Nashville Scene 7-7-22

CITY LIMITS: CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTERS TOUT CHOICE — EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO ABORTION

JULY 7–13, 2022 I VOLUME 41 I NUMBER 23 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

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FOOD & DRINK: THESE NASHVILLE BREWERIES ARE MAKING EXCEPTIONAL FOOD PAGE 21

SOME EDUCATORS ARE BEING PRICED OUT OF THEIR OWN COMMUNITIES PAGE 7

Road to Ruin Residents in Grundy County are fighting a new quarry over blasting, damage to local roads and potential harm to water and wildlife. Their fight is not unique.

BY MICHAEL RAY TAYLOR

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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CONTENTS

JULY 7, 2022

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29

Record-Setting Heat Hits the Unhoused Community .................................................6

Quintessential Observer

CITY LIMITS

Trouble accessing cooling centers can exacerbate issues for people without homes

BY LOGAN LANGLOIS

Crisis Pregnancy Centers Tout Choice — Except When It Comes to Abortion ..........6 Abortion-rights activists believe these centers should be regulated — ‘so they can no longer lie and mislead patients’

BOOKS

Brandon Taylor on his Southern roots and the joys of analog

BY CHRIS MOODY AND CHAPTER 16

30

MUSIC

Riding Again ............................................ 30

BY HANNAH HERNER

Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies repay their fans with The Long Goodbye reunion shows

It’s the Principal .........................................7

BY DARYL SANDERS

Some educators are being priced out of their own communities

That High, Lonesome Sound .................. 30

BY KELSEY BEYELER

Italodisco ace Tan gets mainstream country on the dance floor with The Tan Side of Lonesome

Pith in the Wind .........................................7

BY JASON SHAWHAN

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

Rocky Road ............................................. 33

8

Masterful R&B singer Jon B perseveres

COVER STORY Road to Ruin

Residents in Grundy County are fighting a new quarry over blasting, damage to local roads and potential harm to water and wildlife. Their fight is not unique.

BY MICHAEL RAY TAYLOR

15

CRITICS’ PICKS Assassins, Celeste Barber, Midnight Movies: The Big Lebowski, Brandi Carlile, Marcus Finnie Quartet, Rachel Louise Martin, The Blue Room Market, Jazz AM, DeKalb County Fair and more

21

FOOD AND DRINK Too Good to Be Brew

A handful of Nashville breweries are offering exceptional dining fare

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: Local Company Buys Building Near The Great Escape for $2M Mayor Cooper, Nashville and the Republican National Convention Dunkin’ Planned for East Nashville Property Kindling Arts Festival Announces 2022 Programming

ON THE COVER:

Clouse Hill Sand Quarry Photo by Eric England

BY RON WYNN

34 FILM

Thor and Peace ....................................... 34 Taika Waititi’s latest Marvel effort is mostly a sight for Thor eyes

BY JASON SHAWHAN

Shell Hath No Fury .................................. 34 Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is relentlessly adorable

BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

No Such Thing as a Bad Coincidence .... 35 The Belcourt revisits David Lynch’s down-anddirty Los Angeles noir

BY JASON SHAWHAN

37

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

38

MARKETPLACE

BY ASHLEY BRANTLEY, STEVE CAVENDISH & D. PATRICK RODGERS

27 ART

Crawl Space Part 2: July 2022 The Fourth of the July holiday means a Second Saturday for Nashville gallerygoers

BY JOE NOLAN

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FROM BILL FREEMAN CONCEPT DESIGN FOR NEW TITANS STADIUM

A NEW TENNESSEE TITANS STADIUM COULD ATTRACT ‘THE WORLD’S BIGGEST EVENTS’ — INCLUDING THE SUPER BOWL The Tennessee Titans, Mayor John Cooper and other city officials have been working feverishly to finalize plans for the construction of a domed stadium to serve as the team’s new home. If all goes according to plan, the new stadium could be completed as soon as 2026. Though the Titans were originally seeking only to renovate Nissan Stadium, the team’s estimates presented the case that renovations would be problematic and exorbitantly expensive.

Nashville currently owns Nissan Stadium and leases it to the Titans. But as Mayor Cooper noted in his May op-ed for The Tennessean, the current lease with the Titans obligates Nashville to provide a “first class” stadium until 2038. With that obligation in mind, a decision had to be made to either renovate the current stadium or build a new one. When renovation estimates came in at an eyebrow-raising $1.8 billion, it became clear that a new stadium would be more practical over the long-term — especially when new construction costs were estimated at $2.2 billion and would also eliminate costly maintenance needs for a number of years down the road.

Some have concerns about whether we should provide the Titans this “first class” facility, and have asked what would happen if we didn’t. But when Nashville agreed to build a stadium for the NFL franchise, we as much as agreed to maintain it. Yes, “if you build it, they will come,” but if you don’t maintain it, they will go. And it’s captured in writing that a first-class facility must be provided for the team. So doing nothing after working so hard to get the team here is not a viable option. The Titans have pushed Nashville to greater heights. Not only are we a world-renowned Music City — the team gave us our footing as a sports city.

The first and perhaps the most obvious reason to build a new stadium is that if we were to keep the current lease with the Titans, as taxpayers we would be paying tens of millions of dollars per year for stadium maintenance and improvements. Titans CEO Burke Nihill estimated the city’s shortterm obligations there to be $1.2 billion — with more to come in forthcoming years.

In creating a new contract with the Titans, Mayor Cooper says he is getting the city out of “the stadium maintenance business.” The funding for a new stadium would instead come from multiple streams. The state has offered to provide $500 million, the Titans have pledged $700 million, and Metro will

provide $700 million, using revenue bonds to be repaid with future tax proceeds from the project.

Second, the Titans will be responsible for any construction cost overruns.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, none of our property tax dollars will be used to fund this stadium or to maintain it. The mayor has said that the primary funding source for the stadium will be “the Titans and visitors to Nashville and the stadium campus.” The state has passed legislation allowing an increase in hotel-motel tax, which would permit the Metro Council to raise the tax from 6 percent to 7 percent. According to Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp CEO Butch Spyridon, that could provide as much as $20 million in additional revenue.

Perhaps the most exciting reason to build the new domed stadium is because, as Titans CEO Nihill noted, it will “attract the world’s biggest events,” including the Super Bowl.

We could see the NCAA Championships, the World Cup, major concerts and so much more. We all know how it can positively impact our city’s bottom line when we attract more tourists — and no doubt many will visit Nashville to attend bigger events. Though our reputation is quite good right now, imagine it being even better. Even our rivals will have to agree that we have a lot to offer, and a domed stadium will only solidify that.

We will see final details of the stadium plan by fall, but even now we know the stadium is likely, assuming there are no major wrenches thrown into the works.

The new enclosed stadium will be the “centerpiece” of the redevelopment project on the Cumberland River’s East Bank. Deputy Mayor Sam Wilcox has added that the city will “maximize the community benefits.”

“Getting it right means parks, space for the arts, affordable housing, and multimodal transportation infrastructure in service of Nashville residents.”

I’d have to say getting a brand-new “first class” stadium would ensure the Titans remain for years to come, save money on our tax burden, attract more tourist dollars, and increase our city’s reputation and its ability to draw the biggest events. Those all sound like good reasons to proceed. Pouring billions into an aging facility would reap none of these benefits.

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

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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nashvillescene.com | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

5

CITY LIMITS

RECORD-SETTING HEAT HITS THE UNHOUSED COMMUNITY Trouble accessing cooling centers can exacerbate

could bring dangerous individuals into residential neighborhoods or drive down property values. A particularly outspoken group voicing these concerns is the organization Reclaim Brookmeade Park, which boasts more than 1,000 members on its Facebook page.

Due to this type of opposition, Shower the People has been forced to cease setting up their catch-and-carry mobile showers in certain areas. Instead, in some cases, they’ve had to limit their services to bringing water to unhoused people. MacLeod Jaulin says this sort of resistance to her organization’s relief efforts has made her and her fellow volunteers even more determined. “I think we have that motivation of, ‘Oh yeah? Watch me!’ ” she says with a laugh.

“Along with housing infrastructure support, especially here at the beginning, I feel like as a country … we didn’t catch this problem early,” says Jennings. “So there are people who have been out there homeless for a very, very long time.”

MacLeod Jaulin encourages citizens who want to help to send letters and emails to Metro Councilmembers and state representatives to advocate for affordable housing.

She notes that for anyone who would like to donate, the supplies Shower the People needs most are bottled water, underwear and socks. Jennings says The Contributor could use more water, tents, handheld fan misters, food and tarps.

Visit showerthepeople.net and thecontributor.org for more ways to help.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

tweeted: “This is terrorism and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Stand with us in supporting clinics like Hope Clinic who provide critical resources to Tennessee families.”

Earlier this year, Lee gave $180,000 in taxpayer dollars to buy ultrasound machines for such centers across the state, and he has said he wants to continue using public dollars to fund the centers. Metro Councilmember Joy Styles of District 32 is president of the board at Hope Clinic for Women.

Representatives for Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood have pointed out Lee’s lack of response when the Planned Parenthood location in Knoxville burned down in December.

“Planned Parenthood condemns violence in every form, but we can’t be silent on the harm Crisis Pregnancy Centers like Hope Clinic cause,” says Francie Hunt, executive director for TAPP. “We believe they should be peacefully regulated so they can no longer lie and mislead patients, which has been documented at length by the American Medical Association.”

According to Kailey Cornett, president and CEO of Hope Clinic for Women, the clinic receives one state grant, which funds its abstinence-based education in schools. The organization has a total operating income of $1.1 million.

Cornett says she’s seen a slight uptick in phone calls about pregnancy service in the days immediately following the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

“I feel like we’re gonna be so essential for women who still want to experience good health outcomes in the midst of their pregnancy, and they still need someone to talk through all of the emotions that come with an unexpected pregnancy,” she says. “We just want to make sure people know that they can come and talk and walk through their options and that their options aren’t completely eliminated. It may look different than what they expected last week, but they still have some agency to really think for themselves and consider everything that’s going on

in their life.”

But reproductive freedom advocacy organizations like Healthy and Free Tennessee warn against crisis pregnancy centers.

“In the simplest form, it is a center that pretends to provide comprehensive reproductive health care, but they do not support abortion access,” says Briana Perry, steering committee member for Healthy and Free. “This is a deception — you’re not providing comprehensive reproductive health care and not providing referrals, and giving the illusion that you are.”

Hope Clinic for Women opened in 1983 under the name The Crisis Pregnancy Center. According to the organization’s website, its stated goal was to “reach primarily the abortion-minded and also the likely to carry young women prior to going to an abortion clinic and sooner than she would possibly consider going to an adoption agency.”

The center began offering a post-abortion support group in 1985, a regular feature of crisis pregnancy

centers. It began offering counseling for pregnancy loss in 2009.

Over the years, the faith-based organization expanded its services to include the abstinence-based education in schools, parenting programs in which parents can earn points to redeem at a store with baby items, oral contraceptive prescriptions, and some health exams and STI testing. According to its 2021 report, the center saw 841 people for initial pregnancy testing and counseling that year, which represents more than half of the total operation.

Fifty-six percent of those people were uninsured.

In its mission to prevent abortions, the Hope Clinic reports that it has proven successful.

According to Hope, of those who learned they were pregnant at their initial appointment, 84 percent came back for another appointment; 89 percent of those who returned chose to carry the pregnancy.

issues for people without homes

BY LOGAN LANGLOIS

N

ashville is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave this summer, and it doesn’t look like things are getting much cooler anytime soon.

On June 22, our city’s temperature topped 100 degrees for the first time in a decade, setting a new city record with a final temperature of 101 degrees.

Among the most affected by the dramatic weather — our unhoused population.

Nashville’s Salvation Army and the Metro Homeless Impact Division have established cooling centers in the city, which are open whenever the heat index is predicted to reach above 100 degrees. Other cooling centers, like those run by Nashville’s Office of Emergency Management, have publicly stated that they will not open their doors until the heat index reaches temperatures as high as 110 degrees.

CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTERS TOUT CHOICE — EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO ABORTION

Abortion-rights activists believe these centers should be regulated — ‘so they can no longer lie and mislead patients’

BY HANNAH HERNER

H

ope Clinic for Women’s tagline is “a safe place for tough choices.” But for pregnant people who seek testing and counseling at the Nashville center, abortion is not one of those choices. Hope is a crisis pregnancy center, one of 60 in the state. Until the recent reversal of Roe v. Wade, there were five total clinics in Tennessee that offered abortion procedures.

The organization was the target of an attempted arson on Thursday, which is under investigation by the FBI and the Metro Nashville Police Department. A statement from MNPD called it the first act of vandalism in Nashville related to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision rolling back Roe v. Wade, which is set to put into motion a near-total ban on abortion in the state.

Crisis pregnancy centers are known for giving false and intimidating information on abortions. They also come up in web searches for abortion clinics.

Shortly after last week’s attack, Gov. Bill Lee

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PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

But even when cooling stations are open, they don’t immediately solve problems.

Many unhoused people can’t make it to the cooling stations due to the required travel distance, and some avoid them out of fear that the belongings they’re unable to carry with them will be stolen. In an attempt to assist in the journey to these stations, the Metro Homeless Impact Division has been working to acquire transportation for their unhoused clients.

Such efforts include working with WeGo to provide bus passes, which ensure safe travel to a heat-relief site. MHID has also worked with WeGo to provide cool-off rides, which will allow unhoused clients free rides on the bus for an extended period each day in order to provide relief from the heat.

“I think that the biggest problem that I’ve seen in this heat wave is it exacerbates the problems that people are already expe-

riencing,” says Cathy Jennings, executive director of The Contributor and a member of the Continuum of Care Homelessness Planning Council’s Shelter Committee. The Contributor is a Nashville-based social justice newspaper that employs unhoused and housing-insecure people as street vendors.

This allows unhoused people to legitimize their income by establishing a legal and traceable pay history.

This legitimate pay history can be crucial when it comes to applying for housing. In our current heat wave, Jennings says the streets are less populated with vendors due to safety concerns. This can be devastating to those who rely on the income The Contributor provides.

“If they have a rent payment that’s a thousand dollars a month,” Jennings says, “then they can’t afford to miss a day.”

Other nonprofit leaders, such as Shower the People executive director Meredith MacLeod Jaulin, have different concerns.

“Honestly I’ve had a lot more concerns in previous years,” says MacLeod Jaulin. “In Nashville, especially because of COVID, we have done a much better job ensuring collaboration between nonprofits.”

Shower the People provides mobile showers and supplies to the unhoused, and MacLeod Jaulin says nonprofits like hers have actually been facing challenges from other Nashville residents. She says opposition to community outreach has established a strong foothold in West Nashville in particular. Some residents claim that unhoused relief centers

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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7/1/22 5:00 PM

CITY LIMITS

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG:

PRINCIPAL ASHLEY CROFT

IT’S THE PRINCIPAL Some educators are being priced out of their own communities

BY KELSEY BEYELER

W

hen a real estate agent left a postcard in Inglewood Elementary School’s mailbox offering to help sell the property, an employee jokingly asked her principal if she would get in trouble for selling the school — and how much she might get for it.

Principal Ashley Croft later shared her thoughts about it on Twitter: “While I AM intrigued about what kind of cash offers our precious school building and its 2.5+ acres of green space could [bring], you can kindly leave us the heck alone, Robby.” Croft also noted that she and her husband are being priced out of the area.

They moved into their East Nashville house, which is close to Inglewood Elementary, three years ago when Croft took the job as principal. Before that, she taught at Inglewood while she was an undergraduate student, and later worked at Isaac Litton Middle School nearby.

While Croft says some principals prefer not to live near their schools, she enjoys feeling connected to the community, being close to her campus and seeing students around the neighborhood.

She and her husband hoped to buy the home they were renting, but that opportunity came sooner than expected. “They hadn’t raised the rents on us at all in our three years here, so we were expecting a little bit of a rent increase,” Croft tells the Scene. “But they actually told us they were going to sell.”

At almost $800,000, the house was too expensive. They later discovered they could continue renting with a $1,200 monthly rent increase. Still too expensive. Instead, they bought a home in Hermitage.

“If you look at us on paper, we should be able to live in the community where I work,”

says Croft, whose husband is a lawyer for the federal government. “We can’t, and so that means our teachers definitely can’t.

When I think of the number of our teachers who live in our community, it’s very few.”

Nashville’s public school teachers are the highest paid in the state, yet many can’t afford to live in the communities where they work. And at Inglewood Elementary, some staff members literally risked their lives for their students — in May, they made headlines for restraining an intruder. One teacher broke her elbow tackling and restraining the man.

The families of Inglewood Elementary students are also being pushed out of the area. Croft notes that many families do not live within Inglewood’s designated school zone, but longtime connections keep them coming back. That means Croft must help families work out carpool arrangements, navigate enrollment options and fill out school option applications.

She also spends a lot of time marketing the school, recruiting new students and working to increase racial and socioeconomic diversity. Fifty-five percent of Inglewood Elementary’s students are economically disadvantaged; 72 percent are Black, 22 percent are white, and 5 percent are Hispanic.

“Our schools are very segregated on this side of town in particular, even though our neighborhoods are much more integrated,” says Croft.

Enrollment at the school has mostly declined over the past decade. As longtime families are priced out, connections to neighborhood schools diminish and affluent families move in — families who can afford to commute to other schools or pay for private education.

In 2017, Inglewood Elementary, alongside a few other Nashville schools, received a federal Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant to “reduce minority group isolation,” or desegregate schools. This means adding programming to attract more students — Inglewood became an Environmental Sciences STEAM magnet school.

While no single person can dismantle gentrification and years of school segregation, folks can educate themselves on the matter and consider their actions in relation to it.

The Nashville Public Education Founda-

Planned Parenthood of Middle Tennessee and Northern Mississippi announced it was no longer offering abortion services.

The organization’s Tennessee clinics expected to have a few weeks before the state’s socalled trigger law went into effect following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. But meanwhile, an appeals court lifted an injunction that had barred the state from enforcing its ban on abortions beyond six weeks of gestational age. With that ban in effect even without the trigger law, Planned Parenthood opted to no longer provide abortion services. … Mayoral hopefuls are using the confusing kerfuffle about a new stadium for the Tennessee Titans and a baffling flirtation with the Republican National Convention to make subtle side-eyes at incumbent Mayor John Cooper. Councilmember Freddie O’Connell issued a press release (in a relatively obscure file format) saying Cooper’s attempt to draw the RNC makes the city “look amateurish and chaotic, at best, and dishonest at worst.”

Longtime local do-gooder and retiring Thistle Farms CEO Hal Cato lightly jabbed at Cooper in his resignation email to the nonprofit. Former AllianceBernstein COO Jim “No Relation” Gingrich and Matt Wiltshire, who formerly did various economic things with Metro, have stayed quiet, though the latter did have a sitdown with Leigh Walton, who served as Karl Dean’s treasurer during his mayoral bids. … Cooper also looks to be overhauling the Metro Human Relations Commission. The mayor is appointing 10 new members, ruffling the feathers of current members of the board that oversees HR complaints for Metro departments and addresses diversity and inclusiveness issues, who say that retaining institutional knowledge is critical to MHRC’s work.

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tion’s recent documentary By Design, the Shaping of Nashville’s Public Schools and Ansley Erickson’s 2016 book Making the Unequal Metropolis can serve as starting points. From there, Croft has some advice.

“When you’re moving into a new neighborhood and you hear, ‘Oh, [this] school is the good school,’ or ‘[That] school is the school you don’t want to go to,’ or … ‘Oh, if you live over there, you really have to go to private [school],’ — you know, you see all these discussions on the East Nashville Facebook pages all the time,” says Croft.

“As a parent or as a family or as a community member who has beliefs or interests in schools, you need to go to the school. You need to walk through the doors, you need to meet the people, you need to see the kids … to make an informed decision about what that school is.

“Think about what you’re saying when you say, ‘Oh, XYZ is a good school.’ ” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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nashvillescene.com | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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7/1/22 5:00 PM

Residents in Grundy County are fighting a new quarry over blasting, damage to local roads and potential harm to water and wildlife.

Their fight is not unique.

BY MICHAEL RAY TAYLOR

8

ABOUT A DOZEN PLANNED or existing rock quarries in Tennessee have been recently opposed, and in some cases stopped, by coalitions of residents and local environmentalists. Residents don’t like the quarries’ explosions, noise, possible damage to wells and heavy truck traffic; environmentalists oppose the runoff of silts from crushed rock and sand that can clog local streams, harm sensitive wildlife and enter the water table to damage caves and groundwater.

But the quarries keep coming because of an insatiable demand for concrete — and more importantly, asphalt.

In the 1960s, a new interstate highway system reshaped Tennessee, providing lifelines to cities and development. The new roads also shaped me. This is a story about an ongoing quarry fight in Grundy

County — one that threatens a historic-tour cave, rare life and several quiet neighborhoods. But the threads that tie me to it wind through my Florida childhood, and for me, this is where the story begins.

I grew up in Ormond Beach, Fla., a place so flat that auto racing first began on its hard-packed beach. Once a year, my parents would load my sister and me into the family station wagon and head north to visit relatives in Kentucky and Illinois. The route got exciting when it hit Middle Tennessee. I can still see my father white-knuckled on the old Monteagle grade, cursing every semi and curve. For a kid from a spit of sand in the Atlantic, the actual mountains provided a storybook landscape. Limestone cliffs and mist-shrouded hardwoods hinted at lurking dinosaurs, or perhaps dragons.

PHOTO: KELLY SMALLWOOD

Road to Ruin

JASON HARDY IN SMITH HOLLOW CAVE In December 1967, shortly after I turned 8, the opening of Interstate 24 radically changed our annual drive. Smooth new highways shortened three days of travel to two.

The view north of Chattanooga now opened dramatically above a pastoral valley. It felt as though we were flying over farms and cows, like in the opening scene of The Sound of Music — the first movie I saw in a theater.

In the center of the green fairyland below the interstate, a gigantic red arrow pointed at a hillside. The arrow bore enormous white words designed to excite any 8-year-old: “WONDER CAVE.” Over the next few years, I must have begged my parents to drive to that cave in the valley a half-dozen times. They never would, although they did once stop for the cavern tour at Ruby Falls, which was enough to cement my lifetime fascination with Tennessee caves. Ironically, the opening of I-24 shifted traffic miles away from Wonder Cave, which sat in the valley along old 41. This vastly reduced visitation — 90 percent in the first year. By 2000, the cave, open to visitors since 1902, had permanently closed its doors to the public.

Perhaps because of those childhood

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city, reviving small towns that the highways once killed off.

The idea of retiring to a quiet Tennessee farm on 100 or so acres becomes evermore attractive when you can do so within an hour of medical centers, hip restaurants and organic groceries. But the combined interstates, state roads, housing developments, industrial parks and long driveways create an almost insatiable demand for asphalt.

In March, Nashville’s Music City Center hosted the World of Asphalt conference, which bills itself as the world’s “leading trade show on asphalt.” It featured 400 vendors and 120 educational sessions on making roads stronger, cheaper and more sustainable. Country bands played alongside very big machines.

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

JUST BOOM

MICHAEL FORD memories, in 2014 I began following the website of South Pittsburg, Tenn., cavers Kelly Smallwood and her husband Jason Hardy as they began a modern survey of Wonder Cave. The couple charted new passages more than doubling Wonder’s previously mapped length. They soon extended their survey to include nearby Crystal Cave, which drains Wonder, and Smith Hollow Cave, which sits a half-mile from the former tour cave.

In October 2021, they discovered a welldecorated dome room at the back of Smith Hollow containing a 93-foot waterfall — 15 feet taller than Ruby Falls. Ron Winton, 67, owns the cave and 188 acres of Smith Hollow, and his children live in two houses and a cabin on the property. When Smallwood and Hardy took the family down the challenging muddy trek to see the waterfall (details to come below), Ron’s daughter Teri Winton was awestruck.

“It’s just amazing to think something like that is in your own backyard,” says Winton.

“The water carved this beautiful room, and it’s never been touched or tampered with.”

Not necessarily, it turns out.

While few people have seen Smith Hollow’s pristine waterfall in person, recent dye

tracing suggests that the water itself may have been “tampered with” by a new quarry operating directly upstream from the cave (and other nearby caves). The Clouse Hill Sand Quarry, bordered by the Timberwood gated community and the Retreat at Deer Lick Falls, opened in the spring. As the cavers and the Wintons seek to protect these caves and the rare life within them, other residents and the Grundy County government have united to stop the quarry in court.

Strikingly similar battles have popped up elsewhere in the state.

What lies at the intersection of these disputes is asphalt, a seemingly endless ribbon of bitumen that for better or worse glues the state together. Tennessee boasts 1,201 miles of interstate and another 14,677 of state-maintained highways, according to the Department of Transportation. Over the past half-century, interstates especially have radically transformed communities, blurring old lines between town and country.

In current-day Tennessee, rural farmhouses get DIY upgrades from lawyers and neurosurgeons. Football games and stadium concerts lie within driving distance. As Nashville housing costs skyrocket, bedroom communities reach ever further from the

Some of the biggest caves in Tennessee are found in the Monteagle limestone. The rock formation was laid down about 340 million years ago during the Mississippian Period, when the floor of a shallow sea surrounded an island-like continent made up of parts of present-day Europe and North America. If you drive the Monteagle grade after a spring rain, you can see waterfalls shooting over this crisp white rock along I-24. The formation tends to form impressive cliffs, both above and below ground.

A thin layer of sandstone separates its top from the Bangor limestone, another cavebearing rock.

While water easily cleaves and carves limestone, it has a harder time working through the overlying sandstone layers, which provide a good roof for thousands of hidden caves below. The sandstones atop Grundy County’s stratigraphy — including on Clouse Hill — were laid down at the beginning of the Permian Period, when much of the North American landmass began to rise from the sea, creating beaches that would one day become stone.

Together, sandstone and limestone provide two of the principal materials for asphalt: sand and crushed rock. As a matter of course, most of the state’s asphalt manufacturers own the quarries that extract these raw materials, so the owners at the center of most court challenges are asphalt companies. In Grundy County, the target is Peter Tinsley, owner of Tullahoma-based Tinsley Asphalt, which has asphalt plants in South Pittsburg, Dechard and McMinnville.

In 2019, Michael and Barbara Ford purchased a home and five acres outside Monteagle at the end of a dead-end road on Clouse Hill.

“It was a beautiful, quiet place to retire,” says Michael, a former construction worker.

“We wanted a space where we could be more self-sustaining.”

The couple began raising chickens, geese, guineas and goats. Across the street, 200 feet from their home, was a tree farm. In August of last year, the Fords noticed a crew cutting trees, and assumed the absent owner had decided it was time to harvest. A month later, a neighbor saw an electrical crew installing new power boxes. The neighbor approached the crew and talked for a bit, then walked over and knocked on the Fords’ door.

“Did you know they’re putting in a sand quarry across the street?” the neighbor asked.

“I had no idea,” Michael Ford answered.

To Ford, the information was just hearsay.

But within a few weeks, bulldozers started moving dirt. A couple of homeowners from the nearby Timberwood subdivision stopped by to discuss the quarry, but the Fords — and all other neighbors they contacted — still knew nothing official. Meanwhile, the remaining tree stumps were cleared off the land. The owner dug two large holding ponds for the water he would need to crush rocks and otherwise convert a Permian seashore into asphalt makings.

In early spring, Ford saw someone driving around the site, examining work. He walked over to introduce himself. The man was owner Peter Tinsley.

“I want to be a good neighbor,” Tinsley told Ford. He indicated where the quarry operation would start, directly across from their home.

Ford later learned that is the standard line in the industry. “That’s part of a scripted response they use at every location,” he says.

The first blast was March 11. Ford had asked the site superintendent to let them know when blasting began, and he did — that first time with both a phone call and warning alarms at the quarry. Ford set up his phone to record a video of the effects.

The second blast came a month later, with no warning.

“Just boom,” Ford said. “I was sitting on the bed. There was a small decorative pillow on a table beside me, and the explosion blew it a foot-and-a-half up in the air. We were so scared, and then we were so angry.”

The quarry permit allows 100 trucks per day to travel the dirt road, Ford says, and trucks have begun hauling material from the site daily. “There’s a plastic culvert under the road next to our driveway, and it’s already caving in from their activities. The noise is horrendous.”

A HIDDEN WORLD

The state hides more than 11,000 known caves, according to the Tennessee Cave Survey. Rumbling Falls Cave, located beneath Fall Creek Falls State Park, was kept secret by its discoverers until the nearby town of Spencer announced a new sewage plant that would dump treated effluent into a creek that fed directly into a seven-mile-long river winding through the cave. The cavers went public with a photo of the Rumble Room — a space larger than the Louisiana Superdome, entered via a 200-foot rappel from the ceiling — that bordered the river. A biologist cataloged rare species in and near the river, including the Tennessee cave salamander, the blind Tennessee cave crayfish, and a unique cave-adapted spider-like creature called the Appalachian cave harvestman.

The same organisms live in Smith Hollow and the Crystal-Wonder Cave system, where biologist Matthew Niemiller and his students recently cataloged them. He calls the Crystal-Wonder system “the state’s most diverse” for cave-obligate species — the permanent cave dwellers who lose pigment and eyesight, but gain special adaptations that help them live in darkness. Niemiller is concerned that sand carried by quarry runoff will alter their aquatic habitats.

“The biggest issue is that sand starts to fill up the interstitial spaces and small voids used by cave critters like the salamanders when they’re nesting,” says Niemiller, adding that the extra sand would likely affect surface life in creeks and streams as well.

I tend to run into cave salamanders in

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crawlways. These days I move slower when crawling than I did at 20. While slogging along in a tight space with close walls, my glasses get smudged and muddy. I squint to see whatever is near my head. The cheerful orange of the adult spotted-tail salamander (Eurycea lucifuga) is hard to miss: Brighter than my neon cave pants, with large eyes and decorative black spots, it could be a Disney cartoon character. The more rare Tennessee cave salamander (Gyrinophilus palleucus), usually pale salmon with frilly red gills, often rests in a few inches of water.

Whenever I crawl up beside either one, we tend to freeze in place for several minutes, eyeing each other cautiously before moving along and going about our business.

SOCK ’EM

One neighbor who came by to visit the Fords, eyeball the quarry and solicit support was Linda Brookhart, a nonprofit director who owns a home in the Retreat at Deer Lick Falls. She had learned of a Tennessee organization helping community environmental efforts called SOCM (pronounced

“Sock ’em”). The acronym of the 50-year-old organization originally stood for Save Our Cumberland Mountains, but as its outreach expanded, it changed to Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment.

SOCM quickly helped residents set up a website and print signage for Stop the Clouse Hill Sand Quarry. The Fords, cavers Smallwood and Hardy, and about 40 other residents attended the group’s first meeting.

One resident discovered that Tinsley had announced his intentions in a “blurry, postagestamp-sized” newspaper ad.

Brookhart contacted county Mayor Michael Brady, who explained that the county commission had previously passed a Grundy County Powers Act prohibiting exactly this sort of plant. Other resolutions passed in 2012 and 2019 required any quarry operation to maintain a buffer of at least 5,000 feet from any residence or commercial operation — more than 140 residences sit within 5,000 feet of the new quarry.

The county issued a cease-and-desist order. Tinsley countered that the county had never established a planning or zoning

LINDA BROOKHART commission or properly established a zoning ordinance. The county answered that the statute authorizing the resolution doesn’t require them to do so. Both sides filed motions seeking summary judgment against each other, and a hearing for both parties is scheduled for Sept. 19.

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

CLOUSE HILL SAND QUARRY

QUARRY HERE, QUARRY THERE

Bordering Grundy County on the west, Coffee County does have a zoning plan and votes on zoning regulations. When Hawkins Asphalt Paving, based in Wartrace, sought a zoning regulation to open a Coffee County quarry that would affect 71 caves and >> P. 12

TENNESSEE QUARRY QUARRELS

Residents near operating or planned rock quarries have become increasingly vocal in opposing them across the state, citing blasting noise, road damage, dust, water pollution and reduced property values. Here is a partial sampling of recent and ongoing fights. Some locations are approximate.

2. Commerce Quarry Tuckers Crossroads

7. State Highway 12 Quarry Ashland City

6. East Spring Street Quarry Cookeville

3. Potato Hill Rock Quarry Rogersville

NASHVILLE 4. Hawkins Quarry Beechgrove

5. Greenhaw Rock Quarry Decherd

1. Residents and the county are suing Tinsley Asphalt. Hearing scheduled for Sept. 19.

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2. The county and a citizens’ group are arguing that an improper zoning permit was granted. Hearing scheduled for Aug. 22.

3. The county commission approved road use restrictions in January 2022, effectively stopping the quarry from opening.

1. Clouse Hill Sand Quarry Tracy City

4. After citizens protested, the county was persuaded to halt a zoning change for a new quarry in June 2021. The quarry application may be entered again after one year.

5. After a battle that lasted more than a decade, a citizens’ group was defeated when the county granted Peter Tinsley a zoning change in July 2019.

6. In October 2020, the Cookeville city council denied a zoning request for a quarry at the intersection of I-40 and U.S. 70, a site originally used during I-40 construction. The city approved $20,000 to enforce zoning in November 2021.

7. In January 2021, residents accused Walker Trucking of operating an illegal quarry in Ashland City. A group of nearby residents has joined in a lawsuit against it.

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PHOTOS: KELLY SMALLWOOD

DYE TRACING

THE WATERFALL DISCOVERED IN SMITH HOLLOW dozens of farms in 2020, more than 100 residents showed up to testify against it. The vote was delayed several times. I became aware of the fight from Facebook posts by Jenny McKee, a caving friend who lived near the proposed quarry site.

Almost simultaneously, a caving friend near Huntsville, Ala., posted on social media that a quarry there was planning to excavate an entire mountain — Butler Mountain — including several caves. He enlisted help from an Alabama water-quality group to fight the effort. I was able to write about both of these fights — and the cave animals threatened by them — in a conservation piece for The New York Times the following January. Eventually, both groups stopped the quarries for the moment, but both expect the owners to make future efforts to proceed.

And there are others.

James Allison was only 6 years old when the state of Tennessee opened a rock quarry that bordered his family farm about five miles east of Tucker’s Crossroads in Wilson County. The quarry had only one purpose: to procure limestone for the construction of nearby Interstate 40, which was completed in 1967. He recalls a layer of fine gray dust settling over everything and a neighbor’s well temporarily going dry. After I-40 opened, the quarry slowly returned to nature — until the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued a permit to Heritage Materials in 2020.

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“This area is farmland,” says Kathy Allison, who organized Citizens Against the Commerce Quarry to fight the permit. “It’s officially Greenbelt, zoned for agricultural purposes.”

She says the roads and bridges, including one that goes over I-40, can’t handle the weight of quarry trucks, which have damaged the roads and guard rails. Her husband’s 150-acre family farm is one of three properties that abut the 117-acre quarry site. City water doesn’t run past the Allisons’ property. They fear for the well that serves their house and for the pond that waters their livestock.

The new quarry owners argue that they are exempt from current zoning because they’re grandfathered in by the interstate excavation 55 years ago. The county issued two stop-work orders not long after blasting began, and they were able to shut down the operation in May 2021, pending judicial review. With a judge’s permission, the county lawyer has joined the lawyer of the citizens’ group to challenge the TDEC permit, scheduled to be heard in Lebanon chancery court on Aug. 22.

A MAJESTIC ROAR

When Kelly Smallwood described the waterfall discovery at the end of Smith Hollow, owner Ron Winton was eager to see it.

His daughter Teri would not have described herself as a caver. “OK Dad, if you

want to do it, we’ll go too,” she told him, referring to herself and her sister.

“How long will it take us to get back there?” she asked Smallwood.

The caver paused to consider the size and experience of the group. “Probably two or three hours.”

Holy crap, Teri thought. She had just watched a National Geographic documentary about the 2018 rescue of a dozen Thai boys trapped in a cave.

Smallwood instructed them on the sort of boots and clothing they should wear and provided helmets, cave lamps and small packs. At the appointed time, they geared up and set off.

Teri had been in the cave before, but she’d never noticed the shark’s tooth and other fossils that Smallwood pointed out along the way, trapped in limestone more than 300 million years earlier. She and her siblings had always turned around well before the point where cavers led them down a tight hole, lined with slick mud. But now, after walking further upstream, they were soon crawling on hands and knees. In one place, her chin was just above the water as she ducked under a boulder.

She saw her sister scooting easily through tight constrictions and her father attempting to follow. “Dad, you need to be following me,” she said. “I’m bigger.”

Although the cave was cool, she began to heat up when the group left the stream, crawling over rocks and cobbles toward the dome room. She could hear a faint growling sound ahead, which she realized was rushing water. The passage narrowed, but the rushing wind increased in speed, evaporating her sweat, blowing her bangs out behind her. She popped out near the top of the dome room to a majestic roar.

Smallwood and Hardy were waiting at the bottom of the large room. Teri hugged Smallwood tightly. “Thank you!” she yelled over the roar of the waterfall. “Thank you for taking us here — it’s amazing!”

One by one, Teri and her family waded through the current to climb upon a large, slick rock directly in the spray of the waterfall.

“I still can’t put into words how awesome it was,” she says now. Teri and her family posed on the rock for photos, ignoring the

fact that they had to make the same uncomfortable trip back out again. Water hit them in the face, and they couldn’t stop grinning.

EVIDENCE

Two weeks later, Smallwood and Hardy returned to dump packets of harmless fluorescein dye into Dripping Springs and other water sources flowing from the sand quarry.

This would show the couple if any of the sources fed local wells or nearby caves.

“We don’t have any access to city water — the well is our lifeline,” says Teri Winton, echoing what Linda Brookhart and Kathy Allison had already told me. She was excited when the dye trace was dropped upstream from their farm on a Sunday evening. After a few hours, she called her mom.

“Kelly says the dye has had time to get here,” Teri said. “Is your toilet water pink?”

Her mother put down the phone for a minute. “Yes, it’s pink.”

Teri called her brother. His toilet water was pink also. No, they hadn’t added colored toilet cleaner. Silt sent downstream from the top of the mountain, near the quarry, went to their well and to the cave stream.

Meanwhile, up on Clouse Hill Road, Michael Ford grits his teeth against the noise and waits for the September court date to arrive.

“The problem isn’t the fact of the quarry so much as the lack of care choosing a location,” Ford says. “Peter Tinsley could have bought land in Grundy County that’s not near houses or active farms. He chose that spot because the roads and utilities were there, and that saved him money.”

Tinsley did not respond to the Scene’s requests for comment in time for publication.

Regardless of the outcome of the Grundy County hearing, or of hearings in other counties, new quarries will pop up. Nearby residents will oppose them. Tennessee cave salamanders will search out small dark, dark hollows of streams that no human eyes will see. And the highway will wind on.

Michael Ray Taylor is the author of Hidden Nature: Wild Southern Caves. He lives in Arkadelphia, Ark., where he is currently working on a novel.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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Nightlight 615 begins its annual outdoor movie series with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a flick that I personally believe is one of the most glaring examples of entitled white privilege ever put on film. In this 1986 salute to playing hooky, late teen-cinema auteur John Hughes cast Matthew Broderick as the fourth-wall-breaking title character, a beloved teen who ditches school with his girlfriend (Legend princess Mia Sara) and best friend (future Succession offspring Alan Ruck), as they wreak havoc all over Chicago. Yes, it’s a fun romp, but even fans have to admit that it’s basically about a rich, bratty child of privilege who breaks rules and ends up being rewarded for it. Whether Hughes knew it or not, he made yet another reminder of how white boys can do anything they please in this world. General admission tickets are $10, and food trucks will include Chang Noi, Bad Luck Burger Club, Southern Spoon, Daddy’s Dogs and more. There will be beer from Yazoo Brewing Co., and the flick will start around sundown. 7:15 p.m. at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, 600 James Robertson Parkway CRAIG D. LINDSEY

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SAM HOFFMAN W/VOLUNTEER DEPARTMENT & RAINSTICKS

We’re very lucky to have an array of bands in Nashville’s collection of rock scenes who you want to keep an ear out for — groups who aren’t necessarily prolific, but whenever they have a new release or a new show on the books, it’s worth

your time. On Friday you’ve got a shot to see three of them on the same bill at The East Room. Just a few weeks ago Sam Hoffman released “Mull It Over,” his first new track since 2018, which reaffirms his finely tuned skill at processing complex emotional situations in catchy, folktinged psych-pop songs. You could trace a throughline to bands like The Olivia Tremor Control, who also harked back to bands of the late ’60s like The Monkees.

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CELESTE BARBER

Even if Celeste Barber’s name isn’t familiar, it’s likely you’ve seen her work. The Australian comedian went viral in 2015 when she began posting her DIY photoshoot reenactments of the overthe-top Instagram posts of some models and influencers. In one, she showed herself attempting to clumsily climb out of a pool next to an image of swimsuit model Kate Upton doing the same thing with apparent ease. In another, Barber held a watermelon and a honeydew over her boobs to reenact an especially absurd shot from a swimsuit catalog. Funny, yes — but her brilliant mockery has also sparked important discussions about body image, beauty standards and the negative impact CELESTE BARBER

nashvillescene.com | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CRITICS’ PICKS

ALBUM RELEASE SHOW Teddy & The Rough Riders with CAITLIN ROSE

The 21 NIGHT: Cramps

+

DJ with GO-GO DANCERS

7/09 – saturday, 2-8pm

7/08 – friday

Jack Silverman Quartet

7/15 – friday

7/02 – saturday

7/16 – saturday

INDIE JAMZ with DJ LOVELESS & DJ SHUG disko cowboy Josh Halper’s

Bossa Nova Band 7/28 – thursday

AMANDA SHIRES

Album Release Show

21+

KARAOKE NIGHT with JEMINA PEARL

21+

VINYL RANCH presents:

7/22 – friday

JERRY PAPER

with MAMALARKY

8pm

Blue MARKET Room

21+

7/07 – thursday

7/25 – monday

BODEGA SUPER CITY & TOTAL WIFE

7/29 – friday

Lockeland Strings

7/21 – thursday

21+

ENTERING HEAVEN ALIVE Listening Party 7/27 – wednesday

creature feature Film Night

7/30 – saturday

MATMOS with JEFF CAREY & EVE MARET

Announcing events for July 14 th & 23 rd soon!

OPEN WEEKLY Thursday through Saturday 623 7TH AVE S. NASHVILLE, TENN.

FILM

7/01 – friday

of unrealistic Photoshopping and filters. It’s a good shtick and it’s one she’s kept up to this day — her spoofs now include TikTok dancers and the Kardashians. But beyond being a funny lady on Instagram, Barber is also a hilarious, relatable stand-up. Her observational and confessional style of comedy is just as refreshing to watch as when she makes the influencer community look a fool. 7 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. MEGAN SELING [MAN IN ME]

MIDNIGHT MOVIES: THE BIG LEBOWSKI

The Coen brothers’ 1998 comedy is not so much a whodunit as a whodunwhat. The Big Lebowski’s hero — or antihero, if you like — is Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (or His Dudeness, or Duder, or el Duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing).

Middle-aged, unemployed and clad in old cardigans, surfer shorts and jelly sandals, The Dude (Jeff Bridges) is content with his life. He scrapes by on white Russians, cheap weed and the companionship of his bowling buddies — Steve Buscemi’s earnest, doomed Donny, and John Goodman’s Walter Sobchak, for whom the war in Vietnam is a constant state of mind. Until someone pees on The Dude’s rug. It’s a case of mistaken identity, and soon The Dude is drawn into a convoluted ransom operation that is very un-Dude. The script is chock-full of oneliners that make for the perfect Belcourt midnight screening. But it’s also a sort of modern odyssey. Thrust into an adventure that he’d rather avoid, The Dude confronts

challengers of all stripes — baffling avantgarde artists, thieves, thugs, pornographers, nihilists, the Malibu sheriff, a teenager named Larry, and even his own best friend — before he can crack the case and bring it all back home. The Belcourt is rolling out the rug for this one, with white Russians and bowling in the aisles. Get there early at 11:40 p.m. for the preshow. Midnight at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. ERICA CICCARONE MUSIC

July in...

[GUITAR-WIELDING DEMON SLAYER]

BRANDI CARLILE W/INDIGO GIRLS, CELISSE & LUCIUS

If you’re pissed, sad and feeling burntout and exhausted over the increasingly troubling state of our nation, get thee to one of Brandi Carlile’s two concerts at Ascend Amphitheater this weekend.

She will energize and inspire you. She will turn your rage into strength to take action. A Brandi Carlile performance isn’t a concert — it is 90 minutes of communal purging, wherein Carlile shape-shifts into the world’s best-dressed guitar-wielding demon slayer and enlists onlookers to join her battle with joyful sing-alongs. Hours after it was announced that the Supreme Court had voted to overturn Roe. v. Wade, Carlile played a show at the Greek Theater in L.A. As she’s wont to do, she turned the performance into a rally of sorts, saying, “I don’t know about y’all, but it’s doing my heart a lot of good just to be here with you, and just to sing for you, and to laugh. We can cry, too. And I’m gonna do a whole hell of a lot of screaming. But I’m gonna save a bit of screaming, too. Because I believe that this

BRANDI CARLILE

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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criticspic

CRITICS’ PICKS

[PLAYTIME]

TOY STORY IN CONCERT WITH THE NASHVILLE SYMPHONY

[RHYTHM NATION]

MARCUS FINNIE QUARTET

Drummer and bandleader Marcus Finnie is a Memphis native who began his musical journey playing in church behind his organist mother, and began working in Beale Street clubs before he was in elementary school. As a teen, he met fellow Memphis jazz great Kirk Whalum, and would eventually spend 12 years working and recording in various Whalum ensembles. Finnie’s drumming duties have led to collaborations with a host of gospel, pop, rock and R&B legends. Since relocating from Memphis to Middle Tennessee, he’s amassed an impressive list of credits — a list that ranges from Smokie Norful, Vickie Winans, Donna Summer and Billy Preston, to Keb’ Mo’, Taj Mahal, Lalah Hathaway, India.Arie, Nelly, and G-Love and Special Sauce. Still, jazz remains his prime musical love, and Finnie will be showcasing that side Friday night, heading a top quartet with a roster that includes saxophonist Jovan Quallo, bassist Brian Allen and pianist De Marco Johnson. They will be doing jazz with a classic sensibility and contemporary flair, offering both familiar classics and fresh originals. 8 p.m. at Rudy’s Jazz Room, 809 Gleaves St. RON WYNN

SATURDAY / 7.09 [MAKE MY FUNK THE P-FUNK]

GROOVES FROM THE DEEP AND THE SPACE MATH OF GEORGE CLINTON

When Funkadelic released its self-titled debut album in 1970, they unleashed a brand of guitar-driven funk music that borrowed as much from Jimi Hendrix and Vanilla Fudge as the Motown Sound. Funkadelic founder George Clinton started his career as a young songwriter at the Detroit label, but his creative destiny was waiting for him beyond the Motor City — and ultimately, out of this world. Visual creativity has always

704 18th Ave S. Nashville, TN 37203

been front and center in Clinton’s musical projects, so it seemed only natural when he started showing his own paintings in gallery exhibitions back in the late 1990s.

Show titles like The Mothership Returns and How the West Got Funked Up find Clinton’s “funkology” alive and well — just on white walls instead of black vinyl. Clinton showed his otherworldly multimedia paintings in Miami in the spring, and now he’s bringing Grooves From the Deep and the Space Math of George Clinton to Nashville courtesy of Cëcret by Cë Gallery. Doctor Funkenstein’s Holy Mothership lands this Saturday, July 9, and funks things up through the end of the month. In keeping with Cë Gallery’s speakeasy vibes, gallerygoers are asked to schedule a visit via email: info@cegallery.co.

July 9-31 at Cëcret by Cë Gallery, 516 Houston St. JOE NOLAN [SOME LIKE IT HOT]

AUTHOR EVENT: RACHEL LOUISE MARTIN

In Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story, historian Rachel Louise Martin tackles the complicated history of Nashville’s signature dish. Her research for the book dug deep into the origins of the meal — way back to the kitchens of Black Nashvillians, and eventually to Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, which still survives today. To Martin, the history of hot chicken mirrors Nashville’s history of redlining and urban renewal, which led to the dish being appropriated by white people, some of whom now get rich off the culture and labor of hot chicken’s progenitors. “Systemic racism meant that hot chicken stayed in a corner of Nashville for almost seventy years before it exploded into the rest of the city,” she writes. “When hot chicken left the neighborhood, it did so without taking its progenitors with it.”

It’s now a global phenomenon; restaurants around the world increasingly offer their take on “Nashville hot chicken.” Martin tells Chapter 16 that “this moniker sanitizes and obscures the chicken’s history; it takes the chicken away from the Black family and the Black neighborhoods that produced it; and it lets eaters ignore the way this foodie trend is enriching a number of white restaurateurs.” Martin will discuss her book as part of the TN Writers|TN Stories series at the Tennessee State Museum. She’ll be joined by Khalil Ekulona, host of WPLN’s daytime show This Is Nashville. 10:30 a.m. at the Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. ERICA CICCARONE

FILM

ENTRANCE AND PARKING LOCATED IN THE BACK OF BUILDING

[BEAST MODE]

SUMMER AT THE MOVIES: BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Over the years, I’ve wondered if we cut this indie success story too much slack when it hit theaters a decade ago this summer. (I thought it was OK.) After winning a slew of festival awards — including the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance — Benh Zeitlin’s debut feature was getting hyped up as the next arthouse smash. Critics and audiences were ecstatically won over by the film and adorable star Quvenzhané Wallis, who got a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her leading role as a spunky Louisiana bayou kid. Sure, Zeitlin was clearly getting his Terrence Malick on with this film (Wallis provides introspective voice-over narration that would’ve made the late Linda Manz proud), using nonprofessional actors (the guy who plays Wallis’ unhinged, dying dad is more petulant than she is) to play lowerclass outcasts in a post-Katrina world. But after a recent rewatch, I was reminded how much this still-relevant, rural fable gives us magical realism in a down-and-dirty fashion. But you can see for yourself when the Belcourt offers up several showings of Beasts as part of its ongoing Summer at the Movies series. July 9 & 12 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY SHOPPING

MUSIC

Pixar’s Toy Story is the film that kicked off the computer-generated revolution, and it’s remained one of the best films of its kind over the years. Imitators be damned — the tale of Woody and Buzz eclipses most of the animated films that have come before and since. A big reason for that is Randy Newman’s buoyant score, which adds a sense of mirth and exploration to Woody and Buzz’s grand adventure. This weekend, the Schermerhorn is screening the movie, with the Nashville Symphony playing Newman’s Oscar-nominated score. The Nashville Symphony’s live accompaniments of films are always an electrifying way to revisit a classic. Having the actual music play alongside the movie adds a depth that you just can’t get when watching the film at home — and this time, it’s also an excuse to see a masterpiece on the big screen again.

July 8-10 at the Schermerhorn, 1 Symphony Place CORY WOODROOF

ART

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

BOOKS

FILM

can be undone, and will be undone.” It was the reminder the world needed to hear. Grab your ticket and follow Carlile into the fight.

July 8-9 at Ascend Amphitheater, 310 First Ave. S. MEGAN SELING

[WHEREVER YOU ARE, THAT’S THE PLACE TO BE]

THE BLUE ROOM MARKET

Do you remember hearing about how revolutionary shopping malls were to pop culture in the 1980s? I’ve never quite understood that appeal — until I started going to the local pop-up markets that have been proliferating in Nashville for the past couple years. It really does feel like the perfect way to spend a few hours of your weekend, and I imagine that if Fast Times at Ridgemont High were rebooted in 2022, Stacy and Rat would be working the pop-up circuit as vintage record vendors or taco truck servers. See what the hell I’m talking about at Third Man’s Blue Room on Saturday. Highlights of this iteration of The Blue Room Market will include vendors April Rugs, whose well-priced colorful rugs remind me of a funkier version of Cold Picnic; Hand Wings Ceramics by Ash Atterberry, whose recent exhibition at Julia Martin Gallery was a huge hit; Forestdale Incense, the home fragrance line of prolific local pedal-steel ace Luke Schneider that includes a crackling-wick candle that I’ve

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UPCOMING EVENTS

PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENT FOR TICKETS & UPDATES

THURSDAY, JULY 7

6:30PM

DAVID BELL at PARNASSUS The Finalists

MONDAY, JULY 11

6:30PM

MELISSA ALBERT

with JEFF ZENTNER at PARNASSUS Our Crooked Hearts THURSDAY, JULY 21

6:30PM

LACIE WALDON at PARNASSUS From the Jump

FRIDAY, JULY 22

7:00PM

DANIEL SILVA

with JAMIE GANGEL on ZOOM Portrait of an Unknown Woman MONDAY, JULY 25

6:30PM

CHARLES MARSH

with DAVID DARK at PARNASSUS Evangelical Anxiety 6:30PM

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27

HELENE DUNBAR

with NANCY WERLIN at PARNASSUS The Promise of Lost Things 3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 | Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243 Shop online at parnassusbooks.net @parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks1

@parnassusbooks Parnassus Books

nashvillescene.com | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

4:39 PM

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CRITICS’ PICKS

[DOLL PARTS]

MUSIC

MIDNIGHT MOVIE: DRIVE

[ALL THAT JAZZ]

JAZZ AM

Nashville Jazz Workshop has a busy weekend cooked up for music lovers, beginning with its popular Jazz AM program on Saturday morning. Geared toward children ages 2-10 and their families, this free monthly series allows professional artists to engage with little ones, encouraging creativity and building musical awareness through music, movement, puppets and more. This Saturday’s performance will showcase the music and

[BECAUSE I’M TACKY]

THE TACKY SOUTH LAUNCH PARTY

Good news for people who like books with Dolly Parton on the cover. The Tacky South is a new anthology exploring what shifting notions of tackiness reveal about U.S. culture and the role our region plays in addressing national and global issues of identity.

These 18 essays examine connections between tackiness and the American South, ranging from 19th-century local color fiction and the television series Murder, She Wrote to red velvet cake and the ubiquitous influence of Dolly. Join the book’s editors Katharine A. Burnett and Monica Carol Miller for a thoughtful and fun conversation with Jill Anderson, who contributed one of the essays. No RSVP required — just show up with a mask and $35 in your pocket to buy the book. 5 p.m. at The Bookshop, 1043 W. Eastland Ave. KIM BALDWIN

MONDAY / 7.11 [DRY GOODS]

DRY CLEANING

Dry Cleaning’s 2021 4AD debut New Long Leg was something of a left-field success. Not that the English foursome’s obtuse jangle and free-associative lyrics weren’t bound to captivate listeners and critics with a taste for post-punk (though

CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

COMMUNITY

SUNDAY / 7.10

I maintain that 2018’s Sweet Princess EP is the superior record). But given its relative weirdness, the magnitude of Long Leg’s reach was staggering. When the dust settled, the album was the consensus fifth-most-acclaimed of everything put out all year last year (by critical aggregator Metacritic’s measure). Dry Cleaning looks to keep momentum going, making its longawaited Nashville debut with a new LP — Stumpwork, out this fall — in the can. The short-and-sweet teaser track “Don’t Press Me” boasts the band’s brightest tones and most melodic riffs to date; Florence Shaw’s spoken-word vocals, meanwhile, are more deadpan than before, if that’s even possible.

New Yorkers Weak Signal will open. 7 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St.

[ALL’S FAIR]

DEKALB COUNTY FAIR

The DeKalb County Fair calls itself The Grandpa Fair of the South. It opened in October 1856 — a week later than planned because of snowfall. It’s seen slavery and segregation, tornadoes and flooding, arson and many changes of ownership. The fair is now run by the city of Alexandria, its home of 166 years — which is about an hour east of Nashville. Five bucks will get you in, and $20 will get you unlimited rides on the midway. Events include several beauty pageants, various agricultural competitions, ATV racing, lip-sync battles, a grill-off, a homemade ice cream contest, a cornhole tournament and much more.

Then there are the exhibits — produce, quilts, canning, woodworking and others should make for a nice night of perusing.

Learn more at dekalbcountyfairtn.com. July 11-16 at the DeKalb County Fairgrounds, 102 Fairgrounds Road, Alexandria, Tenn.

ERICA CICCARONE

FILM

legacy of Louis Armstrong, but upcoming programs will feature everyone from Celia Cruz and Ella Fitzgerald to Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. And while you’re there, be sure to check out upcoming programs, master classes and concerts. For example, The Cord Martin Quartet makes its NJW premiere on Saturday, while the monthly NJW Jam Session takes place on Sunday, hosted by Monica Shriver and Chris West.

10 a.m. at Nashville Jazz Workshop, 1012 Buchanan St. AMY STUMPFL

[NIGHT CALL]

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 crime thriller Drive is best remembered for its hip aesthetics — impeccably shot action sequences, a thumping electronic soundtrack, Ryan Gosling’s often poorly replicated embroidered-scorpion satin jacket. But there is indeed quite a bit of substance behind all that style, thanks in large part to a tension-packed script by prolific screenwriter Hossein Amini. In addition to a frustratingly cool performance from Gosling, the film features Christina Hendricks and Oscar Isaac in relatively small roles — the latter shortly before his meteoric rise to stardom — along with Carey Mulligan as the romantic lead and Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman as the film’s heavies. It’s slick as can be, but it isn’t just empty calories, having landed on loads of year-end lists — including that of Roger Ebert, who wrote that Drive “looks like one kind of thriller in the ads, and it is that kind of thriller, but also another and a rebuke to most of the movies it looks like.” This one should go down smooth as a Midnight Movie this weekend at everyone’s favorite arthouse theater. Midnight at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Blvd. D. PATRICK RODGERS

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DRY CLEANING

BOOKS

FILM

On Saturday, Drkmttr hosts a night of music with proceeds benefiting the Asian American Feminist Collective, a New York City-based grassroots organization committed to, per their website, “engaging in intersectional feminist politics grounded within our diasporic communities.” It’s an important cause, and a great lineup. Artists include indie-pop artist Yej, local singersongwriter Cassie Joy, local grunge-folk duo Sayryn and cellist Sydney Lee. The show is all ages, though the venue does require attendees to bring a form of ID. Your COVID-19 vaccine card or proof of negative test within 48 hours of the show are also required for entry. The $15 door fee is cash only. 7 p.m. at Drkmttr, 1111 Dickerson Pike BRITTNEY McKENNA

PHOTO: BEN RAYNER

NOT YOUR CHINA DOLL: A BENEFIT FOR THE ASIAN AMERICAN FEMINIST COLLECTIVE

MUSIC

MUSIC

been burning obsessively ever since I snagged one at the Great Trinity Bazaar last month — it’s a perfect balance between cozy-spicy cinnamon and hippie-witchy essential oils. DJ sets by Disco Rodeo and DJ Los will accompany the market, which turns into a karaoke party hosted by Jemina Pearl at 8 p.m. 2-8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

[MOVE OVER ROVER]

MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: MONTEREY POP

It may not have been the only time Jimi Hendrix lit his guitar on fire onstage, but when he did it June 1967 at the Monterey International Pop Festival, it was enshrined in D.A. Pennebaker’s 1968 documentary Monterey Pop as one of rock ’n’ roll’s defining moments. The film showcases the three-day festival, which catapulted the careers of several folks we now consider household names. In fact, it’s kind of hard to believe how many future icons were present, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and

NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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CRITICS’ PICKS

SISSI DRAG COMPETITION FEAT. CYA INHALE & VIDALIA ANNE GENTRY

For reasons completely beyond all comprehension, a certain hyper-puritanical wing of the Republican Party has turned its ire to drag queens during an election season. With sky-high gas prices and record inflation, one would think it would make more sense to appeal to the pocketbooks of voters instead of attacking the fabulous handbags of drag queens. It would certainly be less lame. There are many First Rules of Politics, and surely one of them must be “Don’t attack drag queens, because you will lose,” as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (great drag name, by the way) is learning. After the former local TV news haircut joined the drag-hate parade, a wellknown local queen read her for filth in the newspaper and brought receipts. Lake, who apparently liked fun things before her brain was infested with idiot-worms, has, in fact, enjoyed drag performances in her life — she palled around with the most fabulous queens in the Valley of the Sun and even attended an at-home drag performance. (She hilariously claimed it was not a drag queen, but a “Marilyn Monroe impersonator”; oh honey.)

WEDNESDAY / 7.13 [THE TWO GENDERS]

QUEER QLASSICS: BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER

Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I saw few joyful depictions of queerness in media, and certainly none about kids like me. I was already in college when Jamie Babbit’s campy satire But I’m a Cheerleader came out, and I missed it entirely until my late 30s. It’s a starkly original coming-of-age story that wasn’t exactly a box-office hit, but has gained a cult following over the past 20-plus years. Good girl Megan (Natasha Lyonne) leads the life of a quintessential hetero teen: She’s pretty and popular, dates a football player and is even on the cheerleading squad. But something is amiss, and her family and friends stage an intervention. She’s been sporting all the telltale signs of lesbianism — eating tofu, listening to Melissa Etheridge, decorating her room with Georgia O’Keeffe-esque artwork. They even bring in rehabilitated ex-gay Mike (RuPaul) to explain her

condition and tell her about the cure. Off Megan goes to conversion camp, where the rules are vague but strict, and bad girl Graham (Clea DuVall) is there to interpret: “You get caught in the throes of sodomy and au revoir,” she quips and takes a drag off of her cigarette. Forced to act out Adam and Eve, play football (for the boys) and change baby dolls (for the girls), the young gays can’t catch a break until two ex-ex-gays come to the rescue. In reality, conversion therapy is not funny, but Babbit brilliantly satirizes the process of trying to fit square pegs into … well, you get it. But I’m a Cheerleader is a joyful, poignant film in the queer canon, and there’s no better way to see it than in the Belcourt’s Queer Qlassics series. 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. ERICA CICCARONE MUSIC

[WHAT A DRAG]

Anyway, drag queens are awesome, and two of Nashville’s best — Cya Inhale and Vidalia Anne Gentry — are co-hosting the SiSSi Drag Competition at Exit/In. The third and final round of the latest cycle of the eleganza extravaganza will feature the top three performers from the first two rounds each performing twice, with the winner chosen by judges and the audience — and going home with $500. 8 p.m. at Exit/In, 2208 Elliston Place J.R. LIND

FILM

DRAG

Ravi Shankar among them — not to mention Simon and Garfunkel, The Who and The Mamas and the Papas. Even if you’re plenty acquainted with these artists more than 50 years later, seeing the flames, performances and outfits in 4K on the big screen will be a real thrill. Catch it at the Belcourt’s ongoing Music City Monday series. 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. AMANDA HAGGARD

[NO STATIC AT ALL]

STEELY DAN

If you’re a Steely Dan fan, you probably don’t need a reminder that the singular jazz-infused rock band — sadly, minus cofounder Walter Becker, who died in 2017 — is playing FirstBank Amphitheater in Franklin. If you feel like the group is only good for supplying trivia answers — “What band is named after a sex toy in a William S. Burroughs novel and had an album cover designed by actor Phil Hartman?” — and making cocaine jazz for nerds, you probably don’t care that they’re coming. If you’re somewhere in the middle and are curious, I’ll point you to outstanding songsmith (and cartoonist, and painter) Aimee Mann’s conversation with Sound Opinions’ Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis about five albums

that shaped her work. In her discussion of Steely Dan’s 1972 debut Can’t Buy a Thrill, Mann gets about as close as humanly possible to pinpointing the amorphous appeal of the Dan. So much about their music — from their unique choices in melodies, chord changes and arrangements to singer-keyboardist Donald Fagen’s voice — doesn’t work on paper, but in practice, it’s fascinating pop music. There’s a weird, erudite presentation of machismo in many of Steely Dan’s lyrics that Mann correctly calls out as misogynistic. But she also notes that there seem to be layers of trauma being processed, too; while it doesn’t excuse the attitude, it helps put it in context. In a display of irony that might make a good song, Mann was booked as an opener on Steely Dan’s summer tour but was taken off the bill, which she understood to be because Fagen & Co. didn’t think their audience would care to hear a woman singer-songwriter. It seems that Fagen and Mann are on good terms, at least: In a statement, Fagen took responsibility for what he calls a miscommunication and a “screwup.” Later, he responded to a request from Mann on Twitter by writing to her with an explanation of the Thrill song “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me),” which turns out to be about a real winner of a neighbor he once had. However, the tour is set with The Dave Stryker Trio opening; while Stryker can’t offer anything like Mann’s incisive songwriting, he’ll bring refined and widely praised jazz guitar chops to the gig. 8 p.m. at FirstBank Amphitheater, 4525 Graystone Quarry Lane, Franklin STEPHEN TRAGESER

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July 8

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MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD

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TOO GOOD TO BE BREW A handful of Nashville breweries are offering exceptional dining fare

BY ASHLEY BRANTLEY, STEVE CAVENDISH & D. PATRICK RODGERS SOUTHERN GRIST

SOUTHERN GRIST’S SUMMER BLUEBERRY SALAD

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SOUTHERN GRIST’S CAVATELLI

nashvillescene.com | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS

Late last year, local brewery Southern Grist — established in 2016 — upgraded its East Side digs with a move to a bigger spot on Douglas Avenue. Grist also has a taproom in the Nations, but it’s clear that with the Douglas location, owners Kevin Antoon, Jamie Lee and Jared Welch wanted to place a heightened emphasis on the food program.

They brought in executive chef Andrew Coins and his sous chef Kenji Nakagawa — both formerly of Miel — to head the restaurant concept they christened Lauter, named after a beer-brewing process.

What Coins and Nakagawa have accomplished at Lauter is, in short, pretty special.

The restaurant rotates its menu. There’s an abbreviated late-night menu toward the end of service and all-day brunch offerings on Sundays. For our purposes, we’ll focus on a few dishes that are on offer with some regularity at the moment.

Among the shared plates, there are light items, like a summery blueberry salad with a complex array of flavors — the bright, ripe berries cut through the savory pestocoated cucumber and pickled kohlrabi. On the heavier side, there’s a rich cavatelli that I have difficulty not defaulting to every time. The flavor of the smoked mozzarella and the texture of the rich, plump pasta are addictive.

On the snack menu, Lauter’s crab claws and bao buns demonstrate Coins’ ability to take seemingly typical bar-menu standbys and elevate them, creating something entirely new and unusual. The crab claws are small, powerful bursts of umami — prepared with smoked butter, aleppo, lemon and pea tendrils — while the burnt-sugar roast pork bao buns are about as good as any buns in town, and the crispy vinegar potatoes are ideal for sharing.

Sunday brunch is served from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m., and offers some creative turns as well. A spicy shrimp with sushi rice is spiked with tart flavors from chili-tamarind cucumbers and turmeric squash. The Sunday menu also offers more conventional fare, like excellent biscuits and tasty Danish pastry.

Considering the wide array of inventive dishes on Lauter’s menu, it was my fifth or sixth visit before I finally decided to try the

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FOOD AND DRINK burger. But, surprise, it’s as unusual and tasty as pretty much everything else Lauter has. The dry-aged burger is topped with fontal cheese, half-and-half pickles, “burger sauce” (a zippy, Thousand Island-esque sauce), onion and smoked Worcestershire.

I’m a firm believer that hamburgers are to be eaten with your hands, but this gloriously messy offering might force you to pick up your fork by the final bites. Bonus: Make it even sloppier by adding “mushroom gravy” for an additional $4. Wash it down with a Summer Crisp — Southern Grist’s tart, citrusy lager.

There’s more, and I haven’t had it all yet.

I’m working my way through the menu. But so far, every single item at Southern Grist’s Lauter is better than brewery food has any right to be. DPR

There’s a moment in the oven when good pepperoni, with the help of several hundred degrees, begins to curl on top of a pizza.

Slowly, each slice of meat starts to render just a little, leaving tiny pools of pork fat in the bottom as the sides form little bowls. If the pizza is cooked properly, it will stay under the heat until the very top edges of the meat begin to blacken just a touch.

This is what has happened on every Pepperoni Pie I’ve ordered at Smith & Lentz.

It’s a sublime combination of simple, classic flavors: crushed tomato sauce, garlic, mozzarella and oregano. A small drizzle of hot honey adds an occasional sweet note.

I always knew that I would love Smith & Lentz’s pizzas when they brought in Chris

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

SMITH & LENTZ

SMITH & LENTZ’S PEPPERONI PIE

DeJonge from Folk to start up their program. You can’t make a truly great pizza without great dough, and DeJonge’s crust is damn near perfect. It’s maybe a touch thicker than some of the other wood-oven or Neapolitan-style pies around town, and it really works.

There are only six pies on the menu, and five of them are vegetarian. You can add soppressata or anchovies to the Red Pie or the White Pie, but quite frankly, you don’t need to if you’re just looking for great flavor. A better move is to “take your pie to prom” for an extra $2 by adding Parmesan, extra oregano and chili flakes to your pizza, and getting the crusts brushed with garlic butter.

But back to that Pepperoni Pie. My argument about pizza places is generally that you have to be superior at the classic American favorite before you can be called great.

The Smith & Lentz version is my new platonic ideal for what a pepperoni pizza should be. The ratio of crust to toppings is perfect, and there’s a complete balance of flavors.

Take a bite and the gooey cheese will stretch between your mouth and the slice. (Unless of course you use a fork and knife like some kind of sociopath.)

Having written enough “best of” lists in my lifetime, I know that calling something “the best” is often a fool’s errand. Nobody has eaten at every place or tried every style.

But let me just put it to you like this: If you ask me if I want to get pizza, I’m going to suggest Smith & Lentz first. SC

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

FIVE MORE BREWERY BITES Fat Bottom Brewery: Bavarian Pretzels + Ruby American Red Ale

Bearded Iris Brewing: Onigiri & Sunomono + Hallucination Sour

TailGate Brewery: Pepperoni Feta Pizza + Orange Wheat

Monday Night Brewing: Cheese Box + The Tiger That Killed My Father

What makes a pretzel Bavarian?

Apparently, it’s lye — a corrosive ingredient used to make soap.

Yummy! But seriously, lye is what gives German pretzels their crisp, brown outside while the inside stays soft. (And the caustic qualities of lye disappear when baked, so you’re safe there.) Now, I don’t know how authentic the Bavarian pretzels at Fat Bottom Brewery are, but I do know this: They are good. The oversized pretzel sticks have the right chew, just enough coarse salt and a surprising butteriness that’s similar to garlic bread. They come with a sinusclearing mustard and a decadent beer cheese. So grab a Ruby Red American Ale to drink and double down on the dips, because beer and cheese? Two things you can never have too much of. AB

Bearded Iris is not for the faint of heart. Their funky beers are hop-forward, which means they need strong, flavorful food to stand up to them. Enter Black Dynasty Secret Ramen House.

While I think their ramen is OK, they excel at small plates. Their crispy rice snacks — which are more like confit-stuffed arancini than onigiri — are packed with every damn thing you can think of: chashu pork, teriyaki chicken, scallions, chipotle, collard greens, cream cheese, bonito! Then they’re deep-fried and served with more scallions, nori powder and miso-basil dressing. To balance the nuclear nature of these gut bombs, pair them with a Hallucination Sour — it’s got papaya and passionfruit for brightness — and the sunomono. Their cucumber salad is made with green tomato, vinegar, seaweed and chili honey, and it’s secretly the best thing on the menu. AB

Much like Jackalope’s Lovebird, TailGate’s Orange Wheat started out as a seasonal release — and then the people revolted. Well, more likely, the people bought so much of it no matter the season that the folks at TailGate decided to make the zingy, creamy ale available year-round. However it happened, it’s a win for diners. The beer’s citrusy notes pair perfectly with the Pepperoni Feta Pizza.

What makes this pie so satisfying? Well, it’s pepperoni pizza, so it’s the ultimate comfort food. But by simply adding fresh slices of roma tomatoes and zesty feta to the gooey mozzarella, TailGate gives you a pie that’s a little fancy, a lot familiar and tasty all the way down. AB

I’ve never understood why brewery food is so heavy. If drinking a beer is equivalent to eating two slices of bread, why throw 10,000 more carby calories on top?

Sometimes a snack is all you need, and that’s all you’ll get at Monday Night Brewing. Grab their cheese box — Brie, fontina, Tillamook sharp cheddar — and gussy up your crackers with Castelvetrano olives, figs, chocolate-covered almonds, local honey and the like.

Then take your pick of seats in their Germantown taproom, which is easily Nashville’s most beautiful. The old meatpacking facility is kid- and pet-friendly, has actual waterfront seating — including an outdoor “Boiler Room” where they play movies (Bueller? Bueller?)

— and an airy taproom that also packs a full bar for the non-beerlovers among you. If, however, you are there for the suds, order their maple-bourbon-vanilla stout, because how can you not get a beer called The Tiger That Killed My Father? AB

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Tennessee Brew Works: Baja Fish Tacos + Walk the Lime Walk the Lime has long been one of my favorite local beers. The zippy wheat brew is crisp and refreshing, which is why — according to the folks who make it — you should pair it with two things: seafood and Mexican food. With their Baja Fish Tacos, you can do both.

The fish is battered in State Park Blonde ale, glazed with savory miso and topped with crunchy slaw. Most importantly, you must add on their McDonald’s-level shoestring fries and house-made ketchup. Why, you ask, would you do such a thing since everyone knows house-made ketchup is garbage? Because it’s not really ketchup — it’s really a ketchupy barbecue sauce made with Basil Ryeman saison, and it’s a tangy, addictive dipper. AB

NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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The juiciest week of the year is back July 11-17 with 40+ restaurants serving up their wildest, cheesiest, most delicious burgers for just $7!

Readers can then vote for their favorite burgs of the week and help crown the best burgers in town.

how it works 1

next page Check out the list of participating restaurants and their featured Burger Week special.

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Visit www.sceneburgerweek.com for restaurant hours and locations to plot out your route for #SceneBurgerWeek22.

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Show up and chow down! Tickets are not required, but be patient as waits may be long, and some restaurants could run out of their Burger Week special. Follow them on social media for updates throughout the week.

S c a n to v ie w ou r in te ra ctiv e m a p

and find a participating location near you.

sponsored by

july 11-17. $7 speciality burgers for one. week. only. nashvillescene.com | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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Five Points BOT Burger Toasted brioche bun, creamy brie, bacon, beef patty, jalapeño & onion jam.

ParTiciPatiNg ResTaurAnts Check out the delicious burgs that participating restaurants are serving up for one week only!

Make sure to ask your server for the “Scene Burger Week special” for the $7 price.

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

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5 Points Diner & Bar

Another Broken Egg Cafe

Sylvan Park The Ultimate Breakfast Benedict Burger Seasoned all beef burger patty with grilled smoked ham & baked bacon, served on a toasted Brioche bun and topped with an over-medium egg, jalapeno-infused hollandaise, green onions and paprika.

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Bad Axe Nashville

The Gulch Breaking Paint 6oz all-beef patty topped with Swiss cheese, caramelized onions, fried egg and a slice smoked brisket.

NASHVILLE

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Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar

Beyond the Edge

East Nashville Titan Burger 6oz of hand pattied beef, seasoned with house burger spice and served with lettuce, tomato and onion on a toasted bun.

City Winery

Brown’s Diner

Graze Nashville

East Nashville BBQ Bacon Burger A house-made veggie burger topped with melted cheese, seitan bacon, pickles and a bourbon BBQ sauce; all served on a toasted burger bun.

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Grillshack Fries & Burgers

Germantown Grillshack Burger The Grillshack Burger is built for burger purists, no frills — but all the better to let the flavor of the best local grass-fed beef and bakery rolls come through. Served with Schwartz’s pickle slices and garden garnish on the side.

Downtown Tennessee Smash Burger Smash Burger with American cheese, fried green tomato, bacon, smoked pulled pork, apple slaw, and bourbon raspberry drizzle, served with a side of fries and garlic aioli sauce for dipping.

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Drake’s Come Play

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Hard Rock Café

The Hart

Cool Springs Southern Comfort Burger A fresh, never frozen Old Bay-seasoned burger with creamy pimento cheese, crunchy potato chips, mayo & fresh cut toppings on a warm butter-toasted bun.

Chestnut Hill Kahuna Double Burger Made with KLD beef patties, the Kahuna Double Burger is stacked with shredded lettuce, American cheese, teriyaki and “sauce” all piled high on a Hawaiian bun.

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El Paseo Cantina

The Nations Cantina Burger Fresh burger patty served with lettuce, mayo, American cheese, jalapeño, avocado and served on top of fresh buns.

Served with a side of onion rings.

Fable Lounge

Germantown Pub

Germantown Nashville Hot Burger Fresh ground beef patty with signature spice rub and secret Jalapeño based sauce, pico de gallo and pepper jack cheese topped with a toasted brioche bun and a fried jalapeño.

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The Horn

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Nolensville The Mary Poppins Porter Road Butcher ground beef topped with Cajun seasoning, a thick slice of American, smokey Benton’s bacon, mayo, and pickled jalapeños.

The Nations The Greek 100% ground lamb burger made with special beer and house-made seasonings, on a bed of olive tapenade, topped with chipotle garlic tzatziki, lettuce, tomato and onion, all on top of a Martin’s potato bun.

D J B A on

Downtown Clyde’s Burger Single beef patty with American cheese, bacon, tomato, lettuce, red onion, house pickles, Duke’s mayo and whole grain mustard on a soft roll.

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Fat Bottom Taproom

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B M Th w w Th

Murfreesboro Road Cheeseburger Sambusa The Cheeseburger Sambusa is a new twist on a classic cheeseburger in a sambusa and served with chipotle mayo.

NASHVILLE

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O O B

Hifi Clyde’s

Midtown Fable American Kobe Burger Not one but two Kobe Beef Patties, grace the perfectly branded bun, cooked to perfection and topped with smoked white cheddar and bacon jam.

#SceneBurgerWeek22

NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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Downtown City Winery Burger The City Winery burger is made from a high-quality house blend beef and is topped with a garlic herb aioli, red winebraised onion, brie, lemon-dressed arugula and gherkin pickles on a brioche bun. It pairs perfectly with the Reserve Cabernet!

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Hillsboro Village The Brown’s Classic The longest standing burger in Nashville, served since 1927, The Brown’s Classic is a burger run through the garden, with or without cheese. The culinary invention of the wheel!

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The Gulch & Lenox Village The Drive Thru Burger Angus beef patty topped with American cheese, pickle chips, diced onion, lettuce and made-in-house BR Sauce.

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NASHVILLE

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Burger Republic

NASHVILLE

Murfreesboro BD’s All American with Cheese 7oz Angus beef patty, cooked the way you like with American cheese, ketchup, yellow mustard, shredded lettuce, tomato, red onion & pickles.

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Five Points The Smokehouse Burger Single smash patty, bacon, pepper jack cheese, fried pickles and BBQ sauce.

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Burger & Company

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Hoss’ Loaded Burgers

Huckleberry Brewing Company

Franklin Our burger special coming soon! Check Burger Week website for updates.

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Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint

Germantown & Edgehill When In Roam 100% wagyu beef patty topped with chipotle pimento cheese, American cheese, jalapeño bacon jam and crispy fried onions.

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John A’s

Opry Mills Our burger special coming soon! Check Burger Week website for updates.

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JWB Grill

Downtown JWB Smash Burger Black Angus double patty, caramelized onion, Gifford’s bacon, American cheese, signature sauce, pickle, lettuce, and tomato on a potato bun. Served with French fries.

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Little Blue Menu

Midtown Bacon Burger (single) Fresh potato bun with never frozen Butcher’s Blend ground beef patty, thick cut bacon, aged cheddar cheese, romaine lettuce, tomato, Kosher dill pickles and Arctic Fox Sauce™.

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The Little Weirdo at Otto’s

Sylvan Park The Weirdo Club Burger Two special seasoned Impossible patties topped with American cheese, onion and brown sugar confit with weirdo sauce on a toasted bun. 100% vegan. Don’t be scared, it’s just plants.

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MOOYAH Burgers, Fries & Shakes

Brentwood & Cool Springs MDC The MDC is the MOOYAH Double Cheeseburger. It’s prepared with two patties (half-pound) on a home baked potato bun with American cheese, lettuce, tomato and MOOYAH sauce.

The beef is Angus certified beef.

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Moxy Rooftop

Downtown The Moxy Rooftop Burger Two 4oz short rib patties with red onion jam, pecan smoked slab bacon, melted Cypress Grove Humbolt Fog cheese, buttermilk fried shallots in-between butter toasted Brioche bun. Served with signature duck fat house fries.

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Nashville Grange

Downtown Spiced Lamb Pita Burger A spiced lamb pita burger with feta, tzatziki, mint and parsley salad and Castelvetrano olives.

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The Nashville Jam Co.

Berry Hill I Bought the Farm Burger The “I Bought the Farm” burger is an amalgamation of the whole darn farm on a single burger! Black Angus meets Gifford’s bacon, ground together, smashed down and grilled till golden brown. Then, placed on a brioche bun and topped with other major farm to fork players including green tomatoes and a sunny side up egg. The burger is finished off with pimento cheese and Nashville Jam Co’s 6 Pepper Jelly!

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Peachtree Grill

Berry Hill Peach & Pimento Burger 6 oz. Angus beef patty, Maplewood bacon, jalapeno peach chutney, house-pimento cheese, lettuce & tomato on a Kaiser bun.

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Pharmacy Burger Parlor & Beer Garden

East Nashville Black & Blue A smashed burger patty topped with Gifford’s bacon, blue cheese, house-made garlic aioli, red onion, whole-leaf lettuce and tomato.

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Rosie’s Twin Kegs

Berry Hill Keg Burger “Keg Burger” with locally sourced beef, locally made bun, mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion.

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Slider House

Midtown The Sleepers Two fresh ground beef sliders sitting atop a fried macaroni and cheese bite, topped with a slice of country ham, pepper jack cheese and homemade Benton’s bacon jam topping on white buns.

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Smokin’ Thighs

Sylvan Park & Wedgewood Houston Flying Hawaiian The Flying Hawaiian is a 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! The perfect summertime burger best enjoyed on the patio.

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Stay Golden Coffee Co.

Sidco Drive The Heirloom Classic beef burger topped with bacon, heirloom tomato and maple mustard aioli on a Martin’s bun.

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Stock & Barrel

The Gulch The Bernie Mitchell Family Farms beef topped with beer battered jalapeños, blue cheese crumbles, blueberry preserves and bacon.

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Stompin’ Grounds

Downtown Broadway Bacon Double Stack Two beef patties, creamy American cheese sauce, crispy Applewood smoked bacon, fresh lettuce and house-made Louie sauce.

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Tasty & Delicious Burger

Nolensville Road Tasty & Delicious Burger Housemade BBQ bacon burger.

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Tavern

Midtown The Urban Cowboy Wagyu blend patty, Coca-Cola BBQ brisket, bibb lettuce, dill pickles, crispy fried onion strings, western aioli all on a brioche bun.

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The Whiskey Shot

Downtown Our burger special coming soon! Check Burger Week website for updates.

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Germantown Sonny’s Smothered Smashburger (Triple S) Certified Angus beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy pork belly, candied jalapeño, fried shoestring onions and mayo. Smothered with BCE (Big Cheese Energy) cheese sauce on a Kaiser roll.

Cool Springs “Dani California” Burger Inspired by their favorite rock band, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, coming to Nashville, Wilco Fusion Grill presents the “Dani California” Burger with homemade mango habanero jam, spring mix, tomatoes, white cheddar, charred raisins, grilled red onions and avocado mayo, topped with southern candied bacon.

Sonny’s Patio Pub and Refuge

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Wilco Fusion Grill

South Side Kitchen & Pub

South Nashville Chi-Town Burger Quarter pound smash patty, house roasted Italian beef, mozzarella, hot giardiniera and giardiniera comeback sauce on a locally baked Kaiser roll.

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Stationary & ERGO at Union Station

Downtown Charbroiled brisket burger with house pickles, shredded lettuce, onion confit, special sauce and a brioche bun. Served with pomme frites.

Eat Burgers.

Win Prizes.

Join the Burger Week Passport.

see details

nashvillescene.com | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE Don’t forget to vote for your favorite burg of the week and help crown the Best Burger in town!

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how to UsE

youR buRger weeK paSspoRt 1

downLoad app Download the free EventBattle app via the App Store or Google Play

ComE kiCk-oFf BurGer week witH us!

Monday July 11 5-7:30PM

Live music, drink specials, photo booth fun and most importantly,

BURGERS!

JWB Grill

Plus, earn 100 points in your Burger Week passport just by showing up!

inside the Margaritaville Hotel Nashville

EntEr tHe gAme Code

Enter the game code “BURG” and create your account. Input your email address, create your nickname and upload a profile photo.

3

4

VieW taSks And takE phOtos

colLect 100 poiNts Or mOrE

Browse the participating restaurants to learn more about their burgers and check out other available tasks. Then, visit any participating restaurant and order their Burger Week special. Open the app, click on the restaurant “task” and snap a photo of your burger. This will automatically credit you points into your passport! Each task = uploading a photo in the app.

Free to attend no RSVP necessary

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Once you’ve collected 100 points, you’ll automatically be entered to win our GRAND PRIZE (over $300 in value). The more points you earn, the more likely you are to win! You can even check the EventBattle Leaderboard to see your standings and check out the competition.

PreSentEd bY

VotE foR youR FavOritE! At the conclusion of your #SceneBurgerWeek22 indulgences, vote for your favorite burgers of the week 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 2023 World Food Championships and most importantly, Best Burger Bragging Rights.

Voting runs Monday, July 11-Monday, July 18 26

Share your droolworthy burger pics!

How to WIn: Show off your delicious burgers for your chance to be featured on The Scene’s social media and win prizes!

Post your photo to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, tag the participating Burger Week restaurant and @nashvillescene and use #SceneBurgerWeek22!

The Scene will be resharing the tastiest pics all week long, so POST POST POST!

sceNebuRgerWeek.cOm | #scEnebUrgeRWeeK22

NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

#SceneBurgerWeek22

ART

CRAWL SPACE PART 2: JULY 2022 The Fourth of the July holiday means a Second Saturday for Nashville gallerygoers

I

SCOTT ZIEHER AT MODFELLOWS GALLERY

n a perfect world, every gallery in Nashville would participate in an art crawl on the First Saturday of the month. But ongoing concerns regarding COVID-19 mean that lowlevel chaos reigns when it comes to organizing across a city’s greater gallery scene. The cracks became more visible this month when the Fourth of July holiday weekend split Nashville’s gallery community in half. A bunch of galleries held Saturday receptions last week, but some notable spaces opted to hold off until July 9.

EAST NASHVILLE

The Red Arrow Gallery will open a show of new paintings by Julian Rogers Saturday night. Rogers had a solo show at the gallery back in 2019, but has taken a step back from painting to travel and camp. This new collection features images of cloudy skies that originate as photographs, which the artist manipulates digitally and then turns into oilon-canvas paintings. The results are sometimes stunning abstract images created with realistic painting techniques informed by otherworldly palettes. Stop by the opening reception on Saturday between 6 and 9 p.m.

WEDGEWOOD-HOUSTON

Unrequited Leisure opens a new two-person video show on Saturday night. Sarah Lasley’s

“ANCESTOR WORSHIP ,” SCOTT ZIEHER

BY JOE NOLAN

short experimental films explore the intersection of feminist themes and pop culture, often with a welcome and winning sense of humor. George Jenne’s videos are sometimes preoccupied with movies or food, and they often feature text or narration and bizarre performances. Jenne’s stuff can be funny too, and he and Lasley will make a good match in Unrequited Leisure’s cozy digs at The Packing Plant. Unrequited Leisure is open from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturdays, and its official opening reception is from 5 until 8 p.m.

The Modfellows Gallery WedgewoodHouston outpost at The Packing Plant opened its new show of collages by Scott Zieher on Thursday, June 30, and they’ll also be open this Saturday night for the Second Saturday evening shenanigans. Zieher — of ZieherSmith Gallery — is a poet and an artist in his own right, and these collages juxtapose elements from midcentury advertising with images from art history on vintage letterhead stationery. History, memory and nostalgia blend here to make new meanings and messages.

Also this Saturday, Grooves From the Deep, and the Space Math of George Clinton will land at Cëcret by Cë Gallery on Houston Street.

(Yes, that George Clinton.) Read more about that in our Critics’ Picks on p. 15.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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7/1/22 1:29 PM

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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QUINTESSENTIAL OBSERVER

Brandon Taylor on his Southern roots and the joys of analog

BY CHRIS MOODY

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N D A ES SU

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of what I call my Midwestern quartet. My first four books are either set in Madison or Iowa City, and they alternate between the two. It’s a novel about a group of people in a year in Iowa City. It’s kind of like a relay among all these different characters. The book opens with a poet, and very quickly from there we encounter a guy who works in a meatpacking plant, a woman who gives swim lessons, dancers, artists and an amateur pornographer.

Hopefully the book speaks to some of the absurdities of trying to figure out who you are and what you want in this wacky age of ours.

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

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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LY

You’ve gotten into film photography lately and seem to really embrace analog products. When you shift to analog, does that change the way you think

What can you share about your next book, The Late Americans? The Late Americans is a part

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family. One of my uncles collected Bibles, and during the summer one of his means of keeping me busy was having me copy down passages for him. We had all these different Bibles and religious texts around the house.

We went to church every Sunday. I went to vacation Bible school. I grew up reading the Bible and singing hymns.

My characters are often beset by a childhood faith that haunts them and follows them for the rest of their lives. They can never quite escape that first essential education in the ways and words of God. The Bible has always been there haunting me in ways interesting, good and bad.

evolved. Earlier in my writing life, I would have been like, “Yes, of course, I’ve lived with a white overculture my whole life.” I understand white people very well because I’ve been bombarded with stories told from a white point of view. But as I’ve matured as a writer and as a person, what I’ve realized about my own writing — and art in general — is where I start from, regardless of whatever affinities I have or do not have for the character, I always start from a place of ignorance with a character. What I try to do is understand who they are, what motivates them, what moves them, what they’re afraid of, what they need. I try to understand their lives. Regardless of whatever I think I understand about that character, I always assume that I know nothing. I try not to make assumptions, and I make my way through.

A lot of my writing is guess and check, as we used to say in science. A lot of it is trying to be sensitive and emphatic and curious about people’s lives and trying to portray a living, breathing person on the page.

That job is hard enough. Am I affording this character a full, robust humanity? Am I being cliché? Am I doing my job, which is ultimately to honor this character’s life?

It’s a lot of asking myself really uncomfortable questions and trying to interrogate my own biases and blind spots. For me the best way to do that is to make no assumptions at the onset.

York and went full analog. I went even further into film photography, I bought a new record player, and I got into fountain pens.

I got into film photography because I was going through this intense period of writer’s block and had this novel that I just wasn’t able to get going. I was so miserable.

I thought, what if I never write again? I need to be OK with that. I would need something else to do with my life. I had always wanted to try film photography, but I never thought that I was a person who would be able to figure it out. It was so nice to be not tethered to instant feedback. I was learning a new skill and had permission to be bad at it for as long as I wanted to. I had no ego attached at all. I was teaching myself everything I could learn about photography. It was just really nice to be able to go out for three hours in Iowa City and take pictures. To escape the dread of never being able to write again.

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Your book opens with an epigraph from the Gospel of John. What role has the Bible played in your life? I grew up in a really religious Baptist

As a Black writer, is writing white characters a challenge at all? My answer to this has

versus being online? I feel like I moved to New

AK

didn’t feel like I could write about the South because I was too close to it. When you’re too close, you can’t really see it. Whenever I would try to write about a character in the South, I would feel kind of paralyzed by all the things that I knew. I would feel like I was constantly getting something wrong when I tried to write about the South. So I started writing about the Midwest. I write about the Midwest a lot because I know a lot about that as a setting, but I think spiritually, and maybe psychically, my characters feel quite Southern to me.

I feel like a lot of my characters, even though they’re in the Midwest, they’re often displaced to the Midwest. I was there as an outsider and a quintessential observer.

It’s where I learned to write real stories, in a sense.

Oftentimes that is one of the more common responses I get in my work. People are often shocked at that.

They realize the extent they have been assuming a white centrality in literature. They’ll read one of my stories and say, “This felt very familiar to me, and then I found out the character was Black and I had been assuming the character was white.” We all come to books and stories with assumptions. I think the really best stories illuminate those assumptions to us in ways that are illustrative, instructive and hopefully moving and instructive, and not too destructive. It can be disorienting for readers.

E V ENT

You grew up in Alabama. You’ve lived in the Midwest, and now you’re in New York City. Is there a region you feel has shaped you the most? I

Many of your stories portray white characters seen from the perspective of nonwhite characters, which can be quite revealing for white readers. One of your stories reads, “White people had a vast hunger for the calamities of others.” Have you had responses from white readers who felt they had never had that kind of self-reflection before?

L

B

randon Taylor, the Alabamaborn writer whose 2020 debut novel Real Life was a finalist for the Booker Prize, tries to avoid setting his stories in the South. “I didn’t feel like I could write about the South because I was FILTHY ANIMALS too close to it,” he

BY BRANDON TAYLOR RIVERHEAD BOOKS says. “When you’re 288 PAGES, $16 too close, you can’t really see it.” The Midwest — particularly Iowa and Wisconsin — has served as the primary milieu for his characters.

His bestselling book of short stories Filthy Animals won the 2021/22 Story Prize and has just been released in paperback.

His forthcoming novel, The Late Americans, will be published in 2023. Taylor is an editor-at-large at The Sewanee Review, and he writes critical essays on his Substack, sweater weather. He currently lives in New York City.

Taylor answered questions via email.

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MUSIC

RIDING AGAIN

Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies repay their fans with The Long Goodbye reunion shows

BY DARYL SANDERS

G

uitarist Rick White never expected his old band the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies to perform again. After all, their last show was nearly two decades ago. But that didn’t stop him from quickly saying yes when lead singer Mike Farris called and suggested they reunite for some shows, one of which will be Saturday at The Caverns.

“Mike was the one that instigated all this, and I do have to admit I was a bit surprised when he called,” White says. “But I was like, ‘Yeah, man, I can’t pass it up, a chance to play the songs again with you guys. It’ll PLAYING JULY 9 AT THE be a lot of fun.’ ” CAVERNS AND JULY 15-17 AT 3RD AND LINDSLEY White was surprised to hear from Farris because it had been the singer’s decision to leave the band and pursue a solo career that brought about the Wheelies’ demise. His departure ended a successful run in the ’90s for the group, a stretch highlighted by a trio of hard-hitting blues-rock albums for Atlantic and Capricorn, and a series of electrifying performances while on tour with headlining rock acts such as Meat-

loaf, Joan Osborne and the Allman Brothers.

“The Southern rock revival — that’s what they were calling it, you know, with us and Brother Cane and Cry of Love, and there was a band called Copperhead,” Farris says, recalling the band’s heyday.

Farris never looked back after leaving the band, whose name was inspired by a Far Side cartoon of cheetahs in the wild poppin’ wheelies. He soon began a long and successful solo career that has won him a Grammy, a Dove and an Americana Music Association award for his soulful vocal performances and his heartfelt songwriting.

“We just never got to the top of the mountain — we never got to the point where even financially it made any sense,” Farris says of the Wheelies. “And I had a young family I was starting, so there were a lot of factors that made me decide, ‘This is not working, creatively and money-wise, and I got to do something different.’ ” Like White, Farris didn’t think the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies would ever perform again. But something happened that made him change his mind and reach out to White and the other members of the band, guitarist Bobby Watkins, bassist Steve Burgess and drummer Terry Thomas.

“Around the pandemic, we lost several key members of our fan base,” Farris explains. “We had built a hardcore following, and part of that was a credit to our manager Rose McGathy, who had cultivated our fans in a way that they all felt like they were really part of this family. And they were.

“So there were several key members of that family who had gotten ill, and I was in contact with them right up to their death,”

he continues, pausing to get his emotions under control. “And it started to really affect me, because these people had connected with our music. It meant so much to them. And one of the things that they really wanted was for us to get back together and play. And finally I just decided, ‘We got to do this. We got to get together, and we got to play some shows. To really have a proper end to this thing.’ ” They initially booked two shows in July — one at 3rd and Lindsley in Nashville on

Saturday, July 16, and one at the Gramercy Theater in New York on Saturday, July 30 — and in case the shows sold out, they had the Fridays before each on hold.

Then two nights before the tickets went on sale, Farris had an epiphany. “I jumped straight up out of bed at 3 in the morning, and I woke [my wife] Julie up and said, ‘We have to open up ticket sales on both nights, because if people do respond to it, they’re going to want to do both nights and make travel plans and all of that.’ So we did, and they all sold out in less than two minutes.

Everybody was shocked.”

“I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me, man,’ ” White says. “It’s been a long time, two decades, you know? I thought some of our friends will show up and whatever — and then that happens. It’s unbelievable, man. We were all blown away by that.”

After the four shows sold out, the band added one show in New York aboard The Liberty Belle cruise ship on Sunday, July 31, and two more shows in Tennessee — one at The Caverns on Saturday, July 9, and a third show in the 3rd and Lindsley run on Sunday, July 17. All but the show at The Caverns are sold out.

“It’s a testament to our fans who have stuck with us,” Farris says of the overwhelming response to the shows they’ve christened “The Long Goodbye.” “It’s not a huge fan base by any means, but it is a strong, loyal fan base that supported us, man — through thick and thin, all these years.

And, you know, all we ever were, were just five guys from Nashville who wanted to go out and make a difference.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

certain transitory emptiness to the whole endeavor.

When abstract digital delivery systems and those of

physical media finally align — when you can find a record on your phone or at your favorite brick-and-

mortar store — then we can all agree that a record is out there for the world. But a good song works in

THAT HIGH, LONESOME SOUND

Italodisco ace Tan gets mainstream country on the dance floor with The Tan Side of Lonesome

BY JASON SHAWHAN

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PHOTO: NATHAN C.

I

t wasn’t until the oft-delayed release party, at The Wilburn Street Tavern — finally hearing some of the tracks from The Tan Side of Lonesome in a proper disco context, with a good crowd letting loose on a pleasant enough late-May Friday THE TAN SIDE OF LONESOME OUT NOW VIA evening — that the sheer STOCHASTIC RECORDS and improbable joy of the whole project fell into place. It was Tan’s take on Kacey Musgraves’ “High Horse” that did it, though I’d had a taste of this effect on Cinco de Mayo at Third Man Records’ Blue Room, when I dropped his cover of Toby Keith’s “Wish I Didn’t Know” into my DJ set.

Of course, given that supply chain drama has exacerbated the backlog of records waiting to be pressed at the vinyl pressing plants of the world, how do we even define record release dates anymore? The digital world is a perfect avatar of The Now, wanting more and more, flinging countless quantities of data against a theoretical wall of music and just seeing what sticks. Streaming may be one of the dominant forms of music delivery these days, but there’s a

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aug 4 Stephen Sanchez

aug 5 Be Our Guest - Spinning 90s/00s Disney Throwbacks aug 6 Jerry Garcia Tribute ft. members of Los Colognes, Futurebirds, and more!

aug 8 Black Pistol Fire w/ Lillie Mae and Shooks aug 9 The Dear Hunter w/ The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, & Tanner Merritt of O’Brother

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7/1/22 11:00 AM

MUSIC whatever context you deploy it.

The idea behind The Tan Side of Lonesome is a great one: taking five country hits from the past three decades and turning them into fourto-the-floor Italodisco stompers. The concept isn’t entirely new; even Saint Dolly has been doing remixes since the late ’70s, and Reba McEntire, Wynonna Judd, LeAnn Rimes and Shania Twain have understood the usefulness of a dance-floor makeover for their tracks. But Tan — Nashville’s one-stop shop for DJing, electronic performance, musicraft, birdwatching and deadpan humor — took this chance not to serve up mercenary cash-ins, but rather to take some superbly written songs and give them new life and new context.

The Tan Side of Lonesome is out now, streaming via Bandcamp and available on vinyl via Stochastic Releases out of Grenoble, France. While Tan was at his combination studio, aquarium workspace and listening den, I spoke with him to get at the heart of this singular new record.

What exactly set you on the road to what became this project? I played Jim Reeves’ The Blue Side of Lonesome for [fiancée and artistic collaborator] Dixie. And she came up with the idea for Tan to do a country cover album and call it The Tan Side of Lonesome. The original idea was to do classic country covers since I’ve been playing those most of my life, but I thought it would be more fun/interesting to do songs I loved that were mainly written in my lifetime.

You’ve played all kinds of music in myriad styles in the past. Was there some kind of epiphany that there were similarities between mainstream country and Italodisco, or was it a whole other process? No real epiphany.

They’re both corny genres with big characters and great hooks.

With this project having been out there and streamable for a bit, have you heard any response from any of the artists you pay tribute to with this record, or anyone on their teams?

Nah. I’m pretty hard to get ahold of.

When you’re working on finding a new arrangement for an existing work, is it a groove, a specific sound, or a bass line that tends to work its way into your skull first? I usually just choose the path of least resistance. Melody, then chord progression, then bass, then everything else.

What do you think is the apotheosis of dance covers? Like, what’s the best example of taking a non-dance song and making it into a dance floor anthem? Off the top of my head, the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of “Always on My Mind” is almost perfect.

Is there more satisfaction in getting the country music community into Italodance, or in getting the Neuromantic crowd to dig on strong-ass songwriting and country turns of phrase? People are going to like what they like, and I have no control over that. I just want to put interesting music out into the ether.

What’s your next project coming up? I take pictures of birds around town, or wherever I’m traveling, and post them to social media every day. It’s my way of sharing nature with people who don’t get to interact with it on a regular basis. I spend most of my free time on Mill Creek or at Percy Priest, looking at and listening to birds. It has added a new depth to life that is eternal and hard to put into words. If I can inspire anyone to appreciate the beauty in this town more than they did before, I’m successful. … Musically, I’ve thought about doing an instrumental concept album inspired by Cambridge Glass, but who knows?

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ROCKY ROAD

Masterful R&B singer Jon B perseveres

BY RON WYNN

R

&B vocalist and songwriter Jonathan David Buck, better known as Jon B, has been a remarkably distinctive performer over his three decades in the business. His career has featured PLAYING JULY 11-12 AT periods of immense CITY WINERY stardom as well as lengthy stretches out of the spotlight, but his popularity as a live performer has never waned. His summer tour takes him across the U.S. and to the U.K., including a two-night stop at City Winery on Monday and Tuesday.

A white artist whose embrace of Black culture and music has been paramount since his days as a teenager in a musical family in Altadena, Calif., Jon B has always exemplified authenticity in performance and presentation. He’s never shied away from the issue of being a white performer in a style created by Black artists, and he’s always followed his instincts musically, even when they conflicted with the opinions of producers or label representatives.

Right after he graduated high school in the early 1990s, he set to work trying to establish himself as a recording artist. Eventually, Tracey Edmonds, then the wife of R&B mogul Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, recognized Jon B’s star quality, feeling he

would connect with broad R&B audiences in the same way other white artists had, from Hall and Oates to Mitch Ryder and beyond.

Working with the Edmondses and their label, he showed off his skills on some outstanding projects, including co-writing the closing track “In the Late of Night” on Toni Braxton’s second LP Secrets as well as several songs for After 7, an outstanding R&B vocal group featuring Babyface’s older brothers Melvin and Kevon Emonds. Jon B even got a co-writing credit after the fact on “Say You’ll Be There,” the Spice Girls’ smash-hit second single, whose melody and other elements are very similar to one of those songs he penned for After 7, “What U R 2 Me.” Around this time, Jon B exploded as a marquee artist. He wrote and produced many of the songs and performed an array of instruments on his 1995 debut studio album Bonafide. The record was certified gold the next year, fueled in part by the hit single “Someone to Love,” which Babyface wrote and produced and appears on as a featured singer; the song also earned a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals.

The track firmly established Jon B’s signature sound, fortified on the LP’s second successful single “Pretty Girl.” His strengths throughout include a charismatic, soulful delivery that communicates sincerity even when the lyrics are at their most maudlin or syrupy. His 1997 follow-up LP Cool Relax proved even more successful. It yielded several hits, including “They Don’t Know,” a tune chronicling personal difficulties and rumors about his relationship, as well as “Don’t Say” and “Are U Still Down?” a powerful pairing with none other than Tupac Shakur. The album went platinum.

Through the years that followed, Jon B continued to enjoy artistic success with 2001’s Pleasures U Like, which included features from Nas and Faith Evans, and 2004’s Stronger Every Day, which included appearances by Scarface and Beenie Man. Respectively, the albums went to No. 3 and No. 17 on Billboard’s R&B albums chart, but Jon B still felt strongly that the commercial results could have been better with improved promotion. During the same period, his first marriage ended in divorce, and a fire at his studio destroyed thousands of dollars in equipment as well as irreplaceable recorded material. Jon B found himself in a deep depression. But he persevered, and a second marriage a few years later not only helped him recover but also aided him in staging a comeback with the well-received LP Hopeless Romantic in 2008. While another full album of new originals, Comfortable Swagg, came in 2012, Jon B has mostly focused on live appearances over the past decade.

Following an acclaimed appearance on BET’s Soul Train Awards show in 2018, he collaborated with fellow R&B heavyweight Donell Jones on the much-loved duet “Understand.” The track kicked off a series of singles that continued on through the pandemic lockdown and will hopefully lead to an album sooner than later.

Now that it’s possible to tour again, Jon B is back where he seems most at home lately: on the road. Over and over again, he’s proven himself a standard-bearer among soul and R&B singer-songwriters. Whether or not he repeats his commercial highs of the 1990s, it seems there’ll be an audience eagerly awaiting his next act.

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7/1/22 5:17 PM

FILM

THOR AND PEACE Taika Waititi’s latest Marvel effort is mostly a sight for Thor eyes

BY JASON SHAWHAN

F

or a film with this much Guns N’ Roses in it (and there is honestly more GnR here than there really should be for a non-jukebox-musical), the fact that there’s no “Patience” is a giant pulsatTHOR: LOVE AND THUNDER ing question mark.

PG-13, 119 MINUTES Beyond the many OPENING WIDE FRIDAY, songs, there’s also JULY 8 signage and a plot point involving how cool the name Axl is, so there’s some behind-the-scenes shenanigans involved, to be sure. But given how 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok fulfilled several generations’ worth of rawk fantasy with its amped-up battle cut to Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” it makes sense that the involved players might aim for what we get here — even if an ABBA deep cut almost steals the whole film.

When last we saw Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth) at the end of Avengers: Endgame, he was heading off into space with the Guardians of the Galaxy, which is more or less where we find him when Love and Thunder kicks off. Christian Bale is the film’s Big Bad, though his Gorr the God Butcher only became such due to a betrayal by the divinity he worshipped that led to the death of his daughter. From there, it was just an ancient necrosword within arm’s reach that set him on the path to kill all gods, everywhere, for taking the faith of their

followers for granted. This is a pretty explosive framework to build a tentpole action movie around, so director/co-writer Taika Waititi’s expected mirth often feels like it’s meant to leaven the proceedings — which also feature some big-deal medical complications and a whole lot of abducted children.

By nature of not actively destroying one of Marvel’s most imaginative achievements of the past few years, Love and Thunder manages to come out ahead of May’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in a comprehensive 2022 Marvel ranking. It has some inspired laughs and keeps the pace brisk and generally amusing. But as far as films with end credits that roll over “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” it’s not quite as inventive or revelatory as 1988’s Bad Dreams. Even when you’re watching the film, you’re going to find yourself wanting a bit more. But paradoxically, this keeps expectations in check. The stakes, especially by Marvel’s usual standards, seem more manageable than the typical “Universe-in-Danger

Battle” that pops up in every third act. Part of that is due to a breezier tone, thanks to Waititi, which is generally a good choice except when it butts heads with a couple of deeply serious themes reaching all the way to the foundation.

The return of Natalie Portman as Jane Foster — astrophysicist/incarnation-ofthankless-girlfriend from the first two films in the series — is a nice narrative shift, especially since she’s got her own story line, which has naturally led to her taking up the mantle of Thor in defense of the coastal community of New Asgard. Unfortunately, there’s not nearly enough Tessa Thompson in the film, which is deeply unfortunate because she’s found the exact right tone for absolutely anything that Marvel throws at her. And that includes universe-hopping to rescue a bunch of Asgardian kids who have been stolen to set up a third-act confrontation. Hemsworth, as always, is charming.

He’s got a strong framework for the character, allowing for jazzier shifts in interpreta-

tion depending on what the requirements are for the film he’s in, and he understands that modern action film physiques are inherently hysterical.

If there’s an overarching issue, it’s not one borne by this film exclusively. But with something new in the Star Wars or Marvel universes deploying seemingly every week, that in-house Disney+ visual style doesn’t really feel special. There are still some interesting color choices and the occasional unexpected creature (including a pair of space goats walking a delicate tightrope between endearing and annoying), but it’s becoming more necessary that the MCU step up its visual game.

Fortunately for audiences, the God Butcher’s path of vengeance introduces the viewer to Omnipotence City, a planetoid/ realm that offers Maxfield Parrish and Q*Bert vibes in abundance. Here deities from all over the cosmos hang out and have meetings, presided over by Zeus, played

by Russell Crowe in a horny showboat of a performance that makes you wish he commandeered even more screen time. It is equal parts Oliver Reed and Orson Welles and steeped in a Mediterranean accent that somehow manages to start a bunch of cultural difficulties but also finish them. It is without exaggeration that I tell you a twohour Zeus film would not suffice for connoisseurs of unexpected acting choices.

It’s been several years since a Marvel mid-credit sequence has delivered a surprise like the one that drops here. It is structured immaculately, with a not-asdead-as-you-thought kicker followed by a guess-who’s-playing-who reveal that inspires awe, lust and that delicate drop that a grand cliffhanger can hit you with. Also, there’s a Very End Credit scene that will anger Nazis, so that’s good as well.

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SHELL HATH NO FURY Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is relentlessly adorable

BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

D

istributed by the uber-hip A24, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is that rarest of cinematic curios — the arthouse family film.

It’s a feature-length continuation of the short films director Dean Fleischer-Camp and actor/ex-wife Jenny Slate dropped on YouTube years ago — brief clips of stop-motion whimsy in which an off-screen filmmaker interviews the titular, talking, one-eyed, tiny seashell (voiced by Slate), rocking an also-small pair of shoes. Millions of views (as well as a book series) later, Marcel’s story has now moved to the big screen.

It’s a full-fledged story this time, rather than just Slate ad-libbing goofy lines as Fleischer-Camp shoots Marcel in cute places. Fleischer-Camp frames the story in a mockumentary format, following Marcel around the Airbnb he calls home. (Fleischer-Camp’s cagey filmmaker is crashing there after a bad breakup.) Marcel used to have a whole community of shells at this location, but they all disappeared after the house’s previous owners broke up and moved on.

(The only shelled inhabitants here are Marcel and

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MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON PG, 89 MINUTES OPENING THURSDAY, JULY 7, AT THE BELCOURT

his aging grandmother, voiced by a game Isabella Rossellini.)

As crazy as it sounds, Marcel may remind you, in a way, of the Fast & Furious franchise. Just like those big-budget demolition derbies, this movie has a lead character who preaches the importance of family.

(That said, Marcel is a more clever, insightful character than Vin Diesel’s muscle-headed Dom Toretto.)

Fleischer-Camp and Slate, along with screenwriters Nick Paley and Elisabeth Holm — the latter of whom

produced and came up with the story for Obvious Child, the 2014 abortion rom-com starring Slate — gives its inch-high protagonist an understated hero’s journey. He comes out of his shell — my apologies for that one — in order to find his peoples.

Although the story dives into meta territory as clips of Marcel go viral, Fleischer-Camp and Slate really press the message that living online isn’t really living at all. As the introverted shell ventures outdoors for his mission, even going on an eye-opening road trip

with his filmmaking partner-in-crime, the filmmakers make the case that the actual universe — with its endless possibilities and individuals — beats the metaverse any day of the week.

Adorable and almost relentlessly heartwarming, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is some thoughtful all-ages fare that’ll win over the kids and their parents. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pixar comes calling for Fleischer-Camp and Slate’s services in the future.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 7 – JULY 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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NO SUCH THING AS A BAD COINCIDENCE The Belcourt revisits David Lynch’s down-anddirty Los Angeles noir

BY JASON SHAWHAN

A

nightmare bookended by Bowie’s “I’m Deranged,” careening into uncertainty in windshield-spanning cinemascope and never looking back, Lost Highway is the smell of wheels LOST HIGHWAY impelled to outrun the R, 134 MINUTES inescapable sense OPENING FRIDAY, JULY 8, that you’ve fucked it all AT THE BELCOURT up. Though it’s the first of David Lynch’s psychogenic fugue trilogy (along with Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire), this film is fixated on the end of things in a way that belies its Möbius structure, unable even to embrace this preternatural other life as a means of reconciliation (Inland Empire) or a blissful, possibly aspirational fantasy for the damned of the now (Mulholland Drive).

Lost Highway, Lynch’s second collaboration with Wild at Heart author Barry Gifford, is all too conscious of doom nipping at your metaphorical heels. It’s a down-and-dirty Los Angeles noir that even James Ellroy would have to look at and say, “damn.”

When asked about the film in interviews, Lynch is uncharacteristically forthcoming, explaining that it was his meditation on the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and how a mind compartmentalizes its deeds, and how people deceive themselves. And that certainly gives you a thematic framework. But in no way can it prepare you for the merciless journey that awaits.

Jazz musician Fred Madison (Bill Pullman, who’s only ever better in Zero Effect the following year) suspects that his wife Renée (Patricia Arquette, brunette, quite good) may be cheating on him. But when a stranger starts leaving videotapes filmed outside the Madison home, that initial fear is subsumed by this voyeuristic violation being waged against Fred and Renée. But things get worse: The tapes escalate in content, with whoever’s filming them eventually entering the house without setting off the security system, recording the Madisons, in bed as they sleep. And whatever began this process of

documentation and pursuit will follow Fred Madison into other bodies and lives, a scourge at the heels of the condemned man.

Pete (Balthazar Getty) is a low-level 20-something fuck-up who works in an auto shop run by Richard Pryor (in his last role). Mysterious crime figure Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia, terrifying) has a soft spot for Pete, because he does good work on cars. He has such a soft spot for Pete, in fact, that he trusts him to escort his lady, Alice (Patricia Arquette, blonde, exquisite), around town. Chemistry doing what it does, soon Pete is carrying on with Alice, always trying to stay a step ahead of Mr. Eddy and his associated henchfolk. But regardless of what comes from the process of being a David Lynch film, this is a film noir, and fists are clenching and fates are sealed long before we meet alleged murderer Robert Blake as a spatially unbound incarnation of sexual insecurity — and before the players find their way into a snuff ring, and discover the absolute best example of why one’s mother was always correct about not running around things with pointy corners.

One time, when I was hosting a midnight screening of Lost Highway, not even halfway through the first reel a couple of Belmont students stumbled into the lobby and asked, “Is this a devil movie?”

This eagerly awaited 4K restoration certainly has its work cut out for it — rendering the inky shadow and formless void that makes up so much of this movie’s visual sensibility is difficult for DCP technology and most contemporary digital projectors. Lots of films are dark, but Lost Highway feels somehow more than just that — something chthonic and obliterative lurks in these shadows, something that feels as close as any modern filmmaker has gotten to the thematic personifications that the ancient Greeks excelled at onstage. It is somehow fitting that the film was made into an opera in 2003.

But nothing — not even Slavoj Žižek’s exceptional writings on the film — gets across the visceral charge of its twists and turns. This movie has a power to it that ramps up, gradually, from the elliptical, classic arthouse domestic tableaux of its early scenes into the most hard-hitting, pedal-tothe-metal, bat-out-of-hell adrenaline rush since the last half-hour of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Relentless, fatalistic, immaculately soundtracked and unforgettable, a nightmare bookended by Bowie’s “I’m Deranged,” careening into uncertainty in windshield-spanning cinemascope and never looking back, Lost Highway is the smell of wheels impelled to outrun the inescapable sense that you’ve fucked it all up.

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JEFFREY PHILLIPS ANDREWS vs.

ASHLEY GAIL ANDREWS In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ASHLEY GAIL ANDREWS. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after July 7, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on August 8, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

isfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ASHLEY GAIL ANDREWS. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after July 7, 2022 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on August 8, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: June 9, 2022 Trudy Bloodworth Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 6/16, 6/23, 6/30, 7/7/2022

tion. Your grand jury foreperson is Parker Toler. His address is 222 Second Avenue North, Washington Square Building, Suite 510, Nashville, 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 citi- zen testifying before the grand jury as to any material fact known to that citizen to be false shall be punisha- ble as perjury. For a request for accommodation, please contact 8624260.

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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 Parker Toler. His address is 222 Second Avenue North, Washington Square Building, Suite 510, Nashville, 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 citi- zen testifying before the grand jury as to any material fact known to that citizen to be false shall be punisha- ble as perjury. For a request for accommodation, please contact 8624260.

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