STRING OF DEATHS AND NEAR MISSES BRINGS ATTENTION TO CUMBERLAND RIVER
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Our recommendations for five weekend getaways — from Athens to Corinth and beyond
Chris Hillman wore this blue velvet suit on the cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ 1969 debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin The suit’s design includes an Aztec-style sun and the Greek god Poseidon—symbols of Hillman’s love of surfing.
From the exhibit Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock
Courtesy of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage photo Bob Delevante . , presented by City National Bank
Street View: A Church’s Expansion Is Denied in Northwest Nashville
After outcry from residents, the Board of Zoning Appeals turned down Zeal Church’s plans in northwest Nashville BY LENA MAZEL
Pith in the Wind
This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog
String of Deaths and Near Misses
Brings Attention to Cumberland River
Historical count of bodies found in the waterway is unclear BY HANNAH HERNER
Critical Race Theory Conference Brings Scholars, Activists to Nashville
Leading racial justice figures see Tennessee as a national battleground against white supremacy BY ELI MOTYCKA
COVER PACKAGE: THE ROAD TRIP ISSUE 2024 Corinth, Miss.
Come for the battlefields — stay for the slugburgers, tamales and cupcakes BY
MARGARET LITTMAN
Sweetwater, Tenn.
Finding the Lost Sea and Tennessee hospitality in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains BY HANNAH HERNER
Natchez Trace by Bike
Biking the storied byway in July turned me into a monologuing villain BY COLE VILLENA
St. Louis
The Midwestern hot spot has more to offer than an arch BY KELSEY BEYELER
Athens, Ga.
Abundant food, drinks and live music are just a few attractions in the home of the University of Georgia BY STEPHEN TRAGESER
Deep Tropics, Earth, Wind & Fire, Chicago, Clue, Bookstore Romance Day and more
ART
Bruise Violet
A purple-themed exhibition honoring David Berman contends with grief and what happens after BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
BOOKS
What Is Justice?
Former Tennessee Assistant Attorney General Preston Shipp recounts his journey from retribution to reconciliation BY EMILY CRAWFORD; CHAPTER16.ORG
MUSIC
You’ve Got a Home
Fanny’s House of Music co-founders prepare their beloved store for its next phase BY MADELEINE BRADFORD
The Long Game Piper & the Hard Times take a big win and run with it on Revelation BY RON WYNN
The Long Goodbye
The Ozark Mountain Daredevils make their debut appearance at the Ryman on their farewell tour BY DARYL SANDERS
FILM
Absurdism
Love and death at the ninth annual Defy Film Festival in East Nashville BY JOE NOLAN
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD AND THIS MODERN WORLD MARKETPLACE ON THE COVER: Illustration Jacob Lucas
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After outcry from residents, the Board of Zoning Appeals turned down Zeal Church’s plans in northwest Nashville BY
Street View is a monthly column taking a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
IN NOVEMBER, West Nashville-based Zeal Church had a big announcement. “Proverbs 19:21 tells us that man makes many plans, but it’s the plan of the Lord that will prevail,” read a post on the church’s website titled “Future Announcement #2.” Specifically, the church’s leaders were referring to a parcel of land they’d bought and where they planned to move, just five minutes from their Charlotte Pike location.
But despite their big plans, Zeal didn’t get the new location after all. After a monthslong saga of near-tie votes and deferrals at the Board of Zoning Appeals, Metro Council District 1 residents blocked Zeal from becoming their new neighbors.
How did they do it? Well, partially through the dedication of District 1 Councilmember Joy Kimbrough.
“This is the only time I’ve appeared before the BZA in strong opposition to something, and I’m only doing it because I am trying to properly represent my community,” Kimbrough told the BZA at a June 6 meeting. “The people who live there don’t support it, the people who live around there don’t support it, and the people who are transiting through there who are in my district don’t support it.”
Much of the opposition to Zeal came from the church’s plan to build near Cato Road and other small streets that likely wouldn’t handle increased traffic well. Zeal services can have as many as 2,000 attendees. (Many opponents of the church’s plan have referred to Zeal as a “megachurch,” though the Hartford Institute for Religion Research defines a megachurch as having a “sustained weekly attendance of 2,000 persons or more.) Kimbrough tells the Scene it’s already a tight fit for two cars driving in opposite directions to pass each other on the street that churchgoers would enter from. While the Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure completed a traffic study for Zeal’s new location, there were some hiccups, with BZA members and Kimbrough not receiving the study until the night before the church’s initial zoning vote was held, causing further delays.
Alongside Kimbrough, District 1 residents organized to oppose the move, showing up together in red shirts. Board members had to remind the vocal constituents not to speak out of turn when they shouted from the crowd during a July 18 meeting.
“Community members were not opposed to the church relocating to District 1 — they were
LENA MAZEL
opposed specifically to the unusual location the church had chosen to relocate to,” Kimbrough tells the Scene
“The impact of having a building and a presence that large in a residential area just didn’t really feel like it fit the community,” says Kristin Walker, a nearby resident who organized to stop Zeal’s move.
Walker and Kimbrough both mention Zeal’s lack of communication with residents as an issue.
“[Residents] voiced their concerns to the Zeal Church pastor, engineer and attorney,” says Kimbrough. “However, Zeal Church continued to move forward. … It seemed as though they did not really care about the community’s concerns.”
This isn’t the first time Zeal’s members have faced criticism for ignoring public concerns.
In 2021, a Zeal-affiliated Instagram account faced backlash after organizing a packed, inperson event during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While District 1 neighbors were organizing to stop the move, Zeal continued to post updates on its website about completing the due-diligence phase of the move and asked members to email the BZA with a script reiterating, “We are happy that the traffic study has shown that the area is able to handle the traffic flow.”
One complication of the case was the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which gives religious institutions some extra zoning rights, including sometimes being exempt from zoning that could “substantially burden” a religious institution’s ability to worship. Some board members debated what this would mean for Zeal’s move, but ultimately decided RLUIPA wouldn’t prohibit them from
voting against the development. It was a close vote at the July 18 BZA meeting to decide Zeal’s future, months after their case was initially heard. The church needed four votes to pass — it ended up with three.
On July 23, in a post titled “Future Update #5,” Zeal wrote: “There were 2 board members who were absent from the proceedings which meant we were only able to secure 3 of the 4 needed votes. While we are disheartened by the vote, we are not defeated.” The post goes on to promise that Zeal leadership will announce new expansion plans “within the next 45 days.”
At the BZA meeting, microphones picked up excited murmurs from D1 residents when Zeal’s “special exception” zoning was denied.
Walker says District 1 residents have been fighting other developments as well. As covered in Scene reporter Eli Motycka’s May 23 cover story, the community is continuing to battle a growing number of dump sites in the district.
Walker says residents want “responsible” developments that “make sense” for the community. She tells the Scene that many want to keep the area’s single-family zoning.
“I think there really is a desire to preserve what it currently is,” she says.
Still, she does think the area will probably change.
“My husband and I have been on this property for 10 years, and there’s a lot of neighbors up the road that like that rural feel,” she says. “But we know that the development’s coming.”
But for now, that development won’t include a 2,000-attendee church next door.
Representatives for Zeal Church declined to comment on the BZA results, telling the Scene by email that they are “moving on to other options.” ▼
U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles confirmed early last week that his cellphone was confiscated by the FBI after he won the Republican nomination for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District once again. NewsChannel 5 was the first to report that the FBI issued a search warrant for Ogles, who has received attention for changes in his campaign financial filings. In a statement on social media, Ogles said: “It has been widely reported for months that my campaign made mistakes in our initial financial filings. We have worked diligently with attorneys and reporting experts to correct the errors and ensure compliance going forward.” Ogles amended nearly a dozen past campaign finance reports in May to show that a personal loan of $320,000 to his campaign in 2022 never happened. The amended filings instead reported Ogles loaned his campaign $20,000.
In her latest column, Metro Council expert Nicole “@startleseasily” Williams reports on the council’s condemnation of political violence and ongoing tension about zoning reform. Williams also notes that, after an hourand-a-half spent hemming and hawing over a series of proposed amendments to the Metro Charter at the Aug. 7 meeting, the council ultimately elected to defer further consideration of any charter amendments to 2026. That means voters will see only one Metro-specific item on their ballots this November: Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transportation improvement plan, “Choose How You Move.”
Writes longtime Scene contributor Betsy Phillips: “Ever since Mayor Freddie O’Connell announced that the Metro Nashville Police Department is reopening the integrationera bombing cases at the heart of my book Dynamite Nashville, people have been asking me what I think and what I think will come of it. And I’ve tried to be honest that I simply don’t know.” In her column, Phillips gets in the weeds on who the MNPD has assigned to the 60-plusyear-old cases — including the 1960 bombing of prominent Black Nashville politician Z. Alexander Looby’s home — and why.
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Historical count of bodies found in the waterway is unclear
BY HANNAH HERNER
WHILE EMERGENCY PERSONNEL were looking for Riley Strain — a 22-year-old tourist who was ultimately found to have drowned in the Cumberland River — they came across another body. The body was that of an unidentified man in his 30s, “possibly Hispanic,” whose death, the Metro Nashville Police Department announced, did not show signs of foul play or trauma.
That’s two bodies retrieved from the Cumberland in March of this year. Also in March, a man fell down an embankment and could have become a third, but he was rescued by first responders. In June, the body of 48-year-old Toby Douglas was found in the Cumberland River. In July, a woman visiting Nashville narrowly escaped a similar fate and was found unharmed on the riverbank in the same area where Strain is believed to have fallen in. Also in July, MNPD announced it had solved a cold case related to a woman who was found in the river after being shot to death in 1998.
While a body being pulled out of the Cumberland River is still a relatively rare occurrence, it’s a subject that has made repeated headlines this year. Strain’s disappearance gained national attention (not to mention attention from truecrime content creators) like no other Nashville death in recent memory. But it’s unclear exactly how often something like this happens.
It’s hard to say exactly how many bodies have been found — drowning victims or otherwise — in the Cumberland River historically. Neither the MNPD, the Metro Public Health Department, the Metro Office of Emergency Management, the Nashville Fire Department nor the Davidson
County Medical Examiner keeps a running list. The Tennessee Office of Vital Records did not respond to a request for more information. The MNPD comes closest, however, by issuing a press release any time a body is found.
District 19 Metro Councilmember Jacob Kupin says he had been working on a resolution related to Cumberland River safety during the search for Strain when fire crews performed the rescue of another man. That spurred him to take up the resolution when he did, he tells the Scene The resolution, which passed a council vote in May, requires a report recommending actions to improve “safety, security and cleanliness” on the riverfront, due back to the council on the one-year anniversary of Strain’s disappearance: March 8, 2025.
The resolution requires all hands on deck, listing eight Metro departments and “any other department of the Metropolitan Government with property or authority along the Cumberland River Downtown Riverfront.” Meanwhile, Kupin says he’s working with the Metro Parks department to price fencing for the problem-area embankments near Gay Street downtown.
“I think anybody that is falling in the river and perishing is a tragic, tragic situation,” Kupin says. “I would imagine that with fencing, with more security, with housing resources, we would see a reduction in that.”
Timing is also ripe. Until recently, the riverfront was part of three different Metro Council districts: 5, 6 and 19. With 2021’s post-U.S. Census redistricting, now is the first time one councilmember has authority over the riverfront,
Kupin says.
There’s now even more incentive to clean up the riverfront and prevent future accidents: With the Tennessee Titans’ forthcoming new stadium on the East Bank and the rebuild of Second Avenue following the 2020 Christmas Day bombing, construction is flanking both sides of the river, and the city hopes to attract more visitors to those areas.
“We’re making a lot of efforts right now on Second Avenue and First and the riverfront to activate that part of downtown and to allow for tourists and locals to come into our downtown and enjoy our riverfront,” Kupin says.
Part of the push for “safety, security and cleanliness” will affect those experiencing homelessness who sleep near the river. The resolution requests a review of the unhoused population in the area and research into what it would take to move them into housing. It appears encampments at Fort Nashboro and along the riverfront may be the next to go in the city’s string of closing encampments.
“I think the housing piece is so important, because I tell people my goal is not to just move people from place to place to place,” Kupin says. “The goal is, if we’re going to have people not to stay on the hillside, we have to get them to resources.”
When Strain fell into the river, he couldn’t have been more than a football field’s length from the Tara Cole memorial bench in Riverfront Park. Cole was killed in 2006 — while sleeping on the bank, she was pushed into the river by two men. ▼
Leading racial justice figures see Tennessee as a national battleground against white supremacy
BY ELI MOTYCKA
THE PHRASE THAT kept coming up — from an opening panel discussion to final conversations in the lobby of the Scarritt Bennett Center — implies both offense and defense.
“This is the tip of the spear,” explains Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor and advocate credited as a founding scholar of critical race studies. “Tennessee is the home of [Nathan Bedford] Forrest and the home of Ida B. Wells. It’s the home of the Ku Klux Klan and the Nashville Student Movement. We’re at a place where these dynamics are so robust and rich. Sometimes the dynamics of discrimination and oppression are also the same sites where resistance is deeply rooted in the soil.”
The African American Policy Forum, cofounded by Crenshaw and Luke Harris in 1996, brought its fifth annual Critical Race Theory Summer School to Nashville in late July and early August, the first time the conference has offered events in person. Workshops and panels featured scholars like Michael Eric Dyson, Nancy MacLean and Jason Stanley. Nashville’s Democratic state Rep. Justin Jones, another featured speaker, helped bring the event to Nashville. While individual participants who spoke with the Scene recall regular threats to their personal safety, the conference did not draw any protests, threats or security concerns.
Language, laws and politics around race have shifted dramatically since the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Along with international protests against police violence came a pointed backlash against Crenshaw’s particular academic niche, critical race theory. Decades of nuanced work focused on analyzing structural racism, confined for decades to lectures and academic papers, quickly turned into simplistic talking points for GOP politicians and conservative media. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo immediately elevated CRT into the public discourse; the topic caught the attention of then-President Donald Trump, who issued an executive order in September 2020 that decried the “destructive ideology” of race-based workplace discussions, specifically federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training.
Conservative Tennessee lawmakers quickly cobbled together their own 2021 law banning certain ways of talking about race. The legislation, touted by proponents as a ban on critical race theory, broadly defines “prohibited concepts of instruction” to include teaching “divisive” ideas about identity, along with topics that may
subject students to “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress.”
Tennessee’s efforts to control discussions around race have also prompted crusades against books that tackle Black history and Black experiences. All of it has created a minefield for teachers, who now navigate a legal gray area when discussing racism and civil rights. Terms like DEI and CRT have become catchalls for discussions about civil rights, Black history and white supremacy.
“It’s shocking that there are elected officials who believe the way forward is to make certain ideas illegal, and certain histories untellable,” says Crenshaw, who describes the anti-CRT backlash as a “tornado” of misinformation from opponents. “The desire to suppress knowledge and literacy is not the tool of a strong democratic society. It is a tool of an oppressive one. For those who want a thumbnail understanding, critical race theory is simply the study of how inequalities, particularly racial inequalities, can be reproduced over time.”
Tim Wise, a white anti-racist educator born and raised in Nashville, sees the moment historically. Backlash always follows racial progress, he says.
“The first round of white backlash to racial equity would have been when President Andrew Johnson — a famous, or infamous, Tennessean — vetoed the Civil Rights Act in 1866,” Wise tells the Scene after a conference workshop. “People don’t give up power, privilege, position or even their worldview without a fight. If you understand that these attacks on DEI or critical race theory are another round of the same old thing, then you can look at what other people did to fight that thing.”
Both Wise and Crenshaw also criticized the initial response from racial justice advocates — including themselves and colleagues — in 2020. They say those early efforts put too much emphasis on individual behavior and not enough on systems. Both emphasize the progress and power that comes from interest convergence — a renewed focus on aligning the interests of minority and majority groups. Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, already slandered by Trump and others as a “DEI hire,” brings together anti-Trump Americans with those fighting the backlash against racial progress, explains Crenshaw.
At the conference’s opening panel, Bernard Lafayette, among the disappearing corps of organizers trained during the civil rights movement, urged principled defiance.
“When people threaten you, you’ve got to make it a parade,” Lafayette told the room.
“Their purpose is to run you off the street. Suppose you run out to meet them?” ▼
Come for the battlefields — stay for the slugburgers, tamales and cupcakes
BY MARGARET LITTMAN
ONE OF THE REASONS I wanted to road trip back to Corinth, Miss., this summer was the food. The city doesn’t necessarily have foodie street cred, but it should. There were so many places I wanted to revisit that I was on a firstlunch/second-lunch kind of schedule.
Corinth is famous for the slugburger, a Depression-era invention in which hamburger meat is mixed with potato flakes or other starches to stretch a budget. It is so named because they were originally sold for a nickel (nicknamed a “slug”) — not because slugs were used in the recipes.
Pat Martin, owner of Martin’s Bar-B-Que and other Nashville restaurants, has Corinth roots. He put the slugburger on his menu at his burger spot Hugh Baby’s “as an homage to the barbecue and burger shops and roadside stands that pepper the mid-South area. I’m also proud of where I come from — both sides of my family are from Corinth — and I wanted to keep the tradition alive.”
Some places mix pork with the beef in a slugburger, which limits where I personally can
For our sixth annual Road Trip Issue, we at the Scene dispatched correspondents on fact-finding missions in four areas within a day’s drive of Nashville: St. Louis; Corinth, Miss.; Athens, Ga.; and Sweetwater, Tenn. We also sent intrepid associate editor Cole Villena to travel the Natchez Trace. By bicycle. In Tennessee. In the summer. Bless his heart.
What follows are rundowns of what to do and where to stay in each of these nearby locales, complete with tips for dining, entertainment, sightseeing and more. Need more recommendations for a quick getaway? Also, check out our past Road Trip Issue installments, where we give you tips for weekend sojourns to Red River Gorge, Ky.; Birmingham, Ala.; Shawnee National Forest; Bardstown, Ky.; Oxford, Miss.; Tupelo, Miss.; Columbus, Ind.; Rugby, Tenn.; Hattiesburg, Miss.; Mammoth Cave National Park; and much, much more.
See you on the road. Godspeed!
eat them. Other favorite area dishes include country ham and pork barbecue, so I asked Martin for some of his Corinth food picks — that way visitors aren’t limited by my dietary restrictions. Martin gave nods to Borroum’s Drug Store & Soda Fountain for their slugburger; that one was already at the top of my list because I believe everything tastes better while sitting at an old-fashioned soda fountain. There’s nothing like a fresh-made limeade, adjusted for your personal tartness preference. Martin also likes the Slugburger Cafe, though I’m partial to the White Trolley Cafe, which has a beef slugburger for $1.50. (It’s not a nickel, but still not much.) Martin also loves Abe’s Grill, which has some of the best hand-cut biscuits in the South (topped with ham or not). Breakfast starts at 4 a.m.
Moving on from the slugburger beat, another Southern gem in Corinth is the Mississippi Delta tamale (even though Corinth is about two-and-a-half hours from the Delta). The spicy Delta tamale is smaller than a Latin tamale, boiled instead of steamed, and a bit grittier due to the cornmeal. If you’ve never been to Dillworth’s Tamales, a drive-thru serving the classics since 1962, they’ll give you your first dozen free — though a dozen costs $5.80, so it is not a hardship to pay for them. Dillworth’s makes theirs with all beef (I am a fan) and conveniently is across the street from Lauren’s Cake Shop. I’m not saying I drove 180 miles (each way) for one of
BORROUM’S DRUG STORE & SODA FOUNTAIN
these cupcakes … but I’m also not saying I didn’t. Varieties change daily, and the cake-to-frosting ratio is just right.
Faithful readers will remember that while I loved my trip to Hattiesburg in last year’s Road Trip Issue, it was oppressively hot and I ate an obscene number of snowballs to cool off. Northern Mississippi was refreshingly temperate, but I did stop in Tepachelandia for a lemon-lime ice. For consistency’s sake.
I was warmed up after getting caught in a rainstorm with grilled cheese and tomato soup
at the Generals’ Quarters hotel. Russell’s Beef House is the resident steakhouse with a serious salad bar.
Not everyone comes to Corinth to eat. Most people come to Corinth because of Shiloh National Military Park. The great battlefield sites span the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. My interest in all things Civil War is fairly limited. I love Corinth Contraband Camp, a sculpture garden and bucolic walking trail with QR codes that tell the story of nearly 2,000 freed men who worked to rebuild their community and their lives after the war.
Corinth was once known as the “Crossroads of the South” because two rail lines intersected there. That was one of the reasons Corinth was so crucial as a transportation hub during the war. The Crossroads Museum, which is housed in the train station, includes tons of artifacts about Corinth history, including an old Dillworth’s tamale-delivery bike. There’s a working train set where you can honk the horn on the trains, and outside is a raised platform for train watching and a car you can climb on. Transportation buffs will also like Dream Riderz Classic Cars, a private collection of vintage cars dating back to the 1920s. Speaking of quirky collections, downtown’s Corinth Coke Museum is a tiny, well-maintained museum that contains 110 years of Coca-Cola Bottling history.
The Visit Corinth tourism office has a cool, selfguided walking tour. Grab a brochure, follow the painted footsteps on the sidewalk, and see 60 Sites in 60 Minutes, reading historical markers about some of the buildings and also visiting some of the sites mentioned here. Many are included in Corinth’s walkable downtown, which is dotted with fun boutiques interspersed with restaurants and historic sites. I like Anyware for women’s clothing, Love & a Dog Boutique for plussize clothes and Sanctuary Antiques
Luxury boutique hotel Generals’ Quarters was built in 1869 as a church, built on the foundation of another church destroyed in the retreats from Shiloh. Since then it has had a number of different owners and identities as a bordello, a boarding house and a private home. It was named as an acknowledgment of the generals
who occupied Corinth, but it did not serve as their quarters. New ownership has completely renovated and modernized the space, with big comfortable (air-conditioned) rooms, welcoming public spaces, a popular bar and restaurant, and a new spa, in addition to a lovely garden. You can hear the church bells from across the street ring on the hour. It’s fun to flip through the guest book and read about folks — from as far away as New Zealand — who have stayed here, as well as people who come for regular repeat visits. It’s in easy walking distance to all of downtown Corinth’s charming restaurants, shops and attractions. The space doesn’t glorify Civil War history, but there are photos from Confederate troops that may not feel appropriate to some guests. If you prefer a more traditional hotel, there are a number of reliable, convenient chain hotels. I’ve stayed at the Hampton Inn Corinth in the past. It has a pool, free breakfast and elevators.
The one quirk about road-tripping to Corinth is that the best businesses have odd hours. Some are open only Monday through Thursday. Some are Wednesday through Saturday, and others are weekends only. I plotted out a Venn diagram of all the overlapping hours of all the best places and landed on Wednesday night through Saturday night as the optimum Corinth timeline. Like many places in the South, most attractions — including the many delicious roadside Amish markets — are closed on Sundays. But all the national battlefield sites are open on Sundays, so those can be an easy visit on your way home after a weekend trip.
Corinth is a three-hour drive southwest of Nashville. If you want to add a detour or a second road trip, you can take the Natchez Trace Parkway for a portion of the route. More on that elsewhere in this issue. ▼
Finding the Lost Sea and Tennessee hospitality in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains
BY HANNAH HERNER
YOU MAY NOT know what the Lost Sea is, but your friends from East Tennessee will. In the pursuit of learning more about the state I live in and its people, I went on a field trip to Sweetwater, Tenn. In a little less than three hours — a little more once you’ve made the mandatory stop at the Crossville Buc-ee’s — you’ll find a town big enough to have a Walmart, but small enough for you to accomplish all there is to do and see in a weekend. Exactly my speed. As part of our own (very tame) Lost Sea Adventure, we found a charming downtown square, extraordinary lodging, a milkshake and a free movie. In the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, the scenery turns everything up a notch.
Few people have a gift for hosting the way Wendi Olson does. Her family’s Whistlestop Manor was the most memorable part of our trip. A medium who once stayed at Whistlestop told Wendi the house had a good energy (thank God), which I would have to agree with. We stayed
in the Ladies’ Room, which can also fit up to five twin beds for sleepover vibes. Wendi has several gifts: One is curating a maximalist and antique-lover’s dream decor in the 1859 home. Another is her cooking: Whistlestop started with murder-mystery dinners, and attendees inquired about having more of the dinner part. (The murder-mystery costume room is available to guests too!) Another of her gifts is her ability to connect with people.
A pandemic side effect: Sometimes I bristle at being in close quarters with others for an extended period of time. Sharing a room at the Whistlestop and hanging out with Wendi and her family healed some of that. Turns out humans are built for community and collaboration. Needless to say, we’ll be going back for a murder-mystery dinner.
We kicked off the trip with the most sought-after attraction of the area, the Lost Sea Adventure, an underground lake that draws tourists from around the world. It’s actually the perfect summertime activity, as the cave stays at about 58 degrees Fahrenheit. If you want to exercise the stalactite/stalagmite knowledge that lives in the recesses of your brain, this is the place to do it.
I have this problem where sometimes real things feel like Disney park attractions to me, and this is definitely one of those times. With the strategically placed spotlights and school-
trip vibes, the Lost Sea may feel a bit contrived to a science nerd. (They have wild cave and flashlight tours for people looking for something more authentic.) I personally thought the red light to signify the Devil’s Hole was a nice touch.
The lake is stocked with trout, which now live in my head rent-free. They’re regular, except they don’t mate, they lose their color because they’re in the dark all the time, and they live longer because they have no predators. Ultimately, they serve no purpose other than just being fun to see. (Hold while I become a fish-rights activist.) There even used to be a bar down there, the delightfully named Cavern Tavern.
To celebrate 90 minutes of finding the Lost Sea, we hit up downtown Sweetwater, which boasts plenty of little shops for my favorite activity: perusing. There’s a gazebo blasting 1950s music, which added ambience, and a defunct train where I wish we’d eaten our lunch to-go. While Sweetwater’s giant flea market is no longer, just down the road visitors can scratch the itch at Market at the Mill
I might make a return trip to Sweetwater just for the spicy honey cheese bites at The Lazy Beagle. I had a cocktail with local honey in it that was killer too. We heard that Fat Hats Grill and Sweetwater Crossings are also very good. (Or you could also ask Whistlestop Wendi to make you some gumbo for an extra fee.)
Part of the rural experience of Sweetwater is driving 20 minutes to get to things. The LoCo Drive-In in Loudon, Tenn., is worth the trip. It’s
free this summer, but cheap the rest of the year. Purists should know the films aren’t projected onto a screen — rather they’re shown on a jumbotron, which actually works quite nicely to allow movies to start before dark.
Another 20-minute drive will get you to Sweetwater Valley Farm, where I got probably the best cookies-and-cream milkshake I’ve ever had, plus several cubes of sample cheese. I’ve seen way more than my fair share of cows in this life, but a tour of the farm could be a treat for kids or city folk. To keep the sweet-treat train going, hit up Towns Toffee for one of the saltine-cracker toffees — they’ve really mastered it.
Tsali Notch Vineyard boasts a beautiful view and is an ideal place to try another thing East Tennesseans seem to know about: Tennessee muscadine grapes. The grapes are naturally very sweet and high in antioxidants. I quite enjoy a juice-like wine, but if you like dry wine, keep that to yourself here and get a sweet taste of East Tennessee.
After a peaceful weekend free of FOMO in Sweetwater, my Volunteer State native friend and I headed back to the capital city. As we drove, I told her I couldn’t believe she used to see scenery like this on her way to school. It’s a far cry from the gray-and-brown flatness of my native Ohio. She said she didn’t appreciate it until she got older. For all the nonsense that this state’s politics can offer, driving through East Tennessee can bring the blood pressure down. I added “My Tennessee Mountain Home” to the queue. ▼
Biking the storied byway in July turned me into a monologuing villain
BY COLE VILLENA
AT MILE 117.1 of my Alabama-to-Tennessee road trip, I steadied myself on my handlebars and pulled out my phone. As I plodded past lush greenery under a perfectly blue sky, I made a voice memo documenting a realization I’d made two miles earlier.
“I’ve decided,” I said between labored breaths, pedaling away on a bicycle loaded with 30 pounds of clothes, food, water and camping equipment, “I do hate you, Natchez Trace.” A dramatic pause for an audience of no one. “And that’s why I’m going to finish you.”
My cycling odyssey was nearly at an end, and I was going to do whatever it took to get to the finish line.
OK, that’s being dramatic. Many before me have taken overnight bicycle trips along the Natchez Trace, a 444-mile scenic byway that winds between Natchez, Miss., and Franklin, Tenn. But I didn’t see anyone else stupid enough to do it in July, when the temperature climbs to near triple digits. So why did I?
Well, our Road Trip Issue is in the summer, and that’s the only time I could get paid to do this. But also, my bike has been my main form of transportation around Nashville for nearly two years, and I’ve always loved going on backpacking trips. This was my excuse to combine these two interests. How hard could it be?
Things didn’t start well. I’m used to dealing with the logistical headaches that come with traveling car-free in a region dominated by highways and cars, but the planning process for this trip proved frustrating since I was biking just one way and going it alone. After I ruled out bus travel (too many transfers!), renting a car (nowhere to return it!) or flying on an airline I’d never heard of (a bit sketchy!), my partner offered to drive me to my starting point and then pick me up a few days later when I finished. (She is the best!) We enjoyed our afternoon road trip even if I caught myself saying, “This is going to suck on a bike!” as we traveled over particularly large hills.
We said goodbye at the Colbert Ferry Park campground just over the Tennessee-Alabama border. I found this spot on the website natcheztracetravel.com, which provides very detailed information about points of interest, lodging options, dining and more. It’s an indispensable resource for any Trace tourist, and I ultimately based my route off one of their sample itineraries.
My plan was to camp at Colbert Ferry on Day 0, ride 60 miles to a bed-and-breakfast in Hohenwald on Day 1, then ride 60 miles to the Trace’s Northern Terminus near The Loveless Cafe on Day 2. This might have been a good plan another time of year, but I cannot overstate how miserably hot and humid it was. It was so bad the night I camped out — that is, the night
before my longest day of riding ever — that I managed only a single hour of sleep. Be smarter than me. Wait until fall.
My ride started dramatically as I crossed the Tennessee River on the John Coffee Memorial Bridge, a nearly one-mile span that’s especially beautiful around sunrise. In just a few minutes I settled into the type of scenery that dominates the Trace: tall green foliage that prevents you from seeing anything interesting. This extremely repetitive scenery combined with my lack of sleep meant that the ride started to blend together almost immediately.
I remember grasping my handlebars with one hand and shoving Jelly Belly Sport Beans into my mouth with the other. I remember being passed, first by cars and then by a large group of Lycra-clad cyclists. I remember belting out songs from Les Misérables, which I played to help stay awake. I remember resolving to finish the day’s ride, sleep or no sleep, and to ignore thoughts of the next day’s similarly punishing ride.
About the time Jean Valjean was confessing his true identity to Inspector Javert on my phone speakers, I was crossing the Tennessee state line. I stopped here for a break and some trail mix and soldiered on until I hit the town of Collinwood, roughly the day’s midpoint. The town is home to just 982 people, but it’s also home to Q Barbecue,
Bed & Breakfast could not have been a more perfect place to recover. Host Melissa Wickline told me all about the town, once called Little Switzerland, as I snacked on home-baked treats from staff baker Deb Whitehead in a handsomely furnished dining room. We had a wonderful time swapping travel stories before I ate dinner at Junkyard Dog Steakhouse and paid a visit to the Meriwether Lewis Monument downtown.
I’d doubted my ability to finish my journey during my misérable first day but forgot these doubts after a good night’s rest and a tasty breakfast of quiche, yogurt and granola. Melissa, who’s a pro at helping out both cycle tourists and solo travelers, sent me off with a packed lunch and a desire to return on a less strenuous trip.
This second day was far hillier than the first. I battled through the heat, taking breaks by trailside information stands, under a shady overpass (Mile 103.0) and near a War of 1812 Memorial I barely looked at (Mile 113.2). I struggled up climbs and silently cursed an old guy who passed me on a superlight road bike. I asked myself why anyone would bike down this “scenic” road that was really just a bunch of trees and hills. I wasn’t quite ready to give up, but I wasn’t sure why I was still going.
And then I had my delirious realization. The Trace was my enemy. It wanted me to give up. I couldn’t let it win.
I began insulting it out loud, soon forgetting how tired I was. As I monologued like some anime villain — “You think you can stop me? These are the words of a fool!” etc. — I defiantly pedaled faster. I even skipped a planned break because I didn’t want the Trace to “get the satisfaction” of seeing me stop.
which gave me enough pulled pork, water and classic rock to continue my journey to Hohenwald, just off the Trace. As I rolled over steep inclines and poorly paved roads, I noticed several signs for candidates in the upcoming Lewis County Highway Commissioner race. Whoever can fix these roads would have had my vote. I arrived in Hohenwald at 3:14 p.m., somehow feeling more pride than exhaustion. I was exhausted, though. Fortunately, Meriwether’s Retreat
My fury broke the Trace’s spirit. Perhaps to concede defeat, it gave me one final downhill segment that I rode down at an irresponsibly fast 38 mph. The Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge served as the de facto finish line for my trip, as the Trace’s Northern Terminus a few miles later is barely acknowledged by an unremarkable highway sign. As I waited nearby for my partner, I realized I still had enough energy to keep riding. But I didn’t keep riding. My life’s hardest physical challenge was finished. My enemy lay defeated.
And even I hadn’t gone crazy enough to ride more in the July sun. ▼
8/17 MIG Welding
8/20 Cu tting Board #2
8/20 A dobe Illustrator
8/21 Build Picture Frame #1
8/22 T IG Welding
8/22 Laser
8/24 Intro Woodturning
8/24 Intro Stained Glass
8/25 Intro Woodturning Workshop
8/28 A dvanced Table Saw
The Midwestern hot spot has more to offer than an arch
BY KELSEY BEYELER
DON’T LET ANY false preconceived notions that there’s nothing to do in the Midwest prevent you from exploring it — especially when it comes to St. Louis. A city full of interesting eats, fun free activities, sports, museums and just about anything you could think of (except mountains), St. Louis is a destination that both kids and adults can easily enjoy. The nearly fivehour drive from Nashville is a bit of a haul, but a pit stop in Paducah, Ky., (which Scene contributor Ashley Brantley wrote about for us back in 2021) might help break it up.
My research didn’t yield a ton of interesting vacation home rental options, but you can find something if you really dig. The city is full of beautiful architecture, after all. Downtown boutique hotels such as The Last Hotel STL offer stylish lodging, and the quirky, Forest Park-adjacent Moonrise Hotel boasts a lunar theme. The Curio Collection hotel by Hilton inside Union Station shares the train-station-turned-mega-entertainment-center with attractions like the St. Louis Aquarium, light and fire shows and lots of family-friendly activities. I ended up at the downtown Hampton Inn near The Gateway Arch because it offered more affordable daily parking rates than most other hotels ($30). My room was clean, and the staff was friendly — their wonderful suggestions helped shape my trip.
There’s far too much to do in St. Louis to cover it all in one weekend. In addition to both major league (the Blues, the Cardinals and St. Louis City SC) and minor league sports teams (the Gateway Grizzlies, among many others), the City Museum and the Anheuser-Busch St. Louis Brewery are among the top attractions. So is Forest Park, a huge green space that also hosts the Saint Louis Zoo, the Saint Louis Art Museum and Missouri History Museum — all of which are free.
Near Forest Park sits the Delmar Loop neighborhood. Myriad shops and restaurants line the street, plus multiple murals and the St. Louis Walk of Fame. (Jon Hamm is from St. Louis?!)
Businessman Joe Edwards — who with his wife Linda founded the insanely charming Blueberry Hill in 1972 — is responsible for many of the neighborhood’s gems, including the sidewalk stars and the Moonrise Hotel. Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and music club, is also a kind of pop-culture museum, with endless ephemera decorating the space alongside vintage toys, PEZ dispensers and photos of Joe with celebrities from Troye Sivan to Chuck Berry, who played more than 200 shows at the venue. Though Blueberry Hill is famous for its burgers, I had just eaten at the nearby Mission Taco Joint, so I opted for slightly lighter fare: a cup of the homemade and nourishing Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup
and the breaded and fried Toasted Ravioli, a St. Louis specialty. Dipped in marinara sauce, the ravioli reminded me of frozen pizza rolls, but better.
St. Louis County holds a whopping 88 municipalities. While that doesn’t change much for visitors, it is helpful information to keep in mind while navigating the area. Locals told me The Hill is where to find great Italian food. For a New Orleans feel, visit Soulard. Full of red-brick row houses and interesting bars and restaurants, the area has lots of character (and the nation’s second-largest Mardi Gras celebration). Swing by the Soulard Farmers Market, but go on a Saturday to experience the full scope of it. The
nearby International Tap House is a nice spot for a midday libation.
And now, to address the elephant in the article — the Gateway Arch that has long represented St. Louis. A $22 ticket includes a presentation about its construction, a ride to the top, a few minutes up there and access to a subterranean museum explaining the arch’s history. For me, the experience was uncomfortable. Not only are the elevators to the top claustrophobia-inducing, but the small observation room at the top includes just 32 windows that dozens of people have to share. The view of the city from 630 feet up is fabulous. The history of the arch isn’t: A monument resurrected to cele-
brate westward expansion, it serves as a glaring reminder that the United States were built on stolen Native land. The nearby Old Courthouse is where enslaved couple Dred and Harriet Scott unsuccessfully petitioned for their freedom in 1846, leading to an 1857 Supreme Court ruling that enslaved people were not citizens. Nearly three decades later in the courthouse, suffrage activist Virginia Minor also sued, albeit unsuccessfully, for her right to vote, leading to an 1875 Supreme Court decision that suffrage was not a constitutionally protected right. St. Louis has deep connections with much of this country’s upsetting history, and that serves an important role in ensuring we remember it.
For a more peaceful activity, consider the Missouri Botanical Garden. The garden is totally worth the $16 entry fee — especially because that money fuels conservation efforts. Throughout 79 acres of luscious flora, you’ll find several kinds of gardens, not to mention the “Climatron,” which mimics a tropical atmosphere for orchids and exotic plants. You could easily spend an entire day in the gardens.
Less than a half-mile away from the garden’s entrance sits an intersection lovingly described to me as “carb corner.” There’s La Pâtisserie Chouquette, a French-inspired pastry shop created by New Orleans transplant Simone Faure. Torn between ordering a cherry-lime cream puff and a strawberry-pistachio tart, I opted for the latter so I could enjoy the heaping pile of fresh strawberries atop the green frangipane and strawberry jam. To offset the sweetness, a whipped dalgona coffee that brought me back to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The bakery runs on a first-come, first-served basis, so go early. Across the street is another bakery called Union Loafers, which operates as a cafe and bread shop by day and a pizzeria by night. The turkey-and-Swiss sandwich I ordered had fresh, pillowy bread and a “famous sauce” — a sort of aioli made from cooked egg yolks that was reminiscent of deviled eggs.
For more hearty fare, you might be interested in St. Louis-style pizza, made with the divisive white Provel cheese. If you’re going to try it, get it from Imo’s Pizza Sugarfire Smoke House was frequently recommended to me, and I was grateful — it’s better than any barbecue I’ve had in Nashville. For a nightcap, try Broadway Oyster Bar, which intrigued me with its music blasting from the patio. While I can’t attest to the quality of the food, the vibes were spot-on. People were friendly, and the local, unfortunately named Funky Butts Brass Band shredded through a set of great covers, unexpectedly keeping me there until the bar shut down.
If you want to visit a bonus state on your way out of the city, take the 20-ish-minute detour to Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, Ill. The largest known prehistoric Native city north of Mexico is now a grouping of large hills and hiking trails. The experience would have been more enlightening if the Interpretive Center hadn’t been closed for renovations, but it’s still worth a visit to appreciate some precolonial history and work in a hike before the long drive home. ▼
UPCOMING EVENTS
PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENTFOR TICKETS & UPDATES
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17
ALL DAY!
BOOKSTORE ROMANCE DAY AT PARNASSUS
An all day celebration of the Romance genre! Visit parnassusbooks.net/event for full schedule
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23
6:30PM
JODI PICOULT
WITH HANNAH WHITTEN at BELMONT UNIVERSITY By Any Other Name
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24
10:30AM
SATURDAY STORYTIME
WITH DAVID COVELL at PARNASSUS Gather Round
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28
6:30PM
DIDI JACKSON
WITH CANDICE AMICH at PARNASSUS BOOKS My Infinity
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31
10:30AM
SATURDAY STORYTIME
WITH ALLIE DAVIS at PARNASSUS Clara and the Constellations Play Kickball
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
6:30PM
ANNE BYRN
WITH LISA DONOVAN at PARNASSUS Baking in the American South
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
6:30PM
ELIZABETH BASS PARMAN at PARNASSUS The Empress of Cooke County
Abundant food, drinks and live music are just a few attractions in the home of the University of Georgia
BY STEPHEN TRAGESER
IF THERE’S SUCH a thing as an archetypal college town, Athens, Ga., might be it. About an hour east and slightly north of Atlanta, Athens has a cultural identity closely tied to the University of Georgia, one of the oldest public universities in the country. UGA’s sports programs, especially football, are widely renowned (except by fans of Auburn and other SEC rivals). The college has also played a big role in the city’s rich collection of arts communities; among much else, those communities have nurtured revered and influential musicians including The B-52s, R.E.M., Pylon, Drive-By Truckers and Of Montreal.
It makes sense to build a visit to “The Classic City” around a big game, if you’re into that, or a show at a venerable venue like 40 Watt Club or the Georgia Theatre. That’s especially true considering that the five-hour-plus drive is at the outer limit of what’s comfortable for a road trip. On a quiet weekend, it felt like a lot of what thrives in Athens is by Athenians, for Athenians — but also easy enough to access. It was a refreshing change from home in Nashville, where it seems like the business of courting tourism with our hospitality has created an outer layer of the city that first-timers have to work their way through before they can start to really get to know us.
My wife and I Airbnb’d a cozy, well-appointed apartment built above a family’s detached garage in Newtown, a well-established neighborhood just north of downtown Athens. It’s one of several neighborhoods around the city that have their own character and cluster of restaurants, bars and other attractions; a couple of others are Normaltown and Five Points. (Yep, they have one too.) Trips between any of these neighborhoods or to and from downtown are generally breezy and short, and it felt rewarding to stay where lo-
cal folks just live and go about their business. But lodging options abound, with chain hotels and several boutique hotels if you’d like something more luxe. Hotel Indigo Athens is walking distance from just about everything you’d want to do downtown, while Rivet House is away from the bustle but still less than a 10-minute drive from the area.
When you’re planning a visit, you’ve got a friend in Flagpole, Athens’ alt-weekly newspaper — their Guide to Athens is an invaluable resource for recommendations. My choice to book our trip for the weekend after the Fourth of July wasn’t the smartest, as several highly recommended places were closed for a summer break. We’ll have to go back for Condor Chocolates, Independent Baking Co., Paloma Park and Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods (restaurateur Dexter Weaver’s soul-food spot whose slogan “Automatic for the People” became the title of R.E.M.’s 1992 album).
We still had so many options for good food and drink that we barely scratched the surface. We felt at home on the bar side of Flicker Theatre & Bar, where we had the good fortune to chat with locals who kindly gave us a slew of pro tips. (Among them: Many bars will serve you a half-shot if you request “a howdy.”) Hidden Gem in Newtown also had a fun and relaxed vibe as well as a tasty carrot-juice-and-rum concoction called Widdle Wascal. Biscuits and gravy at Mama’s Boy hit the spot; Biscuit Basket, a breakfast counter inside a Chevron station, was also great, though we missed out on the gravy-dipped pork tenderloin biscuit that we were hipped to. Trappeze Pub has Flagpole readers’ favorite fries and rock-solid sandwiches, including a spicy chicken affair called the Carolina Dip. In addition to excellent beers and cocktails, Five Points’ The Royal Peasant has an array of English pub fare, and if there’s a football (er, soccer) match airing, you can probably see it there. We kept it casual, but if we wanted fancy, Mediterranean restaurant
The National and Thai spot Puma Yu’s — whose chef and co-founder Pete Amadhanirundr was a James Beard nominee this year — are just a
couple of choices.
For the musically inclined, the aforementioned 40 Watt and Flicker are staples of Athens music going back decades, and they’re just steps apart. Even at this dry time of year for shows, they were holding it down for the local scene: Flicker had a metal show, and 40 Watt hosted a hardcore band’s tape release party. In addition to an array of other venues, you’ve got the Athens Music Walk of Fame and two great record stores downtown. Wuxtry Records, near campus, is famous for employing Dangermouse and members of R.E.M., and has its sibling comics
and collectibles branch Bizarro Wuxtry upstairs. Low Yo Yo Stuff, next to Flicker, has a much smaller storefront, but its crates are jam-packed with gems. Need more R.E.M.? The decaying train trestle in Sandra Lee Phipps’ photo on the back cover of their debut LP Murmur has been rebuilt and incorporated into the town’s greenway system; it’s a tranquil spot for a break and a fun photo op.
And there’s much, much more. In addition to several art galleries, the municipally operated Lyndon House Arts Center highlights a wealth of local and regional art. A highlight among Lyndon House’s summer exhibitions is Cupola: A Collaboration, a musical animated sculpture featuring the work of UGA art students. Like Nashville’s beloved Belcourt, Ciné is part of indie theater group Art House Convergence; flash your Belcourt membership card and enjoy similar discounts and benefits as you would back home. On your way into or out of town, take the short trip to The State Botanical Garden of Georgia Even though the walk through its grounds was sweaty in July, perusing the lush and rambling gardens and hiking through the trees along the Middle Oconee River were just what we needed to send us off. ▼
PresentedwithouttheNashvilleSymphony.
Visit calendar.nashvillescene.com for more event listings
AUG. 16-17
A music festival is bound to chew up a lot of resources, but since the inaugural run of dance-music-centric fest Deep Tropics in 2017, organizers have continued to expand its footprint while working hard to tread more lightly on the environment. Highlighting their commendable efforts to divert waste and otherwise reduce their impact, they’ve added an Aug. 15 Sustainability Summit via nonprofit Deep Culture in advance of this year’s proceedings. The festival proper returns to Bicentennial Mall on Friday and Saturday, with DJs and producers performing on three stages. At the top of the bill Friday is superstar DJ Kaskade, who made headlines this year as the first in-game DJ during the Super Bowl; he’s breaking out his Redux set, which is generally tailored to be more chill. Headlining Saturday is Florida performance-and-production duo Sofi Tukker, coming through with a DJ set in the run-up to their next LP BREAD (an acronym for “Be Really Energetic and Dance”). Heaps more performers are slated for the main stages on both days; from noon to 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, DJ Drez and longtime collaborator Marti Nikko will host the Deep Culture Amphitheater Experience with breath work, meditation yoga and (naturally) dance. Late-night sets are taking over all three stages at Cannery Hall on Friday and Saturday with performers including Zingara and Tape B, as well as at dance club Night We Met with Malóne and a DJ set from Elderbrook. Check out deeptropics.org for complete scheduling and ticketing information.
STEPHEN TRAGESER
AUG. 16-17 AT BICENTENNIAL CAPITOL MALL STATE PARK, CANNERY HALL AND NIGHT WE MET
THURSDAY / 8.15
[SWING LO]
MUSIC
JOHN LOMAX III ALBUM RELEASE
Longtime Nashvillian John Lomax III has graced these pages before. The former manager for Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle has worked as a music journalist, a photographer and — as part of his family tradition — an archivist and preservationist. If Lomax’s surname looks familiar to you, that’s likely because you’re aware of the work of his grandfather John Lomax Sr. and his uncle Alan Lomax, world-renowned preservationists who are responsible for keeping generations of American folk, country and blues music alive. But Lomax III also makes music of his own, and on Thursday, the 52-year music-business veteran will celebrate his upcoming 80th birthday along with the release of his debut album. The 20-track American Folk Songs — the title itself a tribute to a 1956 record by Lomax’s father, John Avery Lomax Jr. — was produced by prolific local engineer and mixer Matthew “Buster” Allen. The lead single, “I Was Born 10,000 Years Ago,” is Lomax’s take on a traditional tune that’s been done a bunch of ways by a bunch of performers over the years — including Elvis Presley. “I saw Peter, Paul and Moses playing ‘Ring Around the
Rosies,’ and I’ll whip the guy who says it isn’t so,” sings Lomax in his lighthearted take on the classic tune. It’ll be fun seeing Lomax and his band of ringers bring that and other folk tunes to the stage on Thursday. D. PATRICK RODGERS
5:30 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT 1604 EIGHTH AVE. S.
[TORTURED THEATER DEPARTMENT] THE FRANKLIN THEATRE SINGS THE MUSIC OF TAYLOR SWIFT
Get your friendship bracelets ready, my Swiftie friends. The Eras Tour may be winding down, but The Franklin Theatre has a special treat in store for you Thursday with The Franklin Theatre Sings the Music of Taylor Swift. A co-production from Jordan Ross Schindler (Cruel Intentions: The ’90s Musical and Only Hope: A Musical Tribute to A Walk to Remember), Amy Sapp and The Franklin Theatre, this unique concert event brings together a host of talented musicians, with each promising to put their own spin on favorite Taylor Swift songs. The cast includes a great mix of local artists, including Corey Allen, Allison Bailey, Brian Logan Dales, Due South, Annabelle Fox, Douglas Waterbury-Tieman, Greer Grammer, Lexie Hayden, Steffi Jeraldo, Sam Kayko, Tyler Kohrs, Kayley Nell, Lauren Paley & JADA, Mandy Quinn, Emily Robins, Tyler Russell, Solace, Eitan Snyder, Katie Stevens,
Tezza, Andrea Vasquez and Lauren Wright. No matter what Era you may be in, you’re sure to be enchanted. AMY STUMPFL
8 P.M. AT THE FRANKLIN THEATRE
419 MAIN ST., FRANKLIN
MUSIC
[THE BABE WITH THE POWER] NUCLEAR TOMB, THETAN & SAVAGE ATTACK
It took Baltimore’s Nuclear Tomb nearly a decade to release their first proper album, but Terror Labyrinthian dropped like a devastating multi-megaton warhead. The LP’s winding, labyrinthine take on thrash/death metal is complex without being complicated, guiding listeners through the brutality and madness like Jack Torrance chasing his son Danny through the Overlook Hotel’s hedge maze in the final scene of The Shining. Local thrash duo Thetan emerged from the ruins of Nashville metalpunk unit Sanctions after the guitarist quit in 2011. Since then, the pair — librarian Chad L’Eplattenier on the blastbeats, and Anti-Corp Music founder Dan Emery on bass — have been blurring the lines of aggressive music while pumping out a catalog that includes multiple LPs and EPs, collaborations with Kool Keith and Lil B, and a fantastic split 12-inch with Music City grinders Bleed the Pigs. The maniacal Savage Attack opens up the cacophony with their rapidfire riffs.
P.J. KINZER
7 P.M. AT DRKMTTR
1111 DICKERSON PIKE
MUSIC
[INFAMOUS ANGEL] IRIS DEMENT
For some in Nashville, Iris DeMent is best known as one-half of the enduring and endearing John Prine duet “In Spite of Myself” — and for good reason. It’s a one-of-a-kind song highlighting the oddball moments that come with unconditional love. But DeMent’s contributions to folk music go far beyond that
rainbow she and Prine once sang about. She’s a formidable force in singer-songwriter circles, capable of cutting through life’s noise to pinch you in unexpected, emotional soft spots. Need proof? Take a spin with songs like “Our Town” and “Let the Mystery Be,” both off her 1992 debut Infamous Angel, an underappreciated gem from the emergence of the ’90s Americana scene. DeMent tours in support of Workin’ on a World, her seventh studio album, released in 2023. And this weekend won’t be the last Nashville hears from her this year; DeMent will return to Music City in the fall to open for Jason Isbell during his annual Ryman Auditorium residency.
MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
7:30 P.M. AT CITY WINERY
609 LAFAYETTE ST.
[SHORT AND SWEET]
FILM
Love, sex, race, discovery and some strange, twisted shit can be found in this year’s Sundance Shorts Tour. From the U.K., “Essex Girls” is a coming-of-age clip where a dark-skinned teenage girl inches away from her posh, pale gal pals and starts hanging with her fellow brothas and sistas. Over in Spain, “The Masterpiece” captures a tense afternoon between a wealthy couple and two immigrant scrap dealers. And from Japan, “Pisko the Crab Child Is in Love” is a quirky, surreal tale about the love life of a self-proclaimed “crab child.” The Jodie Fosterproduced doc “ALOK” (directed by her partner Alex Hedison) follows gender-nonconforming artist/activist Alok Vaid-Menon. The rest of the shorts are deranged puppies from America: A fib-telling woman finds out what happens when her lies come true in “Pathological”; a man tries to save his mentally imprisoned wife (in the most squeamish way possible) in “Dream Creep”; and “Bug Diner” just might be the freakiest, horniest stop-motion animated short you’ll ever see. CRAIG D. LINDSEY
AUGUST 16-20 AT THE BELCOURT
2102 BELCOURT AVE.
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s acclaimed interview series “Nashville Cats” returns Saturday afternoon with a program honoring legendary keyboardist Bobby Wood. While Wood has been a recording artist in his own right, he is best known for his work as a session musician in Memphis and Nashville. As one of The Memphis Boys working out of Chips Moman’s American Sound Studios in the 1960s, he appeared on records by Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Wilson Pickett and Dusty Springfield. When The Memphis Boys relocated to Nashville in the early ’70s, Wood continued to record with hitmakers, including Garth Brooks, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Rogers and Tammy Wynette. “He’s had such an amazing life — starting with singing in his family gospel group, then his seeming pop breakthrough as a performer,” museum writer-editor RJ Smith tells the Scene via email. “He bounced back from a terrible car crash to become one of the greatest session pianists of the ’60s and ’70s. And then, when the studio scene seems to be changing, a newcomer named Garth Brooks enters his life. Time and again, he’s been in the place to be.” The interview hosted by Smith will be accompanied by recordings and video clips
from Wood’s career. DARYL SANDERS
2:30 P.M. AT THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM
222 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY S.
FILM
[FLAMES … ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE] MIDNIGHT MOVIE: CLUE
On paper, 1985’s Clue might not sound like much: a film based on a tabletop game (decades before movies like Battleship and Dungeons & Dragons made that somewhat more commonplace) that landed mixed reviews and failed to earn back its budget at the box office. But anyone who’s seen the comedic cult classic with the knockout cast knows that Clue is better than the sum of its parts — and many of its parts are pretty damn great to begin with. Like its namesake board game — the North American version anyhow, as the original English version was known as Cluedo — Clue, set in the mid1950s, follows six color-coded characters stranded in a New England mansion. A murder most foul transpires, and we the audience are left to game out whodunnit. Writer-director Jonathan Lynn, who’d go on to direct My Cousin Vinny and The Whole Nine Yards, managed to concoct enough intrigue, motive and backstory to beef up the game’s modest premise. But it’s really the performances that make this one sing: Tim Curry as Wadsworth the butler! The recently departed Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard! Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock! Michael McKean as Mr. Green! Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum! Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlet! And perhaps most importantly, Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White! If nothing else, this film is worth the cost of admission for Kahn’s improvised and absolutely incredible “Flames on the Side of My Face” monologue. And that’s not to mention (no spoilers) what might be one of the wildest bits of closing dialogue in the history of cinema. D. PATRICK RODGERS MIDNIGHT AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
[OPENING WIDE]
In Tennessee, ’grass grows everywhere — even in caves. We’re talking about bluegrass music, of course. This weekend, the Big Mouth Bluegrass Festival takes residency inside The
UPCOMING SHOWS AT THE MUSEUM’S CMA THEATER
AUGUST 20
DAVE MASON
DAVE MASON’S TRAFFIC JAM
SEPTEMBER 7
JULIAN LAGE
SPEAK TO ME TOUR
SEPTEMBER 19
THE JERRY DOUGLAS BAND WITH SUPPORTING ARTIST CRIS JACOBS
OCTOBER 11
THE PRINE FAMILY PRESENTS
YOU GOT GOLD: CELEBRATING THE SONGS OF JOHN PRINE LIMITED AVAILABILITY
DECEMBER 1
OCIE ELLIOTT
TICKETS ON SALE NOW Museum members receive exclusive pre-sale opportunities for CMA Theater concerts. Learn more at CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Membership.
AUGUST 15
CONCERT FOR CUMBERLAND HEIGHTS WITH CHARLES KELLEY, BOB DIPIERO, VICTORIA SHAW, VINCE GILL, ERIC PASLAY, ERNEST AND MORE
AUGUST 25
JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS WITH KARLEY SCOTT COLLINS
AUGUST 31 SQUEEZE
SEPTEMBER 11
WILD RIVERS WITH JADE BIRD
SEPTEMBER 26
SHELBY LYNNE WITH WAYLON PAYNE AND MEG MCREE
MAY 1, 2025
MADDIE & TAE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
Caverns — Grundy County’s celebrated caveslash-concert-hall — for two marathon nights of quick-pickin’ fun. The bill includes a stacked serving of bluegrass favorites, such as former Nitty Gritty Dirt Band member John McEuen and his Circle Band, award-winning traditional band Blue Highway, Appalachian outfit the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, teenage showstopper Wyatt Ellis, husband-and-wife group Darin & Brooke Aldridge and family duo The Price Sisters, among others. In its second year, the festival plans to include open jam sessions, workshops, cave tours and craft vendors, among other side-stage attractions. Ticket packages include camping options on The Caverns grounds. Find the full lineup and information at thecaverns.com. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
AUG. 17-18 AT THE CAVERNS
555 CHARLIE ROBERTS ROAD, PELHAM
[LOVE IS IN THE AIR — AND THE PAGES] BOOKSTORE ROMANCE DAY
Fans of the Darcy hand-flex rejoice — Bookstore Romance Day is upon us! Yes, I know I just referenced a movie in a write-up about books, but the Venn diagram of lovers of the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and lovers of romance novels is practically a circle. This Saturday the city’s indie bookstores will celebrate the ever-growing, ever-popular romance genre —from the flirty and joyful to the smutty and fantastical. Parnassus in particular will have a love-filled day, beginning with a special storytime and a swoon-worthy, Bridgerton-themed piano concert. They’ll end the day with tarot readings from Rachel Randolph and a ticketed “between the covers” book club slumber party. But Bookstore Romance Day was always meant to celebrate all indie bookstores — so make a day of it! Check out all the bookish nooks around town. A spicy, queer enemies-to-lovers from Novelette, and a cozy forced-proximity from The Bookshop? An opposites-attract from Parnassus, and a secondchance-romance from McKay’s? Yes, all of the above please! And who knows? Maybe you’ll experience a real-life “meet cute” in the process.
RYNE WALKER
AUG. 17 AT NASHVILLE BOOKSTORES
[WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?]
Comedian Cortney Warner is doing something as delightful as it is important for the local comedy scene. Every few months she hosts Comedy Night at The Blue Room, showcasing local funny people and musicians. Take MK Gannon, for example — while she’s scheduled for Saturday night’s lineup, she’s also responsible for coordinating shows at other great locations like The Lipstick Lounge, The Dive Motel and Drkmttr through Eastside Comedy. James Holiday’s charming social media monologues provide a hint of what to expect, while you never know what you’re going to get from the multifaceted Britt Beer. Brian “B Cov” Covington, who has toured across the country and been featured by Comedy Central, is no stranger to the standup stage. Meanwhile, some comedy fans might recognize Mark Anundson as one-half of comedy-rock duo Bizrq, and many will relate to Sarah Dalton’s amusing observational comedy. If you need an extra reason to enjoy these sets, DJ Night Legs is it.
Composed of goth powerhouse Olivia Jean and badass bassist Erica Salazar, DJ Night Legs has graced these comedy nights before, so you can count on them to provide a fitting sonic ending to a night of amiable antics. These shows have a tendency to sell out, so if your interest is piqued, act quickly to secure your spot. KELSEY BEYELER
7 P.M. AT THE BLUE ROOM AT THIRD MAN RECORDS
623 SEVENTH AVE S.
SUNDAY / 8.18
FILM [THAT’S RUFF] WEEKEND CLASSICS: ANIMAL KINGDOM: BEST IN SHOW
After rounding up his fellow funny pals for the cult mockumentary Waiting for Guffman, Christopher Guest assembled a game ensemble for his 2000 follow-up Best in Show, another heavily improvised free-for-all in which Guest and company play mediocre but determined go-getters striving for triumphant glory. Yes, we have the vets: co-writer Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Guest’s Spinal Tap bandmate Michael McKean. But Guest also introduces us to future scene-stealers Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch
and John Michael Higgins. They all are peculiar characters competing in a Westminsteresque dog show, with Guest himself playing a Southerner who enters his beloved bloodhound. (Guest and Levy came up with their own fictional show after other dog shows turned them down.) We also have the late legend Fred Willard doing his dunderheaded thing as a sideline color commentator, and ’90s arthouse queen Parker Posey as one-half of a yuppie couple who dote too much on their precious Weimaraner. Thanks to the Belcourt, currently featuring its ongoing Weekend Classics: Animal Kingdom series, you’ll be able to see them ad-lib like crazy in glorious 35 mm! CRAIG D. LINDSEY AUG. 18 & 21 AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
Nashville Repertory Theatre officially opens its 40th anniversary season next month with what promises to be a fabulous production of Sara Bareilles’ Waitress. But you can help kick off the fun this weekend as the Rep hosts its ninth annual Broadway Brunch at Music City Center. As always, guests can look forward to a gourmet
brunch, bottomless specialty cocktails and a fun live auction. (The silent auction is already live and open for bids.) This year’s gala also will offer a special honor for the company’s co-founders, Martha Rivers Ingram and Mac Pirkle. There’s a terrific lineup of entertainment planned, including celebrated West End and Broadway artists Laura Michelle Kelly and David Shannon, who will star in the Rep’s upcoming production of Sunday in the Park With George. Also on hand will be local favorites such as Megan Murphy Chambers, Delaney Amatrudo, LaDarra Jackel, Maya Antoinette Riley, Piper Jones, Bakari King, Richard Harris III, Dustin Davis and Garris Wimmer. It’s a star-studded celebration, and all proceeds go to benefit the Rep and its many programs. AMY STUMPFL
10:30 A.M. AT THE MUSIC CITY CENTER 201 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY S.
TUESDAY
[TRAFFIC REPORT]
MUSIC
The fact that Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Dave Mason is still touring and performing his half-century-plus catalog of music is a genuine
blessing. That blessing extends to Nashvillians on Tuesday night when Dave Mason’s Traffic Jam makes a stop in the city for a performance at CMA Theater. Mason is a living legend. He was present at the very start of the British Invasion’s first wave. “I was right there at the beginning of it all,” he told the Scene in January 2023. Mason was a founding member of Traffic, with whom he was inducted into the Rock Hall, and he wrote one of the band’s most memorable songs: “Feelin’ Alright?,” which was made famous by Joe Cocker. He played 12-string acoustic guitar on Jimi Hendrix’s monster 1968 cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” then six years later released his own reimagined, electrifying version of the song, which helped him score his second gold album. In addition to the aforementioned songs, fans can expect to hear a healthy helping of material from Mason’s solo career, as well as Traffic’s catalog. He and his band — Mark Stein on Hammond B3, Johnne Sambataro on guitar and vocals, Marty Fera on percussion, and Ray Cardwell on bass and vocals — will also cover a few songs from some of Mason’s old friends, such as the Spencer Davis Group, Blind Faith and Fleetwood Mac.
DARYL SANDERS
7:30 P.M. AT THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM’S CMA THEATER
224 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY S.
American R&B has a rich history in the city of Chicago. The Second City boasts an output of blues-based musicmakers like Donny Hathaway, Chess Records, Curtis Mayfield and Chaka Khan, so it’s no surprise percussionist/singer Maurice White and his bass virtuoso half-brother Verdine would be a Chicagoland native as well. The White brothers rhythm section relocated to L.A. as the ’60s became the ’70s to form a new musical project — Earth, Wind & Fire. The 55year history of EW&F has covered everything from heady, spiritual jazz-funk to FM radio earworm disco, earning the band the respect of any musician worth their salt. Earth, Wind & Fire’s watermark can be spotted in every corner of popular music for the past five decades. Miles Davis and Dionne Warwick both said the multi-platinum group was their all-time favorite band, while Quincy Jones once claimed to be the biggest Earth, Wind & Fire fan on the planet. Their fellow Lake Michigan expats Chicago have been playing in some form or fashion for even longer, selling 40 million units on the strength of massive hits like “Saturday in the Park” and “25 or 6 to 4.” Catch them both at Bridgestone Tuesday night. P.J. KINZER
7:30 P.M. AT BRIDGESTONE
OF QUEEN: A TRIBUTE TO QUEEN
9.7 AURAL FIXATION
9.8 KARYN WHITE
9.10 JEROME COLLINS REWIND: A JOURNEY TO MOTOWN AND BEYOND 9.15 WOOFSTOCK AT THE WINERY WITH EMMYLOU AND AOIFE O’DONOVAN
9.18 MADDIE IN THE MORNING LIVE! WITH TS MADISON
9.22 DR. JOHN COOPER CLARKE: CELEBRATING 50 YEARS IN SHOWBIZ
9.22 THE TON3S AKA THE HAMILTONES 9.23 HAWKTAIL + VÄSEN
9.24 SHANNON AND VICKI LIVE - REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ORANGE COUNTY
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A purple-themed exhibition honoring David Berman contends with grief and what happens after BY
LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
PURPLE REIGN ISN’T about David Berman.
The beloved frontman of indie-rock bands Silver Jews and Purple Mountains died by suicide five years ago, and his friends — gallery owners Julia Martin of Nashville’s Julia Martin Gallery and Brett Ralph of Louisville, Ky.’s indie record store/bookstore/art gallery Surface Noise — conceptualized the show at Berman’s wake at Congregation Micah. But although both Martin and Ralph are adamant that the theme is little more than a tip of the hat to Berman and his final album, also named Purple Mountains, his influence reigns supreme.
“Our whole circle of friends was all connected by the David Berman thread,” Martin tells the Scene by phone a few days before the show is installed in her Wedgewood-Houston gallery. “I thought it’d be really beautiful to do a monochromatic show choosing the color purple in honor of David, but leaving it at that.”
The purple theme was Ralph’s idea. He’s been curating shows around specific colors for years, inspired by the black-and-white show Robert Fraser curated during London’s “Swinging ’60s” era. He was preparing a pink show when Berman died.
“When we were dedicating David’s tombstone, I was telling Julia about the [color-themed] show we had coming up,” says Ralph. “And she’s like, ‘I would love to do a monochromatic show together. And we’ve got to do purple, because we’re both friends of David’s, and we were thinking about him at that
moment.’ And I was like, ‘Fine — purple.’
“Purple is my least favorite color. I like purple, I just like every other color better.”
The two installed Purple Reign on the fifth anniversary of Berman’s death: Aug. 7. The artists with work in the show are gallery favorites — many of them also musicians, many of them also friends of Berman.
Ralph, who had just gotten back from a threeday memorial for prolific indie-rock producer Steve Albini when we spoke, is clearly enthusiastic about art and music, and has a deep appreciation for his friends’ creativity.
“Catherine Irwin from Freakwater is a legendary Louisville musician,” he explains, “but she also went to the Louisville School of Art, where punk rock in Louisville was kind of born, and has been a painter in the underground here for years.”
Irwin’s painting “Pollinators” is a folk-art-influenced mixed-media work on a wooden panel, packed with euphemisms of romance and sex — a naked man is depicted as small in the palm of a woman’s hand, and they’re separated by a wilting flower.
Letitia Quesenberry’s “As of Yet 183” could remind you of either Hilma af Klint or a New Age album cover, depending on your perspective. It’s part of a series of 17-by-14-inch works that the artist makes in addition to her larger pieces, which often incorporate LEDs — imagine if James Turrell and Georgia O’Keeffe switched places, and you’d be somewhere close.
“You know, I think there’s a tendency to think of nonrepresentational work as cold or cerebral, and certainly less sexy,” Ralph says. “But I think there’s a lot of sex and playfulness in her work that kind of belies that notion.”
Elsa Hansen Oldham’s embroidered works lend themselves to the free association of both memory and grief. The purple-themed work is like a cross-stitch sampler of the artist’s purple-centric interests, starting with Berman himself, bearded and bespectacled, labeled “Purple Mountains.” Around him swirl other purple-related cultural totems — Prince, the Purple One himself, in repose on a bed of flowers, as on the cover of his 1988 album Lovesexy; an oversized Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid (the 1989 version); an equally oversized Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (the 1971 version); The Color Purple author Alice Walker; and on and on. It’s at once playfully obsessive and reverent — kind of like being a fan.
The Louisville artists are in good company with some Nashville favorites. Wendy Walker Silverman, who is represented by Tinney Contemporary, has a standout piece that fuses at least two shades of purple with browns, oranges, and a distinctly midcentury mint green. It has the composition of a color field painting, but its shapes all seem to be made from negative space — there’s celebration, but there’s also absence.
“I personally think it’s such a cool thing, because it’s just a simplification of curation,” says Martin of the show’s purple parameters. “There’s no pretentiousness about it.”
“Part of one’s job as a curator and tastemaker — you know, selling books and records and turning people on to culture — is to share my vision and taste with other people,” Ralph explains. “But I also don’t want to damn my clientele to the vagaries and the pitfalls of my own prejudices.
“If something seems viable and audacious, and I think other people would be excited about it — fine.”
The exhibition opening operated under a similar guise, with a mix of Louisville and Nashville musicians playing on the gallery’s front porch. In an act as viable, audacious and exciting as it gets, Berman’s band, Silver Jews, played a set without its frontman. In his place, Cassie Berman led the band, and her duet with Will Oldham on the Silver Jews’ beloved “Punks in the Beerlight” was the last song they played. ▼
Purple Reign Through Aug. 31 at Julia Martin Gallery
Former Tennessee Assistant Attorney General Preston Shipp recounts his journey from retribution to reconciliation BY
EMILY CRAWFORD
THE MOST POWERFUL moment in Preston Shipp’s memoir, Confessions of a Former Prosecutor: Abandoning Vengeance and Embracing True Justice, is not flattering. It is not a moment of triumph or a funny anecdote showing the author’s wit and intelligence. It conveys a red-hot burning shame you feel through the pages. In it, Shipp stands on the curb opening an envelope he just retrieved from the mailbox. In an ordinary correspondence from his former employer, he learns that seemingly unremarkable actions he’d taken as part of a job he once loved had consigned a friend to life in prison.
Shipp’s book details his journey from an ambitious young prosecutor in the Tennessee attorney general’s office to an activist committed to reform, and a key factor in his evolution was meeting Cyntoia Brown, a victim of trafficking. In 2004, when Brown was 16, years of abuse and desperation drove her to a terrible act — the murder of a middle-aged man named Johnny Allen who had brought her to his Nashville home for sex. Charged as an adult and hit with a life sentence, Brown languished in the Tennessee Prison for Women before joining a Lipscomb University program known as LIFE in which Shipp was an instructor.
Shipp, who found himself troubled and deeply moved by his experience teaching prisoners, had already left his job as a prosecutor and was working for the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility when he first met the bright, resilient Brown in 2009. She arrived in his class “a voracious reader” who was also “fiery and outspoken.” To him, this young woman bore no resemblance to the teenager who shot Johnny Allen:
I knew Cyntoia was a changed person. We exchanged books, shared jokes, and had side conversations about what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted to put her experience to work in service of others by helping at-risk youth avoid the tragic turns her life had taken. … Although she was serving a sentence of fifty-one years, she was nurturing hope that one day she would get a second chance.
Their friendship was tested when they both learned that Shipp had earlier written a brief arguing against an appeal of Brown’s murder conviction — a brief he never remembered writing before that fateful trip to the mailbox. Brown’s quest for clemency later became a cause célèbre, and she was freed in 2019. Shipp took an active role in advocating for her release, and her case pushed him further toward a complete rejection of the retributive paradigm of the
criminal legal system.
The term “criminal legal system” is used deliberately throughout the book and stands as a repudiation of the “criminal justice system” referenced in every Law & Order intro. Shipp considers the current approach little more than “institutionalized vengeance,” wildly inadequate to address crime or other social problems. He brings a prosecutor’s mind to his indictment of the current system and includes heartbreaking statistics about America’s staggering rate of incarceration, which exceeds that of Russia and China. No doubt Shipp, with his acumen for storytelling and memorable data, made a formidable adversary in court.
Confessions of a Former Prosecutor serves as a good explainer on the inner workings of the system Shipp critiques, but it will resonate with an audience beyond lawyers, judges and reformers. Anyone who has ever become disenchanted with a career will find something relatable. “Every day I felt more and more like an imposter,” Shipp writes of his days as a prosecutor. “I no longer believed in the work I once dreamed of doing. Meetings with my colleagues were increasingly uncomfortable, as I no longer shared their common faith in a system of retribution.”
Shipp’s process of abandoning one life for another more in accordance with his moral values is deeply spiritual. He writes movingly about silent meditation retreats, labyrinths and monastic disciplines, but the greatest spiritual practice of all is proximity to the marginalized. “The
gospel as a ministry of reconciliation wasn’t something I learned in church,” Shipp writes. “No, this was a lesson I learned from people in prison.” Through genuine friendships with his students, death row inmates and wrongfully convicted exonerees, Shipp realizes a faith that is more exacting, yet also richer and deeper.
Shipp notes repeatedly that the building he used to work in is inscribed with a pithy directive: “The first duty of society is justice.” Throughout the book, he asks readers to consider what justice really means. In the end, his ethos is one of deep connectedness with those caught up in the criminal legal system. Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Shipp’s wrenching examination of his own heart is proof that achieving justice could never be so easy.
To read an uncut version of this review — and more local book coverage — please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. ▼
A LITTLE BLUE HOUSE at the corner of South 11th and Holly streets in East Nashville’s Five Points neighborhood has ushered in people from all corners of Nashville since 2009. Under the watchful gaze of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mother Maybelle Carter, Joan Jett, Dolly Parton and other female musical luminaries who adorn its colorful mural, Fanny’s House of Music has provided an inclusive, welcoming space for all people to comfortably play music and learn its history, try new gear — more likely new-tothem, as Fanny’s is known for its well-curated stock of player-grade vintage instruments — and talk shop.
Business is bustling, and plans continue to expand the store’s footprint and launch the nonprofit Fanny’s School of Music, which will provide much-needed space for more educational and community-focused activities. Founders Pamela Cole and Leigh Maples met as students at Belmont University in 1982 — they were two of only a few female bass players at the school — and they already had decades of music-industry experience before opening Fanny’s. It’s the sort of environment they say they wish they’d had as children.
“We were talking one day about if someone would open a music store that was comfortable for everybody, especially women players,” says Cole. “And then the air sucked out of the car, and we went, ‘Oh crap. We’re supposed to be the ones to do it.’”
Maples has taken the past year-and-a-half off work due to migraines and nonterminal cognitive issues. After 15 years of running their beloved local business, she and Cole have identified their next step — retirement by the end of the year.
“We started Fanny’s together, and it’s been really hard to do it without her,” Cole says of Maples.
Both owners have worked to maintain the store’s legacy. Cole initially hoped that, with enough pledged funding, Fanny’s House of Music would be bought by the Fanny’s School nonprofit and become a social enterprise, a kind of for-profit business with an explicit focus on addressing community needs. As part of the revised plan, the search is underway for a buyer or buyers to purchase the property and the business from Cole and Maples.
If the new owner of the land and the business are not the same person or group, the intention is to find a buyer for the property who will lease it back to Fanny’s House of Music for a seven- to 10-year term and facilitate the school’s development and the store’s evolution into a social enterprise. If this happens, Cole will act as a nonvoting member of the nonprofit’s board and watch over business practices. While the search will start mid-August, it’s crucial to preserve the environment that Cole and Maples
Fanny’s House of Music co-founders prepare their beloved store for its next phase BY
MADELEINE BRADFORD
have cultivated for a long time to come.
“People are going to be really upset if it ends,” Cole says. “It’s not about us. It’s about the mission. And the mission has always been empowering kids and women and having a place that was comfortable for all musicians.”
The shop’s name evokes Southern hospitality and nods to Fanny, the phenomenal all-woman rock band started by sisters June and Jean Millington in California in the 1960s. While everyone’s welcome in the shop, a key tenet of its mission is to celebrate female players and educate guests about the prominent and hidden figures behind music’s rich history.
“There are only women players on the walls, and I think all of them are actually holding an instrument,” says Cole. “That was important to me to have that representation, and not just [any] picture of the artist.”
Early in Taylor Swift’s career, Cole and Maples hung a poster-size print of her debut Rolling Stone cover in one of the lesson rooms. Cole notes that while she encountered many locals at the time who were dismissive of Swift’s musicianship, young students — boys and girls alike — responded strongly to the star’s confident gaze; some even hugged the poster.
On a visit to the store, Swift signed it, dedicated to those kids.
The staff makes it a point to extend the same attentive customer service to everyone who comes in, celebrity or not. Swift is just one of many famous musicians who have visited and purchased instruments from Fanny’s, including Kacey Musgraves, Gracie Abrams, Jack White and Kathy Valentine. Brittany Howard was already on the wall at the store before she came in as a customer. She has since befriended Cole and Maples, and she now serves on the board of Fanny’s School of Music; Howard also filmed an interview for The 1619 Project, a Hulu docuseries exploring the history of slavery and its impact on modern America, at the store.
“I am very fortunate to have been born with a great deal of self-confidence — almost delusional — so I’m lucky that I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of places that I go,” says Ellen Angelico, who recently ended her 10-year tenure as a Fanny’s staffer to focus on her career as an in-demand session and touring guitarist. “But I know that people that look like me don’t always feel that way. So by taking care of those people, I’m kind of taking care of myself.”
Asked about her favorite instruments in the
store, Cole calls on other staffers to refresh her memory, and Andrea Guess points her toward a 1956 Fender Musicmaster. Cole’s favorites always have interesting stories, and the Musicmaster has clearly been well-used and well-loved. The fretboard is darkened where a former owner (or owners) frequently placed their fingers; some of the tuning pegs have been replaced with pennies folded over, and a partial re-fret job has been carried out, with worn-out frets further up the neck simply left off. Gingerly, Cole picks up the oldest instrument in the shop, a parlor guitar dating from 1896.
“It’s called a ‘parlor,’ and they were to be played very quietly in the parlor, because women should be quiet and stay in the parlor,” Cole says, laughing. “And look at us now.” ▼
Follow @fannyshouseofmusic on Instagram for updates
Piper & the Hard Times take a big win and run with it on Revelation
BY RON WYNN
THE TRIO OF vocalist Al “Piper” Green, guitarist Steve Eagon and drummer Dave Colella — better known as Piper & the Hard Times — had one modest goal in mind when they went to Memphis last year. Representing Nashville in the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge, the band simply wanted to make a good impression on a crowd composed of equal parts blues fans, competing bands, music journalists and industry insiders.
“Sure, we wanted to win, but no, we had no illusions or thoughts about that,” Eagon tells the Scene during a conversation with the whole group. “We just wanted to make a good showing.”
The Hard Times hit that mark and then some: They took first place in the competition’s band division. Not only has the win boosted the trio’s bookings and media coverage, but it’s also led to the seasoned ensemble, who’ve been playing together since the early 2000s, recording their debut album Revelation. They’ll celebrate the album with two performances on Friday, first at 3rd and Lindsley for WMOT Roots Radio’s Finally Fridays program, and later at Papa Turney’s BBQ’s venue Miss Zeke’s Juke Joint.
Cut over the course of a three-day marathon session at Music Row studio Ronnie’s Place, Revelation is a searing, musically delightful portrait that includes everything that makes Piper & the Hard Times special. They come across as a contemporary group steeped in and fortified by the blues, yet easily able to incorporate elements of rock, jazz, soul, pop and gospel into their blend.
“One of the things that we’ve always done is emphasize our own sound, something that’s very much a reflection of our different musical
The Ozark Mountain Daredevils make their debut appearance at the Ryman on their farewell tour BY DARYL SANDERS
A LOT OF CLASSIC rock acts yo-yo at the end of their careers: They do a farewell tour, then a few years later a comeback tour, then another farewell tour, and so on. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, purveyors of groovy, rootsy rock ’n’ roll since the early 1970s, didn’t want to do it that way. So the band’s When It Shines farewell tour, which includes a stop at the Ryman Friday night, actually will be the band’s final run on the road.
“Supe says we’re going to land the plane at the end of 2025,” John Dillon, a multi-instrumentalist and singer who’s one of the two remaining original members of the Daredevils, tells the Scene. He’s quoting his fellow remaining original member, bassist Michael “Supe” Granda, who has called Nashville home since 1991.
“We decided to give it two years,” Granda says. “So we’re telling all of our fans, ‘OK, you have a two-year window to see us one last time.’”
experiences,” Colella says. “For one thing, Al can sing the hell out of anything we give him. Then we’re very much into the groove and the storytelling aspect of the blues, plus the improvisational flavor of jazz, and all of us have grown up hearing rock, pop, funk and soul. So you get all those things as part of what we do.”
The mix of musical personalities is well in keeping with the trio’s diverse backgrounds. Eagon grew up in Northern Ohio and has been a guitarist since his teen years. His playing is equally influenced by Chicago blues and the British Invasion. Colella has been drumming since childhood — he once was a pupil of Dave Brubeck mainstay Joe Morello — and came to Nashville from New Jersey in the 1990s with the band Timberwolf. Green grew up singing in a gospel choir in Bolivar, Tenn., while also hearing soul, pop and rock on Top 40 radio. He touts his uncle, a Chicago resident, as a major influence.
“I remember him coming in for visits in this huge Cadillac,” says Green. “He’d have these blues folks with him. I got from him the color and the style — the essence of the blues.”
So it follows that there’s plenty of thematic variety throughout Revelation. But it is also grounded in hard-edged musical energy, driven by Green’s soulful, powerful lead vocals. There are aspects of Texas shuffle in “The Hard Times” and strains of rock and funk in “Heart for Sale”; gospel and R&B-flavored passion and fury color “Twenty Long Years”; and some Crescent City flavor infuses “Trouble Man.” All 12 songs are originals, something else that’s a group trademark, though Eagon says they’re certainly not opposed to doing covers, and points out that the
In the mid-’70s, the group was riding high with a pair of Top 40 hits, “If You Wanna Get to Heaven” and “Jackie Blue.” But even then, the Daredevils were never road warriors to the same degree as many of their peers.
“We never really played a whole lot, and that was a problem with our record company back in the ’70s,” Granda says. “We never really went out for long, extended tours. I think the most we ever played was 80 or 90 gigs a year. For the last 10 years, we’ve played maybe 20 or 30 a year.”
Granda estimates that When It Shines will end with a total of 75 or so dates. Though the band will no longer tour, they will play the occasional special show.
“I think it’s healthy if it comes to an end in the proper way — where everybody agrees, for one thing,” Dillon says. “And then we sort of celebrate the joy that we’ve had together as a working band for the last 51 or 52 years.”
The Daredevils’ most recent collection of new music was 2019’s Heaven 20/20, and they currently have no plans to make another record. In the fall, however, they hope to release an album that has been on the shelf for more than three decades. They recorded Now Hear This in the late ’80s at Lou Whitney’s studio in Springfield, Mo., where everyone in the band except Granda is based.
“We think we have a home for [Now Hear This],” Granda
blues world often judges groups, especially in their early days, on how well they do them.
“We certainly know a lot of the classics,” says Eagon. “But for us, we see the blues as a foundation to work off and from, and a way to enhance our own writing. Clearly we love those old songs, but for us the challenge is how we apply what we hear to the present.”
Despite the ups and downs, the band has stayed together for more than two decades. It’s a testament to their enjoyment of each other as bandmates and their belief that eventually things were going to happen for them. Now the band is at what feels like a turning point.
“We’re all from different backgrounds, and I grew up — and still live — in the country,” says
Green. “That’s both my escape and my inspiration. I really enjoy that. But it’s also such a joy to get together with these guys and perform, and we’re really hitting our stride now as a group. It’s something that you can hear in the sessions, and I think on the album as well, that we’re now at a peak as a band musically, and we’re looking forward to keeping it going for years to come.” ▼
says. “So hopefully — knock on wood — later this year, our fans and the public are going to have yet another new record.”
Granda has seen many shows at the Ryman since he moved to Nashville, but Friday’s show is the first time the Daredevils will grace the legendary venue’s stage. It’s a bucket-list experience for Dillon and Granda.
“We’re really looking forward to the Ryman because it’s every musician’s dream,” Granda says. “It’s the Mother Church, and they call it that for a reason.”
Reflecting on the Daredevils’ decision to leave the road behind, Dillon says it’s “nice to have an exit with some dignity and grace.” Granda agrees.
“I’m at peace with it,” Granda says, “because I don’t really have any desire to be Keith Richards. Priorities change for a 70-year-old man. The music is fun — the music is still wonderful. It’s the travel that wears on a 77-year-old body.” ▼
Playing 8 p.m.
BY JAYME FOLTZ
NOT QUITE A DECADE ago, Twen rolled into Nashville from the Boston area as a very new band and quickly established themselves as one of the most interesting and dynamic rock groups in town. The excitement for their 2019 debut LP Awestruck led to the core duo of singer Jane Fitzsimmons and multi-instrumentalist Ian Jones becoming world travelers. By the time their follow-up One Stop Shop came out in 2022, they’d pulled up the roots they’d put down in Music City and embraced the van life, and now they take their home and their recording studio with them wherever they go. (From social media and music videos for recent singles, it seems coastal Florida has been their home base lately.)
On Thursday, Jones, Fitzsimmons and the latest incarnation of their backing band — Asher Horton on second guitar, Camden Pink on bass and Forrest Raup on drums — made a brief return to Nashville to headline The Basement East, where they channeled their boundless enthusiasm into a night of poetic chaos.
The night kicked off with industrially inclined dream-pop group Pressure Heaven. Seemingly out of nowhere, the band started popping up on stages around town late last year, and it’s felt like they’ve been everywhere you look in Nashville in 2024. That work has also led to their recent EP Head Start, from which most of Thursday’s set came. Heavy drums and Grace Hall’s ethereal, beautifully drawn-out vocals dominated the stage as they performed “Spiral.” One of their earliest singles, the song built up slowly before paying off with an explosion on the second chorus: “Tried so hard / Let it in / Spiral again.”
Washington state alt-rock foursome Enumclaw revved things up with a wealth of fan favorites peppered with unreleased songs from their forthcoming second album Home in Another Life, set to drop Aug. 30. By request, the group dusted off their 2021 debut single “Fast N All.”
Though singer Aramis Johnson mentioned they hadn’t played it in a while, you wouldn’t have guessed it from the way the band attacked it. The set was an emotional roller coaster, with the band diving deep into the heavy weight of losing someone close as well as the pure joy of forming new connections. Johnson’s even
vocals rang out as the band raged on — a dynamic reminiscent of Pavement in their heyday. They’ve mastered the art of turning life’s messy, complicated moments into something you can rock out to.
Still, they kept the mood light, bantering about their ongoing debate over the best grocery store chain and their love of used-media mecca McKay’s. “There’s so much room up here, everybody,” said bassist Eli Edwards (who happens to be Johnson’s younger brother), gesturing to the gap between the stage and the crowd. “Please take a step forward. We’re afraid of dying alone.” Later the intimate throng of the crowd surged with dancing, and Edwards jumped off the stage to join in.
Twen encapsulates many things about being young, like the freedom of seemingly infinite choices, tempered by rough socioeconomic conditions that make any of those choices seem hard to reach. They also pair serious chops and dedication to craft with a zany sense of humor. Setting the tone, the band took the stage to “The Age of Not Believing” from Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Fitzsimmons stretched casually before diving headfirst into “Awestruck,” one of the band’s earliest songs; she spent much of the set bobbing and pogoing around the stage, swiveling her hips and practically daring the crowd to stop moving.
The set showcased the evolution of their sound from the kind of dreamy, shoegaze-y psych they were first known for through the addition of darker post-punk influences to the funky indie-psych groove of their latest single “Lucky Onze.” Leaning into the song’s reflection on how the precarious nature of our world can make life feel like a gamble, the band invited a fan named Jordan to the stage for a dice roll to decide their next song; his unlucky throw yielded a cover of Weezer’s “Island in the Sun.”
More highlights whizzed by, from longtime set staple “Damsel” to “Long Throat,” a riff on consumerism from One Stop Shop whose intense performance was punctuated by Eli Edwards taking a stage dive. As the show neared its end, some of the crowd started to drift away, but diehard fans pushed closer to the stage, chanting for an encore. Jones and the band snuck back onstage for an instrumental spin on “Iron Man” before Fitzsimmons returned for Twen’s bittersweet “Sweet Dreams (in the Parking Lot).” The song is about the struggle to focus on what’s truly important — a fitting message for such a dynamic band to leave their fans with. ▼
Saturday, August 17
SONGWRITER SESSION
Kyle Clark
NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 17
NASHVILLE CATS
Bobby Wood
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, August 18
CONCERT AND CONVERSATION
Mandy Barnett
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 24
SONGWRITER SESSION
Sam Williams
NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 24
HATCH SHOW PRINT
Block Party
9:30 am, NOON, and 2:30 pm
HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP LIMITED AVAILABILITY
WITNESS HISTORY
Saturday, August 31
SONGWRITER SESSION
Monty Criswell
NOON · FORD THEATER
Wednesday, September 4 PANEL DISCUSSION
Suiting the Sound With Designers Marina Toybina and Maria “Poni” Silver 6:00 pm · FORD THEATER PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NASHVILLE FASHION WEEK
Saturday, September 7
HATCH SHOW PRINT Block Party
9:30 am, NOON, and 2:30 pm
HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP
LIMITED AVAILABILITY
Saturday, September 7
SONGWRITER SESSION Mark Irwin NOON · FORD THEATER
Local Kids Visit Free Plan a trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum this summer!
Local youth 18 and under who are residents of Davidson and bordering counties are always free, plus 25% off admission for up to two accompanying adults.
BY JOE NOLAN
THE DEFY FILM FESTIVAL began its long (and getting longer), strange trip almost a decade ago. The weird-little-fest-that-could established itself as a haven for short films and experimental cinema way back in 2016. Since then, Defy has built a reputation for celebrating boundary-breaking moviecraft, and as the fest returns to East Nashville to celebrate its ninth edition this weekend, Defy remains dedicated to showcasing the unconventional and the surprising on screen.
something like Fatal Attraction, but set in that garage where Reservoir Dogs’ Mr. Blonde tortures Officer Marvin Nash. All the performances are strong here, but Donaldson burns brightest in this dark comic character study electrified by her bold acting and throwback glamour.
This year’s selections include genre-bending feature films and documentaries, along with blocks of visionary shorts, video art installations and other inventive movie displays sprinkled throughout Studio 615. Defy co-founders Dycee Wildman and Billy Senese build their programming from an annual open call — and Wildman reports that this year’s crop of submissions brims with cinematic absurdity. There’s plenty of dramedy to go around, as well as two categories of experimental shorts and local selections that put Nashville filmmakers on the big screen. My Best Friend Depression gets high marks for its artistic photography, inventive score and generally excellent ensemble acting. Former Nashvillian Heather LeRoy writes, directs and stars in this semi-autobiographical portrait, filmed in Nashville, of a woman and the titular diagnosis. LeRoy is a creative magpie — in addition to her all-around filmmaking, she’s also a photographer who’s done stand-up comedy. Her debut feature is a look at modern love and modern medicine. It’s at its best when the actual filmmaking appears to be as chaotic as the heroine’s life: LeRoy marshals cacophonous conversations between multiple characters into consistently funny scenes that sizzle with firecracker timing; and some of the funniest line readings and visual gags feel like improvised gems that made the final cut. These pops of lighthearted, fresh energy bring a critical balance to a movie that is shot in black-and-white, drenched in shadows, and dramatizes a disease that counts suicide as a symptom. But it’s a comedy. Detroit-based thereminist and composer Via Mardot’s antique goth scoring supports the spooky noir vibes on screen. And while I was watching the film, I was reminded that Nosferatu is really just a love story. In its more nightmarish moments, My Best Friend Depression can feel like a horror film. But it’s a comedy.
Elisabeth Donaldson is a local filmmaker who also has a writer/director/star hat trick at Defy. We all know modern dating is a horror movie, and that horror movie is “Ghosted.” Donaldson’s short is big on tension and style, delivering
Nashville filmmaker and musician Aaron Irons’ Chest is a found-footage horror film based on the eerie local legends he heard while growing up in East Tennessee. Among these tales was the spine-chilling story of two hunters who stumbled upon a mysterious chest hidden in a cave behind a waterfall. Chest was Irons’ first feature and made its Nashville debut at Defy back in 2022. Now the filmmaker is back with his sophomore project, Jeffrey’s Hell Chest enjoyed an award-winning festival run and is currently streaming on Tubi. Irons planned to follow up on the film’s success by making a documentary about the legends that inspired the movie. The product, a pseudo-documentary, is a labor of love that Irons was piecing together during a year spent hiking and caving in Appalachia. Jeffrey’s Hell was edited from Irons’ camera after his “disappearance” in 2023. Chest fans will want to see this meta-spinoff, which reads like a meditation on Southern folklore, creativity and madness.
“The Streetlight” is the poignant story of a sentient street-corner lamp that makes a new friend when it convinces a stranger to take it on a tour of the city. Director Sophia Parella’s short film is a warm and funny examination of how our community connections can broaden our horizons and show us the world in a new light. I love the effects here, and hats off to actor James Milford. He plays the protagonist, Hudson, bringing soulful gravitas to his interactions with his inanimate co-star.
Warren Fischer’s “The Serena Variations” is a short film about obsession and artistic perfection that will strike a suspenseful chord with fans of Darren Aronofsky titles like Pi and Black Swan. A young violinist struggles to gain the respect of a domineering composer, but as her fingers find assurance on the strings, her mind
begins to fracture. Fischer blends the mythology of legendary violinist Niccolò Paganini with a psychedelic tea ceremony and lots of ambiguous sexual tension. The result is a story about teachers and students, masters and apprentices. “The Serena Variations” is about limits and what lies beyond them, when adoration becomes paranoia and ambition turns to madness.
“Lollygag” is a great short for a hot summer afternoon spent in the cool darkness of a movie theater. Tij D’oyen’s poetic tale is about summertime voyeurism, swimming pools, sex and chocolate bonbons. It’s a sensual story about a boy who has it all and the girl who lives next door.
“Lollygag” is funny — until it’s as dark as night swimming. And it’s emblematic of this year’s Defy program’s absurd combinations of love and death and maverick filmmaking.
Visit defyfilmfestival.com for times, tickets and passes, which include Defy’s famous after-parties. They’re hosting an 18-and-up drag performance on Friday night and a horror-themed dance party on Saturday. ▼
Defy Film Festival Aug. 16-17 at Studio 615, 272 Broadmoor Drive defyfilmfestival.com
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17
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1 They’re made in the kitchen and not at the gym, it’s said
4 “Dukes”
9 Prepare for a shot
13 Determined
14 Totally in the dark?
15 Disapproving sound
16 2011 Margaret Thatcher biopic
18 Petrol purchase
19 Go on and on, maybe
20 Brown, e.g.
21 Katniss’s partner in “The Hunger Games”
22 Professions
24 Defensive boxing strategy
26 Within bounds
27 Norton’s “Fight Club” co-star
28 Place for a peel
29 Player one?
32 Equal
33 Minor setback … or a hint to entering 16-, 24-, 44- and 52-Across
36 Bad thing to be caught on
37 Hairstylist, at times
38 Apr. addressee
39 Tests for college seniors, for short
40 Q: “Why don’t scientists trust ___?” A: “Because they make up everything!”
44 Saint Petersburg, once
46 “Yeah, don’t do that”
48 What bass guitars have that double basses do not
49 Ice cream container
50 It has its limits
51 Disney toon originally called Dippy Dawg
52 Musicians of the Middle Ages
54 Samsung competitor
55 Rolls-___
56 Italian possessive
57 Western tribe
58 Tennis announcer’s cry
59 Duke, but not duchess: Abbr. DOWN
1 Kind of projection
2 Parent’s demand
3 Court figure, for short
4 Trade from which John Jacob Astor made his fortune
5 How latkes are cooked
6 Some Balkan natives
7 Not messy
8 Total mess
9 Worked steadily at
10 Living off the land?
11 Got rid of
12 Scratch (out)
15 It can help you get a grip
17 *sheepishly raises hand*
21 Like bonsai trees
23 Off-kilter
24 Sunak of British politics
25 Meaning of the prefix “oto-”
27 Pockets for falafel
30 Some fall babies
31 When rights may be restricted
32 Staple of classical Greek architecture
33 How many people walk along the beach
34 Certain calligraphy mark
35 Interpretation
36 Farthermost point
39 April Fools’ Day declaration
41 Intense aversions
42 Standard for evaluation
43 Opens up to a doctor, in a way
45 Some mortgage loans, in brief
46 Channel guides?
47 Counting devices of old
49 Bring (out)
51 Hyena’s prey
52 Prefix with athlete
53 Groundhog’s home
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