Nashville Scene 7-27-23

Good News, Bad News

A deep dive on the state of Nashville’s media landscape

BY ELI MOTYCKA

PERFORMING ARTS: Kindling Arts Festival keeps

Sidewalks and the Mayoral Race

Nashville, TN

Nashville’s list of 1,900 miles in critical need of sidewalks is larger than the county’s existing network of 1,328 miles. So how many miles were built in the past 12 months by Metro?

Eight.

And that’s double what was built in 2020. At this rate, it will take 238 years to complete all the sidewalks needed in the city.

Sidewalks are connectors to neighbors, bus stations, grocery stores and schools, and they serve other daily needs

Weaving It In Downtown

7

Nashville, TN

In big headline caps, the July 20 print edition of The Tennessean proclaimed that “Nolansville has ‘Weaver Fever,’” teasing a heartwarming feature on Nolensville Little League star Stella Weaver. Such a glaring headline error means that a few mistakes were made, somewhere along the line. It got past some people and didn’t get checked by other people — a classic newsroom breakdown.

11

Chris Ethridge supplied key components to The Flying Burrito Brothers’ country-rock sound, through his bass and piano playing and background singing on the group’s widely loved and influential 1969 debut The Gilded Palace of Sin. Mississippi-born Ethridge had been in Burrito Brothers co-founder Gram Parsons’ earlier group, the International Submarine Band, and he left the Burritos before their follow-up Burrito Deluxe. But until his death in 2012, he was a

WITNESS HISTORY

This rose-embroidered Nudie suit designed for Chris Ethridge and immortalized on the Flying Burrito Brothers album cover The Gilded Palace of Sin was stolen in 1969 and considered lost to history. It led a stunning subsequent second life, hiding in plain sight, and is now reunited for the first time with the other three Nudie suits from that foundational band.

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

artifact: Courtesy of Necia Ethridge and family artifact photo: Bob Delevante

ADDISON WRIGHT, NASHVILLE BANNER

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UPCOMING EVENTS

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with SHEBA KARIM at PARNASSUS Counterfeit

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with ERICA WATERS at PARNASSUS

Bring Me Your Midnight

6:30PM

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9

Congratulations, the Best Is Over!

6:30PM

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10

MICHAEL OHER SIGNING at PARNASSUS

When Your Back’s Against the Wall

6:30PM

JAMES MCBRIDE

FRIDAY, AUGUST 11

with KHALIL EKULONA at PARNASSUS

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

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EMBRACE YOUR CIVIC DUTY: LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD IN NASHVILLE’S MAYORAL ELECTION

As early voting continues until Saturday, and with a staggering 11 candidates currently in the running for the esteemed position of mayor, the future of our beloved city hangs in the balance. As a long-standing member of this community, I can’t stress enough how vital it is for each and every one of us to exercise our right to vote in this race. Voting is the cornerstone of democracy. It is a privilege that gives us the power to shape the course of our society; it holds our elected representatives accountable. I hope my fellow Nashvillians will also cherish this opportunity to have our say in shaping the future of our city.

A shining example of the power of voting comes from renowned artist Taylor Swift. In a recent Instagram post, Swift passionately urged her followers to make their voices heard in the upcoming election. She clearly understands the influence each vote wields in transforming our community for the better.

Adding more insight to the importance of voting in this particular mayoral race, think about the three former Nashville mayors — Bill Purcell, Megan Barry and Karl Dean — who all expressed their thoughts in a recent Nashville Banner article. Notably, all three agreed that this election season has been lackluster, and it’s now up to the candidates to inspire the voters. But we can be inspired simply because we know we are making a difference when we cast our individual vote. With numerous challenges and uncertainties facing our city, the candidates have a prime opportunity to lay out visionary plans to connect with Nashvillians. The next mayor must steer a city in which — according to a Vanderbilt Poll — around 56 percent of the population believes it’s currently heading in the wrong direction.

In the ongoing mayoral race, a new Power Poll shows candidate and Metro Councilmember Freddie O’Connell gaining an increase in support, positioning himself as a strong contender for the runoff — possibly against fellow candidate Matt Wiltshire. The crowded field also includes state Sens. Jeff Yarbro and Heidi Campbell, who

have struggled to gain traction. Another candidate, Republican Alice Rolli, has stood out by appealing to conservative voters. Regardless of the candidates, the city is bracing for a low voter turnout, emphasizing the urgency for all Nashvillians to engage in this critical democratic process and let their voices be heard.

According to a study by Pew Research Center, statistics reveal that around 69 percent of U.S. adults consider voting very important to be a good member of society. Democrats and Republicans alike, at around 70 percent each, agree on the significance of voting in this crucial race. Age and education also play roles in voter engagement. Older and more educated individuals place a higher value on most civic activities, highlighting the need to bridge the gap and encourage younger individuals to participate actively when it comes to voting. This is why I was pleased with Taylor Swift’s exemplary call to action. Let’s continue that momentum.

Now more than ever, each of us must recognize the power we hold as citizens. No longer can we afford to believe that our vote does not matter; it absolutely does in this race. With a wide array of candidates representing diverse visions for Nashville’s future, our votes can help shape the direction we want our city to take.

Our city deserves a strong leader who reflects our collective vision and values. This can only be achieved if we all exercise our right to vote. Nashville’s future is in our hands, and it is our duty to make our voices heard loud and clear at the ballot box. So during early voting or on Election Day, cast your ballot with confidence, knowing that you are contributing to a brighter and more inclusive future for the heart and soul of Tennessee — our beloved Nashville.

Bill

Freeman

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

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CITY LIMITS

SIDEWALKS AND THE MAYORAL RACE

BY ADDISON WRIGHT,

BANNER

This story is a partnership between the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Scene. For more information, visit NashvilleBanner.com.

Nashville’s list of 1,900 miles in critical need of sidewalks is larger than the county’s existing network of 1,328 miles. So how many miles were built in the past 12 months by Metro?

Eight.

And that’s double what was built in 2020. At this rate, it will take 238 years to complete all the sidewalks needed in the city.

Sidewalks are connectors to neighbors, bus stations, grocery stores and schools, and they serve other daily needs such as exercise or a well-walked dog. Nashville’s need for connectivity — and the Nashville Department of Transportation’s reported 4,600 missing miles of sidewalk — touches every district.

“Mobility is absolutely foundational to our ability to function in life and access anything,” says Jessica Dauphin, president and CEO of Transit Alliance of Middle Tennessee.

Such wide gaps in a sidewalk network are dangerous. Nashville has almost double the national average of pedestrian deaths, with 80 percent of fatalities occurring on wide roads with multiple lanes and few safe crosswalks, according to the Nashville Department of Transportation’s 2022 Walk n Bike plan.

Last year’s pedestrian fatality count of 49 deaths set a new record.

“There is a large amount of vehicle traffic on Foster Avenue, since it serves as a connector between Thompson Lane and Murfreesboro Road,” says Randall Miller, facility coordinator for the Coleman Community Center, which the Walk n Bike plan highlighted for its connectivity needs. “Adding sidewalks is a crucial part to increasing safety for the Woodbine community.”

This disconnected danger lingers in every district, from fatalities to myriad other issues. Dauphin says transportation “underscores” issues such as affordability, housing, health, environmental sustainability, education and equitable economic development. And for a “healthy and robust transit system … you need safe access and pathways to bus stops and destinations.”

Says Metro Nashville Public Schools spokesperson Sean Braisted, “Complete

sidewalk networks offer students the ability to safely walk to school, mitigating the risk of traffic-related pedestrian injuries.”

So when will the gaps be filled?

All the mayoral candidates have discussed ideas for establishing a form of reliable, safe transit, but unless the city’s transit system arrives at front doors, the next mayor needs to pour more sidewalk concrete. But other hurdles keep rising.

In May, the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a ruling that weakens a 2017 Metro sidewalk law requiring developers and landowners to contribute to sidewalk building.

“After the sidewalk ruling, Metro stopped collecting in-lieu fees to pay for new sidewalks,” says Wesley Smith with Walk Bike Nashville. “In the fiscal year 2024 budget, that translates to over $4 million in lost revenue for sidewalks. Unlike Williamson County and others, Davidson County does not have impact fees on new developments. After this ruling, Metro’s even more limited in its ability to build sidewalks.”

Smith says he wishes the plaintiffs addressed the sidewalk legislation’s “shortcomings through local policy tweaks” instead of involving the federal government, as the ordinance had the “rare” support of 38 out of 40 Metro councilmembers as cosponsors.

When asked about this, Braden Boucek, the plaintiff’s attorney and director of litigation for Southeastern Legal Foundation, says they “tried to work with the city before coming to court.”

“The whole point of the Bill of Rights was to set aside some basic freedoms as being beyond legislative reach,” says Boucek. “Nowhere is that truer than in Fifth Amendment Takings cases, where cities like Nashville want things but don’t want to pay for them, and so they take property that doesn’t belong to it.”

The attorney does not know how much money the city will refund to developers, but Boucek says that throughout the case, they “demanded [Jason Mayes] receive full restitution in the amount he paid [$8,883.21] to the city, which it used to build sidewalks on someone else’s property.”

Boucek represented two Nashville homeowners, but the case decision also limited the Nashville government’s ability to partner with developers to build priority sidewalks.

“Sidewalks benefit both the property owner that builds them and the surrounding neighborhood: raising property values, promoting safety and increasing neighborhood connectivity,” says Smith.

“The U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision should infuriate anyone that wants a more walkable and livable Nashville. It should also serve

as a renewed cry to accelerate sidewalk construction with new funding sources, building faster and cheaper where we can.”

In short, money is a top barrier to having more sidewalks in Nashville. Dauphin agrees. Explaining Nashville’s slow sidewalk progress is complicated, and there is a laundry list of barriers, including a lack of funding.

“Stormwater costs continue to drive sidewalk project costs where current infrastructure doesn’t exist; rising property values have driven higher right-of-way acquisition costs; and construction costs have risen significantly over the past few years due to both inflation and competition for quality contractors,” says Cortnye Stone, NDOT communications director.

Vanderbilt professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Abkowitz warns that “flooding can be exacerbated by having too much concrete in a particular area, which restricts soil absorption and channels a larger amount of water to a narrower area.”

WHAT HAS JOHN COOPER’S ADMINISTRATION DONE?

Past mayors have attempted to resolve the sidewalk funding barrier. Megan Barry’s 2016-2017 operating budget included $60 million for sidewalk and road construction, Nashville’s largest one-time investment.

Since then, the 2020 Metro Nashville Transportation Plan added $200 million to fund 50 percent of the remaining 71 priority sidewalk miles by 2025.

Cooper announced a hefty goal in his 2021 State of Metro address, saying he aimed to “improve sidewalk construction times by 50 percent and reduce costs by 20 percent within 12 months — as we work to build and repair 75 miles of sidewalks.”

These goals have been met, but applying the estimates from Cooper’s 2020 special committee on sidewalks to today would

make addressing Nashville’s 1,900 miles of critical need sidewalks cost about $10 billion.

“Public Works budgets $1,000 per linear foot of sidewalks,” and “current average cost of sidewalk is $837 per linear foot, which is 18 percent professional services and 82 percent construction costs,” wrote Metro Councilmember Emily Benedict in the committee report.

Given the tight budget and high need, NDOT’s 2022 Walk n Bike Plan asserted that sidewalk projects must be prioritized, specifically those with safety, connectivity, transit accessibility, and health and equity needs.

“The sidewalk project that they are planning on installing from Whitsett Road to Thompson Lane would serve as a connector between Whitsitt Elementary School and Coleman Park,” says Miller. “Up until now it hasn’t been a safe option for youth to be able to navigate Foster Avenue due to the lack of sidewalks.”

This project is one of the areas highlighted for its connectivity needs in the Walk n Bike report.

In 2022, Cooper also announced new sidewalk guidelines requiring a temporary sidewalk while the current one is under construction. NDOT announced new rapidbuild sidewalk projects that can save money and speed up sidewalk construction.

To address pedestrian safety, NDOT, under Cooper’s administration, established an education campaign for pedestrian safety as part of Vision Zero Action Plan implementation. The plan includes public awareness campaigns, community engagement events and high-visibility signage and pavement markings for new safety programs such as “High-Intensity Activated crossWalK” (HAWK) beacons.

Ultimately, the Cooper administration has built 17 miles of sidewalks, with 120 miles added through other avenues.

Nashville needs thousands of miles of walkways, pedestrian deaths are on the rise, and the city lost over $4 million in funding in a federal appeals court ruling

NASHVILLE

VISIT NASHVILLESCENE.COM TO READ THE LEADING MAYORAL CANDIDATES’ RESPONSES TO OUR QUESTIONS ON SIDEWALKS

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

CITY LIMITS

WHAT COULD THE NEXT MAYOR DO?

“The next mayor has to set sidewalks right,” says Smith. “A critical issue will be securing dedicated funding for multimodal transportation, so that as we improve public transportation, money is earmarked for sidewalk and bikeway improvements that connect to better bus service. Building sidewalks at the pace we need will take a mayor that is prepared to act on day one.”

Dauphin advises mayors to seek more regional funding, as sidewalks are also a regional issue.

The Greater Nashville Regional Council, or the Metropolitan Planning Organization, is federally mandated to update the 25year Regional Transportation Plan every five years. Every year the RTP allocates federal dollars for the next three years, called the Transportation Improvement Plan. Dauphin says there is room for Nashville sidewalk projects to receive funding from these funds.

NDOT’s 2022 Walk n Bike plan cites that it collaborates with TDOT and GNRC for “planning process,” “grant applications” and for projects across county lines. The plan also says state funding applications for “pedestrian projects” are “ongoing.”

Stone explains NDOT’s goals for the next four years under the new mayor.

“Over the next four years NDOT will continue to execute the 2022-2024 Work Plan for Sidewalks and Bikeways, aiming to advance 74 miles of sidewalk to either design, right-of-way acquisition, and/or construction phases,” Stone says.

Alongside funding, the next mayor will be met with safety concerns for Nashville sidewalks. Abkowitz is leading a Vanderbilt campus research project on pedestrian safety.

“Our research has identified key factors impacting serious accident outcomes involving pedestrians and bicyclists when interacting with motor vehicle traffic,” says Abkowitz. “This can help identify locations where sidewalk enhancements are most needed. We also have performed a research study that uses personal tracking devices to identify locations where pedestrians themselves are exhibiting greater stress.”

As safety programs are implemented, Dauphin voices a need for awareness.

“I have seen cars blow right through [HAWK beacons], and when there’s a pedestrian in it,” says Dauphin. “I have seen the pedestrian push the button and begin walking immediately, not waiting for the flash. … I feel there’s some education that needs to happen there.” HAWK beacons are not mentioned in the 2022 Tennessee Comprehensive Driver License Manual. Also, the next mayor cannot ignore school sidewalks.

“MNPS provides transportation for students at their zoned school who live outside of a ‘Parent Responsibility Zone’ of 1.25 miles or less from an elementary or middle school and 1.5 miles or less from a high school,” says Braisted. “That means that those within the PRZ will generally need to walk, ride their bike or be driven by a family member in order to get to school.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Q&A:

ANALYZES AG’S DEMANDS FOR VUMC PATIENT RECORDS

J.D. Thomas unpacks broad civil investigative demands related to trans care

BY HANNAH HERNER

In June, patients of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s transgender clinic were alarmed to learn that their health records had been turned over to the state. The health system informed patients that it shared the records as part of a TennCare billing fraud investigation by the Tennessee attorney general’s office — but those records were only a small piece of the requests.

VUMC had been handing over information since Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti signed the first civil investigative demand, similar to a subpoena, in November. Two more followed in March. The three CIDs requested a broad swath of information, including messages from a general LGBTQ health email account, employment records for the transgender health care program and the Trans Buddy mentorship program and names of anyone referred to the center, even if they did not receive services. Court records also show a demand for documents “which contain information relating to an insufficient mental health diagnosis for services related to transgender health and gender affirming therapy” in addition to patient medical records and billing information.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) gives patients the right to access their medical records and is meant to make the records confidential so entities cannot sell them without patient permission, J.D. Thomas, a former federal prosecutor and partner at Barnes & Thornburg who specializes in health care fraud enforcement and government investigation defense, tells Scene sister publication the Nashville Post

“It doesn’t give patients any control over how an entity is going to respond to a law enforcement investigation like this,” Thomas says. “There’s a law enforcement exception to HIPAA, and the law itself doesn’t give patients any control over whether their medical records are provided in response to a valid government subpoena.”

Skrmetti’s office has maintained that the Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act and Tennessee False Claims Act investigation focused on the clinic and certain providers, not patients. The investigation was prompted by a VUMC doctor who “publicly described her manipulation of medical billing codes to evade coverage limitations on gender-related treatment,” according to a statement from Skrmetti’s office. TennCare does not cover gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy, puberty blockers and surgeries.

It’s typical for CIDs to be broad, Thomas says, but the breadth of information requested by the attorney general does not appear to have a focus.

“The attorney general has the authority to investigate claims that were coded improperly and submitted for reimbursement for TennCare,”

Thomas says. “The CIDs do not seem narrowly tailored to just that information.”

VUMC said in a statement in June that the organization complied with the AG requests, though the health system told the Tennessee Lookout that it did not comply with every demand. The health care system could push back, Thomas says, but only if it is too burdensome to produce the information.

“It’s very difficult to resist these because [CIDs are] used to investigate health care fraud and the potential improper spending of government money, and there’s so much government reimbursement in health care,” he said.

However, Thomas said often the government will allow the target to produce less information.

“You usually don’t end up in a situation of a government saying, ‘No, respond to the whole thing as written,’ and [the company] saying, ‘We can’t, and if you force us to do that, we’re going to go to court to get protection,’ because somebody blinks,” Thomas said.

It’s not common for companies to go to court to resist CIDs, he adds, and in a 2021 precedent the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision to issue sanctions against a Clarksville company, Wall and Associates, for refusing to comply with a civil demand from the AG’s office.

“If you get to the point of not blinking and you go to court to resist it, in my experience, there’s a pretty decent chance of having a judge say, at least in some way, that this thing is overbroad, and you all need to try to work together to figure out a narrower path,” Thomas says. “You’re never going to be in a situation where the judge is just going to say, ‘No, government, you don’t have the authority to do that.’”

Skrmetti’s request stands out in that it’s focused on one relatively small clinic, Thomas says. Fraud typically occurs in areas of higher reimbursement that serve more patients, such as diabetes care, home health and hospice, cardiology or pain management.

“This doesn’t necessarily seem like an area that’s ripe for traditional health care fraud,” Thomas says.

The investigation reflects Skrmetti’s values, and that of Gov. Bill Lee and legislators who moved to instate the ban on gender-affirming care for youth in Tennessee despite lawsuits from the U.S. Department of Justice and the ACLU of Tennessee. Skrmetti also joined Republican counterparts in 18 states in an effort to prevent the federal government from shielding the medical records for those who cross state lines to obtain gender-affirming or abortion care.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG:

More than 20,000 people have voted early in the Metro elections, which will decide a new Metro Council, vice mayor and mayor. Campaigns are vying for an estimated 100,000 votes based on historic voter turnout for local elections, held every four years. Election Day is Aug. 3, but the mayor’s race and some at-large spots are expected to head to a runoff. … Parents at the Covenant School helped launch two new nonprofits — Covenant Families for Brighter Tomorrows and Covenant Families Action Fund — meant to “protect children from gun violence.” A shooting in March rocked the school and city and claimed the lives of three children and three adults. Prior to a press conference announcing the new organizations, Covenant parents and community members rallied at the state Capitol in support of action on gun control. Gov. Bill Lee has indicated plans to call a special legislative session next month to address the issue. … Marquita Bradshaw, a Memphis environmental advocate and Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 2020, will run again in 2024. If she secures the Democratic nomination, Bradshaw — who lost the 2020 race to Nashville Republican Bill Hagerty by 27 percentage points — would take on Republican incumbent Marsha Blackburn of Williamson County. State Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) has also indicated interest in the race. … Outgoing Mayor John Cooper visited the old Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority — not to be confused with the new authority established by state lawmakers this year — to show his support for the body amid a city-state power struggle over BNA. A three-judge state court panel will meet this week to consider arguments by Metro Nashville, the state and the airport authority, now represented by outside counsel, to help determine future control of the site. … Data released by the state this month shows widespread gains among Metro Nashville Public Schools students compared to previous years — specifically 2020, when the COVID pandemic disrupted learning for students across the nation. The TCAP scores indicate that schools are gaining ground after suffering years of learning loss. … A PAC with ties to the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce pumped more than $200,000 into Metro Council races in the second quarter, reports the Nashville Banner — a more than 200 percent increase on its 2019 political spending. The PAC, A Better Nashville, brings together major business interests concentrated on Nashville’s economic growth. ... A controversial music video released this month by Jason Aldean is a thinly veiled argument for small-town violence against Black people, writes Scene contributor Betsy Phillips. The video, for Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” was filmed in Columbia at the site of a 1927 lynching.

J.D. THOMAS

MAYOR’S RACE ENTERS FINAL DAYS

Looming runoff promises six more weeks of campaign season

BY ELI MOTYCKA

The mayoral runoff has become a tradition in Nashville politics. Fundraising starts again from zero, and candidates get six weeks of extra campaign time. In the general election, candidates don’t have to win a majority or even anything close to it — just a big enough chunk to survive. Then the top two votegetters from the general make a sprint to the finish. Multiple polls show a huge chunk of undecided voters and no candidate with a clear advantage.

“There will be nothing left in our bank account on Aug. 4,” says Freddie O’Connell, the second-term Metro councilmember who got into the mayor’s race more than a year ago.

A wonky computer engineer, O’Connell seems to enjoy explaining the city’s bureaucratic machinery. He has been saying the same things on the campaign trail since April 2022, when he launched what was then an outsider’s attack against a well-funded incumbent, Mayor John Cooper — who in January of this year announced he wouldn’t seek reelection. O’Connell’s campaign has emphasized support for transit and opposition to big handouts — namely the stadium deal for the Tennessee Titans — a shadow jab at his main competition, former city executive Matt Wiltshire.

Wiltshire has cornered support among the more growth-minded downtown business class, and holds a substantial fundraising advantage.

Wiltshire can speak Metro too. Less-defined politics — the left calls him a Republican, Alice Rolli reminds voters that he’s a Democrat — have enabled Wiltshire to cobble together a broad base of support similar to Cooper’s in 2019. While Wiltshire’s bank account remains strong, a recent poll by the Tennessee Laborers’ PAC puts him in fourth place.

Republican Rolli, a former aide to Gov. Bill Haslam, could also have a path to the top two: peel off support from Wiltshire’s right flank and consolidate the city’s conservative minority. AllianceBernstein executive Jim Gingrich dropped out last week after putting up $2 million of his own money. Despite blasting out TV spots emphasizing his executive experience and vowing to soothe Nashville’s growing pains, Gingrich, who moved here with the company in 2018, was branded by opponents as an out-of-touch out-of-towner. Because Gingrich exited the race after early voting had already begun, his name will remain on the ballot through Election Day.

Democratic state Sens. Heidi Campbell and Jeff Yarbro have become second choices. Both rode strong county name ID to favorable spots in early polling. Both

had established fundraising networks that could quickly furnish a local campaign. For Campbell, who flipped a state Senate seat by knocking off Nashville RINO Steve Dickerson in 2020 but lost a congressional race to Andy Ogles in 2022, it would be the second major election loss in nine months. For Yarbro, a loss would be a misstep in a political career he has obvious hopes of extending. The electoral math has been confusing — both split support among their colleagues in the state Democratic caucus and split votes in overlapping demographics in Davidson County. Each has struggled to communicate a distinct vision for the city, perhaps hoping that voters will check the box next to a name they’ve seen before. Working long days at the hyper-conservative state Capitol is full of legislative stone walls and pointless floor speeches — both want a win. As numbers look better for O’Connell and Wiltshire, their paths to a runoff look less and less likely, though Yarbro has a fundraising advantage in the campaign’s final stretch.

“It’s a crapshoot at the moment,” says Campbell’s campaign manager, Cyrus Shick. “You have a lot of people undecided, and a lot of people know Heidi. We see races like this change all the time. There have been many more polls done than have been released — connect the dots on why that might be.”

Shick’s point is the undercurrent of the entire race: No one is ahead. No one knows who is ahead. No one thinks they’re ahead, and no one wants to say they’re ahead. Firms out of D.C. have been calling the city constantly, charging $20,000 or so per poll, returning results that no one wants to share.

Another recent poll came from Harpeth Strategies, a local outfit run by District 35 Councilmember Dave Rosenberg — an O’Connell supporter — with uneven samples and a shocking 5-point lead for O’Connell at 20 percent. Wiltshire came in second at 15 percent, with Rolli at 13 percent.

After a week, early voting topped 20,000, about a fifth of the total expected turnout. Signs point to a substantial number of undecided voters. Everyone will be surprised on Election Day.

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NO ONE IS AHEAD. NO ONE KNOWS WHO IS AHEAD. NO ONE THINKS THEY’RE AHEAD, AND NO ONE WANTS TO SAY THEY’RE AHEAD.

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Illyich

Good News, Bad News

A deep dive on the state of Nashville’s media landscape

BY ELI MOTYCKA

IN BIG HEADLINE CAPS, the July 20 print edition of The Tennessean proclaimed that “Nolansville has ‘Weaver Fever,’” teasing a heartwarming feature on Nolensville Little League star Stella Weaver. Such a glaring headline error means that a few mistakes were made, somewhere along the line. It got past some people and didn’t get checked by other people — a classic newsroom breakdown.

Once held together by the city’s flagship daily newspaper, Nashville’s media landscape has diffused across new properties, resurrected brands, social platforms, audio and video. While The Tennessean leaves a vacuum for news and reporting, new voices have filled in. Journalism is turning insideout while the city explodes, making business news, entertainment buzz and political headlines. We can start with the bad news.

In many regards, The Tennessean of today functions more as a financial experiment than a news organization. Reporting is expensive, and parent corporation Gannett has stripped the paper for parts. A typical online front page buries a few local news stories among college sports coverage, listicles, animal videos and, a recent favorite, themed archival photo galleries like “Nashville Then: 40 Years Ago in July 1983.” Rather than lean on its name brand to produce deeply reported stories based on verified information, the paper has responded to a divided news environment by running editorials that pander to the right. It has committed a few unforced errors in the process, like publishing Laurie Cardoza Moore’s May 2022 argument for banning books, and at a panel a week later, failing to moderate Republican congressional candidates in the name of free speech. Add to that public insults aimed at Tennesseans writ large from executive editor Michael Anastasi and it becomes difficult to imagine what function the paper hopes to fulfill in the city.

Once sought after as a training ground for cub reporters, The Tennessean newsroom has struggled to retain talent, hemorrhaging its best young reporters before they hit the two-year mark. Arcelia Martin, a Columbia journalism grad, reported in

Nashville for a little more than a year before following fellow Tennessean expat Meghan Mangrum to The Dallas Morning News. When she left, Mangrum, who reported at the Chattanooga Times Free Press before moving to The Tennessean, was approaching five years covering education in Tennessee. The paper’s two star political reporters of the past decade both jumped to national outlets — Joey Garrison to the USA Today Network in 2019 and Natalie Allison to Politico in 2021 — while Adam Friedman, reared at the Gannettowned Jackson Sun, made it 23 months at The Tennessean before moving to Tennessee Lookout this spring. LeBron Hill, one of the paper’s opinion voices, announced a hop from The Tennessean to the Times Free Press last week. When it launched a daily newsletter in Nashville, news site Axios lured Tennessean veterans Nate Rau (after a brief stint at the Lookout) and Adam Tamburin, two of the most experienced reporters in the city. It’s a strategy Axios founder Jim VandeHei has not been shy about: poach talent, pay better than anyone else, amass affluent email readers who can command more lucrative ad rates than traditional digital advertising. The Scene snatched Cole Villena from Gannett’s Williamson County desk earlier this year. Layoffs have become routine at The Tennessean, often coinciding with Gannett earnings reports.

The city’s former paper of record now spreads fewer reporters across more beats. Three years into the job, Cassandra Stephenson covers business, real estate, crime, city politics and the courts along with Sandy Mazza, her senior counterpart. Melissa Brown and Vivian Jones, who started full time in April, represent the entire Capitol Hill press coverage for all Gannett newspapers in the state, consolidating into two people what would have been four or five in previous decades. While The Tennessean pipes in national news coverage from its USA Today Network, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis and the Knoxville News Sentinel — all Gannett properties — share state legislative coverage. Consolidated ownership means fewer reporters (that’s the point), and fewer reporters means less competition. Shared articles means a shared point of view and a smaller press pool, casualties of the new news business at the expense of the reader. It’s a common industry practice when an owner holds multiple titles; Scene parent company FW Publishing does the same between the Scene, the Nashville Post and The News Papers make money with advertising and subscriptions (and for one radio station, listeners’ spare cars). Legacy titles

like the News Sentinel, Commercial Appeal and Tennessean offer an additional ace card: valuable urban real estate that once housed stables of reporters and expansive printing facilities. Creative ownership concerned with its own longevity could tap these assets in times of market turbulence (like the 2010s) to stabilize a newsroom. Along with the cost of staff salaries, real estate assets stick out on a corporate balance sheet, and offer quick, big money for an executive in need. Either way, it is a card that can be played once.

Gannett cashed in The Tennessean’s historic 1100 Broadway site for $44.7 million in 2019, drastically downsizing to a few floors on West End and shifting its production to Knoxville. The Commercial Appeal’s offices went for $2.8 million, also in 2019, and the News Sentinel building sold in 2021 for $8.5 million, including an immediate leaseback from Gannett. Critically, The Tennessean soon ceased printing on-site. This change to the fragile logistics of daily print production pushes back deadlines and drives up distribution costs, further eating into the margins provided by dwindling print customers.

Reports of failed unionization efforts are cruel taunts so late in The Tennessean’s life. The paper is historically a non-union shop that, if organized just a couple decades earlier, could have pushed back against corporate raids. Individual print subscriptions have fallen off a cliff, down to 21,597 on Sunday (its most-subscribed day) and 14,523 on Tuesday (its least), according to the Alliance for Audited Media. Those numbers are roughly half what they were three years ago, and in January 2022, The Tennessean stopped publishing a Saturday edition. Ten years ago, it sold 214,072 Sunday papers and averaged 104,109 weekly subscribers. This consistent, sizable income stream has always represented a daily paper’s revenue backbone.

Nearly every journalist — including many interviewed for this article — couches their criticism of The Tennessean with praise for its individual writers. They emphatically defend the journalist against the structure of the industry.

“I don’t ever publicly criticize reporters,” says Holly McCall, editor-in-chief

at Tennessee Lookout, which launched in late 2020. “I mean, if they publish something blatantly false, that’s one thing. But there’s not that many of us around, and the former president of the United States spent four years calling media the enemy of the people.”

IT’S MOSTLY THE older journalists who like to talk about the grim, ambient cloud over print newsrooms. There was, of course, a day when The Tennessean was hiring instead of firing, and reporters jostled each other for position in crowded press conferences at the state Capitol and Metro courthouse. Few local media figures loom larger than John Seigenthaler, the journalist-editor-publisher who spent a career between The Tennessean and the White House, representing a time when papers were not gutted for assets but feared by the corrupt and powerful. A former local writer once described to me a vibrant war of pranks and hijinks between the more liberal Tennessean and its conservative-leaning evening daily competitor, the Nashville Banner — with whom it shared a building at 1100 Broadway — to illustrate Nashville media’s good old days.

There was a time, of course, when chainsmoking reporters cupped their hands over desk phones to yell across the newsroom.

JOHN SEIGENTHALER

Like most powerful institutions then, these rooms were dominated by white men and owned by powerful individuals and families. They also nourished a large crop of writers for entire careers. More writers in stable careers meant more questions being asked, more calls being made, and competition that produced new, interesting, important angles and fresh stories for the benefit of the city.

It’s not difficult to find comprehensive and informative stories on how the internet and corporate raiders blew up the news business. Google it. Every year, tenured journalists at The Atlantic or Politico or the Times (of L.A. or New York) lament the collapse of local information ecosystems, the plague of ignorance that follows and how all of society suffers for it. While it’s likely comforting for media veterans to point to how things were before, their stories and nostalgia distill into just one useful lesson: Get more journalists.

“Launching as the Banner, I don’t have to spend a year telling people who we are,” says Steve Cavendish. Hired out of Belmont University as a cub reporter at the Banner, Cavendish has been in and out of award-winning newsrooms across the country. In 1995 he left the Banner — which was sold off to Gannett and then closed in the late ’90s — but Cavendish landed back in Nashville at now-defunct The City Paper in 2011. He moved over to the Scene in 2013. Cavendish left amid forced layoffs from former Scene owner Southcomm in 2017. Launched this year as a website and newsletter, his revamp of the Banner reflects a personal mission to rebuild a competitive news ecosystem in Nashville and an incurable curiosity about the business side of news.

“The nonprofit news community around the country has been excellent at sharing information, best practices and mistakes,” says Cavendish. “One thing we’ve learned is to launch with scale, and quality news is expensive. You have to pay people a decent wage, you have to support them, you have to give them benefits, you have to do whatever else. It is also expensive in the sense that you are paying for stories that you will never, ever run. This is important, and a lot of people don’t understand this about the news business.”

Along with Demetria Kalodimos, a locally beloved longtime news staple at WSMV-TV, and interns Connor Daryani and Addison Wright, Cavendish has been covering local elections on the Banner’s new website, which went live July 1. (The Banner and the Scene currently have a partnership under which the Scene republishes some of the Banner’s reporting.) The Banner is more than three-quarters of the way to its $2 million fundraising goal, which will allow the site to officially launch as a nonprofit news organization with a 10-person staff. Part of Cavendish’s pitch to donors is that public relations professionals outnumber journalists in Nashville 6 to 1.

The States Newsroom, which runs nonprofit outlets across the country, approached McCall in late 2020 about starting its Tennessee operation. She accepted and got commits from Rau and veteran investigative reporter Anita Wadhwani from The Tennessean. Hires like Tennessean photographer John Partipilo, Sam Stockard (who spent decades as a print reporter

in Murfreesboro) and newcomer Adam Friedman have built out a formidable staff that’s led on Tennessee General Assembly coverage and broken important stories across the state. She takes support from the national States Newsroom but has fundraised herself to hire and keep more reporters.

“Some people are probably liable to view us with some skepticism,” says McCall, whose media career frequently crisscrossed into Democratic politics — including a run for state House in 2016 and work for Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign in 2020. “So I hired good reporters. We break solid stories that are true, factual and important, even if people don’t always like them. We’ve done that since day one — day three, actually, when Anita broke a story about Gov. Lee allowing law enforcement to get people’s COVID records.”

The massive news metamorphosis of the Internet Age suggests that the forprofit model must die for journalism to live. Advertisers have cheaper, better placement on Google and Facebook, and readers fill their information vacuum by scrolling on socials, the junk food of media. Reader behavior is changing, slowly. The New York Times is the rare legacy property to succeed in this moment, which they’ve done by becoming the Amazon of information. Acquisitions of

rising-star niche outfits like The Athletic and Wirecutter, along with expansions in NYT Cooking and games, have allowed one city’s paper to tell the country how to cook, who to read, what to play, who to root for, what to buy and where to travel. Such a diverse portfolio of information can subsidize the paper’s best-in-class news gathering, which makes up a decreasing share of total revenue. Aided by alarming headlines almost every day of the Trump administration, digital subscriptions are way up.

NEW AND REFURBISHED outlets have sprouted up in Nashville, setting up modest shops with specific missions. More individuals paying closer attention to local politics are trying hard to get correct and useful information to the public.

Henry Walker, the Scene’s former media critic, hosts a semiregular media salon at his home on Benton Avenue, a stately red brick American Foursquare furnished like an art gallery — the spoils of a career in corporate law, not journalism, he assures me.

“Stories are generated by grizzled old editors who consume news and have friends and sources,” says Walker from his front porch. “Who are those people now?”

Three retired reporters join us on a recent Thursday: Chris Bundgaard (formerly of WKRN-TV), Ed Cromer (formerly of the Banner and founding

writer of the Tennessee Journal) and Tom Humphrey (former Nashville bureau chief of the Knoxville News Sentinel). Humphrey brought pickled squash.

“Every day, they should have a microphone in Bill Lee’s face asking what he’s going to do about the Covenant shooting,” Bundgaard says. “Does he have the votes? Let’s see the bill.”

“Well, one of the problems with the lack of good reporting is that you don’t know what’s going on,” Cromer chimes in. “We don’t know what we’re not reading about.”

Walker, who was hired by and fired by the Scene multiple times throughout his tenure as media critic in the 1990s, embraced the irreverent alt-weekly’s perch as Nashville’s court jester. He took regular shots at the city’s print giants, The Tennessean and the Banner, and the city’s host of TV news channels, in his popular column, “Desperately Seeking the News.” He joins Cromer, Bundgaard and Humphrey in lamenting Nashville’s current media environment. Then he heaps praise on Scene contributor Nicole Williams.

Under the Twitter handle @startleseasily, Williams started covering (though she wouldn’t call it that) Metro Council meetings virtually during the days of COVID, when everyone was at home all the time. She watched and watched, gleaning interpersonal and policy dramas playing out on obscure city boards and commissions and, of course, Tuesday night council meetings. She had a lot to say, and she said it — she was the only one saying it, and it was important. In late 2021, the Scene gave her “On First Reading,” a Metro Council recap and analysis column, and she’s published it since.

Williams has filed straight news on occasion, but her day job is at a law firm. In her words, she is not a journalist. She does not shy from a Twitter spat and has explicitly endorsed candidates for elected office. But, observes Walker, her charm comes from her voice, and her credibility comes from the sheer scale of information Williams has accumulated watching Metro function up close for thousands of hours. Lots of information on Twitter is wrong, but the platform can give anyone a platform. The same holds for DIY outlets like Substack, where (with assistance from Williams) I briefly published a local politics newsletter called Public Comment that turned into a full-time position at the Scene in 2022.

Our small weekly was built largely under the ownership of editor Bruce Dobie and publisher Albie Del Favero in the 1990s. Back then, the Scene specialized in compelling longer-form dramas, specifically when revealing the machinations of Nashville’s rich, famous, powerful or proud. Unlike the traditional journalist objectives of major dailies, the Scene elevated a writer’s voice.

“Dobie told us that we didn’t have an editorial page because all our pieces were editorials,” Walker remembers.

The paper changed hands multiple times since Dobie and Del Favero left in the early 2000s. Wealthy businessman Bill Freeman, founder and owner of property management company Freeman Webb, acquired the paper with his business partner, the late Jimmy Webb, via Freeman Webb in May 2018. Freeman’s single conceit is a weekly opinion letter that operates independently of the Scene’s news coverage. FW Publishing has lost excellent journalists too

HOLLY McCALL, TENNESSEE LOOKOUT

TENNESSEE LOOKOUT OFFICE

PHOTOS: ANGELINA CASTILLO

Erica Ciccarone, Geert De Lombaerde, Steven Hale, Nancy Floyd, J.R. Lind and Amanda Haggard left in the past three years, among others.

While the Banner returns from the dead, new outlets and new voices pop up. Nashville Noticias has become the dominant Spanish-language news operation in Nashville and the surrounding region, counting an audience that reaches into the hundreds of thousands. Veronica Salcedo works out of a tiny office-studio in Plaza Mariachi recording spots for media giant Univision and managing Noticias’ coverage across social media platforms.

“Our first big story was the snowstorm in the winter of 2015,” Salcedo tells the Scene via a translator. “Soon people started to see us as more professional, so we got more organized. We started with just a laptop that used to overheat. Now Hispanic people call us constantly to relay news of what’s happening around their neighborhood.” Salcedo was a journalist in northern Mexico before moving to Nashville in 2015. Along with her ex-husband, she started building Noticias for the Spanish-speaking community in Nashville.

“What I do for the community, a lot of it is just explaining,” says Salcedo. “When I moved here, I had to learn the rules and the laws that govern Tennessee and the U.S. Now I inform my community of those rules and laws about everyday life in the United States.”

Noticias is everywhere in Nashville. Salcedo recalls being among the first to be on the scene to cover the Covenant School shooting and takes pride in how closely she works with the Spanish-speaking community. Noticias covers lost pets, funerals, house fires, wage theft and traffic accidents. She generates revenue via sponsored posts and ads, often for local grocery stores, restaurants and legal aid. But on occasion, her stories are more clickbait than relevant news.

Clickbait consumes today’s TV stations (and increasingly The Tennessean), like stories about specific incidents of violent crime and mugshots of recent arrests. Such headlines — more public shaming than journalism — get traffic even though they’re largely irrelevant to a viewer’s daily life, doing more to feed racism and fear than to educate or inform. Even so, NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams still dogs politicians and produces excellent reporting for the evening news. His unit has shown signs of journalistic innovation — last week, NC5’s Levi Ismail published an entire investigative story about the Millersville Police on social media.

WHILE A HANDFUL of new outlets have spent the past few years building credibility and establishing followings, just one has weathered a rocky business environment only to emerge stronger, bigger, better staffed and an undisputed leader in its field.

Meribah Knight’s Pulitzer nomination for her coverage of Rutherford County’s juvenile court system (with ProPublica’s Ken Armstrong) was a remarkable nod from one of the toughest categories of the highest prize in journalism. Nashville’s NPR affiliate, WPLN-FM, was close to recognition as one of the best news operations in the country. It has managed to stay on the record every day about news across the state

while building out deeply reported stories and podcasts. Its latest daily show, This Is Nashville, hosted by Khalil Ekulona, already commands a staff of six. NPR’s national desk frequently borrowed Blake Farmer’s health care stories, and WNYC, America’s radio juggernaut, quickly recruited Nashville’s criminal justice reporter Samantha Max last year. WPLN has grown and grown, yet also struggled to retain its best talent — Max of course, but also state legislature reporter Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, enterprise reporter Damon Mitchell, news director Emily Siner and Metro reporter Ambriehl Crutchfield. Crutchfield, who is Black, publicly questioned the organization’s ability to retain reporters of color, and in a parting tweet, cited “not feeling heard internally” as a reason for her departure. Two months after Crutchfield left, her reporting on maintenance neglect by property manager Freeman Webb at Riverchase Apartments won a 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award. Crutchfield declined the Scene’s request for comment on her departure. State politics veteran Chas Sisk left this year, along with Farmer, who went to the private sector. Vice president of content (and general editor) Anita Bugg recently resigned in the middle of a meeting after nearly three decades at the station. On July 24, senior producer Anna Gallegos-Cannon announced on Twitter she was leaving WPLN after five years.

“People have left for a variety of different reasons,” says a source familiar with the newsroom. “We’ve grown, and lots of changes happen with growth.”

Still, inside radio’s morass of evangelical and partisan talk programs, WPLN rules local news. Its nonprofit model means semiregular fundraising marathons — a small price to pay for the many Nashvillians whose car dials stay stuck on 90.3.

While Nashville figures itself out, there has been more news than ever. Astronomical population growth has brought the usual laundry list of growing pains — transit and traffic, housing affordability, booming real estate demographic changes — along with major corporate relocations,

like Amazon and Oracle. A hyper-partisan political environment between the city and state makes Middle Tennessee a litmus test between parties for all kinds of nationally relevant issues. Nashville’s country music bona fides combine a Hollywood shininess with an Americana authenticity. People love it.

Ten years after a New York Times reporter called Nashville the “it” city, national media still harbors a healthy appetite for Middle Tennessee and covers us regularly. Emily Nussbaum gave the country a Nashville update with her July 24 New Yorker piece “Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville,” which follows Paige Williams’ 2019 “Letter From Nashville,” in the same magazine about hot chicken and the Prince family. Henry Hicks IV, a 2017 graduate of the University School of Nashville and a 2020 Truman Scholar, wrote on the Tennessee Three for In These Times’ July cover story. Last year, Fox News blasted its spin on Harpeth Hall’s gender-inclusion policy to the entire country. Far-right mega-outlet

The Daily Wire moved here from Los Angeles in 2020, eager to associate its brand identity with Tennessee conservatism. Restrictive, aggressive and ideologically

inconsistent lawmaking from the state legislature regularly gets written up in national print media when the legislature is in session. After setting up Rick Rojas as its one-person Nashville bureau in 2021, The New York Times sent him back to Atlanta.

Arguing its national significance, Rojas got the Times to send in a full-time replacement, Emily Cochrane, who was immediately busy covering the statehouse and the Covenant School shooting.

Regardless of political affiliation, people across the country see themselves in Nashville. So do those who live here. The news industry has changed everywhere, shedding old-school reporters and collapsing traditional newsrooms. Journalism has also democratized, lending bylines and recorders to a younger, more diverse class of reporters who command information across print, audio and video. The rules are the same: Be honest and fair to everyone involved. Check your bias. Don’t lie or misrepresent facts. Afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted, give voice to the voiceless, and know a decent lawyer for questions about slander or libel. Like any good story, everyone wants to know what happens next.

PHOTOS: ANGELINA CASTILLO

VERONICA SALCEDO, NASHVILLE NOTICIAS

KHALIL EKULONA, WPLN

CRITICS’ PICKS

WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF THINGS TO DO

THURSDAY / 7.27

[POWER STRUCTURES]

MUSIC

THE CHICKS

After weathering a 2003 controversy about their members’ political stances, The Chicks made their best album, Gaslighter, in 2020, just as the pandemic hit. In their former incarnation using a moniker that referenced an old-fashioned name for the South, the Texas trio defined the outer edges of commercial country as it existed 20 years ago. Not exactly country belters and too skilled in the construction of catchy tracks and songs to be true folkies, Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer went for a kind of musical hybridization that drove home their 2003 criticism — delivered in England just as the United States prepared to invade Iraq — of then-President George W. Bush’s handling of the situation. As Maines implied in her comments, there’s country music that massages the power structure, and there’s tough women from Texas who value free speech. The Chicks brought home Grammys in 2007 for the previous year’s single “Not Ready to Make Nice” and their album Taking the Long Way. Of course, country radio barely played it, but it didn’t matter. The Chicks’ music and career prove you can be commercial — and cop bluegrass and Fleetwood Mac to serve your purposes — and still define the cutting edge of country music. Gaslighter combines the personal and political in innovative ways, and the music really works — check out the rap country of “March March.” Toronto’s Wild Rivers will open. 7:30 p.m. at Bridgestone Arena, 501 Broadway EDD HURT

[LEGENDS NEVER DIE]

NASHVILLE DOLLYS BASEBALL

Popularity-wise, baseball is working to regain some of the ground it ceded to football, basketball and hockey in recent decades. But the national pastime is alive

and well in Nashville, between the Triple-A Milwaukee Brewers-affiliated Sounds, three teams in the Tennessee Association of Vintage Baseball and increasingly loud rumblings of a big-league expansion team in the next few years. Maybe you haven’t heard of the Nashville Dollys yet, but add them to the list. The squad belongs to a grassroots coed league of some 200 teams across the country playing “sandlot ball,” a

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE

JULY 28-AUG. 6

grown-up version of the mid-’90s coming-ofage classic The Sandlot where competition takes a backseat to inclusivity. You’ll find the Dollys on diamonds in spaces around town like Cleveland Park, Shelby Park and, for this match against the East Nashville Misfits, Pitts Park in Antioch. Keep an eye on nashvilledollys.com for future game information — and while you’re there, pick up a hat, a mug or another piece of merch with the team’s eye-popping, Dolly Partonhonoring insignia. 7 p.m. at Pitts Park, 299 Tusculum Road CHARLIE

COMEDY [EUREKA]

ZAILLIAN

IMPROV SCIENCE THEATER 4000

When I think of science, I always reminisce on high school. (This likely has to do with the whole “being 20” thing.) Junior year I took an AP Environmental Science class with one of my favorite teachers of all time, who would teach on the implications of pollution, global warming and the importance of ecosystems (pretty lofty concepts). What made these concepts accessible for a little teenager with an attention span of about four seconds was his dry humor: The man had wit and charisma that helped him control the room and made the complexity of AP Environmental Science melt away. Third Coast Comedy is attempting to apply similar logic to their newest show, Improv Science Theater 4000. The comedy show —

with its name inspired by one of the great riff-fests of all time, long-running sci-fi comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 — showcases the research of a local scientist before performers offer improv based on the scientist of the night. The cast will include Sam Brewer, Thomas Clements, Lindsay Frederick, Steve Houtschilt, Paige Kaprelian, Mary Claire Reynolds, Camille Wang and Brian Wessels. Join this cast and collection of scientists for what sounds like a fun and approachable way to learn more about the wondrous and complex world of science. 7 p.m. at Third Coast Comedy Club, 1310 Clinton St. BRADEN SIMMONS

[WALK A MILE]

HISTORY

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY TOUR: THE SIT-IN AND CIVIL RIGHTS

The South can be described in many different ways: unique, polarizing, powerful, a college football hotbed. Personally, my favorite adjective is “historic.” The roots of the civil rights movement spread deep all across the South, with many powerful figures rising from Southern states. Notable sites from the movement can be found from Memphis to Montgomery, and of course in Nashville as well. The African American History Tour: The Sit-In and Civil Rights is a walking tour across downtown Nashville that will inform sightseers about important civil rights landmarks and the stories behind them.

Actors Bridge Studio

THE CHICKS

PHOTO: SALLY BEBAWY PHOTOGRAPHY

From the Davidson County Courthouse to the Witness Walls, this tour is set to span some of Nashville’s most historic landmarks and discuss the leaders behind the movement. Take a walk through Southern history, and see some of the momentous events that took place right in our backyard. 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at the Nashville Visitor Center at Bridgestone Arena, 501 Broadway

BRADEN SIMMONS

FRIDAY / 7.28

[ALL IN THE FAMILY]

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE

Actors Bridge Ensemble is back this weekend, closing out its 2022-23 season with the Nashville premiere of Things I Know to Be True. Penned by Australian writer Andrew Bovell, Things I Know to Be True offers a “complex and intense portrait of the mechanics of a family — and a marriage — through the eyes of four siblings struggling to define

themselves beyond their parents’ love and expectations.” Tough and timely, it’s just the sort of intriguing work we’ve come to expect from Actors Bridge, a company that prides itself on telling “the stories Nashville needs to hear.” I’m particularly excited to see what frequent ABE collaborator and designer Paul Gatrell does with it as he makes his much-anticipated ABE directorial debut. He has certainly put together a terrific cast, including Rachel Agee, Clay Steakley, Erin Grace Bailey, Miles Gatrell, Luke Hatmaker and Johnna James. July 28-Aug. 6 at Actors Bridge Studio, 4610 Charlotte Ave. AMY STUMPFL

[BLUE ON BLUE]

PEERING FROM BLUE SHADOWS

The refreshing cool of the shade is very inviting here in the height of summer. This perspective seems to inform Peering From Blue Shadows, the latest seasonally aligned art and music happening at The Blue Room organized by Nashville artist Olivia Blanchard. Friday’s one-night exhibition will feature art by two of Blanchard’s fellow Nashvillians.

Bunny Ames co-founded the Far Out Fest celebration of psychedelic expression, and her video installation “Big Sister” recently ran at the Belcourt in conjunction with their screening of Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV. Jameson Gerdon, a musician and producer whose multimedia artwork includes collage and sculpture, has recently been sharing his handmade lamps on social media. The soundtrack for the evening comes courtesy of DJ Mystery Money and Curtis Godino’s Discorporation. Former New Yorker Godino’s work includes the Drippy Eye liquid light show; he also makes color wheels for oil projectors, and he’s been commissioned by boutique labels to produce limited-run liquid-filled vinyl pressings of the soundtracks to Friday the 13th and Aliens. Musically, he combines influences from a broad spectrum of 1960s and ’70s pop and psych music; imagine Frank Zappa working with, say, Silver Apples and Conny Plank, and you’ve got a sort of idea where Godino is coming from. Among his recent projects is Curtis Godino Presents The Midnight Wishers, a fantastic psychedelic girl-group horror film for your ears featuring the singing and lyrics of Jin Lee, supported on vocals by Rachel Herman and Nashville rock champ Jessica McFarland. (McFarland and Godino also perform together in the new outfit Crystal Egg.) What exactly the Discorporation sounds like is a bit of a mystery — come out on Friday to discover it yourself. 7 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. STEPHEN TRAGESER

THEATER [ME AND MY SHADOW] THE THEATER BUG: SHADOW

A world-premiere musical is always worth celebrating. But when that new work comes from the creative minds of The Theater Bug, audiences know they’re in for something special. This weekend, you can check out the Bug’s latest effort, as it presents Shadow, a new musical from Cori Anne Laemmel and Laura Matula (If I Were You, Secondhand Wings). Taking on rich themes of perception, self-discovery and our shared humanity, this thoughtful piece looks into “the complexities of identity, exploring how we label ourselves and how others label us, and the delicate balance between the two.” The cast features a supertalented youth ensemble along with local pros like Shannon Hoppe, Pascia Smith and James Rudolph II, and audiences can also

look forward to choreography from Bakari King. July 28-Aug. 6 at The 4th Story Theater at West End United Methodist Church, 2200 West End Ave. AMY STUMPFL

MUSIC [IT’S A PARTY]

NASHFEELS 5TH ANNIVERSARY

Any time a club night turns 5, it’s a cause for celebration. But surviving these past five years? That deserves all the gold stars. Nashfeels celebrates keeping the party alive through the longest half-decade in the history of humanity — not only surviving but thriving. It’s a testament to the drive, ambition and excellent vibes curated by Nashfeels founders D’Llisha Davis and Stephen Thomas. It’s a celebration of hiphop as a philosophy and R&B as a lifestyle, two days of throwback grooves and future funk. Friday is “The Afro Love Edition” with NYC’s Gab Soul and a menu of R&B, reggae, amapiano and Afrobeats from the cutting edge of the dance music diaspora. Saturday is “R&B Nostalgia” night with Gina Tollese, Truestar and O’Ryan, bringing the party back to the old school/new school fusion that the party was founded on. 9 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N. SEAN L. MALONEY

MUSIC [NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL CRINGE] KIDZ BOP

“It’s Kidz Bop o’clock, yeah, it’s 6:30!”

It’s “About That Time” again: The latest crew of Kidz Bop performers is coming to Middle Tennessee to wow elementary audiences with kid-friendly covers of the hottest Top 40 hits. The musical franchise has been bastardizing popular songs since 2001, and their albums have been a staple of American childhood ever since. The minds behind the series have faced plenty of controversy — many a critic has pointed out that the censored versions remove swearing but leave in the mature and sexual messages of many songs. It’s also worth noting that the very first Kidz Bop tour was funded by a Christian sex cult leader. (Google Karen Zerby, it’s a trip!) The finer details might be a little sketchy, but the young performers of Kidz Bop showcase astonishing talent. Kids and their adults are both bound to have a blast bopping along to all their favorite tunes, a perfect first concert experience for the littles in your life. 7 p.m. at First Bank Amphitheater, 4525 Graystone Quarry Lane, Franklin HANNAH CRON

SHADOW

KIDZ BOP

20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELEASE OF THE LONG WAY I n a t w o - p a r t e v e n i n g c e l e b r a t i o n , W i l s o n w i l l p e r f o r m t h e a l b u m t o p t o b o t t o m w i t h a l i v e b a n d , a n d i n t h e s e c o n d h a l f o f t h e e v e n i n g , s h e w i l l f e a t u r e a d d i t i o n a l b o n u s s o n g s t h a t w e r e i n t e n d e d t o b e a p a r t o f t h e o r i g i n a l L P T h i s w i l l b e a s p e c i a l e v e n i n g o f s t o r y t e l l i n g a n d m e m o r i e s c o m m e m o r a t i n g t h i s m i l e s t o n e a n n i v e r s a r y o f W i l s o n ’ s d e b u t a l b u m t h a t l a u n c h e d t h e c a r e e r o f o n e o f t h e m o s t d i v e r s e s i n g e r - s o n g w r i t e r s i n N a s h v i l l e

SATURDAY / 7.29

CARS [ODD-O-ZONE] SUMMER DEMO SERIES

The fourth installment of Lane Motor Museum’s summer demo series features the ultra-rare 1934 McQuay-Norris Streamliner. As one of only six models ever produced, it’s the last remaining operational Streamliner, making it truly one of a kind.

The McQuay-Norris Co., based out of St. Louis, manufactured replacement engine parts at the time. Executives were looking for a distinctive way to promote their product line, thus developing the quirky Streamliner as cross-country transportation for traveling salespeople to turn heads both on the highway and at the repair shop. Essentially, the vehicle utilizes a standard ’34 Ford chassis, engine and drivetrain. From there an aerodynamic, sci-fi-styled aluminum body was designed around a wooden frame to give the car its signature George Jetson-meets-Dick Tracy look. The Streamliner popped up at many motor sporting events of the era, including the Indy 500. Lane Motor’s family-friendly series includes some of the museum’s most unique automobiles and takes place outdoors in their back parking lot. Noon at Lane Motor Museum, 702 Murfreesboro Pike

JASON VERSTEGEN

MUSIC [NO SLACK] HORSEGIRL

It’s always fun to hear a fresh interpretation of post-rock, which is a concept that only seems new. Post-rock in the 1960s meant everything from Fairport Convention and The Ventures to, you know, drummer Tony Williams’ 1969 rock-jazz album with organist Larry Young and guitarist John McLaughlin, Emergency!

In the ’90s, Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, His Name Is Alive and many more bands — some of them from Chicago, which has been a post-rock enclave since Charles Stepney produced Minnie Riperton’s first album there in 1969 — turned post-rock self-conscious. The deliberate dissonances and acerbic single-note melodies of Horsegirls guitarist Nora Cheng seem integral to the songs the Chicago trio plays on its 2022 debut album Versions of Modern Performance. Like pioneering post-punks The Go-Betweens, or maybe like Pylon, Horsegirl puts in the work to write catchy songs that have hooks — check out the Modern Performance track “Anti-Glory,” which sports a really nice one. Bassist Penelope Lowenstein and drummer Gigi Reece provide the sprung rhythms, and every song on Modern Performance leaves its mark. The band has been known to cover Guided by Voices’ 1995 song “As We Go Up, We Go Down,” and Horsegirl ends up sounding like garage rock filtered through the slack concepts of song structure the ’90s remain famous for. They’re not slack, though, which makes all the difference. Opening is fellow Chicago band Lifeguard, whose sound leans to the math-rock side of things. 8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. EDD HURT

SUNDAY / 7.30

FILM [HOW VERY] HEATHERS 35TH ANNIVERSARY

Whoa, Nelly, this movie did a number on my teenage psyche. In 1988’s Heathers, Winona Ryder plays the heroine who’s so disgusted by her snobby clique that she joins a leather-clad Christian Slater in a

plot to murder her friends and disguise the deaths as suicides. Their badassery was intoxicating. But rewatching Heathers as an adult, I see lots of qualities that don’t work in a cinematic sense. It’s way too bleak and macabre for a teen movie. Other lighter — equally as intelligent — options were waiting around the bend; 10 Things I Hate About You came out 11 years later,

for example. Columbine, also 11 years later, brought the entire tone around teen violence from dark humor to shocking reality. Still, Heathers holds up if you’re looking for an easy way to tap into your teenage rebelliousness for two hours. For the film’s 35th anniversary, Heathers is showing one time only at Regal locations. 4 p.m. at Regal Theaters TOBY ROSE

[START LIVIN’ LIKE YOU LOVE SOMEBODY]

MUSIC

EVAN P. DONOHUE W/RILEY PARKER & MOSSMEN

It’d be nice to see more than a couple shows every year from ace songsmith and rock bandleader Evan P. Donohue. But I can forgive him: He’s a busy guy, with gigs including touring as a front-of-house sound engineer and MVP side player. In case his name is not familiar, Donohue studied at Belmont the late Aughts and was a founding member of punk-pop guitarmy Diarrhea Planet; before that band took off, he decided to go in a different direction that has more in common with organic psych-rock, pop visions in a Beach Boys mode and general humanist sentiment. Since his 2010 debut Rhythm & Amplitude, Donohue has released two more LPs of wry, expertly crafted, grooving and imaginative songs: the superbly named Stairway to Evan in 2014 and Page of Wands in 2020, which came out a few weeks before the pandemic lockdown began. Sunday, you’ve got a chance to hear him and his band for yourself when they stop in at familiar stomping ground The 5 Spot. Indie popsters and fellow Nashvillians Riley Parker will join, as will Madison, Wisc., spacey psych-rockers Mossmen, who come through ahead of their new record Sunstream 9 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. STEPHEN TRAGESER

HORSEGIRL

HEATHERS

PHOTO: CHERYL DUNN

David Morton

Saturday, July 29

SONGWRITER SESSION

Gary Hannan

NOON · FORD THEATER

Sunday, July 30

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Adam Shoenfeld

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Friday, August 4

CONVERSATION

Vince Gill and Paul Franklin

on the Music of Ray Price

NOON · FORD THEATER

Saturday, August 5

HATCH SHOW PRINT Block Party

10:00 am, 1:00 pm, and 3:30 pm HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP LIMITED AVAILABILITY

Saturday, August 5

SONGWRITER SESSION

Mark Irwin

NOON · FORD THEATER

Sunday, August 6

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Steve Wariner

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Sunday, August 6

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT AND GUIDED TOURS

Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE FRIST ART MUSEUM

Live Piano Karaoke

CRITICS’ PICKS

[THE NEIGHBORHOODIEST NEIGHBORHOOD]

THEATER

EAST NASHVILLE FACEBOOK PAGE: THE MUSICAL

Kindling Arts Festival, which runs July 27-30, promises 17 “wildly unique projects” by some stellar local artists, including aerialists, stage actors, dancers and puppeteers. (For a full rundown on the festival, check out Amy Stumpfl’s preview in this week’s Performing Arts section.) I’ve lived in Inglewood since moving to town a few years back, so I’m especially interested in East Nashville Facebook Page: The Musical, which promises to be a delightfully hammy celebration of the neighborhood’s endlessly entertaining social media hub. East Nashville is a lovely place for families, artists, young professionals and a few rare lifelong Nashvillians, which means things get impossibly earnest and weird when its residents start posting. Will the show have songs about missed connections at The 5 Spot or Dino’s? How many scenes will there be about aspiring songwriters looking for “chill roommates” and rent for less than $800 a month? Will there be a participatory audience game called, “Was that sound a gunshot or just fireworks?” Come see for yourself: The show promises to highlight everything people love about East Nashville — and “maybe even a few reasons why you hate it, too.” July 27, 28 and 30 at Darkhorse Theatre, 4610 Charlotte Ave. COLE VILLENA

MONDAY / 7.31

[ACCLAIMED AUTHOR, BELOVED BOOKSELLER]

BOOKS

ANN PATCHETT: TOM LAKE

When thinking on the literary talents of Ann Patchett, the neologism “sonder” comes to mind: “the profound feeling of realizing that everyone — including strangers passing in the street — has a life as complex as one’s own, which they are constantly living despite one’s personal lack of awareness of it.” Tom Lake, Ann’s latest offering, is another work that might evoke some sonder. Told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love and the lives parents led before their children were born. Both

hopeful and elegiac, this novel — a discussion of hindsight and past stories told in the present — explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, in which “Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature”

(The Guardian). The event is full — Nashville adores our home-grown literary talent and bookseller — but you can check the waitlist to join at parnassusbooks.net/event. 6:30 p.m. at the Frances Bond Davis Theater at Harpeth Hall School, 3801 Hobbs Road KARIN MATHIS

TUESDAY / 8.1

BOOKS [A REAL THING]

KIRSTIN CHEN: COUNTERFEIT

“Money can’t buy happiness ... but it can buy a decent fake.” Well-written, cleverly structured and darkly comic, Counterfeit follows two Asian American women who unite to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise. This story holds an incisive, glittering blend of fashion, crime and friendship, as well as a peek into upscale storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced. New York Times-bestselling author Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women who are determined to demand more from life. Counterfeit was recommended by Reese’s Book Club as well as Roxane Gay’s The Audacious Book Club, so take that praise into account and discover the lucrative business of knockoff luxury items. This free in-store conversation with Chen will be facilitated by one of Vanderbilt’s writers-in-residence, Sheba Karim. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike KARIN MATHIS

A LOOK AT WASTE ON LOWER BROAD

Envisioning new ways to tend to the downtown area’s massive trash output

BY CLARA WANG

Walk down Lower Broadway on a hot summer day, and the streets are bustling.

Families with children seeking a taste of Americana. Bachelorette parties wearing neon cowboy hats and sweat-streaked makeup. Black-clad barbacks running to work in sensible shoes. Musicians lugging equipment from one gig to the next. Neon lights turn on at 11 a.m., luring pedestrians toward air-conditioning and cold drinks. The guitars and singers onstage are sometimes only the background music to the satisfying sounds of beer cans opening and bottles being popped at the bar.

These cans and bottles all end up in the huge blue and brown trash bins tucked away every few blocks in alleyways and around corners, and they mostly sit open during the day — each already filled or about to be filled with 8 cubic yards of broken-down cardboard boxes and huge bags lumpy with cylinders.

Nashville has waged war on its waste problem for a decade, with Nashville producing nearly twice as much waste per capita as those in the rest of the country in 2020. In 2022, the Nashville Downtown Partnership removed 602,000 pounds of waste in eight months from downtown trash cans and alleyways alone. While initiatives like Urban Green Lab and the Zero Waste program strive to educate citizens on reducing waste and provide more access to residential recycling, the refuse of the revelry at the bars and honky-tonks of Lower Broadway poses an even more complicated problem that requires largescale changes in both waste management infrastructure and the way bars use disposables. But there may be a light at the end of the tunnel: As part of the Second Avenue Rebuild project — which launched in the wake of 2020’s Christmas Day bombing — innovative measures are being tested nearby that could set an example

for turning Lower Broadway’s “trash” into treasure.

In 2018, former Mayor Megan Barry attempted the Honky Tonk Glass Recycling Pilot program to collect bottles — which ended abruptly due to high costs and low revenue. Currently, most bars on Lower Broadway contract their waste removal to independent companies, with Metro offering cardboard recycling pickup to a few downtown businesses (although that is currently on pause due to vehicle capacity). Metro Waste Services also collects trash off the streets to prevent critters and protect public health.

“Lower Broadway is really about the volume of trash and the ability to sort it effectively,” says Jenn Harman, who has been the manager of Metro Nashville’s Zero Waste program since 2019. “It’s really hard when the restaurant or bar is just trying to get it out of the way so they can keep operating their business.” Metro focuses primarily on residential recycling, which means other than picking up trash for public health purposes, most businesses on Lower Broadway are on their own. Harman also points out the difficulty in sorting glass and metal, not using plastic bags — which can’t be recycled normally and sit in landfills — to hold recyclable materials, and the danger

of dumping glass in a bin.

“Everything ended up contaminated, so we were sending out more trucks without being able to collect a huge quantity of good material that could be recycled,” says Harman.

Ashley Boyd has been bartending at Robert’s Western World — where only bottled and canned beer is served — for four years. She says it’s not hard for bartenders to sort bottles behind the bar. When her enterprising 5-year-old nephew asked her to collect bottle caps so he could sell them at a premium to classmates, she didn’t find it inconvenient at all to sort them into a bin rather than throwing them in the trash, even during peak hours.

“I realized that I have the time to do that,” says Boyd. “If trash cans were placed in the same spot, it would be easy.”

Recycling on the other side of the bar, however, poses more of a dilemma — separate bins would mean two to three times the work for the barbacks who are hauling heavy trash bags up and down stairs, and it would be difficult to get customers who’ve been drinking to properly dispose of their containers. Bartenders and barbacks the Scene chatted with on Lower Broadway echoed Boyd’s sentiments. On a calm Monday afternoon with only a few tourists

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

and locals sipping on Coors bottles, it’s easy to imagine neat stacks of clean cans and bottles ready to be recycled. But that’s a different scenario from Broadway after 7 p.m., or just about any time on a weekend — patrons are more concerned with dodging vomit and elbows than with where a can goes.

Strolling farther down Broadway to Second Avenue, renderings of coming construction drape walls chewed ragged by the 2020 bombing, and old walls sport new barbed-wire trim to protect the rebuilding inside. On the three-block stretch of Second Avenue between Broadway and Union Street, Metro and the Metro Development and Housing Agency are partnering with sustainability consulting company Wilmot Inc. and The District, a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing Nashville’s downtown historic areas, for a futuristic form of infrastructure. A pilot project, which began in 2021, will harness new energy-saving techniques and consolidate waste collection. Wilmot Inc.’s Tiffany Wilmot tells the Scene her company has conducted studies on how recycled glass could be repurposed, including as a form of gravel beneath parking lots and sidewalks. If the pilot project is successful, Wilmot hopes the city could expand it beyond Second Avenue.

When Wilmot looks at the trash

downtown, she doesn’t see waste going in the bin — she sees “excess materials that are basically profit being thrown away.” The innovative ways Wilmot hopes to sort recyclable materials and use glass could potentially be used to transform recycling on Lower Broadway. By consolidating the stream of material to a single contractor that moves down Ryman Alley (which joins with some parts of Lower Broadway), removing food waste and instituting separate recycling bins in consolidated areas that businesses can share, they reduce the risk of glass ending up on the street or not being properly sorted. Wilmot tells the Scene that the glass could potentially be crushed into gravel and used for construction locally, rather than being shipped out to Atlanta landfills.

Wilmot is also recommending ways bars can reduce the amount of materials being used, such as implementing reusable containers.

“A lot of the honky-tonks are really interested in this because it’ll save them money,” says Wilmot. “And it gives somebody a job, right? You put a dishwasher in, and then you have a human being who has a job instead of a material that gets thrown away.”

Wilmot’s Second Avenue project manager Mark Pruett reminds us that the city wasn’t

built with modern waste disposal in mind. He tells the Scene that waste removal could be optimized.

“It’s about finding systems to augment what’s already there and taking all these materials and making use of them again,” says Pruett.

While the Second Avenue project is still

mostly dealing with hypotheticals, if it is successful, it could lay the road map for a greener Lower Broadway where glass bottles are properly sorted, honky-tonks use reusable cups, and your beer can is recycled. The Zero Waste Program has a deadline of 2050 to figure it out.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

PHOTOS: ANGELINA CASTILLO

AT THE MARKET:

MAYPOP SPARKLING WATER

Matt Herrick and Keaton Presti-Stringfellow are consciously carbonating

BY KELSEY BEYELER

With our series At the Market, we’ll highlight some of our favorite farmers market vendors from the Nashville area.

It was only a matter of time before I would write about Maypop Sparkling Water. (Not to be confused with previous At the Market subject Maypop Farmstead.) Though the company has been around for only a few years, it’s hard to miss. If you haven’t seen Maypop’s cans at farmers markets, maybe you’ve seen them for sale at dozens of restaurants and local grocery stores around town. Co-owners and longtime friends Matt Herrick and Keaton Presti-Stringfellow run the show, from production to distribution.

Herrick, who used to work in craft beer distribution, started the company after noticing there weren’t many locally made nonalcoholic drink options. Creating Maypop was his answer to that, and the brand features an intentionally curated lineup of flavors including grapefruit-orange, lemon, lime, tangerine and a new hop water (which currently has limited availability). Aside from the hop water, each is made with fresh juice that is never frozen or made from con-

centrate. It’s all made shelf-stable through a pasteurization process that happens at Jackalope Brewing Company. The hop water, which is made at Barrique Brewing and Blending, relies on Citra hops from the Yakima Valley in Washington. While it does have an essence reminiscent of beer, it isn’t beer and isn’t trying to be. Presti-Stringfellow describes it as “more like a tea — it’s citrusy and floral.”

“A lot of people obviously have not had the opportunity to see a true, pure, transparent expression of what hops are, as a flavor

profile, existing nakedly in a product,” says Presti-Stringfellow. “It’s just a sort of full display of the beauty of what the flavor profile of this flower is.”

Maypop’s owners are focused on what they call “conscious carbonation,” which encompasses a range of values and practices that are rooted in sustainability. The term describes how they source ingredients, the vessels they use, how they manage waste and their regular donations to local nonprofits.

“We are consciously concerned about our footprint on this planet and where our waste

goes,” says Herrick. “When you buy a Maypop, you’re supporting that initiative.”

Folks can find where Maypop products are sold on the company’s website, where those who live in Williamson and Davidson counties can even order products for home delivery. Catch Herrick and Presti-Stringfellow slinging sparkling waters on Tuesdays at the 12South and East Nashville farmers markets, and on Saturdays at the Richland Park and Franklin farmers markets.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

PHOTOS: ANGELINA CASTILLO

MAYPOP SPARKLING WATER MAYPOPWATER.COM

RISKY BUSINESS

Kindling Arts Festival

“It really is a mix of old friends and new favorites,” says Kindling’s founding artistic director Jessika Malone. “And that’s very intentional. Every year, we look at who’s working in the sector that we might want to work with. We meet a ton of folks through our open application process. And then we have projects that we incubate or instigate — working with artists to develop their ideas, which is always exciting.

“I think that’s one of the things I’m most proud of,” she adds, noting Kindling’s reputation for risk-taking and experimentation. “We’re able to hold space for artists to present work that might not otherwise find a home. When you think about how difficult it is financially for artists in this city, I’m really proud that we’re able to say: ‘Hey, here’s a fully functioning venue, with a staff and marketing support. Now let’s go make your

Some of the crazy ideas happening this BAR FIGHT 2666: Broken Vows (Let the Bodies Hit the Floor) — the much-anticipated followup to last summer’s “queer karaoke/wrestling crossover theatrical experience.” Then there’s The Cackle(an interactive late-night party that subverts everything you think you know about the classic county-fair vibe, complete with activities such as “Milk the Mayor, the Husband-Dumping Contest and the Biggest Corn Cob Contest.”)

And in another highly anticipated show, Emma Supica and local improv musical troupe Cherry Bomb will present East Nashville Facebook Page: The Musical, honoring “the city’s most simultaneously beloved and despised news source in song.”

“When I first started following the East Nashville Facebook Page, I thought: ‘This is comedy gold,’” says Supica, an improviser, educator and founding director of the arts nonprofit Unscripted. “There’s just so much

source material — with everything from these huge celebratory, supportive posts to people tearing each other down in a really wild way.”

Audiences can expect a fast-paced evening of musical vignettes, all based on actual Facebook posts. There’s an ode to “missed connections,” a collection of singing taco shops, and even a nod to the famous East Nashville Snow Chicken.

“East Nashville has such a strong identity,” she says. “East Nasty, the Tomato Art Fest, we love it all. It used to be — and really still is — where all the weird artists live. It’s just that now there’s more people, more commercialization. So why not explore all of that through song?”

For Jones, this offbeat, tongue-in-cheek approach is just the sort of thing that Kindling has embraced over the past few years.

“I feel like we’ve settled into a certain confidence or boldness with our programming,” he says. “There’s something sort of unexpected about our shows. They’re often unclassifiable, and probably very different than what you’re going to find at a more traditional arts institution. One of my favorite things is hearing audience members say:

‘I’m not sure what that was, but I loved it.’”

And while there’s no doubting the fun, Supica says Kindling means serious business for local artists.

“There’s no way I would be doing this musical if it weren’t for Kindling,” she says. “I’ve never really identified as an artist until I presented my one-woman show with them last year. My art was always more tangential — something I did for fun. But I feel so empowered because of my experience with Kindling. The impact goes way beyond what we see onstage. It’s exponential for Nashville’s arts community, and it’s incredible to be part of that.”

PHOTO: KARA M C LELAND

A CONNECTION TO THE EARTH

Brooks Lamb works to preserve the family farm with Love for the Land

BY JIM PATTERSON

Brooks Lamb, author of Love for the Land: Lessons From Farmers Who Persist in Place, has had a heck of a week. But not an unusual week.

Lamb and wife Regan Adolph had spent two hot days cutting, baling, hauling, unloading and stacking hay at his parents’ farm in Marshall County, about 40 miles south of Nashville. Then they headed home to Memphis to their other fulltime jobs.

“We have about 25 or 30 mama cows, beef cattle there, and we raise calves off of those cows,” Lamb says. “We have a pretty substantial garden. … We’ve got a backyard flock of chickens that my parents, especially my mom, steward.”

Lamb, a graduate

of Rhodes College in Memphis and author of Overton Park: A People’s History, is a link between the family farm and academia. He earned a master’s degree from Yale School of the Environment and works as a land protection and access specialist at American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit that advances environmentally sound farming and aims to enhance economic viability for farmers and rural communities.

His résumé and rural roots make Lamb, 29, uniquely qualified to write a book about the importance of farming in the U.S. and to suggest helpful policies to support small farmers as they struggle to survive.

The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

You have a day job, help work your parents’ farm, and hope to buy one of your own. That life seems very hard. Why is it rewarding to you? There’s something for me that is profoundly spiritual in being intimately involved with a place to take care of animals, to take care of the land itself. There’s a contentment and a joy there that’s almost indescribable for me. I think a lot of people look at the hard physical work of farmers and see it as drudgery. I think one can also look at it as an expression of an art form. That’s how we look at it.

You raise cattle for slaughter. How do you reconcile that with your commitment to the wellbeing of farm animals? I think our goal in the production of meat is to do everything we can to minimize cruelty and ensure a good existence for that animal’s life. There are re-

ally responsible ways in which you can give a wonderful life to an animal and avoid a lot of the climate issues that we so often hear of when it comes to livestock production.

The book has a lot of statistics about how small farms are vanishing because of development and large-scale farming by corporations. Why is it important how farming is done? There are a variety of reasons. As farms grow larger and industrialize and you need fewer people and fewer families, a lot of rural communities are deserted.

You can look at ecological destruction and the contributions of industrialized agriculture to climate change. As farms specialize and mono-crop more, as land is lost near major urban cores, you lose a lot of the capacity for local and regional food movements.

Farming is, or at least it can be, one of the most intimate connections we have with the earth. As acreage is getting bigger and bigger, and there is less actual connection to the ground, we lose that intimacy and that relationship and that awareness.

You compare running a good farm to being in a good marriage. Can you flesh that out for me?

A marriage is a partnership, right? If it’s done well, both parties in the marriage will flourish. It takes a lot of work. It takes effort, it takes sacrifice. But in the end, there’s a fulfillment there, a joy that I think is really powerful. I think the same goes for farming when farming is anchored in love and understanding.

Is it going too far to relate these principles to having a successful life? Something like 1 percent of American society lives on a farm, so most people who read this book are not going to be farmers, and I don’t think we need a mass back-to-the-land movement. Instead, we can work to practice these virtues where we already are. If you’re living in an extremely dense area like New York City, it might mean cultivating a relationship with a street tree in the sidewalk and paying attention to that tree as you’re walking to work — trying to really be aware of how it changes throughout the season, perhaps giving a little bit of water out of your water bottle as you pass by as a gesture of love. I think that we can practice those virtues wherever we are, with the idea being if we all work together to love and care for specific places on earth, the planet itself will be better off for it.

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

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

ArtVUE: Showcasing the best of Nashville-area artistsWhere Imagination Meets Expression

August 4-6, 2023

3D Design Center, 130 Belle Forest Cir, Bellevue, TN

Erin Anderson Sarah Arace Daniel Arite

Ben Buess

Ben Caldwell

Regina Davidson

Cass

Fazio

Jennifer Hinson

Linda Hobdy

Jack Isenhour

Lisa Jennings

Johnson

Ella Jolly Haile

David Kazmerowski

Sandra King

Robin Lovett-Owen

David Orth

Gayla Pugh

Nadine Shillingford

To register or for more details: tomatoartfest.com/events/recipecontest

The recipes should be inspired by the classic BLT, but do not have to be a BLT sandwich. Be creative, whether that’s a soup, pastry, quiche, salsa or otherwise.

Night 9

Hinder w/ Goodbye June & LOST HEARTS

old 97's w/ angel white

TRASH PANDA & HOTEL FICTION

MY SO-CALLED BAND

SEAN MCCONNELL W/ Bowen*Young

DARLINGSIDE w/ Jaimee Harris

THE TESKEY BROTHERS

WYATT FLORES

KENDALL STREET COMPANY w/ DIZGO & Connor

Kelly and The Time Warp

YOKE LORE W/ GIRLHOUSE thee

kate yeager, myylo [7PM]

Kesley Bou, Drugstore Cowboy, Josh Rennie-Hynes [9PM]

brian fuller w/ christian yancey [7pm]

juke of june, oweda, black light animals [9pm]

jr carroll w/ Maggie Antone, Forrest McCurren [7pm]

Scott Collins, Ghostfinger, and Stephie

James [9pm]

lo naurel, ag sully, shelldhn

Pindrop Songwriter Series

Vinnie Paolizzi w/ Colton Venner & Johnny Clawson [7PM]

Chad Bishop, Scott Levi Jones, Justin Jeansonne [9pm]

evan honer w/ sierra carson [7pm]

tommy newport [9pm]

william matheny w/ Dylan McDonald & The Avians

Sara Beck, Lauren Lucas and Kimberly Quinn [7pm]

Trashville Feat. DTL Jams, Lilla Sky & Social Animals [9pm]

darren kiely [7pm]

Daikaju, Harriers of Discord, Bad Bad Cats [9pm]

Kiely Connell w/ Sophie Gault [7pm]

Leah Blevins, Kimberly Kelly & Jess Nolan [9pm]

Abby Johnson, Brennan Wedl, Lily Ophelia, DD Island

Will Hoge

LOST AND FOUND

A reissue of The Contenders recovers a nearly forgotten piece of Nashville rock history

BY DARYL SANDERS

On Friday, North Carolinabased Southern Moon Records will reissue on CD

The Contenders, a long-outof-print album that represents an important piece of Nashville’s rock history. The record is significant because it was the one and only album made by The Contenders, who arguably were the best rock band in Nashville for a couple of years in the mid-1970s. The group — made up of Tommy Goldsmith (guitar, vocals), Champ Hood (guitar, vocals), Walter Hyatt (guitar, vocals), Steve Runkle (bass, vocals) and Jimbeau Walsh (drums, vocals) — earned its reputation as one of the city’s best bands on the strength of artful songwriting, tight musicianship and soulful vocal harmonies.

Rising from the ashes of a pair of groups that tried unsuccessfully to get traction in the city a few years earlier, The Contenders were born in February 1976 when Hyatt and Hood from Uncle Walt’s Band and Goldsmith and Runkle from Pritchard Avenue Band teamed up with Walsh, a rock and blues drummer they knew from Chicago. It wasn’t long before they were wowing audiences in Nashville with regular appearances at Exit/In and other local nightspots. They also took their act on the road and packed

WORKING BLUE

Chris ‘BadNews’ Barnes brings hokum into the 21st century

BY RON WYNN

Anyone unfamiliar with blues history might think vocalist and harmonica player Chris “BadNews” Barnes is trying something new with his contemporary blend of musical and comedic elements. But what Barnes — a satirist and writer as well as blues musician — is doing dates back at least to the late 1920s. He’s simply putting a 21st-century spin on the hokum blues, a branch of the idiom that combines wicked, often raunchy humor and alternately poignant and insightful observations with spirited, fiery blues solos and licks. It’s a style Barnes began honing more than 40 years ago, when he was the opening act for many top blues performers at famed New York City club Tramps.

“Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith would say to me, ‘Yeah man, tell ’em, put that hokum on ’em,’” Barnes says in a recent interview with the Scene. “The great W.C. Handy used to say, ‘You gotta hook ’em with the hokum,’ and that’s always fascinated me — taking the blues storytelling form and blending comedic and satiric observation. I’m not saying I’m as good at it as guys like Tampa Red or Barbecue Bob, and you really

houses from Texas to the Carolinas. Although a major-label deal eluded the band, The Contenders were offered the opportunity to make a record by Dave Robert, who was then the owner of the Cat’s Cradle, a popular club in Chapel Hill, N.C. Robert loved the band and essentially started the independent label Moonlight Records in order to release their LP. The eponymous album, which was recorded at LSI Studio in Nashville in September 1977 and released in January 1978, had the catalog number MR-001. As it would turn out, the album was more or less the group’s swan song. By the summer, The Contenders had disbanded, and the members went on to various other musical pursuits. Among many highlights, Walsh and Goldsmith both worked with David Olney at different times, and the Oak

Ridge Boys had a hit with Runkle’s “Love Song” in 1983. Sadly, Goldsmith and Walsh are the only remaining original members of The Contenders; Hyatt perished in the May 1996 ValuJet plane crash, while Runkle and Hood both died of cancer in 2001. The reissue of MR-001 was spearheaded by Runkle’s brother Ben, who co-produced the new version with Goldsmith.

“It was something I had wanted to do for a long time,” Ben Runkle tells the Scene from his home in North Carolina. Runkle tracked down Robert in 2021 and learned he still had the original multitrack tapes. After a few discussions about what he had in mind, Robert — who died in 2022 — decided to essentially give the tapes to him for the reissue. Runkle then sent the multitrack masters to Sonicraft A2DX Lab in Redbank, N.J., where

they were restored and digitized.

“One reason I wanted to do [the reissue] so badly was because the LP had tons of reverb and real heavy compression,” Runkle says. “You listen to it and say, ‘Oh, hell, why did they do that?’ I was so pleased when the transfers came back and none of that was present.”

“There were no effects built into the tracks at the time,” Goldsmith explains. “So we really had leeway to take it and make something that sounded as good as we wanted it to sound.”

Goldsmith and Runkle remixed the record with engineer Dick Hodgin at his Osceola Studios in Raleigh, N.C. The reissue features one bonus track not included on the original LP: the CD’s final track “Getaway.” Goldsmith says it wasn’t originally included on the album because the band wasn’t satisfied with the recording. But after hearing the song during the mix sessions, Goldsmith decided it could be improved and included on the reissue.

So he enlisted the help of some old friends — Marcia Ball (piano, vocal), Hood’s nephew Warren Hood (fiddle, vocal), Willis Alan Ramsey (vocal), Jeff Barnes (saxophones) and The Lunsfords (vocals) — to revitalize the track, which Goldsmith jokingly refers to as the reissue’s “big single.” In the run up to the release, Steve Boyle was called on to direct and edit a cool music video, which includes the song’s lyrics, vintage photos of The Contenders and footage from a reunion show.

A release party for the reissue — featuring Goldsmith and Walsh with The Contenders’ family, friends and longtime associates — was originally scheduled for July 15 at Springwater, but due to illness has been rescheduled for Aug. 12 from 4 to 7 p.m.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

PHOTO: LAURA CARBONE

PHOTO: JACKSON D e PARIS

MUSIC

couldn’t get away today with saying the kind of stuff that Lucille Bogan or Big Bill Broonzy used to put in songs. But I’ve found audiences really enjoy the riffs and lines buttressed by the blues sensibility.”

Music City fans have two chances to hear Barnes with his current band The BluesBallers: They’ll appear Friday at 3rd and Lindsley during WMOT Roots Radio’s midday Finally Fridays program, and they’ll be back Tuesday night for a full show. The band features Barnes with guitarist Colin Poulton, bassist CC Ellis, keyboardist Eric Robert, drummer Brian Czach and background vocalist Tabitha Fair, augmented by a killer horn section headed by Roy Agee. Singer Gale Mayes will also appear Tuesday as a special guest.

Barnes, who’s recently relocated to Nashville, started playing music very early, and then veered into work on well-known TV shows and films. His talent as a writer was noticed almost immediately when he moved to New York in 1977, at age 17, and began doing comedy at renowned club Catch a Rising Star. His first mentor was Richard Belzer, known for his longtime portrayal of Det. John Munch on shows including Homicide: Life on the Street and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Later, Barnes became a protégé of other stars like Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and both John Belushi and his brother Jim. After his time at Tramps and other clubs, Barnes moved to Chicago and worked with the legendary Second City sketch comedy troupe for an extended period. His writing credits include work for MTV and National Lampoon, as well as some sketches for Saturday Night Live, and he’s appeared on shows like Seinfeld, 30 Rock and Curb Your Enthusiasm

But in 2015, Barnes returned to his first love with his debut LP 90 Proof Truth, recorded with a group of seasoned blues players and released under the name Bad News Barnes and the Brethren of Blues Band. Though response to the record was somewhat mixed, he followed some advice from blues and jazz luminary Bob Porter and took a deep dive into hokum for his 2017 follow-up Hokum Blues. That record features Barnes & Co. doing 14 songs immortalized by artists like Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and pianist, vocalist and songwriter Georgia Tom — who, after a spiritual awakening, became widely known as Thomas A. Dorsey, the father of modern gospel music. In 2021, Vizztone released Barnes’ BadNews Rising, a collection of 10 originals helmed by ace Music City drummer and producer Tom Hambridge. Those releases set the stage for an upcoming album — titled True Blues and set to come out on a date to be announced — that Barnes considers his masterwork. He sings and plays with relish and vigor, and he’s backed by a super-tight combo that includes singers Sugaray Rayford and Jimmy Hall (who’s also an expert harmonica player) as well as guitarist Walter Trout in addition to Hambridge.

“Tom and I sat down and went over what we wanted to do very carefully, and we got the right people — and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. We’re going to shop it around and make sure we get the right folks to release it. We knocked it out of the park with this one. It’s my best vision yet in terms of taking the humor and wit of the hokum form and making it work for today’s audiences. I think anyone who loves good music and the blues is going to be thrilled with this one.”

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CITY CONNECT

Kowloon Walled City brings its trademark slow-andlow sound to Music City

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

Band names don’t get more apropos than that of Kowloon Walled City. If the Oakland, Calif., quartet’s namesake is not familiar to you, claustrophobia is likely to set in merely looking at photos of the place: a self-governing vertical tenement that housed hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong denizens between 1898 and its demolition in 1994. The same could be said about the band’s music.

Between 2012’s masterclass in tensionand-release Container Ships, its immersive 2016 follow-up Grievances and the group’s stark, punishing 2021 LP Piecework, singer-guitarist-engineer Scott Evans, guitarist Jon Howell, bassist Ian Miller and drummer Dan Sneddon prove the value of having a local to show you around. There’s an authenticity, a humanity and an unusual warmth to KWC’s catalog rarely heard in bands of this ilk. You’ll hear it in the band’s attention to melody and negative space, as

well as their minimal use of effects. Ahead of Thursday’s Drkmttr gig — which they’ll co-headline with wide-ranging Louisville outfit Jaye Jayle and Nashville prog-punk greats Shell of a Shell — the Scene caught up with Evans via email. Followers of Nashville heavy music may also recognize his name from the liner notes of Yautja’s 2021 instant classic The Lurch, which Evans produced at Chicago’s legendary Electrical Audio.

Was Piecework written and recorded during quarantine, or did you wrap it before everything went sideways? Kind of both. We recorded it in summer ’18, but I was gridlocked on lyrics. I was really in a hole. Eventually I got it together and we wrote and recorded in ’21. What a mess.

What were the first and last songs written? The first was “When We Fall Through the Floor.” There was a PJ Harvey vibe to the guitars that we ended up walking back. The last was “Lampblack,” which seems to be a [consensus] favorite. Every song was hard to get out. We’ve been doing this band long enough that we’re out of lightning-in-abottle ideas.

How have the group’s intentions — lyrically, sonically, ideologically — grown and evolved over time? On day one, I had three bands I wanted to pull from: Godflesh, Shallow North Dakota and Unsane. Unadorned, repetitive [and] fucking mean. When [Howell] joined and we wrote Container Ships, something changed. Less feedback, more space, better lyrics. We stumbled onto what we wanted this band to be, and that’s the

path we’ve been on since.

Tell me about your studio, Antisleep Audio. Is most of the production work you do out of there?

It’s my little studio in Oakland. Two small rooms, a mix room and a live room. Been there 10 years, made a ton of records there. It’s great. I mix everything I work on there, but it’s too small for full bands or big drum sounds so I [also] do a lot of recording at Sharkbite Studios, which is down the hall. That’s where we’ve done the last few KWC records.

Are there things your experiences in KWC taught you that have carried over into your production work, or vice versa? Less is more. If you want great-sounding guitars, don’t fill up the arrangement with other shit. Want great-sounding drums? Leave space in the other sounds and parts. It’s so easy to pile on ideas now, but hard to ensure these ideas are additive.

Was going to Electrical to track Yautja a special occasion? Tell me a bit about y’all’s relationship. Going to any out-of-town studio is always special — Electrical especially, because the staff is so great and it has an incredible history. And then Yautja — man, they are just one of the best bands doing it. I’ve known them for a long time and been a huge fan. For years I had hoped I might get to record them. So yeah, for me that session was a big deal. I hope we did them justice.

The Lurch was recorded pretty much live from the floor. We doubled the guitars and overdubbed vocals, but what you’re hearing is a great band just destroying.

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PLAYING THURSDAY, JULY 27, AT DRKMTTR

WEAVING IT IN

How Flying Burrito Brother

Chris Ethridge’s family found his long-lost Nudie Suit

BY BRITTNEY M c KENNA

Chris Ethridge supplied key components to The Flying Burrito Brothers’ countryrock sound, through his bass and piano playing and background singing on the group’s widely loved and influential 1969 debut The Gilded Palace of Sin. Mississippiborn Ethridge had been in Burrito Brothers co-founder Gram Parsons’ earlier group, the International Submarine Band, and he left the Burritos before their follow-up Burrito Deluxe. But until his death in 2012, he was a first-rate session and touring player, relied on by artists like Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder and Willie Nelson.

Ethridge added one more thread — or set of threads — to the Burritos’ legacy. In the cover photo for Gilded Palace, taken in January 1969, he joined his bandmates in wearing a custom Nudie Suit, a flamboyant and intricate creation of designers Nudie Cohn and Manuel Cuevas. The other three suits have been on display as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock exhibit since it opened in September 2022 — but Ethridge’s

suit went missing in August 1969. Stolen out of road manager and infamous industry figure Phil Kaufman’s car in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the white suit with its distinctive floral motif was thought to be lost to history.

Ethridge’s daughter Necia Ethridge tells the Scene that her father chose the suit’s theme “as a nod to his Southern roots and love of the [Hank Snow] song ‘Yellow Roses.’” Chris Ethridge wore it for a handful of photo sessions, as well as during an album preview performance at A&M Records’ soundstage, billed as the Burrito Barn Dance, and when the group played “Wheels” and “Hot Burrito #1” on American Bandstand

Despite Ethridge and his family’s best efforts to locate the suit, it remained elusive. That is, until earlier this year. An eagle-eyed friend of the family, Tommy Miles, spotted a familiar-looking outfit in a promotional email from renowned auction house Kerry Taylor Auctions.

“It was Lot 385, and it had a picture of my dad’s suit on it,” Necia Ethridge explains.

“I was like, ‘Well, I’ll be darned. That is his suit.’ Then I read the words, and I think my heart just about went through my shoes when I read, ‘Elton John’s 1971 Nudie Suit.’”

As it turns out, the suit was living an alternate life — squarely in the limelight. John purchased the piece from the Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors Store in Los Angeles in late 1970; Ethridge says no one is certain how it wound up back there. The famously fashionable John first wore it on Top of the Pops in 1971, when he performed “Your Song,” and again in his role as best man at Bernie Taupin’s

wedding later that year. In 1972, John once again donned the suit, along with a trademark pair of oversized shades, for the photo on the sleeve of his mega-hit single “Rocket Man.” John held onto the suit until 1988, when he auctioned it for charity through Sotheby’s, and it didn’t appear in public until that fateful email.

“It felt unreal,” Ethridge says. “It honestly took me months to process. That was my dad’s suit. But it was also Elton John’s beloved suit. So I had to come to accept that this was part of the journey.”

Ethridge contacted the auction house and shared her story. It was verified in part by a tag bearing the name “Chris Ethridge” on an order label in the breast pocket. The auction house pulled the lot from circulation and gave Necia the opportunity to make her best offer, which she did at the urging of her children. The bid was accepted, and Necia flew to London to retrieve the suit, half-joking that she couldn’t risk having it shipped, lest it be lost once again.

“Kerry Taylor had set it up on a mannequin, beautifully styled,” Ethridge says. “And I couldn’t tell you who was in that room. I couldn’t tell you what was around me. In that moment, it was like I was connecting to my father, who passed away in 2012. It was just amazing. I cried.”

She graciously loaned the suit to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where it rejoined the Burritos’ other suits in a special event July 20. Wilco’s Pat Sansone, a Nashville resident and Ethridge family friend, performed. Ethridge was in attendance, along with longtime Nashvillian Phil Kaufman. The museum’s Mick Buck tells the Scene that the suits are “the centerpiece of the exhibit,” and that this unexpected discovery helped elevate an already special offering.

“They’re just so striking and visual, and so iconic,” Buck says. “They’re an important part of the exhibit’s story. And so, to unexpectedly be able to add the fourth suit — not only was that a totally out-of-left-field surprise, but now we feel like the exhibit is complete.”

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ON DISPLAY IN WESTERN EDGE AT THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

DETAIL OF CHRIS ETHRIDGE’S SUIT

PHOTO: BOB DELEVANTE FOR THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

PHOTO: AMIEE STUBBS FOR THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

GIVE US A HAND

Talk to Me horrifies, terrifies and grosses out

BY JASON SHAWHAN

More than the kangaroo omen lurking in the periphery, more than those distinctive vowel sounds, it’s the hand that makes Talk to Me hit differently than so much other horror of the past decade or so.

The genre is elastic and adaptable, capable of absorbing just about any sort of situation or accessory you throw at it, but this hand … this hand is something else. Part of it is the intimacy — to take part in this dialogue beyond the span of the world before us, you have to shake hands with this lightly obscene sculpture, ceramic upon plaster upon the severed hand of a cursed medium. Part of it is the proportions — it’s not exactly a hand in the way we define them. The knuckles are just a bit off, and the spread of fingers seems unusual. You know even before you accept this insane phenomenon that this isn’t a handshake on even terms. It’s like your World War II veteran relative’s voice, in your ear, insisting that every battle is won and lost depending on the impression given by the way you shake hands.

At heart, the premise is similar to Bloody Mary (or for Middle Tennessee kids, saying “I hate the Bell Witch” three times in a mirror). This is the big party game for Australia’s teens and early 20-somethings, wherein you risk great supernatural consequence to entertain your “friends” so they don’t

wreck your house. But unlike Bloody Mary and its regionalized variants, when you shake hands with this mysterious construct, you actually do communicate with another realm of existence. And because of the omnipresence of smartphones, we see the trajectory of this fracture between worlds one uploaded video after another.

The first thing Talk to Me does exactly right is unfold in an interesting and smartly arranged cosmology that is tonally consistent without revealing all its secrets or spelling everything out. The second thing it does exactly right is put to bed the whole “the monster is a metaphor” school of scares that have been kicking around since Takeo Saeki murdered his wife in 2000’s Ju-on all the way up to this summer’s interesting but ultimately frustrating The Boogeyman. That’s not in any way meant to diminish the grief our heroine Mia (Sophie Wilde, in a staggering performance) is dealing with, but merely to say that Greek Australian directors Danny and Michael Philippou (and Danny’s co-writer Bill Hinzman) have seen all the same movies that we have, and this is no It Comes at Night

In Stephen King’s nonfiction work Danse Macabre, he talks about the three different responses one can aim for in dark fiction: to horrify, to terrify and to gross out. Talk to Me does all three of these things, and expertly. But there’s even a fourth response, stretching all the way back to ancient Greek theater, when the viewer recognizes inescapable tragedy as the only possible end point — a sigh of acknowledgment that comes from some unknowable place deep within — and Talk to Me excels at that like its ’90s spiritual ancestors Candyman and In Dreams did.

Every week it seems like there’s some new hook coalescing into menacingly viral

form online. Just last month, that McDonald’s promotion for Grimace’s birthday launched a mini trend in found-footage horror as well as proved that corporate resources can be channeled into creating a tulpa. The Philippou brothers come from the realm of YouTube videos, equal parts Bam Margera and creepypasta as their artistic spawning grounds, and despite their association with disgraced YouTuber Jake Paul, they’ve made one of the most auspicious horror debuts in quite some time. This is a smart and genuinely scary film that somehow found a way to make a resonant tale of consumptive sadness that also delivers upsetting body horror and realistic, quality teen performances. And this may be the best ending to a scary movie in years. (2018’s Truth or Dare comes close, but that was a weak film with a superb ending, and Talk to Me fires on all cylinders its whole brisk 95 minutes.)

There’s real emotional resonance here — a lot of modern horror doesn’t tend to hit this hard. You have to reach back to The Dead Zone or 12 Monkeys to find the films that haul off and punch you in the gut the day after you see the movie. It feels a bit lazy to invoke Lake Mungo in comparison, because all things Antipodean are not a monolith, but there’s something about when Australian horror decides not to fuck around (see also Bad Girl Boogey, an incredibly violent slasher now available via video on demand from trans filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay that also pulls no punches and unleashes a deeply resonant vision on the global genre cinema scene) that has a lingering power you can’t wriggle away from. Talk to Me is uncompromising and emotionally brutal, it’s gross and smart, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since I saw it.

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NOTES ON CAMP

Theater Camp is payback for Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman

BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

Twenty years ago, actor Todd Graff showed up at Sundance with Camp, his directorial debut, which was nominated for the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the festival. Based on the experiences he had as a young lad at New York’s Stagedoor Manor theater camp (Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Robert Downey Jr. were also once happy campers there), the flawed but endearing musical-comedy saluted summer camps that gave little Sondheim-loving kids the freedom to indulge in their love of theater, while also encouraging them to never give up on their Broadway dreams.

Two decades later, another actor showed up to Park City with a directorial debut about kids spending one crazy summer staging elaborate shows. But unlike Camp, Theater Camp is not a filmmaker’s love letter to all the people he learned from during his teenage years. This one is more of a spiteful fuck-you.

Molly Gordon, most recently seen as Jeremy Allen White’s love interest on streaming hit The Bear, co-wrote and co-directed this mockumentary with Nick Lieberman. She also stars as Rebecca-Diane, one of the many instructors at upstate New York camp AdirondACTS. After the camp’s longtime owner and founder (a brief appearance from Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma (she has a heart attack during a strobe-lightfilled production of Bye Bye Birdie), it’s up to her vlogging, crypto-bro-wannabe son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) to keep the camp from being foreclosed on.

This Camp is an elongated adaptation of a 2020, no-longer-available-online short Gor-

don and Lieberman made with Dear Evan Hansen star Ben Platt (who plays another camp instructor here) and his fiancé Noah Galvin (who plays the camp’s long-suffering maintenance man). This foursome comes to gether to do their own Waiting for Guffman, complete with heavily improvised dialogue, buffoonish characters and a rousing but ridiculous stage production that also serves as the film’s finale.

But whereas Guffman director Christopher Guest had love for his mediocre but passionate theater folk, Gordon & Co. clearly want you to loathe these geeks. Gordon has said in interviews that she didn’t have fun at theater camp. Considering how most of the camp faculty (and even some of the kids) are portrayed as self-centered, highly delusional narcissists with middling talent, Gordon appears to be directing some payback at the so-called artists she rubbed shoulders with in the mess hall. Platt’s head counselor Amos is the most insufferable, claiming to be there for the kids but becoming petty as hell around one who’s destined for bigger and better things. He also gets quite salty when his best pal Rebecca-Diane, an autoharp-playing flake who claims she can communicate with spirits, starts leaving the camp to actually pursue acting gigs. Those two and others treat Tatro’s well-meaning-but-outof-his-depth de facto boss with immediate contempt — and they’re practically oblivious to the fact that they’re dismissing and ostracizing him the same way people have dismissed and ostracized them. Gordon’s Bear co-star Ayo Edebiri plays the only instructor who isn’t a complete tool — and that’s mainly because she knows nothing about theater and lied on her résumé to get the job. (Naturally, Gordon named her after her favorite camp teacher.)

More of a sitcom pilot than a movie (think Abbott Elementary with showtunes), Theater Camp is 95 minutes of successful actors showing how far they’ve come. But they also do something I don’t think was their intention: They give people plenty of reasons to hate theater and those who yearn to be a part of it. Let’s hope this doesn’t inspire kids to beat down any youngster who knows all the songs in Rent backward and forward.

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ACROSS

1 Expression of false modesty from a texter

5 Peacock’s home

8 Sing “Scooby-doobydoo,” say

12 Unseasoned

13 The “chum” of chumming

15 ___ of Titus (Roman landmark)

16 First of the Jewish High Holy Days

18 Title meaning “superior one”

19 Approved by one’s insurance company, say

20 Kitchen game?

22 Co. that, in 1925, said of crosswords “The craze evidently is dying out fast”

23 Clicking sound

25 Smooth

26 Org. that might have a beef with beef

27 Major gold exporter

29 Department store with a New York City flagship

32 Eventually

36 O.R. figs.

38 New parent’s whispered admonition … or a hint to four squares in this puzzle

41 Took a load off

42 Applies to

43 Online marketplace since 2005

44 Pioneer in atomic theory

46 West Coast sch. with the mascot King Triton

48 Source of pink juice

51 ___ the Enchanter, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” character

52 That chap

55 Seasonings that chefs employ

58 See 52-Down

60 Big name in eyedrops

61 Feature of “Monty Python” and “Peep Show”

63 Ties often tied in bows

64 Propels, in a way

65 Idiotic

66 Name associated with speed 67 Soccer superstar Hamm

68 Pair nicknamed “dynamite” in Texas hold ’em

DOWN

1 “Honesty with the volume cranked up,” per George Saunders

2 Headwear with breathable fabric

3 Catch some waves?

4 Beginnings

5 In which Bulls lock horns with Bucks, for short 6 Seat in court 7 Byes 8 It might be on the tip of your tongue 9 Bit of X Games gear 10 High place 11 Conjunction with other or rather

34 Won’t respond until later, say

35 Composer Henry

37 One with secrets to tell

39 Supernatural surroundings

40 Played first 45 Secret

47 Big success

49 Airbnb alternative

50 Norm ___, longtime host of “This Old House”

52 With 58-Across, why we do what we do

53 Straightens things out?

54 Sister of un oncle

55 Email header

56 Singer McEntire 57 Phony personality? 59 Air

62 Ones asking you to raise your hands, in brief?

REED It is ordered that said Defendant enter his appearance here in with thirty (30) days after AUGUST 3, 2023 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 31st 2023. 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. Joseph P. Day, Clerk

BRIDGID CALDWELL

Attorneys for Plaintiff

NSC 7/13, 7/20, 7/27, 8/3 /23

nessee, therefore the ordi-

nary process of law cannot be served upon DARRELL REED It is ordered that said

Defendant enter his appearance here in with thirty (30) days after AUGUST 3, 2023 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 31st 2023. 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.

Joseph P. Day, Clerk Keisha Bass, Deputy Clerk Date: July 5, 2023

BRIDGID CALDWELL Attorneys for Plaintiff NSC 7/13, 7/20, 7/27, 8/3 /23

communities to TIRRC’s services, campaigns, and leadership development opportunities. Employer: Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition. Job location: Nashville, TN headquarters, with extensive (up to 50%) travel throughout Tennessee required. Employee may reside in Nashville, Memphis, or Knoxville. Mail CV to Cara Kilgore, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, 3310 Ezell Rd, Nashville, TN 37211.

Senior Manager, Salesforce Consulting (Mult Pos), PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Nashville, TN. Asst clnts lvrg Salesforce tech to enhnc thr cstmr exps, enbl sustnbl chng & drive rslts. Req. Bach’s deg or foreign equiv in Info Sys, Comp Sci, IT, Engg, or rel + 6 yrs rel wrk exp, of whch at least 5 yrs mst be post-bach’s, prgrssv rel wrk exp; OR a Master’s deg or foreign equiv in Info Sys, Comp Sci, IT, Engg, or rel + 4 yrs rel wrk exp. 80% telecommtng permitted. Mst be able to commute to designated local office. Trvl up to 80% req. Please apply by sending your resume to US_PwC_Career_Recruitme nt@pwc.com, specifying Job Code TN3768 in the subject line.

NEW AUTHORS WANTED!

Organizer. Connect individuals in diverse immigrant and refugee communities to TIRRC’s services, campaigns, and leadership development opportunities. Employer: Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.

Job location: Nashville, TN headquarters, with extensive (up to 50%) travel throughout Tennessee required. Employee may reside in Nashville, Memphis, or Knoxville. Mail CV to Cara Kilgore, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, 3310 Ezell Rd, Nashville, TN 37211.

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