Nashville Scene 6-2-22

JUNE 2–8, 2022 I VOLUME 41 I NUMBER 18 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

The cult classic Ernest Goes to Camp turns 35 this summer.

Here’s a look at the people who were there and the continuing love for the man at the center of it. | BY J.R. LIND

CITY LIMITS: METRO SCHOOL YEAR ENDS WITH TALK OF SHOOTINGS AND SAFETY MEASURES PAGE 7 CULTURE: BACK TO BLACK BURLESQUE DISSOLVES RACIAL BARRIERS IN THE DANCE SCENE PAGE 29 cover_6-2-22.indd 1

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CONTENTS

JUNE 2, 2022

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26

Guns in Schools..........................................7

Crawl Space: June 2022......................... 26

CITY LIMITS

ART

The final days of the Metro school year were spent talking about shootings and safety measures

June’s First Saturday art events feature abstract painting, video installations and Moby Dick

BY KELSEY BEYELER

BY JOE NOLAN

This Is the Thunderdome ...........................7

Off-Site: Kimia Ferdowsi Kline in Paris ..... 27

The city is steadily rolling toward a pricey new domed football stadium

BY ELI MOTYCKA

The Nashville native speaks about her folkart-influenced paintings, on view at a Parisian gallery in June

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

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

29

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THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: Help Nü Mangos’Aaron Tyler King Recover From Aural Surgery Dollar General Denies Entry to Legal Proxies at Annual Shareholder Meeting Layer Cake and Cherry Lounge to Open in SoBro

CULTURE

COVER STORY

Skin in the Game

Worrell History

The cult classic Ernest Goes to Camp turns 35 this summer. Here’s a look at the people who were there and the continuing love for the man at the center of it.

BY J.R. LIND

Back to Black Burlesque dissolves racial barriers in the dance scene

Report Recommends New Office of Housing

BY KATELYNN WHITE

31

ON THE COVER:

Illustration by Holly Carden

MUSIC

15

Notes From Underground ....................... 31 The East Room, a bastion of Nashville’s music and comedy communities, turns 10

CRITICS’ PICKS Jeremy Garrett Bluegrass Band, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, S.G. Goodman Album Release, The Godfather, Nashville R&B Fest, Big K.R.I.T., Fanny: The Right to Rock and more

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

The New Old-Fashioned Way .................. 31 Superchunk expands an indie legacy with introspective LP Wild Loneliness

BY P.J. KINZER

21

Happy Returns......................................... 32

Sugar Shock: Ice Cream Dreams

34

Greg Bryant prepares to reunite with Concurrence and Greg Bryant Expansion

FOOD AND DRINK

BY RON WYNN

At Sarabhas Creamery, Gursharan Singh and Manpreet Gill offer unbeatable Indian-style ice cream

FILM

BY MEGAN SELING

Primal Stream 77

24

A queer Asian American take on Pride and Prejudice, supplemental Jackassery and more, now available to stream

PERFORMING ARTS

BY JASON SHAWHAN

Honoring the Journey

FALL looks to build understanding about chronic pain with A Bending of Its Own Kind 2.0

BY AMY STUMPFL

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37

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

38

BOOKS

MARKETPLACE

An Unfamiliar Past Woman of Light explores the persistence of stories

BY SARA BETH WEST AND CHAPTER 16

SCENERY Arts and Culture News From the Nashville Scene

Looking for the latest on art and culture in Nashville? Subscribe to Scenery, our weekly newsletter that covers visual art, theater, comedy, books, film and more.

Subscribe at nashvillescene.com/subscribe

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AFTER THE DEVASTATING LOSS OF 19 CHILDREN AND TWO TEACHERS IN A SCHOOL SHOOTING, GOP LAWMAKERS DISTORT WHAT’S AT THE HEART OF THE ISSUE This letter may be the hardest one I’ve ever written, but I wanted to respond to recent remarks made by Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr. With clear anguish, Kerr commented on the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two adults were killed. These mass shootings’ recurrence is on everyone’s minds. The Uvalde event was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, as was 2012’s Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut, which took the lives of 20 children and six adults.

To date, there have been more mass shootings in 2022 than days in the year. The U.S. ended 2021 with 692 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive. In 2021, more American children 17 and under died from gun violence (1,560) than died from COVID-19 during the entire pandemic (1,070). As of this writing, there have been 27 school shootings this year. Other mass shootings have recently occurred in Buffalo, at a church in Southern California and in Dallas.

All this built up to Coach Kerr taking time at a pregame press conference to talk not about basketball, but about the Uvalde shooting — about background checks becoming law. Currently, background checks are not required for gun sales and transfers by unlicensed and private sellers. Kerr was angry and filled with disbelief as he called out those in power who he feels could make a change: “There are 50 senators right now who refuse to vote on HR 8, which is a background-check rule the House passed a couple years ago.

It’s been sitting there for two years. There’s a reason they won’t vote on it: to hold onto power.” Kerr directly asked Mitch McConnell and others: “Are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our churchgoers?

Because that’s what it looks like.”

I think many have the wrong idea here. Despite what Coach Kerr said, that background checks could reduce the ease of gun buying, all many heard was “gun control.” And immediately they covered their ears, spouting about all the rights that would be stomped on in the name of gun control.

I am a gun owner and an avid hunter, and that’s not what I heard. What I heard from Kerr made sense to me. I do believe, given

PHOTO: REUTERS/MARCO BELLO

FROM BILL FREEMAN

all we’ve experienced as a nation, that when it comes to gun violence, it is indeed too easy for too many violent people to get a gun. I also know, as President Biden recently stated, that “common sense gun laws can’t and won’t prevent every tragedy. But we know they work and have a positive impact.”

Furthermore, a number of polls taken over the years show that the majority of Americans support universal background checks for those wanting to buy guns. A 2018 Gallup poll found that 92 percent of people supported “requiring background checks for all gun sales,” and in 2019, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 94 percent of American voters supported universal background checks. But as Kerr said, we have 50 senators “holding us hostage” and not doing what the American people want. Perhaps he’s right.

As reported by The New York Times, within hours of last week’s shooting, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) “moved to clear the way to force votes in coming days on legislation that would strengthen background checks for gun purchasers … but that Republican senators gave little indication that their positions had changed.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) gave a stirring plea, asking his colleagues why they’d work to be “in a position of authority if … as the slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing?” Any gun legislation would require 60 votes due to the Senate’s filibuster rules. So far, it just doesn’t look promising.

Still, we must do more than offer prayers.

Native Texan Matthew McConaughey may have recently said it best: “The true call to action now is for every American to take a longer and deeper look in the mirror, and ask ourselves, ‘What is it that we truly value?

How do we repair the problem? What small sacrifices can we individually take today, to preserve a healthier and safer nation, state and neighborhood tomorrow?’ We cannot … make excuses, and accept these tragic realities as the status quo. … This is an epidemic we can control, and whichever side of the aisle we may stand on, we all know we can do better.”

Editor-in-Chief D. Patrick Rodgers Managing Editor Alejandro Ramirez Senior Editor Dana Kopp Franklin Arts Editor Laura Hutson Hunter Culture Editor Erica Ciccarone Music and Listings Editor Stephen Trageser Contributing Editor Jack Silverman Staff Writers Kelsey Beyeler, Stephen Elliott, Hannah Herner, J.R. Lind, Eli Motycka, William Williams, KateLynn White Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Steve Erickson, Nancy Floyd, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Kashif Andrew Graham, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steven Hale, Steve Haruch, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Daryl Sanders, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Nadine Smith, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Abby White, Andrea Williams, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Art Director Elizabeth Jones Photographers Eric England, Matt Masters, Daniel Meigs Graphic Designers Mary Louise Meadors, Tracey Starck Production Coordinator Christie Passarello Festival Director Olivia Britton Marketing and Promotions Manager Robin Fomusa Publisher Mike Smith Senior Advertising Solutions Managers Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Advertising Solutions Managers Richard Jacques, Deborah Laufer, Niki Tyree Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Jada Goggins, Audry Houle, Alissa Wetzel Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis For advertising information please contact: Mike Smith, msmith@nashvillescene.com or 615-844-9238 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

GUNS IN SCHOOLS The final days of the Metro school year were spent talking about shootings and safety measures

BY KELSEY BEYELER

A

n already difficult school year ended on a deeply somber note last week as news of the Uvalde school shooting devastated the nation. On May 24, 19 children and two teachers were killed when 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos entered Robb Elementary School in the small Texas town. Metro Nashville Public Schools board members were meeting as the news broke, and Director of Schools Adrienne Battle responded.

“Children have the right to learn and thrive in a safe environment, free from violence or tragedy, and far too often society fails in protecting that right,” Battle said at the school board meeting.

Battle also sent a letter to parents later that evening, noting, “For two years we have been living through a pandemic caused by COVID-19, but this is a stark reminder that too many of us have lived with an epidemic of gun violence for all our lives.” Battle herself experienced a school shooting in 1994 while enrolled at J.T. Moore Middle School. A fellow student brought a gun to school; it went off while being handled by a classmate, killing 13-year-old Terrance Murray.

Around 16 guns have been recovered in Metro schools this year, though none were fired on school premises. Less than a week before the Uvalde shooting, an 18-year-old was killed and a 17-year-old injured during a shooting at Riverdale High School’s graduation ceremony in Murfreesboro.

The shooter, also 17, is in police custody and facing a first-degree murder charge.

Just two days after the Ulvalde shooting, a 16-year-old MNPS student was found with

METROPOLITIK

THIS IS THE THUNDERDOME The city is steadily rolling toward a pricey new domed football stadium

BY ELI MOTYCKA

M

etro government is caught in a thicket of legal and financial obligations that could cost the city more than a billion dollars stemming from the city’s 1996 lease with the Tennessee Titans.

The lease, signed under former Mayor Phil Bredesen on terms favorable to the professional football team, is a relic of the city’s past — a time when Nashville sought the cachet of a major U.S. city. It put Nashville on the hook to guarantee a stadium in “First Class Condition,” an ambiguously defined term that rests on a standard set by comparable sports facili-

JUST TWO DAYS AFTER THE ULVALDE SHOOTING, A 16-YEAR-OLD MNPS STUDENT WAS FOUND WITH A LOADED GUN AT STRATFORD STEM MAGNET SCHOOL. ACCORDING TO THE METRO NASHVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT, “THE TEEN SAID HE WAS CARRYING THE PISTOL FOR PROTECTION.”

a loaded gun at Stratford STEM Magnet School. According to the Metro Nashville Police Department, “The teen said he was carrying the pistol for protection.”

Following the Uvalde shooting, MNPS provided mental health resources and consulted with its security department and MNPD. Though no immediate changes were made to the district’s protocols, district spokesperson Sean Braisted says, “We’ll continue to discuss and determine whether new steps need to be taken to align with best practices for protecting against these situations.” Braisted also notes that district schools have doors that lock from the inside, single entry points, cameras and safety drills.

MNPD Chief John Drake deployed officers to elementary schools following the Uvalde shooting. Typically, middle and high schools have school resource officers, but not elementary schools. SROs are security officers who work for the MNPD rather than the school district — typically, they are armed. MNPS also has its own security department, but members of that department aren’t stationed at specific schools — they work across the district and respond when needed. Some schools also budget for their own security personnel.

SROs in schools is a controversial topic. Research has shown that they negatively and disproportionately impact students of color. District 4 school board representative John Little, who has spoken about gun violence before, tells the Scene that he supported having a heightened security presence following the Uvalde shooting. But, Little says: “We have to have a conversation with the community, with parents, with teachers [and] with

stakeholders. Because the school-to-prison pipeline is real, and I’ve been an opponent of having SROs in our elementary schools.

And so we have to think about, ‘Well, if there’s not SROs, and parents want safety, what alternative does that look like?’ I don’t think it has to be police officers.”

As reported by the Associated Press, officers were at the scene of the Uvalde shooting for more than an hour before Ramos was killed by Border Patrol tactical officers. This deadly event — along with studies and additional information about other school shootings — shows that law enforcement isn’t always effective in quickly shutting situations like these down.

In a letter sent to parents on May 26, Battle notes, “We want to be safe and secure, but we also want to ensure that we are making sound decisions based on evidence-based research that truly make us safer while also making sure we don’t disrupt or detract from the learning environment.”

Conservative lawmakers have discussed the need to “harden” schools with tactics like ramping up security and arming teachers. Research, however, suggests that arming school staff is more likely to expose students to gun violence than deter it.

“Arming teachers is not the answer; more guns in schools is not the answer,”

reads a statement from the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association, Nashville’s teachers’ union. “What we need is to address the policies that make it so easy to acquire guns. We need action from state and federal legislators, and we need it now.”

Last year, the Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation allowing people 21 and older to carry a handgun without a permit — despite disapproval from law enforcement across the state.

This year, a bill seeking to lower the minimum gun-carrying age from 21 to 18 passed the House but not the Senate. Gov. Bill Lee — who tweeted last week that he and his wife were “heartbroken by the horrific tragedy” in Texas — prioritized last year’s gun-related legislation.

Following the Uvalde shooting, state Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) called on Gov. Lee to freeze open-carry laws and call a special session to repeal gun legislation and advance mental-healthcare-related laws.

“This is something that has just rocked our nation, but it continues to happen again and again,” says school board representative Little. “Politicians are gonna be politicians. I just wish we can have a common sense approach.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

ties around the country. Now, the two options considered by current Mayor John Cooper require Metro to put billions of dollars of public money toward the team’s facility: either a completely gutted Nissan Stadium, or a brand-new domed arena neighboring the current stadium.

Stadiums comparable to the Nissan facilities have been torn down or overhauled in the past 26 years, pushing that First Class Condition standard (and the city’s associated financial obligations) higher and higher. The city stopped its upkeep reimbursements at some point in the past few years — Nissan Stadium was mentioned once in a decade’s worth of capital improvements budgets, when the city listed $25 million for miscellaneous improvements in 2016. The Titans say they’ve incurred another $27 million in maintenance, for which they haven’t been reimbursed. The team factored back payments into its estimation of the city’s total obligations, a whopping $1.8 billion through 2039 — a number that finally came out at a May 19 Metro Sports Authority meeting.

In May, the mayor released Metro’s Capital Improvements Budget, pinning a new stadium at $2 billion. After 72 hours and a few questions from coun-

cilmembers, Metro finance indicated it had made a “clerical error,” and the number settled at $2.2 billion.

Much of the deal has moved along at a pace set by the Titans. As a for-profit company that sells football, the team naturally has a strong interest

in a shiny new domed stadium. Though ostensibly interested in spending as little taxpayer money as possible, the city has agreed not to contest the Titans’ numbers with its own due diligence, essentially accepting the team’s astronomical estimates.

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CITY LIMITS

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Who said Whiskey couldn’t be

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The day the Titans lobbed Metro’s billion-dollar obligation at the Metro Sports Authority, the mayor dropped a press release that ended in surrender: “We have no plans to commission another study to tell us what we already know: renovating the stadium would cost Nashvillians hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Rather than play hardball (conduct minimal Nissan upgrades, challenge the Titans to sue) or play softball (respond with its own renovation estimates), the city has chosen to not really play ball at all. Metro, represented in negotiations by the mayor’s office, has deferred to the team at major junctures in stadium talks. According to a tweet from Cooper’s former scheduler Ariel Hughes, the Titans have had a standing Monday meeting with the mayor since the fall. In early May, news broke that the Titans had decided on an architecture firm to do concept designs for a new stadium.

The mayor’s office has focused on communicating the advantages of a new stadium while minimizing its multibillion-dollar price tag. Cooper’s main argument rests in a complicated financing plan that will piece together state and local tax revenue, a $500 million gift from the state and a still-undetermined contribution from the Titans expected to be around $700 million. If this is close to right, the city will attempt to close a $1.2 billion gap with a combination of hospitality tax revenue and a special sales tax district. This district would route state and local sales taxes toward stadium debt payments — all taxes collected inside the stadium (even for non-Titans events, like, for instance, a World Cup) and half of all taxes collected in the 130 acres surrounding the stadium, currently an industrial floodplain.

The mayor reduced the complexities of the plan in

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Ahead of its May 24 meeting, the Metro Nashville Public Schools board received a letter from Councilmember At-Large Burkley Allen, who asked if the district could cut its budget by $10 million to $12 million. Writes our own Kelsey Beyeler, “Between Councilmember Allen’s letter and the specific budget items Mayor John Cooper proposed in his State of Metro address, the city is using the power of the budget and public opinion to shape MNPS spending — and asking them to reduce the amount they’re receiving while also publicly announcing how they should spend it.” …

The nationwide formula shortage was, statistically, worse in Nashville than it was nationally. While the feds reported a 43 percent formula shortage nationally, the Nashville area was at 52.5 percent.

Though 53 percent of Tennessee infants participate in the Women, Infants and Children government program, which provides formula and other basic foods for participants, that only accounts for 43 percent of eligible babies across the state. … Metro may be taking its own Board of Zoning Appeals to court this summer. The BZA overturned a ruling by zoning administrator Joey Hargis on setbacks in an affluent West Nashville neighborhood not because he applied the law incorrectly — no one is arguing he did — but rather because the board bowed to pressure from neighbors. Hargis — again, indisputably correctly — said that builders of new homes in Battlefield Estates off Woodmont Bou-

a carefully worded Tennessean guest column on May 12: “I will not sell public land, raise the sales tax, or spend property tax dollars to fund this stadium,” he wrote. Councilmember At-Large Bob Mendes clarified on his blog that the plan would spend quite a bit of sales taxes, a preview for the kind of scrutiny any deal might face when its various components move through the Metro Council later this year. Cooper also argues that the stadium will unburden Metro’s general fund, the financial heartbeat of the city that currently backs Nissan Stadium debt. Rather, the new plan will burden the general fund indirectly, creating time-sensitive pressure to quickly develop the East Bank into a stadium district that can generate enough sales tax to back $1 billion in debt. Already, the mayor has planned another $1 billion in infrastructure upgrades to redevelop the East Bank. The city has just one financially comparable project on its capital improvements books — Clean Water Nashville, an overhaul of Nashville’s sewer system that started more than 30 years ago.

Economists are in rare agreement as to how poorly sports teams perform as public investments as compared to transit, infrastructure and schools. According to experts, sports stadiums siphon up spending and rearrange tax revenue rather than attracting outside spending or generating new tax revenue. City leaders have sold a new stadium on the merits of hosting high-profile events. In reality, the mayoral administration has been backed into a corner by a decades-old lease and remains deferential to the negotiating party sitting across the table, seeing a multibillion-dollar opportunity to develop a new commercial district downtown.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

levard could build with a 60-foot setback. Existing homeowners pushed for 80 feet, and the board concurred, with board member Tom Lawless even invoking the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v.

Board of Education during the debate. … Metro is looking for a contractor to “guide the redevelopment of the Global Mall and surrounding area,” according to a solicitation issued by the city. The city is in the process of buying the South Nashville mall, in part so that it can lease some of it back to Vanderbilt University Medical Center as a health center. Currently, the Metro Planning Department is reviewing submissions from consulting firms, and a decision will not be made until the end of June, a spokesperson says. After the team is chosen, the study will begin in July of this year and the community will be invited to give input. … Goodlettsvillebased Dollar General refused to allow three legal proxies into its annual shareholders meeting after the trio attempted to check in four minutes late.

Civil rights leader William Barber II along with labor organizer Gabriel Bolden Shaw and Dollar General employee Kenya Slaughter held proxies for the meeting and were part of a protest demanding wage hikes for employees and a softer approach to union organizing efforts. ... A new audit recommends Nashville create a stand-alone Office of Homeless Services, which would alter the systems and structures directing how the city approaches housing issues. The study, conducted by the Louisiana-based firm HousingNOLA, suggests that Nashville needs to focus more resources into addressing chronic homelessness, as Nashville’s chronically homeless population is proportionally higher than the nation’s average. The presenters stressed the need for a housing-first model that emphasizes individuals receiving housing as soon as possible, in addition to treatments and services needed to stay in place.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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JIM VARNEY IN ERNEST GOES TO CAMP

The cult classic Ernest Goes to Camp turns 35 this summer.

Here’s a look at the people who were there and the continuing love for the man at the center of it. | BY J.R. LIND JIM VARNEY OWNED A DELOREAN. If a more 1980s sentence than that has ever appeared in these pages, it’d be gobsmacking.

But it’s true, the man beloved by a generation for portraying Ernest P. Worrell — the oblivious, rubber-faced naif constantly annoying the perpetually unseen Vern — owned the batwinged automobile that could travel through time.

And in pictures with his treasured car, Varney looks … rad.

Now if Jim Varney, a lifelong chain smoker who died in 2000 of lung cancer, was simply the man who created the good-natured goof who appeared in countless commercials, it would be a life well-lived. There are certainly worse legacies than playing a character who became a pervasive part of American culture for more than a decade and spawning a catchphrase that’s still bandied about by folks of a certain age.

Knowhutimean?

But those faded photos of Varney in a leather jacket and just-this-side-of-skinny blue jeans make it obvious: Varney contained multitudes.

Everyone who worked with the actor for any length of time will no doubt remember that

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Varney forgot nothing. Scientists are skeptical that photographic memories exist, and even that phenomenon’s more provable cousin eidetic memory is frustratingly difficult to diagnose.

But Jim Varney could look at a script and nail it in one take like a coveted contract player in the Old Hollywood studio days.

As a child, he’d memorize poems, lengthy passages from books and television dialogue, rattling them off days and weeks later. And whatever special wiring his brain possessed also gave him the gift of imitation. He’d declaim Shakespeare at the dinner table in the voice of, say, Huckleberry Hound. In 1950s Lexington, Ky., this was very funny stuff to come out of a tween. Honestly, it’d be no less funny now.

His mother got young Jim involved in local theater — smart woman — and Varney trod the boards all over the Commonwealth and elsewhere, studying Shakespeare at the Barter in Virginia and eventually making it to Nashville to take a role in a show at Opryland.

His talent was obvious, which is how he ended up as a regular on Johnny Cash’s 1970s variety show. Varney’s stunningly expressive face was perfect for nightclubs and stand-up comedy

— he was an original alumnus of The Comedy Store and made the late-night talk-show rounds in the late ’70s. His high-velocity imagination was the breeding ground for an untold number of characters with backstories so well-developed and labyrinthine that particularly logorrheic 19th-century novelists would be impressed.

All of what came with the package — the beartrap memory, the voice and that face, which has now been memefied to show just how damn talented Varney was at demonstrating the full range of human emotion with just a purse of a lip and the slight stiffening of a cheek — was exactly what was needed to make Ernest a star.

A star of natural gas commercials.

IT’S 1978 AND VARNEY is in Los Angeles, having landed roles on Petticoat Junction and Fernwood 2 Night. But then the SAG-AFTRA strike hit and the work dried up. Varney came back to Nashville.

Meanwhile, the Nashville advertising firm Carden & Cherry wasn’t doing much business because of stagflation.

“John Cherry had an advertising agency

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Montgomery Bell State Park in Burns, Tenn., will host Ernest Day June 11, beginning at 2 p.m. The event is free.

From 2 until 5 p.m., rangers will lead a birds-of-prey program and archery lessons, along with three one-hour nature hikes, weather permitting. In honor of Ernest Goes to Camp’s chaotic climactic scene, there will also be turtle catapulting. (The park assures us no turtles will be harmed.) The Ernest Look-Alike contest will be held at 7 p.m., followed at 7:30 by a Q&A with three cast members: Eddy Schumacher (Counselor Stennis), Todd Lloyd (Chip Ozgood) and Daniel Butler (Eddy).

The showing of the film at Group Camp One will begin at approximately 8:30 p.m.

Concessions and merchandise will be available.

STILL FROM ERNEST GOES TO CAMP that wasn’t advertising anything because nothing was selling,” Varney told the Scene in one of his last interviews in 1999. “I had 100,000 characters that I couldn’t get arrested for because nobody was buying commercials, so we started thinking we should get comedy back into commercials on a local level.”

First, Varney played his drill instructor Sgt. Glory in ads for Purity Dairies, castigating the cows into producing more milk. Then, in 1980, Carden & Cherry got the contract to do spots for the then-dilapidated Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green, Ky. And that’s when Ernest P. Worrell made his advertising debut.

So what was the genesis of the lovable hayseed who so often gets too far over his skis, his backwoods braggadocio always found out by the silent Vern, all within 30 seconds and all intended to sell a gallon of sweet acidophilus?

Of course, Ernest couldn’t exist without Varney. He had the knack for voices and the face that could paradoxically say so much while knowing so little. But neither would Ernest have lived without Cherry, who died in May at age 73. The ad man honed Ernest’s shtick, basing the character on a man who worked for his father years before. After the success of the Sgt. Glory ads for Purity, Cherry suggested Ernest P. (which stands for “Powertools,” by the way) Worrell as the new pitchman.

As Varney told the Los Angeles Times in 1993 — in one of many profiles over the years inevitably headlined “The Importance of Being Ernest,” including the aforementioned one by the Scene — the character then “took off like a rocket.”

So stratospheric was the success that Carden & Cherry licensed the character to dairies all across the country, sometimes filming more than 25 virtually identical commercials in the same day. (Varney’s generational memory and single-take professionalism was efficient and a costsaver.)

Varney, Cherry and a brain trust of a dozen or so writers and ad execs focused on products and services that were common across the country but remained controlled by regional rather than national firms.

Think dairies, air conditioning service, utilities. The commercials could be more or less the same everywhere, filmed quickly and in succession. Ernest P. Worrell became locally beloved across the country, firmly

associated with this local company or that one. And in pre-internet days, someone watching a milk ad in, say, Topeka was blissfully unaware the same guy was hawking air conditioners in Butte.

It was a shock to go on vacation and see Ernest advertising milk for some Florida dairy when, to Nashvillians, he was Purity.

“Everybody thinks I’m an actor in their market,” Varney told the Scene in 1999. “When I play something dramatic or offbeat, they go, ‘That’s the guy who sells them air conditioners up there, isn’t it?’ They really think I work for a local company.”

At one point, Varney estimated he’d done 3,000 commercials in 200 markets. “All at local market prices,” he’d add sardonically.

The lack of national campaigns was ultimately due to regional Ernest ads’ own success. For example, General Motors once approached Varney and Carden & Cherry about getting Ernest to sell Chevrolet pickups, but it was essentially impossible because of the web of exclusivity deals the character had in every market. Chevy would only be able to use Ernest where Ernest ads weren’t already running, and by the mid’80s, there weren’t many such places.

Nevertheless, Ernest was extremely popular. Market research showed he was a hit with over-35s who were beyond trying to be cool and under-13s, a demographic for whom lovable goofuses are always a winner.

The problem was that it was difficult to capitalize on that prepubescent popularity with the ad campaigns they had. Not a lot of 10-year-olds are included in the decisionmaking process when it comes to air conditioner repair or natural gas service. So Cherry and Varney decided Ernest should hit the big screen.

Or at least the video store.

VARNEY AND CHERRY’S first project was Knowhutimean? Hey Vern, It’s My Family Album, which, like most of the later films, was shot almost exclusively in the Nashville area. The 57-minute release, which hit shelves in 1983, is a little bit like Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. Except the characters aren’t dead. And it’s comedy sketches, not epitaphs. The frame story is that Ernest is telling an as-usual-unwilling Vern about his family, all part of those “100,000 characters” Varney had in his brain. The catch is that all of them — Aunt

Nelda, Ace the pilot, Rhetch the gambler, Lloyd the grouchy mountain man and so on — are kin to Ernest.

Truly, this is the wellspring of the Worrell extended universe.

It was enough of a success and enough fun to make that Cherry, Varney and regular contributor Coke Sams released the wacko (and surprisingly dark) sci-fi comedy Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam in 1985, Ernest’s feature-film debut (although it too was straight-to-video). Now, this in and of itself is a little odd. Movies have grown out of all sorts of weird nuggets of pop-culture esoterica (remember The Emoji Movie?) but rarely out of characters from commercials. The world isn’t exactly clamoring for the gritty origin story of Flo from Progressive.

Nevertheless, Cherry, Varney, Sams and the rest thought they were on to something.

It was time for Ernest to go to camp, but first he had to go to the Indianapolis 500.

As part of the pre-race rigamarole in 1985, Varney made an appearance as his popular character.

Also on hand? Then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, along with his moneymaker Mickey Mouse. Now, it’s hard to upstage Mickey Mouse, but the crowd at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that day went absolutely bonkers for Ernest, giving him a more robust reception than they did Mickey.

Eisner, who heretofore didn’t know Ernest P. Worrell from G. Gordon Liddy, was so impressed that he sought out Cherry, Sams and Varney and offered the Mousebacked largesse to make a real honest-toWalt movie that would be shown in theaters and everything. This was still the Disney Dark Age, which would continue until the release of The Little Mermaid in 1989, so Eisner was trying to play things a little tight.

But $3.5 million in the mid-1980s was a good chunk of change for a group of guys who had by and large been shoestringing and bootstrapping their own VHS-friendly fare.

Cherry would direct and, alongside Sams, write the script for what would ultimately become Ernest Goes to Camp. Touchstone would produce, and Buena Vista would distribute. Still, there’s no reason to waste Disney’s money, so there were concessions to be made.

First, the film wasn’t exactly The Longest Day in terms of star power. The biggest name in the movie (beyond Varney) was Iron Eyes Cody, the veteran character

JOHN CHERRY

actor known for the “Crying Indian” Keep America Beautiful commercial and playing various Indigienous characters for 60 years despite almost certainly being Italian American. The film was Cody’s last.

Then there was John Vernon (Animal House’s Dean Wormer) and Lyle Alzado, the former NFL lineman scoring his first big feature-film role. (He had previous TV credits and played Assassin #2 in 1979’s The Double McGuffin.)

And then there were local Boy Scouts.

One was Lance Bridgesmith, who’d later become a well-regarded mergers and acquisitions attorney, making partner at numerous elite Nashville firms. He’s now an administrator at California’s Pepperdine University. Another was Michael Chappelear, who was 9 years old the year of filming and is billed as Camper #3. For the late-’80s tween set, having grown up with the Purity ads, Varney was a huge star — but what Chappelear really remembers is how kind, generous and gracious Varney was to kids for whom he might as well have been Robert De Niro.

“The second day filming, Jim was sitting on a chair looking out on the water during a break,” Chappelear says. “I walked over curiously. Jim was so relaxed and kind. Jim greeted everyone kindly and encouraged everyone to not look directly into the cameras when filming! It’s just a small memory, and maybe not that exciting, but I really liked his relaxed, cool style, and his kind way of giving some important acting advice.”

The plot of Camp was fairly straightforward. (Even so, much of the film’s dialogue is improvised, which caused the occasional headache because, Cherry wrote in his memoir, Disney loved to meddle —

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nixing, for example, the idea that Ernest would have a love interest.) Cody plays Chief St. Cloud, owner of Kamp Kikakee. Varney’s Ernest is the camp handyman who longs to be a counselor. He gets his chance with the “Second Chancers,” a group of ne’erdo-wells. Well-meaning Ernest unwittingly helps an evil mining company trick Chief St. Cloud into selling the camp. Shenanigans (and a truly stunning number of convoluted explosions) ensue. Good guys win!

It’s classic summer family fare.

The part of Kamp Kikakee, such as it is, was played by Group Camp One at Dickson County’s Montgomery Bell State Park. It hadn’t changed much since it was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. And to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s credit, it hasn’t changed much in the 35 years since Ernest Goes to Camp hit screens on May 22, 1987.

The park’s central cabin has props and photos from filming and little shrines to all the cast members who have died, almost like those dedicated to saints in niches of European cathedrals. There’s one for Cody and Alzado and Varney, and one suspects Cherry will get his soon enough. Maybe it will be set up in time for this year’s Ernest Day, scheduled for June 11 at Group Camp One. The annual event, which draws Varney devotees from far and wide, began almost by accident.

Phil Baker was already running a summer movie series for his church, usually a double bill featuring a cartoon backed with a film celebrating an anniversary or something related to current events. In 2017, he decided to do Ernest Goes to Camp to celebrate its 30th anniversary, and realized that it was filmed just up the road. He called the state park and learned the rangers were trying to put together an Ernest commemoration of their own. He offered to help with planning, and the church said the park could use its audiovisual equipment.

Ernest Day was born.

“More people showed up that first year than any of us anticipated,” Baker says.

“We were all overwhelmed by the turnout and enthusiasm that still existed for Ernest.

Director and Ernest co-creator John ‘Buster’ Cherry III was there and was blown away by the fans who had such strong love and affection for his creation. Mr. Cherry … was on a high for weeks afterwards according to his family. … Before the credits rolled that night, the park had decided it was a foregone conclusion that this should become an annual event.”

There was, apparently, an Ernest fandom as enthusiastic as any on earth. There are Ernest podcasts, including one that does high-brow character analysis of his various iterations, and others that do the kinds of deep dives usually reserved for capital-C Cinema.

An Ernest documentary was funded on Kickstarter, and filming is underway. (Yes, it’s called The Importance of Being Ernest, because it’s really just inevitable.) Ernest Day has become more and more like any other -con. There are Ernest lectures and Ernest trivia. The rangers teach archery and canoeing and take folks on hikes, just like in the movie. It helps, Baker notes, that Group Camp One looks exactly the same, “like passing through the screen into Kamp Kikakee.” Little kids come dressed like Ernest and Nurse St. Cloud.

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attraction. Disney stayed on board for the first three post-Camp volumes — Ernest Saves Christmas, Ernest Goes to Jail (filmed at the old state penitentiary) and Ernest Scared Stupid. That last one made just $14 million at the box office. Despite some genuinely impressive practical effects, it was reviewed poorly, deemed far too scary for kids and too dumb for adults. It was hard to capture the magic of … Goes to Camp.

Cherry and Varney did the rest of the Ernestverse on their own, and apparently left many more would-be misadventures scripted but unmade. But heck, it was successful enough that Varney could afford a DeLorean.

STILL FROM ERNEST GOES TO CAMP

Baker admits he liked Ernest before he fell into his role with Ernest Day, but he wasn’t a superfan. He says Ernest persists in part because he’s like a cartoon made flesh. Bugs Bunny’s classics are still rewatchable decades after their debut, so why shouldn’t Ernest be?

“He is a good-hearted man who always gets in over his head,” says Baker. “He treats everyone the same no matter their age, race or social standing. This is his best quality, but is also the one that usually gets him into trouble. So we root for him. We all know or knew someone like Ernest — a friend, neighbor or someone at church.

Sometimes we love them. Sometimes they can be overbearing and annoying, and that’s when we sympathize with Vern. But we know he means well.”

But Ernest needed the right vehicle, and somehow that ended up being the welltrained Varney and Cherry the ad man.

“The more you examine Varney’s performance, and dissect his lines, you begin to notice subtle layers underneath,” says Baker. “Jim Varney was a very smart Shakespearean actor. You can’t just set that

aside and play a two-dimensional character.

There are throwaway lines you miss, but then catch on repeat viewings. There are jokes you don’t initially catch. There are things in the movies that went over my head as a kid. But watching them as an adult, I appreciate them now. Plus his physicality is right on par with Bugs Bunny or Popeye.

That’s not easy to pull off! But Jim made it look easy.”

Ernest Goes to Camp grossed $23.5 million on its $3.5 million budget. Inflationadjusted, that’s nearly $60 million, which would put its performance on par with, say, Jackass Forever. The movie did millions more in video rentals and on cable. It ran at the drive-in in Dickson for nearly two straight years.

It also spawned eight sequels, mostly filmed around Nashville — Ernest a redneck ur-version of Tyler Perry’s Medea.

No longer simply a pitchman, Ernest became the face of a bona-fide franchise.

It was Ernest who gave the world the first look at Walt Disney World’s Splash Mountain, and Ernest was part of the preshow at Epcot’s Cranium Command

VARNEY GOT LOCKED IN as “just Ernest,” despite taking on other projects. It was something he’d feared. Cherry wrote in his book that Varney didn’t want to make Goes to Camp for fear of being typecast, and he went on a fairly steep bender in the days before production began — though he was, of course, a complete pro on set.

Varney played Jed in 1993’s movie adaptation of The Beverly Hillbillies, but Jed isn’t too far afield from Ernest. He used those vocal gifts to bring Slinky Dog to life in the first two Toy Story films. His performance in the independent 1997 thriller 100 Proof was praised. The last Ernest movie, Ernest in the Army, hit Blockbuster shelves in 1998. Three years later, Varney was acclaimed for his turn in Billy Bob Thornton’s Daddy & Them, released posthumously in 2001.

He played against type in the final season of the first edition of Roseanne as a royal suitor to Jackie.

But Varney never got that serious look he craved. He told the the Los Angeles Times he wanted a career like Robin Williams, who was able to shake off the silliness of Mork and play seriocomic roles mid-career before being taken seriously as a dramatic actor.

It seems almost a shame — or a rare oversight — that Tennessee native Quentin Tarantino couldn’t find a place for Varney to really show his chops.

So Varney planned to do it himself. He had worked for years on a massive epic silver-screen version of the Hatfield & McCoy story, but he died before he could get it really rolling.

Varney struggled with the prospect that Ernest would be his only legacy. It’s why he was suspicious of …Goes to Camp, and why he shelved the character even though dozens of concepts were developed and many scripts were in the can.

But in a couple of weeks, families will roll into Group Camp One once again, Ernest Day returning. There will be interviews and Q&As and footage taken for the documentary. This little movie, the end result of a chain of unlikely events — a commercial character resonates across the country because of an acting genius, a studio executive in need of a cheap hit goes to an auto race — brings them winding back to Kamp Kikakee every year.

The artist and his art are beloved and shared across generations to be beloved again. No, Ernest isn’t Lear, but people care about the character and now care for his memory. As far as legacies go, it’s a good one.

Knowhutimean?

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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the Carpathian, Egon’s estranged family picks up the proton packs to slug it out with some pretty pesky poltergeists of their own and settle some of their grandfather’s unfinished business. The heartwarming tale is told by director Jason Reitman, who took up the mantle of his own father, the late Ivan Reitman, director of the first two films. It’s the perfect kickoff for the Scene’s annual free outdoor movie series Movies in the Park, which takes place at sundown each Thursday in June at Elmington Park.

Look for upcoming screenings of The Princess Diaries, Black Widow and Encanto.

The pet-friendly events also include food trucks and games for the whole family.

5 p.m. at Elmington Park, 3531 West End Ave.; screening begins around sundown

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JEREMY GARRETT BLUEGRASS BAND THURSDAY, JUNE 6 The Station Inn

JEREMY GARRETT BLUEGRASS BAND

Apart from its formal beauty, bluegrass has a spiritual side that comes through on fiddler, singer and songwriter Jeremy Garrett’s new album River Wild. A member of progressive bluegrass band The Infamous Stringdusters, Garrett does well with the instrumental tunes that make up part of River Wild — you’ll groove to tracks like “Bird of Prey.” Still, the centerpiece of the album is “Time to Get Into the Change,” which is a politically charged bit of modern bluegrass. The song is about risking everything to swim with the waves that threaten to overtake modern society, and it’s also about letting go of the past. You can hear a similar take on political and social instability on The Infamous Stringdusters’ new full-length Toward the Fray. For a bluegrass album, Toward the Fray sports what you might call a controversial cover image: A young girl wears a gas mask and holds a teddy bear on a street that leads into a scene of destruction, as if a city has been bombed. The album’s “Means to an End” finds the band singing, “The times ain’t getting any better and I don’t know why / It seems like the whole world doesn’t even want to try.” Toward the Fray is a savvy — and sometimes fairly dark — piece of neo-grass that tries to address how the forces of history can inspire an art form

[TAKE TEN]

TEN YEAR

What is it about high school reunions that brings such a rush of jumbled emotions? On one hand, they offer an opportunity to take stock, reminisce and hopefully reconnect with old friends. Yet they also can trigger a host of unresolved worries and youthful insecurities. But no matter how you feel about your own high school experience, you’ll want to check out the world premiere of Ten Year, a new musical from Jacob Heinz and Wesley King.

The story follows Sam, who’s been stuck in the same old routine since graduation. But with his 10-year reunion coming up, he’s hoping to shake things up a bit — and maybe even discover whether “the first love he’s held onto for a decade could be rekindled.”

Heinz directs a solid cast, including Michael Horvath, Madison Gunn, Morgan Riggs, Kilby Yarbrough, Brooke Ferguson, Nick Spencer, Ezra High, Sam Kell, Aubrey Bagley and Lorenzo Rivera, with musical direction by King. And it’s refreshing to see a musical that just happens to center on a queer character, treating sexuality as an important factor that doesn’t always have to be pivotal to a story’s plot. June 2-4

at the Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Ave. AMY STUMPFL FILM

[CHANGE IS NOW]

rooted in tradition. Thursday at Station Inn, Garrett brings his own bluegrass group to town — expect hot picking and thoughtful songwriting. 9 p.m. at the Station Inn, 402 12th Ave. S. EDD HURT THEATER

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MOVIES IN THE PARK: GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE

“Hey, anybody see a ghost?”

Ghostbusters fans certainly have. The franchise was resurrected for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the third chapter in the original team’s story. Thirty-two years after the fellas saved New York City from Vigo

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AUTHOR EVENT WITH JONATHAN MARTIN IN CONVERSATION WITH JON MEACHAM

In This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, two New York Times reporters provide a deep dive into the mess we call a political system in this country. The book gives context to the past 18 months specifically — the pandemic, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and President Joe Biden’s first year of presidency.

Writers Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns focus on the unfortunate effects of a two-party government and how aging leaders like Donald Trump and Biden have struggled to lead during a time of change in the United States. Martin will discuss the book Thursday at Parnassus with Pulitzerwinning author Jon Meacham. This Will Not Pass questions the future of democracy in America, so the discussion is not likely to be light. But it’s the kind of tough conversation Americans need to hear — and participate in. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike AMANDA HAGGARD

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Those of you who are into structureless improvisation, mid-American style, might want to check out Friday’s show at Third Man Records’ Blue Room by Powers/ Rolin Duo. Guitarist Matthew Rolin plays in a harmonically simplified mode that owes something to pickers like Robbie Basho. Meanwhile, Jennifer Powers favors the hammered dulcimer, which she plays in a percussive style that is tangentially melodic. The duo, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, makes music that’s been compared to that of German New Age pioneers Popul Vuh, but Powers and Rolin sound, well, pretty American — the liturgical tone of Popul Vuh is absent from Powers and Rolin’s 2021 albums Strange Fortune and Beacon, the latter release also featuring drummer and percussionist Jason Gerycz.

The drones and interspersed melodies of Strange Fortune build slowly, and the mix places both players in a space in which they sound a lot like one instrument. Powers, who started out playing piano and switched to dulcimer after deciding the strictures of piano performance felt limiting, dominates the proceedings by dint of her commitment to pointillist expression, and Rolin adds touches that suggest the duo could do some interesting things with more traditional

compositional modes. Their music is simultaneously relaxing and strange — sometimes non-structures can feel liberating. 8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. EDD HURT MUSIC

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MUSICIANS CORNER FEAT. THE WATSON TWINS, WILL HOGE & MORE

The long-running free festival Musicians Corner rolls on through a stellar spring run with packed shows on Friday and Saturday. This weekend’s featured guests tend toward Americana, with top-notch local performers including superlative vocal duo The Watson Twins scheduled to go on at 8:10 p.m. Friday, and Will Hoge, a longtime stellar songsmith who has never been one to shut up and sing regarding the political climate, playing at 4:45 p.m. Saturday. It’s also release weekend for San Francisco transplant Nicki Bluhm, whose new LP of shapeshifting roots-schooled rock Avondale Drive is out Friday (she performs at 7:15 p.m. that day). But there are plenty more highlights that don’t necessarily fall under that big Americana tent: Don’t miss Karina Daza, who opens Friday’s show with a blend of vocal pop, jazz and Latin pop music, and rockers Pepper Said, who follow right after her at 5:40. Saturday, don’t miss out on the contemplative, electronically enhanced pop of Veaux, who opens it up at noon, followed by queer pop songsmith daena at 12:30 and

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SLIM & HUSKY’S UNPLUGGED FEAT. THE BLACKSON, RON OBASI & THEY NEED WEEZ

Slim & Husky’s Unplugged series continues this weekend, bringing some of Nashville’s rising talents together for a showcase and also offering professionals a chance to mingle and network. The latest installment takes place at Analog, and features outstanding local MCs — The BlackSon and Ron Obasi (who were both featured in a recent Scene cover story on Nashville’s booming rap renaissance) and self-described “Rhythm and Bounce” singer-songwriter They Need Weez. 8 p.m. at Analog at Hutton Hotel, 1808 West End Ave. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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David Newbould Listening Party PM: DJ Juice + DJ Dregs

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It can be easy to forget that one of the ideas at the foundation of psychedelic art is reacting to or exploring experiences so profound that they reshape your perception of the universe. Kentucky-born songsmith S.G. Goodman makes a kind of

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Paul Burch & WPA Ballclub Residency

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Now in its second year, NKA Gallery is a cornerstone of the Buchanan Arts District, mounting exhibitions of Black artists from near and far. It adjoins Slim & Husky’s flagship location, and engages the restaurant scene with the visual art scene in a fun intersection. The latest exhibition is Hello My Name Is Eugene.

Atlanta-based artist EuGene V Byrd III illustrates aspects of the Black experience that are often overlooked. Using a bold palette to evoke rich experiences, Byrd sets a tone of celebration and pride. Openings at NKA feel a lot more like parties. There’s a bar stocked with drinks, and the gallery often features live music too. With a small courtyard and a couple of cornhole boards, it’s an opportunity to slip kids into an art gallery. Show up early and support some of the Black-owned businesses on the block.

6 p.m. at NKA Gallery, 915 Buchanan St.

WEEKEND CLASSICS: THE GODFATHER

I recently had the pleasure of seeing a friend’s reaction to watching The Godfather for the first time. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 masterwork is one of those immense cultural touchstones that must surely feel so daunting, so outsized and overwhelming to the first-time viewer. But this friend, naturally, loved it, surprised and delighted not only by cinematographer Gordon Willis’ beautiful lensing but also by the film’s emotional complexity. The 175-minute Italian American crime epic was released 50 years ago this spring, and a 4K restoration will screen Saturday and Sunday as part of the Belcourt’s ongoing Weekend Classics series. See it for its many iconic quotes and set pieces, permanent fixtures in the American cultural identity that have been parodied, replicated and referenced more times than anyone could count. See it for the weight of Marlon Brando’s peerless on-screen presence. (Then go home and queue up the speech Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather delivered on Brando’s behalf at the Academy Awards when he won but would not accept the Best Actor trophy.) See it and marvel at the fact that Michael Corleone was just the third feature-film role for then-32-year-old Al Pacino. See it for Nino Rota’s remarkable score. See it for Diane Keaton! Just see it. 1:30 p.m. June 4-5 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. D. PATRICK RODGERS

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As an eight-piece band, St. Paul and the Broken Bones are best known for flamboyant soul tracks full of upbeat drums, shrieking horns and bright, piercing vocals from frontman Paul Janeway. The band’s most recent album, this year’s The Alien Coast, turns all of that on its head, but in the best way possible. The band leans heavily into a stripped-back psychedelic sound, with contributions from the horn section being few and far between while keyboardist Al Gamble makes use of screeching, eartickling effects, and Janeway’s vocals are heavily distorted. The effect is a demented atmosphere that permeates the album.

Even on tracks like “The Last Dance,” which hews more to the band’s typical fusion of soul and funk, the use of driving bass lines in tandem with whirling synths and shimmering guitars feels kind of like a black hole in the middle of a disco party.

The album is a complete change of pace for the band, and a welcome one. How will this new and strange sound transfer over to their famously high-energy live show?

Your guess is as good as mine, but whether he’s in a skin-tight metallic bodysuit or a brightly colored tux with a cape, I’m sure Janeway will find a way to charm the crowd with a fantastic show. Fellow soulsters Fitz and the Tantrums will open. 7 p.m. at Ascend Amphitheater, 310 First Ave. S.

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rock music, which draws on psych rock and Appalachian folk music among many other things, that puts that interpretation of psych front and center. Her debut LP, 2020’s Jim James-produced Old Time Feeling, focused on her experiences as a child of poor farmers and as a queer woman in the rural South. You can draw a connection between songs like Goodman’s “The Way I Talk” and those of others like Adia Victoria, in that both are working to reorient the narrative of the South and tell important stories that get brushed aside. Saturday, Goodman celebrates her new second album Teeth Marks, an examination of love in myriad forms and the impressions it leaves on you, with a show at Third Man Records. She’ll be joined by Rich Ruth, a composer and performer of contemplative and expressive instrumental music, who’s set to release a new LP called I Survived, It’s Over in August. 8 p.m. at Third Man Records’ Blue Room, 623 Seventh Ave. S. STEPHEN TRAGESER

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theatrically inclined piano-popster Ele Ivory, who is on at 1. That’s just the tip of the iceberg — get ready to make a day of it. 5-9 p.m. Friday and noon-6 p.m. Sunday at Centennial Park, 2500 West End Ave.

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CRITICS’ PICKS

DANCE

If you have been suffering from a lack of quality slow jams in your life, look no further than Saturday’s Nashville R&B Fest for the solution. At the top of the bill is Keith Sweat, who worked his way up the ladder on Wall Street, then in the late ’80s became a pioneer of the kinetic pop-andR&B style you know as new jack swing, and later became a master of sensuous grooves with singles like “Twisted.” Tevin Campbell, who had hits right out of the gate beginning with his 1991 debut T.E.V.I.N., and Tamar Braxton, the youngest of famed R&B vocal group The Braxtons, will also appear. Silk, of the immortal and unabashedly horny slow jam “Freak Me,” and 112, whose catalog boasts the bouncy and soulful Biggie-featuring “Only You,” will join in, while H-Town and Pretty Ricky round out the bill. 7:30 p.m. at Bridgestone Arena, 501 Broadway STEPHEN TRAGESER [SEE YOU NEXT YEAR]

NASHVILLE BALLET AT BELMONT

Nashville Ballet has had an excellent season, which included a nationwide tour of Lucy Negro Redux and an Emmy win. But all good things must come to an end. The final production of the season will take place at the new Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Belmont, and it will combine new choreography, a fan favorite, classic music and new orchestrations.

The showcase will preview a new piece by acclaimed choreographer Matthew

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Neenan set to music by Grammy-nominated composer and pianist Gabriela Lena Frank.

Frank identifies as a multiracial Latina, and she pulls from her multicultural experiences to create her sound. The ballet’s associate artistic director Nick Mullikin will also debut new work. 2,192 Days features music by Sergei Rachmaninoff performed live by pianist Alessandra Volpi and violist Christina McGann. Also on the roster, company dancers will reprise Val Caniparoli’s fan favorite Tutto Eccetto il Lavandino, featuring the music of Antonio Vivaldi. If you haven’t been to the Fisher Center yet, this is the perfect opportunity to experience the world-class venue and celebrate the ballet’s triumphant season.

7 p.m. June 4 and 2 p.m. June 5 at The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Belmont University, 2020 Belmont Blvd.

Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, 925 Third Ave. N. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

MONDAY / 6.06 BOOKS

NASHVILLE R&B FEST FEAT. KEITH SWEAT, TEVIN CAMPBELL, TAMAR BRAXTON & MORE

AUTHOR EVENT WITH KALI FAJARDOANSTINE IN CONVERSATION WITH DESTINY O. BIRDSONG

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s new novel, Woman of Light, shows readers the complex lives of the Lopez family. A multigenerational saga, this is a story about

MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK

TUESDAY / 6.07 [DAMN FINE COFFEE]

DIANE COFFEE

Seeing the words “Diane Coffee” immediately brings to mind Twin Peaks.

Multi-instrumentalist Shaun Fleming is an alum of 2010s psych-rock burnouts Foxygen, and with this project he constructs

FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK

ERICA CICCARONE

SUNDAY / 6.05 MUSIC

[I LOVE THE TASTE OF WHIPPED CREAM]

[FANNY ARE YOU OK?]

Considering the rich history of trailblazing women who make rock music, from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to the sisters who make up Haim, I’m a little pissed at myself for not knowing about Fanny. The all-girl California rock band is the subject of this new documentary from Canadian filmmaker Bobbie Jo Hart. Led by Filipina American sisters Jean and June Millington, this collective dropped five hard-rocking albums in the early to mid-’70s. They never broke through to pop stardom, even though they had famous fans like David Bowie — who called them “one of the finest fucking rock bands of their time.” This doc chronicles the band’s Me Decade run and catches up with the 60-something founding members as they reunite to record and release another album. Bonnie Raitt, Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott and Kate Pierson of The B-52s also appear to give their flowers to these badass trailblazers. 7 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY

MUSIC

NASHVILLE BALLET AT BELMONT MUSIC

PHOTO: KARYN PHOTOGRAPHY

FILM

survival, family secrets and love. Her 2019 book, Sabrina & Corina, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and The Story Prize, and winner of an American Book Award.

Fajardo-Anstine will appear in conversation with poet, novelist and essayist Destiny O. Birdsong for an in-store event at Parnassus Books on Monday. It is a free event, but space is limited, so registration via parnassus.net/event is required. Masks are strongly encouraged. For more on Woman of Light, see our review on p. 25. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike, Suite 14. KIM BALDWIN

[CADILLACTICA]

BIG K.R.I.T.

Big K.R.I.T. has always shown a penchant for soul and R&B channeled through a classic, trunk-rattling Southern rap aesthetic. His 2022 release Digital Roses Don’t Die dives deeper into soul, R&B and funk stylings, with plenty of rapping and crooning. It’s his biggest experiment yet, but tracks like “Rhode Clean” show K.R.I.T. can still make perfect songs for sunny-day drives. Catch him when he pulls up to Nashville, along with Elhae, Price, Cam Wallace and Tre Amani. 8 p.m. at

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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CRITICS’ PICKS

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headphone-friendly symphonic-pop tapestries anchored by thick bass tones and fluttering percussion that float in autonomous sonic orbit. A little early ’90s and a lot late ’60s, Diane Coffee’s sound isn’t explicitly Lynch-ian — but isn’t not Lynchian either. With People is Coffee’s latest for Polyvinyl. Folk-rock duo Hello Darling opens. 8 p.m. at Drkmttr, 1111 Dickerson Pike CHARLIE ZAILLIAN [COMMUNITY MATTERS]

NASHVILLE SYMPHONY’S COMMUNITY CONCERT SERIES

For the next five days, you won’t have to go to the symphony to hear live classical music. The symphony will come to you. Well, the Nashville Symphony is likely coming to a park near you. The concerts are part of the free Community Concert Series, which takes place at various outdoor spaces around town. The family-friendly, no-cost series features a program of Shostakovich (“Festive Overture”), Dvořák (No. 7, “Allegro vivace,” from Slavonic Dances Nos. 5-8), ColeridgeTaylor (Ballade in A Minor), Rodgers (The Sound of Music selections for orchestra), John Williams (“Flying Theme” from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and “Raiders March” from Raiders of the Lost Ark), and more.

The outdoor locations are picnic-friendly, so bring sandwiches and a blanket and enjoy.

The series kicks off with Tuesday’s show at Antioch Southeast Greenspace, with a pre-concert performance from the Antioch High School Wind Ensemble. Upcoming shows include June 8 at Key Park in Lafayette, June 9 at Centennial Park, June 11 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, and June 12 at Crockett Park in Brentwood.

Details, including alternate indoor locations in case of rain, are at nashvillesymphony. org. June 7-12 at various locations

two years because of the COVID pandemic, the Jam returns to the Ryman Wednesday night with an astutely chosen — and starstudded — cast. Stuart’s band, The Fabulous Superlatives, will be on hand to dive deeply into country history. They can rock out and stay stone country — Stuart & Co. do it all, with great guitar work only part of the picture. Meanwhile, this year’s Jam features one of country’s most interesting young performers, Lainey Wilson. Her 2021 album Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’ offers a nondoctrinaire version of modern country that sports a tune titled “Small Town, Girl,” which adds elements of Betty Davis-style funk to its sound. Also on hand will be Stuart’s wife, the foundational country singer Connie Smith. Rounding out the bill will be Marcus King, who favors a combination of Southern rock and blues, along with Emmylou Harris, Williams and Ree, The Grand Ole Opry Square Dancers, and other avatars of country. Stuart also says he plans to pair performers with instruments from his vast collection — how about Pops Staples’ 1969 Fender Rosewood Telecaster and Merle Haggard’s 1970 Martin S000-45? 9 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. EDD HURT

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MARTY STUART’S LATE NIGHT JAM

For two decades, catching Marty Stuart’s Late Night Jam at the Ryman has been a way to mark the progress of country music. After taking a break for

MARTY STUART

PHOTO: ALYSSE GAFKJEN

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FOOD AND DRINK

SUGAR SHOCK

ICE CREAM DREAMS

At Sarabhas Creamery, Gursharan Singh and Manpreet Gill offer unbeatable Indian-style ice cream

BY MEGAN SELING

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

T

he days are getting hotter.

The humidity is getting thicker. There’s only one thing we can do to survive another summer in Nashville: eat ice cream.

Nashville has no shortage of sweets shops that’ll help you cool off as temperatures rise.

You can’t go wrong with longtime favorites Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams and Mike’s Ice Cream. Jeni’s leans toward the artisan end of the ice cream spectrum with flavors like Frosé Sorbet, dairy-free Cold Brew With Coconut Cream and — surprisingly enough, my favorite — Everything Bagel. Mike’s, on the other hand, has that old-fashioned soda-shop flair, serving classic sundaes and banana splits alongside hand-scooped milkshakes, malts, egg creams and ice cream sodas. If you visit while their Blackberry Cornbread ice cream is in the SARABHAS case, buy a scoop CREAMERY immediately.

400 21ST AVE. S. There are dipped SARABHASCREAMERY.COM soft-serve cones taller than your head at the legendary Bobbie’s Dairy Dip, huge candy-loaded sundaes at TailGate Brewery’s Sweet & Three, decadent plant-based creations at Koko’s, and a rainbow of tasty cream and fruit-based paletas at La Michoacana Premium #1 and La Michoacana Golden on Nolensville Pike.

You even have the option to get house-made chocolate or vanilla soft-serve ice cream with a side of piping-hot french fries for dipping at 12South’s Fryce Cream. Genius.

Now there’s one more creamery to add to your refreshing summer-sweets dance card — Sarabhas Creamery, an Indian-style ice cream shop that opened on 21st Avenue South in January.

Husband-and-wife duo Gursharan Singh and Manpreet Gill moved to Nashville in 2014, and though they both worked as software designers, they couldn’t resist making their ice-cream dreams come true after spotting a vacant storefront near Vanderbilt.

“We used to make ice cream at home for friends and family,” Gill tells the Scene. “We were driving through 21st Avenue one day and saw a space available, so we decided to open up a business.

“We try to make the flavors as traditional as we can to replicate the flavors we get on Indian streets,” she continues. “The difference between Indian and American ice cream is that Indian ice creams are churned at very low speed so they have more air content and also are more creamy.”

The texture of Sarabhas’ ice cream is smoother and lighter than many other premium ice creams, though it’s not lacking in richness. Their saffron ice cream is a bold

STRAWBERRY AND SAFFRON ICE CREAM and beautiful sunflowery yellow-orange color, and while the first bite tastes fresh and clean, it melts into a vibrant, flowery finish.

It’s like taking a bite out of a summer day.

The mango, which Gill says is one of the shop’s bestsellers, is another standout.

Imagine the most perfectly ripe mango you’ve ever had, made just a pinch sweeter and creamier. The slow-churn process leaves little room for ice crystals to form, so the ice cream takes on a silky, custardy texture with little else standing in the way of the fruit’s bright flavor. It is divine.

The shop’s other flavors include kesar pista (saffron and pistachio), chai spice, coconut, peanut-butter-chocolate, strawberry, coconut and Indian coffee, the latter of which is bold and sharp, just the way I like it.

Also on Sarabhas’ menu is shahi gulab — two scoops of delicately flavored butterscotch ice cream served alongside a hot gulab jamun, a ball of soft, milk-flavored dough that has been fried and soaked in sweet and sticky syrup. The shop also offers kulfi, long spears of ice cream served on a stick. It’s like a popsicle but better.

“The difference between ice cream and kulfi is that in kulfi there is no whipping, no air, so it is more flavorful, and it is not soft, it is solid,” says Gill.

One of Gill’s favorites is the falooda, a cold drink that she says reminds her of her childhood. While falooda can come in a variety of different flavors — mango, peach, phirni and more — at Sarabhas it’s a brightpink rose-flavored drink loaded with jelly, vermicelli noodles, basil seeds, ice cream

INDIAN-STYLE CAKE

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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and nuts. For the unfamiliar, it can be hard to know where to start. Eat the solid bits first and leave the drink for last? Drink the milk and enjoy the jelly afterward? But Gill says there are no rules. Just dig in.

“I like to drink it a little bit till the ice cream and dry fruits gain the flavor of rose,” she says. “Then I eat the dry fruits and ice cream. At the end I can sip the rest of the drink.”

Along with all the sweets, Sarabha’s also has a few savory offerings, including puff pastries filled with paneer, veggies and Indian spices. They also serve slices of Indian-style cake, which is reminiscent of a tres leches cake. Exceptionally moist cake is flavored with chocolate, coffee or fruit and layered with lightly sweetened whipped cream. Get it with a cup of coffee or chai tea, both of which are cooked in hot sand.

“It cooks very slowly,” Gill says about the

shop’s coffee and chai drinks. “One cup can take up to 10 to 15 minutes to cook. It cooks slowly to infuse more flavor into the drinks.

We serve it both hot and cold.”

Nashville is already filled with an array of ice cream options — even just a block away from Sarabhas stands a Ben & Jerry’s — but Gill says she and Singh have already gained a loyal following. That isn’t surprising; that saffron ice cream really is some of the best I’ve ever had.

“We are so blessed that everyone is very supportive and helpful,” says Gill. “We didn’t do any marketing yet — all the business which we are getting is through word of mouth. We love when someone tells us, ‘We heard about you from our friends or family.’ It gives us more excitement that our efforts are paying off, and we try to do our best to deliver the best product.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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HONORING THE JOURNEY Saturday, June 4

Sunday, June 12

FALL looks to build understanding about chronic pain with A Bending of Its Own Kind 2.0

SONGWRITER SESSION

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Ronnie Bowman

John Osborne

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Thursday, June 9

Monday, June 13

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CMT’s Next Women of Country Featuring Priscilla Block, Ashland Craft, Miko Marks, Lily Rose, and Hailey Whitters

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Caitlyn Smith NOON · FORD THEATER

Colbie Caillat 8:00 pm · CMA THEATER Friday, June 17 and Saturday, June 18 LIVE ON STAGE

Bobby Bones 7:30 pm · CMA THEATER Saturday, June 18 SONGWRITER SESSION

Jeannie Seely NOON · FORD THEATER

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P

ain has a way of bringing things into perspective. But in the case of dancer and choreographer Rebekah Hampton Barger, chronic pain also inspires her art.

As the founder and artistic director A BENDING OF ITS OWN KIND 2.0 of FALL, Nashville’s JUNE 4-5 AT FALL AERIAL first aerial and conARTS AT NASHVILLE SCHOOL temporary dance OF THE ARTS; TICKETS AT company, Barger FALLDANCE.ORG is well known for her gravity-defying work, which “blends classical and contemporary dance with aerial fabric and invented structures.” In 2017, she presented A Bending of Its Own Kind — a piece commissioned by OZ Arts that examined Barger’s personal experience with severe scoliosis and chronic pain.

This weekend, she continues that journey with A Bending of Its Own Kind 2.0 — a new iteration of the original work that she hopes will help improve communication between chronic-pain patients and their health care providers.

“The performance at OZ was one of the most artistically satisfying experiences of my career,” says Barger, who founded FALL in 2010. “But even then, I think I knew that it wasn’t done — it was something I would want to revisit at some point. It’s like a living autobiography — 2017 was Chapter 1, and this is Chapter 2.”

That second chapter actually started in 2020, when Barger — who was diagnosed with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis at age 13 — suffered a series of personal and physical setbacks that forced her to reevaluate her health.

“My health sort of shut down in a way that I could no longer pretend everything was fine,” says Barger. “I had to acknowledge, once and for all, that I have legitimate physical issues that I have to pay attention to and care for.”

That experience led Barger to tap into online scoliosis and chronic-pain communities, where she found that many patients were struggling to communicate effectively with doctors and other health professionals.

“For those dealing with chronic illness, there’s often a disconnect — a sense that you’re not being heard or believed. And as I began to reengage with my own health, I kept thinking back to A Bending of Its Own Kind, wondering if it could be used to bridge that gap.”

Barger set about reworking the piece, securing funding from Metro Arts and establishing a partnership with the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Vanderbilt, with the goal of presenting the new piece to its medical staff as well as the general public.

She gathered input from other chronic-pain patients through interviews and online forums. And she also incorporated the work of fellow artists, including photographer Martin O’Connor, composers Timbre Cierpke and Dan Wright, and writer/performance artist Audra Almond-Harvey — all of whom have dealt with their own chronic health issues.

“As I began resetting the piece, I realized that my feelings had changed over the last five years,” says Barger. “Rather than feeling betrayal or resentment toward my body, I had a real sense of gratitude and even awe, as I considered just how much I’ve been able to accomplish in my career and in my life. That actually came through with all of the contributing artists. The journey hasn’t always been easy, but it was important for us to honor the resilience of these bodies that allow us to keep making our art.

“You have to keep fighting,” she adds.

“You have to keep moving forward. But it’s so exciting to me that this performance could help build empathy and understanding — that’s what keeps me going.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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books_6

BOOKS

AN UNFAMILIAR PAST Woman of Light explores the persistence of stories

BY SARA BETH WEST

W

PHOTO: WESLEY DUFFEE-BRAUN

hen authors choose an epigraph, they are giving the reader a peek into the heart of a story, offering someone else’s words as a hint at what’s to come in their own. National Book Award finalist Kali Fajardo-Anstine has chosen two passages to open her novel Woman of Light. One is from an Ingmar Bergman film, and the other is engraved at the base of a statue at the National Archives: “What is past is prologue.”

WOMAN OF LIGHT

BY KALI FAJARDO-ANSTINE ONE WORLD 336 PAGES, $28 FAJARDO-ANSTINE WILL DISCUSS HER BOOK 6:30 P.M. MONDAY, JUNE 6, AT PARNASSUS

This line, drawn from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, seems a simple truth for a piece of historical fiction, a story that insists the narratives of older generations have relevance to those who come after. But Woman of Light rejects such simplicity, asking readers to consider the ways the past might move through and around each generation, emerging into the present in complicated ways.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the book opens with a prologue that’s set in 1868 in the “Lost Territory.” This geographical name may not be familiar; in fact, an online search of the term returns nothing about the land to which Fajardo-Anstine alludes — the huge swaths of Mexico gained by the United States following the Mexican-American War. The opening pages introduce the oldest generations of this family saga: the Sleepy Prophet of Pardona Pueblo and an infant abandoned on the bank of an arroyo.

Desiderya, the Sleepy Prophet, had “dreamt of stories in her sleep” but was called from her bed to that arroyo, where she stood, “smoking her pipe and considering the sloping way blue darkness layered the nearby mountains.” The description goes on: “The Spanish had named the stream Lucero because starlight shimmered over the water’s trickling back, as if the earth had been saddled with sky.” Fajardo-Anstine writes effortlessly stunning sentences, each unspooling to create a rich and engrossing tableau. In fact, Woman of Light is much like the visions Desiderya experiences, plunging readers into an unfamiliar past, one that seems to hold vital truths if only we will see them.

The child Desiderya rescues is Pidre, later to marry the widowed sharpshooter Simodecea Salazar-Smith. Their love produces Sara and Maria Josefina — one the mother of Luz and Diego, the other the woman who would raise them. Luz is the shining heart

of the novel, so much more than “just some poor Indian and Spanish laundry girl.” She too is a seer, able to see both the future and the past in sharp, sometimes painful detail.

After the children’s abusive father leaves and Sara loses herself in grief, Maria Josie takes Luz and Diego to Denver, and as each section unfolds, readers float between time and place, every character fully alive in the present and the past.

Following an ill-advised relationship with an Anglo woman, Diego is forced to flee Denver, leaving behind his family and his work as a snake handler. The snakes, whose “tips hissed like tin cans of pebbles,” can’t accompany him on the migrant circuit, where “every hello possessed within itself a farewell.

People were as transient as crops, picked and packaged, shipped afar, feeding the mouths of families Diego would never see.” In his absence, Luz works as a secretary for David, son of the generous Greek grocer in their neighborhood, who has come back home to practice law and fight for social justice. Through her relationships with David and the gentle musician Avel, Luz is forced to reckon with her warring desires and the complicated role of race and class.

With any multigenerational narrative, it is impossible to summarize the complex layers of detail woven by the author. This book is about Luz and Diego and Denver and the Lost Territory; ultimately, though, it is about stories — who gets to tell them and which ones survive. Pidre understands this after leaving the Lost Territory and stumbling into the entertainment industry: It was in that moment that Pidre realized he had entered the strange world of Anglo myth, characters resurrected from the language of story, populating the realm of the living, side by side, if only for one night and one night only.

Pidre came from storytelling people, but as he passed a big top devoted to the reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand, he couldn’t help but think that Anglos were perhaps the most dangerous storytellers of all — for they believed only their own words, and they allowed their stories to trample the truths of nearly every other man on Earth.

Woman of Light proves the past is the prologue, insisting we map the Lost Territory onto our stories even when search engines don’t recognize the term. It is a sprawling and gorgeous exploration of the land we have come from, the past we have failed to acknowledge and the persistence of stories through time and space.

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

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Debora Lee Meehan, C.C.H

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MONDAY, JUNE 6 6:00PM

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KALI FAJARDO-ANSTINE

with DESTINY O. BIRDSONG at PARNASSUS Woman of Light TUESDAY, JUNE 7 6:30PM

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ART

CRAWL SPACE: JUNE 2022 June’s First Saturday art events feature abstract painting, video installations and Moby Dick

Chauvet Arts opened We Are Nashville: Act One in May, and the exhibition will stay up through July. That’s a long run for a Nashville gallery show, but photojournalist Philip Holsinger’s deep and immersive community portrait captures the stories of everyday Nashvillians in journal entries, photography, short films and audio interviews archived over the past five years. There’s a lot to take in here, and it’s the kind of show that rewards multiple visits. This extended, slow scheduling makes for an especially inviting environment for spending some time meeting new neighbors this summer.

Amber Robles-Gordon’s SoveREIGNty: Acts,

Forms, & Measures of Protest & Resistance

opened at Tinney Contemporary on May 28, and the gallery will be holding a reception for the show on Saturday from 2 until 8 p.m., making this stop ideal for all you early art crawlers. The exhibition of large-scale mixed-media quilts investigates U.S. policy and governance of populated territories and the District of Columbia. Robles-Gordon’s paint, textile and hand-stitched assemblages avoid the clichés of most political protest art by embracing the mysterious messaging of striking abstract compositions in place of sloganeering and pure propaganda pushing.

The two-sided designs are suspended like banners, displaying a postmodern mix of elements from national flags, Doppler radar aesthetics, Indigenous art, domestic ritual and references to the midcentury Abstract Expressionist art movement known as the Washington Color School.

EAST NASHVILLE

At Red Arrow Gallery this month, the talented Ashanté Kindle’s Gesturing Joy engages in a complex and nuanced exploration of joy as expressed through Black women’s hair culture that any fan of painterly abstraction will be able to engage with and relate to.

Kindle uses acrylic paints, hair accessory materials and other found objects to create paintings ranging from monochrome works in shades of black to vibrantly colored pieces exploring various textures expressing everything from, as Kindle’s artist statement puts it, “that 1995 Easter Sunday press & curl kinda joy” to “that braids and beads kinda joy.” Red Arrow has always focused its diverse roster on strong abstract painters, and Kindle’s new exhibition is emblematic of what the gallery does best. Red Arrow will open the exhibition with a reception this Saturday at 6 p.m.

WEDGEWOOD-HOUSTON

I mentioned Greely Myatt’s new sculpture exhibition at David Lusk Gallery in last month’s column. Pointing Fingers and Throwing Bricks is a whimsical examination of personal responsibility in a time of social-media-fueled culture conflict. The show continues through June 11, and the gallery will be open from noon until 7 p.m. on Saturday. Myatt will be attending the event, and he’ll give a gallery

26

talk at 1 p.m. Myatt is one of those Memphisbased artists who is emblematic of David Lusk’s strong artist roster, and this talk will illuminate this exhibition’s timely themes as well as Myatt’s signature penchant for transforming found objects.

I love John Huston’s 1956 adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. One of the most iconic scenes in that movie is the church sermon delivered by Father Mapple, played by Orson Welles. In the book and in the film, Mapple relates the story of Jonah and the whale to a group of sailors about to set sea, addressing his maritime parishioners as “shipmates.” The new Shipmates exhibition at Zeigeist takes Moby Dick as a jumping-off point to address communal toil, featuring painting and sculpture by Daniel Reidy and Greg Pond, with musical contributions from César Leal.

Coop’s only a few months into its new, bigger space at The Packing Plant, but it’s already beginning to pay off with largerscale programming like this month’s video installation. Abracadabra is a collaboration between the gallery and the Vanderbilt University Department of Art’s 2022-2023 initiative, titled Vanderbilt, Arts, and the Middle East: Building Bridges to the Global and the Local. The exhibition includes work by three Middle Eastern women artists: Saudi Arabia-based movement artist Sarah Brahim, the Israeli media artist Ronnie Karfiol, and the Iranian artist Laleh Mehran. As the Vanderbilt initiative’s titling suggests, Abracadabra is meant to illuminate viewers’ understanding of a part of the world that America is both tied to and in conflict with. It also aims to reflect a greater understanding of the Middle Eastern diaspora that includes our own neighbors in Nashville. Brahim is a trained dancer whose performances mix live music and vocals with percussive footwork that recalls styles from folk to tap to hip-hop, and it’s refreshing to see a “movement artist” who can really hoof.

I wrote about Unrequited Leisure’s May exhibition, Raheleh Filsoofi: Artifacting, last week, and it continues through June. It’s an intense and affecting video-and-sculpture installation that offers a great example of how performance artists can and should do more with video than just the bare bones of documenting their work. Unrequited Leisure has really been knocking it out of the park this year, with displays by women video artists including this show and Mary Addison Hackett’s Anonymous Was a Vlog, which ran back in February and March. I love it when galleries change up their programming, but it can also be important for a space to be clear and consistent in their mission, and Unrequited Leisure’s focus on striking screen-based art displays makes them one of the most uniquely excellent art venues in the city. The gallery will also be welcoming Jodi Minnis to their AIR_(space) flagpole display on Saturday. Minnis’ recent work focuses on reclaiming and rejecting stereotypes of Black women in Bahamian

SHIPMATES AT ZEITGEIST

WE ARE NASHVILLE AT CHAUVET ARTS culture, asking why a community that trades in tourism has to represent itself with outdated racist imagery. Unrequited Leisure will be open from 1 until 8 p.m. on

“IN SEARCH OF THE MATADOR SPIRIT,” PHILIP HOLSINGER

DOWNTOWN

“AND THE SHARK (AFTER COPLEY),” DANIEL REIDY

BY JOE NOLAN

Saturday, and will have a proper flag-raising for Minnis during its official reception from from 5 until 8 p.m.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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“I DIDN’T COME FROM YOUR RIBS, YOU CAME FROM MY VAGINA,” KIMIA FERDOWSI KLINE

ART

“BLEEDING AND CRYING,” KIMIA FERDOWSI KLINE

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

OFF-SITE:

KIMIA FERDOWSI KLINE IN PARIS

The Nashville native speaks about her folk-art-influenced paintings, on view at a Parisian gallery in June

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER Off-Site is an ongoing series of features about Nashville-based artists whose work is being exhibited elsewhere

H

eritage informs the art of Nashville native Kimia Ferdowsi Kline — but maybe not the kind of heritage you’d expect. She was born and raised in Davidson County, but Kline’s family is Persian, KIMIA FERDOWSI KLINE TO MAKE ME FORGET and her mother was ABOUT NOW raised in Africa.

CURATED BY JORDY Those influences, KERWICK OPENING JUNE 4 AT GALERIE combined with a childhood that was JULIEN CADET, PARIS spent with more access to her family’s medical practice than contemporary art, formed the basis of Kline’s singular style, which is both offbeat and sophisticated, rough-edged and profound.

“I’m very influenced by outsider artists,” Kline tells the Scene during a studio visit in her family home in Brentwood. “I didn’t even know that there was a contemporary art world until I was 17. All of the art that I was exposed to growing up were Persian miniatures, Persian rugs, Persian calligraphy.

I didn’t know that art continued after Van Gogh. I just had no idea. So Mose Tolliver, Clementine Hunter, Jimmy Lee Sudduth — those were my heroes.”

The Southern outsider-art influence is clear in a work like “Bleeding and Crying,” its flat figure brought to life with a kaleidoscopic Minnie Evans color palette. This painting is one of three that are part of To

Make Me Forget About Now, a group show curated by Jordy Kerwick that opens Saturday in Paris. In the painting, a crouching figure bleeds from its vagina, leaving a trail of bright red that matches its naked breasts.

That trail is repeated in tears running from the figure’s eyes, gracefully curved like fabric tied up in a canopy. Despite its bloodied, teary-eyed state, Kline’s figure never seems pitiable. The artist’s ability to portray a figure’s powerful energy even in a compromised state might come from her family’s history in medicine — to a physician, blood can be a byproduct of healing, not necessarily a signal of danger.

“My grandfather was a surgeon, and my mom is a nurse,” Kline explains, “so I also come from a very medical family. We have different ways to talk about the physical healing of the human body, and I have a very visceral connection to that. I’m interested in the intersection between beauty and pain, wounds and healing.”

Another connection between surgery and Kline’s artwork is her inclusion of stitching.

She uses book-binding methods to literally stitch through the parchment she paints on — a skill she picked up during the year she worked as a bookbinder after graduating college. The resulting grid-like structures make Kline’s paintings feel pored over and somehow human. The papyrus she uses as canvas — she sources all her papyrus from an Egyptian vendor named Mufasa — is a perfect stand-in for skin.

“I think about skin tone a lot,” she says. “I just think about all the different beautiful skin tones in the human family. So when I’m making paintings, the skin tones are intuitive, but they’re also formal. But I’m also thinking about depicting skin in different ways, and always making sure that there’s a diversity of color that I’m using for that reason.”

With “I Didn’t Come From Your Ribs, You Came From My Vagina,” the stitchwork forms a precise grid that underscores a formalist balance — it’s not a stretch to compare the figure to the traditional symbol for yin and yang. The figure seems saintlike, her freshwater pearl eye glistening as she gazes down toward an earthy vaginal shape that looks a bit like the waxy leaf of a Southern magnolia tree. It’s a bold, prophetic vision that perfectly encapsulates Kline’s own multilayered, multicultural origins.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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KRISTIN HERSH (OF THROWING MUSES, 50 FOOT WAVE) IN THE LOUNGE

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

CULTURE

GUITAR LESSONS

SKIN IN THE GAME

with former Musicians Institute and Austin Guitar School instructor

MARK BISH.

Back to Black Burlesque dissolves racial barriers in the dance scene

BY KATELYNN WHITE

B

Jazz, Rock, Blues, Country, Fusion, Funk, Flamenco, etc. Technique, theory, songwriting. Programs available. 40 years exp.

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FROM LEFT: BETTY VOU PLAÎT, LUCEE McFLY, RAVEN, RAINY GALORE

Black member’s decision to relocate. Rainy Galore says she experienced discrimination over and over but didn’t allow it to hinder her passion for dance. In Nashville, she says she was completely ignored by producers — but since becoming a traveling showgirl, she’s been booked weekend after weekend.

“Some producers think that certain skin colors don’t fit their aesthetic, or [they] believe that we should conform to what the ideal ‘look’ is for burlesque,” she says.

Raven describes how racial discrimination has impacted her emotionally. She would feel insecure about being booked because she didn’t know if she was chosen based on merit or to fill a diversity quota.

She would even question if the employers liked her performance. “Having the courage to dance in downtown Nashville is also something I’ve had to work on,” Raven says, “because there’ve been times that I knew I was dancing for people that didn’t come to see my Black body onstage.” However, she believes those experiences gave her thicker skin, a bonus within the industry.

To dissolve the race barrier within the creative community and foster multicultural environments, Back to Black also wants to bridge the training gap. Being a dancer can be expensive, and not everyone has access to the same resources neces-

sary to pursue the art form. The women offer low-cost classes to people who are interested in becoming students of creative dance. By encouraging other Black people to learn burlesque, they encourage them to embrace their talents even if some people in the world do not. At the April show at The Barbershop, audience members could choose to buy a “Wealth Privileged Allies” ticket for $40; the additional $25 provided free tickets for people who otherwise could not afford to attend.

Each member feels they have been met with challenge after challenge — but they say it’s no different from the racial fight they’ve been in their entire lives. Fostering a judgment-free environment that prioritizes and celebrates Black femmes, regardless of someone’s gender, is finally happening. They hope to see the rest of Nashville push toward inclusion.

“I’d love to see productions that highlight individuals from different cultural backgrounds, of different skill levels and disciplines,” Vou Plaît says. “I would love to see people in the audience who look like me and who don’t look like me. A lot is lost by segregation, and I would love to witness what increased cross-pollination could look like in the city’s underground creative scenes.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Nashville Jazz Workshop • 1012 Buchanan St.

FREE EVENT for ages 2-10

Billie Holiday

Limited in-person capacity.

Please register online.

POWERED BY

PHOTO: MIRANDA ROSE PHOTOGRAPHY

urlesque dancer Raven recalls a time when, after a performance, an audience member wanted to take a photo with the cast. But she wasn’t in the picture — they handed her the camera so she could photograph her castmates instead.

That’s just one example of how local Black dancers say they’ve felt excluded from the burlesque industry. Now, Raven and other dancers are doing something about it.

Raven, Betty Vou Plaît, Lucee McFly, Rainy Galore and Remy Ryder have an eclectic mix of personalities, but are united by their melanated skin and passion for dance.

The five women LEARN MORE ON INSTAGRAM AT joined forces @BACKTOBLACKBURLESQUE after discussing their similar experiences dealing with racism. They hoped that employing burlesque and nonhierarchical organizational structures would help elevate self-esteem of people of color and challenge Eurocentric beauty standards.

“The company was born because we didn’t feel accepted,” says Raven. “So that’s one thing that we all have in common, not feeling accepted in a predominantly white scene. It’s a shared feeling each member has experienced, and that in particular is why we do what we do. … It was just an idea about the lack of diversity we noticed in the scene and decided to be that change we want to see.”

Back to Black Burlesque made its debut in the dance scene at Kindling Arts Festival in 2017. From there, the troupe began producing shows to create performing opportunities that they previously lacked. Their April showcase at The Barbershop Theater featured a dozen dancers and drew a crowd.

They’re creating an environment for Black men and women to feel safe and comfortable while showing off their talent.

Prior to founding Back to Black, the artists say racial tension and tokenization were becoming more and more apparent in their field. Vou Plaît has questioned the motives of her employers. “I often wonder, am I being booked because I’m talented or because I was raised by members of the dominant culture and essentially bred to move between the two cultures?” she says.

The group wants to make it possible for generations of Black men and women to be chosen because of their talent and not just to fill a diversity void. They hope companies learn that when they look past demographics, they open a door to a world full of talented people. “We want to create opportunities for Black bodies to perform and be showcased for their actual talents and not as a form of tokenism,” McFly says.

Biased acts toward people of color in the dance industry contributed to one Back to

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Upcoming shows jun 4 jun 5 jun 6 jun 8 jun 9 jun10 jun11 jun12 jun 13 jun 14 jun 15 jun 17 jun 18 jun 19 jun 20 jun 21 jun 22 jun 23 jun 24 jun 25 jun 27

TWRP w/ rich aucoin emmit fenn w/ ayokay shaman's harvest & crobot w/ any given sin drum masterclass ft. matt gartska of animals as leaders free!

THe emo night tour the shadowboxers w/ shockley them vibes & jive talk goth babe w/ miloe sold out! ann wilson of heart ann wilson of heart wet w/ hannah jadagu qdp The beast street band: bruce springsteen southern underground pro wrestling mariah the scientist hinder w/ no resolve & abby k penelope scott w/ fanclubwallet & yot club erin rae w/ logan ledger & dj poboy ocean alley w/ le shiv live emo band karaoke owen

jun 28 jun 29 jun 30 jul 5 jul 8 jul 9 jul 11 jul 14 jul 16 jul 17 jul 22 jul 23 jul 25 jul 26 jul 27 jul 29 jul 30 jul 31 aug 3

sara kays w/ hayd strand of oaks sam johnston w/ a. g. sully & arts fishing club foxing w/ greet death & home is where savannah conley w/ secondhand sound sundy best dry cleaning w/ weak signal the deslondes w/ banditos the wrecks w/ girlhouse & mothe the summer set somo ian noe w/ kimberly kelly grayscale & guardian w/ bearings & the ivy marian hill w/ leyla blue icon for hire w/ sumo cyco corey kent broncho w/ tchotchke cobra man memphis may fire w/ from ashes to new, rain city

aug 9

the dear hunter w/theworldisabeautifulplace and

drive, & wolves at the gate

I am no longer afraid to die & tanner merritt of o'brother

COMING SOON 6/9 6/10 6/11 6/11 6/13 6/14 6/16 6/17 6/18 6/24 6/25

ADAM SHOENFELD PAT MCLAUGHLIN BAND BACKSTAGE NASHVILLE FAB BEATLES + THE CONSOULERS THE TIME JUMPERS A NIGHT OF CLASSIC MUSIC WITH GALE MAYES SARAH DARLING ALLY VENABLE + GARY NICHOLSON & THE CHANGE RESURRECTION: A JOURNEY TRIBUTE 12 AGAINST NATURE GUILTY PLEASURES

6/26 STEPHEN WILSON JR. WITH ALYSSA BONAGURA 6/30 DEAD LETTER OFFICE : A TRIBUTE TO REM 7/2 RUBIKS GROOVE 7/8 NICK SHOULDERS 7/9 SMOKING SECTION 7/10 LOGAN HALSTEAD 7/14 JESSE DANIELS 7/15 THE SCREAMIN’ CHEETAH WHEELIES SOLD OUT! 7/16 THE SCREAMIN’ CHEETAH WHEELIES SOLD OUT!

7/17 THE SCREAMIN’ CHEETAH WHEELIES SOLD OUT! 7/19 RYAN CLARK 7/21 WILLIAM LEE GOLDEN & THE GOLDENS 7/24 RED CLAY STRAYS 7/28 KIM RICHEY WITH JEFF BLACK 7/31 BAD BAD HATS WITH GULLY BOYS 8/11 NATHAN THOMAS 8/21 FLYING BUFFALOES 9/10 MAGIC CITY HIPPIES 10/9 MONDO COZMO 10/20 JILL ANDREWS + CLEM SNIDE 10/23 THE HILLBENDERS

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

BROTHER SMITH // JUN 6

THE BONES OF J.R. JONES // JUN 9

UPCOMING SHOWS jun 3 jun 4 jun 4 jun 5 jun 6 jun 6 jun 8 jun 9 jun 9

get happier friday: VOLK, Jeff Shepherd, Drew Dixon, Roanoke letdown w/ devil's cut (7pm) brother james barbee, gally wallop, & the smoking flowers (9pm) jordan lindley, maddie medley, & ally westover brother smith (7pm) el escapado w/ hans condor & oi!takus (9pm) ben chapman the bones of j. r. jone s (7pm) juke of june, the dead bolts, & the welters (9pm)

jun 10 jun 10

get happier friday: super special takeover event (5pm) multi ultra w/ the prescriptions

jun 11 jun 11 jun 12 jun 13 jun 14 jun 15 jun 15 jun 16 jun 17

spirits of the bear w/ sylmar (7pm) homes at night w/ dori valentine (9pm) new madrid madeleine w/ ingrid snook & fimone kimberly kelly & brit taylor cliffdiver w/ goalkeeper (7pm) sleep away camp w/ the phantom fix & vern (9pm) flight attendant & fortezza w/ the shitdels the comancheros w/ kirstie lovelady (7pm)

& small victory (9:30pm)

1604 8th Ave S Nashville, TN 37203 thebasementnash

thebasementnash

thebasementnash

MUSIC

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

The East Room, a bastion of Nashville’s music and comedy communities, turns 10

T

he East Room opened at 2412 Gallatin Road in East Nashville in 2012. In the decade since, the black-box-theaterstyle space has developed, fine-tuned and solidified a niche as a critical 10TH ANNIVERSARY proving ground CELEBRATION JUNE 9-11 for up-and-coming musicians and comedians. The venue will celebrate its 10th anniversary next week with a murderers’ row of Nashville stand-ups on Thursday, June 9, followed by a parade of great bands on June 10, and, on June 11, an extra-special edition of Fascination Street, the long-running monthly goth DJ night. All three installments kick off around dinnertime, and will run late.

In its fledgling years, The East Room quickly emerged as an east-of-the-river analogue of sorts to the venerable Springwater. “It shared that vibe of ‘anyone can do anything here,’ with a slightly bigger room and a balcony,” comedian, filmmaker and promoter Seth Pomeroy tells the Scene.

Thursday’s lineup offers a who’s-who of comics who have collectively elevated Nashville’s stand-up coterie from a farm team for Chicago, L.A. and New York to burgeoning big-league center in its own right.

Chad Riden, Brad Edwards and Sean Parrott — veterans of Ultimate Comedy, the weekly showcase that began at The East Room and has held down Tuesday evenings for several years — will ring in the three-day fest. The bill also includes Brad Sativa, Corey Perry

THE NEW OLDFASHIONED WAY Superchunk expands an indie legacy with introspective LP Wild Loneliness

BY P.J. KINZER

I

n recent press photos, Superchunk singer-guitarist Mac McCaughan’s signature hairdo is still thick and pointing skyward, but the sides have developed a silver patina. The first thing I notice when he speaks over the phone PLAYING SATURDAY, is that the nasal twang JUNE 4, of his singing voice, AT BROOKLYN BOWL often imitated by various nerdy frontmen of indie rock, is true to his speaking voice. Known to friends and fans alike simply as “Mac,” McCaughan has been co-leader of two much-loved indie institutions for more than three decades; he and bassist Laura Ballance launched both Superchunk and Merge Records in 1989 while McCaughan was on a break from studying at Columbia University in New York. But the heart of both projects has always been in the Tarheel State, where McCaughan grew up and still lives today.

and, as the flyer promises, a “celebrity mystery guest comic.”

In April 2015, a gang of Nashville funny people, performing under the banner of Broken Record Comedy Show, banded together to break the Guinness record for the longest continuous stand-up gig with multiple comedians. The round-the-clock affair — which took three days, eight hours and two minutes to make official — included drop-ins from touring comics Hannibal Buress, Rory Scovel, Ahmed Ahmed and Nate Bargatze.

But locals deserve the credit for the recordshattering group effort. “It was out of control in there — it became like a commune,” Pomeroy remembers with a laugh. “The East Room really is something special.”

On the music end, East Nashville Underground — the brainchild of Jared and Kristyn Corder, the married co-founders of powerpop juggernaut *repeat repeat — staked its claim early, throwing quarterly all-day fests between 2012 and ’15. That recurring event highlighted local talent and planted the seed for eclectic future affairs like Cold Lunch Recordings’ Spewfest, a late-winter staple since 2016 that, though halted by the pandemic, will hopefully resume in 2023. E.N.U. originated in the Corders’ basement, but in light of the explosion of punk and garagerock talent at the time, it quickly graduated to the then-new East Room.

“The freedom and space it offered to use any way we wanted made [it] really unique,” Jared Corder says. “It’s always embraced the left-of-center, and helped nurture Nash-

“For me, growing up here — it was great,” says McCaughan, referring to his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. “Punk shows were the only shows I could go to when I was 14 or 15, because they were allages shows. Really, learning about all kinds of music on college radio — this is a great place to be because we have three universities here.”

In the middle of North Carolina’s Research Triangle, he could pick up the low-wattage radio from the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State and Duke in the halcyon era of college stations. They gave him an education that he’s carried throughout his life.

Superchunk and Merge are both deeply embedded in the South, which has at times confused their peers from bigger scenes. Chapel Hill’s inexpensive college-town lifestyle made good economic sense in the band’s early years.

“We would work jobs, and put out records, and tour when we could,” McCaughan explains. “We could afford to do that living here, whereas I never understood how you could afford to do that in a big city like New York or L.A.” Superchunk kept plugging away and released their first two albums, the thrumming Superchunk in 1990 and the Steve Albini-recorded buzz-pop masterpiece No Pocky for Kitty in 1991. McCaughan’s network of fellow D.I.Y. Southerners quickly expanded, as Super-

PHOTO:STEVE CROSS

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

DADDY ISSUES PLAYING THE EAST ROOM IN 2017 ville’s indie music scene.”

Taylor Cole, East Room general manager and bandleader-songwriter of the super-size pop ’n’ rock band Tayls, can remember the venue’s previous iterations as a dog wash, a church and an Irish pub. However, *repeat repeat “took it and made it their own,” says Cole. He recalls attending an E.N.U.presented show with Natalie Prass in 2013.

Three years later, the Tullahoma native and MTSU grad assumed his current role as GM and talent buyer at the club.

“A lot of people here still miss the old Nashville — Freakin’ Weekend, East Nashville Underground,” Cole says, referencing Music City’s 2010s explosion of noisy, lo-fi punk, indie and garage rock. “But I think it’s important to take what we’ve loved and create something new from it. We understand the ebb and flow of the music scene … [and] want to be there for new bands who are going to grow, to make a place like East Room a stepping stone.”

To that end, the June 10 show’s programming consists of an eclectic 11-act cast of East Room alums highlighted by Missis-

sippi-raised Southern-rock nostalgists H.A.R.D. (Have A Rad Day), posi-hip-hop crew Heru Heru, cerebral headbangers Oginalii, psych-pop classicists Okey Dokey, and lovably ferocious punk combo Peachy.

A cross-genre assortment of fellow locals — Crocodyle, Fable Cry, Full Mood, Lord Goldie, Maddie Medley and Weird Sisters — rounds out the bill.

Amid much upheaval in Nashville’s venue landscape — most notably the dagger to the heart that was May’s closure of Cannery Ballroom, Mercy Lounge and The High Watt — something to celebrate feels needed. Nashville’s out-of-control real estate market plays a major role in many of the recent changes. Cole also points out that fans making sure to get out to shows they want to see in the venues they love is vitally important.

“It’s a weird time, and no one knows exactly what comes next,” he says. “We’re all still healing, throwing darts at the wall. But if we keep losing our venues, we’ll lose the thing that people move here for.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

chunk shared bills with bands like Chapel Hill’s own Polvo and Archers of Loaf, Atlanta’s The Rock*A*Teens, and Neutral Milk Hotel, which first formed around Jeff Mangum in Ruston, La. Merge released well-received albums by most of these groups too. Thanks to Jonathan Marx, a college buddy of McCaughan’s who would later serve as an editor in several capacities at the Scene, Nashville’s own Lambchop was brought into the fold.

“I remember [Marx] saying, ‘Hey, I’ve been playing in this band, Posterchild,’ ” says McCaughan, referring to Lambchop by its original name. “And he’s describing it and he says, ‘It’s kind of a country band, but I play clari-

net.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Well that doesn’t sound great.’ ” He chuckles as he thinks back on the relationship that’s now passed the 30-year mark, as Merge has released record after brilliant record of Kurt Wagner & Co.’s ever-morphing countrypolitan art-rock.

Following 2001’s Here’s to Shutting Up, Superchunk laid low for most of the Aughts, but returned as a strong musical force in the 2010s, with a recent threealbum arc that’s particularly inspiring.

2018’s What a Time to Be Alive is a furious critique of the Trump era, followed the next year by an acoustic rerecording of the band’s 1994 classic Foolish. In February, the band released Wild Loneliness, an album that takes a giant step away from their snarling power-pop sensibilities. When asked about the triumvirate of LPs, McCaughan simplifies the natural progression.

“The march towards fascism and authoritarianism continues,” he says. “But in terms of making music, I think it’s hard to sustain that kind of energy that’s on What a Time to Be Alive and still remain interesting.

It’s a hard thing to stand for more than one record at a time, even if we’re still waking up every day feeling that way about what’s going on.

“There was a kind of reaction to making an acoustic version of our Foolish album,” he continues. “We still play the songs live, but with a different instrumentation

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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MUSIC

HAPPY RETURNS

Greg Bryant prepares to reunite with Concurrence and Greg Bryant Expansion

BY RON WYNN

I

n January 2020, longtime Nashville musicians and married couple Greg Bryant and Dara Tucker bid a fond farewell to Music City and departed for the New York area. In addition to other projects, Bryant revived his career as a radio broadcaster, taking a gig at revered jazz station WBGO-FM in New Jersey. He hosted Jazz After Hours, the station’s late-night program, and he teamed up with journalist and broadcaster Nate Chinen on the invaluable podcast Jazz United. The pair’s freewheeling conversations on music, culture and politics earned them the 2021 and 2022 Jazz Journalists Association award for Podcast of the Year. But following internal changes at the station, Bryant found a new broadcasting home earlier this year. The man known to listeners as “The Watchman” now hosts Real Jazz With Greg Bryant on Sirius XM’s Real Jazz Channel 67. Bryant shares a great blend of classics and contemporary tunes, and offers listeners a wide range of material in every idiomatic style under the jazz umbrella.

Bryant has also maintained his career as an electric bassist, backing Tucker on the stage and in the studio as well as playing with his own ensembles. June 3 and 4, Bryant returns to town to meet up with two of them at Rudy’s Jazz Room. Concurrence, the boundary-blurring band he’s co-led for nearly two decades with keyboardistcomposer Paul Horton, will play a special reunion on Friday with drummer Marcus Finnie and multi-instrumentalist Giovanni Rodriguez on percussion. The four initially met as students at MTSU 20 years ago, but Bryant says this is only the fourth time they’ve played together in this configuration. They will be doing old favorites as well as previewing material from a forthcoming EP. Greg Bryant Expansion headlines on Saturday, featuring Finnie on the drum throne along with ace trumpeter Rod McGaha and pianist David M. Rodgers. They’ll bring out original material as well as traditional jazz selections. Bryant took a breather from his busy schedule to answer questions via email.

Does the new EP represent a new or different direction for Concurrence?

Our new EP Recollections features three all-new tracks and will be released on Juneteenth. It will soon be available for preorder on Bandcamp. The title track is

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me even more towards this kind of acoustic record.”

The finished Wild Loneliness features rich and subtle production touches, as well as cameos from the likes of former Middle Tennessean Sharon Van Etten, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills and Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley. It’s perhaps Superchunk’s most introspective, songwriter-oriented

co-composed by Paul and I, and features drummer Marcus Finnie propelling us to the ozone. It’s a tune that we had been playing live before the pandemic in 2019 and had never documented.

The same can be said for Paul’s tune, “The Center Cannot Hold.” This particular version, with Derrek Phillips on drums, was captured live in 2021 at Rudy’s Jazz Room, our home club. It’s sort of a cocktail piece — a medley of two ideas in the tradition of folks like Don Cherry and Greg Osby. The first half leans avant-garde, while the second half of the tune is more groove-based.

The name and the designation wasn’t as important at first as cultivating those two ideas and having them work together. However, a lot of tunes’ titles certainly feel different these days after what we’ve all endured and continue to experience. You’ll hear the first part of the tune working out tension and angst, while the second half points to the beginning of something else — a new era of awareness and being awake, perhaps?

The final tune “The Sunday Cookout” is all Paul Horton. He composed, sequenced and played all of the keyboards and rhythm.

He’s been busy with Brittany Howard’s band and producing for a few artists, and he released his solo debut last year, Prelude No. 1. When he let me hear this tune during the pandemic, I thought it sounded like something Concurrence would do. He agreed, and we decided not to track it as a band. It was already in its right place; his demo version is the master take that you hear on the EP.

Is it accurate to consider the Greg Bryant Expansion more of a straight jazz band while Concurrence is more a multi-idiomatic unit?

The Greg Bryant Expansion has been an umbrella term that denotes projects under my name. Its personnel has evolved and includes many players. … I think some folks will see the fact that we have a horn involved and link that concept more with the tradition of the music. That’s great. And we do play some material by many of our cherished ancestors and current heroes, like Horace Silver and Wayne Shorter. We also play some of our own compositions and improvisations as well. We’re still trying to be melodic and have a good time, but if we end up floating and exploring, that’s always great.

Will that band also be doing some recording at a future date?

I’ve actually tried to record the Expansion on two different occasions, in a previous lineup that had Jovan Quallo on sax, Paul Horton on piano and Marcus Finnie on drums. Those guys really elevated my playing, and we are still family. The first time, we had a great night and great audience, but we didn’t have the sound quality that it needed to release it professionally. I think Marcus actually recorded it on his cellphone near the drums. I still may put that out with the guys’ blessing at some point. The second time, the audio was great, but I don’t think

work — featuring songs like “Highly Suspect,” in which McCaughan reflects on the challenges of coping with what feels like a 24-hour cycle of bad news, and the effortlessly catchy environmentalist warning “Endless Summer.” Though it may not be as loud as other Superchunk efforts, McCaughan didn’t want the record to sound like demo tracks or a toned-down in-store

appearance.

“I think the subject matter, as well as the acoustic sound, was really influenced by being stuck at home, and being around my family. You’re trying to wake up every day and appreciate the things we do have, even in a dire situation.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

CONCURRENCE PLAYS JUNE 3, GREG BRYANT EXPANSION JUNE 4 AT RUDY’S JAZZ ROOM

the recording captured the spirit of what we played, so I didn’t feel great about putting that one out either. It is a goal to certainly record the Expansion in some configuration.

Last year, [WBGO’s] Dorthaan Kirk passed along a quote from the late vocalist Betty Carter to me that explains it best: “It will happen when it is supposed to happen.”

Is there a principal composer in the Greg Bryant Expansion? I know Paul does a lot of the writing for Concurrence.

We’ve played tunes from all members of the band. Jovan and I handled the musical direction mostly, but since he won’t be with us on Saturday, I’ve got a game plan.

How is it working now with Sirius XM? Being with SiriusXM is the realization of a dream. I was there first as a visiting artist in 2019 as bassist in Jojo Hermann’s Slim Wednesday Band. They interviewed us for a segment on the jam channel. I remember telling myself, “I want to work here one day.

It would be great to return to radio here at Sirius.” Almost three years later, I’m on the air as their evening host on the Real Jazz channel. I’m really grateful.

What’s the biggest difference between being on satellite radio and on conventional broadcast radio?

Overall, I think satellite radio in tone and timbre is moving toward a more conversational presentation. They want the feeling of a podcast or conversation, versus the style and authority of traditional broadcast personalities. It’s certainly a more concentrated approach, but within the time allotted, you can still share knowledge and excitement about the music.

How is juggling careers, going back and forth between being an active musician and a full-time broadcaster?

I toggled between playing and broadcasting the first time, briefly, while I was still living in Nashville and hosting on WFSK and

PHOTO: JOHN ROGERS

than we were used to. And I was like, ‘It would be cool to make a record like that with new songs.’ So I started writing songs on acoustic guitar.”

In early 2020, McCaughan locked himself in his basement to craft new tunes, unaware that COVID was about to lock down the whole world. As he says, “I think not being able to play these songs with anyone drove

playing during the evenings and on weekends. I think people know you for one thing over the other based on how they encounter you. My goal has been simply to spread improvisational music to all who will listen. If I have a bass strapped to me, if I’m in front of a microphone, or if I’m in a virtual or physical classroom, it all points toward the same goal. A healthy scene starts with healthy interest, and hopefully, that enthusiasm will catalyze people to get involved at various levels. It was nice to win the national Jazz Journalists Association award in back-toback years for podcast of the year with Nate Chinen, but it means just as much to get a letter or an inbox from someone who has memories associated with something you’ve played or something you’ve said. I’m grateful to be doing what I’m doing.

Any final words for the Nashville audience?

I want to thank my friends and folks here in Nashville for their support. … I’m grateful for the acknowledgement and well wishes virtually and in person. I want to make a difference where I can, and I’m learning that it takes time, but that I shouldn’t wait. That said, there will be a Concurrence full-length album for 2023, and I’ll also be producing the next Dara Tucker album. I was privileged to write the liner notes for the forthcoming JD Allen album on Highnote Records that I can’t wait for folks to hear, and there are more things in the works that I’ll keep you posted about.

You know, we saw the world shut down once, and I’m thankful to still be here. Being alive right now just reinforces that we have to move and execute safely and cautiously — but purposefully and with vigilance. Again, to me, waiting isn’t an option. We play a song in Concurrence that will be on the next album that expresses my current mantra: “Now Is Still the Time.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 2 – JUNE 8, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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BE THE FLOOR. BE THE DOOR.

Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ‘70s EXHIBIT CLOSES JUNE 7

DOWNTOWN MKTG_Scene Full Page_PrintAd_06.02_22.indd 1

VISIT TODAY

5/27/22 10:04 AM

FILM

PRIMAL STREAM 77

A queer Asian American take on Pride and Prejudice, supplemental Jackassery and more, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

W

elcome back after a long time away from this, our recurring roundup of good things to stream.

Planet’s still fucked.

Tennessee is still run by grifters aiming to destabilize education. And eventually, the armadillos and the squirrels are going to start comparing notes and then we’re all completely screwed. But in the few months since the last one of these, there’s been a heap of streaming options out there for you. Let’s have a dive in, shall we?

FIRE ISLAND, JUNE 3 ON HULU A queer Asian American take on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Fire Island is exactly the mental margarita audiences feeling the stress of a hateful nation can soak in while gathering strength and sufficience. The fact that Disney bounced this over to Hulu as a Pride Month exclusive is typical, but it’s also a gesture that will allow it to become a perennial favorite, garnished with brunch drinks and the kind of verbal shorthand shared between dear friends.

Noah (screenwriter Joel Kim Booster), his best friend Howie (multihyphenate superstar of the future and SNL icon Bowen Yang), and their friends Keegan, Luke and Max have been making the trek to the LGBTQ enclave Fire Island for several years now, going all the way back to their common time as Brooklyn brunch servers. Their friend Erin (Margaret Cho) has a small but comfy house she shares with them during the summer, making the rich white tendencies of the island a bit more bearable and a lot more diverse in the process.

Booster and director Andrew Ahn (he made 2019’s Driveways, as well as the 2016 Nashville Film Festival hit Spa Night) has managed a remarkable feat with this sweet (and salty) rom-com, and Yang delivers an unexpectedly textured performance that finds the drama in The Drama and knocks it out of the park. Regardless of sexual orientation, anyone who enjoys a timeless narrative of the travails of love is going to find some aspect of this film that will resonate with them. And for gay audiences, it is pleasant, meaningful and most importantly a respite from the machinations of those who wish us harm for existing. Find the liberating dance party in your heart (excepting one unfortunate Lukasz Gottwald co-write on the soundtrack) and let your spirit fly. It’s all OK because your friends are taking care of dinner. Fire Island is a summer breeze of love, life and amyl nitrite.

JACKASS 4.5 ON NETFLIX In keeping with the ongoing tradition of putting out supplemental films — equal

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FIRE ISLAND parts deleted scenes, outtakes and behindthe-scenes exegeses — the Jackass crew returns with more of everything that defines their polymorphously perverse universe. It’s wild how much stress the crew put themselves under as COVID cut off radiating their Jackassery in an external direction. There’s a lot more emotional worldbuilding going on here than in any of the previous .5 addenda, and way more nudity than in previous installments. Danger Ehren McGhehey always deserved the MVP award for Jackass Forever, but good gawd, he went through a lot in the making of this one. There’s no further info about or appearances by Bam Margera, or the untenable situation he and the production had placed themselves in, but there’s a bit more of a reflective tone from the involved parties. You have to look past the vomit and pendulous dong to get there, but it’s there.

To put it another way, when asked to help people broaden their cinematic horizons, it’s very easy to offer L, G or T movies from the LGBTQ pantheon. “What’s a good B movie?” someone might ask, to which I’d say, “1999’s The Mummy.” But were someone to ask, “What’s a Q movie?” the best answer is “any of the Jackass films.”

music set in Nashville — with at least a tiny bit of second-unit footage actually shot here (written and made before the recent tragedy involving Naomi Judd) — could best be described as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane colliding with Spider Baby and just a soupçon of Georgia. National treasure Katey Sagal is Harper Dutch, part of a sister duo who topped the charts in the ’80s and ’90s and then receded into retirement after the tragic death of her sister. Contemporary duo Jordan and Leigh have sought out Harper for advice and maybe to record a song, but they find themselves in over their heads and under the control of a hard-drinkin’, hard-livin’ country legend with unspeakable secrets. The script, by Rachel Koller Croft, has occasional moments of indelible cruelty that elevate it above the made-for-TV vibes that occasionally pull the edges down, and Croft’s original songs are pretty great. She understands the modern country idiom well, and director Brea Grant has a gift for horror, subverting clichés and making the tension at the heart of the situation palpable.

The moment that’ll stay with you is an impromptu a cappella recording sequence, in which Sagal and the women are allowed to sing — the rest of the movie fades away, and that moment becomes everything.

TORN HEARTS VIA VIDEO ON DEMAND, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

TOP GUN ON NETFLIX

Despite some occasional F-words and a bit of gore (including one spectacular kill that feels almost like a Tarsemian touch), Torn Hearts feels like it might have been written as a Lifetime movie. That’s not a knock on it — Lifetime has been responsible for a lot of interesting thrillers and psychodramas over the past few years. But at times this twisted tale of the dark side of country

In advance of the sequel, Netflix did a good job of putting the 1986 original Top Gun front and center, making sure the moviegoing public has the original text fresh in their minds even as they use a modern HD master that aims for the orange-and-teal palette of modern action cinema. There’s no getting over the loss of director Tony Scott — an incredible visual stylist who developed

over the course of his career into a gifted formalist. And like Adrian Lyne did with Flashdance and dreams of modern dance, he takes another Simpson/Bruckheimer production and turns it into a sleek and sensual advertisement for Ronald Reagan’s America. And the thing is, as military recruitment skyrocketed following this film’s release, Scott sold this mentality all too well — like how Ghostbusters helped breed disdain for the EPA. Top Gun is a perfect vehicle for Tom Cruise’s stillprotean-at-that-time charm (it was the ’80s — rule-breaking and disregard for the safety of others was considered a feature, not a bug), packed to the rafters with sweaty homosocial vibes (Roger Avary by way of Quentin Tarantino was absolutely correct), and a soundtrack of wall-towall bangers (respect to ’80s soundtrack deity Giorgio Moroder and brand-new Nashvillian Michael Jay). Scott framed Val Kilmer — who is actually correct in his assessment of Cruise’s character — the same way he did David Bowie at the beginning of The Hunger. But this is not a “good” movie. It feeds on nostalgia for something that never existed, a beautiful shell concealing profound and utter emptiness at its heart.

JONNY GOWOW, “ALL OR NOTHING” ON YOUTUBE When it comes to homosocial vibes with a lot on the mind, Nashville’s own Jonny Gowow delights in complicated discourse and muddying ideological waters. His newest video, “All or Nothing,” is a striking work that refuses to allow any sort of easy compartmentalization or low-effort memeification, and it gets at some of the underlying horror that has become part and parcel of trying to have a point of view on the internet. “All or Nothing” is the kind of text that wriggles around in your subconscious and extends its most troubling tendrils deep into dreams and nightmares alike.

A QUICK TV CATCHUP: Paramount+ has a whole lot of Star Trek available for the viewing (alongside the new 4K restoration of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which is essential), and Lower Decks (which uses the freedom of animation and a superb voice cast as well as an acerbic cat doctor) and Strange New Worlds (which is the first spinoff that aims for the vibe and M.O. of the original series, also featuring former Tennessean Anson Mount) have emerged as my personal faves. Netflix’s attempt to make the queer public forget about Dave Chappelle’s descent into hacky transphobia, Heartstopper, is a pleasant YA series that would have meant the world to me as a teen. I find more complicated joys, however, in HBO Max’s Our Flag Means Death and The Magnus Archives podcast. But it’s a vicious world, so find that joy wherever you can and pack a lunch. In the way that Community’s “Digital Estate Planning” (on Hulu/ Prime/Netflix) and The Boondocks’ “Smokin’ With Cigarettes” (HBO Max) episodes became comfort TV rewarding dozens of views, so too has Letterkenny’s International Women’s Day special (Hulu) become the kind of thing that yields new facets upon repeat viewings.

Professor Tricia would approve.

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In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon LATONYA C GADDY. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after June 16, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 18, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

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LATONYA C GADDY In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon LATONYA C GADDY. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after June 16, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 18, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

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brightonvalley.net | 615.366.5552 nashvillescene.com | JUNE 2 - JUNE 8, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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S U H P I TC

Nashville is a diverse city, and we want a pool of freelance contributors who reflect that diversity. We’re looking for new freelancers, and we particularly want to encourage writers of color & LGBTQ writers to pitch us.

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