Nashville Scene 9-10-20

CITY LIMITS: NASHVILLE LIBRARIANS IN SUPPORT OF BLACK LIVES MATTER PAGE 6

SIX MONTHS INTO COVID-19, NASHVILLE’S INDEPENDENT MUSIC VENUES LOOK AHEAD

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

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SEPTEMBER 10–16, 2020 I VOLUME 39 I NUMBER 32 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

MUSIC: AMERICANAFEST GOES ONLINE WITH THRIVING ROOTS PAGE 23

SOUND CHECK 9/4/20 4:45 PM

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

CONTENTS

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

6

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Nashville Librarians in Support of Black Lives Matter ................................................6

The Great Outdoors

CITY LIMITS

School, academic and public librarians are rethinking the roles libraries play in creating equity

BY KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM

Pith in the Wind .........................................6 This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

Growing Coalition Backs Pervis Payne’s Fight for DNA Testing .................................7

BOOKS

In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald explores the interconnectedness of humans and wildlife

BY EMILY CHOATE AND CHAPTER 16

VODKA YONIC

All Hands on Deck I bought my first vibrator in my 30s. Here’s what I’ve learned.

BY STEVEN HALE

BY DESTINY O. BIRDSONG

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22

Sound Check

Full Circle ................................................. 22

Demos’ Closes Downtown Location Attention Nolan Fans: Tenet Playing at Driveins in Middle Tennessee Area

MUSIC

Nashville’s independent music venues have been in limbo for six months during the COVID-19 pandemic. Where do they go from here?

Miranda Lambert Takes Record for CMA Nominations for a Female Artist Metro Police Officer Arrested on Rape Charges

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Payne is set to be executed in less than three months for a crime he says he didn’t commit

COVER STORY

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB:

Waylon Payne takes an unsparing yet tender look at his life on his new album

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

Wish You Were Here ............................... 22

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

Elizabeth Cook takes country music as her subject on Aftermath

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BY EDD HURT

Build your own streaming Chadwick Boseman film festival, catch Krista Knight’s animated puppet play Crush, stream dance performances from Jacob’s Pillow, Listen to It’s a Pixies Podcast, pick up the reissue of Yo La Tengo’s made-in-Nashville Electr-O-Pura, check out Mercury Chamber at The Barbershop Theater and more

The Spin ................................................... 24

Americana Online ................................... 23 Your quick-reference guide to Thriving Roots

CRITICS’ PICKS

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

The Scene’s live-review column checks out a livestream by Greasy Neale at The 5 Spot

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

25 FILM

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Primal Stream 24: Mad Max Rip-Offs

Quarantripping: Around the World in Asheville

Defiant

This week, some streamable sci-fi that picks up where Mad Max and The Road Warrior left off

FOOD AND DRINK

BY JASON SHAWHAN

Five great spots to safely globe-trot, all in downtown Asheville

Nashville’s best film festival celebrates its fifth birthday online

BY JOE NOLAN

BY ASHLEY BRANTLEY

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NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

CULTURE

Barnyard Bunch Piccolo Farms Animal Sanctuary is home to pigs, chickens, a 40-year-old tortoise and more

BY ERICA CICCARONE

Call for take-out!

ON THE COVER:

Todd Sherwood, owner of The 5 Spot Photo by Eric England

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9/4/20 6:56 PM

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With feet on the street, we discover Nashville’s own unique beat – one mile at awith time

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FROM BILL FREEMAN A LOOK AT MAYOR COOPER’S $1.5 BILLION MASS TRANSIT PLAN Mayor John Cooper’s proposed countywide $1.5 billion transit plan is on the table and raising some eyebrows.

Firstly, the referendum doesn’t seem necessary because the plan doesn’t ask for a sales tax increase. So where is the money coming from? And if the plan doesn’t require a tax increase, what would private funding or grant expectations do to the plan’s proposed timeline?

The real question, however, is whether this transit plan will fly when previous ones have failed.

Former Mayor Karl Dean’s Amp project — a 7.1-mile, $174 million high-speed bus line that was to connect East Nashville’s Five Points neighborhood to Saint Thomas West Hospital near Belle Meade — failed.

That was in part due to the fact that it did not solve any real congestion issues and was thought too unsafe, as passengers would board or disembark from the center lane.

A couple of years later, the Let’s Move Nashville referendum — a plan that would have potentially added 26 miles of new light rail, a more robust bus service and a major tunnel below downtown where the new transit lines would run — failed, and failed dramatically. That was not just because of its $5.4 billion price tag, but as The Tennessean reported, also due to “muddled messaging,” former Mayor Megan Barry’s sex scandal and the fact that the plan was “very much the product of the chamber of commerce.” Once again — as in years past — rather than listening to residents, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, under the direction of CEO Ralph Schulz, chose to “build its coffers almost exclusively with checks from large companies, firms and powerful institutions.” Nashville’s leaders were so intent to put a transportation package into place that they ignored the desires of citizens. Further, the rail lines would have stopped miles short of the county line, forcing residents to commute at least to get on the rail, which did nothing to aid in diminishing traffic across the region.

According to World Population Review, in 2010 the greater Metro Nashville area — with its 13 counties — was home to 1.59 million people. It was estimated that by 2020 we would reach 2 million — we beat that number. Today the metro area has more than 2 million residents. Nashville proper’s population of a little less than 700,000, however, is only a portion. These numbers point to the need for a regional transit program. The Greater Nashville Regional Council released new estimates that five Nashville-area counties are set to experience more than 50 percent population growth by 2045 — thus compounding the need for a regional plan. Though counties can collaborate on the process, financial constraints often push individual counties to go it alone. At some point in our not-toodistant future, that needs to be addressed.

Knowing these facts, Mayor Cooper realizes the reality of having to do something — and of having to act quickly.

Even given the challenges of COVID-19, the tornado cleanup and the city debt, to not do something now would mean to fall further behind, which Nashville cannot

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

PET OF THE WEEK!

afford. Mayor Cooper’s plan outlines a focus on enhancing existing bus routes and stations, modernizing traffic signals and infrastructure, expanding sidewalks, and repairing potholes and damaged streets.

It includes 11 new transit centers, 68 new bus shelters, 25 improved shelters and new rapid-transit lines. These are all good ideas that need to be accomplished.

Cooper’s plan is considerably less expensive, at a cost of $1.5 billion, than Barry’s $5.4 billion plan (which was as much as $8.9 billion when adjusted for interest and inflation). The mayor has listened to his constituents, and the project accounts for priority areas and an approach that will mean addressing specific portions of the plan in chunks rather than all at once.

Further, it doesn’t require a tax increase but will potentially use funds from specialized new grants, creative budgeting and private contributions.

On the downside, the plan still has a hefty price tag, and many are concerned about how the funding will work if no tax increase is required. At-Large Councilmember Bob Mendes told The Tennessean: “As a direction, I think more focus on neighborhood infrastructure sounds great.

But, without being tied to funding, I don’t know what that would be but a statement of present intentions.” Councilmember Freddie O’Connell, who has worked on prior transit projects, says, “There are few options when it comes to producing new transportation funds.”

Another minus is the fact that the draft plan is only countywide at this point.

Still, the mayor is doing a lot of things right inside the plan. He’s thinking creatively. He’s prioritizing, focusing on how current transit can be improved to better opportunities for riders to get to work, school or shopping. Though Nashville really must move toward a regional plan if we are to continue to grow and attract businesses and tourists, we also have to realize that meeting a short-term goal is a good steppingstone to bigger goals in the future.

Editor-in-Chief D. Patrick Rodgers Senior Editor Dana Kopp Franklin Associate Editor Alejandro Ramirez Arts Editor Laura Hutson Hunter Culture Editor Erica Ciccarone Music and Listings Editor Stephen Trageser Contributing Editors Jack Silverman, Abby White Staff Writers Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Geoffrey Himes, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Chris Parton, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Andrea Williams, Cy Winstanley, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Art Director Elizabeth Jones Photographers Eric England, Daniel Meigs Graphic Designers Mary Louise Meadors, Tracey Starck Production Coordinator Christie Passarello Events and Marketing Director Olivia Moye Promotions Coordinator Caroline Poole Publisher Mike Smith Senior Advertising Solutions Managers Maggie Bond, Debbie Deboer, Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Stevan Steinhart, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Advertising Solutions Manager William Shutes Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Emma Benjamin, Price Waltman Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis For advertising information please contact: Mike Smith, msmith@nashvillescene.com or 615-844-9238 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

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Bill Freeman Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and Home Page Media Group in Williamson County.

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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9/4/20 6:33 PM

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum itself is an open book, and celebrates the resilience of country music as it nourishes our culture through good times and bad. We are honored as caretakers of that essential, sweeping piece of the great American story.

Our doors are open to the public beginning Thursday, September 10, and we invite everyone to explore the galleries within our newly established protocols.

Visit CountryMusicHallofFame.org for details.

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

CITY LIMITS

NASHVILLE LIBRARIANS IN SUPPORT OF BLACK LIVES MATTER School, academic and public librarians are rethinking the roles libraries play in creating equity

BY KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM

T

he nation’s summer of protest has revealed a paradigm shift among the general populace.

Salient calls for defunding the police and honoring Black trans lives have surged nationwide and indeed throughout our community here in Nashville. Yet another shift, albeit a quieter one, is also taking place.

Some of Nashville’s libraries and librarians — in school, academic and public alike — are departing from the neutrality that has traditionally defined them by participating in social justice conversations.

On June 4, the Nashville Public Library issued a statement acknowledging the death of George Floyd and other Black people at the hands of law enforcement. In the message, the library pledged to “continue conversations about contemporary human rights issues.” But when asked if Black Lives Matter groups would be able to utilize public library meeting rooms on a “people of color only” basis — as they were banned from doing in 2016 — a library representative referred to the branch meeting-room policy.

According to these guidelines: “All meetings in branch libraries must be open to the general public and news media for the entire duration of the room booking. No private events are allowed.” Private gatherings, such as those in which organizers wish to limit access to people of color only, must be held in one of the downtown public library’s rooms — at a cost, which may present a challenge

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for some marginalized groups.

Academic libraries are also taking up the equity gauntlet, despite controversial beginnings.

In February, the Twitter account for Vanderbilt University’s libraries posted an image of a banner reading, “Libraries don’t take sides.” The post proved contentious, with disapproving replies ranging from messages like “neutrality doesn’t equal objectivity” to “disappointed to see this as a former library worker at Vandy.” The social media whirlwind surrounding the post may have inspired some internal dialogue about

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG: Metro Police Officer Jeremy Arrington was arrested after surrendering to police following a grand jury indictment that charged him with rape and sexual battery. The two-year Metro Nashville Police Department veteran, who is 26 years old, is accused of assaulting a 25-yearold woman who visited his Bell Road apartment on April 6. Police say the woman reported the

values, as in June the library released a statement on racial injustice that expressed a commitment to anti-racist work — a statement that was, effectively, taking a side. The release was buttressed by an exhaustive resource guide — what’s known as a LibGuide in the library world — on Black Lives Matter, including links to Nashville and regional bail funds.

Nashville State Community College’s John E. Mayfield Library experienced an ordeal that was quite different. That library’s “Black Lives Matter LibGuide” was created in response to a library Facebook group discussion. Some members felt that posts were waxing too political, while others expressed that they were a part of the group just to see memes. But Dean of Learning Resources Faye Jones saw the library’s responsibility through a different lens.

“By their very nature, good libraries can’t help but getting involved in such discussions [as Black Lives Matter],” says Jones.

“They inform what books we buy.” Jones was then approached by three of her library assistants — Jessie Angel, Sonja Humphries and Lauren Turner — about producing a Lib-

alleged assault in May, prompting a criminal investigation by the MNPD’s Sex Crimes Unit.

A separate investigation by the department’s Office of Professional Accountability is ongoing.

Arrington’s bond was set at $25,000, the same as Officer Andrew Delke’s after he was charged with first-degree murder for fatally shooting a fleeing Daniel Hambrick in 2018. … Former Davidson County Public Defender Dawn Deaner filed a federal lawsuit against Judge Cheryl Blackburn and the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility, which litigates ethical complaints against lawyers and is investigating Deaner. Deaner was seeking to represent a Nashville man after he contacted her nonprofit, Choosing Justice Initiative, which she started after more than two

Guide to address the community’s burgeoning social justice information needs.

“I reached out to the staff about creating this LibGuide in June when I saw that the public conversation around race was prompting lots of folks to speak about books and other resources engaging with anti-racism,” says Turner. “The interest I saw in my own community for educating oneself and being willing to learn was all the impetus I needed to start the conversation with staff.”

With Jones’ support, the team constructed the comprehensive three-tier “Black Lives Matter LibGuide,” with sections labeled “Community Resources,” “Books and Films” and “Readings and Videos.” “It was the perfect idea — since physical materials weren’t the easiest way to reach folks, we could then incorporate films, articles and other online resources too,” says Turner.

When asked if she discerns a recent shift in the role of libraries, Jones says: “I do think that there has been a more conscious effort in the past few years. But I know many libraries have always been aware of the need to provide a safe place for its patrons, both physically and in its collections.”

This sentiment was echoed by Kate Pritchard, middle and high school librarian at the University School of Nashville’s Hassenfeld Library. “More librarians are becoming more aware of persistent racial inequities, including inside our own profession,” she says, “and are feeling the need to make changes in terms of our policies (and how they are applied), our own internal biases, and our collections.”

Pritchard created the “Resources on Racism & Antiracism LibGuide” following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Pritchard saw the same few books being shared and knew that parents with children of various ages would also be looking for materials to help them navigate the tough conversations ahead.

She believes libraries can also promote equity by eliminating fines for overdue items and developing programs that foster open dialogue between patrons. She sees libraries as centers for news and media literacy, which is especially pertinent in the face of the upcoming election.

“Our role has always been to support our communities,” Pritchard says. “That hasn’t changed, but I think ideas about what that support can and should look like are changing.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

decades in the Metro Public Defender’s Office.

Deaner filed the request in Blackburn’s court, and the judge accused Deaner of ethical violations.

After the encounter, Blackburn and Anthony Thompson, the defendant’s court-appointed attorney, filed a complaint with the BPR, prompting an investigation. Thompson alleged Deaner “openly and publicly assail[ed] (his) good name and reputation.” Deaner says the client was unhappy with Thompson’s representation and that the attorney didn’t file motions for reduced bail or to suppress certain evidence. Deaner is asking a federal judge to enjoin BPR from disciplining her.

NASHVILLESCENE.COM/PITHINTHEWIND EMAIL: PITH@NASHVILLESCENE.COM TWEET: @PITHINTHEWIND

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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9/4/20 6:46 PM

CITY LIMITS

PHOTO COURTESY OF PERVISPAYNE.ORG

GROWING COALITION BACKS PERVIS PAYNE’S FIGHT FOR DNA TESTING Payne is set to be executed in less than three months for a crime he says he didn’t commit

BY STEVEN HALE

P

ervis Payne is less than three months away from being executed for a crime he has always insisted he did not commit. After more than 30 years on death row, his life may depend on whether a judge grants his request for DNA testing, which his attorneys say could prove his innocence.

Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich is opposing that testing, while Payne is now backed by a growing coalition of criminal justice and civil rights organizations, including the Innocence Project. Both sides made their case at a lengthy court hearing in Memphis last week. A decision is expected later this month.

Payne was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of a white woman named Charisse Christopher and her 2-year-old daughter Lacie Jo. But he has always maintained that he was an innocent bystander who came upon the horrific scene while checking to see if his girlfriend was at her apartment across the hall. He says he tried to help and then panicked. The pros-

ecution’s case against him relied heavily on racist stereotypes about Black men, portraying him as a drug-using sexual predator who attacked Christopher, a stranger, when she rejected his advances.

The evidence against Payne was largely circumstantial, and he had no prior criminal record. He also has an intellectual disability.

His current attorneys argue that made it difficult for him to assist with his defense and easier for the prosecution to make him look guilty.

What’s more, there was an array of holes in the case, forensically, that remain unfilled.

“Though painted as a drug abuser by prosecutors, no drug testing was performed on Mr. Payne, even at the insistence of Mr. Payne and his family,” said Asia DiggsMeador, a board member with the Ben F. Jones chapter of the National Bar Association, at an event in support of Payne ahead of the recent court hearing. “Though the prosecution argued that the victim had been sexually assaulted, despite being found fully clothed, no testing was done to support such

PURVIS PAYNE a claim at trial. Though arguing that the victim fought and scratched Mr. Payne as she tried to get him off of her, no analysis had been performed on her fingernail clippings taken from the crime scene. Mr. Payne has been ignored and marginalized for three decades. And the only way to somewhat undo the damage done by the prosecution’s use of racist tropes to circumstantially convict him is to ensure that the more than a dozen items of crime scene evidence are submitted to DNA analysis.”

Joia Erin, a program manager at the Memphis-based criminal justice advocacy organization Just City, was also at the event.

Erin said that Payne’s case — that of a Black man accused of a sexually motivated attack on a white woman — “evokes haunting memories of countless Black men who were lynched in the Deep South.” Shelby County, where Payne was convicted, has the most known lynchings in Tennessee’s history.

The case also highlights the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and the way such cases are dealt with in the decades that follow a conviction. Nearly 50 percent of the men on Tennessee’s death row are from Shelby County. More than 30 years later, the outcome of Payne’s case is still significantly affected simply by the jurisdiction in which it is taking place. While Weirich is opposing DNA testing — even though Payne’s attorneys say the cost would be covered and the testing could be done in time to avoid a delay in Payne’s execution date — Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk says his office would agree to testing in such a case.

“When anyone volunteers to pay for DNA testing on physical evidence from a closed case, it is the Nashville District Attorney’s office policy to sign an agreed order authorizing the test,” Funk says in a written statement to the Scene. Still, Funk’s office has faced criticism for its handling of at least one potential case of wrongful conviction, that of Daniel Webster. A decision on that case by the office’s Conviction Review Unit is still pending.

Payne’s story has remained the same for decades. But earlier this month, he sat at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, watching as attorneys argued over video about whether he’ll have the opportunity to back his story up with testing that wasn’t available when he was convicted.

Gov. Bill Lee has the power to commute Payne’s sentence or at least delay his execution, pending DNA testing. He has not commented on whether he will do so.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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9/4/20 6:47 PM

SOUND CHECK

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

SIX MONTHS INTO COVID-19, NASHVILLE’S INDEPENDENT MUSIC VENUES LOOK AHEAD

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

EXIT/IN OWNER CHRIS COBB

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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9/4/20 6:35 PM

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

O

ver the past two decades, live performance has increasingly become what musicians rely on to make a living. At the beginning of 2020, the concert business was booming, and Nashville was experiencing a strong uptick in activity at the club level.

Small and midsize venues — rooms with a capacity of between 150 and 1,500 people — are where artists build the audiences that make their careers possible. They’re a cultural and economic boon to cities that are lucky enough to have them. Nashville’s ecosystem of independent clubs has nurtured heaps of rock bands with global fan bases, played an important role in the rise of Americana as a force to be reckoned with, and hosted an array of pop musicians, rappers and others as they’ve worked to get established in our city. The international network of venues that our city’s clubs are part of employs thousands of people and allows local scenes to grow and evolve across an array of genres and traditions.

Running a small or midsize venue has always been a difficult business, with high overhead costs and margins that depend on crowds consistently coming through the doors. As Music City navigated its recent decade-long cultural boom, challenges like rising rent and real estate prices put additional pressure on Nashville’s independent music venues. But that hasn’t stopped local musicians, promoters, talent buyers, venue owners and staff — as well as audiences, including heaps of new Nashvillians who’ve arrived since 2008 or so — from building on the foundation of an incredibly dynamic club scene. It’s been ebbing and flowing here since Exit/In opened in 1971, and now big players like Beverly Hills-based ticketing and touring giant Live Nation want to tap into that market. That means additional competition to cope with, but it’s also a badge of honor.

In March, the COVID-19 pandemic began to creep across the U.S. As public spaces closed in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, the live-music economy — from dive bars to major festivals — ground to a halt, putting musicians, audio and lighting techs, stagehands, bar staff and most other people who make live music possible out of work. Musicians and some other workers, who typically work on a freelance basis and are classified as self-employed, have been able to find some help through revamped government unemployment programs as well as relief funds from nonprofits like MusiCares and Music Health Alliance. Musicians have been able to pivot to livestream shows from their homes or studios or from empty venues. It’s an alternative creative outlet that can make up a small portion of the income they’ve lost since the pandemic has prevented them from touring.

Venues, though, have had precious few ways to generate revenue beyond selling T-shirts and masks and launching crowdfunding campaigns. While assistance from fans has been both heartwarming and financially significant, it can’t create the kind of sustained income that independent venues need to survive. We’re six months into the pandemic with no clear end in sight, and numerous clubs across the U.S., including Nashville’s Douglas Corner Cafe, have announced that they will close permanently.

Others, as Scene contributor Marissa R. Moss reported via NPR, are concerned about becoming targets for predatory investment.

Legislation that could help venues has been introduced in Congress, and on Sept. 1, the Metro Council passed a resolution offering grants, allocated from federal CARES Act funding, meant to help independent venues pay bills for two months, delaying the worst outcome. There’s still a real danger that some venues will not reopen. None, however, are giving up without a fight.

CHRIS COBB STARTED BOOKING shows at Exit/In in the Aughts, and he became the sole owner of the venue last fall after an amicable split with business partner Josh Billue (with whom he co-founded 1,800-capacity venue Marathon Music Works). Cobb is already very experienced with organizing support on behalf of the longstanding 500-capacity room on Elliston Place. Exit/In is at the center of the group Save the Rock Block, which organized a successful grassroots campaign in 2019 against a rezoning ordinance that Cobb and his neighbors — whose strip of Elliston is known as the Rock Block for its long tradition of hosting shows — saw as detrimental to their businesses.

Construction on the proposed hotel project may continue anyway, but the area was recognized at the top of Historic Nashville Inc.’s 2019 Nashville Nine list of endangered historic properties. Funds were raised for a historic marker recognizing the neighborhood’s contributions to the city, which was unveiled outside Exit/In on Aug. 12.

But now there’s a more immediate problem. Exit/In hasn’t hosted a show since March 15, and financial reserves are getting thin.

“We don’t have a lot of cash in the bank,” Cobb tells the Scene. “If we don’t get a significant amount of help … it’s going to be mass extinction.”

Cobb has been using his experience in organizing: He’s a charter member of a trade group called the National Independent Venue Association, launched in April.

NIVA’s ranks currently include about 2,600 independent venues and concert promoters — more than 30 of which are in Nashville — and one of its primary goals is lobbying Congress for federal aid. Cobb and Exit/In have also banded together as part of a group of 15 of those local NIVA members, from tiny all-ages spot Drkmttr to the three-venue Cannery Row complex, as Music Venue Alliance Nashville.

A fact sheet that NIVA published in June includes an unsettling statistic from an internal poll: Ninety percent of the 2,000 members surveyed would have to permanently close after just a few more months without significant financial assistance. A survey of MVAN’s members is even more alarming: By early October, six of the Nashville venues would have to close permanently, and by early November, 14 of the 15 would be gone.

In August, the group made its case to Metro’s COVID-19 Financial Oversight Committee, which led to the Sept. 1 resolution.

The two months’ worth of funds offered by the council doesn’t come close to getting the venues all the way through the pandemic. It does not help either the self-employed workers these businesses have been unable to hire as they normally would, or the full-time staff they’ve had to lay off. Nonetheless, it’s a welcome bit of relief.

“It’s two months — we asked for six, and

“

[LIVESTREAMING] CONNECTS ARTISTS WITH FANS. IT ALLOWS ARTISTS TO CREATE THEIR ART, AND IT GIVES MUSICIANS A CHANCE TO GET TOGETHER AND PLAY. IT GIVES A FEW PEOPLE AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE PENNIES TO THE DOLLAR OF WHAT THEY USED TO MAKE — TO DO NOT ONLY THE SAME WORK, BUT PROBABLY HARDER WORK. DEFINITELY HARDER WORK MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY.” —CHRIS COBB

we need, probably, 12,” Cobb says. “But it feels good. It’s a whole hell of a lot better than nothing, and we could have very easily got nothing. There are so many people so affected by the circumstance, and CARES was not set up to help us all through much more than a few months of the pandemic.”

Cobb hopes that success bodes well for getting help from both the state and the federal government. The wheels are already turning at the federal level. In July, U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and John Cornyn introduced a bill called the Save Our Stages Act that would make some $10 billion in aid available, addressing the bulk of NIVA’s concerns. (The bill also shares its name with NIVA’s call to action, featuring a form email that makes it easy for music fans to contact their representatives in Congress.) Recipients would be able to cover things like rent and utilities, as well as costs of personal protective equipment and other expenditures to comply with local health guidelines once they are able to reopen. There’s also a provision to pay people who work for venues on a freelance basis — from bartenders to sound crew to the folks who work the door, they make up a substantial portion of the liveentertainment economy. There isn’t money specifically for performers, but many musicians also work at venues. There are safeguards to prevent large corporate entities from taking advantage of the program, and there’s an opportunity to apply for supplemental grants if conditions force venues to remain closed.

The Small Business Administration’s Payroll Protection Program — an imperfect solution to an unprecedented problem — has benefited a lot of businesses. But it’s not much help for clubs and similar spaces that can’t predict when they’ll be allowed to reopen, let alone feel that it’s really safe to do so or that the decision is financially sound.

Cobb counts himself lucky that he has access to financial experts through his bank and elsewhere. After working with them for two weeks on a PPP application, he was approved. He then did extensive research to learn how the loan could be forgiven, but ultimately determined there was no way

he could meet the requirements. Rather than taking on the loan, which would likely become a debt he couldn’t afford to pay, he made a gut-wrenching decision. In addition to the 47 self-employed workers he’d already cut loose, he let go of seven full-time staffers.

“What I learned over the course of 10 days was that it was going to be better for not only most of them,” Cobb says, “but also for the hope that Exit/In wouldn’t have to permanently close … to lay all of them off.”

The Save Our Stages Act enjoys bipartisan support. The same is true of another piece of legislation that NIVA endorses: the RESTART Act, a broader relief bill in the U.S. Senate that would expand and modify the PPP to make it work better for businesses like venues. SOS hasn’t gained any support from Tennessee’s congressional representatives yet, but Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Lamar Alexander have signed on to co-sponsor RESTART, while Reps. Jim Cooper, Steve Cohen and David Kustoff have co-sponsored a corresponding bill in the House. However, congressional Republicans and Democrats remain at an impasse over how to proceed with financial relief, and both SOS and RESTART are among the bills that didn’t come up for a vote before Congress took its August recess.

In the meantime, independent venues are looking for any viable revenue source. Exit/ In was one of five Nashville clubs to host stops on young bluegrasser and rocker Billy Strings’ wildly popular Streaming Strings Tour in July. Exit/In’s own house video rig is almost dialed-in, and they’ll produce more streams coming up. Streaming works for some venues: Bluegrass mecca the Station Inn established its Station Inn TV platform in 2019, and it’s been a huge help to the club this year. But Cobb has done the math, and the money brought in from streams like recent ones by Lilly Hiatt and Moon Taxi isn’t sufficient for Exit/In. To match the revenue that comes from a full year’s concert calendar, he’d have to produce 2,000 streams in a year — an impossible five to seven every day.

“We love it because it uses the stage,” Cobb says of streaming. “It connects artists

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with fans. It allows artists to create their art, and it gives musicians a chance to get together and play. It gives a few people an opportunity to make pennies to the dollar of what they used to make — to do not only the same work, but probably harder work.

Definitely harder work mentally and emotionally. And I’m talking about the artists, musicians, the audio techs, the video techs, the venue managers — who are now doing temperature checks and having to have everyone who comes into the building sign waivers that say you won’t sue us if you end up sick. It’s a whole new world.”

IN 2003, DIANE CARRIER and her husband William “Bones” Verheide opened The 5 Spot in East Nashville’s Five Points, and the club, whose capacity was originally fewer than 100 people but has since grown to 150 or so, became a staple practically from the get-go. The couple handed the business off to Todd Sherwood and Travis Collinsworth a

few years later. Sadly, Carrier died in 2017, but she’s fondly remembered as a firm believer in the area’s music scene years before it took off.

Miraculously, the building was spared from the March 3 tornado that did extensive damage to dozens of nearby homes and businesses, including 3 Crow Bar and venue The Basement East. The 5 Spot was without power for a week, but reopened March 11 with a benefit show for Gideon’s Army’s tornado relief efforts in North Nashville. The next day, seeing the rising tide of COVID-related cancellations, Sherwood and Collinsworth made the call to close until further notice.

They set up a crowdfunding campaign with the goal of paying staff, bands on the calendar whose shows were canceled and some of their own bills, at least for a month.

They haven’t yet been able to reopen. One bright spot is that Verheide is their landlord, and he made a public pledge to waive

KEB’ MO’ AT CITY WINERY

10

wood produce the streams, and he’s been paying them out of his own pocket. He hopes to scale up and run more than one stream per day. The main obstacle is a very New Nashville problem that, ironically, feels almost quaint during the pandemic. Heavy construction on M Cubed Developments’ townhome complex next door rattles The 5 Spot until 5 or 6 p.m. most days.

Sherwood would be grateful to see some federal assistance, but he isn’t betting on it anytime soon. Looking into the future, he sees a way that a proliferation of streams could spruce up the city’s image.

“What all the music venues in Nashville need to do is find a way that we can service the city itself and help change the view of Nashville from downtown drunken idiots in a pandemic to real live music,” Sherwood says. “When the city opens back up, maybe tourism will be improved by bringing people to come see the venues that they watched on livestreams.”

A HANDFUL OF VENUES have been able to meet the guidelines on Metro’s roadmap to reopening, and have hosted shows for a very limited-capacity in-person crowd. They offer a glimpse of what a cautious return to live audiences might look like, and it’s hopeful. It will not, however, be easy.

City Winery opened in 2014 in a former warehouse near Third Man Records and the Nashville Rescue Mission It’s one of eight City Wineries around the U.S., each of which features a restaurant space as well as one or more venue spaces. Showgoers have always sat at tables inside the venue, eating meals from the kitchen and drinking housemade wines while they watch the show. The Nashville location is one of two City Wineries that’s been able to cautiously make a return to live music since the pandemic began.

Tables are now spaced eight to 10 feet apart, and wine barrels are used to mark off guest areas. Both staff and guests get a temperature check and a wellness questionnaire

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

TODD SHERWOOD AT THE 5 SPOT

rent until the venue could get back in business, a very rare circumstance in commercial real estate.

“The business is basically OK, but I feel morally obligated to be able to pay the rent and the bills, and some staff members and myself,” says Sherwood. “I can’t just not do that. I feel like it’s a challenge, like, ‘OK, let’s see if we can still pay these bills and some people with this situation.’ ” Over the summer, Sherwood and Collinsworth have transitioned to a model that’s more like a soundstage. They’ve installed a streaming rig with several cameras, upgraded their lighting to make the room look better on screen and invested in a strong internet connection. Sherwood has produced multiple shows most weeks, including oneoffs and online versions of some regular weekly shows like Jason Eskridge’s Sunday Night Soul, Casual Tuesday (a version of Derek Hoke’s $2 Tuesday) and Tim Carroll’s Rock ’n’ Roll Happy Hour.

The process has become streamlined — audio and video are consistently highquality, and the talent is first-rate. Most of the shows have been free streams on Facebook with a virtual tip jar for the artists, but the next step is to experiment with ticketed shows via the StageIt platform.

“There’s been the whole ‘phases of reopening’ for Nashville, and I had my own phases of doing this,” Sherwood says.

“Phase one was ‘Build it,’ and phase two was ‘Get it going well.’ And now I’m in phase three, which is ‘Try to find out if people will pay five bucks to watch something on their phone or computer.’ If they do, we can have a broader reach. But there’s a lot of competition out there for the little rectangles that people are looking at. So we’re about to learn in September if it is possible to even make a living at all doing this.”

As of late August, the September calendar was nearly booked, but the number of people that the current iteration of The 5 Spot can pay is small. Two techs help Sher-

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A STAFFER CHECKS GUESTS’ TEMPERATURES AT CITY WINERY on arrival. Staff members wear masks; guests are expected to do the same, and few have complained. In addition to sanitization before patrons arrive and after they leave, a staffer spends each show circling the venue, wiping down high-touch surfaces and offering hand sanitizer. Guests receive a baggie so they’ve got a place to put their mask while they’re eating, plus a disinfectant wipe. Paths are marked throughout the building to keep traffic flowing freely.

For Mike Simon, a longtime City Winery staffer who took the reins as programming manager for Nashville in 2017, attention to detail in making the room a safe place to be is absolutely critical.

“I think all parts of the music industry are realizing that venues need to all work together to make sure that we’re all doing this the right way,” says Simon. “Because all it really takes is one venue doing it poorly, and it could ruin it for everyone else.”

With these precautions in place, 100 people — 25 percent of the main room’s capacity — can come see a show. As you might predict in a music town starved for concerts, demand has been strong, and events with much-loved songsmiths John Hiatt and Hayes Carll sold out quickly.

Also a quick sell-out: an Aug. 22 set from bluegrass guitar master and rising singersongwriter Molly Tuttle, the first show with an audience to be streamed live from City Winery via its new partnership with streaming startup Mandolin.

“The energy that an artist is getting from a crowd listening to their music, as opposed to an empty room, [that] made all the difference in the world,” Simon says.

“We were hearing that from people who watched it from home, saying, ‘That was the best livestream I’ve seen this entire quarantine experience.’ And part of it has to be because Molly was feeding off of the crowd.

You could hear people saying things to her, thanking her for playing tonight, and she didn’t want to get off the stage.”

At the end of August, the venue opened a new tented outdoor area called the Music City Wine Garden. A full house of 100 guests came to the debut show in the Wine Garden with blues ace Keb’ Mo’. With the addition of heat lamps, Simon expects the Wine Garden to remain in operation until December.

As long as the public health metrics that

Metro tracks don’t indicate a need to move backward on the reopening roadmap, City Winery can accommodate 200 total patrons at its two stages each day. They won’t be increasing capacity until they judge that it’s safe to do so, even if Metro’s guidelines allow it sooner. These are some relative luxuries provided by having other parts of the business to rely on; food and wine are City Winery’s main sources of profit, something that works well for few club-size venues.

In a non-pandemic year, City Winery might serve from 600 to 2,000 guests on a busy weekend night via the restaurant, the upstairs lounge and the main venue. The current conditions are a vast improvement over the venue’s lowest point during the pandemic, when all but five salaried employees were furloughed, but it’s still a skeleton crew. In addition to booking the shows and ensuring they run smoothly, Simon is out on the floor busing tables.

“The economy of scale just isn’t what it used to be,” he says. “Is that sustainable?

If we’re still in the same place and still trying to do the same type of stuff, let’s say, in March, probably not. We feel lucky in Nashville that we have this beautiful, huge parking lot, which is now completely tented with the Wine Garden. … Some of our locations are closed, and their local legislation is not giving any kind of room to be able to operate. They just don’t have the space to be able to do outdoor, fresh-air programming. In Nashville, we are counting our blessings.”

While they’re in this rough spot, there’s little for the folks who run Nashville’s independent music venues to do that they aren’t already doing. They’re seeking out new sources of revenue and lobbying for federal financial aid. They’re asking fans to contact their representatives in Congress; to donate money, if they have it, to keep the lights on; to wear masks when they go out in public with the hope that sooner than later, it’ll be safe to gather in groups again. They might be hoping for a benevolent investor like Sir Elton John, who recently told BBC Radio 6 Music that he has “a few irons in the fire” with regard to saving The Troubadour, the Los Angeles club where he made his U.S. debut in 1970.

One thing is clear: These venues have given us more than we can give back.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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CRITICS’ PICKS O F

CHADWICK BOSEMAN IN GET ON UP

FILM

ec[WAKANDA FOREVER] BUILD YOUR OWN STREAMING CHADWICK BOSEMAN FILM FESTIVAL

Last month, cineplexes in the Nashville area began reopening with COVID-19 safety protocols in place. That’s all well and good, and perhaps these past few megaplex-less months have you champing at the bit to get back into the ever-comfy stadium seats of Regal and AMC theaters. But for those who don’t want to take the health risks — or those just not interested in the limited selection of new releases hitting theaters — we’ll continue our long-running series of build-your-own-streaming-film-fest Critics’ Picks. For our 22nd installment, let’s look back at the catalog of great work left behind by Chadwick Boseman, who died on Aug. 28 due to complications related to colon cancer. Start with 2013’s 42 (available to rent for $4 via iTunes and YouTube), in which Boseman plays icon Jackie Robinson, the first Black man to break Major League Baseball’s color line as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It’s an earnest and straightforward drama with a powerful performance from Boseman — who, as it happens, died on the day designated by the MLB as 2020’s Jackie Robinson Day. Next, behold Boseman’s range with 2014’s Get On Up ($4 on Amazon Prime Video), in which the actor takes on the challenging role of James Brown. While the man who would be Black Panther playing the Godfather of Soul is a bit of a stretch physically, Boseman’s portrayal is nevertheless top-tier and deeply enjoyable. Make it a biopic trifecta with 2017’s Marshall ($4 on Prime), in which the actor plays future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in his days as an NAACP defense attorney. Boseman of course played Black Panther in a number of Marvel films, but 2018’s Ryan Coogler-directed Black Panther (free with a Disney+ subscription or $4 on Prime) is handily the best of them, and indeed among the best superhero flicks of all time. Bring your film fest home with

this year’s Spike Lee joint Da 5 Bloods (on Netflix), a weird, dark, dynamic and fun war film that features Boseman — sadly, fittingly — as a group of Vietnam War vets’ beloved and inspirational squad leader, who was killed in action. It’s heartbreaking to think about all the roles we won’t get to see the extraordinarily talented actor play, but a delight to celebrate the body of work he left us with. D. PATRICK RODGERS

T H I N G S

T O

D O

coming at you.” The essay, titled “Peonies,” is one of several that EDITOR’S NOTE: Smith wrote during quarantine AS A RESPONSE TO THE and compiled for Intimations, ONGOING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, which as a whole meditates In an early essay from her WE’VE CHANGED THE FOCUS OF on what it means to live new collection Intimations, THE CRITICS’ PICKS SECTION TO INCLUDE ACTIVITIES YOU CAN through an experience that, Zadie Smith writes, “Out in PARTAKE IN WHILE YOU’RE AT as Smith later puts it, wholly the field, experience has no HOME. “transforms its participants.” chapter headings or paragraph We are all participants, of course, breaks or ellipses in which to and reading Intimations felt for me catch your breath ... it just keeps like a rare chance to catch my own breath.

Smith has always been a keen observer of culture, politics and their intersection, and these essays have that keenness in spades — whether her attention is turned toward structural racism or the depression that often accompanies too much free time.

Intimations provides no answers for how to navigate our new normal. Instead, it does us one better: It poses the kind of questions we’ll need to ponder deeply if we’re ever to move forward. Buy it locally at Parnassus or The Bookshop, or check it out at the library.

[CATCH YOUR BREATH]

READ ZADIE SMITH’S NEW ESSAY COLLECTION INTIMATIONS

BRITTNEY MCKENNA

FILM

R O U N D U P

BOOKS

W E E K L Y

[ARE YOU IN OR ARE YOU OUT?]

WATCH THE OTHER MUSIC DOCUMENTARY

Music retail spot Other Music was a New York City institution, practically from the moment it opened its doors in 1995. When it closed in 2016, it signaled the end of an era, and filmmakers Puloma Basu and Rob Hatch-Miller set out to record the remnants

OTHER MUSIC

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CRITICS’ PICKS

CHECK OUT MARCUS SAMUELSSON’S NO PASSPORT REQUIRED ON PBS

If you’ve watched all the Parts Unknown and No Reservations you can handle, you’ll eat up PBS’ No Passport Required. Each installment of the 10-episode travel/cooking/ history program hosted by chef Marcus Samuelsson dives headlong into a different ethnic stronghold of an American metro.

The eps clock in at an hour apiece, allowing Samuelsson to leisurely eat his way across town, schooling the viewer on how these enclaves formed — Guyanese in Queens, N.Y.; Cape Verdeans in Fall River, Mass.; Armenians in Glendale, Calif.; Lebanese in Dearborn, Mich. — and how new mutations of old traditions develop over time. Much of the show takes place in private residences, with stories and smiles being exchanged

over mouthwatering home-cooked meals in multigenerational households. Samuelsson — who was born in Ethiopia, was raised in Sweden and resides in Harlem — isn’t a rock-star presence like the late Anthony Bourdain was, but he exudes natural warmth and calm that make him easy to open up to. No Passport Required makes the irrefutable case for America’s melting pot of cultures, and guarantees to get you worked up about the ignorance and xenophobia that still very much exist in this country. The upside: It’s great road-trip inspiration. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN [CAN-DO CRUSH]

CATCH KRISTA KNIGHT’S ANIMATED PUPPET PLAY CRUSH Despite the obvious challenges the performing arts world is currently

facing, it’s been pretty exciting to see just how resourceful and innovative theater artists can be. For example, when performances of Krista Knight’s new play Crush — winner of the 45th annual Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival — were canceled due to COVID-19 restrictions, the playwright decided to rethink the whole project. Together with her collaborator Barry Brinegar, Knight used virtual tools and technologies to create an engaging six-part animated puppet play.

Created remotely in the duo’s East Village home, the play was captured by Knight and Brinegar in 3D, and then matched to the vocal performance of actor Ben Beckley — which had been recorded via Zoom sessions.

You can check out their work — along with a fun look behind the scenes — on Knight’s YouTube channel. AMY STUMPFL

DANCE

[URBAN GRUB]

JACOB’S PILLOW

THEATER

TV

of that era in a new documentary, also called Other Music. The number of bands that were formed as a result of Other Music’s influence, as one customer says through teary eyes in one of the doc’s opening scenes, is unfathomable. The laundry list of cultural figures in the doc who reminisce about Other Music’s place in their lives is too long to get into here — it includes JD Samson, Tunde Adebimpe and Benicio del Toro, for starters — but the most insightful bits might be from the famously intimidating, untouchably cool staffers. For example, one particularly eloquent quote from employee Scott should be etched into stone on the street corner where Other Music once was: “Coming to New York and going to shows sometimes wasn’t enough. I wanted to be bombarded constantly, I wanted to have my ideas challenged, and I wanted to be fucked with.”

That’s the job of cultural leaders — to show people things they didn’t even know they needed, and never would have otherwise.

And with the shop’s closing, we’ve lost a big conduit for that. Watch it for free on Amazon Prime Video, or rent or purchase it on iTunes, Google Play, Vimeo On Demand, YouTube, Fandango Now, Vudu or Microsoft Movies & TV. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

[EXPLORING THE PILLOW]

STREAM DANCE PERFORMANCES FROM JACOB’S PILLOW

Situated in the scenic Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, Jacob’s Pillow has been a driving force in the world of dance since the 1930s. The National Historic Landmark, which is home to the nation’s longest-running international dance festival, recently presented its first virtual dance festival — a monthlong celebration marked by performances, master classes and conversations. And thanks to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive and the Virtual Pillow, dance fans can still stay connected through various online programs. Dance Interactive features a huge collection of performance clips — many of which are organized into themed playlists. For example, the playlist Dancing Directors includes everything from Paul Taylor Dance Company (Concertiana) and Caleb Teicher & Company (Bzzz) to Ronald K. Brown (Water) and Trisha Brown Dance Company (Lateral Pass). The playlist More Black Voices highlights some fascinating works from Micaela Taylor’s TL Collective, Garth Fagan Dance, Collage Dance Collective, Companhia Urbana de Dança and more. You can also check out the Pillow’s extensive online archives, multimedia essays and interviews, along with monthly podcasts.

Visit jacobspillow.org to learn more.

PODCAST

AMY STUMPFL

NO PASSPORT REQUIRED

14

[LA LA LOVE YOU]

LISTEN TO IT’S A PIXIES PODCAST

As we’ve outlined before in these Critics’ Picks, the 2020 lockdown has proven to be a great era for going down rabbit holes. True crime, obscure subreddits, video art — there’s so much weird shit out there to distract us. A good podcast is its own kind of rabbit hole, and the latest one I’ve gotten into has a nostalgic appeal that makes it even more comforting. It’s a Pixies Podcast was created as a lead-up to the legendary alt-rock band’s album Beneath the Eyrie — which was released, coincidentally,

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CRITICS’ PICKS

THEATER

Yo La Tengo may be the pride of Hoboken, N.J., but the indie-rock legends are also honorary Nashvillians. Released in 1995 and named for a defunct soda brand the trio discovered on a visit to Goodlettsville’s Museum of Beverage Containers and Advertising (which closed in 2003), ElectrO-Pura was the second of seven Yo La Tengo LPs recorded here in town with Roger Moutenot, and it cemented the lasting bandproducer partnership that began one album earlier with 1993’s tonally awesome Painful.

Over that stretch, guitarist Ira Kaplan, bassist James McNew and drummer Georgia Hubley embraced Music City fully, shouting out Prince’s Hot Chicken in their liner notes and forging lifelong friendships with locals like Lambchop leader Kurt Wagner, Scene scribe Jonathan Marx and everyone at Grimey’s New and Pre-Loved Music. A perfect marriage of joyous fuzz pop and ecstatic longform psych freakouts, Electr-O-Pura was the band’s signature sound solidifying; to celebrate its 25th birthday, Matador is pressing the hourlong album as a double LP for the first time for optimum sound quality. Pick it up at Grimey’s — where else? — and also check out YLT’s quarantine EP We Have Amnesia Sometimes, which builds on the Zenlike vibiness of 2018’s There’s a Riot Going On, the band’s most recent studio album. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN [GOING TO THE SOURCE]

CHECK OUT MERCURY CHAMBER AT THE BARBERSHOP THEATER

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past six months trying to believe that art will see us through. Bless the starry-eyed optimists who keep making things that soothe our spirits. Artists Kari Leigh Ames and BB Fou Fou have transformed The Barbershop Theater into “a multimedia space to stimulate all of the senses, explore the nebulousness of headspace, experiment in a cosmic wizard’s temple and emerge anew.”

Mercury Chamber will act as a ritualistic portal of sorts — featuring a divination station, a custom tarot deck and BB Fou Fou’s ethereal soundscapes — and the artists promise healing and communion. A maximum of two people may enter at a time, and masks are required.

The project is crowdfunded, so you

So Refreshing!

Refreshing!

A women’s column featuring a rotating cast of contributors

[A CLOWN TO YOU]

READ MADE MEN AND REWATCH GOODFELLAS

Sept. 19 marks 30 years since the release of Martin Scorsese’s based-on-a-truestory mafia saga Goodfellas — with Ray Liotta as mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill and Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci as his volatile best pals. Coinciding with the anniversary is the release of Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, a hybrid true crime and film history wherein veteran film critic Glenn Kenny breaks down the whole damn movie, using everything from interviews with Scorsese, the film’s stars, and various cast and crew members, to various texts like Wiseguy, the Nicholas Pileggi book the movie is based on. Also included are stories about all the movies, lore and personal anecdotes that influenced this forever-electrifying gangster tale — Pesci’s iconic “How am I funny?” scene is actually based on a real-life interaction Pesci once witnessed, for example. Of course, you can always watch the movie — it’s ready to rent or buy at streaming sites like YouTube or Amazon Prime Video, and if you’re one of those schnooks who still has cable, you can watch it on Tuesday afternoon on TNT. Buy the book via Parnassus — it drops on Sept. 15. CRAIG D. LINDSEY

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Shop online at parnassusbooks.net Curbside pickup available! @parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks @parnassusbooks1

UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENTS THURSDAY SEP 10 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE The Exiles

MONDAY SEP 14 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with SARAH RAMEY The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness

TUESDAY SEP 15 6:00PM HELEN MACDONALD Vesper Flights

Save the dishwashing for later

PICK UP THE REISSUE OF YO LA TENGO’S MADE-IN-NASHVILLE ELECTR-O-PURA

mmm...

Support Local

[STILL GOT IT]

can donate to the campaign on Indiegogo to secure your ticket and some extras; this will support the artists, The Barbershop Theater and local heroes Teens for Equality.

“Every cosmic wizard’s temple needs its altar space,” says BB Fou Fou on Art Fight Podcast. So bring your weird trinkets, scribbled secrets and healing crystals to offer to the goddesses. It’s a little bit woowoo — OK, it’s a lot woo-woo — but you’ll be all the better for opening yourself up to new experiences. Visit bit.ly/mercurychamber for tickets. Sept. 10-24 at The Barbershop Theater, 4001 Indiana Ave. ERICA CICCARONE BOOKS & FILM

MUSIC

just a year ago this week. Music journalist Tony Fletcher is at the helm, and he lends a credibility to interviews that might otherwise veer into hero worship. Each of the podcast’s 12 episodes chronicles the recording of a specific song from Beneath the Eyrie with the exact kind of intensity you’d expect. But even though the focus is primarily on the new stuff, it’s those old stories about the genesis of the band and its ongoing tension — a forensic examination of their past, as Fletcher describes it — that’s the real draw. Listen on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

WEDNESDAY SEP 16 6:00PM FACEBOOK LIVE with AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL World of Wonders

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Visit nashvillescene.com for our daily takeout picks.

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QUARANTRIPPING: AROUND THE WORLD IN ASHEVILLE Five great spots to safely globe-trot, all in downtown Asheville

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A

sheville is no well-kept secret when it comes to eating. Any Nashvillian who treats food as sport goes often, but never has the time been so right as now.

First, the North Carolina city’s maskwearing success rate is far higher than ours.

Second, you can book a hotel downtown for a crazy-reasonable rate — parking, pool and pet included (which is good, because your dogsitter won’t come into your house right now anyway). Third: You can eat your way around the world without ever getting in your car. Mexico, Africa, India — Asheville has it all, and all within walking distance.

Here are five local places — all downtown and within a mile of each other — where you can safely globe-trot in place. And as with any journey you take outside the house, Nashville, please don’t fall prey to Maskless Chad syndrome. Masks on face, social distance in place.

husband Félix Meana moved to Asheville and opened Cúrate, the restaurant that launched a thousand love affairs with vermouth, cockles and Ibérico pork.

Your Cúrate plan of attack should be twofold. First, make a dine-in reservation as soon as you book your trip. They fill up fast, but you have to eat there to order showstoppers like the Catalan specialty Rossejat.

Rossejar means “to toast,” which is how Cúrate gives these thin noodles a roasty, al dente richness. They’re cooked paella-style — shellfish stock, squid in its ink — until the bottom forms a crackly crust, and the whole thing is drizzled with salsa verde and garlic mayonnaise. The menu bills this

as “the essence of the ocean,” and I have no better words to describe it. Rossejat is briny, creamy, toothsome and decadent. It’s the best dish I’ve had this year, particularly paired with Atxa Blanco Vermouth on tap.

Next, hit up the bodega a few blocks away.

Build the world’s most ludicrous picnic by ordering prepared dishes like the Ibérico pork burger (mushrooms, piquillo peppers, freakin’ lardo), the hot-’n’-ready paella of the week and fresh churros. Then plan to go back on your way out of town and run the table on take-home. Musts include zesty gazpacho (bottled, as they do in Spain), albondigas (meatballs made with jamón) and cochinillo, the brined suckling pig. Throw it in your oven to get the skin crispy and the meat melting, and you will instantly become a dinner-party legend.

BENNE ON EAGLE (AFRICAN, APPALACHIAN)

John Fleer is Asheville food royalty, so when the Rhubarb owner and perennial

CÚRATE (SPANISH)

Cúrate is as close as you can get to Spain when you can’t get to Spain. (You can’t. We checked.) Chef Katie Button’s résumé is guaranteed to make you feel like a failure.

She graduated from Cornell before earning her master’s in biomedical engineering in Paris. She fell in love with cooking, worked for José Andrés, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and then Ferran Adrià at a little holein-the-wall called El Bulli. Then, she and

BENNE ON EAGLE

PHOTO: JOHNNY AUTRY

IN TOWN HOTTEST CHICKEN l, Too!) (Most Flavorfu

PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER SHANE

s, Thanks for your! vote Nashville

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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FOOD AND DRINK James Beard Foundation nominee decided to open a spot on Eagle Street, people knew he’d do it right. Located on The Block — the central African American business district in the early 20th century — Benne modernizes and honors culinary traditions that once thrived here. Chef Ashleigh Shanti cooked everywhere from New Orleans to New York before landing at Benne, and she’s putting all those influences to work.

Take the chicken and grits. A pan-fried thigh is served on creamy heirloom grits, topped with gremolata and suya-tomato gravy.

Suya is a popular Nigerian street food typically made with grilled beef, seasoned with dry-roasted peanut powder, ginger, cayenne, garlic and paprika. Putting those flavors in a tomato gravy gives the dish a smoky, sweet, umami flavor that’s at once recognizable as Southern yet also new in its complexity.

The menu’s nods can be subtle — a sweet-pepper sauce drizzled over a perfect French omelette, a cinnamon-infused tequila cocktail — but they’re always there.

Even dishes like pork-sausage scrapple, which the Pennsylvania Dutch lay claim to, have the inherent use-everything ethos that feels at home in the South, and particularly on The Block.

EL GALLO AVL (MEXICAN)

If you’re an Asheville veteran, you may have dined at Table, which is where you’ll now find El Gallo AVL. (Table isn’t closed — it’s just moving around the corner.) El Gallo is a collaboration between Table chef Jacob Sessoms and Luis Martinez, who came to the U.S. in 2005 as a refugee from Mexico. Martinez worked on a farm in California before becoming a graphic designer. Eventually, he found his way into the kitchen, and now he’s bringing Indigenous Mexican cuisine to Asheville.

Growing up, tacos were a special-occasion food for Martinez. You can see that reverence in his menu. Heirloom varieties of corn — bolita, cacahuazintle — are used to make everything from tortillas to masa to panna cotta, and that earthy, sweet-corn flavor underpins El Gallo’s dishes.

Start with aguachile (chili water) de mariscos (seafood), made with North Carolina shrimp, summer veggies and avocado.

Similar to a ceviche, it’s bright and pickly, served with shatteringly crisp just-fried tostada. The pastor taco is as flawless as you’d expect, but the cauliflower barbacoa is the most interesting for my money. Laced with tomato chamoy — a sauce made with salted pickled stone fruit — and salsa diablo, it has the same depth and funk you’d find in Oaxaca’s lamb variety.

To drink, there’s a michelada — a brunch drink I maintain is superior to a bloody because it’s less filling but still savory — made with roasted tomatoes, chili peppers and Victoria lager. However, I’d opt for their house margarita, which is simple and stunning. Made with blanco tequila, curaçao, lime and agave, it’s the closest any margarita has come to the paragon I had in the Before Times in Mexico City at the famous Cantina Tío Pepe.

THE MED (GREEK, DINER)

Across the street from El Gallo, there’s the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spot The Med. This Greek diner was not on our itinerary, which

made it the great stumble-upon of our trip.

The Med’s longtime owner, Pete Apostolopoulos, was born in Greece in 1949 in the midst of his country’s civil war. At 18, he left his 30-person village and immigrated to Asheville. He opted for a job at McDonald’s rather than at his uncle’s Greek restaurant, because he feared he’d never learn English if he was surrounded only by his native tongue. In the ’80s, he purchased The Med from Pete “Papa” Moysakis, and Apostolopoulos ran the beloved local hangout for 44 years before retiring at age 70 a couple years back.

Thankfully, not much has changed since he left, and that’s by design. The team who took over The Med (locals Samantha and Chris Kronberg, Rachel Goodman and Eli Scott) wanted to keep it the way they loved it — tasty, high-quality food at reasonable prices. (The most expensive thing on the menu is a $12 patty melt.) The timelessness of the place is obvious, even the first time you step inside.

The Med is a damn fine diner, so order whatever you want, or pay homage to all the Petes with a lamb gyro. For breakfast, grab a bodega sandwich, made with ham, cheese, bacon and egg smashed to perfection on a brioche bun. For lunch, I judge all diners by how good their club sandwich is, and this one — thick-cut turkey, simply dressed with mayo, precisely assembled — is simply the best I’ve ever had.

CHAI PANI (INDIAN)

If there’s a common thread in the Asheville culinary scene, it may be folks who’ve quit their day job. That’s what Meherwan Irani did back in 2009 when he decided to ditch his sales job and open an authentic Indian street-food restaurant. In the decade since, he’s been nominated for Best Chef: Southeast by the James Beard Foundation four times, which undoubtedly softens the blow of those lost sales commissions.

Chai Pani has the crowd-pleasers, of course, like butter chicken in aromatic tomato-cream sauce, served with jaggery (cane sugar), raita (yogurt sauce) and pickled masala slaw. But the sandwiches are the go-to since Pani isn’t currently open for dine-in. The chicken tikka roll is richly flavored with lime juice, Kashmiri chili paste and North Indian spices, and the crispy masala fish wrap is lights-out, wrapped in hotbuttered naan and topped with slaw, cilantro and chutney. Throw in some okra fries or cholle — a Punjabi dish of garbanzo beans slow-cooked in a spicy-sweet tamarind broth — and you’ll forget all about that passport collecting dust in your drawer.

Can’t get to Asheville? You can still take a culinary trip with Irani thanks to his company Spicewalla (spicewallabrand.com).

Growing up in India, Irani learned that spices are seasonal just like produce, and every fall, his family dedicated a week to making their own blends at his grandmother’s house. Now you can get his ginger chai or tandoor masala mix delivered to your door. Bonus: Irani has partnered with other locals like pitmaster Elliott Moss to offer their secret recipes, including the chicken rub from Buxton Hall, Asheville’s best barbecue spot, which also happens to be located within Asheville’s Magic Mile.

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CULTURE

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

SUPPORT PICCOLO FARMS ANIMAL SANCTUARY ON PATREON AT PATREON.COM/PICCOLOFARMS

BARNYARD BUNCH

Piccolo Farms Animal Sanctuary is home to pigs, chickens, a 40-year-old tortoise and more

BY ERICA CICCARONE

J

ust past the cottage where Bonnie and Jeff Glueck live on the nineacre lot of Piccolo Farms, regal turkeys consort with placid pigs, a naked-neck rooster forages alongside a 40-year-old tortoise, and a half-dozen tiny chicks scamper underfoot of inquisitive goats.

“I can’t take it,” I exclaim as Bonnie closes the gate behind me. “I need a moment to absorb.”

A blind quarter horse named Buddy shakes his mane beneath a shade cloth, and three miniature horses — Rio, Fabio and Dr. Dre — playfully chase each other nearby.

A goat playground sits out in the field. It’s empty at the moment, but its many levels and bridges promise hours of enrichment.

“It’s a magical place of sanctuary where everyone gets to hang out together,” Bonnie says.

“Everyone gets to choose where they sleep and who they want to sleep with. We don’t lock anybody up. We leave the coops open and the barns open, even in the winter time. Here comes Zeena.”

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Zeena is a 4-month-old great Pyrenees, a guard dog in training under the watchful eye of Zeke, an adult great Pyrenees and a capable farm manager who has not lost a single animal to predators and recently won a battle with a red-tailed hawk. Doug and Felicia, a pair of ducks in a long-term relationship, scurry past, quacking.

“We have a Montessori approach to the farm,” says Bonnie, “a ‘live and let live’ kind of mantra. So many of the animals weren’t treated well or were abandoned, so when they come here, we just really want them to live how they want to live.”

I sense a presence behind me and turn.

Maple, a male rooster, acts as the welcoming committee, and he won’t leave my side for the duration of the tour — including when Bonnie hands me a white Silkie hen who feels more fluff than feather. Her name is Magic. As Maple gets more comfortable with the farm’s latest visitors, his brightred face fades to blue-gray — “like a mood ring,” Bonnie says.

It all started in East Nashville on Holly Street, when the Gluecks took in a trio of

goats who were retired from a local goatyoga business. Word quickly got out — the phone started ringing, and other animals began showing up at their home. Among the adoptees was Tank, an African sulcata tortoise with an appetite for apples, whose owner had died. The couple realized they needed to make a decision: Either start saying no, or go all the way.

The Whites Creek farm offers a sunny

pasture, a dry horse run that suits Buddy — who has Cushing’s disease and cannot eat fresh grass — a spacious barn, and several colorful chicken coops and hog houses. At the top of the hill, a small herd of sheep lollygags in the shade of some nearby bamboo.

One ewe, Pearl, was brought to the farm as an infant, her umbilical cord still wet. They had to raise her in the house, sleeping with Bonnie in bed. Two others were rescued

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CULTURE

JEFF GLUECK

NOW OPEN! B&N Cafe´

Proudly Serving Starbucks Coffee

New Store Hours Monday to Saturday 10 am to 7 pm Sundays 12 to 6

2501 WEST END AVENUE (Across from Centennial Park)

BONNIE GLUECK from the slaughter line of a Dickson farm.

Among the mingling critters are 14 turkeys, 22 goats, 11 hogs, four sheep and a Chinese crested dog named Skeeter. And the chickens? Bonnie estimates that there are at least 50.

The Gluecks don’t play favorites, but it seems clear that Jeff is sweet on the hogs.

Among the passel is a pair in temporary residence because their home was destroyed by the March tornado, along with Brick, a 400-pounder who arrived as a baby with a serious injury. She was the runt of the litter, and her mother had bitten a chunk out of her forehead.

“Pigs are, by far, probably the greatest need from a rescue perspective across the community,” Jeff says. “People go to Rural King and see little potbellies … and then they’ll realize that this is about as small as they get.” He points to Captain, a big boy who is grunting in his sleep. “That’s a very powerful animal that can smell all the food in the fridge, that has the strength and intelligence to rip the door off. People get themselves into situations where it’s not sustainable, and that’s when they call us. Part of our mission is to expand because [pigs] are natural rooters and natural foragers, and the more space we can give them to forage, the better off they will be.”

The Gluecks both work regular full-time

jobs — Bonnie in banking and Jeff in sales.

They’ve set up a cot in the barn for when Bonnie is on night duty. They offer tours to help pay expenses, and they get monthly support via Patreon. Recently, they started offering a new option called Nourish that invites single visitors to spend two hours on the farm on Sundays. The Gluecks want to encourage people to connect with nature, animals and themselves.

For me, the show-stealer is a 2-month-old Oxford Sandy and Black pig named Twinkie.

She was rescued a week before my visit when the Gluecks received a call that she was spotted at Hartman Park in Bordeaux.

She’s reddish-brown with black spots and perky ears. She lies down for a quick belly rub and then prances off to a mud puddle.

A few minutes later, she gives my knee a muddy snout stamp. This does not deter goat Draper from nibbling on my shorts. Before long, Twinkie will weigh 400 pounds.

I’d willingly stay at the farm all day, but the Gluecks need to tend to their day jobs before heading to Metro Animal Care and Control to pick up a new pig. There’s no sign of the flow of animals ebbing, but the Gluecks seem content.

“It’s just one of those things,” says Bonnie, “where if you open your heart, it comes and comes.”

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BOOKS

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

VODKA YONIC

ALL HANDS ON DECK

In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald explores the interconnectedness of humans and wildlife

BY EMILY CHOATE

C

Vodka Yonic

the royal family) and birdkeeping laws that aptivating habitats abound are largely applied to lower classes. in Helen Macdonald’s essay Some of the book’s most impassioned collection, Vesper Flights. moments place the plight of refugees in the Mushrooms spring up from foreground. Macdonald makes clear that the floor of a Suffolk forest. shutting others out — whether the sojournHarsh winds whip against the ers are human or otherwise — comes at a upper floors of New York’s high-rise towers, great (and rapidly increasing) cost of suffersupporting — and sometimes confusing — ing. The shadow of Brexit looms over these birds flying in migration. The salt-rich desessays, including a short piece about an aperts and volcanoes of Chile’s Atacama Region proaching summer storm, which finds Machost a team of researchers, for whom this donald “waiting for hope, stranded in that land stands in for the surface of Mars. strange light that stills our hearts before the Macdonald has been pursuing the places storm of history.” where nature reveals its complexity and The destabilizing effects of the climate mystery since she was a tiny child. Her 2014 crisis feature prominently in Vesper Flights. memoir, H Is for Hawk, details her decision Losses of habitat and biodiversity are to train a goshawk — a species known to disastrous for nearly every species that present brutal, violent challenges even to Macdonald describes. Yet she is not mired experienced falconVESPER FLIGHTS in despair or grief. In a brilliant essay that ers — while grieving

BY HELEN MACDONALD draws parallels between the progression her father’s death.

GROVE PRESS of the climate crisis with the experience of This extraordinary 288 PAGES, $27 chronic migraines, she writes, “Apocalyptic exchange between thinking is a powerful antagonist to action.” human and animal changed Macdonald’s Arguing that “apocalypse” doesn’t have to life and turned her into one of our most vital mean inevitable defeat, she continues: “In advocates for recognizing and respectits earlier senses the word meant a ing the points at which humans and revelation, a vision, an insight, an wildlife interconnect.

MACDONALD WILL unveiling of things previously Vesper Flights expands the DISCUSS VESPER FLIGHTS unknown, and I pray that the scope of this advocacy, arguWITH MARGARET RENKL AT 6 P.M. TUESDAY, SEPT. 15, revelation our current apocaing that such interconnectivIN A TICKETED ONLINE EVENT lypse can bring is the knowlity is constant, often fraught HOSTED BY PARNASSUS BOOKS edge that we have the power and — on occasion — sublime.

AND BENEFITING HUMANITIES to intervene.”

Macdonald conveys such reTENNESSEE. TICKETS AT PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET. Macdonald returns us to a markable moments from her truth that should be obvious but own life with sparkling originalnever is: that we humans are not ity. “Dispatches From the Valleys” always at the center of life on earth. But our recounts her years of working on a Welsh presumption of centeredness is so intractafarm dedicated to falcon conservation. She bly ingrained that, in essay after essay, each describes stalking a herd of cattle and then time she makes this recurring point, it lands provoking them into stampede — a cathartic with fresh surprise. Reflecting on a life act born of frustration with her own choices spent among wildlife, she concludes: “Aniand a stifled sense of constraint. mals don’t exist in order to teach us things, The title essay compares Macdonald’s idbut that is what they have always done, and iosyncratic methods of tricking herself into most of what they teach us is what we think sleep with the unusual nighttime habits of we know about ourselves.” swifts, birds that have evolved to get their This particular insight underscores sleep midair. Swifts emerge as memorable why a book like Vesper Flights is so valucharacters in Vesper Flights, which catalogs able — perhaps essential. A great strength innumerable examples of the complicated, of Macdonald’s writing is her willingness to sometimes surreal ways in which humans expose her own struggle against this blind and animals must attempt to share the spot. She’s willing to own up. Even lifelong same world. Unforgettable images arise naturalists fall under this spell: “None of from these accounts: a gruesome YouTube us sees animals clearly. They’re too full of clip reel of DVCs (deer-vehicle collisions); the stories we’ve given them.” By seeking peregrine falcons living among the cooling to undeceive herself, she helps us see our towers of a decommissioned Irish power world anew. station; a French World War II pilot coastWith startling candor, precision of detail ing, engines off, surrounded by a flock of and unsparing self-inquiry, Macdonald consleeping swifts. veys her experiences through a lens of reA number of the essays offer challenges newed wonderment at the rich abundance of to traditions or received beliefs within our world and the conviction to value every Macdonald’s own English heritage. These species, in every habitat. Or as she phrases practices blur the concerns of wildlife with it: “To rejoice in the complexity of things.” considerations of class or race. For example, For more local book coverage, please visit Macdonald addresses the centuries-old pracChapter16.org, an online publication of Hutice of “swan upping” on the River Thames, manities Tennessee. highlighting the disparity between what’s leEMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM gal for the owners of elite estates (including

20

I bought my first vibrator in my 30s.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

BY DESTINY O. BIRDSONG

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

I

bought my first vibrator in my 30s.

My late 30s.

OK, about eight months ago, right after I lost my job.

Getting laid off was like being served divorce papers from someone I was planning to leave for someone else — in this case, the affair was with full-time writing. But I was beaten to the punch just before the holiday season. I had only a few thousand dollars’ worth of PTO as severance pay and no other prospects to speak of. I knew I had to make what little money I had left last as long as possible, but I did allow myself a few indulgences. For three years, I’d been bringing home a paycheck that didn’t even cover all of my bills, let alone afford me any splurges without dire consequences.

So I revamped my peeling leather couch.

I bought myself a designer handbag (from the outlet). And I bought a vibrator.

As is often the case with me in the bedroom, I know what I like when I see it, so it didn’t take me long to pick one out. Nichole Perkins, another Black woman writer, had given Tracy’s Dog’s Clitoral Sucking Vibrator a glowing review on Twitter months before, and I’d saved the Amazon link in my Notes app under a list called “Hoop Dreamz.” When it was time to pick it out, my only point of debate was the color. I chose purple — which is my second-favorite. They didn’t have pink.

My vibrator arrived on a day when my friend Josh and I were hanging out, watching episodes of Tuca & Bertie, and I joked with him that he’d have to leave because I needed some time alone. But he was curious, so we pulled it out of the box to examine it together. It was V-shaped, with a clitoral stimulator on one end, and several speed settings. I was turned on by every aspect of it: the bulbous tip, which I held in my palm like an egg; the flexibility at the base; the velvety feel of silicone. I was even aroused by the charging port on the handle — an almost-hidden hole you gain access to by piercing the silicone with the connector.

I bought my first vibrator because I’d never had one before, and as hard as I’d worked — both at my day job and my writing — I’d earned it. I bought it because I believed it would help me out. I’d been tired of masturbating using only my hands — although, big ups to these hands, they get the job done. I bought it because I really love clitoral stimulation, and I figured it

could handle that part easily, with the touch of one finger instead of the rapid rubbing of many. I bought it because I am a sexual assault survivor, and in the years since the assault happened, I’ve been deeply committed to sexual pleasure divorced from other people’s bodies — at least for now. It has made exploration feel safer. After all, I can’t violate myself, can I? Well, in most instances, no. But I’ve certainly reenacted moments of violence on myself unaware. When I first realized I could facilitate my own orgasms (also in my late 30s, for shame!), I masturbated with abandon, my sole purpose being to get off.

I’d wake up the next day unnecessarily sore, in pain when I hadn’t intended to be. I had to learn to slow down, be kind to myself and enjoy the process. I hoped the vibrator would help me do that conveniently.

And it did, but not in the ways I expected.

I don’t find the clitoral stimulator helpful at all. Its suction isn’t as strong as I anticipated, and when I turn it on, it sounds like one of those tiny personal fans, which also fail at their jobs, IMO. I also learned that I don’t like to be penetrated, at least not by stiff silicone.

It feels like trying to have sex with a bowling pin. But I get a great deal of pleasure — and multiple orgasms — from placing the vibrator directly on my clitoris and using my fingers to penetrate myself. It’s not what I anticipated, but it’s wonderful.

It may also serve as a metaphor for my recovery.

I had no idea that rape would help me understand how, even in consensual encounters, I hadn’t always been getting everything I wanted — like … orgasms. And I rarely voiced my disappointment or tried to remedy it. I was raised in a conservative Christian household where sex and pleasure were the domain of men, and masturbation was considered “mannish” — a word whose structure tells you all you need to know about its meaning. Being mannish means being aggressive, transgressive and breaking the gendered boundaries that good, Godfearing women are expected to maintain, even if we never had a say in why and how they were set. It makes me sad to think of all the pleasure I missed and all the times I could have walked away from folks who didn’t know what they were doing, to find it on my own.

My new vibrator has its disappointments, but it’s been willing to work with me, and it lets me decide how best to get what I need.

In doing so, it’s prepared me to ask the same of any potential partner, to expect that we will mutually please each other and be flexible and innovative when necessary. It’s been a great dry run, and I look forward to the times I slip Tracy’s Dog out of its box and lock my actual dog out of my bedroom.

I also look forward to the day I can put what I’ve learned into practice with a partner.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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21

MUSIC

FULL CIRCLE

Waylon Payne takes an unsparing yet tender look at his life on his new album

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

W

aylon Payne has had plenty of dreams during his 48 years, but two have rested firmly atop his list for most of that time. The first was to introduce his mother, country singer-songwriter Sammi Smith, on the Grand Ole Opry, which he achieved shortly before she died in 2005. The other was to have an album of his own pressed to vinyl.

As for that second one, Payne made good on his dream this month. While on the phone with the Scene, he’s holding the just-arrived test pressing of his new album Blue Eyes, the Harlot, the Queer, the Pusher & Me, out Friday via the label arm of Carnival Music, which also publishes his songs. He’s calling from his home in Nashville, where he’s stayed “locked behind a door” with his beloved Chihuahua, Petey, since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March. Payne, whose presence even over BLUE EYES, THE HARLOT, THE the phone is warm QUEER, THE PUSHER & ME and generous, OUT FRIDAY, SEPT. 11, VIA couldn’t hide his CARNIVAL RECORDING excitement.

COMPANY/EMPIRE “I knew I’d officially be part of the tribe of rock ’n’ roll the day I had my own album,” says Payne. “I grew up in the ’70s, and albums were very special. Albums were like life’s blood. … It’s truly a special experience.”

While Blue Eyes marks his first solo release since his 2004 album The Drifter, Payne has been a major presence in Nashville in the intervening years, co-writing with acclaimed country artists like Lee Ann Womack, Ashley Monroe and Wade Bowen.

Some of those years he spent working as an actor (you saw him as Jerry Lee Lewis in Walk the Line), and many of them he also spent mired in an addiction to methamphetamine, an experience he recounts — along with his journey to sobriety — in raw, often gut-wrenching detail over the course of Blue Eyes’ 12 tracks.

Blue Eyes has been released gradually over the course of the summer, with a threesong “act” coming every month or so. (The fourth part will be released alongside the full LP.) While a tiered release could be written off as marketing strategy, Payne says it reinforces the narrative quality of the album, which more or less chronicles his journey from someone in the throes of substance abuse to a sober man with the clarifying wisdom of hindsight.

“Even though they’re really personal songs, it seems with each [act’s] release the part of my life that it dealt with gets put on its shelf,” he says. “It’s been incredibly freeing. It’s been beautiful, actually.”

Blue Eyes opens with “Sins of the Father,” a deceptively rowdy song that introduces the shortcomings of Payne’s father, late Willie Nelson guitarist Jody Payne, as precursors to Waylon’s own. As the younger Payne sings: “First it was beer / Then it was whiskey / Then it was coke and speed.” The track

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playfully interpolates the theme song from The Jeffersons before revealing a world of hurt — “Mama’s been cryin’ in the kitchen / Daddy’s done left in the truck” — that the younger Payne is ready to move past.

Over the course of the album, Payne dives deeper into familial dysfunction (“What a High Horse”), hits rock bottom and takes responsibility (“Dangerous Criminal”), charts redemption (“After the Storm,” “Back From the Grave”) and says goodbye to figures from his addict past (“Shiver,” “Old Blue Eyes”). He also offers his own striking version of “All the Trouble,” a Grammy-nominated single for Lee Ann Womack that the pair wrote together.

And while it’s easy to focus on Payne’s remarkable lyrics, his gorgeous singing voice — which resembles that of his mother as well as Bobbie Gentry and Kris Kristofferson, among others — anchors these stories in an emotional experience that is nothing short of breathtaking.

Payne also wrote a series of essays to accompany each song, detailing the full stories behind the lyrics and paying homage to the real-life characters who inspired them. Penning the essays was cathartic for Payne, but his real goal in writing them was to ensure that listeners got the stories straight: Many of them deal with real-life friends who were invaluable to Payne’s finding sobriety.

“They loved me back to health,” he says.

“They really did. They just loved me and didn’t give up on me. My buddy Edward [Johnson] helped me reprogram my life. He helped me stand up and taught me the importance of being a man.” Space was made for a little tribute: Johnson’s son Lake is the child heard speaking at the very beginning of “Sins of the Father.”

Payne’s prose is as moving as his lyrics. In an essay about standout closing track “Old Blue Eyes,” he writes of his late onetime friend and drug dealer Tyler: “We all were running from something and on a quest that to this day I still don’t know the meaning of.

But for a while, we all leaned on each other and got through life together.”

“Old Blue Eyes” is romantic — “too romantic,” jokes Payne, who is an out gay man — but only in the tenderness of its goodbye to an old friend and an old life. “Tonight, old Blue Eyes just may try to reach the moon,” he sings, and Tyler’s memory fades into swelling, countrypolitan strings and Payne’s agile, aching vocal.

“That song was such a special memory to me,” Payne says. “I wrote that on the night Tyler died. He’s where the title for the album came from too. … I kind of have crushes on all the strong men in my life.

That’s what draws me to them. Then I learn so many lessons from them.”

Frank Liddell and Eric Masse co-produced Blue Eyes, and tracked the LP at Zac Brown’s Southern Ground Nashville, which was put on the market in April. Payne recorded in the very room where his mother, while pregnant with him, recorded Kris

Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” At the time, the building was Monument Studios.

The full-circle nature of that experience is not lost on Payne. Nor is the ever-present realization that, with hard work and the help

WISH YOU WERE HERE Elizabeth Cook takes country music as her subject on Aftermath

BY EDD HURT

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he acoustic guitar chords that lead off “Daddy, I Got Love for You,” one of the tracks on Nashville singer and songwriter Elizabeth Cook’s new album Aftermath, sound like the kind of folk-country licks you’ve heard countless times. But “Daddy, I Got Love for You” isn’t exactly a country recording. Aftermath — which Cook cut in Santa Monica, Calif., with producer Butch Walker and a crack band that included Music City guitarist Andrew Leahey — takes country music as its subject matter.

Cook’s lyrics make it AFTERMATH WILL BE clear she has cultivated SELF-RELEASED FRIDAY, an empathy for the rural SEPT. 11 Southern people she writes about, but the record uses classic-rock tropes in a manner that might remind you of Pink Floyd, R.E.M. and The Band. It’s a rich, elusive

of some dedicated and loving friends, he has found a second chance at making his dream come true.

“It’s pretty nice to be solid, and finally have this story told.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

collection of songs that suggests Cook, whose most recent album was 2016’s critically acclaimed Exodus of Venus, has found her way out of the world of country music itself.

Cook cut most of Aftermath in 2019 at Walker’s Ruby Red Studios in Santa Monica, with one track recorded at Nashville’s Creative Workshop. In every way, her latest music builds upon the considerable virtues of Exodus of Venus and her 2010 breakthrough album Welder. For Cook, the pop eclecticism of the record sits easily with the grand theme of her songwriting.

“My perspective is earnest; my experience is rural,” Cook says from her Nashville home. “My stories pertain to an ilk of people that are considered country people. But I just don’t think all these rigid ideas about country are what make it matter.”

Indeed, Aftermath confounds ideas about musical, lyrical and thematic approaches, and does so brilliantly. It’s arguably Cook’s finest work to date, and it’s been a long time coming.

Cook was born in Florida in 1972, and she came to Nashville in 1996, garnering a publishing deal and releasing albums like 2002’s Hey Y’all. She hit her stride on 2007’s Balls, which featured a song titled “Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman,” a clever take on sexual politics. The song, which Cook wrote with Melinda Schneider, established Cook as a savvy

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

AMERICANA ONLINE

personal values first, in spite of people who want you to “shut up and sing.” Their talk is called Price Points (Sept. 18, 4 p.m.).

The beloved

Your quick-reference guide to Thriving Roots

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

Americana Honors and Awards Ceremony isn’t

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or the first time in two decades, mid-September won’t see fans of music that might or might not fit into traditions of country, folk, bluegrass, soul, R&B, blues or rock ’n’ SEE THRIVINGROOTS.PATHABLE.CO roll flock to FOR COMPLETE SCHEDULE AND Nashville REGISTRATION INFO for AmericanaFest. In June, the Americana Music Association made a tough but smart call regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The bustling in-person happening, which usually fills venues from the cozy Station Inn to the expansive Ascend Amphitheater for five or more days and nights, will not take place. Instead, the association’s recently founded charitable and educational arm, the Americana Music Association Foundation, will host a three-day virtual conference called Thriving Roots Sept. 1618, entirely within a customizable app.

COVID-19 has taken away one of AmericanaFest’s biggest draws: the overwhelming quantity of good shows you can see for the price of a wristband. But the necessary shift to an online platform provides a special opportunity to reflect on the state of the business and put a spotlight on issues that affect people across the breadth of the big-tent genre. In the past, AmericanaFest’s daytime discussion panels have generally appealed most to industry folk and media, but Thriving Roots puts them at center stage.

In August, the Americana Music Association hosted a panel called Black Equity in Americana, in which Black musicians and

Americana artist. I wrote about Cook at the time of Balls, when the idea of hip country was beginning to take hold among fans and critics. The spare, rocking arrangements on the album — and Cook’s cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” — suggested she had already transcended the restrictions of genre.

The follow-up, Welder, proved Cook was an ambitious artist who artfully balanced humor and serious examinations of the fate of country people who found themselves in a rapidly changing world.

Producer Don Was helped turn Welder into a country record hipsters could love, and Exodus continued in that vein. Meanwhile, Aftermath draws from rock and pop, but the rueful tinge of Cook’s lyrics — and the meticulous way she allows the words to flow within the music — mark her as an exemplary post-country artist. This fusion of words, music and production makes the record’s “Stanley by God Terry” an unclassifiable piece of work. The song lasts for five minutes, but this is a track that could run for 30 minutes.

“That’s a story I wanted to tell for a long time,” Cook says about “Stanley by God Terry,” which begins with an oddly familiar chord progression that evokes John Barry’s theme for the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy. The song has a circular, repetitive feel that allows Cook to tell her story effectively. “Stanley by

BRANDI CARLILE

RHIANNON GIDDENS

business professionals discussed ways that Americana underserves them despite its fundamental reliance on Black art. Panelists including journalists Andrea Williams (a Scene contributor) and Marcus K. Dowling and artist Adia Victoria will participate in a follow-up talk called Beyond Representation: Community Leadership for Black Equity in Americana (Sept.

16, 3:45 p.m.). Panelists including Tanya Tucker and journalist Marissa R. Moss (also a Scene contributor) have been brought together

by Change the Conversation, an organization advocating for gender equality in the music industry. They’ll discuss navigating the differing landscapes of country and Americana music in Ladies, Your Roots Are Showing (Sept. 16, 1:30 p.m.).

Staying on the industry side, there are also panels on topics like the evolution of copyright law (The Music Modernization Act: An Update, Sept. 17, 10:30 a.m.) and music licensing for new ways of listening, like streaming and virtual reality (The Day the Music Died a Second Time, Sept. 18, 10 a.m.).

Closer to home for the average music fan

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will be NIVA and NITO: Fighting for the Survival of Independent Music (Sept. 17, noon), in which representatives of the National Independent Venue Association and National Independent Talent Organization will discuss lobbying for federal aid to help venues survive the pandemic. (See our cover story on p. 8 for more on this topic.)

You’ll hear plenty from artists as well.

Brandi Carlile and Yola are set to have a conversation about advocacy and representation, as well as how to navigate suddenly becoming widely known after many years of work (Sept. 17, 12:45 p.m.). A discussion about protest music and the historic roles played by Black musicians will feature Rosanne Cash, Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder with activist Angela Davis and author Alice Randall — see Love and Vigilance (Sept. 18, 10 a.m.). Taj Mahal and Rhiannon Giddens will speak with journalist and author Ann Powers about music’s ability to heal in a talk called Music Is the Healing Voice (Sept. 18, 2 p.m.). Margo Price and journalist Jewly Hight will round out the week as they discuss putting your artistic and

technically part of the conference, but is still set to stream live from the Ryman on Sept. 16 (time TBA).

Though you won’t be packing into sweaty clubs to see them, there will be plenty of short streaming music performances interspersed throughout Thriving Roots. The late John Prine’s Oh Boy Records has two showcases on deck for artists Kelsey Waldon (an Emerging Act of the Year nominee at the Honors and Awards), Dan Reeder, Tré Burt and Arlo McKinley. They’ll play originals during Aw Heck (Sept. 16, 12:15 p.m.) and some Prine classics during I Remember Everything (Sept. 18, 3:30 p.m.). Meanwhile, PR firm Missing Piece Group’s showcase (Sept. 16, 2 p.m.) features rockers Low Cut Connie, country ace Hailey Whitters and multifaceted songsmith Justin Osborne of SUSTO. ANTI- Records’ showcase (Sept. 18, 12:15 p.m.) includes country legend Wynonna, folk-pop stalwart Ben Harper and Jeremy Ivey, husband and musical partner of Margo Price; his new LP Waiting Out the Storm is out in October.

There’s plenty more where that came from. Visit the Thriving Roots site (thrivingroots.pathable.co) to register and to see the full schedule of more than 70 events. “Nick of Time,” the final pricing tier for registration, is $199.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

God Terry” also shows off Cook’s genius for rhyme, as she sings: “Passed out on the concrete porch / Love sure is a bitch when your liver is scorched.”

“I remember writing that song on my front porch, and I remember getting the bulk of it in one sitting,” says Cook. However she arrived at the final version of this remarkable composition, the song, like all of Aftermath, evinces a high level of sheer craft.

Cook & Co. dip into any number of classic-rock approaches on the album, but none of the songs feels like genre exercises.

Elsewhere on Aftermath, Cook recalls R.E.M. and The Byrds on “When She Comes,” a song worthy of The Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday. “Thick Georgia Woman” is an empathetic look at the life of a small-town woman, and Cook rhymes “J.C. Penney” with the name of Drivin N Cryin leader Kevn Kinney. As the two songs make clear, the record’s pop leanings situate Cook in a culture that is larger than country music.

It’s an addictive record worthy of Pink Floyd’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here. That album mourns the disappearance of troubled Floyd singer Syd Barrett, while Cook mourns a vanished way of life in the American South. What’s gone may be gone, but Cook has used her immense gifts to help you remember what should never be forgotten.

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

ELIZABETH COOK

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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THE SPIN

STREAM ON

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

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usicians from around the globe have graced The 5 Spot’s stage since the cozy, low-lit venue in the heart of East Nashville’s Five Points neighborhood opened in 2003, but co-owners Todd Sherwood and Travis Collinsworth, who took the reins circa ’06, have always put locals first. In the immediate wake of the March tornado and subsequent COVID shutdown, they closed up ahead of most other venues in town. (Read a whole lot

worked well for folks like Billy Strings and Lilly Hiatt, and for other venues around the city like the Station Inn. “I need to start breaking away from Facebook Live, and Facebook altogether,” Sherwood recently posted. On Sept. 2, the venue made its first foray into PPV livestreaming, broadcasting a set from instrumental jazz three-piece Greasy Neale on the StageIt platform. Like in real life, StageIt shows require a ticket to see the stream and aren’t archived for later viewing, adding incentive to show up on time and get your money’s worth. (For this one, cover was pay-whatyou-can, but an RSVP was required to join.)

Just after 9 p.m., the three men of Greasy Neale (a name straight out of the Scene’s annual “Americana Artist or Baseball Player?” quiz) masked up and took the stage. With Micah Hulscher’s triple-keyboard

GOES DOWN EASY: GREASY NEALE

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more about the struggles venues are facing in our cover story on p. 8.) Sherwood started a GoFundMe for staffers and bands who had their shows canceled, and he got on social media to crowdsource suggestions on how to realistically and safely move forward.

Sherwood has kept up the dialogue in the months since. When not polling friends on what is and isn’t working for them about livestream shows, or rightfully criticizing Metro’s apparent double standard toward nightlife establishments — neighborhood bars following stringent mask and social distancing regulations struggle, while much of Lower Broadway appears to break them unchecked — he’s worked to make The 5 Spot the best virtual venue possible.

In late June, the venue debuted a new multi-camera, pro sound and lighting rig built for livestreams and taping. The 5 Spot has since streamed some 20 performances via Facebook Live. Those were free to watch, but with in-person shows at most venues still off the table for the foreseeable future, the concept of pay-per-view streams sounds increasingly reasonable for musicstarved viewers tired of pixelated video, choppy sound quality and dodgy feeds, hosted on platforms that aren’t built for this purpose. So far, paid streams seem to have

setup offering a variety of melodies and tones — you might recognize him from Margo Price’s band The Pricetags — bassist Alec Newnam and drummer Nate Felty held things down on the rhythmic end, propelling the playful, slightly psychedelic hourlong performance forward.

Playing a mix of original instrumentals and covers that included bossa nova godfather Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Children’s Games” and a mellowed-out take on Charlie Rich’s country standard “Behind Closed Doors,” the trio was remarkably tight, transporting the viewer from Tennessee’s sticky summer clime and the chaos of 2020 through space and time to somewhere more tranquil. Perhaps a visit to the swinging ’60s — think a secluded beach at sunset, or a roof in the city on a cool night.

Production values matched Greasy Neale’s technical prowess, with crystalclear sound, fluid multi-camera work and excellent picture quality. Even the one technical hiccup — the feed temporarily cut out midsong at one point — happened at the exact half-hour mark, making for a natural intermission. Here’s looking forward to more music from the trio, and more quality shows of this nature from venues across the spectrum in Music City.

EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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PRIMAL STREAM 24: MAD MAX RIP-OFFS This week, some streamable sci-fi that picks up where Mad Max and The Road Warrior left off

BY JASON SHAWHAN BATTLETRUCK

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wo weeks ago in this space I spoke of the liberating chaos of Mad Max rip-offs. Really, though, the subgenre also encompasses rip-offs of The Road Warrior (and even Beyond Thunderdome to some extent; if society holds up, I look forward to Fury Road rip-offs we’ll see one day, so long as we’re not living in it). We conflate those two aesthetics together, but they’re coming from different places — Mad Max is the chaotic unwinding of society as it’s happening, while The Road Warrior is the embodiment of the kinetic postapocalyptic runabout film. They’ve all got their something, and the side of the continuum tilting toward The Road Warrior is a little bit freer from the enervating terror of right now, which continues to get worse on a daily basis.

So let’s spend this week diving deep into this cinematic timespace. As always, look back at past issues of the Scene for more recommendations of what to stream.

The first two on deck, both streaming on Amazon Prime, are Cirio H. Santiago’s 1987 Equalizer 2000 and Harley Cokeliss’ 1982 Battletruck (the latter streaming under the title Warlords of the Twenty-First Century, because if there’s one lesson to learn from the exploitation game, more titles means more

WHEELS OF FIRE

love ... or something). Both exist in desolate wastelands with lots of dunes and betrayal and not enough petrochemicals to keep the war machine going. The Santiago film is an ode to the joy of violence, ostensibly detailing the struggles of various factions to gain a doomsday weapon that will shift the balance of power forever. Future T-1000 Robert Patrick pops up as an unfortunately handsy minor official, there are henchmen with flamethrowers and a willingness to use them on anybody, and there is so much gunfire herein that you will find out exactly how concerned your neighbors are about your well-being.

In Battletruck — which amps up its narrative to become a metaphor for ’70s utopian sci-fi aesthetics in a deathmatch with the new Australian gears-and-grunge style — the war machine is literally a big truck. It looks like a souped-up Winnebago with gun turrets, and it terrorizes the land, siphoning resources and assaulting the people with the petulant iron hand of Col. Straker (James Wainwright). His daughter Corlie (Annie McEnroe) escapes his clutches, seeking refuge with Hunter (Michael Beck of The Warriors and Xanadu fame) and the vaguely hippie commune of Clearwater. As you know from decades of

sci-fi and also the world we’re living in, fascists cannot abide a community peacefully getting by that believes in the tenets of equality and sustainability. So a confrontation brews in this Kiwi conflagration, and the end result scratches all postapocalyptic itches as well as deploying a great High Plains Drifter/Blazing Saddles approach to the big throwdown. It features John Ratzenberger (yes, Cliff Clavin) as a noble metalsmith and cinematography by Oscar winner Chris Menges (The Mission, plus second unit on The Empire Strikes Back)!

Santiago also directed Wheels of Fire (streaming on Prime), a 1985 journey into anxiety that is steeped in deeply retrograde gender theory and some genuinely inspiring flamethrower effects. (A note: This subgenre of exploitation film loves flamethrower effects — they are analog terror at its finest.) Wheels of Fire’s place in cinema history is probably clinched by inspiring the human-hood-ornament aspect of Tarantino’s Death Proof, though here the idea is much more dehumanizing and dangerous. One of the pernicious and recurrent issues in this subgenre is the degree to which the menace of sexual assault drives the narrative; a lot of films in this milieu use the wasteland as a backdrop for rape/revenge stories, which centers the inescapable tragedy at the heart of these films — humanity often simply refuses to learn from its mistakes.

And though it starts in a wasteland Ren Faire that promises a whole unforeseen angle of society, Wheels of Fire decides to emphasize lots of troubling patriarchal foolishness, as if that framework is somehow the only foundation that society can build itself on. Santiago loves gratuitous nudity, eliding narrative beats for purest, visceral sensation, and he also loves to deploy a third-act shock moment when one of the women characters (if there is more than

DEFIANT

Nashville’s best film festival celebrates its fifth birthday online

BY JOE NOLAN

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f I were going to create a film festival, I’d identify a unique and underserved audience.

I’d curate a broad and diverse selection of international movies while staying true to my central vision. I’d create an interactive DEFY FILM FESTIVAL neighborhood-party STREAMING SATURDAY, SEPT. 12; REGISTER, atmosphere around my EXPLORE AND STREAM AT screenings, and hone DEFYFILMFESTIVAL.COM and grow my festival so that each year is bigger and better than the last.

That last one’s a biggie. If you tell your family and friends (and the local alt-weekly) that you’re starting a film festival, you don’t want it to turn out like your brother’s band — you know, the one that broke up after its first show — or your friend’s podcast, which is “still in the works.” Creating and sustaining a unique and thriving film festival is a massive undertaking, and if I were going to create a film festival, I’d want it to be a lot like Defy. For me, Defy Film Festival was the best Nashville film festival of 2019, and the fifth anniversary of the experimental film showcase is something for all

one) is tragically killed for the flimsiest of reasons. But there’s also a lot of old-school plunger-based TNT explosions, which can be a delight for any Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote fans, and this movie is designed to provide maximum everything.

The Italian riffs on Mad Max and The Road Warrior (there are many, and Enzo Castellari somehow made the best and worst of them with his epic Bronx trilogy — if you dig on Battletruck, just you wait until you meet Megaweapon) tend to have a bit more going on narratively. But they also bog down in loose ends sometimes. We’ll get to them later on in the pandemic, which is a deeply disheartening sentence to have to write. The applicable generalization in postapocalyptic rip-off cinema is the genre itself, so you have to dig in and figure it out for yourself. Car stunts are a safe bet. The irony of driving vehicles throughout the wasteland despite the fetishized shortage/absence of petrochemical products is not addressed. Political perspectives will be represented — all of them. (If you ever wondered where The Dark Knight Rises got its insane political compass, look no further.) The children will be weird. As with all the many variants of exploitation cinema, your mileage may vary.

A note: The 2010 documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed, currently streaming on Hoopla, details the history of the Filipino exploitation film industry and features extensive material on Cirio Santiago and his body of work. Also, Brian DePalma’s essential sexy mystery Femme Fatale is streaming on Amazon Prime. Late, great Scene editor Jim Ridley wrote about it back in 2003. It has everything you could want, but what’s particularly wonderful is its cosmic sensibility about the grind of being alive. As a bonus, check out the international trailer, cut by former Nashvillian/USN alumnus Jamie Bradshaw.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Nashville movie lovers to celebrate.

Of course, this year’s iteration of the fest will only be streaming online, but it will also be free. So no shocking-pink cups overflowing with local beer, but also no picking and choosing between tickets and times, hoping not to miss a gem. The online pivot can now be thought of as a film-fest best practice following six months of cinema celebrations fleeing theatrical screenings amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

(The Nashville Film Festival will be doing the same thing next month, naturally, though not for free.) And the free admission might actually attract newbies who’ll become devoted Defy-ers once we can all fest together again, as the weird-movie gods surely intend.

This year’s shorts and features range from abstract and almost-indescribable to surprising, sensual and spiritual.

Wayne is a struggling method actor who inherits a down-and-out adult movie theater after his estranged father passes away. In The Last Porno Show, grief and confusion quickly give way to lubed-up inspiration as Wayne embraces the new creative freedom he discovers in the sweaty underbelly of the pornographic underground. The Last Porno Show is graphic and funny and sweet all at the same time, and at its best it recalls the familial, human moments in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. Wayne wants to unload the real estate to a developer who’s anxious to erect a rock-climbing gym. But Wayne’s plan gets derailed by memories of his sketchy but loving dad, not to mention the cast of colorful

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 10 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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characters who depend on the theater as a place to live and work and, you know, watch porn in a theater like a proper cinephile.

Patton Oswalt puts on a Catholic collar and struggles with his religious vows playing the title role in “The Priest.” After the death of his brother, a Texas priest yearns for a more adventurous and fulfilling life. Oswalt is the sad, soft center of this comedydrama that plays from flat-out funny to heartfelt. The film is impressive in its shifting of moods and tones in just a little more than 15 minutes. It’s a short that’s full of unexpected twists, and it’s one of those little movies you’ll want to see blown up into a full feature by the time the end credits roll.

“Garden City Beautiful” captures two friends taking a drive on a sunny afternoon. Images of highway overpasses, street scenes, tree canopies and sidewalk cracks are accompanied by voiceover narration and spoken dialogue taken from a letter written by pioneering American socialist Victor L. Berger in 1895. Director Ben Balcom combines words and images in a poetic collage that superimposes Berger’s vision of a cooperative utopia over our everyday world at the end of the American empire, and maybe at the end of capitalism as we’ve known it. “Garden City Beautiful” is a short that lives up to its name, and its message reminds us that we can transform the world if we’re only willing to

change our own minds.

Family vacations can mean wonderful memories and unbearable tensions. “The Explosion of the Swimming Ring” boils down the National Lampoon formula to a couple and their young child at a public swim park. Then it pushes the family to the breaking point in less than 10 minutes. This ferocious little film sends up modern family dynamics with an unexpected savagery that culminates in the titular blow-up.

True crime podcast junkies will dig the grisly twist that “Last Seen” takes on the genre. The short by Drew Van Steenbergen follows Emily — the “new Nancy Drew” and the creator of the eponymous podcast. Emily’s show is a viral sensation, but her murder investigation is hitting a roadblock. She has to get creative to keep the creative juices flowing, and then she gets a clue: You have to think like a killer to catch one.

Viewers won’t know what to make of “Demon Cooler” given its title, but it couldn’t be more straightforward. This gore-ific exploration of father-son dynamics, male bonding rituals, generational trauma and the politics of craft beer comes to a chunky, gooey head when a son confronts his father with some all-too-real metaphors. The movie pairs minimal wind-up with maximum payoff to deliver a horrorcomedy take on a sins-of-the-father yarn.

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They might help you get a grip Little downtime Saying “You’ve never looked better,” maybe Chorus at an arena de fútbol Time off Inland’s opposite Sage Hard hit, in baseball lingo Wear in ancient Rome Many a country road Brand of “anti-aging” products Fr. religious figures

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[blown kiss] 2 Author of “Interview With the Vampire” 3 Old Glory 4 Hesitant to act 5 What a foul mouth is full of?

6 Counselor to Job 7 Get into 8 Container brand that lost its trademark status in 1963 9 Terminus 10 “I’ll be right behind you” 11 Main Las Vegas industry 12 Outer space phenomenon photographed for the first time in 2019 13 Clif Bar bit 14 MuggleNet, for Harry Potter devotees 20 Prime Cuts and T-Bonz brand 21 Actress Hayek 25 It might prevent an overload of the power grid 26 Compadre 27 ___ Wiseman, director of “Total Recall” 28 & 32 Ambiguity … or a hint to this puzzle’s theme 35 Is allowed to, quaintly

39

1

40 41 43

45 47

48 49 51

Significant other DC reporter Carrier to Tokyo Chick magnet?

Game whose dualcolored pieces are apt for this puzzle’s theme Air apparent?

Gene with a large ’stache of films?

“Fingers crossed!”

Cirque du ___ Passes

52 53 57

58

59 61

“Grimms’ Fairy Tales” heroine Starter course?

Two-time Tonywinning actress Judith Goddess often depicted holding an ankh And so on: Abbr.

Mo. when Oktoberfest starts

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE W I F I

I R A N

P A I S K S E

F O L K M U S I C

B T O A S U S

L O P E

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T O L B E E A T L L L E S L R G O O O W N N E E N R S

O P I E S T O O D M T N

the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon THOMAS DONNELL HORTON. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after September 10, 2020 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on October 12, 2020. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

B E E N N E S K P I H U T I R E P E S E T D O W A D E R E E E S T

S H I N E

C O N E S

R U D E

A P S E I A S

T H S O U W A I T O I L S O N E N T W A B I L A N E G G

E T A

O D D S

Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/ crosswords ($39.95 a year).

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v.

Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 20D700 MICHAEL JEROME WHITNEY vs.

IRIS BEST OATES In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon IRIS BEST OATES. It is ordered that said Defendant enter Her appearance herein with thirty (30) days after September 24, 2020 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on October 26, 2020. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk W. North, Deputy Clerk Date: August 27, 2020 Jessica R. Simpson Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/3, 9/10, 9/17, 9/24/20 Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 20D644 KIMBERLY YVETTE HORTON Vs. THOMAS DONNELL HORTON In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon THOMAS DONNELL HORTON. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after September 10, 2020 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on October 12, 2020. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk

Edwin Geovani Sanchez (Biological Father) ORDER FOR SERVICE BY PUBLICATION This cause came in front of the court on August 7, 2020, on a motion for publication filed by the Petitioners. In this cause it is appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon Respondent. It is ordered that said Respondent be served by publication and that said Respondent enter his appearance herein within thirty (30) days from the last day of publication of this notice and defend or default will be taken against him. The hearing to be held at the Williamson County Chancery Court in Franklin, TN. It is therefore ORDERED that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks in the local newspaper.

It is further ORDERED that said four (4) week succession publication will constitute service upon Edwin Geovani Sanchez in the above-captioned case.

Entered this the 7th day of August, 2020.

Judge: James G. Martin III By: Vanessa Saenz (#18875) Saenz & Maniatis, PLLC (615) 366-1211 Attorney for Petitioners NSC 8/20, 8/27, 9/3,& 9/10/20

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EMPLOYMENT Change Healthcare seeks a Senior Manager, Product Management in Nashville, TN to manage a team that works closely with the dental product development team. Reqs BS & 4 yrs.; Add’l specific exp. req’d. To apply mail resume to Change Healthcare, Attn: Dale Lineberry, R15497, 5995 Windward Parkway, Alpharetta, GA 30005.

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