Nashville Scene 7-6-23

MUSIC:

SOULFOLKS RECORDS AND TAPES IS BUILDING

COMMUNITY IN MADISON

The Talented Professor Henry

Artist and Fisk University professor Alicia Henry is as layered and enigmatic as her art

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

7

CITY LIMITS

At-Large Candidates: A Deeper Look 7

We asked the field for their position on license plate readers, the Titans stadium, property taxes and more

BY CONNOR DARYANI, NASHVILLE BANNER

A Late Challenge in District 9 ................... 8

Newcomer Stephanie Montenegro takes on incumbent Tonya Hancock for the Madison council seat

BY ELI MOTYCKA

Trans Advocates Protest Daily Wire Production in Nashville 9

The film — which shot at Municipal Auditorium last week — will reportedly depict men posing as girls while competing in a basketball tournament

BY

HANNAH HERNER AND HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

11

COVER STORY

The Talented Professor Henry Artist and Fisk University professor Alicia Henry is as layered and enigmatic as her art

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

21

CRITICS’ PICKS

John Oliver, Nashville Scene Burger Week, The Mountain Goats, Fan Me With a Brick and more

31

FOOD AND DRINK

Learn to Cook Like a Euro 31

Two local bakers want to help you reach a state of Rêverie

BY

CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

At the Market: The Creole Diva 32 Lynn Jones brings authentic Creole staples to Nashville’s farmers markets

BY KELSEY BEYELER

34

BOOKS

All That Glitters

Lindsay Lynch’s debut novel Do Tell is sparkling and sharp BY ERICA WRIGHT; CHAPTER16.ORG

35

VODKA YONIC

Don’t Look Up

A morning in my ever-changing Nashville neighborhood

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB:

Plaintiff Awarded $300K in MNPD Harassment Suit

Court Blocks Trans Care Ban, Another Blow to GOP Legislature

R.A.P. Ferreira establishes a new outpost of Soulfolks Records and Tapes

BY BRITTNEY M c KENNA

FILM

Jumping for Joy Joy Ride is a horny and humorous look at Asian American identity

BY KEN ARNOLD

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

42

MARKETPLACE

Once Upon a Time in France Owners Respond to Misconduct, Food Safety Allegations

MNPS Board Passes 2023-2024 Budget During Tense Meeting

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ON THE COVER: Alicia Henry

Photo by Angelina Castillo

PET OF THE WEEK!

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FROM BILL FREEMAN

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MAYOR COOPER’S VISION SHINES WITH THE ORACLE BRIDGE, A PATH TO PROGRESS

In the midst of ongoing discussions surrounding the Titans stadium deal, the attention has now shifted to a remarkable new development that holds the potential to transform Nashville’s East Bank. As reported last month by multiple local media outlets, renowned software giant Oracle Corp. recently unveiled a conceptual rendering of a visionary bridge that will connect Germantown to East Nashville. Like so many, I am thrilled to witness this significant step forward in Nashville’s progress, and I appreciate Mayor John Cooper’s efforts.

Says Mayor Cooper in a statement: “This new bridge built by Oracle will create a new, convenient way for walkers and bikers to get across the river. Residents who live in McFerrin Park, for example, will be able to take this bridge to the farmers market, a Sounds game, or to a job downtown. Making it easy and more affordable to get around Nashville is an essential component of our larger East Bank vision.”

Mayor Cooper and his team have been thinking ahead. With the traffic situation as it is in Nashville, anything that enables us to get around without having to drive is of great appeal. Better still, Nashville will not be footing any of the bill — and our city will gain many new jobs. As the Nashville Post reported early on, Cooper said in May 2021, “This is the largest private investment and the largest job creation deal in our history — all with no expense in our budget and no new debt. Oracle’s $1.2 billion investment will create thousands of quality jobs and help our kids succeed in the digital economy.”

The Oracle bridge will be a vital link — not just in terms of physical connectivity, but I believe as a symbol of Nashville’s growth and prosperity.

Mayor Cooper and his team have worked to secure a deal that ensures Oracle bears the costs of the bridge and other infrastructure improvements. According to the Nashville Business Journal, Oracle will “fund up to $175 million of infrastructure upfront,” which goes toward the construction of the bridge, greenways, roads and utilities. This investment will reportedly be reimbursed through a 50 percent property tax discount over a 25-year period, with the remaining costs falling on Oracle. Thus, Nashville residents

can rest assured that their tax dollars are not being diverted toward the project.

The Oracle bridge is, as the NBJ notes, just “one prominent piece” of the broader East Bank development, which promises to bring tremendous positive impact to our city. As reported in 2021 by The Tennessean, with Oracle’s $1.2 billion investment, the 65-acre River North campus will not only provide an estimated 8,500 new jobs by 2031, but also bring aesthetic improvements and increased opportunities for Nashville’s workforce. These well-paying jobs, with a reported average salary of $110,000, will contribute to the economic prosperity of our community while positioning Nashville as a hub for technology and innovation.

Mayor Cooper has had to face many challenges. As I wrote back in January, he has navigated a pandemic, faced natural disasters like tornadoes and dealt with the 2020 Christmas Day bombing. Further, the Titans stadium deal has been in the spotlight more so than potential development of the East Bank. That has not been an easy trail for the mayor to blaze. To that end, I have to applaud Mayor Cooper for his vision and dedication to Nashville’s progress despite the completely unforeseen challenges he has had to endure.

Now, with the unveiling of the Oracle bridge plan, I can only imagine the delight Mayor Cooper must feel knowing his dedication has not been in vain. This potentially transformative development will be a testament to his leadership and the remarkable growth Nashville has achieved during his tenure. Mayor Cooper’s legacy will be one of forward-thinking, inclusive urban planning, and a commitment to ensuring a bright future for all Nashvillians. You are appreciated, Mayor Cooper. The Oracle bridge will stand as a testament to your vision and perseverance, and Nashville’s residents eagerly await the future it will unlock.

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AT-LARGE CANDIDATES: A DEEPER LOOK

BY CONNOR DARYANI,

BANNER

This story is a partnership between the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Scene. The Banner is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization focused on civic news and will launch later this year. For more information, visit NashvilleBanner.com.

Following the deadline for candidates to qualify for the ballot, the Nashville Banner sent a questionnaire to all Metro Council candidates asking them basic questions about themselves and policies they support, oppose or might encounter while in office: the Titans stadium plan, license plate readers, police staffing, property taxes, the city-state relationship, affordable housing and transit. The following is a synthesized version of each of the 21 at-large candidates’ responses, including some extra context about some of the candidates.

Visit nashvillescene.com to see our ongoing series of interviews with at-large candidates.

INCUMBENTS

BURKLEY ALLEN is one of two incumbents running for a second term. She previously served two terms as the District 18 council representative. She voted in favor of both the Titans stadium deal and license plate readers (LPRs) but does not support facial recognition technology being used in public. Affordable housing is one of her top priorities, and as a councilmember, she participated in the affordable housing task force and also worked to pass multiple pieces of housing-related legislation, including one allowing people to build detached accessory dwelling units in their backyard. She played a big role in regulating short-term rentals, requiring permits and enforcement. She says the city cannot move forward without securing dedicated funding for transit and believes community engagement will be an important aspect of getting people on board in order to avoid a failure similar to that in 2018.

ZULFAT SUARA is the other incumbent running. A Nigerian immigrant, Suara voted yes on the Titans stadium deal and no on LPRs. She works as the executive director of grants and contracts at Meharry Medical College and has served as a member of various community organiza-

tions during her time in Nashville, including the American Muslim Advisory Council. She does not believe Metro needs more police officers, and instead believes we should be investing in nonpolicing alternatives such as mental health professionals and community programming. In the 2019 runoff, she secured the last available at-large seat, becoming the first Muslim elected to the Metro Council. She is one of three councilmembers who filed a lawsuit against the state over the Metro Council reduction bill, along with Delishia Porterfield, who is also running for an at-large seat.

NONINCUMBENTS

TONY CHAPMAN is a Republican from Antioch. Chapman did not answer any questions.

CHRIS CHENG might be recognizable from his hot sauce business, Hot Sauce Nashville, which he owns with his wife and sells at local farmers markets. He was also a captain in the U.S. Army, serving as a Ranger. One of his top priorities is supporting small businesses, and he hopes the new Titans stadium deal will encourage people to spend more money at local restaurants and businesses. On the question of more police and LPRs, he is open to discussion and wants to ensure there are open lines of communication to see what is best for the city. He wants to explore options for dedicated transit funding, and aside from upgrading bus services, wants to encourage regional transit systems.

CHRIS CROFTON is a musician and comedian. For many years before he announced he would be running for an at-large seat, Crofton wrote the Advice King column for the Nashville Scene, which often touched on national, state and local politics. In 2022, Vanderbilt University Press published his columns in the book The Advice King Anthology. He believes we should be funding comprehensive health care, public education and better wages for workers — things he says he’d rather fund than more police officers and LPRs. He would not have voted for the Titans’ stadium deal. One of his top priorities is more non-alcohol-related culture downtown, along with affordable housing and transportation.

STEPHEN DOWNS is a retired social worker and has served on the state Democratic Executive Committee. His top priority is

repairing the relationship between the city and state governments, saying the Metro Council “bit off our nose to spite our face” by voting against hosting the 2024 RNC. He has worked with various political campaigns, and done community work such as neighborhood clean-ups and organizing events. He feels the city likely needs more police officers beyond the unfilled positions, but his first focus is providing raises to the police force. He has concerns over LPRs and believes a better relationship needs to be developed between the public and the police force. He believes there are lots of improvements that could be made to the city’s transit system, and that dedicated funding is a must.

QUIN EVANS-SEGALL serves on Nashville’s Industrial Development Board. Although the IDB is typically a rather invisible government body, during her time on the board she pushed back on deals the city was making, such as one with the Montgomery Bell Academy. She co-founded Voices for a Safer Tennessee and has served on a number of nonprofit and community boards and committees. She is a lawyer by day. Many of her top priorities involve updating city government to be more effective and efficient, and better able to carry out vital tasks such as updating the bus system. She does not think the Titans stadium plan was a good deal, and she has concerns over LPR usage.

RONNIE GREER was the District 17 councilmember from 1999 to 2007. He says he would not have voted for the Titans stadium deal. He’s not sure whether Nashville needs more police officers, is unsure about LPRs, is unsure whether WeGo needs improvements over the next four years and is disturbed by the relationship between the city and the state.

ARNOLD HAYES is a retired engineer and teacher and previously served on the Community Oversight Board. He does not believe the city needs more police officers and instead would like to focus on making the city safer in other ways, such as funding for mental health programs. He says he would not have voted for the Titans stadium deal and would have preferred to take an issue like that to the voters and let them decide. He wants to ensure more support for the Barnes Housing Trust Fund, but also wants to reevaluate summer emergency housing and at what temperatures it should be opened. He would like to see bus routes expanded over the next four years.

BRIAN HELLWIG is an “asset protection specialist” at Home Depot, which means he focuses on safety and theft mitigation. He previously served as the chief safety and security officer at Kent State University. His top priority is security and safety, with

a focus on retail theft and organized retail crime. He believes downtown development has been great, but that there needs to be more emphasis on safety. He would not have supported the Titans stadium deal. Hellwig is very supportive of LPR usage and would support the use of facial recognition technology. He also believes the city needs more police beyond the unfilled positions.

OLIVIA HILL made a name for herself when she sued Vanderbilt over allegedly discriminating against her because she’s transgender. She has worked to advocate for women and the LGBTQ community. She’s a Navy veteran, and her top priorities are infrastructure, homelessness and transportation. She does not believe the city should use LPRs, and while she did not take a position on the Titans stadium deal, she now wants to focus on the surrounding neighborhoods, as well as updating the transportation and utilities downtown. She believes we need to expand the bus system and establish a dedicated funding source for transit.

YOLANDA HOCKETT is the program committee chair of Rebuilding Together Nashville and works as a juvenile corrections administrator. She would have voted for the Titans stadium deal “if youth benefited from it,” and supports LPR usage. She believes property taxes will need to be adjusted in the next four years in order to meet the needs of the city. Supporting the city’s youth is one of her top priorities.

HOWARD JONES will likely be a familiar name to anyone who has voted in Nashville recently. He has run for office multiple times, including most recently a bid for Circuit Court judge. He has worked as a high school principal, a senior pastor and a community organizer. His top priority is community safety, and he believes the city needs more police officers beyond the unfilled positions. He says he would not have voted for the Titans stadium deal, and he supports LPR usage, as well as the use of facial recognition technology. He believes that if the city can do a deal like the Titans stadium, it should be able to put together a $1 billion plan to address affordable housing. He would support a dedicated funding source for transit and believes WeGo should be updated to support the needs of the city.

MARCIA MASULLA helped start Nashville Fashion Week. She worked for The Tennessean until 2017, when she started ROAR Nashville, a communications firm. She also worked as an aide for Mayor John Cooper. She has worked with local nonprofits,

We asked the eld for their position on license plate readers, the Titans stadium, property taxes and more

NASHVILLE

CITY LIMITS

including the Tiny But Mighty Fund and the Table Action, and serves on the community benefits agreement board between Nashville SC and Stand Up Nashville. She says that while she would not have initially supported the Titans stadium deal that was first on the table, the final deal made sense. She is open to the usage of LPRs and possibly even facial recognition, but wants to see the data from the pilot program to back it up. She feels it is important to invest in the Metro Nashville Police Department and expand programs that could help to prevent crime. Safety, affordable housing, education and transit are her top priorities. She believes there needs to be a referendum to secure dedicated funding for transit so we can expand bus service, create dedicated bus lanes and expand or create other services.

DELISHIA PORTERFIELD is one of three district councilmembers running for at-large, but the only one who is not term-limited. She was first elected to District 29 in 2019 through a special election before winning the seat in the general election that August. She voted against the Titans stadium deal, does not support usage of LPRs, and rather than invest in more police officers, wants to invest in affordable housing, creating well-paying jobs and other community programming to decrease crime. She is one of the few candidates who definitively says a property tax adjustment will be needed in the next four years in order to meet the needs of the city. She joined Suara in the lawsuit against the state over

A LATE CHALLENGE IN DISTRICT 9

Newcomer Stephanie Montenegro takes on incumbent Tonya Hancock for the Madison council seat

BY ELI MOTYCKA

Back in 2019, Tonya Hancock shellacked two opponents to win her seat in District 9. She’s built a first-term identity on strong support for emergency services, specifically the police and firefighters, earning her a spot alongside fellow Councilmembers Larry Hagar, Russ Pulley, Courtney Johnston and Robert Swope in what Scene columnist Nicole Williams calls Metro’s “Cop Caucus.” The group, labeled by Williams for its praise of the Metro Nashville Police Department and unwavering support for police spending requests, is also a proxy for the chamber’s more conservative members — unsurprisingly, Hancock has already earned the local police union’s endorsement for District 9.

Hancock’s law-and-order tendencies are personal — campaign photos feature her husband, a lieutenant colonel in the Tennessee Army National Guard, in his

legislation to cut the Metro Council in half, and has been an outspoken voice against many of the state’s actions during the past session. She also made headlines when she led the charge to reinstate Rep. Justin Jones after his expulsion, which was notable because Jones beat Porterfield for the District 52 state House seat in 2022.

RUSS PULLEY is termlimited in District 25. He is a retired FBI agent and spent 24 years officiating college football in the Southeastern Conference. He has been a part of various community organizations and church groups in the Green Hills area. He voted yes on the Titans stadium deal, wants to invest in more police and “strongly” supports LPR usage. Crime, public safety and affordability are some of his top priorities. During the 2020 budget cycle, he pushed for a $2 million increase in the Metro Nashville Police Department budget, despite an attempt from current Councilmember At-Large Bob Mendes to strip that from the budget. Recently, he was a main opponent of a bill from District 5 Councilmember Sean Parker that redefined “family” in the zoning code, allowing more unrelated individuals to live in a single household.

GILBERT RAMIREZ is a retired Metro Nashville police officer who now works in private security. During his time with MNPD, he organized community events, such as health fairs and festivals. He believes Nashville needs 400 officers beyond the unfilled positions and that the city

needs to slow downtown development, such as plans for the East Bank, and focus on the surrounding neighborhoods. He did not give a yes-or-no answer regarding the Titans stadium. He believes facial-recognition technology and LPRs could be useful, but is cautious due to studies showing facial recognition can lead to racial profiling. His top priorities are education, affordable housing, infrastructure and transportation.

INDRANI RAY is a health care consultant who previously worked for Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the state. Ray did not answer any of the Banner’s questions, though she did participate in a Q&A with the Nashville Scene and the Nashville Post in which she highlighted her interest, as an economist, in “making sure our expenditures are in directions of improving our welfare.”

JEFF SYRACUSE is one of three district council members vying for a promotion to an at-large seat. He is currently wrapping up his second term as the District 15 representative in the Donelson area. He voted in favor of both the Titans stadium deal and LPRs. He has spent his career working in the music industry, and during his two terms placed a strong emphasis on preserving the music business in Nashville. He is in favor of Nashville dedicating funding to transit and increasing WeGo’s bus services. Syracuse also has played a big role in advocating for better trash pickup, and pressuring Red River, a waste service contractor, to be more consistent with their pickups. He was also

responsible for legislation late last year that banned smoking in bars and concert venues, a bill that was met with resistance from local dive bars. He supports having another transit referendum and wants to see a big emphasis on regional transit.

DELORIS VANDIVORT is a registered nurse. Her top priorities are schools, infrastructure and getting the city’s finances in order. She believes downtown development needs to slow down, and would like to see Lower Broadway become a walking-only area. She would not have voted for the Titans stadium deal as is. She does not have an issue with LPR usage but has concerns over facial recognition technology.

JONATHAN WILLIAMSON works in the hospitality industry, at Marriott as a business systems analyst. He would not have voted for the Titans stadium deal, and he does not feel the city needs more police beyond the unfilled positions. He does not feel LPRs should be used the way they are and is against facial recognition technology. He feels a property tax adjustment will “absolutely” be needed, in part because of the stadium and East Bank development. He supports the creation of a dedicated funding source for transit and wants to expand regional transit to neighboring towns. He recently came under fire for several 2022 tweets relating to vaccine hesitancy, immigrants and Jewish people. One, which has since been deleted, read: “Gews and banks. Smh. This is America.”

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fatigues. And as a self-proclaimed “Navy brat,” she connects her own commitment to public service to a lifetime of experiences with state and federal armed forces and, briefly, her own stint in the foreign service in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.

Among her first-term achievements, Hancock first lists her successful push to end lifetime health care

benefits for councilmembers — something she calls a small but important show of fiscal responsibility.

“It will probably save $1 million a year,” Hancock tells the Scene. “But for the citizens, it let them know we cared and weren’t going to keep a plan that they felt was out of whack because it had always been there.”

Recently, she helped broker a deal with Metro

Parks and MNPD to relocate the city’s mounted patrol facilities to Peeler Park, combining her interest in law enforcement and outdoor recreation. As a Metro Nashville Public Schools parent with a career in education at Texas Instruments, she emphasizes her connection to city schools and her service on MNPS’ parent advisory council.

TONYA HANCOCK

STEPHANIE MONTENEGRO

This campaign season, Hancock has rebranded as “Two Term Tonya” and posted $22,100 toward a $30,000 goal, according to a fundraising thermometer on her website. The last campaign finance disclosure, filed April 10, declared $16,206.67 on hand, thanks in part to $2,000 from herself and her husband and large donations from prolific Metro lobbyist James Weaver, Ray Render (district director for Republican U.S. Rep. John Rose), scattered real estate interests, and the PAC run by downtown law firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis. A courteous $50 came from fellow Councilmember Burkley Allen. In the nonpartisan theater of city politics, Hancock has aligned herself with the traditionally conservative conception of government — a guarantor of the status quo, responsibly administering public resources, rather than a vehicle for societal change. The traditional values might fit District 9, a more suburban cross section of Davidson County dotted with charter academies and private Christian schools where homes are only just now becoming unaffordable. Then again, they might not.

The district branches east off two dozen commercial blocks in Madison, just past Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, an area that might soon be known as Northeast Inglewood. By area, it’s mostly single-family homes all the way down Neely’s Bend. Peeler Park, hemmed in by the Cumberland, has miles of trails and its own airpark — Shelby for half the price and twice the commute. Stephanie Montenegro lives in one of these homes with her wife and kids. She filed campaign papers 24 hours before the race deadline in May and hasn’t yet filed any official fundraising disclosures.

Montenegro’s campaign echoes candidates like current District 19 Metro Councilmember Freddie O’Connell (who’s running for mayor) and Quin Evans Segall (who’s running for one of the council’s five at-large seats). They represent a growing ideological pole, defined by its focus on quality-of-life deliverables like pedestrian infrastructure, public transit options, bike lanes and strong traditional public schools. They’re critical of the city’s big public subsidies that favor corporations and tourism, usually represented by the recent Titans stadium deal, which passed with Hancock’s support. Inside the council, allies like Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda and Councilmember At-Large Bob Mendes have preached similar politics; both have endorsed Montenegro over Hancock, their colleague of four years.

“I haven’t seen a strong leader in council for District 9,” Montenegro tells the Scene. “A large part of our district is on limited income or working families. We have a lot of seniors in our community who rely on public transit. We need affordable housing, safer roads and stronger public schools instead of a brand-new Titans stadium. Madison has just been forgotten.”

Nashville’s suburbs have seen property taxes continue to rise, traffic get worse and public schools struggle while party barges crisscross downtown. Both candidates reference the district’s large Hispanic population — Montenegro’s family immigrated from Colombia two decades ago — and the area’s strong sense of community. If Montenegro can effectively communicate what she sees as a raw deal to her neighbors (and make Hancock responsible for it), she could pull off the upset.

With name recognition and an incumbent (and alphabetical) advantage, Hancock remains the favorite. She’s built a base with open-ended community meetings during her first term. But unlike races in more homogenous corners of the city, Montenegro’s challenge represents a chance to determine Davidson County’s appetite for change.

TRANS ADVOCATES PROTEST DAILY WIRE PRODUCTION IN NASHVILLE

The film — which shot at Municipal Auditorium last week — will reportedly depict men posing as girls while competing in a basketball tournament

BY HANNAH HERNER AND HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

As film extras filed into Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium on June 28, they were met with protesters. The movie, which appears to have the working title Coach Miracle, is a production of The Daily Wire, a Nashville-based far-right media group, and seemingly mocks transgender people in sports.

While extras signed nondisclosure agreements, two agreed to speak with the Scene on the condition of anonymity. They tell the Scene they signed up for what was advertised as a sports comedy film through Aud615, a local casting organization. On June 27, some began to put the pieces together, after reading a post from Tennessee Holler.

Clara — an assumed name we’ll use to refer to one of the extras — says that during a break from filming, several actors voiced their objections and were “screaming” about The Daily Wire’s involvement with the film before being escorted out of the building.

“It was fun,” she says. “We were getting to pretend we’re watching a basketball game, but then after the outburst, you could kind of feel the whole energy in the place change.”

A basketball team depicted in the film is called the Lady Ballers and includes eight young girls and four grown men — some of whom were portrayed by local college bas-

ketball players.

“The day before, those men had been dressed up with wigs and fake boobs and everything,” Clara says. She adds that after some extras noted their objections, certain costume elements and props — such as wigs and a sign reading “Baller Pride” with a trans flag — were removed in what she says appeared to be an effort to downplay or hide the content or plot of the film.

John, a transgender man who spoke with the Scene under a pseudonym, says he sat next to fans of The Daily Wire who had heard about the filming and traveled to Nashville from Michigan and Wisconsin. He joined on June 27, but those who had been there the previous day filled him in.

“They started handing out props, and I saw a bunch of trans pride posters, and all of these people were laughing at them,” says John. “They’re like, ‘It’s men dressed as women trying to compete in this Olympicstyle tournament.’” He immediately went to confirm the premise of the film with a security guard on site, who he says told him, “It’s a spoof on transgenders in sports.”

The pay started at $150 a day in cash — a number that eventually was raised to $200, and later $300, as confirmed by email correspondence between casting recruiters and extras. Recruiter emails also sought people who would dress in drag as a “visual gag,” though would not include practicing drag queens.

Clara was not familiar with The Daily Wire, and the organization’s name was buried in the contract, but she did some personal research about the reported content of the film and its backing organization. She decided not to take part in the production any longer, noting that she’s a supporter of the LGBTQ community.

“I was devastated,” she says. “The minute I even thought that that could be what I was participating in, I was sick to my stomach. I wanted to just bawl my eyes out, because I would never willingly or knowingly participate in something like that or support it.”

The Daily Wire moved its headquarters to Nashville in 2020. Its commentators have already impacted state policy, with the outlet’s far-right media personality Matt Walsh leading an anti-trans rally in the fall, which was followed by the state banning gender-affirming care for minors in Tennessee. Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s pediatric transgender clinic ceased operations, while the law (set to go into effect July 1) has been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Representatives for Municipal Auditorium declined to comment. Belmont University, which was initially slated to host some filming, ended up canceling it.

“This event will no longer occur on campus because the production company has not fulfilled the requirements or provided the details that would have been necessary for us to proceed,” a university spokesperson says in an emailed statement.

Aud615 tells the Scene in a statement that they were only provided the title of the “PG13 sports comedy film” and not the script — which is common.

“We were asked to provide the paid filming opportunities this week to our member base and we did,” says Aud615 in a statement. “We have fulfilled our agreement by advertising the opportunity. Aud615 is a casting company. Movie subjects, content, theme and events do not necessarily reflect the audience service’s beliefs or opinions.”

EMAIL

EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

WITNESS HISTORY

This 1973 Sho-Bud Pro-II pedal steel guitar helped spark a rock & roll revolution in Los Angeles. It was played by Dan Dugmore onstage and in the studio with Linda Ronstadt, including on “Blue Bayou.”

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

artifact: Courtesy of Dan Dugmore artifact photo: Bob Delevante

photo

The Talented Professor Henry

Artist and Fisk University professor Alicia Henry is as layered and enigmatic as her art

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO ALICIA HENRY

Alicia Henry is relaxed

inside the Carl Van Vechten Gallery. She is relaxed in most places, but especially here — the gallery, named after the photographer and Harlem Renaissance patron, is the beating heart of Fisk University, where Henry has been a professor since 1997. She scans the work on the walls through tortoiseshell glasses, moving with a gracefulness that seems almost slow-motion. She’s brought students through exhibitions in this space for decades, introducing them to artwork by masters like Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden and Alma Thomas. Today it’s her own art on display.

Alicia opened in March as part of the inaugural statewide Tennessee Triennial, and it is monumental for several reasons — not the least of which is that it’s Henry’s first solo show at the university. Alicia contains multitudes — collages, paintings, ceramic sculptures and textile-based works, all spanning the length of time that Henry has been working at Fisk and living in Nashville. In 20 artworks, Alicia will give you a deep understanding of the artist’s outsized talent.

But the artist herself is a different story. And she might always remain a mystery.

KNOWING ALICIA HENRY is like knowing two people. The show’s title hints at that duality — to the students who speak of her with reverence, she will always be Professor Henry, and calling her by her first name seems an almost improper display of familiarity. She is known for keeping quiet about her work, which she seldom names anything other than “Untitled” and always installs herself. Her silence remains even as she garners prestige and recognition — she’s been the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, a Joan Mitchell fellowship and a Ford Foundation fellowship. Even to those closest with her, Henry is as layered and enigmatic as the art she creates.

Fisk’s gallery director and curator Jamaal Sheats joins Henry in the Van Vechten Gallery, and they greet each other warmly. They are, in many ways, opposites. Sheats is as talkative as Henry is soft-spoken, but they have the easy rapport of colleagues whose lives have long been intertwined. Before he became the director of Fisk’s art galleries in 2015, Sheats was one of Henry’s first students, and he’s one of many whose life has been changed for the better by the elusive but influential artist.

“I was intrigued by her as a student,” Sheats tells me later. “She was very serious. Always very supportive, always present, always strong.”

It makes sense that Sheats would be the one to curate the first solo exhibition of Henry’s work at Fisk — his education and professional career have been shaped, in many ways, through close contact with her. To him, the exhibition has been a gift.

“Having the opportunity to handle her work is amazing,” Sheats says. “To see it off the wall, front and back. It’s layer after layer after layer after layer, and when you hold it from the back side, you get to peer through all those layers — the eyes, the mouth. But that part is concealed — we don’t get to experience it. And that feels a lot like Professor Henry too.”

The first major show Henry had in Nashville, 2003’s Alicia Henry: Black and Blue at the Frist Art Museum, established her as a force, and also surprised the students who had never heard her even speak about her work. Sheats remembers seeing her work for the first time at the Frist. “I was floored,” he says.

The exhibition was curated by Mark Scala, who is now the museum’s chief curator. “Even at that time, Alicia’s work was just so extraordinary — so powerful and full of gravitas,” he says. “She belongs in a larger framework, but she’s absolutely original. Sometimes I wonder if she was born making art.”

Henry grew up in Illinois, the middle child of Charles and Katie. She went to college at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and after that, she studied at Yale. Artist Rico Gatson, who graduated from Yale’s MFA program with Henry, remembers how they met during orientation on the first day

DETAIL OF “ANALOGOUS III”

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

ALICIA THROUGH AUG. 31 AT FISK UNIVERSITY’S CARL VAN VECHTEN GALLERY

JULY 13

SPRINGER MOUNTAIN FARMS BLUEGRASS NIGHTS AT THE RYMAN RHONDA VINCENT & THE RAGE WITH THE KODY NORRIS SHOW

JULY 15

SAVE THE MORRIS BUILDING BENEFIT: GRANDMASTER FLASH & FRIENDS

JULY 25 & 26

RYAN ADAMS & THE CARDINALS

JULY 30

MELISSA ETHERIDGE

AUGUST 9

HAPPY TOGETHER

THE TURTLES, LITTLE ANTHONY, GARY PUCKETT & THE UNION GAP, THE VOGUES, THE CLASSICS IV AND THE COWSILLS

AUGUST 31

SHAKTI

50TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR WITH SPECIAL GUEST JOHN SCOFIELD

of school. “There were only four African American students in the program then,” he tells the Scene via email from his Brooklyn studio. “I saw her across the room, and at the end she introduced herself to me. We’ve been friends ever since.”

Even as a student, Henry seemed blessed with insight. Once, after Gatson had visited her studio late into the evening and was preparing to walk across campus, Henry advised him to take care. “It struck me in a curious way,” he says. “As I walked, I thought how profound it was that she understood that even though I had a huge sense of self-confidence and assurance, I needed to remain cognizant of potential dangers and remember to be careful.”

After graduation, Henry lived in Ghana on the coast of West Africa for two years as a volunteer in the Peace Corps. Then she taught art on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. When she began looking for work, she landed on Fisk. “I had no doubt that this was my path,” Henry says, explaining that she’d always wanted to be at a historically Black university, and Fisk has a great art collection. “It was just kismet.”

Fisk’s archive is legendary. The university has been collecting artwork since the 1870s, and has amassed an incredible collection.

“We house one of the greatest repositories of the cultural production of people of African descent, from across the diaspora,” Sheats says with quiet confidence and a twinkling eye.

That repository includes not only the storied Stieglitz Collection, which was donated to the university by artist Georgia O’Keeffe in 1949, but also jewels of the Harlem Renaissance, like the sevenpanel mural in Cravath Hall that Aaron Douglas painted in 1930. Douglas, who was considered the visual voice of the Harlem Renaissance, later returned to Fisk as a teacher in 1937, and went on to found the

university’s art department in 1944.

Fisk’s collection is what drew Henry to Nashville, and it continues to inspire her and influence her art-making practice. She has favorites — Henry Ossawa Tanner’s “The Three Marys” from 1910 is a piece she always brings students back to. The painting presents the women at Christ’s tomb as a kind of evolution of grieving, and Tanner’s depiction of sorrowful faces is similar to elements found in Henry’s work.

“You can always see the influence of the [Fisk art] collection on the artists who teach here,” Sheats says. He’s speaking generally, but the connections between the rich work in Fisk’s collection and Henry’s work are unmistakable. During the curation of Alicia, Sheats was reminded of the collection’s portraits by Winold Reiss, which feature detailed faces above simple outlines. He sees echoes of Reiss in the quality of Henry’s lines, pointing to an untitled piece that required her to hammer rows of nails into the wall. The dozens of steel nailheads descend from a detailed cotton-and-felt face with a soft bend, like the branches of a willow tree. It turns the Fisk gallery wall into a kind of nkisi, a statuette from the Congo region of Africa that receives prayers as nails are hammered into its surface.

“I’ve always had the feeling that behind that work there is pain,” Scala says of Henry’s art. “I don’t know if it’s personal pain or cultural pain, probably both. But I can’t look at the work quickly — I have to spend time with it.

“When I’m standing there in front of one of her expressive, convoluted figures, I feel like I’m standing in front of somebody,” he continues. “It becomes more than a work of art. And that is a gift — I don’t know how you get that, as an artist.”

THE BRILLIANCE of the work in Alicia never comes from just the concept, but in its execution. Sheats remembers watching Henry install her work, hammering each small nail into place.

“She’s constantly making critical decisions,” Sheats says. “It’s almost like a ritual. There’s a rhythm and a pace to it that’s fascinating to see.”

“It is performance art to see her in action,” says Houston-based independent curator Michael Ewing. When he was a student at Fisk in 2009, Ewing took Henry’s class Arts and Ideas. “That class changed my life,” he says with conviction. “You feel like you just sat with the oracle from The Matrix and she just gave you one of those cookies, and you walk away feeling like life is greater for you.”

Ewing came to Nashville for the installation of Alicia, and worked with the Triennial’s consulting curator María Magdalena Campos-Pons, the celebrated Afro Cuban artist who arrived in Nashville to teach at Vanderbilt in 2017 and has championed Henry since.

“I have long quietly cherished the beauty and the mystery of her work,” says CamposPons. Henry was among the artists CamposPons brought to Cuba in 2019 for the Havana Biennial, the country’s most prominent international art event. When she began work for the Tennessee Triennial, there was no question that Henry’s work would be included.

“I am interested in the kind of material discourse that her work opens,” CamposPons says, referring to the domesticity of

ALICIA HENRY INSTALLING HER WORK, 2020

DETAIL OF “UNTITLED”

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

materials Henry returns to with her work.

“There is something about Alicia Henry deconstructing the surface in tiny, tiny, tiny little gestures that one by one, by accumulation, construct a larger narrative,” says Campos-Pons, almost always referring to the artist by her full name. “The delicacy of that — the kind of soft, quiet, methodical, silent aspect of it — not only does that reflect her personality so well, but also talks to the history of making things in silence, which was the way of survival of Black culture. Part of the hidden power of her work resides in that modesty of gesture that, by consistency and commitment, becomes heroic.”

“To me, her work is actually most powerful for what it doesn’t say,” Ewing says. “Not having a title, the tension in the nails when you see that body elongate and stand over you. I think the beautiful complexity of her work isn’t just the work — it’s the spaces she

makes for you to be in her work, for you to respond to her work with however you feel.”

To commemorate the show and his admiration for Henry, Ewing had one of the works from the exhibition tattooed onto his forearm. The piece, an untitled work from 2005, is a mask-like visage made up of various layers of leather and cotton, stitched together with that same quality of line that at once tidies and upsets. A semicircle is cut out above one of the eyes, causing a half-moon-shaped flap to fall open just below it. It is an eye that’s been opened, but it is also the remnant of the space where a closed eye once was. Henry is a virtuoso of layered isolation.

Ewing chose Elisheba Israel Mrozik at One Drop Ink as his tattoo artist, knowing that she was also a fan of Henry’s work. She told him she was honored to tattoo it onto his skin. Henry’s influence radiates throughout the community.

“There’s a beautiful duality about her that’s both authentically Professor Henry and authentically Alicia,” Ewing says. “And some people meet one or the other, but both of them will lead you back to who she is.”

HENRY’S ART is constantly evolving, but there are themes and motifs that she continues to experiment with. Across from the piece that inspired Ewing’s tattoo is an untitled work on paper from almost a decade earlier. At roughly 89 by 60 inches, it is among the largest works in the exhibition, and it’s a favorite of Campos-Pons.

“It is almost like you could see the skin on the many strata,” she says of the paper piece, “as if you could peel the skin and see the many layers of someone’s identity. It’s an interesting portrait of a collective feeling. I think that she’s cleverly managed to capture that — that is not an easy quality.

There is a lot of power in being able to create that kind of experience in an image.”

The familiar layers of Henry’s work are somehow still unexpected and fresh in this early work. Each surface clings loosely to the one behind it, like a child’s paper doll before it’s been accordioned out. As the surfaces pile up, the shapes become more simplified, until the final maroon piece is just a vaguely face-shaped ring where there was once a full head. To look at each layer on its own might give you a more complete understanding of the surface, but it’s only after they’ve been stacked together that you can see the full face. The ring is a symbol, a halo, a shield.

“She is an icon,” Campos-Pons says of Henry. “One day her work will be regarded as some of the most important that was produced in this city.”

“When I’m standing there in front of one of her expressive, convoluted figures, I feel like I’m standing in front of somebody. It becomes more than a work of art. And that is a gift — I don’t know how you get that, as an artist.” —Mark Scala

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL EWING

DETAIL OF “UNTITLED”

SUMMER NIGHT MARKET

SATURDAY, JULY 8

ONE C1TY / 4PM TO 9PM FREE

Shop from 50+ curated artisan vendors showing off their homemade goods including home decor, clothing, pet products, jewelry, visual art and so much more!

Take in some live music and indulge in food truck fare while enjoying a beautiful summer night of shopping!

Crafty Bastards is FREE to attend and welcomes kids, pets, friends and families of all ages. IN

NATIONAL YOUTH ORCHESTRA OF THE USA WITH HILARY HAHN

July 20*

CYPRESS HILL PERFORMS

“BLACK SUNDAY"

September 5 at Ascend Amphitheater

STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW LIVE September 6*

WANT SYMPHONIC: RUFUS WAINWRIGHT with the Nashville Symphony, An Americanafest Special Event September 19

RUBEN STUDDARD & CLAY AIKEN: TWENTY YEARS | ONE NIGHT October 8*

THE BLACK VIOLIN EXPERIENCE

October 10

BILLY OCEAN

October 12*

*Presented

Presented without the Nashville Symphony.

Presented without the Nashville Symphony.

CRITICS’ PICKS

WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF THINGS TO DO

THURSDAY / 7.6

MUSIC

FAN ME WITH A BRICK

[THIS

CHAOS, THAT FEELING] LIZA ANNE’S ABBA DISCO FOR ABORTION CARE

There’s a simple pitch for this ABBAthemed dance party: “Dress hot, shake ass, fund abortion access!” Indie rocker Liza Anne — who recently moved to New York after releasing three albums as a Nashville resident — held their first disco party at Third Man in August at The Blue Room and has raised funds for local organizations like Abortion Care TN while holding parties in places like Nashville, L.A. and Chicago. You can expect lots of ass-shaking to hits like “Dancing Queen” or “Mamma Mia,” but we’d also love to hear Liza Anne’s own new track “Cheerleader,” which dropped in May and has a music video featuring several faces that Music City arts folks will recognize. Local photographerabout-town Dana Kalachnik will also provide a photobooth for those looking to commemorate the night. Disco attire is encouraged; Liza Anne was well known as a reseller of vintage clothes at places like Anaconda Vintage in East Nashville, so don’t be afraid to get funky with your outfits.

VILLENA

7:30 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S.

[CLEVER GIRL]

JURASSIC PARK IN CONCERT

The summer movie season has already started with a bang, serving up everything from comic book superheroes to nostalgia-laden sequels with star power to spare. But if you’d like to experience a true summer blockbuster in a whole new way, I’d suggest heading over to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center this weekend for Jurassic Park in Concert. Thirty years after its release, the original Jurassic still holds up quite well, with interesting characters, compelling social commentary and plenty of movie magic. But it’s John Williams’ sweeping score that really sets this megahit apart, capturing iconic moments that are full of both wonder and terror. Beginning Thursday, you can revisit it all as Jurassic Park is projected in HD, with the Nashville Symphony’s principal pops conductor Enrico LopezYañez leading the full symphony orchestra in performing Williams’ score live. July 6-7 at the Schermerhorn, 1 Symphony Place

AMY STUMPFL

COMEDY

[IN ON IT]

YOU HAD TO BE THERE

Inside jokes are almost never as funny as people think they are — at least, not to those who aren’t a part of the friend group who has them. They’re kind of a weird concept to me — they exclude anyone who wasn’t there and are seemingly antithetical to the goal of stand-up comedy, where everyone is supposed to be in on it. That’s why Third Coast Comedy’s show based

entirely around inside jokes, You Had to Be There, caught my attention. How could this setup possibly work in front of a crowd? Well, it’s because you, an audience member, get to be one of the friends who are in on the joke. The show will bring various comics onstage to share anecdotes from their lives before performing comedy scenes based on said stories. They say life often imitates art, but in this show it’ll be the opposite. The cast will include Carlton Fripp, Emily Smith, Grant Collins, Madeline Farr, Libby Genz, Jack Stell and others. So come on down, start excluding everyone else you know and join the world of inside jokes.

7 p.m. at Third Coast Comedy Club, 1310 Clinton St.

BRADEN SIMMONS

FRIDAY / 7.7

THEATER

[A WORTHY WORLD PREMIERE] FAN ME WITH A BRICK

Kenley Smith has dedicated much of his career to working with new plays and playwrights, most recently as the co-founder and co-director of Tennessee Playwrights Studio. This weekend, Smith is back with a new play of his own as TPS presents the world premiere of Fan Me With a Brick. Based on actual events (with original research by V. Yalewa Sparrowhawk Ferguson), this intriguing story follows a woman named Victoria as

she sets out to learn more about her family’s complicated history — uncovering “a scandalous affair in segregated Virginia, a stolen child, a lost parent, a horrific accident” and more. It’s just the sort of meaty material we’ve come to expect from Smith, whose plays include Devil Sedan, Empires of Eternal Void and Maidens Shawn Whitsell is on board to direct Fan Me With a Brick, and the cast includes Tanya Anderson, Briana C. Finley, Dee Hammonds, Leslie Hammonds, Tony Insignares, Myah Jackson, Ethan H. Jones, Josh Kiev, JR Knowles, Angela Martin, Kysa Siovan and Kinston Smith. July 7-22 at the Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Ave.

AMY STUMPFL

[OUR MOMENT]

MUSIC

MIDNIGHT MEMORIES: ONE DIRECTION NIGHT

When One Direction went on “hiatus” in 2015, the only thing I really knew to be true about my future was that I would be in attendance at the reunion tour. While I wonder if that day will ever come, these One Direction DJ nights feel pretty good. In a previous iteration, the playlist was satisfying: mixing 1D’s extensive catalog and some solo-act tunes. The one thing they didn’t have the guts to play was anything from Liam. Understood. Being a Directioner is not just about the object of fandom, it’s about the fangirl world view — that we can love someone (or a band)

so deeply and purely that we make them the biggest band in the world. In fact, with sheer determination and the internet, we can make the world better. Since the band parted ways, I’ve often wondered if I could feel excited about anything the way I was about One Direction. Crowding a dance floor with other like-minded individuals at Midnight Memories comes close. 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N.

HANNAH HERNER

SATURDAY / 7.8

MUSIC [STRANGE BEAUTY]

MOSHTITS: METAL BURLESK FESTIVAL

The Tennessee General Assembly’s so-called anti-drag ban has met stiff resistance from members of the LGBTQ community and its allies (not to mention, ironically enough, a Trump-appointed federal judge, who ruled to halt the legislation’s enforcement last month). The draconian infringement of the First Amendment is on hold for now, but no matter the circumstance, the show must go on. Like a scene out of a grindhouse film, “horror burlesque troupe” Bump in the Night Ghoulesque presents a peep show turned creep show that would make any fan of cinema stars Elvira or Frank-N-Furter proud. The Nashville/Atlanta-based troupe of randy rebels will descend upon The

JULY 7-22

Darkhorse Theater

Cobra for a night of defiant debauchery and sideshow spectacles, all accompanied by a live metal soundtrack from Kay Azna & The Weapons of Mass Elation. Performers include Risky Sour, Nikki Nukem, Ava Cado (you’ll never look at the fruit the same again), Teddy Bow and sword swallower La Reine the Thrill, among many others. 8 p.m. at The Cobra, 2511 Gallatin Pike

JASON VERSTEGEN

SUNDAY / 7.9

MUSIC [FUTURE GAMES] L.S. DUNES

I’ve always thought the alternative rock band My Chemical Romance did a nice job of combining emo, prog and what I guess you’d call rock ’n’ roll on tunes like 2006’s “Teenagers,” which still sounds good today. Meanwhile, post-hardcore prog group Circa Survive updated the sound of King Crimson circa 1974’s Red on their 2005 debut album Juturna. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Circa Survive

FILM [KEEP YOUR ’LECTRIC EYE] ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS

In July 1973, onstage at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, David Bowie surprised the audience by declaring this would be his final show for his alter ego Ziggy Stardust and Ziggy’s backing band the Spiders From Mars, led by renowned British session musician Mick Ronson. The group had been touring for more than a year following the release of Bowie’s glam-rock masterpiece The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, and it was time to retire the alien rock star. The concert was recorded in its entirety, but it took years to be released to the public. It finally received a theatrical premiere at the 1979 Edinburgh Film Festival before getting a wide release in 1983, but each of those versions omitted legendary guitarist Jeff Beck’s three-song appearance toward the end of the show. Now, in honor of the concert’s 50th anniversary, a remastered 4K version of the concert documentary, complete with Beck’s cameo appearance, is being released in theaters nationwide.

Peabodys over its 10 seasons, and while that is in large part due to the show’s crack writing and research team, creator, host and executive producer Oliver deserves more than a little bit of credit. The 46-year-old Brit served as a Daily Show correspondent and occasional substitute host, and while he didn’t take over the Comedy Central program himself, Last Week Tonight is truly the spiritual successor to Jon Stewart’s version of that show — with all due respect to Trevor Noah and the other hosts who’ve manned the desk at The Daily Show, none has offered the incisive, progressive voice Oliver has in spades. Oliver also has a couple

decades’ worth of experience in stand-up comedy, and he’s currently on the road with his John Oliver Live tour, which lands Monday at the Grand Ole Opry House. Be there to find out who he’ll turn his incisive eye on next. 7:30 p.m. at the Grand Ole Opry House D. PATRICK RODGERS

FOOD & DRINK

[YOU’RE MY CHEESEBURGER, MY YUMMY CHEESEBURGER]

NASHVILLE SCENE BURGER WEEK

After a fun-filled June in which I spent arguably too much on early summer activities and eats, I was relieved to realize I can pick up dinners for $7

singer Anthony Green got together with My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero to form L.S. Dunes, which released its debut album Past Lives in 2022. Like the best work of Green and Iero’s previous bands (L.S. Dunes also features guitar work by Coheed and Cambria member Travis Stever), Past Lives sports mutated postpunk rhythms, existentially challenged lyrics and moments of proggy virtuosity. The album works as a companion piece to Circa Survive’s 2022 Two Dreams, which delves into electronica and peaks with the superb track “Discount on Psychic Readings.” As is usual in emo, the relentless tempo and metrical shifts become a special kind of cliché over the course of Past Lives, but the lyrics to something titled “It Takes Time” sound heartfelt and, for all I know, autobiographical: “We’ll cancel everything / And play our records in reverse / To collect, collect, collect my anchor.” Past Lives sums up post-pandemic anxiety without making me nervous, and that’s cool. 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. EDD HURT

You have several chances to see it in the Nashville area — at the Belcourt as well as a couple of Regal and AMC locations — so round up your space spiders and hop in the nearest hovercraft to witness a rare theatrical experience. July 9 at Regal Opry Mills, July 9-10 at AMC Thoroughbred 20, July 10 at the Belcourt LOGAN BUTTS

MONDAY / 7.10

COMEDY [ZAZU HIMSELF] JOHN OLIVER LIVE

For nearly a decade and just shy of 300 episodes, HBO’s Last Week Tonight

With John Oliver — ostensibly a comedy show — has done some genuinely solid reporting on a broad array of issues. From political corruption and the opioid epidemic to media literacy, corporate monopolies and net neutrality, the satirical half-hour news broadcast has delved into some very serious issues with skill, aplomb and delightfully juvenile ribaldry. The show has earned two dozen Primetime Emmys and a couple of

L.S. DUNES

JOHN OLIVER LIVE

PHOTO: FAT BOTTOM BREWERY

NASHVILLE SCENE BURGER WEEK

Historic Moments Live Here.

The History and Culture Center of Williamson County is perfect for bridal brunches, rehearsal dinners, and weddings in an intimate, historic setting.

bit.ly/hcc-weddings

williamsonhistorycenter.org

from dozens of local spots this week thanks to the Scene’s Burger Week. The annual celebration isn’t just a way to score a cheap meal, though: It’s a competition in which local restaurants create one-of-akind burgers to try to become Music City’s best burger slingers and grillmasters. Participating restaurants include both burger behemoths going all out for the competition (like The Pharmacy, Grillshack Fries & Burgers, Burger Republic and Burger and Co., which won last year’s Best Overall award with the B.O.T. Burger) and spots that don’t typically specialize in burgers trying something new (what will a place like The Horn, which specializes in Somalian sambusas and chai, cook up?). Catch the kickoff party Monday, July 10, at Scoreboard Bar & Grill, and then use the app to plot your course from burger to burger and pick up points to win free stuff, including restaurant gift cards and wonderful Scene merch. Remember to tip well and order extras to go with your burger — these places are giving you a pretty great deal, so use the money you’re saving to treat your friends in the hospitality industry right! — then vote for your favorites online. July 10-16 around Nashville

COLE VILLENA

TUESDAY / 7.11

[DO TELL ME

BOOKS

THAT YOU PRE-ORDERED

LINDSAY LYNCH

THIS BOOK]

Being a debut author is fun and terrifying. It might be even more so if you work at one of Nashville’s independent bookstores like Lindsay Lynch does. As the book buyer at Parnassus Books, Lynch knows all too well which books Nashvillians buy and which ones they don’t. Luckily for Lynch, I have looked into my crystal book-

Do Tell in this week’s books section.) In celebration of her debut novel, Lynch will be in conversation with Ann Patchett. The event is full — a good sign for how well the book might sell — but you can check the waitlist to join at parnassusbooks.net/event.

6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike KIM BALDWIN

[SHOUT]

MUSIC

TEARS FOR FEARS

Hey Gen Z: You know the “Head Over Heels” song from TikTok? That’s Tears for Fears. And there are a lot more bangers where that came from. Start with “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” then move on to “Sowing the Seeds of Love” and “Shout.” Older fans will remember these songs from heavy MTV rotation, but there’s lots for new fans to discover, including from the band’s latest album, The Tipping Point. British New Wavers Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith are deep thinkers (even a bit existential in “Mad World,” perhaps one of the world’s most popular songs to cover), and gained huge popularity in the ’80s despite not following a traditional pop formula. Tears for Fears songs are great for looking out the window on a drive, popping onto a record player on a rainy day, or occasionally … well, shouting. The hair has grayed for these ’80s mainstays who have been playing together since they were teens, but the talent has stayed. Golden State indie rockers Cold War Kids will open. 7:30 p.m. at FirstBank Amphitheater at 4525 Graystone Quarry Lane, Franklin HANNAH HERNER

[BACK

MUSIC

Trace today, I hear a band that specializes in music that goes from Rolling Stones riffs to evocations of Parsons himself. The album’s high point, “Drown,” is rock-country as opposed to country-rock. Elsewhere on Trace, lyrics that address “the traveling hand of time” seem rather indefinite to this fan of straight country narrative. Son Volt marks the 28th anniversary of Trace’s release Tuesday by playing the album in full. The band also released in June a fulllength of Doug Sahm songs, Day of the Doug, that they’ll draw from. Americana may have started out as the province of quasi-bar bands in thrall to The Flying Burrito Brothers, but it ended up as an offshoot of classic rock that makes room for experimentation and forays into the kind of pop that bar bands never achieve. English singer-songwriter Peter Bruntnell opens. 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. EDD HURT

MUSIC

[THE FRAGMENTS THAT STICK WITH YOU] THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

North Carolina rock heroes The Mountain Goats and their singersongwriter-ringleader John Darnielle are all about exploring stories in depth. It’s apparent even in their extracurricular activities — for a couple recent examples, see the nuances of Darnielle’s involvement in the Rian Johnson-directed, Natasha Lyonne-starring Poker Face and his work on a card set for Magic: The Gathering. Produced by Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, the band’s 2022 LP Bleed Out continues their

ongoing work of delving deep into stories you might think you know. With poppy grace and punky snarl, Darnielle & Co. dive into plot points and devices common to late-20th-century action thrillers — films that were often more or less disposable, but still inform contemporary culture with their explorations of rage, greed and other intense emotions. The band holds them up to the light for closer examination like shards of busted VHS cassettes, and you’ll have your chance to join their investigation in person on Tuesday. The show was previously scheduled for April; a bout of COVID forced the postponement and a slight lineup change. J Mascis was to open the original date, but Dinosaur Jr. is on the road with Clutch this summer (you can see that show at the Ryman on July 31), so Eric D. Johnson of thoughtful indie-folk-rockers Fruit Bats will open this date with a solo set instead.

7:30 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. STEPHEN TRAGESER

WEDNESDAY / 7.12

[DRAW THE LINE]

MUSIC

ANTHONY DA COSTA TRIO

Although he’s been dubbed an Americana artist, I don’t hear any deep connection to so-called roots music in the work of New York-raised and Nashvilleresiding singer-songwriter Anthony da Costa. Da Costa sports a slick guitar style that’s made him an in-demand side musician for the likes of Sarah Jarosz, and he sings in a pleasantly wimpy voice that suggests that the main influences on his vocal style are Dewey Bunnell, who wrote and sang “A Horse With No Name” and other hits for America, and Don McLean, whom you might know from his 1971 rockhistory tune “American Pie.” Da Costa’s 2022 full-length I Should Call My Mother is a collection of relationship songs that contains hints of power pop without being very powerful — which I’m not knocking. When da Costa sounds like, say, Fountains of Wayne on tracks like “Drawing a Line,” his finely detailed accounts of his career and life problems — and his search for the perfect relationship — come across as energized versions of ’70s and ’80s pop. I

sale ball and predict great things for her debut novel, Do Tell, out on July 11. Do Tell is a perfect read for any season, but especially for this season of lingering afternoons and reading on the beach. Set in the golden age of Hollywood, Do Tell is the story of a gossip columnist who finds herself embroiled in the trial of a decade. (Read more about

TO THE BARROOMS]

SON VOLT PLAYS TRACE AND THE SONGS OF DOUG SAHM

When writing about alt-country in 1997, rock journalist Robert Christgau declared that the genre “has always been bar music and always will be.” Alt-country began moving decisively toward modern Americana in 1995, when albums by The Bottle Rockets, The Jayhawks, Old 97’s, Wilco and Son Volt did indeed modify timeless bar-band, country-rock dynamics in the service of songs that were, you know, pretty good. I think Christgau was halfright. Also in 1995, former Gram Parsons associate Emmylou Harris released Wrecking Ball, on which producer Daniel Lanois gave Harris a sheen of modernity I don’t find convincing, even though this strategy seems as predictive of modern Americana as anything by Son Volt.

Listening to Son Volt’s 1995 debut album

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

TEARS FOR FEARS

PHOTO: SPENCE KELLY

LINDSAY LYNCH PHOTO: HEIDI ROSS

PEERING

Saturday, July 8

SONGWRITER SESSION

Ryan Beaver

NOON · FORD THEATER

Saturday, July 8

NASHVILLE CATS

David Hood

2:30 pm · FORD THEATER

Sunday, July 9

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Dave Cohen

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, July 15

SONGWRITER SESSION

Nathan Chapman

NOON · FORD THEATER

Saturday, July 15

WRITERS’ ROUND

The Songs of Eric Church

Featuring Luke Laird and Jeremy Spillman

2:30 pm · FORD THEATER

WITNESS HISTORY

Museum Membership

Receive

Sunday, July 16

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Jen Gunderman

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, July 22

HATCH SHOW PRINT

Block Party

10:00 am, 1:00 pm, and 3:30 pm

HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP LIMITED AVAILABILITY

Saturday, July 22

SONGWRITER SESSION

Tigirlily Gold

NOON · FORD THEATER

Saturday, July 22

POETS AND PROPHETS

Salute

JD Souther

2:30

· FORD THEATER SOLD OUT

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CRITICS’ PICKS

Should Call My Mother still strikes me as a trifle wimpy, but da Costa knows how to be funny and weird without losing the built-in accessibility his songs depend on. There is some Americana in his catalog — check out his 2012 album Secret Handshake, which has its moments. He plays a residency at Dee’s on Wednesdays in July, and you can expect to see some cool guest stars joining him onstage. 8:30 p.m. at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, 102 E. Palestine Ave., Madison EDD

HURT

[90 MINUTES OF JUST PLAIN WRONG]

FILM

QUEER QLASSICS: DESPERATE LIVING

John Waters must’ve been in go-bigor-go-home mode when he came up with the 1977 final chapter in his careerlaunching Trash Trilogy, Desperate Living Just when midnight movie mavens didn’t think he could top the dogshit-eating dementedness of Pink Flamingos and the criminal chaos of Female Trouble, ol’ boy took things to a whole ’nutha level with this one. What starts off as a girls-on-the-run movie — as a disturbed housewife (Waters regular Mink Stole) and her heavyset nurse hit the road after accidentally offing the housewife’s husband — soon turns into a story of revolt and liberation when said female fugitives hit a dirty-ass shantytown run by a tyrannical queen (Flamingos egg lady Edith Massey). Basically 90 minutes of just plain wrong, Waters throws in anything and everything that could shock, offend or just gross people the hell out. We’re talking

rambling nudists, cops who wear lingerie, killer lesbians, cannibalism, castration, a baby in a fridge, etc. It’s all loud and lewd and bizarre and vulgar — and you can see it this week as part of the Belcourt’s ongoing Queer Qlassics series in glorious 35 mm! 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave.

CRAIG D. LINDSEY

MUSIC [STAY GOLD]

FIRST AID KIT

The name is apt, because there is something very soothing about folk outfit First Aid Kit. Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg create beautiful harmonies with observational lyrics in their five studio albums. The band was popular on Myspace in the late Aughts, and a cover version of “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” by Fleet Foxes in 2008 helped the duo break through. When they performed in Nashville in 2010, Jack White took interest, and they ended up releasing some music from the duo through Third Man Records. As of late, they haven’t toured America much, so catching them at the Ryman is a treat. Based solely on “Out of My Head” — a standout single from their latest album, Palomino — their recent work lives up to the precedent set by early standouts including “Emmylou” and “My Silver Lining.” The sisters often explore coming of age in their songs new and old, showing (in the most comforting way) that growing pains are never really over. 7:30 at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N.

HANNAH HERNER

JUSTIN

REYNOLDS at PARNASSUS Disunion Among Ourselves

4:00PM

WEDNESDAY, JULY 19

KIDLIT SUMMER CELEBRATION with CHRISTINA SOONTORNVAT, JAMIE SUMNER, & KRISTIN O’DONNELL TUBB at PARNASSUS Into the Shadow Mist (Legends of Lotus Island #2)

SATURDAY, JULY 22

2:00PM

SHANNON STOCKER at PARNASSUS

Warrior: A Patient’s Courageous Quest

4:00PM

WEDNESDAY, JULY 26

WALDO CELEBRATION at PARNASSUS

Join the hunt for Waldo! parnassusbooks.net/event

6:30PM

RICHARD RUSSO at PARNASSUS Somebody’s Fool

KIRSTIN CHEN

FRIDAY, JULY 28

Live Piano

THU 7.6 DRUNKEN DISNEY Singalong 7-9

Piano karaoke 9-12 w/Benan

FRI 7.7 PIANO KARAOKE 6-9 w/Bella Dorian Piano karaoke 9-1 w/Caleb Thomas

SAT 7.8 KATIE PEDERSON 7-9

karaoke 9-1

TUESDAY, AUGUST 1

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

@parnassusbooks

@parnassusbooks1 Parnassus Books 3245 Gallatin Pike

Nashville TN 37216 sidgolds.com/nashville

Sink

Flip to view Burger Week

ParTiciPatiNg ResTaurAnts

Sink your teeth into delicious burgers from participating restaurants! Make sure to ask your server for the “Scene Burger Week special” to get the $7 price.

Remember - not all the specials will come with a side, check our website or app for hours and details and BE NICE TO THE STAFF. They are working their buns off for you.

1

1 Kitchen

Downtown

1 Burger

Smash burger patties, Dijonnaise, lettuce, local tomato, habagardil pickle and spiced pimento on a brioche bun.

2 615 Deli

Hillsboro Village

The 615 Burger

Two house-blend beef patties with lettuce, tomato, pickled onions, pickles and house sauce on a brioche bun.

3 Almost Friday Sporting Club

Downtown

Almost Friday Super Smash Burger

Two 3oz. smash patties, American cheese, dill pickles, house special sauce and caramelized onions on a toasted brioche bun.

4

Bad Axe Throwing Nashville

Pie Town

Breaking Paint

All beef patty served on a potato bun and topped with caramelized onions, tender smoked brisket, Swiss cheese, horseradish aioli and a fried egg.

5 Bella Vista Coffee Shop

Smyrna

Morning Glory Burger

A delicious and satisfying breakfast burger that combines the classic American breakfast with bold Argentinian flavorsjuicy chorizo-beef blend patty, buttered scrambled eggs, mild cheddar, crispy maple hashbrown, tangy bacon jam and chimichurri aioli on a soft brioche bun.

6 Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beer

Downtown

The Tennessee Burger

Prime burger with Jack Daniel’s red pepper jam, diced pickles, Dirty’s sweet potato chips, white BBQ sauce and chopped parsley.

7

Brown’s Diner

Hillsboro Village

Brown’s Turkey Burger

Fresh ground turkey with a house made garlic-pepper onion mix and a lot of old Nashville love. Topped with Pepper Jack cheese, hot mustard, lettuce, tomato and pickled red onion, served on a fresh made Charpier’s bun.

8 Burger & Company

East Nashville

Luigi Burger

Beef patty with Havarti, caramelized mushroom and onions, black garlic aioli, strawberry habanero jam and arugula.

9 Burger Republic

Gulch & Lenox Village

The Big O

100% Angus beef patty infused with onion soup spices and topped with provolone cheese, fried onion straws, grilled onions and roasted onion aioli, served on a fresh Charpier bun.

10 Cledis Burgers

South Nashville

Billy Berry Smash

Grilled onion smash burger with bacon, creamy goat cheese and strawberry jalapeño jam served on a toasted potato roll.

11 Double Dogs

Hillsboro Village & Sylvan Park

Bo Burger

A single Black Angus beef patty topped with Double Dogs’ special sauce, grilled onions, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles and melted American cheese.

12 Drake’s Franklin

All “B” It Burger

A fresh, never frozen burger with creamy brie, smoked bacon, citrus-splashed arugula and blueberry-bourbon BBQ sauce on a warm butter-toasted bun.

13 Electric Jane

Midtown

Supper Club Burger

Double patty with onion, pickle and Electric Jane’s signature Scoppa Sauce.

14 Fat Bottom Brewing

The Nations

The Nations Burger

Two smashed patties topped with Muenster cheese, caramelized onions, pickle and mustard on a toasted potato bun.

15 Flat Tire Diner

Old Hickory

Nacho Burger

6oz. Angus beef patty with Pepper Jack cheese, tortilla chips, diner made queso and pico de gallo on a fresh baked jalapeño cheddar bun.

16 Game Terminal

South Nashville

GT Beer Cheese Burger

Smashed patty with onion grilled to perfection, doused with beer cheese, jalapeños and bacon. Beer cheese is made with Music City Beer Co.’s NSC Pitch.

17 Germantown Café

Germantown

GTC Burger

Two juicy chuck & brisket patties with sharp cheddar, shredded romaine, house-made sweet n spicy pickles and Dijonnaise atop a brioche bun with house-cut French fries.

18 Germantown Pub

Germantown

GTP Slaucy Burger

House-made coleslaw tossed in Germantown Pub’s secret sweet, tangy, spicy sauce on an 8oz hand-patted burger topped with pickles on a toasted brioche bun.

19 Good Times Full Service Bar

Wedgewood-Houston

Good Times Smash Burger

Two smashed patties with grilled onions, bread and butter pickles, ketchup and their special Good Times sauce.

20 Graze Nashville

East Nashville

Fried Pickle Smash Burger

Two house-made veggie burgers grilled, smashed and topped with melted cheese, grilled onions, fried pickles and Thousand Island dressing.

21 Grillshack Fries & Burgers

Germantown

The Royale with Cheese

A slightly elevated take on a well-known standard. 141 grams of grass-fed Bear Creek beef with two slices of American cheese, chopped white onion, dill pickle slices and their secret-recipe remoulade on a grilled bakery roll.

22 HERO

Sylvan Park

HERO Burger

All beef patty with American cheese, homemade pickles, onions and crack sauce served on a homemade brioche bun.

23 HiFi Clyde’s

Downtown

The Spicy Cowboy

Certified Angus Beef patty topped with white cheddar, chipotle cream, pickled jalapeños, fried onions and bourbon BBQ sauce.

24 The Horn

South Nashville

Cheeseburger Sambusa

The Horn’s take on a classic cheeseburger in an authentic sambusa.

25 Hoss’s Loaded Burgers

Nolensville

The Reuben

Burger stuffed with Swiss cheese, topped with Russian sauce, sauerkraut and fried pastrami on a rye bun.

26 Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint

Edgehill & Germantown

Crab Rangoon Burger

100% wagyu beef burger topped with house-made crab Rangoon dip, fried wonton strips, and a sticky sweet chili sauce.

27 JWB Grill

Downtown

Nash Burger

4oz. double patty with angry pickles, pimento cheese, onion straws, Paradise Sauce and Gifford’s bacon.

28 Makeshift

East Nashville

S. 8th Smashburger

Two Short Rib Wagyu blend smashed burger patties topped with two slices of American cheese and finished with pickles and their house burger sauce.

29 MOOYAH Burgers, Fries and Shakes

Brentwood & Franklin

MDC

MOOYAH’s Double Cheeseburger (MDC) with Angus certified beef, American cheese, lettuce, tomato and MOOYAH sauce.

30 Nashville Grange

Downtown

Spicy Lamb Pita

Lamb burger topped with feta, tzatziki, mint and parsley salad and Castelvetrano olives, served in a pita pocket.

31 Otto’s Bar x

West Nashville

The Secret Bodega

El Poncho Smash Burger

Smoosh patty, grilled onions, melty chihuahua cheese blanket, topped with bright Mexipoix and slathered with roasty Rancho sauce.

32 Peachtree Grill

Berry Hill

Smashville Burger

6 oz. spicy burger smashed with bacon and blue cheese, topped with red onions, lettuce, tomato and garlic parmesan sauce.

33 The Pharmacy

East Nashville

Spinach Artichoke Cheeseburger

A burger topped with spinach artichoke schmear, Swiss cheese and a garlic aioli.

34 Phat Bites

Donelson

Visit sceneburgerweek.com for more info.

35 Proof

Gulch

High PROOF Burger

Burger topped with whisky onion jam, bacon, arugula and Red Dragon cheddar.

36 Punk Wok

Sylvan Park

Seoultown Smashburger

Two smashed beef patties, two slices of American cheese, Iwai Whisky onions, sweet & spicy gochujang mayo, house-made pickles, house-made kimchi and fried egg on Martin’s Famous Potato Roll.

37 Robert’s Western World

Downtown

Beca’s Bologna Burger

1/3 pound all-beef burger topped with lettuce, tomato and their world-famous fried bologna, served on Texas toast with a side of chips. Only available during Burger Week.

38 Ruby Sunshine

Hillsboro Village

Sunny Up Burger

Ruby Sunshine’s delicious Ruby Burger served with Applewood smoked bacon and a sunny side egg on a brioche bun.

39 Scoreboard Bar & Grill

Music Valley

Southwest Burger

Hand-pattied and never frozen 1/2 lb burger with American cheese, bacon and onion rings, topped with BBQ sauce on a potato bun.

40 Slider House

Midtown

The PB&Bs

Two ground beef sliders with garlic aioli, lettuce, fried jalapeños, cheddar cheese, candied bacon and a dollop of peanut butter on a white bun.

41 Smokin’ Oaks Organic Farms

Butcher Shop & Grocery

Melrose

Smokin’ Oaks Smashburger

Two 3oz patties smashed on the grill, topped with organic cheddar, onion, lettuce, tomato and house made burger sauce, all piled on a brioche bun. Sides are available too!

42 Smokin’ Thighs

Sylvan Park & Wedgewood

Flyin Hawaiian

Hand pattied 1/3 lb. ground chicken burger topped with provolone, pineapple, kickin slaw and teriyaki, served on delicious Texas Toast with a side of lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle! It’s the perfect summertime burger, best enjoyed on the patio.

43 Sonny’s Patio Pub

Germantown

Southern Jam Burger

Hand-pattied certified Angus beef with Colby Jack cheese, crispy onion straws, habanero bacon jam, lettuce, tomato and pickle all on a potato roll.

44 Sopapilla’s Franklin

Visit sceneburgerweek.com for more info.

45 SOUL Restaurant

West Nashville

Soul Burger

All burgers come with cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions and Soul Sauce.

46 South Side Kitchen & Pub

Melrose

South Side Smash

1/4lb ground beef smash patty, grilled onions, house comeback sauce, dill pickles, lettuce and American cheese on a potato bun.

47 Spicy Boys

East Nashville

Couillon Crawfish Burger

A “hamburger” patty made with Louisiana crawfish tails, served on a Charpier bun with lettuce, tomato and a Cajun dill special sauce.

48 Stationairy

Downtown

Conductor’s Experience

TN-raised Simpson’s Meats patty, locally fresh-baked brioche, Henosis oyster mushrooms, heirloom tomato, Jarlsberg Swiss and house au poivre.

49 Stay Golden

Sidco Drive

Grandma’s Meatloaf Burger

Better than Grandma’s meatloaf topped with fried pickled red onions and Stay Golden glaze on toasted white bread.

50 STK Steakhouse

Gulch

STK Wagyu Burger BKFT

7 oz. beef patty American cheese, bacon, fried egg, lettuce, tomato, onion and special sauce.

51 Stock & Barrel Gulch

Volly Parton Slider

Beef patty with BBQ sauce, habanero sauce, crispy onions, pimento cheese and bacon.

52 Streetcar Taps

West Nashville

Hot Not Hatched Burger

A juicy burger fit for sauce bosses and smoke lovers alike. Wagyu ground beef and brisket burnt end patty on a house brioche sesame seed bun, Hach’t Sauce, Memphis dry rubbed buttermilk cheddar, Streetcar Sauce, mint Ranch, house dill pickle and pickled red onion, summercrisp lettuce and purple Cherokee tomatoes.

53 Tasty & Delicious Burgers

Downtown & Stewarts Ferry

Smash BBQ Bacon Burger

Homemade burger with crispy bacon, topped with BBQ sauce.

54 Teddy’s Tavern

Downtown

American Burger

Two smashed patties topped with American cheese, lettuce, onion, tomato, pickle, mustard and ketchup, on a toasted potato bun.

55 Wilco Fusion Grill

Franklin

“MonkeyChamp” Burger

Angus beef, lettuce, roasted tomatoes, white cheese, fried sweet plantains, black beans and garlic mayo. Topped with a crusted corn cheese croquette and served on a black sesame seed bun.

kick-off Burger Week with us!

Monday July 10 5:30-7:30PM

Scoreboard Bar & Grill

2408 Music Valley Dr

Vote for your Favorite!

Enjoy drink samples, photo booth fun and most importantly, BURGERS!

Plus! Earn 100 points in Burger Week app just by showing up!

This year, there’s tons of ways to win BIG!

At the end of the week, vote for your favorite burgers by visiting sceneburgerweek.com and clicking VOTE. The winning restaurants will win a super cool plaque to hang on their wall, a chance to compete in the 2024 World Food Championships and bragging rights!

Vote in three categories:

Best Overall Burger

Best Unique Toppings

Best Traditional Burger

Voting runs Monday, July 10-Monday, July 17

|

Download the official Burger Week app

Visit participating locations, order the Burger Week special and check-in to earn points. Click the “Earn More Points” button to find even more ways to gain points! One winner will receive $500 in gift cards to participating restaurants, a Corsair Distillery tour for two, Scene swag and more!

Snap a photo of your Burger Week feasts and post it to social media using #SceneBurgerWeek23 and tagging @nashvillescene. Just by sharing, you’ll be entered to win a $50 gift card.

1 2 3

Vote for your favorite burgers of the week and you’ll be entered to win a $50 gift card!

Cocktails of Burger Week

Participating restaurants will offer Corsair Distillery and Black Sheep Tequila drink specials throughout Burger Week! Plus, we’ve gathered a few delicious cocktail recipes for you to whip up at home and pair with your burgers! Visit sceneburgerweek.com to find specials near you and recipes for at-home!

LEARN TO COOK LIKE A EURO

Two local bakers want to help you reach a state of Rêverie

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

Netflix had a minor hit in 2022 with the show La Pitchoune: Cooking in France, a limited series about a cooking school held in Julia Child’s former cottage in Châteauneuf, France. The school is taught by a pair of young women who introduce visiting students to the pleasures of the local markets and ingredients of Provence. But as it turns out, two Nashville-based bakers were actually way ahead of that game.

Lisa Donovan has been an important part of the Nashville culinary community as a cook and pastry chef at some of the city’s most beloved restaurants, including Margot Cafe & Bar, City House and Husk. She is also a James Beard Award-winning writer known for her essays and the 2020 book Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger, which share her reflections and anecdotes about the stressful and complicated life of working in kitchens. Julie Belcher started out as a home baker and developed her passion into a career, studying in Angers, France, at Boulangerie des Carmes to learn from the masters. She eventually started up her own cooking school with Miette Nashville in Joelton.

Together this talented duo launched Rêverie, a cooking school that invites 12 to 15 travelers to stay in chateaus in France for a week of immersion in the culinary traditions and culture of different regions ranging from the Loire Valley to the French Riviera. Even more important than what they teach in the kitchen, Donovan and Belcher strive to introduce students to how to travel and really understand what makes smaller communities special.

They’re also both rediscovering what it means to experience joy in the kitchen.

“I met Lisa in 2012 when she was starting at Husk, and I was a barista at Crema,” Belcher recalls. “She helped me get my first kitchen job with Tony Galzin at Flyte. Tony was brilliant and very helpful. Then I started working as an assistant at Husk, where I learned I wasn’t built for a restaurant kitchen.”

Donovan had a similar, but much longer, experience in hospitality. “Some people think I’ve had a varied mess of a career,” she says, “but I was just doing what interested me at the time. I was recuperating from restaurant life.”

In addition to lots of personal and professional travel and cooking at private events, Donovan was teaching the occasional cooking class when she took a gig helping out at a painting retreat in France led by Nashville artist Emily Leonard. Donovan immediately thought of her friend. “Julie was still living in France, so I called her and said ‘Man, you should come!’” she re-

members. “I didn’t have a lot of experience with the region. She was my language guide and showed me the markets.”

The group of people coming together to learn about art and food really struck Donovan. “It was like my weird collection of jobs funneled into one thing!” she says. “Everything I was doing was trying to gear my life toward a very communal experience, and cooking took the shape of something beautiful again. It just felt like the reason I started cooking.”

Leonard planned another retreat in New Mexico for later that year, so Donovan invited Belcher to help out again with the cooking component. “That felt way more like a partnership, and Julie was back in Nashville, so we started talking seriously about doing something for ourselves,” explains Donovan.

In 2019, the duo officially created Rêverie and led their first excursion to Toulouse. Renting a chateau for a week, Belcher and Donovan created a home base for their students to learn about the community in a deeply personal way. “That’s one thing that makes us different,” says Belcher. “This isn’t a tour; you only unpack once. We take a deep dive into the 50 miles around us wherever we stay. It’s about the community, not even the region.”

“The main goal is not to just show up somewhere and point at things,” Donovan adds. “We try to share the richness of the experience.”

Market visits are an important component of the weekly itinerary, intended to teach about more than just the local ingredients available. Belcher says, “We help people learn how to travel, how to go out on their own.”

“There are simple rules of engagement in the market,” says Donovan. “It’s a sacred space, their version of church. You should

ask before you take photos, and offer a friendly ‘hello’ before engaging — don’t just order. Americans don’t necessarily know they’re being rude!”

While the schedule for a week at Rêverie is stuffed with opportunities like Donovan’s pastry classes, Belcher teaching about sourdough, guest chef workshops, natural wine tastings and dinners at local restaurants, the operators ensure that everything is optional. “Guests can have as much free time as they want,” says Donovan. “Since we stay in the same chateau for the week, it’s fine if someone wants to be a little cavalier and spend the day by the pool, book a massage or just catch up on a book.”

In addition to the cooking classes, Donovan and Belcher prepare most of the evening meals for the group, and their kitchen is always open. “We welcome anyone to come to just enjoy a glass of wine and sit and watch us in the kitchen,” assures Donovan. “We talk about cooking, and the guests can help out with dinner or just practice their knife skills.”

“This is for all levels of cooks,” says Belcher. “One student made it very clear that she wasn’t a cook and didn’t even own an apron or any knives. After the trip, she texted me a picture of dinner and bragged, ‘I used two pans!’ Other people cook all the time and even teach us things.”

After skipping 2020 due to the pandemic, Rêverie returned with more new itineraries, adding trips to chateaus in Normandy, the Loire Valley and the French Riviera to Toulouse on the list of destinations. New developments in the curriculum include appearances by notable guest chefs who are friends of Donovan and Belcher.

Jérôme Navarre of La Maison Navarre in Gimont taught a class on regional Gers cooking on a recent Toulouse trip, and Melissa

Martin will join the next retreat on the French Riviera from her popular Mosquito Supper Club in New Orleans. Chef Richard Ruan has been Belcher’s baking mentor, and he teaches classes in classic French techniques of the Loire Valley, where he’ll be joined on the next trip by Naomi Pomeroy, whom the James Beard Foundation named Best Chef Northwest in 2014 for her work at Beast in Portland, Ore. Other guest chefs on the docket include baking cookbook authors Erin McDowell and Tera Jensen, Top Chef runner-up and Beard Award winner Nina Compton of New Orleans and — in a major bit of local news — Trevor Moran of Locust, who will help lead a new itinerary in Ireland for 2024.

While travel to and from the destination is not included in the cost of the classes — which are in the $6,000 to 7,000 range for a week — Donovan and Belcher are happy to help with arrangements and handle airport transfers and all transportation in luxury black cars during the week of classes. These retreats usually sell out well in advance, and the capacity of the chateaus is a limiting factor that maintains the intimacy of the experience.

“We’re trying to grow organically,” Belcher says. “We’ve gone from two classes a year to four, and now six or seven. We’ll keep adding a couple a year until we feel we’re good.”

Feeling good is the most important thing to Donovan right now. “We’re both deeply committed to bringing joy back to the kitchen space!” she says. “I could’ve walked away, but by introducing new people to how to integrate travel, food and culture, I have reestablished this space as a place for me.”

It seems like Donovan’s “varied mess of a career” is definitely turning in the right direction for herself and her students.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

RÊVERIE REVERIEFOREVER.COM

PHOTO: VICTORIA QUIRK A RÊVERIE DINNER IN TOULOUSE

AT THE MARKET: THE CREOLE DIVA

Lynn Jones brings authentic Creole staples to Nashville’s farmers markets

BY KELSEY BEYELER

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

Acommon farmers market conundrum is seeing all the beautiful food and buying more than you’re able to cook or consume in a timely manner. Lynn Jones, known by her market moniker The Creole Diva, has a solution via authentic — you guessed it — Creole cooking.

zucchini-onion pie or sweet-potato-orangepecan bread. Jones prioritizes using local produce and offering health-conscious options like saltless spice mixes. She dreams of opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant and is considering “dabbling in veganism.”

I made the Creole Jambalaya Mix and it was fantastic. The directions on the packaging are easy to follow and come together quickly. They’re organized in a way that builds flavor as you cook, and there are optional instructions for “a little more umph.” The packaging says it serves four, but I had lots of leftovers after serving three. Jones doesn’t add salt, so taste as you go and season as needed.

“Everything I make is made with love,” says Jones. “No additives or preservatives. And when I do it, I pray that wherever it goes it will nourish every body that my food hits.”

You can catch The Creole Diva Tuesdays at the East Nashville Farmers Market and Saturdays at the Richland Park Farmers Market. Check out The Creole Diva Facebook page for more information about availability, offerings and updates.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Originally from New Orleans, Jones learned how to cook as so many of us do — from her grandmother. After being displaced by Hurricane Katrina, she ended up in Nashville and eventually met Keith, a then-unhoused Contributor vendor turned friend who offered her a bag of fresh zucchinis. Jones accepted the gift and used it to make him zucchini bread.

“He said, ‘Anybody can bake and cook, but I can taste the love that you put into this,’” says Jones. Keith encouraged her to start selling food at a farmers market, and The Creole Diva brand was born. The two are still friends today — Keith has since found housing and he gives Jones the first crops from his garden each year.

Since Jones started it in 2012, The Creole Diva brand has blossomed into a local staple that’s outlasted many fellow vendors and even some markets. Jones’ food is also available via catering, but at markets, she sells red beans and rice, jambalaya, dirty rice and spice mixes, all of which you can throw in your pantry. You can also find bread pudding, tomato jams, olive salad for muffulettas, and rotating baked goods like

LYNN JONES

ALL THAT GLITTERS

Lindsay Lynch’s debut novel Do Tell is sparkling and sharp

BY ERICA WRIGHT

In Lindsay Lynch’s sparkling, sharp debut novel Do Tell, a hardworking performer balances her friendships with A-list stars against her own ambitions. Edith “Edie” O’Dare came to Hollywood in the 1930s to be a star herself. Those dreams seemed within reach until another ginger-haired actress by the name of Rita Hayworth eclipsed her potential.

With her seven-year contract running out, Edie decides to make a name for herself in another role. That is, she becomes the gossip columnist for a Los Angeles newspaper, securing herself a tiny desk and cold shoulders from her more serious colleagues. Little do they know that Edie is at the center of a serious scandal herself.

In historical fiction, there’s a risk of overly modernizing characters. Lynch avoids that misstep, making Edie a product of her times in this well-researched story. While her brother might frown at her questionable ethics, they make sense in a certain light. In some ways, Do Tell does feel modern, but only because circumstances have not improved enough for women in show business — and outside of it. The trial of Freddy Clarke versus Sophie Melrose feels eerily familiar. As the judge, jury and defense attorney focus on a few glasses of Champagne and chaste kisses with an age-appropriate beau, it’s hard not to think of the frustrating question that often circulates in cases of sexual assault: What was she wearing?

The novel is divided into two acts, with the first half focused on the sexual assault of a teenage actress. Like Edie, Sophie Melrose arrived in Hollywood brimming with excitement. Her fire is quickly extinguished by a notorious bully named Freddy Clarke — well, notorious to his co-workers. Outside of those in the know, Freddy is a marquee idol, making housewives across the United States swoon — and making his studio FWM a whole lot of money. It’s no surprise when the studio closes ranks around him, forcing their best-known talent to do the same.

Lynch is particularly adept at exposing the power of the Hollywood studio system. Actors and actresses were told what to wear and say and whom to marry. Even the most successful stars only crossed executives at the risk of ending their careers. Nonetheless, one intrepid spirit does, and in some ways, this is Charles Landrieu’s story even if it’s being told by somebody else.

Charles is a former stuntman plucked from his behind-the-scenes role and thrust into the spotlight. After losing his Southern accent and rougher edges, he rivals Freddy in popularity. But audiences are quick to turn on him, perhaps because of suspicions about his heritage. The censors like giving him a hard time for actions that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow when performed by a lighter-skinned actor. Charles, Sophie and Edie’s alcoholic brother Seb give Do Tell a dark edge despite the often witty prose. This is a clear-eyed look at the exploitative systems functioning in the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood.

Do Tell in many ways reads like an unapologetic memoir. It blurs genres, comfortable in historical and literary fiction with a matter-of-fact narrator who sounds believably like a successful gossip columnist. In letting herself off the hook for her role in Sophie’s story, Edie turns her razor-sharp tongue on the readers: “A large part of what I do is tell America what they want to hear.” A quick look at the media frenzy surrounding the trial of Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard confirms the bleak wisdom of this statement. It’s tempting to call Do Tell timely, but the chilling truth is that it feels timeless.

Do Tell is Lynch’s debut, but she is no stranger to the literary world. She is a book buyer at Nashville’s Parnassus Books and has written for The Atlantic, Lit Hub and other prominent publications. In an essay on letterpress printing for Chapter 16 (she was an intern for Nashville institution Hatch Show Print), she writes, “I try to pretend I’m not a materialist, but there’s one large exception to my minimalist fantasy: big, beautiful, stinky books.” Did Lynch know when she wrote this ode to books that her own would one day join her crowded shelves?

Lynch shows us that #MeToo issues have long plagued Hollywood, with or without those infamous studio systems. There’s a memorable scene in which Edie washes off her stage makeup, struggling to wipe away every last bit of foundation. She pushes at her skin until she can see the real version again. This could be a metaphor for the entire book. What’s underneath the designer gowns, expensive jewelry and caked-on makeup? It might not be pretty. With its insider-outsider narrator and dazzling cast of characters, Do Tell shares a kinship with The Great Gatsby. Glamour cannot hold tragedy at bay for long.

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

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

DON’T LOOK UP

A morning in my ever-changing Nashville neighborhood

BY ERICA CICCARONE

Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of women and nonbinary writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find in this column, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.

This morning, as I feed the cats and drink my coffee, funk music starts playing in the neighborhood. It’s loud, and I am a known curmudgeon. After a while, I get dressed, draw on some eyebrows and head across the street.

“Hi!” I shout, louder than necessary at the band set up in a garage. “When you gonna be done?”

They all smile apologetically. “One more song! So sorry!”

“It’s OK,” I say. “But you know I’m always gonna investigate.” Feeling stupid, I call out, “You sound good!” and raise my arm in the air like an idiot.

Luxury condos directly across the street from us are finally complete. Our house sits downhill from the road, which always gave us a bit of privacy. Now I find myself delighted that some of the luxurious occupants of these condos will be treated to a view of my messy garden and porch. It’s partly intentional and partly because I have a high tolerance for clutter and wildness. The porch is strewn with empty cardboard boxes, half-used bags of compost and mulch, broken cat carriers and a friend’s steam cleaner, which I haven’t got around to using on my car seats. No one steals anything, perhaps because of my successful cultivation of refuse and 4-foot weeds. But I also keep it messy because I like a neighborhood with some character.

When I moved here a decade ago, most of the houses were old, like ours, which my husband bought in 2008 for next to nothing. The paperwork says it was built in 1920. A neighborhood organization sprang up in the late ’70s to get some decent roofs on people’s homes and demand the city do more about crime. They fought city hall to keep the area zoned residential and to prevent a waste treatment plant from being built where there is now a distillery. Before that — nearly a century ago — a family opened a hosiery mill just down the road. They used it to make socks worn by the first astronauts who went to the moon, and to sponsor German Jews escaping the Third Reich and gruesome, unthinkable death.

Now it’s a members-only country club for the young social elite.

Old Nashville, New Nashville. I’m weary of the conversation. Since it isn’t idiotically hot this morning, I decide to cut through the alley and walk to the neighborhood bakery. In the alley, there’s a small hill that slopes

down to a ground-floor industrial building. Every year, the thistle takes over for a halfblock, the spiky stems and leaves shooting taller than I am, the purple puff-balls of flowers dotting the hill. I remember when I first discovered it, how gorgeous it looked against the rusted industrial buildings, the blue sky. The bakery had not opened yet, and there was little reason to walk anywhere. There were no sidewalks, but not many cars either. No backup beepers, no cement trucks, no condos stretching skyward. Two more are being built just blocks away, but I don’t look up. I focus on the thistle, the patches of red amaranth, the Queen Anne’s lace delicately snaking through the prickly stalks.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” the woman at the bakery counter says. “We have a great new veggie sandwich that is so, so good!”

This is arguably the best bakery in town, and it opened not long after I moved here. My sense of ownership has grown stronger as the lines of patrons have grown longer. The employee’s recognition of my usual veggie-based orders makes me recall the first year of the pandemic, how they renovated the storefront to be a walk-up cafe, complete with a clear plastic shield and a two-doored pickup window. I’d go there most days of the week, and the staff would smile beneath their masks and call me by my name.

When a condo complex starts going up behind us, the thistle will be plowed down, and those luxury residents will have a direct view into my backyard — our clucking hens, the pond we dug by hand, the rotting porch, my vegetable beds. But thistle is stubborn, wild, determined to keep seeding and spreading — the stalks too prickly to be pulled up by hand. Soon goldfinches will dine like kings.

Back at home, I unwrap my sandwich. The music has stopped, but the lawn crew at the house across the street is filling in the quiet left by the band. My phone chimes. “Hey Erica!” the text says. “Sincere apologies for the loudness with the band. Thank you for coming over here and talking to us!” Maybe I’ll straighten up the porch.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

BUT THISTLE IS STUBBORN, WILD, DETERMINED TO KEEP SEEDING AND SPREADING — THE STALKS TOO PRICKLY TO BE PULLED UP BY HAND.

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INTERIOR LOGIC

Eve Maret fuses pop and classical music on New Noise

BY EDD HURT

For the past half-century, the pursuit of electronic pop has given ambitious artists the tools to transcend the limitations of pop itself. Pioneering work by Jon Hassell, Brian Eno and Neu! took the basic elements of rock and pop and stretched them out into something approximating infinite space. Eno’s lyrics on albums like 1974’s Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and 1975’s Another Green World are allusive examinations of the idea that human beings can flourish in artificial spaces, complete with synthesizers and hints of the standard rock-band setup electronic music often dismisses. For Nashville electronic music artist Eve Maret, song form is something to be shaped through repetition, and this idea animates her new album New Noise. Maret’s latest music folds in disco, garage rock and — as the album’s title implies — moments of pure sound that are as evocative as the poetry of her pared-down lyrics.

New Noise is Maret’s fifth full-length since she made her debut with 2016’s Say So. Along the way, she’s given a boost to Nashville’s experimental music community as a founder of Hyasynth House, a collective designed to give women and nonbinary and trans people a space to create electronic music. Maret’s take on electronic pop places her at the forefront of a segment of Nashville music that often gets overlooked in favor of more traditional guitar-bass-drums setups. As Maret tells the Scene via phone from her Nashville home, New Noise combines straight-up pop with time-honored ideas partly derived from classical music.

“I’ve always been influenced by pop music,” Maret says. “I mean, when I was really getting into classical music, I was also 8 years old and getting onto iTunes and seeing what the top 10 songs were, and trying to educate myself. I want my music to be accessible, and I want my music to be universal.”

Like a lot of the pop and rock Maret references on the album, New Noise is about getting rid of limitations and looking ahead to the many possible futures of music. Maret was born in Holland, Mich., on Sept. 3, 1993, and she grew up in St. Louis, where she heard blues, rock, pop and classical music. (“I just immediately fell in love with classical music,” she says, noting that her parents took her to hear symphonic music when she was a child.) After moving to Nashville in 2012, she studied business at Belmont University, and she also took drum lessons from Chester Thompson, who has played with Frank Zappa, Genesis and many others.

Maret graduated from Belmont with a business degree in 2016, and she released Say So and 2018’s No More Running before attending music classes at Mills College in Oak-

land, Calif. She is an ambitious artist whose materials came out of the pop landscape, and the time at Mills gave her insight into the mentality of the old-school avant-garde.

“I remember doing my first performance for this class that was a seminar in live electronic performance,” she says. “One of the

critiques I received from my teacher was that I was hiding behind beats. For some reason, beats were off-limits. It’s almost like [they were] trying to make the least accessible music possible.”

Maret returned to Nashville in early 2020, and she released Stars Aligned that year. That record signaled the rise of a major voice in Nashville music, with the album’s “Freedom” a standout track. Her command of an idiom that manages to be both avantgarde and sleek shines through New Noise, which expresses the form of standard pop even as it dissolves it.

“I arrived at electronic music through this desire to have access to all the sounds on the spectrum — and more,” Maret says. “To be able to have that sort of creative control, and to be able to also discover new things along the way — I found it more challenging with acoustic instruments to make it transform in the way I wanted.”

Like Eno and Hassell at their best, Maret knows how to put across a simple melody

that gradually undergoes a transformation. You can hear this on the New Noise track “For Sappho,” which ends up being just as catchy as the more rock-centric tracks on the album. Similarly, “Anima Rising” features a pattern that becomes a wash of sound.

Elsewhere on New Noise, erstwhile Nashvillians and current Chicago electronic music group Coupler contributes keys to “New Day,” a track Maret says she began working on in 2019. Maret adds clarinet to the title track, while album closer “My Body Speaks” works off a basic rock ’n’ roll chord structure. The concision of the tracks on New Noise speaks to Maret’s pop savvy, but the album is both introspective and pleasingly kinetic — as befits an artist who seeks to infuse expressive pop with a kind of interior logic that’s all their own.

“I’m someone with a lot of ideas, and I wanted to compose on my own. I love people. I’m a social person. But I’m also, you know, pretty introverted.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NEW NOISE OUT THURSDAY, JULY 6, VIA CURIOUS MUSIC; PLAYING JULY 6 AT RED ARROW GALLERY

“The connoisseurship is very high,” he says of Japan. “Deeply impressive to me was the desire to not just have music or play it — but to understand it, to identify it. Even from that distance, the perception of authenticity was important. Over there, the execution of the culture is so seamless. At the rap show, they still had b-boys and bgirls dancing. There were people sketching graffiti in their piecebooks. There were a lot of vinyl DJs. It was really cool to see, especially so far away.”

That’s the kind of energy Ferreira hopes to bring to Soulfolks, which also plays host to live music and community-minded events. Walk through the shop’s front room and you’ll find additional space for hosting artists and listeners, with a custom mural painted by Ferreira’s friends. While Ferreira admits he has to keep the lights on, making money is low on the priority list. Most events at Soulfolks are free and all-ages.

OLD SOUL

R.A.P. Ferreira

establishes a new outpost of Soulfolks Records and Tapes

BY BRITTNEY M c KENNA

If you head up to Madison via Gallatin Pike and hang a right on East Old Hickory Boulevard — just before the intersection with Old Hickory Boulevard proper — you’ll find Soulfolks Records and Tapes. The new shop serves up hard-to-find hip-hop albums and hosts some of Music City’s more innovative music programming. Soulfolks, a welcome and needed addition to Nashville’s assortment of indie record shops, is the brainchild of R.A.P. Ferreira, a widely traveled but locally based MC and producer looking to bring a new community hub to the city’s vibrant rap scene.

Ferreira first put down roots in Nashville in 2019, and this iteration of Soulfolks opened for business in early May. Since then, Ferreira says the shop has already attracted a crew of regular customers, as well as vinyl-loving out-of-towners hoping for their next big score. He attributes the latter phenomenon especially to the shop’s location in Nashville, a more central locale than the store’s original location in Biddeford, Maine.

“I’m already getting a lot more people who are on their way to something else stopping by,” Ferreira tells the Scene, chatting in the shop on a sunny Monday afternoon. “It’s been great in terms of foot traffic. I like taking that left-hand path where people are like, ‘What would bring you there?’”

The Soulfolks retail space is compact but deftly curated, taking up the front room of a small storefront. The several crates lining the front windows boast albums from artists like MF DOOM and J Scienide, with a healthy dose of local music up for grabs too. In the shop’s front case, there are some musical rarities and unusual finds, like a Gakken Toy Record Maker Kit, which is a tabletop lathe cutter from Japan.

Curation is key to the Soulfolks enterprise, so much so that Ferreira even has albums — which he’s reluctant to name — from his own personal collection available for sale. He takes a communal approach to sourcing stock, taking care to buy from other indie shops and touring artists when he’s out on the road in support of his own music career.

“I’ve been a touring artist for 12 years, maybe,” he explains. “From doing this that long, I know so many thousands of artists, so I try to buy all of the vinyl I encounter from other artists on the road. Sliding through other shops, it’s always fun to be a representative of Soulfolks, like, ‘I got this little shop in Nashville.’ Nine-and-a-half times out of 10, that’s the phrase that gets, ‘Oh, well check this out.’ We’re doing something the internet can’t do. The internet can’t fuck with my curation and my ability to travel.”

Ferreira took that philosophy a step further recently when he traveled to Tokyo and Osaka to shop for LPs and tapes — as well as those awesome little lathe cutters. In those cities, he found a passionate community of like-minded music lovers, as well as, as he puts it, “a lot of stuff that, until you saw it, you didn’t know you needed it.” He brought some of that back.

“I want to be able to have a place for music that doesn’t require money,” he explains. “At least on the face of it. And that doesn’t revolve around consuming alcohol or the lights being off. We’re inviting an almost scholastic energy to the record store. I grew up in maybe the last generation that could still go to the park and rap. An idea like that almost seems twee, right? But there’s no place you can just do your music outside where the police wouldn’t accost you at some point. This is my little attempt at that.”

The next happening at Soulfolks is July 7: the first Nashville incarnation of its Beat Invitational, a free community event highlighting talented beatmakers from all over the country, and a few from other nations too. The shop has tapped 57 participants from the pool of applicants for the gathering, during which creators will play their best beats for an eager audience of fans and potential collaborators. There is no contest or winner, just a communal celebration of music and culture.

“It’s an opportunity to bring your music, sell your music, be around music,” he says. “It’s all about giving people their props. For some people, it will be their first time playing beats in public. We want it to be a supportive atmosphere, something that you fall in love with.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

SOULFOLKS RECORDS AND TAPES, 115 EAST OLD HICKORY BLVD.; BEAT INVITATIONAL FRIDAY, JULY 7

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JUMPING FOR JOY

Joy Ride is a horny and humorous look at Asian American identity

BY KEN ARNOLD

In 2018, Crazy Rich Asians opened the floodgates for a new wave of mainstream Asian American cinema. Now that film’s writer, Adele Lim, is back with her directorial debut, Joy Ride, which looks at Asian American identity through the lens of a raunchy road comedy.

Audrey (Ashley Park) was adopted at a young age by a white family and is one of the only Asian Americans in the town of White Hills. She grows up and becomes a lawyer, tasked with closing a deal in Beijing to get a promotion. Joining her on the business trip is her childhood best friend and erotic artist Lolo (Sherry Cola), Lolo’s cousin and K-pop superfan Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and Audrey’s college roommate and Chinese drama actress Kat (Stephanie Hsu). When securing the deal with the company doesn’t go as planned due to Audrey not knowing her birth mother, the four set out to Haiqing to find the agency that handled her adoption many years ago. But on the train to Haiqing, the group has a run-in with a drug dealer that ultimately gets them kicked off the train and their passports stolen. What follows is a cocaine-fueled road-trip-style journey through the Chinese countryside to find Audrey’s birth mother.

Writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao and writer-director Lim

wanted to tell a story with women who look like them and who are messy and thirsty but still have a lot of heart. In this regard they definitely succeed with flying colors. While humor is obviously subjective, this one ought to be a big hit for the fans of raunchy comedies — and it doesn’t skip the tender moments. While it doesn’t have the emotional depth of Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul, which also focuses on a transracial adoptee, there is still enough to pull the heartstrings of most viewers.

Even so, while the lead characters feel authentic and are played well, the setting comes off as inauthentic. What we see feels like a hyper-exaggerated version of how Americans view China, with a slew of stereotypical traits for Asian characters. On the topic of stereotypical depictions, I can’t shake the feeling that Wu’s character, Deadeye, is an asexual stereotype. Both the actor and the character are nonbinary, and while nothing here is as offensive as Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, Deadeye still has similar traits that plague asexual characters in mainstream media, such as

being hyper obsessive about hobbies to the point of being socially atypical. Deadeye is a step in the right direction, but — outside Spongebob Squarepants — ace representation still has a long way to go.

Regardless, Joy Ride is still a must-see for fans of mainstream, raunchy comedies — an altogether fun time at the movie best enjoyed with a few beers and a group of friends.

JOY RIDE R, 95 MINUTES NOW PLAYING WIDE

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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 August 7th 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

Bill Riggs, Deputy Clerk

Date: June 8, 2023

Brian O. Bowhan

Attorney for Plaintiff

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LEGAL NOTICE

Howard C. Gentry, Jr., Criminal Court Clerk

222 Second Avenue North, Washington Square Building, Suite 510, Nash- ville, Tennessee 37201.

The grand jury will meet at 8:00

A.M. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays for three (3) months.

Submission of an affidavit which the applicant knows to be false in material regard shall be punishable as perjury. Any citizen testifying before the grand jury as to any material fact known to that citizen to be false shall be punishable as perjury. For a request for accommodation, please contact 862- 4260. NSC 7/6/23

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be taken on August 14th 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

Bill Riggs, Deputy Clerk Date: June 15 2023 Randi Benton Attorney

It is my privilege as your elected Criminal Court Clerk to notify all citizens of Davidson County, that relative to grand jury proceedings, it is the duty of your grand jurors to investigate any public offense which they know or have reason to believe has been committed and which is triable or indictable in Davidson County. In addition to cases presented to the grand jury by your District Attorney, any citizen may petition the foreperson (foreman) of the grand jury for permission to testify concerning any offense in Davidson County. This is subject to provisions set forth in Tennessee Code Annotated 40-12-105. Pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated 40-12104 and 40-12-105, the application to testify by any citizen must be accompanied by a sworn affidavit stating the facts or summarizing the proof which forms the basis of allegations contained in that application. Your grand jury foreperson is Theeda Murphy Their address is 222 Second Avenue North, Washington Square Building, Suite 510, Nash- ville, Tennessee 37201.

The grand jury will meet at 8:00

A.M. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays for three (3) months.

Submission of an affidavit which the applicant knows to be false in material regard shall be punishable as perjury. Any citizen testifying before the grand jury as to any material fact known to that citizen to be false shall be punishable as perjury. For a request for accommodation, please contact 862- 4260.

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CALL 844-514-0123 for a free in-home consultation. (CAN AAN)

CASH FOR CARS!

We buy all cars! Junk, high-end, totaled – it doesn’t matter! Get free towing and same day cash! NEWER MODELS too!

1-866-535-9689

(CAN AAN)

Call 1-866-566-1815 (CAN AAN)

BEAUTIFY YOUR HOME

with energy

efficient new windows!

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

844-335-2217 (CAN AAN)

NEED NEW FLOORING?

Call Empire Today® to schedule a FREE in-home estimate on Carpeting & Flooring. Call Today! 855-721-3269

(CAN AAN)

SAVE YOUR HOME!

Are you behind paying your MORTGAGE? Denied a Loan Modification? Threatened with FORECLOSURE?

Call the Homeowner’s Relief Line now for Help! 855-721-3269

(CAN AAN)