if the student’s principal and teacher provide a unanimous promotion recommendation, and if the student receives tutoring in fourth grade.

Members also approved a resolution brought forward by Ryan Holt, who represents Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District on the board. The resolution urges the governor and General Assembly to reconsider the retention law by “maintaining the excellent supports for struggling readers,” but suggesting that kindergarteners through third-graders be considered for retention under the law rather than third- through fourth-graders.

In 2023, the state passed legislation that widens the criteria gap for students to advance to fourth grade if they pass the TCAP or score within the 50th percentile of the last benchmark test before the TCAP, while also receiving tutoring in fourth grade. The law also allows school staff to assist families in appealing retention decisions.

Legislation to adjust the retention law is currently being considered, including one bill that would require schools to hold parent-teacher conferences about retention decisions rather than leaving them fully in the hands of the state. Another item baked into the House’s massive voucher amendment would allow additional offramps for fourth-graders facing retention if they receive learning interventions. ▼

WITNESS HISTORY

This Nudie suit, embroidered with Florida-inspired motifs, was designed in late 1968 for the drummer with the Flying Burrito Brothers, Jon Corneal—who played on the group’s debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, but left the band before the photoshoot for the LP’s iconic cover.

From the exhibit Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock, presented by City National Bank

artifact: Courtesy of Jon Corneal artifact photo: Bob Delevante

The People Issue 2024

Profiling some of Nashville’s most interesting people, from archivists and DJs to Americana star Allison Russell

Americana Star Allison Russell

The Grammy-winning singer calls Nashville home — and she isn’t going anywhere

BY ELI MOTYCKA

ALLISON RUSSELL had home-court advantage when she sold out The Basement East — twice — in January. The venue sits within walking distance of her Nashville home, where Russell lives with JT Nero, her partner in music and life, and their daughter, who goes to middle school not far away. Late into the first of her two shows, Russell introduced newly elected state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) as a friend and quite literal neighbor.

Russell has lived across Canada — early years in Montreal and almost a decade in British Columbia — and moved to Nashville a few years ago from the Chicago area. During COVID isolation in 2020, Rhiannon Giddens’ Madison, Tenn., home became a haven for Russell and her family. Russell’s family gardened vegetables and tried to survive the era of in-home music-making, with help from Giddens and a rotating cast of musicians and friends, including singer-songwriter Yola. That culture of creative collaboration brought them to Nashville for good.

“Rhiannon had found this place with about an acre in the back, and it ended up being a kind of cooperative living space,” Russell tells the Scene. “It was affordable, and it had this amazing plot of land behind the house. That was the real allure. We got through it together and figured out how to be our own terrible little DIY TV station — doing our best with what we could afford, to get through those hard times.”

Russell mentions other Nashville musicians/parents like Béla Fleck, Abigail Washburn and Luther Dickinson, professional peers who became quick friends. The family moved from Madison into East Nashville, where they count Jess Wolfe (of Lucius) and Monique and Chauntee Ross (of SistaStrings) as neighbors.

Her January concerts showcased an artist whose work spans songwriting, vocal performance, political activism and community-building grounded in the American South. Her focus has been hyperlocal: In an encore, Russell shared a story about working with Behn to rename Forrest Avenue in East Nashville. At a recent concert in Bristol, Tenn., she brought state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) onstage, lending her star power to Johnson’s campaign to unseat GOP incumbent U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

“Here I am, a queer Black woman — all sides of my identity had to fight so hard for the vote, and it’s excruciating that I can’t vote,” says Russell, whose song “Eve Was Black” earned her a Grammy for Best American Roots Performance in February. A Canadian national, she’s pursuing dual citizenship with the U.S. “In Canada, I took voting for granted. I didn’t feel the urgency in the way I do now. In Tennessee, I see how precious that is, and want to use my sphere of influence to speak out about human rights and equality and nonviolence.”

Russell proudly claims Tennessee as her home, but on Feb. 12, state lawmakers refused to claim her back. The episode — in which Republicans killed a resolution commemorating Russell’s Grammy win despite approving a parallel honor for Paramore — thrust Russell into the national spotlight.

This month, Russell is releasing a new rendition of “Tennessee Rise,” an anthem for today’s civil rights struggle. Like movement music before it, the song preaches hope and progress in the face of political oppression. She brought in voices like Brittany Howard, Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Emmylou Harris, Brittney Spencer and Langhorne Slim to the Sound Emporium to join her on the track, a testament to her Nashville community.

“With each mass shooting and the violence in our state and country, I get a lot of pressure from my family to come home,” says Russell. “But Nashville is our home. We live here. We work here. It’s given us tremendous gifts. I don’t want to show my daughter that we run away from hard things, I want to show her that we face them and change them together.” ▼

Photographed by Dana Trippe

The People Issue

Renaissance Woman Bebe Buell

The longtime rock ’n’ roller has landed her spaceship in Nashville, and she intends to stay

BY KELSEY BEYELER

A MUSICIAN, WRITER and longtime “it girl,” Bebe Buell has lived a mystical life in the world of rock ’n’ roll — a life most could only dream of, from growing up in the South to living with nuns, weaving herself into New York City’s 1970s arts scene, raising actress Liv Tyler and juggling various creative projects of her own.

Buell’s heart has always been in music. She could have pursued acting, prolonged her successful modeling career or even married one of her many rock-star lovers, but Buell had her own life to live, her own stories to tell, her own songs to sing. And she still does.

The Scene recently caught up with Buell backstage at a 3rd & Lindsley show dedicated to New York City’s ’60s and ’70s rock scene. She was there to join legendary local cover outfit The Long Players and her husband Jim Wallerstein, who formerly played with Das Damen and co-produces Buell’s music. On this recent Saturday night, Buell recounted her friendships with Patti Smith and Nico before singing “Because the Night,” “Femme Fatale” and other tunes in her rich contralto croon. While the show was dedicated to others’ music, Buell has her own discography — dating back to the ’80s and featuring a wide range of raw, energetic rock tunes both as a solo artist and with her bands The B-Sides and The Gargoyles. Throughout her music career, she’s worked with heavy hitters including Todd Rundgren, Rick Derringer and Ric Ocasek, as well as local legends like Jon Tiven and Dave Roe.

Buell spent most of her life in NYC. But after recording a track for Plowboy Records’ tribute album You Don’t Know Me: Rediscovering Eddy Arnold in 2012, she was enticed by the spiritual connection she felt with Nashville. Since relocating, she says she’s formed countless friendships and performed at just about every venue in town, including frequent appearances at the recurring Thee Rock N’ Roll Residency. “I wanted to come here to really get good at my craft,” says Buell. “Getting to live in this town and be an active participant in the musical community is a dream come true.”

Last year, Buell released her second book — Rebel Soul: Musings, Music & Magic. A follow-up to 2001’s Rebel Heart, the book is a mosaic of memories that combines past experiences and present insights. Landing somewhere between memoir and scrapbook, Rebel Soul invites readers to consider not just the glamour but also the pain of a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.

“I watched that life swallow up a lot of women that couldn’t hold on to their identity, and drug dependency destroyed a lot of beautiful lives,” says Buell.

“I live it every day,” says Buell of honoring those memories without getting lost in the past. “I’m an active singer, songwriter, performer, writer. I have bestsellers. I am not just sitting there, melancholy, thinking about the cool guys I dated when I was 24.”

Frustrated by local challenges such as the GOP-controlled state legislature’s attacks on reproductive rights, Buell was considering leaving Tennessee when Rebel Soul was released. But events like the Covenant School shooting and the subsequent expulsions of Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — along with the Republican supermajority’s attempted expulsion of Knoxville Democrat Gloria Johnson — have since convinced her to stay. “I’m not turning my back on this town,” she says.

“I realized that I want to be here to help with the change. I want to use my voice, not to hurt anybody, not to call people names, not to finger-point, not to point out what’s obviously wrong — we already know what’s wrong. What we need to do now is focus on what we can do to make it right.” ▼

Photographed by Angelina Castillo; hair and makeup by Emaline Briggs, BBC Nashville

2024

SPOTS FILLING UP FAST!

SPRING BREAK CAMP, MARCH 11–15 + SUMMER CAMPS, WEEKLY MAY–AUGUST

At our camps, kids explore science, technology, and art while enjoying interactive demonstrations, experiments, and the science center’s award-winning exhibits.

Camps range in topics from wilderness exploration to superheroes, outer space to wizardry, and so much more. Before and After Care are also available for additional costs.

K-6TH GRADE

The People Issue Community Sports Organizer Darrell Downs

The founder of East Nashville Athletics would ‘much rather be significant than successful’

BY LOGAN BUTTS

IN 2012, DARRELL DOWNS was slated to become the general manager of a new facility that his employer, Mac Papers and Packaging, was opening in Music City. So he and his family packed up and moved from North Carolina to East Nashville.

When Downs arrived, he quickly realized the East Side was lacking a dedicated community-based recreational sports program for kids — something that was long-established in other areas of the city. So the Downses decided to create one themselves.

Downs’ son Clay was playing baseball at the time, so that’s where East Nashville Athletics started. But thanks to rapid growth, the program now offers softball, flag football, track and field, and cheerleading for kids ages 4 to 13. Downs and his team have plans to expand to wrestling, volleyball, soccer and maybe even dance in the near future. They also offer further instructional opportunities for kids seeking more than a typical recreational-league experience.

“We just saw a need,” says Downs, who still has his day job at Mac Papers. “So I started looking around at people that could be community volunteers, and I kind of ‘volun-told’ them to come on and help. There’s been a lot of people over the last 12 years that have really stepped up.”

Volunteers are integral for a program like ENA, which operates on a shoestring budget as a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Many of the program’s coaches are parents of kids playing in one of the leagues. Once their child ages out, usually the parent moves along with them, disrupting what is intended to be a stable environment. Downs is the son of two teachers, one of whom was also a high school baseball coach, so he knows how important that sense of community is to a kid.

“It’s a passion of mine,” Downs says. “In today’s sports world, so much is divided from winning. It’s fractured all over the place. Ours is [about] community. Our mission is that it’s a safe place to build that community, and to go have fun.”

But with that passion comes a never-ending list of duties — everything from dealing with city government over the use of public baseball diamonds to painting stripes on a flag football field early on Saturday mornings. Everyone, including Downs’ wife Denise, their daughter Brittany, their son Clay, and their 8-year-old twins Amos and Lydia, is involved.

“It could not be done without my wife,” Downs says. “I’m kind of the visionary of what I want it to be; she carries out a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of long hours. It tests your character. … I think that’s my commitment to the community. If I had to kind of summarize my life, I’d much rather be significant than be successful, and I think my family is significant with the community.”

It also costs a lot of money to run multiple sports leagues. You have to pay umpires and referees, upgrade facilities, stock concession stands and buy equipment, among other costs. Plus, ENA never turns down a child over financial concerns, instead offering scholarships to anyone who can’t afford to pay.

“If it wasn’t for sponsors and just good people in the community, it wouldn’t be possible,” Downs says.

Downs has seen kids from the program go on to earn college scholarships, which he says is always a proud moment. But for most of the kids involved, it’s simply about the community-building aspect of local sports.

“There’s a lot of times you want to give up,” Downs says. “But when the season winds down and you have parents come up and say, ‘You don’t know how much you meant to my kid,’ that’s why we keep doing it.” ▼

Photographed by Eric England at Shelby Park

Known as the preeminent American sculptors of the Gilded Age, Daniel Chester French and Augustus Saint-Gaudens produced dozens of the nation’s most recognizable public works. Monuments and Myths is the first major exhibition entirely devoted to the intersecting careers of these two friendly rivals. Learn about the lives and careers of both artists while exploring the aesthetically graceful and socially potent artworks that shaped and reflected America’s complicated negotiation of national identity.

THROUGH MAY 27

Downtown Nashville 919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203

FristArtMuseum.org @FristArtMuseum #TheFrist

This exhibition is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts, Chesterwood, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Saint-Gaudens Memorial in partnership with the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park. Major support for the publication has been provided by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Support for the exhibition and publication has been provided by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

The People Issue

Public Historian T. Minton

Leader of the Belcourt Stories Project discovers truth and fiction in history

BY HANNAH HERNER

COME THE END

of the Belcourt Theatre’s 100-year celebration in 2025, T. Minton will box up all the archives they painstakingly collected since 2021 as part of the Belcourt Stories oral history project and pass it along to a museum for storage. Then they’ll be onto the next project.

It will be satisfying, Minton tells the Scene As a musician, they’re used to finishing a project and setting it loose into the world in this way. Working as a public historian and archivist at the Belcourt is a dream project for Minton, who pivoted to the field after touring for years as a drummer.

They earned a master’s degree in public history at Middle Tennessee State University, but it’s important to them to study history outside of academia, and closer to the public. Minton seeks to connect history to present-day social and political issues, and importantly, everyday people. Most of all, they want to make it interesting in a way that elementary school history classes and other historians have failed to do.

“History is made by real people everyday doing the work of imagining better futures and being in community with each other, and challenging power,” Minton says. “That’s how history is made,

but history is told by the people who win things and people who we think should be important figures, and we forget that they are just regular people.”

The seed for Minton’s current life was planted at the Southern Girls Rock and Roll Camp (now the Yeah! Rocks Summer Camp), where they taught a music history class. Minton was hoping to inspire young girls by introducing them to female musicians who came before them — and the inspiration worked on Minton, too. Their involvement evolved into a seven-year run of She’s a Rebel, a girl-group tribute show, as well as an MTSU final project focused on women musicians in Nashville.

“I’ve always felt that I found my personal place in existence by being aware of and appreciative of people who have come before me,” Minton says. “To me, that’s the work of history — helping people and communities understand who they are and where they’ve come from, and [letting] the story that they want to tell about themselves be heard, particularly if it’s something that has been silenced by dominant narratives, people in power.”

Minton lives by the philosophy that “history is always incomplete, and it’s always a fiction as much as it is a truth.” All

the different truths have to be in communication with one another to arrive at the most complete picture of a time and place. Here are a few things about the Belcourt that are factual: The gilded stage inside the Belcourt’s 1925 Hall began as a site for theatrical productions in the 1920s, and housed the Nashville Children’s Theatre and The Grand Ole Opry during its tenure. The Belcourt as we know it now, an independent cinema nonprofit, was born out of the 1999 “Save the Belcourt” campaign — when the theater came dangerously close to shutting down.

Nashville used to be filled with neighborhood theaters and movie palaces, but the Belcourt has outlasted them all. Minton thinks it is a combination of luck and the public’s attachment to the place — and as a historian to the public, they’ll tell us all about it.

“We have existed, I think, for 100 years because of the efforts of actual everyday Nashvillians seeing the potential for this place to be a gathering for the creative and performing arts and to build community around those things,” they say. “I think that’s the thing that has saved it.” ▼

Photographed by Angelina Castillo at the Belcourt

MARCH 13

JENNY LEWIS

WITH HAYDEN PEDIGO AND LOGAN LEDGER

MAY 23

TYE TRIBBETT

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

JUNE 1 AT 5 PM 3RD SHOW ADDED!

JIM GAFFIGAN

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

JULY 29

DONNY OSMOND

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

AUGUST 16

THE OZARK MOUNTAIN DAREDEVILS

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

SEPTEMBER 19

MAT KEARNEY

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

OCTOBER 2

SIGUR RÓS

WITH WORDLESS MUSIC ORCHESTRA

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

DJ Afrosheen

The Antioch native and in-demand DJ is all about community, resistance and music

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

JUST TWO YEARS AGO, DJ Afrosheen still had a 9-to-5 job at SmileDirectClub — spinning records was still a side gig, no matter how unhappy they were with the corporate life. Suddenly a voice popped into their head while playing an afternoon set at Bonnaroo in 2022: “Your last day is Aug. 1.”

Afrosheen knew the change wouldn’t make sense to anyone, but as they tell the Scene, “I’m meant to be a full-time creative, whatever that looks like for me.” They listened to the voice.

Flash-forward to 2024. SmileDirectClub is bankrupt while Afrosheen is one of the busiest DJs in town, performing at everything from drag shows to benefit concerts and even opening up for Philadelphia R&B legend Jill Scott at Municipal Auditorium in 2023. But on any given week, the easiest place to find Antioch native Aliyah Allen is probably at their recurring gig at East Side cocktail bar Golden Pony, a venue they now call home.

“I started DJing there in July, and it’s been the perfect place to grow,” Afrosheen tells the Scene. “They are extremely supportive of the community — Black, brown, queer. It seems like, honestly, the safest space to just chill.”

It makes sense Afrosheen would vibe with such an inclusive space. The DJ loves to spin disco, house, electronic and underground, genres rooted in queer communities of color. And certainly the radical spirit of those genres still feels relevant today in Tennessee, where lawmakers have taken aim at Pride flags and drag shows.

“A lot of old-school disco and electronic music promotes positivity, promotes love, promotes acceptance, tolerance, expression, freedom, liberation,” says Afrosheen. “They come from resistance and revolutionary thinking.”

You can see that radical, inclusive spirit at Afrosheen events like Baby at The Blue Room. The monthly party series, which features throwback R&B and pop hits, was created by Afrosheen and DJ John Stamps in 2022. But the duo doesn’t just rely on 2000s-era nostalgia to maintain their crowd. There’s a flair for theatrics and costumes, clever themes inspired by Bratz dolls and Blockbuster (the latter complete with walls of VHS clamshells), and a dedicated photo booth run by local photographer Dana Kalachnik captures the revelry and variety of free-spirited outfits.

Afrosheen’s hard work hasn’t gone unnoticed. The DJ was recognized twice as the city’s Best DJ in the 2023 Best of Nashville issue — once in the readers’ poll and again as a writer’s choice.

“I don’t think people understand how deep my gratitude is,” says Afrosheen. “People like me don’t get our flowers in real time.”

Afrosheen doesn’t plan on slowing down either — 2024 is going to be a year of expansion. And their success is, in their opinion, about more than their own career.

“Nashville has such a rich Black and queer community that is resilient and is truly caring and carrying the culture. And I think that I am just the beginning of members of that community getting the flowers that are overdue.” ▼

Photographed by Angelina Castillo at Golden Pony

The People Issue

Car Man David Tinsley

Meet the owner of Lebanon’s Ragtop Picture Cars and his fleet of impeccable autos

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, David Tinsley didn’t really have any connection to the film industry. He knew a lot about cars and was working in collision repair. But things changed one day when he was driving to work in his 1964 Pontiac GTO.

“I was driving a GTO to work, and a guy pulled me over — he was blowing his horn, saying, ‘Pull over, I want to talk to you!’” says Tinsley. “So I pulled over and he said, ‘Man, we love this car. Can we use it in a music video?’”

The stranger was a broker who sourced cars for music videos — and he wanted to feature Tinsley’s GTO in Brooks & Dunn’s 1999 video for “Missing You.” That was Tinsley’s gateway into the industry and what would ultimately become Ragtop Picture Cars.

Talking to the Scene from a replica service station he built on his Lebanon property, Tinsley, who’s soft-spoken and polite with a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard, gestures toward autographed headshots that line the walls. Nicole Kidman, Taylor Swift, Randy Travis, Gwyneth Paltrow, Carrie Underwood — all people he’s worked with in some capacity. He moved his operation to this property in 2007 and built the mock gas station, which doubles as his office, to look like something right out of 1950s Route 66 Americana. A handful of big names have come out to shoot there, including the American Pickers guys, Ashley McBryde and Alan

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

Jackson. (Jackson, Tinsley explains, touched down on the sixacre property in a helicopter about 15 years back, much to the surprise of the neighbors.)

But Ragtop’s real bread and butter isn’t the service station — it’s Tinsley’s many vehicles. He’s got a warehouse with a few dozen about 15 minutes away, but most of his inventory is right here on the property. Old Pontiacs and Buicks, a 1947 Studebaker, a strange little turquoise Nash Metropolitan and an orange 2018 McLaren 570S that looks like a rocketship. There are loads of Crown Vics — a popular cop-car model, naturally — as well as a fleet of yellow taxis and several vehicles outfitted to look like ambulances and news vans. He’s also still got the ’64 GTO that earned him the Brooks & Dunn gig.

Pickup trucks from the 1950s and ’60s tend to be popular rentals, especially in Nashville-shot music videos. But Tinsley has sent vehicles as far as South America, and they’ve been featured in everything from the AMC series Dark Winds and 2018’s Robert Redford-starring The Old Man & the Gun to CMT’s Still the King, ABC’s Nashville, the James Brown biopic Get On Up and 2018’s Oscar-winning Green Book As a matter of fact, Green Book director Peter Farrelly insisted on buying a 1959 Ford Wagon off of Tinsley, one of 13 Ragtop vehicles featured in the film. (“I still kinda wish I wouldn’t have sold it,” he says.) He’s also got a few smashed-up

vehicles around the property. Every once in a while, a director will need a car that looks like it’s been in a wreck — even though it pains Tinsley to smash up an otherwise perfectly good car.

Then there are the specialty replicas: a Dukes of Hazzard-style General Lee, a Back to the Future-style DeLorean and the pièce de résistance — a gleaming, black-and-red Batmobile built on the chassis of a 1976 Lincoln and featuring all the campy bells and whistles of the 1960s Adam West series. These cars, Tinsley explains, mostly rent out for events, parties and car shows.

As successful as the business has been, Tinsley is looking to wind down. He sold 90 cars to his friends Kevin and Katelyn Hanson of the newly launched Picture Car Company in February of last year, bringing his inventory down to his current 146. (The most he ever owned at once, he reckons, was 248.) He’s hoping to fully retire from the film business at the end of this year so he and his wife can focus mostly on car shows like Gulfport, Mississippi’s Cruisin’ the Coast and what are known as cruise-ins — informal car events where folks show off their rides and talk shop.

“When I retire completely I’m going to keep about 20 cars,” he says, before the Scene asks if he has a favorite.

“Nah, I like ’em all.” ▼

Photographed by Eric England on Tinsley’s Lebanon property

Pops Conductor

Enrico Lopez-Yañez

The composer and conductor strives to make the symphony accessible to all

BY HANNAH HERNER

ENRICO LOPEZ-YAÑEZ wants you to see the Nashville Symphony. And he doesn’t care if it’s because you have a deep appreciation for classical music.

“Classical music has a certain number of fans,” says Lopez-Yañez, the principal pops conductor for the Nashville Symphony. “But more and more orchestras are realizing that to really serve our mission, we have to serve more people in the community. … And one way to do that is to offer a bigger variety of genres of music, because not everyone is going to love classical music, but that doesn’t mean they can’t love an orchestra or a symphony.”

Symphonies around the country are catching on to that sentiment. When he’s not working with the Nashville Symphony, he’s serving in a similar role at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony in Orange County, Calif., or the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It’s a niche the 35-year-old has carved out for himself during his seven seasons in his home base of Nashville.

“Pops” is a term used to describe all of the nonclassical stuff an orchestra plays — movie scores as well as originals by guest artists like Trisha Yearwood, Patti LaBelle and even Nas. Lopez-Yañez is especially proud of Latin Fire, a show he composed with trumpet legend Jose Sibaja that’s played at a dozen orchestras now. He’s also the guy who wore a Jedi outfit to the Star Wars revue last year — or you may recognize him from Nashville’s yearly Let Freedom Sing! Fourth of July event. This year he’ll conduct the music of Elvis and E.T. in concert, among other shows.

Lopez-Yañez’s father is an opera singer and his mother is a pianist, so he had a clear picture of working in music when he got his undergraduate and master’s degrees in trumpet from UCLA. His father came from Mexico to study opera in the U.S. when he was in his 20s, and his parents actually met because she was assigned to be his accompanist. The family spent some time in Europe on the opera-gigging circuit, and Lopez-Yañez at one point considered being an opera conductor. Shortly after earning a degree in conducting from the University of Maryland, he worked for the Omaha Symphony. That’s where he saw an orchestra play pops for the first time — and he decided to go that route.

Lopez-Yañez describes conducting as “living in three time zones.” His job is to be listening in the present, taking in information, reflecting on what just happened and what he wants to change, and communicating through gestures and facial expressions to the 80 people in front of him what should happen next.

He also explains that his job has three main responsibilities: conducting, composing and being a face for the symphony. But he’s far from snobbish. His classically trained parents filled their home during Lopez-Yañez’s childhood with all kinds of music: Elton John, Chicago and other ’70s rock, Frank Sinatra, country music including Yearwood, ABBA and more pop. These days he researches new artists people have suggested to him. (He has a habit of handing out his personal email to patrons.)

“I think they all have value, and they all have merit for being onstage,” Lopez-Yañez says. “All of these artists, if they’ve put out stuff and had success in this, it’s because people value it. Who would I be to judge and say, ‘Oh, well, that’s not as worthy.’ There’s an audience for it. They feel like it’s worthy. They have bought their records or have their posters. It’s our job to bring the best performance of that to life with an orchestra and amplify that in that way. That’s a lot of fun to do.

“The same amount of dollars that you spend here, you could easily go to 50 to 100 other venues in town and spend your money there,” he continues. “Why would we make our experience here less approachable when we’re competing with so many other places?”▼

Photographed by Eric England at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center

The People Issue

Community Amplifier DJ Erica

Host of WXNA’s Soul of the City wants to expand the power of community radio

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

IF YOU WANT to hear a massive variety of Black music on local radio, including local artists’ tracks — or you just need a weekly dose of J Dilla while you get the lowdown on upcoming concerts — you know to tune in to Soul of the City which currently airs in the drive-time slot from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursdays. Erica Hayes Schultz, better known as DJ Erica, has been bringing a laid-back blend of cool music and informative interviews focused on a Black Nashville audience to WXNA-FM since the community radio station launched in 2016.

The show began as a way for DJ Erica, an educator whose daughter was a preschooler at the time, to relieve some stress and ease back into grown-up hobbies by spinning songs from her neo-soul library. But her extensive previous radio experience made boosting community-focused conversations a natural fit.

“I would just get phone calls like, ‘Hey, we’re doing this event over in the Cameron area,’ or, ‘Hey, we’re doing the Nashville Black Market, can we come in?’” Schultz says, taking a seat in the office across the hall from WXNA’s broadcast studio at The Packing Plant. “And I was just wide-open to it. Because I know that 92Q and 101 [The Beat] — they don’t have the space to do it. Not like they don’t want to, they just don’t have the space. So I was like, ‘OK, let me be a resource.’”

DJ Erica’s passion for radio dates back to her childhood in suburban Atlanta. Her father had a long career with the U.S. Department of Labor, but went to historically black Morehouse College on a music scholarship and has never stopped being passionate about music. (They are also related to revered singer Roland Hayes.) She fell in love with broadcasting at University of Georgia

student station WUOG circa 1992. She intended to study in the university’s renowned journalism school, but what she describes as a “party appetite” left her without the necessary GPA. She completed a history degree and focused on a path to becoming a teacher, but with frequent forays into radio and the music business.

While she studied for her master’s degree and teaching certifications, Schultz was part of a DJ collective called The Beat Collaborative. They spun in Atlanta clubs and hosted a suite of shows on powerful Georgia State student station WRAS that not only brought local electronica enthusiasts together but also helped spread sounds like drum ’n’ bass across the Southeast. When she and her family moved to Music City from California years later, her old friend Tim “Mindub” Hiber encouraged her to start a show on WXNA. (His only re-

quest was that she not pitch an electronica show, since that was his idea; later, she turned her Mode.Radio electronica podcast into a show that airs at midnight on Fridays.)

As Soul of the City heads toward its eighth year, Schultz wants to focus on mentoring marginalized people and showing them the power of amplifying their voices through radio. And she wants to see the platform of her program and the station as a whole keep growing.

“I come from a city where we’ve been creating our own stuff forever, and so I’m used to that. [Sometimes] in Nashville, we try to create, and then structures and systems kinda let us go only so far. And I would like my show to be a starting point.” ▼

Photographed by Eric England at WXNA

The People Issue

CAITLAN FLEURETTE DILLINGHAM may not have planned on becoming a digital curator of Nashville history, but she’s always been an archivist at heart.

Dillingham is the creator of Nashville History X (@nashvillehistoryx), an Instagram account with a focus on photos and history from the greater Nashville area. One day about three years ago while walking her dog, she noticed an interesting-looking old house. Outside of Zillow, she couldn’t find any information about the people who lived there or its history. After some digging, she found that the house was built in 1925; the state lists the parcel as historical, but there’s no plaque there. That moment set her on a journey to start an account just for her, where she would research houses like this and share as much history as she could find.

“Every single day, I’m thinking about history and what was here before me,” the Nashville native tells the Scene. “So I started pulling it. I wanted to make it accessible, because it’s not accessible. History is not accessible.”

What started as a creative outlet for Dillingham in 2021 soon caught on. The account has 21,000 followers and an active audience. She receives direct messages every day from people asking her to help them find old photos of their home, or information on previous owners.

“The history is going to hold you in and start a conversation and a dialogue,” Dillingham says. “And that’s where we get improvement, change, hope.”

Dillingham may not be a ninth-generation Nashvillian, but she has roots. Her parents met at The Gold Rush in the ’70s, and her great-grandfather died, along with at least 100 people, in Nashville’s Great Train Wreck of 1918, also known as the Dutchman’s Curve train wreck.

By making history accessible, Dillingham hopes her posts inspire people to go to places like the Tennessee State Museum and take more of an interest in local history.

“I want you to be able to be on your phone and on a bus and just be like, ‘Wow, this is history I didn’t know about. Now I’m going to be able to share this with A, B and C.’ It’s a new generation. Everything’s mobile.”

Dillingham lists Nashville’s Public Square as a site she wishes she’d been alive to see in its heyday, when it bustled as a market full of grocers and wholesale vendors. But as Dillingham says, the space also has a dark past — it was the site of at least one racist lynching in the 19th century. But that history is hard to see now. “Now it’s just a central traffic-jam area,” she says.

Sharing what she learns and knows about Black history is a core value for Dillingham. “When it comes to Black history, I’ll put almost anything out there,” she says. “I’m going to put it in your face, and I hope that you take a step back and read it.”

Archivist and Historian

Caitlan Fleurette Dillingham

With Nashville History X, Dillingham makes Music City’s history accessible to everyone

BY KIM BALDWIN

Dillingham uses #nashvilleblackhistory on these posts so they are searchable and easy to find.

Everyone has a story, and with Nashville History X, Dillingham says she wants to help people tell theirs. “Everyone is so important, and everything is so important,” she says. “It’s important for me to share.” ▼

Photographed by Eric England at Union Station

The People Issue

Artist and Advocate Sally Wells

The Choctaw elder serves as president of the Native American Indian Association of Tennessee

WHEN SALLY WELLS prays, it’s always in Choctaw.

“Nobody ever asks me what I say,” she says in the courtyard of the Frist, where she often leads land acknowledgements before events. Last month, at the invitation of Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville), Wells became the first Indigenous person to open a session of the Tennessee House of Representatives, where she opened with a Choctaw prayer. “It’s whatever comes to my heart. It just pops in my mind, what I need to say. It goes all the way through my heart, and everything I say comes from somewhere else.”

Wells has lived in Nashville since the 1980s, but she originally lived on the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Reservation in Bogue Chitto, Miss. Both her parents spoke Choctaw, and they raised their family — six daughters and one son — with Choctaw traditions.

“In Choctaw, beading is part of family,” says Wells, a prolific bead artist. “As I was growing up, maybe 6 or 7 years old, there were six of us girls, so we had to be doing something. That’s the age when your parents feel like you need to start learning things, so you can take care of yourself when you’re older.”

As she talks about her family, Wells begins to pull about a halfdozen boxes from an oversized blanket tote, opening each to reveal brightly colored beaded jewelry. Some pieces are earrings and necklaces, while others defy categorization as simple necklaces. These are more like beaded chest plates or embellished collars. The small

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

seed-sized beads are threaded in specific color combinations, and some are completely transparent.

She explains how she designs her work. “You have to kind of dream up and envision what you want to make — that’s your pattern.”

“When I touch the beads,” she says while demonstrating, putting her hand near her heart to feel her own necklace, “I feel my family. When I start sewing, I forget about everything outside. I’m just doing it.”

“On the reservation, anything you do you have to go through the government, and the government decided that we could leave the reservation if we wanted.” The families that didn’t want to farm often moved to California, Illinois or Texas. But Wells’ family was made up of farmers who wanted to continue farming, and when Wells was 12 or 13, her parents decided it was time to leave the reservation. They settled with six or seven other families in Ripley, Tenn., about an hour northeast of Memphis.

“That was our first experience with white America,” she says. “We were scared to death. We went to a white school, public school. It wasn’t a happy time. Whatever it is that you grow up with, you miss that.”

It was also in Ripley where Wells later met her husband, Bill, who was doing contract work for the government after serving in the Army. They married six months after they began dating, then moved

to East Tennessee for a time, before ultimately settling in Nashville with their two girls. It’s here that Wells became a founding member of the Native American Indian Association of Tennessee in 1981. The intertribal organization began as a way for Natives to connect with other Natives, who were often members of different tribes and had different traditions.

“I never knew any Indians around anywhere. Even if they were here, I didn’t know them. There are different tribes, different languages. We just wanted to get everyone together, and maybe have a picnic or something.”

From those humble beginnings, a large organization was built. The NAIA provides a wealth of services to local tribal members, and Wells serves as the organization’s president as well as the coordinator for the arts and crafts demonstrators at the NAIA powwows.

“NAIA is part of me,” she says. “Anything we do, we have to do it together.”

The NAIA is currently raising funds to build a permanent community center, the Circle of Life Indian Cultural Center. Its mission is to create space for the more than 25,000 full-blooded Native Americans and 42,000 others with Native American heritage who live in Tennessee. For more information — including plans for the cultural center — and to make donations, visit naiatn.org. ▼

Photographed by Eric England at the Frist Art Museum

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The People Issue

Advocate Joseph Gutierrez

The executive director of API Middle Tennessee builds community with his fellow Asian and Pacific Islander neighbors

BY COLE VILLENA

JOSEPH GUTIERREZ had never heard of Murfreesboro until he moved from California — to South Korea.

It’s not a typical moving-to-Middle Tennessee tale: The Los Angeles native attended UCLA and dreamt of living abroad, so he moved to Incheon, South Korea, to teach English. Once there, he fell in love with an Asian American woman named Monica and eventually followed her when she moved back home to be closer to family in Murfreesboro. (For any romantics reading, the couple are now happily married and living with their English bulldog, Donut.)

But this circuitous road to Nashville was illuminating for Gutierrez, who grew up surrounded by Filipino culture in Southern California — everywhere from his family’s church to his local Jollibee restaurant. In Nashville, where only 3 percent of people identify as Asian or Pacific Islander, where could he find community?

“I never had to question being Asian in California until I got to Korea, and then I never had to question being American until I got [to Tennessee],” Gutierrez says. “That kind of distinction of navigating my own identity is very much tied to the places I was in.”

He’s still navigating those questions, and he’s helping his Asian and Pacific Islander neighbors in Nashville do the same as they build community together. Gutierrez is the founding executive director of API Middle Tennessee, a nonprofit whose mission statement is to “[work] towards racial justice by building API community, lifting API voices, and celebrating API identities.”

You may have seen Gutierrez at the kickoff for Nashville SC’s second-ever home game,

which was also the first official API night in Major League Soccer history. Perhaps you’ve attended one of their many community arts events, like the Bahay Works exhibit at Fido in Hillsboro Village featuring Filipino artists. Local government observers will recognize Terry Vo, the group’s director of partnerships, who also represents Metro Council District 17.

“Our work is focused on place- and space-making,” Gutierrez says. “How do we create place here? How do we hold space for our community in spots that we can?”

The group incorporated as a nonprofit in 2020, and its early history was colored by the coronavirus pandemic. “People were asking about, like, self-defense classes,” Gutierrez recalls, reflecting on the rise in discrimination. But some of its work has been less dramatic: Since they launched during a federal census year, for example, they spent countless hours educating community members on the importance of responding to the survey so they could be accurately represented federally.

Gutierrez is proud that the group is celebrating its fourth year with a new cycle of board members and a slate of events planned for API Heritage Month in May. As its executive director, he’s also looking forward to helping shape its future.

“What do we have to do now?” Gutierrez wonders hopefully. “What can we do and what can we accomplish for our long-term vision where our community is connected to each other, connected to their histories, connected to their culture and connected to Tennessee?” ▼

Photographed by Angelina Castillo at 100 Taylor

FRIDAY, MARCH 8

MUSIC [YOU WISH] FLYANA BOSS

If you had told me that in the year of our Lord 2023, there would be a female hip-hop duo rapping about Lethal Weapon, Michael Phelps, Dr. Evil and Fat Bastard, it would have blown my Gen X, ’90s-obsessed mind. But that is exactly what Bobbi LaNea Tyler and Folayan Omi Kunerede, better known as Flyana Boss, did back in the summer. The group went viral on TikTok for their song “You Wish,” which features all the aforementioned references. Outside of your phone, you may have caught them at the Ryman opening up for Janelle Monáe’s Age of Pleasure Tour stop in October. The L.A.-based group, who describe themselves as “two weirdos one duo,” is bringing the Bosstanical Garden Tour to The Basement East with New Jersey R&B performer Honey Bxby. Hello Christ? Don’t let me sin again. I missed Flyana’s last Nashville show and I won’t again. KIM BALDWIN

8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST

917 WOODLAND ST.

Visit calendar.nashvillescene.com for more event listings

THURSDAY / 3.7

ART [TRUTH TO POWER] SHABAZZ LARKIN: MAY I BE BRAVE ENOUGH TO SPEAK MY TRUTH

The woven blankets that are central to the exhibition May I Be Brave Enough to Speak My Truth, currently on view at OZ Arts, are some of the most accessible but profound pieces I’ve seen from Shabazz Larkin. The Nashville-based artist is best known for his Museum of Presence, a gorgeously designed printed collection that mimics a newspaper’s bold call to action. Consider this selection of Larkin’s work, which is curated by Cë Gallery’s Clarence Edward, an extension of that project. The woven blankets are cozy but contemporary, and the figures standing on each other’s shoulders bring to mind everything from figurative tropes to graffiti writers trying to reach higher spots on walls. The exhibition statement says the blankets are “a poignant representation of our ancestral bonds and future legacies” — it’s well worth a trip to OZ to participate. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER THROUGH MARCH 21 AT OZ ARTS

6172 COCKRILL BEND CIRCLE

MUSIC [KNOW WHEN TO TAKE A WALK] STYROFOAM WINOS W/KATE TEAGUE & RYAN SOBB

Stardom isn’t a prerequisite for any musician to be someone you’re proud to have representing your city. It’s more about players weaving themselves into the local creative community like Styrofoam Winos have, with a kind of unassuming grace and great, thoughtful work. It’s been a hot minute since the trio of excellent songsmiths made up of Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant and Joe Kenkel played together as the Winos — among other things, Kenkel has been living in Iowa while his partner finished her MFA there. But they’ll be back at perennial favorite watering hole Betty’s on Thursday, just as they take their special blend of philosophically inclined rock and folk on the road to SXSW. Memphis singersongwriter and rock bandleader Kate Teague will join them; her September EP Loose Screw features contemplative songs about trying to find your equilibrium in relationships with romantic partners, family, yourself, even in spiritual dimensions. Rounding out the bill is Nashville’s own Ryan Sobb, who has a knack

PHOTO: SARAH JANE SPRENG

MADI DIAZ PAGE 32

NASHVILLE CATS: DAN DUGMORE PAGE 34

MEN’S SEC BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT PAGE 36

for literate examinations of living that recall The Replacements and Drive-By Truckers.

STEPHEN TRAGESER

8 P.M. AT BETTY’S 407 49TH AVE. N.

MUSIC [HEAR ME OUT]

DISCOVERY NITE FEAT. MG, BOOK NOT BROOKE & MASSIE99

The heads at To-Go Records — who release recordings, book shows and publish a handy show calendar — keep their ears to the Nashville-area rock underground. Their monthly Discovery Nite show at The Blue Room is back to put the spotlight on three acts you’ll want to get to know better. So far, trio massie99 has released just one track, and it’s barely a minuteand-a-half long, but it’s a heater: “Anika” has snarling punk energy, catchiness and heft that remind me of Be Your Own Pet. Meanwhile, mg is a project spearheaded by Soccer Mommy guitar-slinger Julian Powell that released its self-titled debut EP in November. The typeface on the cover suggests that Britpop legends Oasis are an influence on these songs, and that is not a red herring; there’s also experimentation with studio technique and song form that bring to mind The Olivia Tremor Control and Pink Floyd. And rounding out the bill is book NOT brooke, headed up by Brooke Vespoli, whom you might recognize from relatively recent Ohio transplants Baby Wave. Vespoli’s recent book NOT brooke EP The Day I Was Supposed to Be Born is a collection of pop and rock tunes with a wide sonic palette and thoughtful lyrics; they make me think about how part of growing up is feeling displaced — from various kinds of relationships and states of being — before you move on to the next phase.

STEPHEN TRAGESER 8 P.M. AT THE BLUE ROOM AT THIRD MAN RECORDS 623 SEVENTH AVE. S

FRIDAY / 3.8

[KNEEL BEFORE NEIL]

MUSIC

NEIL O’NEIL BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

FEAT. CHEER UP CHARLIE DANIELS 2011 was a heady time in the local rock scene.

Still two years out from being declared the “‘it’ city” by The New York Times, Nashville was home to a bustling community of punk, folk, psych, soul and rock ’n’ roll bands who collaborated, swapped members and opened for one another at venues including Mercy Lounge, Exit/In, The End, The 5 Spot and The Basement (not to mention now-defunct DIY and house-show spaces like The Other Basement and Little Hamilton). One of the many bands right in the thick of it was Cheer Up Charlie Daniels, an ensemble that billed itself as “Nashville’s most eclectic rock band” and — unlike their namesake — made an outsized form of eccentric pop rock full of folk and jam-band influence. Their shows were big, fun, singalong affairs that often featured a team of coed vocalists, special guests and lighthearted tunes. This weekend, for the first time in 13 years, CUCD’s original members will get together for a full set. Friday’s show is in celebration of frontman Neil O’Neil’s 40th birthday, and it’s sure to be an event overflowing with positive nostalgic energy. O’Neil will also play a set of his own tunes, with Professional Gaze and Stevie Rae Stephens rounding out the bill. Proceeds from ticket sales will go to the W.O. Smith School of Music. D. PATRICK RODGERS

9 P.M. AT THE BOWERY VAULT

2905 GALLATIN PIKE

[OH BOY, OH BOY, OH BOY]

MUSIC

OH BOY RECORDS’ TN TO TX: THE ROAD TO LUCK REUNION

Can’t make the 800-mile trek to Willie Nelson’s ranch for his annual SXSW-week hootenanny, Luck Reunion? That’s OK, because a slice of the Texas-sized show will take hold of The Blue Room in Nashville this weekend. “Road to Luck Reunion” — a short run of gigs leading up to the mid-March festivities on Nelson’s ranch outside Austin, Texas — makes a one-night pit stop in Pie Town with a lineup including soul legend Swamp Dogg, country crooner Kelsey Waldon, folk transplant Tré Burt, Midwestern storyteller Arlo McKinley, can’t-miss singer-songwriter Emily Scott Robinson and Irish artist Mick Flannery. And, yes, there’s a theme to the bill. Each artist is signed to tastemaking Nashville

label Oh Boy Records, which curated the sixcity Road to Luck Reunion Tour. In addition to Nashville, the tour stops in Memphis; New Orleans; Martindale, Texas; and Muscle Shoals, Ala., before culminating at Nelson’s ranch in mid-March. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER

8 P.M. AT THE BLUE ROOM AT THIRD MAN RECORDS 623 SEVENTH AVE. S.

[TRUE BELIEVER]

MUSIC

MADI DIAZ

The pop efforts of Nashville singer and songwriter Madi Diaz on her 2021 album History of a Feeling strike me as a bit arty and musically prolix, but Diaz makes artiness a matter of principle on her new full-length Weird Faith The Pennsylvania-raised songwriter, who attended the Berklee School of Music, returned to Nashville in late 2017 after spending a few years in Los Angeles. Weird Faith registers as a highly evolved form of Nashville-style pop that alludes to indie rock, power pop and power ballads without following the form of any particular style. When it works, as on the History of a Feeling track “Woman in My Heart,” Diaz’s music folds in classic rock melodies with, say, the expressionist approach of PJ Harvey. The relationship songs that Diaz has written for Weird Faith include the title track, which she penned with Nashville country songwriter Lori McKenna. Weird Faith is her strongest full-length to date — Diaz continues to sing with both precision and feeling, and the track “Girlfriend” is an extraordinarily compelling relationship song. Singer-songwriter Jack Van Cleaf opens.

EDD HURT

8 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL

925 THIRD AVE. N.

SATURDAY / 3.9

MUSIC [GOOD 4 HER] OLIVIA RODRIGO

To be a teenager is to wrestle with enormous emotional riddles that feel like the end of the

world as you know it. Young people today have a fearless guide to tackling those questions in Olivia Rodrigo, one of the first bona fide pop stars of the post-pandemic era. The former Disney Channel star burst onto the scene with 2021’s SOUR, which helped her earn three Grammys and comparisons to pop-rock royalty like Hayley Williams and Avril Lavigne. Now 21, Olivia is stopping in Nashville as part of her first stadium tour, armed with a new slate of bangers from last year’s GUTS. Tracks like “get him back!” are perfect distillations of the teenage experience — are the people you’re trying so hard to fit in with even worth your admiration? — and Rodrigo’s stardom also represents some of the best parts of Gen Z: Not only is she a Filipino American woman helping redefine the once overwhelmingly white and male pop-punk genre, but she’s also using her platform to uplift organizations like Abortion Care Tennessee and other reproductive health nonprofits. Chappell Roan is set to open with songs from her bombastic, queer-as-hell The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess — expect Bridgestone Arena to get rowdy when she references the Volunteer State in “Pink Pony Club.” COLE VILLENA

7:30 P.M. AT BRIDGESTONE ARENA

500 BROADWAY

MUSIC [TESTED BY TIME]

THE VICES

The well-crafted songs on Netherlands rock quartet The Vices’ 2023 album Unknown Affairs strike me as genre pieces that never coalesce into what you might call rock ’n’ roll. What I hear on Unknown Affairs is retro pop that borrows from The Strokes, Television and any number of bubblegum bands that reference 1960s rock. Singer Floris van Luijtelaar delivers his lines well, and the band seems more compelling live than in the studio, as you can hear on the concert tracks collected on their new EP Talk the Talk. Because The Vices have mastered the art of the pop pastiche, their best songs sound like the unpremeditated

OLIVIA RODRIGO

STYROFOAM WINOS

PHOTO: LARISSA HOFMANN

Revuary LOV E

A CONCERT TO BENEFIT

FEATURING THE FISK JUBILEE SINGERS

SPECIAL GUESTS

MARY GAUTHIER

RUBY AMANFU

MARCUS & LEVI HUMMON

BRONWYN KEITH-HYNES, BRENNA MACMILLAN, & CRISTINA VANE

Mar 19, 2024

TUESDAY 7:30 PM

RYMAN AUDITORIUM

MARCH 16

LUCKY BLUES, BEER & BBQ FEST

PIPER & THE HARD TIMES WITH ETTA BRITT FREE ADMISSION

MARCH 21

LADYCOUCH WITH POTATO GUN CANYON

MARCH 23

UPCOMING SHOWS AT THE MUSEUM’S CMA THEATER

APRIL 18

DIXIE DREGS

WITH SPECIAL GUEST STEVE MORSE BAND

APRIL 25

ROBERT CRAY BAND

MAY 2

MATTEO BOCELLI

A NIGHT WITH MATTEO

MAY 3

ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO

MAY 10

T BONE BURNETT

WHAT IT IS A TRIBUTE TO ARETHA FRANKLIN

COMING SOON

3/29 SAM GRISMAN

4/16 THE WAY DOWN WANDERERS

5/3 CHEST FEVER

Celebrating 55 Years of THE BAND

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

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

BOOKED BY

THU 3.7

FRI 3.8

• MOL SULLIVAN

• ETHAN SAMUEL BROWN • NICK FAIR

• ANNIE DUKES • THE SMOKESHOWS

• TENNESSEE MUSCLE CANDY

• BABE HONEY

SAT 3.9 • FASCINATION STREET

MON 3.11 • SHEDONIST • CINEMA HEARTS

TUE 3.12

• SHALOM • MERCY HANSON

• ULTIMATE COMEDY FREE LOCAL STAND UP!

WED 3.13 • AARON GILLESPIE (SOLO) • FELICITY

THU 3.14

FRI 3.15

efforts of a group that loves playing around with well-worn tropes and time-tested musical materials. This approach works on the Unknown Affairs track “Lay Down, Stay Down,” which features van Luijtelaar delivering these lines: “Deep conversations without speech / Called a lawyer, briefcase with evidence / Yet there is no one here to reach.” Meanwhile, “I Had a Name” exemplifies the band’s post-Strokes style. Unknown Affairs is catchy and lighthearted — maybe these guys really do need a lawyer with a full briefcase, but their music comes across as refreshingly uncomplicated. Nashville singer and songwriter Matt Sahadi opens. EDD HURT 7 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT

1604 EIGHTH AVE. S.

MUSIC [DIGGIN’ ON STEEL]

NASHVILLE CATS: DAN DUGMORE

Session musicians aren’t typically inclined to take center stage, but the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Nashville Cats series aims to spotlight the careers of Music City’s most impactful accompanists. One such side person to the stars is California native and top-notch pedalsteel player Dan Dugmore. Before arriving in Nashville, Dugmore began his prolific career working with Los Angeles country rockers such as Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Warren Zevon. He relocated to Tennessee in 1990 and notched recordings and performances alongside country music’s biggest stars of the decades that followed. Dugmore’s premier steel playing can be heard on timeless hits by artists such as Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Toby Keith, Martina McBride, Tim McGraw, Kacey Musgraves, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Sturgill Simpson, Trisha Yearwood and many more. The museum’s senior writer and editor Michael McCall will moderate an exclusive interview that will feature photos, film and recordings that coincide with Dugmore’s story. JASON VERSTEGEN

2:30 P.M. AT THE FORD THEATER, COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

222 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY S.

FILM [WINDING ROAD]

PASSPORTS: AN INTERNATIONAL FILM SERIES: INSIDE THE YELLOW COCOON SHELL

winner of the Caméra d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival is a surreal, sonorous meditation (in every sense of the word!), on love, loss, faith, mortality and how to know when it’s the right time to let go. CRAIG D. LINDSEY

MARCH 9-12 AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.

MUSIC [TIME TO GO HOME]

LUCERO W/BOBBY BARE JR.

A lot can change in 25-plus years, but the members of Memphis’ Lucero have been as sturdy as the backbone of their blue-collar roots rock. Still running roads with its original lineup, the fiercely independent band has come to define “sticking to your guns,” and for more than a dozen albums and countless shows, fans keep coming back. Maybe it’s the muddy but comforting growl of frontman Ben Nichols’ sandpaper vocals. Or maybe it’s the rich, Mississippi Delta-rooted fusion of Southern rock, Stax soul, country songcraft and punk spirit — the band’s preferred delivery vehicle for whiskey-soaked sing-alongs and toughluck tales from the other side of the tracks. In any case, they’ve stubbornly kept up the kind of work legacies are built on. Joined by altrock/alt-country rogue Bobby Bare Jr. and his Young Criminals’ Starvation League, they’ll roll through The Basement East Saturday in support of the 2023 album Should’ve Learned by Now for another night full of road-weary wisdom and long-haul dedication — both to each other, and those who call themselves fans. CHRIS PARTON

8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST

917 WOODLAND ST.

DRINK [IN GOOD TASTE]

FOOD &

A SUPPER THAT SUSTAINS US

Parthenon Naos room. This weekend, you can check out Alias Chamber Ensemble’s muchanticipated spring concert, which will honor International Women’s Day with a program of diverse works by trailblazing women composers from various eras. Presented as part of the Parthenon’s popular Echo Chamber Music Series, the evening kicks off with the Australian composer Maria Grenfell’s dynamic Ceol na Fidhle, which is based on traditional Celtic tunes and mixes percussion instruments with solo violin. Audiences can also look forward to Grażyna Bacewicz’s engaging String Quartet No. 4, along with the celebrated American composer Amy Beach’s finely crafted Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet. It’s a marvelous lineup, and it all takes place at the feet of the gleaming 42-foot statue of Athena. What better way to celebrate the wisdom and empowerment of women? AMY STUMPFL

7:30 P.M. AT THE PARTHENON

2500 WEST END AVE

MONDAY / 3.11

FILM

[ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE ORCHESTRA PIT] MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: MORRICONE X3: ENNIO

• JOHNNY WAS HERE

• HER LEATHER JACKET

• OLIVIA MONTGOMERY • SISSY

• KELTONIOUS

• DRY CAMPUS • TIFFANY JOHNSON

• CAMI

2412 GALLATIN AVE @THEEASTROOM

Who’s ready for a three-hour movie from Vietnam about how everything and everyone must come to an end? That’s the general gist of Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, the latest selection from the Belcourt’s Passports: An International Film Series, and it’ll be showing this week. Debut filmmaker Phạm Thiên An gets his Béla Tarr/Apichatpong Weerasethakul on, using long, languid takes to tell the story of Thien (Le Phong Vu), who takes care of his 5-year-old nephew and goes in search of his brother after the brother’s wife suddenly dies. Along the way, he gets reacquainted with past loves and has lengthy yet insightful run-ins with old souls. Did I mention this dude also has unexplained magical powers? Despite tonally moving like an all-too-tranquil dream (I certainly had trouble keeping my eyelids open in the first half), this

Fitz and the Tantrums fans, I have some news that will make your hands clap. Co-lead singer Noelle Scaggs is joining 1 Kitchen culinary director Chris Crary to create the restaurant’s quarterly A Supper That Sustains Us dinner Saturday. Crary and Scaggs will present a four-course dinner in honor of International Women’s Month. The meal will be an ode to the matriarchs, featuring nostalgic flavors of Scaggs’ childhood such as deviled eggs, braised mustard greens and gumbo. After dinner, head up to Harriet’s Rooftop, where music from Scaggs’ favorite artists over the years will provide the backdrop to a nightcap. Tickets are $75, and a portion of proceeds will benefit Reggie’s Helping Hands, which provides farming jobs and nutritious produce to the Nashville community. MARGARET LITTMAN

5-9 P.M. AT 1 HOTEL NASHVILLE

710 DEMONBREUN ST.

SUNDAY / 3.10

MUSIC [CELEBRATING WOMEN COMPOSERS] ALIAS CHAMBER ENSEMBLE

Nashville’s historic Parthenon may be one of the city’s most iconic sites — and it’s certainly one of the most unusual places to enjoy live music, thanks to the unique reverb of the

The 2021 documentary Ennio is just as grand and overwhelming as the lengthy career of the titular film composer it spotlights. Coming in at a walloping 156 minutes, the film features Italian music icon Ennio Morricone telling his life story, mostly explaining how he came to create the countless influential compositions and film scores he did for filmmakers in Italy (Leone, Argento, Pasolini) and abroad (Malick, Carpenter, De Palma) right up until his 2020 death. Director Giuseppe Tornatore (who worked exclusively with Morricone ever since he scored Tornatore’s Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso) rounds up a heavy list of friends, collaborators and admirers who sing Morricone’s praises: Clint Eastwood, Quincy Jones, Quentin Tarantino, Bruce Springsteen, John Williams, Oliver Stone, even the lead singer of Faith No More, Mike Patton. While I would’ve much preferred if this were a multipart Netflix documentary you could binge over a weekend, at least Ennio (which kicks off a three-week series of Morricone-themed Music City Mondays screenings) has a maestro who isn’t running around with a fake nose. CRAIG D. LINDSEY 4:50 AND 8 P.M. AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.

TUESDAY / 3.12

THEATER [SAY IT THREE TIMES] BEETLEJUICE

It’s showtime, Nashville! Broadway’s Beetlejuice arrives at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center next week, promising plenty of devilish, high-octane humor and over-the-top visuals. Based on Tim Burton’s 1988 hit comedy, this fast-paced musical takes a few liberties with the original source material, shifting the

focus from the recently deceased suburban couple just trying to hang onto their dream home to Lydia Deetz, a quirky teen struggling with the loss of her mother. Of course, there’s also quite a bit more face time with the titular “ghost with the most.” And word has it that the creative team has pulled out all the stops on this one, with eye-popping sets by David Korins (Hamilton; Dear Evan Hansen) and lighting by Kenneth Posner (Wicked; Mean Girls). Six-time Tony Award-winner William Ivey Long’s colorful costumes also are notable, capturing the film’s many iconic looks. But while the nostalgia factor is no doubt strong with Beetlejuice, keep in mind that this stage adaptation comes with a hefty content advisory — including mature language and themes and “a lot of the crazy, inappropriate stuff you would expect from a deranged demon.” AMY STUMPFL

MARCH 12-17 AT TPAC’S JACKSON HALL 505 DEADERICK ST.

WEDNESDAY / 3.13

MUSIC [PRESTIGE ACT] MILESTONES

ever made and a band that was the epicenter of the New York City jazz of the 1960s. P.J. KINZER

9 P.M. AT RUDY’S JAZZ ROOM

809 GLEAVER ST.

SPORTS

[INTO THE MOUTH OF MADNESS] MEN’S SEC BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

There’s always something thrilling about hosting the SEC Basketball Tournament, men’s or women’s, in downtown Nashville. The herds of fans in team colors migrate around the city all week, so you can sit at a lunch table between a family in head-to-toe Auburn Tigers gear and a group of retired friends decked out in Alabama crimson. College basketball conference tournaments have a special mystical nature, because it’s the last stand for so many bubble teams hoping to cut down the net and get an automatic berth to The Big Dance. But this tournament is especially important, as the Southeastern Conference has a particularly cutthroat postseason in store for fans. NBA prospect Dalton Knecht and his fellow Tennessee Vols look like a squad that could make a NCAA Final Four run. They’re followed by the bluegrass bluebloods of Kentucky, the Crimson Tide and Auburn all in line for a topfour seed in the NCAA brackets. South Carolina and Florida have all but punched their ticket to the field of 68, but Mississippi State, Mississippi and Texas A&M are still making strong arguments for a berth. This may be the most competitive men’s tournament Bridgestone has ever hosted.

MARCH 13-17

The first Miles Davis album I ever bought was Milestones, rescued 27 years ago from a used bin at a record store just a few blocks from my high school. The 1958 Milestones session marked the return of the young sax player John Coltrane, after a brief hiatus, to the first great Miles Davis Quintet. With the addition of Cannonball Adderley on alto sax, the six-man “Quintet” boasted a lineup with Philly Joe Jones on drums, Red Garland playing piano and the double bass of Paul Chambers. For people who don’t know a lot about jazz, this would be like if the 2016-17 Warriors had signed LeBron to come off the bench or Superman joining the Avengers. MILEStones is a local tribute to the classic bop and modal era of the Quintet, as well as Miles’ late-’60s post-bop Quintet (which featured Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams and Ron Carter). The act, led by drummer Brian Czach, celebrates some of the greatest music

BEETLEJUICE

PHOTO: MATTHEW MURPHY

3407

3.25

3.7 SEAN MCCONNELL WITH LIZ LONGLEY

3.8 CALIFORNIA GUITAR TRIO

3.8 END OF THE LINE: A TRIBUTE TO THE ALLMAN BROTHERS

3.9 CRYS MATTHEWS WITH SETH GLIER

3.9 RON POPE’S “A DROP IN THE OCEAN” 15TH ANNIVERSARY WITH TAYLOR BICKETT & ROBBY HECHT

3.10 MAURICE “MOBETTA” BROWN

3.12 GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS “UNCERTAIN COUNTRY” WINTER TOUR 2024

3.13 TANK AND THE BANGAS - THINK TANK 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY SHOW

3.15 AN EVENING WITH ALYSSA JACEY

3.15 ANTHONY NUNZIATA SINGS ROMANTIC CLASSICS AND ORIGINALS

3.16 DRAG BRUNCH

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

3.26

3.16 NASHVILLE IMPROV COMEDY PRESENTS: MARCH MADNESS

3.17 LAUREN JANE GRACE BACKED BY MIKE PATTON WITH THELMA AND THE SLEAZE

3.18 GIVING GUITARS FOUNDATION BENEFIT CONCERT FEATURING STEVEN CADE & FRIENDS

3.19 WOMEN WITH SOUL: CELEBRATING WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH WITH SARAH MANZO, MIRIAM KASS, AMBER AIS, NANCY DAINES

3.21 AN EVENING WITH INDIGENOUS

3.22 AN EVENING WITH PETER MULVEY

3.23 CITY OF LAUGHS PRESENTS JOSH PRAY FEAT. J.MCNUTT - 2 SHOWS!

3.24 NASHVILLE BEATLES BRUNCH FT. FOREVER ABBEY ROAD AND FRIENDS

3.24 ERIC HAGEN WITH CLAIRE KELLY

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

BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN

The

6:30PM

CHARLIE PEACOCK & ANDI ASHWORTH with NATHAN TASKER at PARNASSUS

Why Everything That Doesn't Matter, Matters So Much WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13 6:30PM

ADAM

SATURDAY

3900

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“HELP SAVE THE Youth of America,” read a flyer of the 1950s from the segregationist White Citizens’ Council. “DON’T BUY NEGRO RECORDS.” As Michael Bertrand continuously demonstrates in his fascinating new book, Southern History Remixed, popular music shaped how Black and white Southerners understood and engaged with one another. Music could both unite and divide. It is a history that hits more than one note — it twangs and jangles and rumbles.

Michael Bertrand is a professor of history at Tennessee State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Memphis. A scholar with interests in popular music, popular culture, memory and social change, he is the author of Race, Rock, and Elvis. He answered questions via email.

South’s encounter with the modern Civil Rights Movement. I end the book with the phrase, “It’s complicated.”

Crow imagery so vital to a segregated society (and earlier radio programming). Every major Southern city had at least one radio station that aimed its programming and onair personalities toward a Black market; the impetus, of course, was advertising dollars. Following World War II, the South enjoyed a prosperity unprecedented in the 20th century. African Americans partook of this affluence. Trying to reach those listeners and their dollars, programs emphasized racial dignity, respect and affirmation. Not insignificantly, those tuning in would include future Black student activists and white rock ’n’ rollers.

This book was born after you read an editorial from 1956 by James Wechsler, the crusading liberal editor of the New York Post. What was the message, and how did it shape Southern History Remixed? It started with the editorial’s title, “The Bystanders.” Wechsler was commenting on the onstage attack by White Citizens’ Council members on Nat “King” Cole in Birmingham, Ala. As he noted, racist paranoia over the popularity of rock ’n’ roll among white teenagers precipitated the assault. Over 3,500 “decent human beings … watched in passive horror” as a handful of ruffians battered the performer. They later cheered and apologized to the singer, but the audience’s failure to rescue Cole resonates. Reading the editorial, it struck me that Wechsler was hinting that the Cole attack appeared made to order for future historians grappling with a changing American

Southern society sometimes appears paradoxical. On one hand, it has enforced racial separation. On the other, Black and white people interact closely, with a cross-fertilization of cultures. Can music help explain this paradox? The key is U.B. Phillips’ article, “The Central Theme of Southern History,” in which he states that “the South shall be and remain a white man’s country.” What drove Phillips was his belief that a biracial Southern society would not produce a biracial Southern culture. But he was wrong. Anyone who charts the interrelationship between musical and cultural trends in the South recognizes the tension inherent in conflating regional identity with whiteness. The study of music likewise calls into question the cultural efficacy of segregationist policies and conventions among those Blacks and whites who were politically, economically and socially marginalized. Despite the erection of the color line and laws limiting physical interaction, their similarities were more prevalent than their differences. Their potential for unity, in opposition to an oligarchical system oppressing them, was very real. And threatening.

In the era after World War II, Black-oriented radio stations popped up around the South. How did they shape Southern history in this period? It is complicated, because most of the Blackoriented radio stations were white-owned. Nevertheless, in the late 1940s the emergence of African American radio programming played a large role in countering the Jim

When we think about white Southerners during the civil rights movement, we tend to focus on those who harassed, beat and oppressed Black activists. If we approach the period through the lens of rock ’n’ roll, does it complicate that picture? Yes. The white student response was never monolithic. The voices of white teens often expressed ambivalence toward segregation and acceptance of desegregation, with students frequently mentioning their attachment to rhythm and blues or rock ’n’ roll. Balancing the perspective as presented in the question, for example, are descriptions of frustrated young white segregationists outside of a school angrily yelling toward the building demanding that their peers join their demonstration. Significantly, most did not. As troublemakers returned to class and terrorized Black students, the majority of whites did little to counter. They did not join in the terrorism, but neither did they stop it. Many of the students may regularly have attended an off-campus morning BlackDJ-hosted radio show on the way to homeroom. Paradoxically, white rock ’n’ rollers generally did not march for civil rights. But it is what else they did not do, and why, that draws our attention.

To read an uncut version of this interview — and more local book coverage — please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. ▼

Michael Bertrand examines how rock ’n’ roll united and divided Southerners across the color line

The Ultimate Chef Throwdown!

Teddy Thompson Presents MY LOVE OF COUNTRY with Special Guests BUDDY MILLER & NICOLE ATKINS with EMILY WEST

WMOT Roots Radio Presents Finally Fridays featuring GOLDPINE, RACHAEL SAGE & ZACH RUSSELL

THE EAGLEMANIACS:

The Music of Don Henley & The Eagles

Backstage Nashville Daytime Hit Songwriters Show feat. FRANK MYERS, ANDY ALBERT, RAY STEPHENSON & GARY NICHOLS with ERIN VIANCOURT + CLAIRE KELLY

GENE WATSON & MORE!

3/21 BETH ORTON WITH SAM AMIDON

3/22 RESURRECTION: A JOURNEY TRIBUTE 3/23 FAB NASHVILLE A BEATLES TRIBUTE 3/23 HOGSLOP STRING BAND

3/24 THE MINKS WITH THE LOVE-IN 3/25 BLUEBIRD ON 3RD

VERA BLOOM with BADCULTURE

THE TIME JUMPERS

THE WOMEN OF COUNTRY

Hosted by TEZZA with JULIA COLE, GRACE LEER, CATIE OFFERMAN, ALEX KLINE, AVA PAIGE + MORE!

KAYLEY BISHOP “HOLD ON HONEY”

Release Party with AUTUMN MCENTIRE, STEVENSON EVERETT & ROAN ASH

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

3/26 MUSIC ON THE MOVE 3/27 JEDD HUGHES WITH THE DANBERRYS 3/28 FIGHTER FEST 3/29 EAST NASH GRASS 3/30 GUILTY PLEASURES 3/31 SARAH SHOOK & THE DISARMERS WITH MALI VELASQUEZ 4/6 PAT MCLAUGHLIN BAND 4/7 LOCKELAND STRINGS FEAT. NATALIE PRASS, CAITLIN ROSE, JOHANNA SAMUELS & LYDIA LUCE 4/10 EMILY WEST 4/11 BACKSTAGE AT 3RD: RHETT MCDANIEL 4/11 GRADY SPENCER & THE WORK 4/12 THE FLOATING MEN SOLD OUT!

DUSTBOWL REVIVAL

mar 8 mar 9 mar 10 mar 11 mar 12

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Tanner Usrey w/ Kat Hasty qdp

jonathan richman ft. tommy larkins on drums mclusky w/ ganser

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mar 25

mar 26 mar 27 mar 28 mar 29 mar 30

sierra hull w/ gabe lee donna missal

between the buried and me w/ the acacia strain

between the buried and me w/ the acacia strain

jervis campbell w/ Nathan Colberg & Ivan Theva a plea for purging w/ Orthodox, Alert the Sky, Alcina & Get Your Guns

a plea for purging w/ Orthodox, Alert the Sky, Alcina & No Cure

apr 6 apr 7 apr 8 apr 9 apr 10 apr 12 apr 13 apr 14 apr 15 apr 17 apr 18 apr 20 apr 22 apr 23 apr 24 apr 25

oct

mar 7

ZDAN and Terra Lightfoot (7pm)

mar 7 mar 8 mar 8 mar 9 mar 9

Josh Morningstar (9pm)

Tow'rs w/ A Boy And His Kite (7pm)

no control: a bad religion tribute (9pm)

the Vices w/ Matt Sahadi (7pm)

the wolves of glendale (9pm)

wheatus w/ Gabrielle Sterbenz (6:30pm)

mar 10 mar 10 mar 11 mar 11 mar 12 mar 13

Future Crib, Psymon Psine (9pm)

THUS LOVE + Native Sun (7pm)

Danielle Durack w/ Laura Berens & Purser (9pm)

lylak Bo Staloch w/ Joy Hotchkiss (7pm)

69 eyes w/ The Bites & Budderside tiny habits w/ Beane maoli w/ Andrew Duhon & Lindsay James stop light observations w/ Easy Honey caleb hearon & annie dirusso guided by voices w/ John P. Strohm smallpools x grayscale w/ Moody Joody and The Romance

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Willi Carlisle w/ Nat Myers

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Darren Kiely giant rooks

soft kill w/ Gumm & Liberty & Justice

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Mar 13 mar 14 mar 14 mar 15

mar 15

mar 16

mar 16

mar 17

mar 18

mar 18 mar 20

Meg McRee & Harper O'Neill (9pm)

My Politic, Sophie Gault (7pm)

Philip Bowen w/ Donny Van Slee (9pm)

harvey street collective w/ molly forbese (7pm)

Jacuzzi Suite, Extravision, Pressure Heaven (9pm)

Colton Sturtz w/ Hal O'Dell and Jamie Adamson (7pm)

Case Bloom, DJ Day (9pm)

St. Owsley

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

Sam Weber & Max Helgemo (10pm) king lazy eye w/ High King Kai (7pm)

4/27 5/3

5/23 5/31 6/9

5/8

SOUTH

A SHOT OF GOOD LUCK

Jenny Lewis embraces Nashville’s wide range of sounds on Joy’All

BY ELI MOTYCKA

JENNY LEWIS’ JOY’ALL BALL graces the Ryman on Wednesday, capping a 12-stop tour leg that passed up some of the biggest cities in favor of smaller markets and skipped the East Coast altogether. There will be great music as well as a real show, like at every Lewis engagement. Somehow tickets had not sold out at press time.

Lewis’ tour through five decades of popular culture continues. Born in Las Vegas and reared by lounge-performing parents based in the San Fernando Valley, Lewis launched a screen acting career as a child, at least partially out of financial necessity. By 1998, she had parlayed her show-business adolescence into a music career, fronting indie-rock band Rilo Kiley and lending vocal talent to The Postal Service a few years later. More collaborations followed, including her lauded 2006 partnership with The Watson Twins on Rabbit Fur Coat, and an exceptional run of solo albums including 2014’s The Voyager and 2019’s On the Line. With sequined gowns, neon palettes, VHS-core music videos, sunburst guitars and an absurdist Instagram presence, she is equally a daughter of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s who fits perfectly into the chaos of today.

She puts a little of everything into Joy’All, her country-inflected 2023 release produced by Nashville legend Dave Cobb. There are songs about puppies and trucks, for a start. There are also songs about avoiding psychological abuse and recognizing delusions of grandeur; living, learning and falling in love; and breaking up and getting older.

“I’m pretty sure I made it up,” Lewis told NPR’s World Cafe last summer about the album’s titular portmanteau. “It sets the intention of the record in this moment in history: finding the joy through the shadows.”

Lewis made the record at RCA Studio A in Nashville, where she now lives at least part of her busy life. Lewis sightings filter in here and there — mingling in the Belcourt lobby, dropping in on a Soft Junk show in East Nashville, popping up for an album-release party at Eastside Bowl in June. Alongside her hypoallergenic dog, Bobby Rhubarb Lewis, she’s built a life in Music City since landing here in 2018.

“I didn’t go to Nashville to necessarily make music or ‘make it’ in music,” Lewis tells the Scene “I went to listen to music, and to learn about music — and to have a chiller lifestyle. It’s become about music, inevitably. But it wasn’t really why I moved to the city. I moved to the city for the people, and my friends, and for the hangs.”

A self-described homebody, Lewis has built her Nashville life on the low-key and the familiar: walking the mall (Rivergate), scoping out

Playing 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 13, at the Ryman

antique malls and posting up at Mas Tacos. She’s about halfway through a $1,000 Joyland gift card she received three years ago from Bill Murray. Her radio dial favors 101.1 The Beat. Lewis loves playing the Ryman because of its rich music history and the short walk across the alley to Robert’s Western World.

“People say, ‘You live in Nashville, it must be all country music,’ and it’s not,” she says. “There’s great indie and alternative and great hip-hop. It’s a totally diverse music scene, which is amazing. You can go over to the Palace — I think that’s probably my favorite bar in Nashville — and learn so much just watching those incredible musicians.”

In that same NPR interview, Lewis describes a cosmic songwriting connection to John Prine and recounts finding a spangly gown owned by Skeeter Davis at Black Shag Vintage in East Nashville. She wears it on the Joy’All cover, intentionally made in the image of Nashville albums

from Davis’ heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.

Country music shares Lewis’ strong emphasis on storytelling and affinity for pedal steel, which has been part of the instrumentation on her albums since the Rilo Kiley days. Her self-effacing Instagram posts and all-femme backing band — including locals Megan Coleman, Ryan Madora and Jess Nolan, plus Nicole Lawrence, who splits time between Los Angeles and NYC — are welcome antidotes to the ascendant bro country dominating Music Row billboards and Lower Broadway bars, a reminder of Nashville’s many sounds.

Her Ryman show includes an opening set from Logan Ledger exclusive to this stop. Locals might recognize the Western crooner from his sessions at Brown’s Diner or Layman Drug Co., the Chestnut Hill recording studio on Third Avenue South that stands like a relic of a different era. Deep twangy vocals, porkchop sideburns and a thick auburn mustache put Ledger spiritu-

ally in sync with the Ryman’s Opry history.

Ledger joins Hayden Pedigo, a young Texan guitarist touring with Lewis, on the show’s undercard. Odds are good that both will don massive cowboy hats. Pedigo’s prodigious fingerstyle playing — one pillar of a career spanning runway fashion and an unsuccessful bid for political office in Amarillo — has earned him widespread acclaim since he was a teenager. Still, Pedigo is aware that instrumental guitar has commercial limits.

“Every single time I play a show opening for Jenny, it really hits me how bonkers it is to play solo instrumental guitar music for crowds this big,” Pedigo wrote on Instagram recently. “In terms of openers I was probably the least ‘safe’ choice Jenny could have made, but it’s truly a testament to how open she is to putting a spotlight on off kilter music people might not usually listen to.” ▼

THAT RINGING SOUND

Northern Irish punks Protex get ready for their Nashville debut

BY P.J. KINZER

ON THE OPENING night of The Clash’s 1977

Out of Control Tour, Belfast gave the Londoners one of the most chaotic nights they ever had on the road. Members of Belfast underground bands like Stiff Little Fingers and Rudi, as well as musician and novelist Thomas Paul Burgess, were all in attendance. And as Protex’s Aiden Murtagh tells it, the show was a big part of his band’s origin story.

“We were all pretty young at the time — actually must have been about 16, maybe 17,” Murtagh says on a trans-Atlantic video call. “The first Clash gig was a big thing in Belfast. Firstly, there were very few bands that came over to play Belfast because of The Troubles.”

He’s referring to a period of high tension and violence that lasted from the late 1960s through the late ’90s, in which Unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the U.K. fought with republicans who believed the land was rightfully a part of Ireland. Over the 30-year period, the conflict killed more than 3,000 people, more than half of whom scholarly studies say were civilians. Among much else that was disrupted, most tours steered clear of Northern Ireland; but for Clash frontman Joe Strummer and his band of political provocateurs, opening a tour at Belfast’s Ulster Hall was a statement. However, the insurance company pulled the plug on its coverage, forcing organizers to call off the show before The Clash could take the stage.

“And a riot started,” Murtagh explains, very matter-of-factly, as if that were the only logical outcome of shutting down a Clash show under those circumstances. “We went two streets away where the hotel was that The Clash were staying in. And we met Joe Strummer. And we spent the evening just talking music and politics

MUSIC: THE SPIN

DEEP BREATH

BY ADDIE MOORE

— everything else, with Joe Strummer and then the rest of the band.”

The experience poured a concrete foundation for what would become Murtaugh’s band, who took their name from The Clash’s song “Protex Blue.” The evening’s events were exceptionally inspirational to Murtagh and his friends.

“That gig showed everybody, including ourselves, just how big the punk community was in Belfast,” he tells me. “Because during The Troubles in Belfast at that time, everybody really stayed in their own areas, because it was just too dangerous. Or it’s just what everybody did — and what you were conditioned to do by the paramilitaries as well.”

Within a year, Protex released their first single, the power-pop anthem “Don’t Ring Me Up,” via Good Vibrations — the label that sent other punk singles from Northern Ireland, like The Undertones’ indelible “Teenage Kicks,” out into the world. While many punk bands were becoming more aggressive, Protex cultivated a bittersweet beauty in their melodies. Music became an escape from the bleak, oppressive world Murtagh and his bandmates lived in daily.

“It was in our minds,” he recalls. “We did not want to write about The Troubles. I had people who’ve had experience of The Troubles. My family has. My family business has. And I really didn’t want to be writing about it.”

Instead, much like his Good Vibrations peers, Murtagh chose to write about girls, teenage rebellion and dreaming of leaving their lives behind for better ones. In many ways, their music had as much in common with the mid20th-century American pop of Ricky Nelson as it did the Sex Pistols or The Jam. In their original three-year run, the Protex boys released one al-

Playing 7 p.m. Saturday, March 9, at Eastside Bowl

THURSDAY NIGHT, local indie-rock notables Pale Lungs’ tour with Toronto “it band” PONY kicked off at The End. The co-headliners proved to be a formidable one-two punch, but two more Nashville acts came first, confirming that a crucial corner of the local rock scene has a clean bill of health.

Industrial dream-pop outfit Pressure Heaven opened the evening. (Sadly, the night didn’t go as planned for our photog, and he arrived after their set was over. Cue the sad trombones.) The group’s online presence gives the impression that it’s a guitar-and-vocals duo. This checked out visually because the band’s fog machine almost completely obscured the drums onstage. Surely, that kit was only there for backlining purposes — no need to brace yourself for a jump scare, right? But upon the first song hitting its stride, a still-invisible drummer brought even more brutality and musical precision to “Spiral” and other selections from the growing Pressure Heaven catalog.

The best visual was what you didn’t see, and it added an element of surprise and intrigue to one of the most imaginative local acts that might not yet be on your radar. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Pressure Heaven

bum and four singles, and eventually moved up to the much bigger Polydor Records. But in 1981, the band was dropped from its contract, and it split up. Around that time, British tabloids were echoing the sentiment many punks had been espousing for years, declaring punk dead.

For so many of the first-wave punk bands, that was how things concluded: Post-dissolution, the members would go on with their lives in work or school. Murtagh went into the hotel management business, and that’s where the story of Protex easily could have ended — to live on as oral history passed down by record-store clerks.

But then the punk sleuths of the Information Age found out about Protex, and their ebullient energy led to 2010 reissues of the band’s crucial catalog via revivalist imprint Sing Sing Records. “We didn’t even realize that there was anybody who wanted to hear us,” Murtagh says.

Quickly, offers came in for tours and a pro-

develop a devoted and still-growing following like that of Total Wife, fellow locals with more mileage under their belt. After Pressure Heaven set the bar incredibly high, solo act Bogues served a change of pace. On songs from his 2023 EP I Know You’re Getting Older, he offered up storytelling that relied as much on his multiple guitars — three for six songs, per his witty stage banter — and effects pedals as it did his poetic reflections on growing up.

Once the two pillars of PONY — singer Sam Bielanski and guitarist Matty Morand — and their rhythm section started holding court, one notion about the quartet’s engaging, active stage presence and its ’90s-tinged power-pop gems like “Très Jolie” became unshakable. Visually and sonically, they are the kind of band you for sure would’ve heard and maybe even seen on a TV drama targeting a younger audience in the ’90s or early Aughts. Think Beverly Hills, 90210 or, better yet, Dawson’s Creek. Fittingly, after-the-fact perusing of press materials revealed that a PONY song made it onto an episode of Canadian national treasure Degrassi.

Pale Lungs launched its tour in a venue that’s very familiar to the group and its fans. Indeed, the release show for the band’s 2023 self-titled album took place at The End one year and three days prior. Most coverage of Pale Lungs over the past year or so has put over how the shoegaze- and emo-flavored group now focuses as much on telling stories through words as it does on concocting musical blends of guitar-rock reference points. That proved true throughout a set that captivated a considerably packed house for a weeknight. Creative touches like the steel-guitar sound that’s not an

posal to play Hotel Vegas in Austin, Texas, for SXSW, which the band ended up doing four times. And then fans in Austin began asking for new Protex music. “To be honest,” Murtagh says, “I hadn’t thought about that. So that just changed the whole dimension of the band.”

In the ensuing years, Protex released two more LPs, 2017’s Tightrope and 2022’s Don’t Waste My Time. Murtagh, now in his mid-60s, is the sole original member. With the group’s current roster, he’s making music that’s impressively faithful to the original formula — fast, loud, sweet and effervescent. You can hear it for yourself when the band makes their Nashville debut Saturday, with support from The Sleeveens and Black Venus. And Murtagh has no plans for the story to end anytime soon.

“Hopefully we can start recording now this year for another album. As well as more gigs. We always want more gigs.” ▼

actual steel guitar on the elegiac “Burning Time” — at least, it wasn’t played on steel guitar on Thursday — sounded as well-executed onstage as they do on the album.

It made sense to stick with DIY tradition and have the top-drawing local act go on last, but with all due respect to Pale Lungs, few bands between here and Toronto could’ve topped that PONY set. While the out-of-towners shone brightest, the rest of the bill cast a positive light on indie rock in Music City, bubbling across an assortment of scenes well-stocked with both established acts and those on the rise. ▼

PHOTO: STEVE CROSS

SNAPPING INTO FOCUS: PALE LUNGS

THU 3.7 9-12pm MASON, MARCUS TURNER,

SAT 3.9 4-7pm BANJOLA 9-12pm MARK MANNING, ELLIOT DUKE, HENNESSY, MARGARET, $10

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

Saturday, March 9

SONGWRITER SESSION

Mark Miller and Mac McAnally

NOON · FORD THEATER

Saturday, March 9

NASHVILLE CATS

Dan Dugmore

2:30 pm · FORD THEATER

Sunday, March 10

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

John McEuen

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, March 16

HATCH SHOW PRINT

Block Party

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

HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP

WITNESS HISTORY

Museum Membership Receive

Sunday, March 17

PANEL DISCUSSION

Celtic and Country Music Connections

With Altan and Jerry Douglas 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, March 23

SONGWRITER SESSION

Ashley Cooke

NOON · FORD THEATER

Sunday, March 24

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Striking Matches 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, April 6

POETS AND PROPHETS

Jackie DeShannon 2:30 pm · CMA THEATER

ACROSS

1 Zeroes, in soccer

5 Comedic takedown

10 Includes

13 Peak of revelation?

14 Happen next

15 Lead-in to -cide

16 *A little bit of everything

18 Org. whose initials omit its “E” (for “Explosives”)

19 Lousy (with)

20 Instrument with a bell

21 First Muslim Nobel Laureate (1978)

23 Character with a famous opening line?

25 Resolve

26 Exposes personal information about online, informally

27 Cultured dessert option

30 Former Yankee nickname

31 Crown, in Persian

33 *1957 hit by the Edsels with a nonsense title

35 Depot: Abbr.

38 Indian spice mixes

40 Cue preceder

41 *”Eventually ...”

43 Casual rejection

45 So

46 Adolph who purchased The New York Times in 1896

48 Potentially offensive, say

52 Prepare for a kiss, perhaps

54 Home of some of the best drivers in No. America

56 Actress Juliette

57 Middling

59 Risk-taker’s mantra, in brief

60 Hoppy inits.

61 Upside-down parts of a roller coaster ride — represented twice in the answer to each of this puzzle’s starred clues

64 Cause of some head-scratching

65 “You shouldn’t have!”

66 Randy looks

67 Appreciated, as a joke

68 Overly involved

69 Campus health and safety org.

DOWN

1 Ex ___ (from nothing: Lat.)

2 Up the creek

3 “Past post” wager at the track, e.g.

4 One-named singer with the 2016 #1 hit “Cheap Thrills”

5 Winged mammal with rustcolored fur

6 Not snookered by

7 Arthur with a statue on Richmond’s Monument Avenue

8 Appeal, as for peace

9 Like the responses of “yes” or “no”

10 Journey of the mind

11 Have no co-conspirators

12 Gradual transition, in art

13 Very valuable violin, informally

17 Bean or noodle

22 Marginally

24 “Me, too!”

25 Brotherly greeting

28 Depression precursor

29 ___ Harbour, Fla.

32 Cured Spanish meat

34 Sitting meditation pose

35 Sign of an injury, maybe

36 Artoo’s partner

37 Measure of energy savings, as when the meter runs in reverse

39 1/3,600th of a deg.

42 Literature Nobelist Morrison

44 Extra-sweaty meditative exercise

47 Kind of sense

49 Like 20, for Little League

50 Like wood prepped for papermaking

51 Sects’ symbol?

53 Subject covered in a madrasa

55 Possible hurdle for getting a master’s, for short

57 Gets hard to see through, in a way, with “up”

58 Does impressions of

62 Need to pay

63 L.A.P.D. head?

Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/ crosswords ($39.95 a year).

Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay. Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/studentcrosswords.

PUZZLE BY SIMEON SEIGEL

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MAHA F. ALHASSAN VS. NADER ALHASSAN

Public Auction to satisfy owner’s lien for unpaid storage rent. Fox Moving and Storage of Nashville, LLC on March 21st at 9 am. The auction will be held at 5030 Harding Place Nashville, TN 37211. The following units will be sold to the highest bidder: Paris Henriksen, Rangoni Shoes, and David Campbell.

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