Amid TSU’s financial turmoil, we take a three-part look at the past and future of the historic local university
What the Body Carries is a multimedia exhibition of figurative paintings, collages, and sculptures by Haitian American artists M. Florine Démosthène and Didier William. The exhibition reflects the artists’ experiences of hybridity as they navigate life outside Haiti while still being informed by the country’s history, culture, and spiritual traditions.
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PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE METRO HISTORIC ZONING COMMISSION
Following an audit, new legislation from Councilmember Benedict aims to move MHZC into the Planning Department
BY LENA MAZEL
Street View is a monthly column taking a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
IN AUGUST, homeowner Brian Beach came to the Metro Historic Zoning Commission with plans to build an extension in front of his 1930s home in the Hillsboro-West End neighborhood. Beach had done his research: He’d reached out to the commission multiple times and proposed a design similar to nearby structures. Supportive neighbors even submitted comments through the commission’s portal. Still, the commission denied the request — though they did allow the Beaches’ rear addition plans.
Beach and his wife eventually resubmitted new extension plans without a front addition. But he tells the Scene it wasn’t just the decision that frustrated them. He wishes the MHZC had handled the process differently. “You have zero power when in that relationship,” he says. “You’re not even entitled to clear information.” He wanted earlier communication and more holistic thinking from the commission. And he wanted them to consider the project’s neighborhood support.
Beach isn’t alone in this sentiment. Nashville has nine historic preservation zoning overlays and 26 less-restrictive neighborhood conservation zoning overlays. The MHZC has been enforcing historic zoning since 1977, assuring that structures are similar heights, materials and style in each overlay. Overlays have support among neighborhood associations and some residents, and the MHZC’s handbook lists a number of zoning benefits including stable property values, conserving building materials and promoting heritage tourism. The commission writes that historic zoning “nurtures a sense of community” and “provides a sense of place.”
But after a recent third-party audit of the commission, some city leaders are questioning whether the MHZC’s current structure achieves those goals effectively.
On Feb. 8, District 7 Metro Councilmember Emily Benedict, who lives in North Inglewood, filed legislation to restructure the Historic Zoning Commission. Instead of a stand-alone department, MHZC staff and commissioners would become part of Nashville’s Planning Department. “I believe the Planning Department has the expertise to ensure that historical character is protected in our city while also building housing for our existing and new residents,” Benedict tells the Scene. She says Planning can help people better understand historic guidelines and boost community engagement in overlay districts.
At press time, Benedict’s legislation is set to be presented to the Metro Council on Feb. 18 — after the Scene’s deadline. It follows findings from an audit commissioned by Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office, which made an official suggestion that MHZC become part of Planning. The audit, completed by consulting firm HDR, includes background research and interview material from 23 individuals, including MHZC and other government officials and members of the Lower Broad business community.
The interview responses were varied, with some praising the MHZC’s role in preservation and its ability to work with other departments. Critiques mentioned the MHZC’s “unnecessarily rigid” interpretation of the Secretary of the Interior historic guidelines and its use of “context” to regulate nonhistoric structures within overlays. One example of “context” not mentioned in the audit: At a July MHZC meeting, two homeowners applied to build a two-and-a-half-story house. Their home was a “non-contributing” part of the overlay, they prepared a presentation complete with 52 examples of similar builds nearby, and they gave the MHZC a petition expressing support from their neighbors. Still, their application was denied. “Precedent” is also a common theme in MHZC decisions, including a vote that one homeowner should tear down the roof from a too-tall garage in 2023.
MHZC executive director Tim Walker does not agree with the audit findings or recommendation. “I feel like of Metro departments, we’re near the top of the list in terms of being responsive to constituents and councilmembers,” Walker tells the Scene. “So that’s why these
criticisms are a little hard to swallow.”
As for the claims of the MHZC’s rigidity, Walker says that’s just how the federal regulations work. “We don’t have the option of changing standards, because we’re required to follow the federal standards,” he says. “We’re trying to treat everybody the same by the same standard. It’s just a fairness issue that we’re trying to apply.”
Walker also mentions that the audit interviewed only the Lower Broad community and not people in residential overlays (though the audit does mention “preservation-related issues” in other neighborhoods). Honky-tonk owners on Broadway have a contentious history with the MHZC, and one conflict escalated to a 2023 bill in the state legislature.
“Since taking office, Mayor O’Connell has sought a development services process that is fair and effective for all parties,” says Alex Apple, spokesperson for the mayor’s office. “The independent review of the Metro Historic Zoning Commission has laid out a series of recommendations which we will now use to guide how we move forward. We are aware of pending legislation at the state legislature that could impact the city’s work here.”
Walker says making the MHZC part of the Planning Department would weaken the commission’s ability to enforce historic zoning, but Benedict says that won’t happen. Her legislation keeps the current staff intact, proposing that existing members transition to their new role under the executive director of planning.
“I’m not a proponent of dismantling our historic character,” says Benedict. “I am a fan of
growth in congress with that historical character. I believe we can have them together.”
In a statement to the Scene, Planning Department executive director Lucy Kempf expresses similar goals.
“Today, the Planning Commission makes recommendations to the Metro Council for historic overlays, and we will steadfastly continue that work, ensuring that overlays effectively serve their purpose,” she says. “As Nashville continues to grow, it has become clear that some of our planning practices around overlays require thoughtful reassessment, in collaboration with our community. The Planning Department is prepared to work with residents, business owners, preservationists and stakeholders to ensure our historic zoning policies reflect Nashville’s evolving needs, balancing growth with preservation in a way that above all else, strengthens our city’s character.”
Beach is an economist, and he hopes zoning changes will solve bigger issues than his front addition. He says historic zoning promotes “inefficient use of land” and “a huge degree of income separation,” creating restrictions that can prevent renter-friendly or dense affordable housing. One solution could be guidelines for buildings like duplexes that are aesthetically similar to the overlay — the MHZC has collaborated with one East Nashville community to make similar changes before.
“I think it’s just natural to have some neighborhood change,” Beach says. “And if we want to preserve some things so that we remember the past, there are ways to do that that don’t require so much administrative inefficiency.” ▼
PITH IN THE WIND
NASHVILLESCENE.COM/NEWS/PITHINTHEWIND
The 114th Tennessee General Assembly resumed its regular business last week, moving bills through committees in both the House and Senate following Gov. Bill Lee’s State of the State address on Feb. 10. Among consideration was House Bill 64, which would require all “residential educational programs” to “segregate all restrooms, changing areas, and showers by immutable biological sex,” with an amendment specifying that the bill relates only to multioccupant facilities. The bill was advanced in the House Education Administration Subcommittee on Feb. 11 — which also happened to be Advancing Equality Day on the Hill. Visit nashvillescene.com/state-legislature for regular legislative updates.
EMILY BENEDICT
THE TOO-EARLY SHORT LIST FOR TENNESSEE’S NEXT GOVERNOR
The Lee era will end in 2026. Who might vie for the state’s top office?
BY ELI MOTYCKA
A TERM-LIMITED Gov. Bill Lee will leave office in 2026 after eight years as Tennessee’s chief executive. In that time, Republicans have held onto their consolidated power in the state legislature and in Tennessee’s congressional delegation, where just one Democrat — U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis — represents Tennesseans in Washington, D.C. Lee has brought Tennessee into lockstep with the national GOP on issues like private school vouchers while criminalizing immigration and abortion.
The state has solidly voted Republican in the past several elections. Tennesseans gave Lee 64.9 percent of the vote in 2022. Trump won Tennessee with 64.2 percent of the vote in 2024. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn won her second term in the U.S. Senate in November with 63.8 percent. Democrats have few prospective candidates and no clear blueprint for a competitive campaign.
With a little more than 20 months between now and the 2026 gubernatorial election, here’s a quick look at eight names that could end up in the mix — some more hypothetical than others.
U.S. REP. JOHN ROSE
Cookeville busi
nessman John Rose broke into state politics in the early 2000s as Tennessee’s agricultural commissioner
CULTURALLY DIVERSE TSU TENNIS FORGES STRONG BOND ON AND OFF COURT
International-heavy Tigers have led program to back-to-back men’s HBCU national titles BY LOGAN BUTTS
ON THE AMATEUR tennis landscape in America, college programs often function as a miniature United Nations.
Of the eight players on the men’s tennis team at Tennessee State University, for example, five
NASHVILLE
under Republican Gov. Don Sundquist. While Sundquist’s second term ended in a corruption investigation over no-bid state contracts, Rose hopped back to his lucrative software hustle while keeping a foot in the statewide farming bureaucracy. He has Future Farmers of America to thank for his marriage: At 42, Rose was an FFA board member while Chelsea, his now-wife, was the 17-year-old FFA state president. They were engaged four years later. Most importantly, Rose has publicly said he will run for governor and has the money to do it: Rose reported assets over $50 million in his congressional disclosures and has historically funded his tenure as a congressman, representing Tennessee’s 6th District since 2019. Money, CEO bona fides, farming photo opps — Lee brewed that same stew in the 2018 Republican primary. By default, Rose remains the front-runner.
U.S. SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN
If she actually wants to return to the Tennessee Capitol, the state’s popular senior senator would immediately be the favorite. Blackburn has curried Trump’s favor and blasted her name, image and likeness to Tennesseans via Fox News and campaign ads since winning her first Senate term in 2018. Before then, she racked up terms as a U.S. representative from her perch in Brentwood, the state’s wealthy and well-connected political core. Before that, the longtime Republican led a successful effort to kill a proposed state income tax as a state senator. She’s reported to have started exploring and polling for a 2026 governor’s run, but has yet to formalize her next political move. (Blackburn’s colleague in the Senate, Bill Hagerty, recently confirmed his plans to run for reelection, quashing rumors that he was considering a gubernatorial run.)
MATT WALSH
As a right-wing podcaster and media provocateur, Matt Walsh has demonstrated an insatiable appetite for attention. Keep feeding it, as he has at public anti-trans rallies and in the Daily Wire mediasphere, and it gets hungrier. Scene columnist Betsy Phillips laid out Walsh’s frantic attention-seeking in a recent column, speculating, quite reasonably, that he may follow media stars like Robby Starbuck, Nicholas Kristof, Cenk Uygur and Donald Trump into the political jungle. Most of them fail.
MAYOR GLENN JACOBS
Quick submission did not make Kane, Glenn Jacobs’ champion WWE persona, the most feared matchup in the ring. But it may be the tactful polit ical move for the Knox County mayor, who endorsed Blackburn’s still-hypothetical (at press time) gubernatorial bid in January after he spent months maneuvering for his own statewide prospects. As Kane, Jacobs is an international star; as Knox County mayor, he’s still a relative political newcomer low in the GOP pecking order. Such deference should serve his own bid for governor if Blackburn doesn’t run, and positions him well to rise through the state party’s ranks if she does — perhaps as her successor in the Senate.
a sign that he likes the Music City lifestyle. Unlike his peers on this list, Sexton lacks both the personal wealth to self-finance a campaign and a major hometown political base from which to fundraise.
TRE HARGETT
Hargett’s seemingly random speaking engagements and public appearances would suddenly make sense if he decided to replace his boss. As Tennessee’s secretary of state, Hargett gets his name on lots of documents and has drummed up lots of reasons to talk to crowds, mainly touting Tennessee’s election security and cheerleading the Republican party. Sources say he’s already floated the idea with colleagues within the state government.
STATE REP. JOHN RAY CLEMMONS
Somehow, Democratic state Rep. Clemmons keeps showing up to the Capitol with well-reasoned policy arguments and an affable demeanor that may even border on chipper. Like his party colleagues in the statehouse, the Democratic Caucus chair is disrespected, ignored, dismissed and disregarded by the ruling party nearly every time he tries to legislate. Fluent in most issues, from the budget to education to immigration, Clemmons brings an agile legal acumen and earnest appeals to committee and floor debates, suggesting he may have the psychological endurance for a statewide campaign.
FORMER U.S. REP. JIM COOPER
SPEAKER CAMERON SEXTON
Jumping to the governor’s mansion would be the natural next move for state House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who has presided over the Tennessee House of Representatives since 2019. As speaker, the Republican has seen the ins and outs of policymaking and kept his reputation only slightly tarnished. While nominally representing Crossville, Sexton maintains a Nashville residence, a potential violation of his office but
Nashville’s former 5th Congressional District representative always teases that his career isn’t over. Against him, he has the daunting data and a demonstrated aversion to electoral defeat. Yet Cooper may be the only Democrat in the state with the name recognition and fundraising potential to run a formidable campaign. It doesn’t hurt that Cooper spent his career distinguishing himself from the mainstream Democratic Party, or that his father, Prentice Cooper, held the governor’s office during World War II. ▼
hail from countries other than the United States.
According to a 2022 study by Next College Student Athlete, an organization that helps athletes and coaches navigate the recruiting process, that number lines up with college tennis’s national average: 61 percent international players, the highest among all Division I sports.
TSU’s student-athletes from Haiti, Australia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Poland have formed the nucleus of a program that has won back-to-back HBCU National Tennis Championships. (The acronym stands for historically Black colleges and universities.) Despite being from all corners of the world, with multiple language barriers and countless cultural differences, the TSU team is a tight-knit international hodgepodge.
Unlike American athletes, elite-level international athletes often leave home for specialized
academies at a young age so they can pursue a career in their chosen sport. Tatenda Mutetwa, a TSU junior from Zimbabwe, hasn’t seen his family since he was 13. Teams morph into families.
“When I’m in college here, that’s my family,” Haitian American sophomore Christopher Bogelin says. “Even when we’re on break, we stay in contact. We are family.”
Soccer was Bogelin’s first sport of choice. But when the 2010 earthquake ravaged Haiti, many of the local soccer fields were either destroyed or converted into disaster-aid areas — so he made the switch to tennis. Bogelin, who was adopted by a family in Florida prior to his arrival at TSU, says the collision of cultures makes for a unique melting pot.
“I think that’s what makes it great, that all of us are different,” he says. “We bring different ideas. For example, the music for warm-ups, we
all have different tastes. … It keeps it exciting.” Where some teams might fracture over a lack of similarities, cultural differences have brought the TSU men’s tennis team closer together.
“I think you just embrace [the differences], it’s super cool,” says Australian junior Taj Hibbert. “You know you have a place to stay wherever you want to go in the world — Europe, Africa, Australia or America.”
After finishing second at the 2022 HBCU National Tennis Championships, the Tigers took home the first-place trophy in 2023 and 2024 — with individual national champion Jonasz Dziopak, a native of Poland, leading the way.
A slew of accolades and program firsts followed: In September, Hibbert and Rohan Loubser teamed up to win the Horizon League doubles championship, while Hibbert claimed the singles title. In October, Dziopak and Hibbert
became the first Tigers to compete at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s All-American Championships. In November, Loubser and Hibbert topped the doubles consolation bracket at the ITA Conference Masters Championship.
Unlike professional tennis, where players only have to worry about themselves and their own results, college players have to balance individual results with team goals. The Tigers have excelled at both.
“We do have that individual season, but we act as a team,” Hibbert says. “It never really feels like you’re playing as an individual. … We’ve all individually had moments, but the team here has a very special connection.”
Despite all the successes, just a few weeks after the ITA triumph, head coach Todd Smith resigned. Smith had built the program up to its current heights nearly from scratch. For almost two months afterward, volunteer assistant Pat Patrick acted as the interim coach for both the men’s and women’s programs. In late January, John Trondson was hired as the university’s director of tennis. Trondson — who’d been an all-conference tennis player at Middle Tennessee State University in the early 1990s and was a TSU assistant coach after that — has a threepronged approach when it comes to guiding student-athletes through a busy schedule filled to the brim with academic and athletic
responsibilities: “One is the academic piece. The second is the tennis piece. Third is the personal piece.”
It’s a tough balance to maintain. According to a study conducted by the NCAA in 2022, 30 percent of student-athletes admitted to feeling “extremely overwhelmed,” while 25 percent said they were “mentally exhausted.”
“If you had the answer, I would want it,” says Loubser, who came to tennis via his father, a squash player in South Africa. “I’m just trying to study as hard as I can, give 100 percent in everything that I do, even though it’s not necessarily the healthiest thing to do. I have to sometimes put 80-20 into schoolwork, maybe 80-20 into tennis, but I’m still struggling with that balance — but working my way toward getting better.”
With the spring semester in full swing, there’s barely time to stop and take a breath, especially with the program’s first conference championship on the to-do list and a 3.6 cumulative team GPA to maintain. Luckily, they have a makeshift family to fall back on.
“In terms of the program, I think it just needs to be highlighted,” Loubser says. “We’re doing something special here.”
Through the end of March, TSU Tennis is holding a matching grant fundraiser, which means every dollar raised (up to $10,000) will be matched during this time. ▼
PHOTOS:
CHRISTOPHER BOGELIN
ROHAN LOUBSER
WITNESS HISTORY
This 1957 Gibson J-200—with custom pickguard and mother-of-pearl inlay—was used by Johnny Cash in performance and to write songs, including his 1959 country chart-topper “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.”
From the exhibit Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present
artifact: Gift of Marty Stuart, Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation, and Loretta and Jeff Clarke. From the Marty Stuart Collection.
artifact photo: Bob Delevante
Amid TSU’s financial turmoil, we take a three-part look at the past and future of the historic local university
PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO
How TSU Got Here
Legislators and administrators have been trading blame over studies, funding and management for more than three years
BY ELI MOTYCKA
Sometimes trouble comes slowly, like the proverbial frog meeting its end in boiling water. Other times it happens all at once. Both kinds of problems have pushed Tennessee State University into a corner over the past decades, years and months, leaving its leaders and critics to puzzle over whether the flagship university’s outlook is getting better or still getting worse.
For more than a century, the historically Black university has minted prominent graduates across the arts, academia, athletics, entertainment and politics while building its stature as a destination school. Olympian Wilma Rudolph and billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey top an impressive alumni list that is both star-studded and lengthy. The marching band has Grammy awards, and the sprawling campus, which includes wetlands and an agricultural research center on the banks of the Cumberland River, anchors North Nashville. Every fall, thousands of proud alums assemble at the TSU Homecoming.
A student housing shortage in 2022 set off increased scrutiny around how the school was managing its money. Less than three years later, the state legislature had vacated TSU’s entire governing board, and the university was welcoming its third president in six months. Undergraduate enrollment has fluctuated dramatically and shows steadily shrinking senior classes since 2020.
Dueling reports offer broad explanations
for why the university struggled to balance its budget.
After accumulating comments about the state underfunding TSU from Rep. Harold Love — a Nashville Democrat and TSU graduate — state House Speaker Cameron Sexton, the chamber’s ranking Republican, convened a joint committee to look into the issue in late 2020. A year later, Love and colleagues reported that the state legislature, tasked with providing regular matching funds for the school, had shorted TSU by $544 million compared to other public universities. Capital projects and deferred maintenance had suffered the most, researchers found, leaving the university unable to keep up with its vast campus. The revelation prompted a $318 million budget allocation to the university for capital projects and maintenance in Gov. Bill Lee’s 2023 budget.
“Historically Black colleges and universities have been institutions that have done more with less since their first foundings in 1837,”
Brittany Mosby, HBCU director at the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, told WPLN’s This Is Nashville in the months following the report. “Support for HBCUs is an all-hands-on-deck issue. It’s going to take significant investment on all levels.”
Within weeks, state comptroller Jason Mumpower released another study squarely blaming TSU’s administration for financial malpractice. Immediately, state legislators pilloried the school and its leaders with the audit’s findings.
“TSU management has repeatedly fallen short of sound fiscal practices, adequate documentation, and responsive communications to concerned parents and students,” reads the audit’s executive summary. “In addition, there have been repeated inconsistencies between testimony given by TSU officials to state officials and actions later carried out.”
A sudden bump in 2022 enrollment and a subsequent $22 million jump in scholarships broke the budget, the audit says — it recommends to the Tennessee General Assembly a
series of sweeping moves, including vacating and replacing the TSU Board of Trustees and management. The full report does not mention historic underfunding. In his 16-page summary, Mumpower mentions TSU’s underfunding exactly once — to say that money allocated for capital improvements can’t go to dorms, as dorms generate revenue.
Six months later, in September 2023, the Biden administration weighed in with its own towering estimate of TSU’s underfunding. The state had shorted TSU more than $2.1 billion in the previous 30 years, explained a letter to Lee from Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Department of Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack. Cardona and Vilsack explicitly contrasted the legislature’s neglect of TSU with its support of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
While the studies piled up, then-TSU President Glenda Glover announced in August 2023 that she would leave TSU after a decade leading the university. She formally stepped down as president in June of last year but remains in the spotlight for two reasons. First, the state’s audit called out her administration in its findings. Second, her retirement buyout and a post-presidency advising contract amounted to $1.7 million.
The state vacated the Board of Trustees in March. Ronald Johnson succeeded Glover as interim president before stepping down less than six months later, citing board concerns. Dwayne Tucker, the CEO of LEAD Public Schools, took the interim job in December. Pending legislation in the statehouse formally appoints new trustees Dimeta Smith Knight, Terica Smith, Dakasha Winton, Jeffery Norfleet, Trevia Chatman, Charles Traughber and Marquita Qualls.
Everyone involved has reasons to blame each other and reports to point to. Meanwhile, in a report from Tucker, the school has a projected $46 million deficit, a 50 percent decline in freshman enrollment and operating cash set to run out before this year’s graduation. ▼
Where TSU’s Historic Underfunding Meets School Mismanagement
Talking to Rep. Harold Love about his alma mater’s complicated funding history
BY NICOLLE S. PRAINO
Rep. Harold Love Jr. began looking into the possibility that the state was underfunding Tennessee State University in 2013. But the Nashville Democrat was following in his father’s footsteps — Harold Love Sr. began examining the same thing in 1970.
“It’s my blood,” says Love Jr. of the university. The younger Love received his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from TSU, where his mother worked for 57 years. His father also served in the state House — both men served in districts home to the university.
“These were conversations we would have at home, just about the university and the work he was doing — the path to eradicating the underfunding,” says Love, whose father died in 1996. “And so for me, getting elected in 2012 and sworn in 2013, to have the conversation about underfunding still being a concern was shocking. But that’s when we began the work of investigating what we call the state match requirements.”
TSU is what’s known as an 1890 land-grant institution — a historically Black school that was established by the Morrill Act of 1890. There are federal laws about its level of state funding compared to its counterpart — the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, established by the Morrill Act of 1862.
“The loophole with 1890 Morrill Act schools was that if the state government didn’t have the funds to provide a full match, then the states could request a waiver of the full match requirement,” says Love. “The waiver could be no more than 50 percent of what was required. So that, I think, began the opening of opportunities, I’ll say, for underfunding.
“The other nuance is, in some states, the legislature just said to the schools, ‘We don’t have any of it, even the waiver, so you may have to let go of those federal funds,’” Love continues. “So what presidents oftentimes did was raise their own funds to make the match. And so when we talk about underfunding, it’s a double whammy.”
Historically, he explains, those university presidents were not only missing out on the state funds — universities were also pulling money from their own reserves. By now, the numbers are widely known. Thanks to a committee that Love pushed for, a 2021 study revealed that the state of Tennessee underfunded TSU by more than $544 million between 1957 and 2007, based on those matching
PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO
DWAYNE TUCKER, INTERIM PRESIDENT OF TSU
rules. In 2023, the U.S. Department of Education found the state underfunded the university by $2.1 billion. (The latter number is based on a totally different funding requirement.)
As Love was working on addressing the underfunding issue, TSU was undergoing a massive enrollment increase — and trouble arose with housing. At the same time, then-president Glenda Glover and other members of school leadership were pushing hard for the state to pay TSU in response to its historic underfunding. The state did take a first step, agreeing to provide TSU with $250 million for building maintenance to address a backlog of infrastructure plans. Another $250 million was to be granted to the school later for academic programs — however, the university has yet to fully draw down the funds for the infrastructure projects. Love has a plan to propose some changes to get TSU its funding. As the state opened up this funding to the university, state leaders were also watching several audits reveal how management of school funds became an issue.
“There are many of us who are aware of the challenges that the underfunding has caused,” Love says. “We are not abandoning the work to get underfunding resolved. And we also think there’s an obligation to the students that we also make sure that Tennessee State has these systems in place to provide them the world-class education the school can.”
In an audit of the entire state for the fiscal year ending June 2023, the state comptroller’s office found that TSU did not follow federal guidance for money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), which created the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF). Federal regulations stated that additional scholarships and grants to students that utilized HEERF money should prioritize students with exceptional needs. TSU spent $85,000 of those funds on grants that were given based on requirements such as GPA and attendance at student engagement events. The university could be required to pay that money back to the U.S. Department of Education.
Additionally, at the beginning of fiscal year 2023, TSU did not have HEERF funds remaining, but $233,133 became available after late adjustments to student accounts. The state audit questions the spending “after the prior-year costs were reversed and then again spent in a similar fashion.” The audit goes on to say that TSU management and auditors were unable to determine whether funds were used appropriately. TSU management did not concur with the audit findings, but school leadership did indicate that they would develop a system for the future.
Ultimately, these financial management issues were the reason for the state’s ire as Glover retired and Republican state leaders passed legislation to vacate the school’s board of trustees.
“At the end of the day, several things can be true,” Love says. “There can be some areas in the university that need to be improved — and they do, and they’re being improved now. Also the state can owe the university money. They’re not exclusive of each other.”
After the new board was appointed and in-
“At the end of the day, several things can be true. There can be some areas in the university that need to be improved — and they do, and they’re being improved now. Also the state can owe the university money.”
—STATE REP. HAROLD LOVE JR.
terim president Ronald Johnson was chosen, the university reported on its financial challenges to the State Building Commission in November. At that meeting, comptroller of the treasury
Jason Mumpower made a suggestion to sell the university’s Avon Williams Campus for a cash infusion and indicated he knew of several developers who were interested. Love explains that the school’s downtown satellite campus is not just a building or property, but a space with a history that must be considered.
“When you talk about the Avon Williams Campus, you talk about [civil rights pioneer and TSU professor] Rita Sanders Geier, who then is realizing that there’s a dual system of higher education in the state of Tennessee,” Love says. “Out of that came the acquisition of UT Nashville by Tennessee State … and TSU getting the downtown campus property.”
That November meeting was heated, as the commission also discussed an advisory contract that the university had to pay the now-retired Glover. By the next meeting, in December, Johnson had resigned and the new interim president Dwayne Tucker was installed.
The commissioners urged Johnson, and later Tucker, to have the board of trustees consider
Students, Legislators and Community Members React to TSU’s Changes
‘We love TSU. It’s just hard to keep loving something that’s hurting you.’
BY HANNAH HERNER
“Go Big Blue Tigers” is a common way for a Tennessee State University alumnus to end an interview with a reporter — even if they’re telling that reporter some of their concerns about the school.
It’s also how the school’s interim president and the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators ended an informational meeting earlier this month. The gathering — titled “Stand Up 4 TSU Action Meeting” — was held in the sanctuary of Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church in North Nashville, not far from TSU’s campus. Black Caucus members encouraged the meeting’s attendees to look forward, but a number weighed heavily on the gallery’s mind: $2.1 billion. That’s the amount that, in 2023, the federal government found the state had shorted the school over 30 years.
financial exigency. Essentially, exigency is a formal declaration by the Tennessee Board of Regents — the governing board of public colleges and universities in the state — that TSU faces an imminent financial crisis that creates an inability to maintain programs, and the only way for the budget to be balanced is by extraordinary means. In a special-called meeting, the TSU board had an informational session to learn about financial exigency.
“The bottom line is financial exigency is an important mechanism for restoring an institution’s financial stability in the face of a serious, sustained crisis,” Deanna McCormick, a higher education consultant, said during her presentation to the board. “But it should be avoided as a unilateral or quick fix to a temporary condition.”
Ultimately, according to TSU policy, the president has the responsibility to initiate a proposal for declaration of financial exigency with the Tennessee Board of Regents. Several other steps must be taken before that can happen. The board’s next regular scheduled meeting is March 14. Tucker was set to give another presentation on the university’s financial situation to the State Building Commission at its meeting on Feb. 19 (after the Scene’s deadline). ▼
Interim TSU president Dwayne Tucker, a 1980 graduate, made it clear that the university would not sue the state for the money it was owed — a popular suggestion among participants.
“Really, there’s no account payable to set up for the state of Tennessee to pay us $2.1 billion,” Tucker said. “Sometimes taking the lawsuit is not the right thing to do.”
Tucker did garner applause when he promised to rectify technical issues with financial aid and upgrade Banner, the software system students use to access course information.
Current freshman Cathalene and current sophomore Ja’Lene have their eyes on private universities in town, including nearby Fisk — another historically Black university. Other schools have nicer, newer academic buildings and housing and a more reliable class software system, they say. (Students quoted in this story requested that the Scene use only their first names.)
Counting both sides of her family, Ja’Lene is the 40th person in her family to attend TSU. She’s staying in the same dorm where her father lived in the 1980s, and she says it’s rife with wear-and-tear issues like exposed pipes.
“We do experience a lot of those things that are caused by the underfunding on a daily basis, and it definitely has caused people to leave the
PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO
school,” says Cathalene. “A lot of people have transferred, and they’re still transferring [due to] issues that should have been resolved if we were funded correctly in the first place.”
James Odneal, a 1987 TSU graduate and former student-athlete, tells the Scene he wants to see his alma mater have stability. He attended the meeting to find out the status of the $2.1 billion.
“I’m not going to look at it as one-sided,” Odneal says. “We got to do our part too, so we can’t be asking for help and money when we’re not pulling our weight, so to speak.”
Sheryl Huff, president of the Middle Tennessee National Action Network, takes a different stance.
“There ain’t no mismanaging nothing — it’s underfunded,” she tells the Scene. “They just don’t fund TSU the way they should, period.”
She says former president Glenda Glover is assigned a disproportionate amount of the blame.
“This was way before Dr. Glover, and it’s going to be way after Dr. Glover,” Huff says.
“If she was so bad and messed-up, and [then they appointed] a new president — that man resigned,” says Huff in reference to Ronald Johnson, who resigned from the interim president role in December after less than six months in the position. “That was Dr. Glover’s fault too?”
Tucker said he wants to expand the school’s public relations efforts to get more positive stories about the school into the press. “We should be out there, and we should be the source of truth for what’s really going on at Tennessee State — good or challenging,” Tucker says.
Set to launch a fundraising campaign with a $100 million goal, Tucker says less than 10 percent of alumni are donating to the university. He wants to see more of them give, even if it’s a small amount of money.
“When rich people look at your alumni and they see that you have a single-digit giving rate, what do you think they conclude by that?” Tucker said. “If your own alumni are not giving to the university, why should I give you my money?”
Like the students, he points to the lush campuses of Belmont University and Lipscomb University as evidence that Nashville’s wealthy families want to support education.
“I think there’s a lot of people outside of alumni who want to support the mission of Tennessee State that have a lot of money,” said Tucker. “But those individuals don’t want to come off the sidelines and give you the money when they think you may be insolvent and bankrupt in April or May.”
Ja’Lene is determined to finish out at TSU. Being from Nashville and admiring the school so many of her family members attended from afar, she says it “doesn’t get better than that.”
“Most of my teachers are Black,” Ja’Lene says. “That’s one of the main things, because I’m an art major. My art teacher is Black. My choir teacher was Black. Both of my biology teachers are Black.”
Aisha, a 2024 graduate, attended the meeting to make sure the school would still be intact. Her main concerns are rumors she’s heard about the school selling its satellite Avon Williams Campus, and she was relieved when Tucker said there were no plans to sell.
“I come from Seattle, Wash., and where I’m from, there’s no historically Black colleges and universities, so I was glad to be accepted and come here,” Aisha told the Scene. “To see that this is happening and that this school may not have enough money until April is kind of sad, because I was thinking about going back for my master’s.”
She says her teachers felt like family, and cared about her success and well-being. She’s the first in her family to attend an HBCU.
“I came out here by myself, so it was just me, but I’ve had family that I’ve met here from the school and in the community.”
The familial sentiment is a common one among TSU students and alumni — and just as with family, students and alumni are often critical of their school, but bristle when outsiders are critical.
“We love TSU,” Cathalene says. “It’s just hard to keep loving something that’s hurting you. A lot of people don’t understand that the hurt is not from where you think it’s from. It’s from the state government underfunding. A lot of people get mad at financial aid, their teachers, the institution, the president. But it goes beyond that.” ▼
THURSDAY, FEB. 20
MUSIC
[SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE BEAR] TORO Y MOI W/PANDA BEAR
Now that kids who grew up with access to the expansive world of music on the internet are at the age at which they are veteran musicians, the result is a generation of artists who seem untied to genres — concerned more with extending the boundaries of their sound. The 2024 album Hole Erth, Chaz Bear’s eighth full-length effort under his Toro y Moi moniker, explores divergent musical ideas and bending genre conventions to meet the needs of Bear’s songwriting. Listeners can connect the shared ideas between Hole Erth and lo-fi SoundCloud rappers, mopey ’90s college radio shows and airy electronics. The title is an homage to Stewart Brand’s grassroots series Whole Earth Catalog, a sort of publication for holism, sustainability and self-reliance that served as an inspiration to the counterculture through the last few decades of the 20th century. There is a certain similarity between Brand guidebooks and TyM’s musical ethos, as both seem to look at their tools as a way of connecting with the world around them rather than changing it. The bill will be rounded out by Animal Collective’s Panda Bear as well as Nourished by Time, the synthesizer-heavy project of Baltimore’s Marcus Brown, just a few weeks shy of releasing his magnificent new Catching Chickens EP on XL Recordings. P.J. KINZER
8 P.M. AT MARATHON MUSIC WORKS
1402 CLINTON ST.
THURSDAY
/ 2.20
THEATER
[NOT YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S AUSTEN!] PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice is a tried-and-true classic that digs into rich themes of love, marriage, wealth, social class and more. Beginning this weekend, you can revisit this beloved “comedy of manners” as Nashville Shakespeare Festival teams up with Belmont University’s College of Music and Performing Arts to present Kate Hamill’s delightful adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. This rather lively retelling premiered at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and explores “the absurdities and thrills of finding your perfect (or imperfect) match in life” with great humor and energy. NSF’s new artistic director Jason Spelbring directs this co-production, and the cast features a terrific lineup of Belmont
students along with seasoned pros like Brenda Sparks and Sean Martin. Audiences can also look forward to eye-catching set design from Em Mills and costumes by Abbie McCurdy. With a title like Pride and Prejudice, it’s only natural that some audience members might expect a rather staid period piece. But make no mistake about it: Hamill’s adaptation offers a decidedly modern (and certainly playful) approach.
AMY STUMPFL
THROUGH MARCH 2 AT BELMONT’S TROUTT THEATRE 2100 BELMONT BLVD.
DANCE
[STRICTLY COME DANCING] DANCING WITH THE STARS : LIVE!
Dancing With the Stars has long been a cultural phenomenon. It’s the show you hear about in the break room at work, even if you don’t watch it every Tuesday. Slowly, you might start to follow each season, crying for people you’ve never met and disagreeing with judges who have infinitely more experience in the world of dance competition than you do. Once you’re all in, the touring live show is the perfect way to experience all of your favorite dancers and their stunning artistry, including Emma Slater, Alan Bersten, Brandon Armstrong, Britt
Stewart, Daniella Karagach, Gleb Savchenko, Pasha Pashkov and Rylee Arnold (my personal favorite). Choreographing their work and directing the tour is Mandy Moore — no, not the former pop star, but the choreographer who’s truly a star unto herself. As a three-time Emmy winner and the choreographer for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and films like La La Land, Moore brings with her years of expertise and talent that are sure to make for an unforgettable performance featuring the professional dancers you’ve followed for many seasons. KATIE BETH CANNON 7:30 P.M. AT THE GRAND OLE OPRY HOUSE 600 OPRY MILLS DRIVE
[AGELESS WISDOM]
HISTORY
WE ARE NORTH NASHVILLE LUNCH AND LEARN
A little more than 50 years ago, racial terror, “innovations” that overlooked or ignored the needs of Black communities, and city projects that literally cleaved those communities in half plagued Nashville. Nowadays, those stories are often forgotten, the targeted groups overlooked or ignored. But a group of Nashvillians lived through it all — and they aren’t afraid to make their stories known. We Are North Nashville is
PHOTO: INDIA SLEEM
first and foremost a storytelling project, headed by a small group of people who seek to collect, document and share the wisdom of local elders in an effort to brace Nashville for the unclear future ahead. Their efforts have culminated in a five-episode podcast detailing the history of North Nashville through the eyes of those who have called the area home for 50-plus years. Project leader M. Simone Boyd and We Are North Nashville: The Podcast executive producer Andrea Tudhope will lead a lunch-and-learn discussion Thursday in the Tennessee State Museum’s Digital Learning Center, and they’re encouraging those interested in Nashville’s lesser-known history to attend in person or via the museum’s livestream. The event begins at noon and will feature wisdom straight from the source, with two of the project’s featured elders — Melvin Gill and Barbara Jean Watson — as panelists. BAILEY BRANTINGHAM
NOON AT THE TENNESSEE STATE MUSEUM
1000 ROSA L. PARKS BLVD.
FRIDAY / 2.21
[DON’T FADE AWAY]
MUSIC
PAUL THORN
Roots-rock singer-songwriter Paul Thorn and his band are headlining 3rd and Lindsley Friday and Saturday in celebration of the release of Thorn’s exceptional new album Life Is Just a Vapor. The album, his first since 2021, features a spicy mix of traditional rock ’n’ roll flavors, including blues rock, heartland rock, countryrock and gospel-inflected Southern soul. Produced by Billy Maddox and engineered and mixed by Thorn’s keyboardist Michael Graham, Life Is Just a Vapor features performances by
guest guitarists Joe Bonamassa and Luther Dickinson. Thorn and his band — lead guitarist Chris Simmons, bassist Scott Esbeck, drummer Jeffrey Perkins and Graham — will include a healthy dose of material from the new album at this weekend’s shows. “Usually when we put a record out, we’ll play two songs off the new record,” Thorn tells the Scene. “But we’re playing seven songs off the new album, and that’s a lot of new songs. The reason we’re doing it, though, is we’re getting a response to these songs like we’re never gotten before.” Songwriter Phillip Lammonds will open Friday’s show, while Saturday’s opener will be country trio July Moon.
DARYL SANDERS
FEB. 21-22 AT 3RD AND LINDSLEY 818 THIRD AVE. S.
MUSIC
[THEY’RE GONNA MAKE A BIG STAR OUTTA ME] GRAND OLE OPRY FEAT. RINGO STARR &
MORE
Before the January release of Look Up, his first country album in more than a half-century, Ringo Starr talked to the Scene about how one of the albums that most shaped him as a young artist was Ernest Tubb’s 1960 live-performance compilation Midnight Jamboree. Recorded in downtown Nashville just steps from the Ryman Auditorium — where legendary longtime radio program the Grand Ole Opry was recorded at the time — Jamboree featured an array of classic country performers whose influence is all over Starr’s T Bone Burnett-produced Look Up. When Starr and his band took to the Ryman’s stage last month for a two-night stand celebrating their album’s release, none other than Emmylou Harris took the mic to announce that the former Beatle would make his Grand Ole Opry debut in February. It’s about time! Starr will appear
among Friday night’s Opry lineup, which will also feature Molly Tuttle (who has some beautiful contributions on Look Up), Mickey Guyton, Lauren Alaina and more. Opry sets are shorter and faster-moving than headlining sets — so what handful of tunes will Starr pick for Friday’s performance? Look Up standouts like “Thankful” and the title track? Classics like his version of Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally”? Show up to find out. D. PATRICK RODGERS
7 P.M. AT THE GRAND OLE OPRY HOUSE
600 OPRY MILLS DRIVE
FILM [GOD,
IT’S BRUTAL
OUT HERE] BEST PICTURE MARATHON: THE BRUTALIST
I know we critics love to throw around the
phrase “They don’t make ’em like this anymore,” but The Brutalist truly feels plucked directly from the American New Wave of the 1970s. It’s massive in scope both thematically and literally (thanks to that gorgeous, towering VistaVision) and a true epic, something rarely seen on the modern film landscape. And it’s got the three-and-a-half-hour runtime to match. I genuinely have no idea how Brady Corbet made this for less than $10 million — it looks like it cost five times that. Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones are all Oscar-worthy, and Joe Alwyn (somewhat surprisingly) more than holds his own alongside those heavyweights in a film about a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who immigrates to the U.S. There’s a lot to unpack with a film this filled to the brim with hefty themes; the epilogue alone deserves a deep dive, considering it completely changes your views on the preceding three hours. If you’re only going to catch one movie from the Belcourt’s Best Picture Marathon on the big screen, make it this one. LOGAN BUTTS VARIOUS DATES AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
SATURDAY / 2.22
MUSIC [FLESHED-OUT FANTASIES] NEW TRANSLATIONS
RELEASE SHOW
Because their music trades gloominess for ebullience, Nashville band New Translations doesn’t come across as emo. The musical materials that characterize emo — guitar riffs that double as hooks, shiny keyboards and theatrical vocals — are present in New Translations’ 2023 EP The Business. The quintet gives their take on 1980s New Wave pop an optimistic spin that’s as charming — and winningly self-involved — as the performances of singer Oliver Pierce, who comes across like a guy who’s happy to be able to express himself through the timeless medium of ’80s post-punk music. The Business proves the band has a way with melody, and their live shows — including local turns at The Basement East and Bonnaroo
PAUL THORN
NEW TRANSLATIONS
— are chops-heavy and slick, without any extra fat. Tunes like “Trashcan Heart” — my favorite track from The Business — go for that Billy Idolmeets-The Psychedelic Furs vibe that you might recall from the decade of Ronald Reagan. The band has a new album, Vacation, that sounds even catchier than their 2023 music. Saturday’s show at The Blue Room marks the release of Vacation and also features support from HR Lexy and Pressure Heaven. EDD HURT
8 P.M. AT THE BLUE ROOM AT THIRD MAN RECORDS 623 SEVENTH AVE. S.
SUNDAY / 2.23
[SOUP MODE]
& DRINK
FOOD
OUR KIDS SOUP SUNDAY
What the world needs now is love. And soup. The annual Our Kids Soup Sunday has been a Nashville tradition for more than 30 years, featuring the city’s top restaurants vying for three awards: People’s Choice, Judges’ Choice and new this year, Best Sandwich-Inspired Soup. Ticket proceeds go toward Our Kids, which provides medical evaluations and crisis counseling for children and families struggling with child sexual abuse. Last year’s event served a reported 320 gallons of delicious soup and raised $120,000, with winning soups including Caribbean lobster chowder; Mexican street corn; and ginger, sweet potato and coconut milk stew with lamb. Attendees reap the benefits of these chefs battling with their broth prowess, as they have the chance to sample flavors and ingredients from all over the world. The most important ingredient, of course, is love — love for yourself, love for others, love for the soup life you are creating. TOBY ROSE
11 A.M. TO 2 P.M. AT NISSAN STADIUM CLUB LEVEL WEST 1 TITANS WAY
FILM [A WEIGHTY CHOICE]
BEST PICTURE MARATHON: CONCLAVE
I will always enjoy movies that consist of a series of high-stakes, hushed, tense, borderline-gossipy conversations. Edward Berger crafted the hell out of what is essentially an airport-novel story; the music, sound design and cinematography are all top-notch. Ralph Fiennes leads an
ensemble that is really allowed to cook, and carries the weight of the world in his character’s weary face. The legendary Isabella Rossellini earned an Oscar nomination with essentially two-and-a-half scenes’ worth of work, and Italian actor Sergio Castellitto is a riot as the vaping, ultra-conservative Cardinal Tedesco. This movie’s release date, which was less than two weeks before the 2024 presidential election, made for a fascinating watch for reasons both thematic and structural. In the Academy of old, this would be an obvious Best Picture winner — a down-the-middle, well-made, cerebral but entertaining crowd pleaser. I’m not sure it’ll play as well with the younger modern Academy, but it’s still a fun ride well worth a trip to the movies.
LOGAN BUTTS
FEB. 23, 25 & 28 AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
MONDAY / 2.24
MUSIC
[SURREALIST SALUTE] TWIN PEAKS NIGHT
In the spring of 1990, a large chunk of America asked the same question: Who killed Laura Palmer? Through a picturesque haze of small-town secrets and enigmatic themes, the cult classic Twin Peaks had viewers fiending
to solve a supernatural murder. Two seasons, a film and a long-awaited third season later, fans know who killed Palmer, but for those longing to congregate and discuss far-fetched theories or plot holes, Eastside Bowl is returning with Nashville’s very own annual Twin Peaks Day celebration. Instead of gathering under a cryptic fog, fans can enter the Twin Peaks world and celebrate the 36th anniversary of Agent Dale Cooper’s on-screen arrival in Twin Peaks, Wash., by partying to the music of ambient mastermind Angelo Badalamenti. This year, the celebration will double as a tribute to the genius behind the curiously mind-bending world of Twin Peaks, David Lynch, who died in January. Fans are encouraged to hit Eastside Bowl’s mysteriously retro venue, The ’58, in their best Twin Peaks costumes starting at 7 p.m. Admission is free, and — in classic Twin Peaks fashion — cherry pie, coffee and a “moody atmosphere” can be expected. BAILEY BRANTINGHAM
7 P.M. AT EASTSIDE BOWL
1508 GALLATIN PIKE, MADISON
TUESDAY / 2.25
FOOD & DRINK
[POUR A GLASS] TWISTED TUESDAYS
It isn’t uncommon to have a drink to take the edge off of social gatherings or just to relax after a stressful day. But it’s getting easier to embrace alcohol-free fun thanks to the growing accessibility of innovative products. Killjoy — a nonalcoholic beverage store in East Nashville — has partnered with Gramp’s Garage Bar for a weekly alcohol-free event called Twisted Tuesdays. There’s no need to suffer a nasty hangover, a restless night or alcohol-induced anxiety when there are tasty, all-natural products that can still give you a boost. Many of these nonalcoholic beers, wines, herbally infused tonics, cocktails and shots contain ingredients that promote everything from relaxation to sleep improvement and more. Whether you drink or not, Twisted Tuesdays are an opportunity to spend time with the community at a nostalgia-inducing bar on a
weeknight you might normally spend at home.
AIDEN O’NEILL
5-10 P.M. AT GRAMP’S GARAGE BAR
2913 GALLATIN PIKE
WEDNESDAY / 2.26
MUSIC
[TRIPLE HEADBANGER] ANBERLIN W/COPELAND & THE DANGEROUS SUMMER
This Wednesday, a one-two-three punch of emo swings into Music City when Anberlin, Copeland and The Dangerous Summer play Brooklyn Bowl Nashville. For headliner Anberlin, the alt-rock band fronted since 2023 by Nashville-area musician Matty Mullins, the show comes after the release of Vega, the group’s eighth album in a catalog that now spans twoplus decades of polished rock riffs. Copeland, an underappreciated indie-rock band that released a string of solid albums in the 2000s — In Motion still hits, guys — plays main support. And come early to catch The Dangerous Summer, a band that continues to fly under the radar in alternative music circles despite consistently releasing albums worth spinning on repeat. (New fans should check out 2011’s War Paint or 2018’s The Dangerous Summer, for starters.) This winter, The Dangerous Summer tours behind the 2024 LP Gravity, another solid release in a packed discography. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
7 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL NASHVILLE
925 THIRD AVE. N.
MUSIC [FROM ENGLAND TO EXIT/IN] THE NEW MASTERSOUNDS
Though they hail from across the pond, retro-jam rockers The New Mastersounds are no strangers to Music City. Two of the British band’s best-received albums — 2016’s The Nashville Session and 2018’s The Nashville Session 2 — were cut at The 1979 recording studio tucked away in Music City’s Nations neighborhood. On their latest single, “Gonna Get in My Way (Live),” NMS is joined by vocalist Shelby Kemp and organist Chris Spies for a high-energy extended jam recorded live at the Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver during the group’s 25th anniversary tour last year. Kemp’s emotive slide guitar and Spies’ frantic keys bring to life the nearly eight-minute Southern-rock-esque shred fest. The New Mastersounds let their hair down a bit on this one compared to many of the tighter jazz, funk and R&B outings they’re known for. The show promises to be an extra groovy time, and you just never know who may sit in — this is Nashville, of course. JASON VERSTEGEN
8 P.M. AT EXIT/IN
2208 ELLISTON PLACE
CONCLAVE
THE NEW MASTERSOUNDS
Salute the Songbird with Maggie Rose
Radney Foster w/ Special Guest Logan Mac
T. Graham Brown
From platinum-selling chart-toppers to underground , household names to undiscovered gems, Chief’s Neon Steeple is c bringing the very best national and regional talent back to Broadway.
FEBRUARY LINE UP
2.1 Karen Waldrup w/ Special Guest Joey Green
2.7 Aaron Nichols & The Travellers Chris Stapleton Tribute – Free Show
2.8 Livin’ the Write Life feat. Dave Gibson, Jet Harvey, Anthony Smith, Anthony Carpenter
2.11 Salute the Songbird with Maggie Rose, Special Guest: Brittney Spencer 2.12 Uncle B’s Drunk with Power String Band feat. Bryan Simpson w/ Ben Chapman, Thad Cockrell, Trey Hensley, Meg McRee
2.13
Chase Rice – Songs From I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell SOLD OUT
2.14 Chase Rice – Songs From Go Down Singin’ SOLD OUT 2.15 8Track Annual VD Party!
US @ChiefSBROADWAY om cha ons, t a s, eeple committed mmi
2.16
Radney Foster w/ Special Guest Logan Mac
2.19 Heather Morgan, Tiera Kennedy, Iris Copperman w/ Ross Copperman
2.20 T. Graham Brown
2.21 James Esaw & Triad4Christ
2.22 Waymore’s Outlaws –Runnin’ With Ol’ Waylon
2.23 Pick Pick Pass w/ Kevin Mac, Craig Wayne Boyd, Jake Hoot
2.24
Buddy’s Place Writer’s Round w/ Girl Named Tom, Gina Venier, Sam Williams
2.26 Josh Weathers w/ The Lowdown Drifters
2.28 Jamie O’Neal Album Preview Show GET TICKETS AT CHIEFSONBROADWAY.COM
At Chief’s we understand that great music is born from the heart and soul of it’s creators, which is why our writers’ rounds are dedicated to celebrating the brilliant minds behind some of today’s most iconic songs.
& Pizza
SINGING FOR SUPPER
Studio Mama Supper Club invites small audiences in for dinner, conversation and music
BY MARGARET LITTMAN
IF YOU DRIVE by the red Studio Nashville building on Charlotte Avenue, there’s a good chance you won’t notice it. There’s no sign out front. Parking is in the alley, where there’s a back set of stairs to get inside. From the outside, you certainly wouldn’t imagine that this is the place where people flock each quarter for an intimate dinner and show.
But since 2023, this is where Rebecca Wood has been hosting Studio Mama Supper Club, a four-course, $550-per-person dinner and private concert for 30 or so lucky people. Rebecca is known for her skills in the kitchen — she got the nickname “Studio Mama” by working as a studio chef for eight years at Zac Brown’s recording studio Southern Ground Nashville. Under her company name Heart’s in the Mix, she offers a meal subscription service with entrées, baked goods and pantry staples.
During the pandemic, Rebecca self-published Studio Mama Community Cookbook, a collection of music-industry stories and recipes. She offered a dinner with live music in the studio where her husband Oliver Wood — roots musician and frontman for The Wood Brothers — records as
one of the big prizes for the cookbook’s crowdfunding efforts. A Wood Brothers fan made the investment and then opened up the evening to other fans. The evening was such a success that Rebecca decided to keep doing it, and soon after launched Studio Mama Supper Club.
“My husband is an overthinker, and I am a doer,” she says.
The Supper Club has four regularly scheduled acts per year, plus an additional fifth show in December — that one is typically a fundraiser with Oliver onstage. In 2024, the show benefited The Nashville Food Project. The next show, which is set for March 15, will feature Americana singer-songwriter Langhorne Slim.
If you’ve been in Nashville for a minute, you’ve probably been to a house show. They’re popular ways to interact with musicians, with the music and with fellow audience members. They foster connection and allow some freedom that performers don’t always get at a traditional venue. But even in a town full of house concerts, what Rebecca has created is different — in part because her events take place in a professional recording studio with inherently good acoustics.
And then there’s Rebecca’s food.
“Studio Mama is a cut above any house concerts,” says singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan, who played the event in 2023. “What they are doing over there is on a different level.”
Other artists who’ve played the stage — which is two to three feet from the small bar and the communal dining tables — have included Darrell Scott, Nikki Lane and musicians from the Black Opry Revue.
Because it’s in Nashville, Studio Mama Supper Club has musicians onstage, in the audience and even working, mixing drinks or serving giant platters of perfectly seasoned carrots. The vibe has a local, neighborhood flair — although on the night Tasjan played, he learned that one fan flew in from Baltimore just to see the show. Part of the vibe of Supper Club is that folks who are in the audience join the artist for a song or two, in Nashville tradition. When Tasjan played, he brought his friend Judy Blank up to sing, and he says she wowed the audience. She’s just signed with Rounder Records — perhaps Supper Club guests will be able to say they heard her back before she was famous.
Gabe Dixon heard what was happening over at Studio Mama Supper Club, and during a songwriting session with Oliver last year, he mentioned that he and his wife Amanda would like to attend sometime. Oliver suggested they come for the December fundraiser for The Nashville Food Project — if Dixon agreed to join him onstage for a song or two.
Dixon agreed; he was already a fan of Rebecca’s cooking from her Southern Ground days.
“I knew it would be delicious food, but I did not know how well-done the whole experience would be,” says Dixon, who has played his share of house concerts. These kinds of experiences, he adds, are important because they celebrate the craft of songwriting.
“I had an extremely big year in 2024,” Dixon says. “[Playing with Oliver at the Supper Club] was the last thing I did, and it was an excellent capstone for the year.”
The small audience and the format of the evening — an hour of cocktails and conversation, followed by dinner and then the show — allow artists to experiment and perhaps play something different from what they might at a
Studio Mama Supper Club feat. Langhorne Slim, Saturday, March 15, at the Studio Nashville PHOTO:
OLIVER WOOD (CENTER) PERFORMING IN DECEMBER
bigger show. They also play with musicians they haven’t played with before. In Tasjan’s case, that included the house percussionist and upright bass player.
“We did a really cool, slowed-down, almost Nick Drake-style version of ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ by Tom Petty,” Tasjan remembers. He wanted to play something the audience would recognize, but with his own stamp on it. “It seemed like it was resonating with folks,” he says.
For many performers, the physical proximity to the Supper Club audience is one of its selling points.
“I perform better when people and I are close,” says Sean Scolnick, who performs under the name Langhorne Slim. “I need to be energetically and physically close to the audience to have the best experience. The more of a divide between myself and the crowd, the shittier I feel.”
Scolnick had heard about the Supper Club and was intrigued, knowing Oliver “was a master vibes man.” The two were on tour together last year, and that connection led him to book a date. The idea of the Supper Club is just the kind of thing that made him fall in love with Nashville more than a decade ago.
“It’s no ego, no division between you and the audience, just people getting together for the love of music,” Scolnick says.
Rebecca refers to herself as the HBIC (“head bitch in charge”), but there’s nothing bitchy about her hostessing prowess — or the everyone-is-welcome vibe she creates. Studio Mama Supper Club is a unique experience, and is priced accordingly. The ticket price includes the four-course family-style meal, cocktails, wine, conversation and the intimate show in a real recording studio that has been decorated for the evening. Volunteer opportunities to help in the kitchen are available for those who want to attend but can’t swing the ticket price. Performing artists, bartenders and kitchen staff are paid, and Rebecca is committed to using quality and ethically sourced meats and vegetables for the culinary experience. She does not pay herself for her considerable work.
Rebecca works with nonprofit Nashville Grown to source ingredients, and she develops her menus based on what’s in season.
“It is an expensive party, but it feeds my soul,” she says. She averages the costs over the year, so prices are the same no matter which artist is performing.
“It is a really nice event to reset your soul, “ says Rita Martinez, who has attended some dinners with her husband, including the one with Nikki Lane as well as December’s fundraiser.
“What you are paying for is the intimate experience and the quality,” says Martinez, who used to own The Salty Cubana. What the Supper Club offers is not a Michelin-star kind of meal, she says. It’s home cooking, served family style — and she’s OK with that. “I care where my food is coming from, and I’m willing to pay more to know it is from a pasture-raised source.”
The food is plentiful too, and if you’re still hungry — which seems unlikely given the large portions on the platters that are passed around — you’re encouraged to ask for seconds.
You also don’t have to dress like you are going to a $550-a-plate, black-tie dinner. “We want it to feel good, casual and cozy and fancy,” Rebecca says. “If you want, wear your good pajamas — the silk ones, not flannel.”
Once you buy a ticket, you’ll be emailed a survey asking about dietary restrictions and preferences as well as any mobility challenges. (The back entrance requires stairs, but there is a plan B if needed.) Rebecca accommodates many dietary needs, including offering vegetarian and gluten-free dishes.
Rebecca currently cooks out of the Citizen Kitchens food incubator space — though she’s in the process of building her own commercial kitchen — and transports the food to Studio Nashville for dinner.
“To patrons of the arts and music fans, things like Studio Mama are a very worthy investment of your hard-earned entertainment dollars,” Tasjan says. “I know a lot of folks don’t have the disposable income that they used to, but this is a true experience curated by Rebecca.
“You can’t even really explain it — you just have to go.” ▼
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THE GOOD FIGHT
Faith sustains activist Catherine Coleman Flowers amid the rural South’s water wars BY CAT ACREE
IN THE FIRM hands of Catherine Coleman Flowers, environmental, social and racial justice aren’t separate strands of work that must be done, but rather parts of a whole that stretches back generations. Her essay collection, Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope, reveals an activist who knows what it takes to get things done.
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When we speak of water, we often speak on grand scales — the condition of the oceans or the vast amounts of water wasted to cool down artificial intelligence data centers. But for more than two decades, Flowers has been fighting to address another kind of outsized water problem: basic sanitation in poor rural communities. As Flowers testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing in 2023, 18 percent of all United States households are unable to send their sewage to a centralized wastewater system. That’s almost 1 in 5 homes.
Flowers elevated the issue to a national stage with her 2020 memoir Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. Her second book, Holy Ground, is a collection of essays on her continued work in this area and, more broadly, on the failing infrastructures in rural Southern communities — especially predominantly Black communities — and how climate change exacerbates these problems. In addition to these crises, she writes about gun control, reproductive rights, school meals, regenerative farming and more.
A recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Flowers is the director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and she was appointed vice chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council in 2021. For Flowers, this work is the family business; after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed and the Voting Rights Act became law, her family’s community in Montgomery, Ala., became one of the critical locations for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC. Her environmental justice work is a continuation of her family’s legacy of civil rights advocacy.
Lowndes County, Ala., where her father is from, bears the nickname “Bloody Lowndes” for its violent, racist history, but Flowers characterizes her community by its heroes and gamechangers. She describes how the fierce feline symbol of the Black Panther Party originated there in 1966. And the collection’s titular essay, about the Holy Ground battle site from the Creek War, is a loving piece about discovering a profound spiritual connection with the land alongside its complicated history.
Flowers’ own ferocity comes in a torrent from the opening essay, “Thirty Pieces of Silver.”
It’s our first look at how her faith informs her
work, and she is precise in her indictments. She considers the deal that Judas struck to betray Jesus for a small fee: “Those pieces of silver have become a compelling metaphor for many of the harms inflicted on innocent people because of the enormous profits a very few enjoy,” she writes. “I despair as I watch once-trusted elected officials, once-revered members of the judiciary, or once-respected religious leaders wrap themselves in rectitude as they sell out people who are less fortunate.”
“This Is What Disinvestment Looks Like” is equally powerful in its depiction of the water problems in Jackson, Miss. Flowers describes the state’s predominately Black capital city as “the embodiment of neglect, of a collapsing infrastructure, of environmental injustice at its most extreme.”
To continually fight across political battle lines is to wring yourself dry, and much of Holy Ground offers a measured peek into Flowers’ methods for sustaining herself. Primarily, her wellspring is her faith, even after the worst loss imaginable: the death of her mother, killed with a gun. But Flowers’ grief does not overflow onto the page. Instead, she looks for inspiration in the leadership of young people such as state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, whose persistence in the aftermath of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville was met with the “breathtaking racism and cynicism of Republican lawmakers in Tennessee.”
Throughout the collection, there is one source of hope that feels most hard-won: a belief that redemption is available to everyone. “Even people whose names [are] synonymous
with bigotry can change,” she writes. She offers several examples of this, such as Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and Alabama Gov. George Wallace, whose 1963 inaugural address she quotes: “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. And segregation forever.” But by 1995, Wallace was welcoming civil rights marchers to Montgomery. Flowers acknowledges that a younger version of herself never could’ve stomached such an argument, but she’s displaying some political shrewdness here. To make the changes she wants to see, she must believe that even the smallest moments of connection may lead to reform.
To work this hard and fight this hard, you must be sustained by strong stuff. For Flowers, that is her community, her faith and her family. This is the kind of book you write when you’re using your narrative to build bridges so you can help someone else across.
For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.▼
Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope By Catherine Coleman Flowers Spiegel & Grau 240 pages, $28
MUSIC
HEART OF THE MTTR
Local DIY music venue Drkmttr expands its daytime programming with Social Club
BY P.J. KINZER
UNLIKE MOST BUSINESSES, music venues are largely vacant during daylight hours. Sure, there are folks in there fixing microphones, running sound checks or delivering beer shipments. But these spaces are generally closed to the public while most other businesses are open, and vice versa.
Long-running local independent haunt Drkmttr wants to be more than just a place to catch bands on the fringe. The Dickerson Pike space has always strived to be a central part of the community, wherever needed — whether that has meant offering free food items to community members who needed them or restructuring as a nonprofit to ensure its ongoing existence as a space for local artists. The venue has also recently launched Social Club, a program during daytime hours that helps elevate the work of Nashville community organizers. On a recent busy Saturday spent meeting with various community groups, coexecutive director Olive Scibelli took 30 minutes
needs met and give them an opportunity to connect and bolster their projects,” Scibelli says. The mission statement for Social Club can be found on the Drkmttr website. “We want to host and highlight local voices and struggles, connect people to the resources they need, and learn from and with each other to create a freer world.” Scibelli jokingly called the program “Leftist WeWork.” Welcoming artists, organizers and collaborators, Social Club even hosts a Monday afternoon event called Co-Work that provides free workspace, internet, printing and snacks.
“People I don’t know are showing up regularly and meeting each other,” Scibelli says of the unconventional workspace. “It would be great to expand those hours, but we need more funding.”
It’s never “all work and no play” around Drkmttr, however. To paraphrase a saying often attributed to early-20th-century revolutionary Emma Goldman, if they can’t dance, it’s not their revolution. Drkmttr has also been hosting Sunhouse, a monthly family-friendly dance party featuring DJ Afro Sheen and an Irish couple who call their group Dancing People. “It’s the first Sunday of every month,” Scibelli says. “The DJs set up and the music is fire.” Alcohol is decentralized at these events, offering a social alternative that doesn’t focus on beer and booze. The February installment of Sunhouse featured Music City Breakdancing’s crew, and goods from the Brooklyn Heights Community Garden.
for a quick chat with the Scene about the new projects the Drkmttr team is working on.
“There’s a lot of time when this place is not being used,” explains Scibelli. “And we’ve tried to monetize it. But it doesn’t monetize very well, because it’s also kinda DIY and scrappy.”
Scibelli juggles a lot of challenges at the East Nashville venue — programming events, securing funding and organizing future projects — all while maintaining a career as a full-time hairstylist. “So pivoting from actually making money off of these things, we wanted Drkmttr Social Club to be the antithesis of that and basically be an incubator or a petri dish for organizing and art through the lens of leftist principles or socialist principles.”
The groups who have been incubating in the space include affordable housing activists, critics of capitalism and folks who want to provide free food as a human right to Nashvillians in need. “And really we’re just supporting people, trying to help them get their
“If you want to experience community, and you don’t want to be out late, and you want to dance, and you want your kids to have community, and you want to be with other likeminded parents,” Scibelli says enthusiastically, “it’s just been another beautiful place where people start showing up. … So it’s really expanding our programming and wanting to create those spaces that are intergenerational … and free and still give you a good time.”
As Drkmttr expands, Scibelli and coexecutive director Kathryn Edwards will continue to host underground music — including some of my favorite upcoming acts, like Philly’s Poison Ruin on tour with Quebec’s Béton Armé, new romantic synth revivalist Riki and a hometown show for Nashville micsmith R.A.P. Ferreira. But the space is broadening what an all-ages art and community center can be.
“I’m wanting more people who go to shows to come to Social Club stuff, and people who go to Social Club stuff to go to shows,” Scibelli explains. “It all feeds into each other. I’m just hoping that we continue to grow our ecosystem. And we’ve been around for 10 years. That’s pretty impressive for all of us doing this as our not-full-time job.”
OLIVE SCIBELLI
BODY MOVIN’
For DJ Seizure, raging is a radical act
BY SEAN L. MALONEY
ONE OF THE cruel injustices of covering local music is that sometimes the busiest artists are the most difficult to cover.
Take DJ Seizure (aka Curtis Jennette), a resident DJ at Play Dance Bar and a fixture on the Nashville underground dance scene since before he could drive. He’s one of those folks who seem to be everywhere all the time. His schedule is packed with regular gigs on Church Street, out-of-town gigs DJing paint parties and time slots at some of the coolest if-you-know-youknow parties in Nashville.
And when he’s not playing the cool parties, he’s out supporting the cool parties and generally being a nexus for good vibes and good tunes. His multifaceted aesthetic is as much a product of what Nashville dance music has been as it is a representation of what it can be.
Saturday, February 22
SONGWRITER SESSION
Cary Barlowe
NOON · FORD THEATER
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BOOK TALK
Author Geoffrey Himes
With Rodney Crowell
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MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Chris Tuttle
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 1
SONGWRITER SESSION
Don Schlitz
NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, March 2
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Kristen Rogers
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
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Canaan Smith
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“I started [DJing] back when I was in high school, a freshman in high school,” Seizure tells the Scene. “My friends were going to these happy hardcore raves that were actually at the old Rocketown building, the one that used to be off Sixth Avenue — this is way back. So I really fell in love with the music, and when I would go to these parties, I would find myself just closer and closer to the DJ booth, watching what the DJ was doing.”
For those who don’t remember: Those Rocketown parties were wild. The original iteration of the Christian rock venue — which relocated to a different building a few blocks away nearly 15 years ago — would host crowds that were drug-free but amped-up on the unbridled energy of kids getting their first taste of freedom. The buzz was boosted even further by blazing-fast BPMs and tweaked-out synths. Those parties were a scene and a testament to the old raver ideal of “PLUR” — peace, love, unity and respect. The blend of people and styles that made those parties so much fun still runs through Seizure’s work, where connecting with a crowd of diverse people with diverse tastes is the key to keeping the dance floor moving.
energy to one of the premier queer clubs in Middle Tennessee and the mainstream of Midstate dance music. Finding that balance between party-time jukebox and wizard-like sherpa for new sounds is a challenge for any DJ — but when your spot is the spot where people are looking for true dance floor deliverance, expectations are even higher.
“I love the fact that I can start at a low energy and build out the night and get to a peak and then bring ’em back down,” says Seizure. “At Play, it’s a mixture of everybody. You have a mixture of people wanting to hear hip-hop. You have people who are wanting to hear Latin music. You have people who are wanting to hear EDM. You have people who are wanting to hear pop bangers. It is really a very big melting pot of
a bunch of different people.”
And bringing joy to that melting pot is more important than ever. With queer spaces and arts spaces under attack from the hate-filled, vitriol-spewing corners of the White House and the Trump admin’s acolytes, spending five hours in sanctuary and dance floor fellowship on a Saturday night is a radical act. In an age of institutional greed and selfishness, sharing joy and sharing music is a form of revolution itself.
“I feel like I have a pretty good finger [on the] pulse of what’s happening in the dance music world in Nashville,” Seizure says. “I follow a lot of different crews that are in the city, so I know what’s going on in the house music realm. I know what’s going on in the bass music realm. I’m just an avid dance music fan.”
Seizure has been a resident DJ at Play for nearly eight years — a millenia or so in nightclub years. He started his run after winning a DJ competition, and brings his underground
“Just being able to share new music with people is probably one of the most rewarding parts of [DJing],” says Seizure. “[To] the people understanding how I’m keeping a party going, it’s like, ‘Hey, you’re awesome, thank you.’” ▼
PLEDGE SUPPORT
BY P.J. KINZER
“WE LIVE IN strange times,” Chuck Indigo said onstage at The Blue Room at Third Man Records Saturday night. That line became a refrain between songs at nearly every break in his headlining set. Indigo, who by day Clark Kents as the Southern Movement Committee community organizer Nick Drake, kept returning to the notion of maintaining our humanity and surviving in the current era. Indigo never expanded much on the hardships he talked about, but instead focused on his solution: community. A few times, he openly asked folks to pledge their support for the people around them. Received with cheers and raised hands by the eager crowd, the rapper made communication and community building the focus of his hour on the Blue Room stage, never letting the audience forget that people have more power when united.
Third Man hosted the rain-check gig for the Indigo show, originally slated for January. After a snowstorm canceled the show, the event was rescheduled for the night after Valentine’s Day.
The show began a little after 8 p.m. with an abbreviated set from Nashville MC Mike Floss With an interesting approach to a shortened opening time slot, Floss ended a few of his songs early. At first, he said his 2024 single “Heat.wav” hadn’t gotten enough plays on streaming services for the audience to deserve to get the whole song. But the trend continued when Floss chopped a few other tracks in half. But Floss wasn’t using his time to stuff as many songs from his catalog as he could into his halfhour — the rapper used his extra time on the microphone to talk about the importance of community organizing.
When he isn’t spending his nights onstage, Floss’ Bruce Wayne hours are used as the arts and culture director at the Southern Movement Committee. He urged everyone in attendance to sign up for the fourth annual State of Black Tennessee Town Hall on Feb. 22. This wasn’t the first time I had seen Floss onstage in 2025 talking about the SMC’s work to anyone who would
listen. Just last month he was at The Basement East hyping up his cause between hardcore bands. But when he’s making music, Floss is an incredible performer who can control a crowd and take full ownership of his set. Even the end of his set was unique — Floss opted not to perform his most recent single “World Wonder,” instead playing the studio version over the PA as he exited the stage.
With a full band, the headliner came out and greeted his fans. Chuck Indigo, appropriately playing a room painted entirely dark blue, has a magnetic presence that connects with an audience on a level most artists couldn’t ever achieve. Accompanied by a DJ, drums, keys, guitar and bass, Indigo came fully equipped with a lockdown band. Much of his set list centered on his most recent album UNTIL I GET THERE, but deep Indigo-heads got special treats like “Pay Stubs” from 2019’s iNDigo Cafe and his rowdy full-crew anthem “Hoodrat Shit” off 2020’s No Moor Bad Days.
Indigo is known mostly as a rapper, but his style bounces around between hip-hop, sultry neo-soul and breezy R&B. When I interviewed the artist on Jan. 1, he informed me that much of the basis of what he does is rooted in gospel music — which makes sense after seeing the MC live. One could imagine his band playing together in a large church, with Indigo as a pastor testifying to parishioners, preaching the good word of community organizing and creating healthy environments for working folks. He made the audience pledge to look out for the people in their community and had everyone chanting “Capitalism sucks!”
Throughout the night, Indigo recalled anecdotes from his life. With much of his family present at the show, the MC cited the uphill battles it took to get from his childhood in East Nashville to the life he has now as a father, husband, artist and activist, personal themes repeated all over his autobiographical UNTIL I GET THERE. The artist never shied away from speaking about what is on his heart, both in his music and in his work.
With an ever-growing number of listeners, Chuck Indigo has a lot of new ears hearing what he has to say. He clearly has every intention of putting it to good use. ▼
SOUND OF THE MONKEY DRUMMER
The Monkey tops cinema’s current wave of interesting and grotesque horror
BY JASON SHAWHAN
WRITER-DIRECTOR Osgood Perkins has, with just a quintet of films — all of them superb — made himself one of the most distinctive and thought-provoking creators in horror. He can do slow-burn drama, gothic fantasy, grungy glam and tragic timeslips with unsettling ease, juggling theme and mode but always focused on the way people engage with the most unfortunate of circumstances. The beauty of his latest, The Monkey, is its ability to embody all manner of the things we carry, or suppress, that have been part of our families for generations. That could mean any number of hereditary diseases, moral weaknesses or secret shames that we try to leave behind. But it’s always there, and it’s always the fracture point that can unmake everything. And that’s a pretty high concept for a film about a killer (do not call it a toy) monkey. But honestly, it feels very, very right for our collective mood at the moment.
Twin brothers Hal and Bill (Theo James as adults, Christian Convery as kids) are not those dress-alike, secret-language, psychic-link, “you and me against the world” kind of identical twins. They are aesthetically, ideologically and socially complete opposites, and Convery and James are so good at playing, inhabiting and living this differentiation that the fact that it’s the same actor feels overwhelming. It’s an achievement comparable to Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers or Nicolas Cage in Adaptation — only twice in the same movie.
The twins’ mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany, of Orphan Black and She-Hulk renown), is a softgoth pragmatist who carries the burdens of
LAY OF THE LAND
Oscar-nominated No Other Land tells the long, brutal story of Palestinian erasure
BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY
NOW IN THE IT Came Right on Time Department, the new documentary No Other Land shows up in American theaters just a couple of weeks after a certain world leader announced his apparent plans to build vacation resorts in Gaza — and the Palestinians who used to live there will just have to find someplace else to live. Almost an immediate response to you-know-who’s ass-backwards, possibly-a-war-crime declaration, Land shows audiences how getting kicked to the curb is something Palestinians have had to endure since way before Orange Julius came to power.
“I started filming when we started to end,” says Basel Adra, one of the four filmmakers who directed No Other Land, via voice-over. A longtime videographer, Adra,
perspective and always being outnumbered, even in her own house. We meet Hal and Bill’s estranged father, played by Hellraiser: Bloodline and Parks and Recreation’s Adam Scott, only in the film’s opening scene, which lays out the framework by which this monkey operates. It’s a brutal and creative moral challenge, this monkey drummer, equal parts Richard Matheson’s The Box and Pee-wee Herman’s breakfast machine with a soupçon of 1984 Depeche Mode fatalism (which it even quotes on its elegant hatbox home), slightly less imposing but far more lethal than Chris Cunningham and the Aphex Twin’s monkey drummer.
Someone turns the wind-up crank on the monkey’s back, it beats its drum, and someone dies. An action is taken, and an equal and opposite reaction occurs. And while its baroque and brutal mechanisms of death may call to mind the Final Destination series (with a new installment of that sorely missed series coming this summer), The Monkey is taking a different approach. The Final Destination films view death as something inescapable and egalitarian — a challenge that can be delayed, sometimes even dodged, but never fully escaped. The Monkey’s cosmology is rooted in the specific actions and failures of human behavior, and it aims to fuck up your mind.
We’re currently inside an unexpected wave of interesting and grotesque horror. (In the first two months of 2025, we’ve gotten Presence, Companion, Heart Eyes and now The Monkey, each of which is good-to-great, does something completely different, and yet somehow, as horror so often does, speaks directly to the moment we’re
along with his Palestinian-Israeli crew, spent several summers filming and recording as the Israeli military bulldozed the people and homes of Masafer Yatta, his Palestinian community in the West Bank where Israeli forces built a military training ground.
As the offspring of activist parents — along with fighting for his people, Adra’s dad is also the community’s lone gas-station proprietor — Adra finds documenting these atrocities both necessary and depressing. But no matter how mentally obliterating it gets (authorities apprehend his old man at one point), he knows what he has to do — and he knows things won’t change overnight. When Israeli investigative journalist/co-director Yuval Abraham complains that his latest dispatch hasn’t gotten enough views online, a chuckling Adra reminds him that he’s in for a long battle. “This has been going on for decades,” Adra tells him.
It’s a vicious cycle that Adra and his team regularly endure in Land. By day, they film men, women and children being harassed and even shot at by the military, as their homes and schools are demolished right in front of them. At night, Adra and Abraham spend quiet moments
in.) The Monkey emerges as a favorite just because of how it finds the balance between the sad family story you only hear when someone’s had too much to drink and what happens when your buddy gets a bit too stoned and simply has to tell you about the most fucked-up thing they ever saw. Oh, side note: Corey from Halloween Ends is back! He’s playing an unpredictable aspect of the cosmic death circuit the evil monkey has the Shelbourne family ensnared in, and his wig acting is exactly right for the tone of the film.
You just don’t expect a killer-monkey film to dwell on the ways rage, resentment and sadness are like fundamental building blocks of existence, incapable of being created or destroyed, merely kept at bay (or closely controlled) — like a dog or cat that just genuinely hates people. Or the way you keep toxic people in your life so you can keep an eye on them — so they don’t do more damage to themselves or others. Perhaps Perkins was tapping into the 1988 George Michael hit “Monkey” just as much as the 1980 Stephen King story the film adapts.
This is not an explicitly faithful adaptation of that short story, but it does demonstrate why
smoking hookah and strategizing, trying to wind down even when there’s a possibility that people with guns will come by for a surprise visit.
There are no talking-head interviews in Land, as Adra, Abraham and co-editors/directors Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor aim for a cinéma-vérité, you-are-there tone that makes the film feel more like a neo-realistic drama. During these quiet moments, Adra and Abraham exhibit a silent intimacy, hinting that the pair may be fighting for more than just Adra’s homeland. (Although Adra and Abraham’s relationship appears platonic, I did wonder if Adra let the cat out the bag when he asked Abraham when guys like them will stop protesting and get married.)
It’s damn near miraculous that Land, which wrapped filming right when the Israel-Hamas conflict horrifically escalated in October 2023, is getting some theatrical time around these parts. Although it was picked up for release in 24 countries, Land couldn’t find an American distributor. (It appears that even our ”daring” indie distributors — they know who they are — don’t wanna deal with the scrutiny and headaches they could possibly
King is the modern master of the short-story form — the central idea is so good that it can be evolved in all manner of ways, but the derived material remains true to the text that gave it life. (Note: This is no The Lawnmower Man, which is an interesting cautionary tale about mistaking a hodgepodge of bravado and immediacy for something visionary.) A King short story collection remains, as always, a reliable foundation for any horror library.
There’s something resigned about the universe Perkins gives us, with the comic tones finding a perfect balancing point between gleefully outrageous gorescapes (personal faves involve a hibachi incident and golfing) and the kind of gallows humor you’d find in M*A*S*H or a particularly grisly Coen brothers film. But The Monkey is neither glib nor edgelord — it’s very much about how we respond to untenable situations and how we reconcile all the messy pieces of the past that can sort of Tetris-ize together into something approximating a life. And damned if once again Oz Perkins hasn’t done it again, crafting something ghoulish and awesome that you feel deep in your guts. ▼
face by releasing a film about what’s going on over there.)
Nevertheless, the film had an Oscar-qualifying run at New York City’s Lincoln Center in the fall, which definitely worked in its favor. Along with getting a limited rollout in theaters (including Nashville’s very own Belcourt), it will also be a Best Documentary Feature nominee at next month’s Academy Awards.
Even if it doesn’t win, No Other Land is an essential, less-bloody-but-still-fucked-up record of an Arab culture literally being erased. If there’s one thing these people do not need, it’s a Western despot looking to scoop up some international property. ▼
ACROSS
1 Gaming ___ (console alternatives, for short)
4 Command to a skydiver
8 Make a quick appearance
13 Bad sound to hear while bending over
14 Taylor-Joy of “The Queen’s Gambit”
15 Have a loan from
16 Unfriendly, as a relationship
17 Brouhahas / Most appalling
19 Letters put in boxes
21 First half of a two-volume encyclopedia on physics, aptly?
22 Org. for important adults in a child’s life
23 “The Incredibles” costumer / Science class display
26 Smallest bit
27 Roasts
28 In
30 Singer/songwriter ___ Reznor
33 Worked (up)
34 Lock up for the night / Despairs
36 Woodwinds that are usually black
38 It’s all wound up
39 Sent a reminder text, in lingo
41 Weird flexes?
45 Cornhole action
46 Like some activities at a mountain lodge / Marketing fodder
49 Affirmation not usually spoken at a Jewish wedding
50 “My man!”
51 Grow a team, say
52 Set of educational standards
… or a hint to 17-, 23-, 34- and
46-Across
56 What follows T.S.A., weirdly
57 Capital east of the Jordan River
58 Like some fabrics
59 Early tech giant
60 Not too sure
61 Genesis creator
62 Like cabernet sauvignon wine, typically DOWN
1 Part of a makeup routine
2 Part of a summer swarm
3 Getting a sneak peek?
4 Sticky stuff
5 Point value of any vowel in Spanish Scrabble
6 “That’s on me”
7 Wasabi or miso
8 Something a meter reader reads?
9 Take responsibility for, as a mistake
10 Lookout point
11 “Let’s do this thing”
12 Covered in marginalia, maybe
18 Soft drink named for a nut
20 Final race stretches … or what racers may be on by then
24 Down in the dumps
25 Infrequently counterfeited bills
26 “What just happened?” reaction
29 North Korea has the fourthhighest number of these, after China, India and the U.S.
31 Original Super Mario console, in brief
32 Equivalent of 16 pinches: Abbr.
34 Something to put stock in
35 Sprinkler attachment
36 Vision-related
37 Housing bubble?
40 “Phooey!”
42 Button clicked to advance to a YouTube video
43 Aid in self-reflection
44 Unflinching
47 Goal seekers?
48 River through Lyon
50 What a good fillet of fish isn’t
53 Word that becomes its own synonym if you add a “k” to the end
54 Fix the wrong way?
55 H
PUZZLE BY REBECCA GOLDSTEIN AND ADAM WAGNER
IN THE CHANCERY COURT FOR THE STATE OF TENNESSEE
TWENTIETH JUDICIAL DISTRICT, DAVIDSON COUNTY No. 24-1273-II
IN RE: THE MATTER OF NAME CHANGE OF KALIYHA FINLEY-GRAY BY NEXT FRIEND: PATRICIA GRAY Petitioner, vs. TARVISO FINLEY Whereabouts Unknown Respondent.
ORDER
IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED, and DECREED that the Motion for Service by Publication filed by Petitioner, Patricia Gray, as Next Friend of her granddaughter, Kaliyha FinleyGray, is hereby granted and it is hereby ordered that Respondent, Tarviso Finley, will be served by publication notice in The Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Davidson County, Tennessee for a period of four (4) consecutive weeks.
IT IS ORDERED.
ANNE C. MARTIN CHANCELLOR, PART II
APPROVED FOR ENTRY:
Marykate E. Williams #041708
CAMPBELL PERKY JOHNSON, PLLC 329 S. Royal Oaks Blvd., Suite 205 Franklin, Tennessee 37064 (615)914-3038 marykate@cpj.law
NSC 2/6, 2/13, 2/20, 2/27/25
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IT Lead Analysts, Financial Systems. Analyze & define SAP financial systems, business processes, & user needs for a major retailer. Employer: Tractor Supply Company. Location: HQ in Brentwood, TN. May telecommute from any location in the U.S. Multiple openings. To apply, mail resume to J. Yokley, 5401 Virginia Way, Brentwood, TN 37027. Ref. job code 230345.
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lifecycle of model development including project scoping, data collection and cleaning, model building, testing, implementation, and performance tracking. Requires M+5yrs. exp. Can work remotely. (ref. code(s) 001921). Qualified Applicants apply through SHProfRecruitingcc@ubs.com. Please reference 001921. NO CALLS PLEASE. EOE/M/F/D/V. #LI-DNP.
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