Pizza Guide

Taste ofthe Month - Pizza! Where to Go for the Best Pizza in Town Johnny’s NY Style Pizza Over 50 Atlanta area locations: Order online @ JohnnysPizza.com

Johnny’s Pizza is synonymous with great pizza and subs in Atlanta. The secret to their success is in the preparation. They always use the finest ingredients. Johnny’sspecializesinNYstylepizza, Theyhavesev- eral house specialties including the Johnny’s Deluxe, Italian Special, Veggie, Steak & Cheese, Pesto and Buffalo Chicken. There are plenty ofindividual top- pings to creat e your own masterpiece. Also on the menu are subs, salads, sand- wiches and other popular Italian dishes includingcalzones, strombolis, and lasagna. Johnny’s restaurants offer dine-in, take-out and delivery. Please check with your local store to find out their latest hours and dining options. You may always call or order online for takeout, curbside pickup and contactless delivery. Go to JohnnysPizza.com to find the location nearest you. Mo’s Pizza 3109 Briarcliff Rd. 404.320.1258 MosPizza.com

Feel at home at Mo’s, your neighborhood eatery offering a wide variety oflunch and dinner specials to please any palate. Mo’s has been serving up great pizza in Clairmont / N. Druid Hills for over 30 years! Everything is made using the fresh- est ingredients including the dough built from scratch every day. Menu highlights include Mo's Special, Meat Lovers and BBQ Chicken pizzas and you will love Mo’s traditionalAmericanfarelikehamburgers, s alads, sandwichesandmore. Mo’sPizza is currently open for Dine-In, Take-out and Delivery. Inside tables have been removedandspacedoutwhiletheyofferahugedogfriendlydecktohangoutonand soakup the sun! Stop in Mondaynights and geta Large Cheese Pizza for just$9.00. Mo’s is one ofthe longest running pizza joints in Atlanta, come in and see whythey are among the best. Harry’s Pizza and Subs 2150 Powers Ferry Rd. 770.955.4413 harryspizzaandsubs.com

Harry’s Pizza & Subs has been serving the north Atlanta community for over 30 years. This family owned and run restaurant specializes in New York style pizza but they are also known for their chicken wings, oversized salads, and mouthwatering sand- wiches. Harry’s offers daily specials on menu items and always has a special on draft beers. Try their Chipotle Turkey burger which comes with fries or onion rings and drink $8.99. Come Wednesday nights and play a few rounds ofBINGO or on a Thursd ayfor some familyfun weeklytrivia.

Harry’s Pizza & Subs is committed to the health oftheir customers and staff. The restaurant recently underwent a heavy deep cleaning by well-respected virus clean- ing service Enviro-Master and received their hygienic certification. They are open from 11am (noon on Sunday) to 9pm daily for dine-in and take-out. Delivery is offered after 5:30 pm. Check their Facebook page for updates. Stop by and visit Rich, Ilene, and the family and se e for yourself why Harry’s is always filled with happy, pizza loving customers! Fritti 309 N. Highland Ave. 404.880.9559 Frittiatl.com LocatedintheheartofhistoricInmanPark just walking distance from the Atlanta BeltLine, Fritti is nationally recognized for its pizza and state ofthe art wood-burning oven. This world class oven can maintain a temperature of 1,000 degrees and cooks pizza unlike anything you have ever experienced. Fritti serves authentic Neapolita n Pizza that is prepared according to traditional artisan methods. The dough is made with Caputo flour and natural yeast, tomato sauce is hand milled and they use locally produced fior di latte mozzarella. Try their Salsiccia e Pepperoni (Italian sausage and roasted peppers), the Cotto e Funghi (Crimini and Portobello mushrooms withcotto ham) orthe vegetarianEstiva(freshtomato, red onion & arugula). Fritti offers a variety ofantipasti dishes including offerings of funghi fritti (fried mushrooms), fried calamari, classic Sicilian arancini and bruschetta. Also find a bevy ofdelicious salads, Italian Skewers and pizza-bread Panozzi pizza-bread paninos. Their patio is among the hottest places to be in Inman Park as the entire dining room opens up to the lively street scene. Service staffare provided with brand newKN95 and surgical masks for everyshift, as well as gloves, which theyare required to wear.

• Pizza • Harry’s

Speciality Pizza • Oven Baked

Subs • Pizza By the

Slice • Spaghetti • Calzones • Appetizers • Fresh Salads • Wings

6 WINGS, SLICE OF PIZZA, & A DRINK $9.99!

2 Slices of Cheese Pizza, Drink: $5.99 (Additional toppings... $0.50 per topping per slice) Any Small Pizza, Drink: $9.99 (Any specialty pizza or up to 4 toppings) 1 Slice of Pizza, Small Salad, Drink: $7.99 (Includes one topping) (Greek, caesar, chef, spinach, or toss) 6 Wings, Small Salad, Drink: $9.99 (Greek, caesar, chef, spinach, or toss) Large Salad with Chicken, Drink, and Chips or Cookie... $9.99 (Greek, caesar, chef, spinach, or toss) TEAM TRIVIA! Thursdays @ 7:30pm

2150 Powers Ferry Road • Atlanta • 30339 770-955-4413 • harryspizzaandsubs.com

FIT AS A FIDDLE

When it Comes to Rocking the Blues, Joe Bonamassa Doesn’t Fiddle Around

BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH

IT’S NOT UNUSUAL FOR A JOE Bonamassa album to reach number one. His latest, A New Day Now recently achieved his usual goal scoring his 23rd number one chart smash. The latest accomplishment is especially notable because it’s a revisit to his first album, released twenty years ago next month. A New Day Yesterday was the national introduction to the child prodigy who’d already opened for B.B. King and a jammed with a host of other luminaries. The debut record ignited a career that two decades later, presents the oft-lauded musician looking back on his earliest work. Released just a month ago via J&R Adventures, the album isn’t just a stale reissue, the entire record is completely re-sung by Bonamassa and remastered by frequent collaborator, producer Kevin Shirley. In a press release, Shirley says: As time has gone by, Joe’s vocal style particularly, has changed enormously. He’s grown from an adolescent shouter to a very mature and soulful singer. From early on in our working relationship, Joe has mentioned that he would really like to have another shot at those vocals, and asked that if he did redo them, would I remix his first solo album.” Now, with that project under his well-worn guitar strap and an instrumental sideproject from The Sleep Easys also available, he continues to release new music from marathon sessions at Abbey Road Studios in England. Next month, Royal Tea, an entire new album of material will be issued. All of this work comes on the heels his recent production work on a new LP from Dion, weekly programming for Sirius XM’s Bluesville channel as well as artist interviews and performances on his own Facebook page. Since his touring schedule has been derailed by the pandemic, he’s busy with a new way to play live. This month for an online performance benefitting his non-profit Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation (KTBA), Bonamassa his band will perform Royal Tea in its entirety a full month before its official release at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. INsite spoke with the busy performer on his way to get a Covid test.

How’s it going? I’m great, just busy as usual. Right now, I’m on my to get a virus test. We’re doing a livestream at the Ryman and in order to enter the building, we’ve got to be as fit as a fiddle. So there’s that and I’m helping my producer Kevin Shirley. He’s moving out of his studio and totally to Australia and he’s got about fifty guitars that need to be sold, so I’m the guy.

Before you get to the doctor’s office, we should talk about Royal Tea. It’s a heavy one. Thanks! Well, it’s a heavy English blues record.

I’ve read that was the vibe you were going for and you certainly succeeded. Well the whole thing about working in England, working with Bernie Marsden, Pete Brown, that’s what I was hoping for and I’m glad it worked out that way. Absolutely. I’ve said it a number of times now, but it’s true - the whole adventure was a bucket-list thing for me. It’s the sound I basically grew up with in my head. Some of my first influences were heavy British bluesrock. I mean, artists like Jeff Beck, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Eric Clapton and Cream. My father had a lot of those records and I loved them. I would have been about twelve years old when I first got into them. And it was the sound I started hearing in my head. So once I heard Cream, it was like, ‘Okay, I’m in. This is it. That’s what I want to be.’

Since you mentioned Cream, tell us about working with [lyricist] Pete Brown. Obviously he means a lot to you as an influence. Oh yeah. He’s 80 years old and he’s still got that biting, witty sense of abstract poetry going on. I met him ten or twelve years ago at a festival. He introduced himself to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Pete Brown, you may not know me.’ I said, ‘Oh I know exactly who you are.’ We just became friends. It’s just an ideal situation because Bernie [Marsden] and I have been friends for twelve years, too. It’s really great because we all collaborate really well together.

You took the project to Abbey Road to record. Was the album ready to go or did you write in the studio? We actually wrote the record in 2019. We had the thing done by the end of June. Then [drummer Anton Fig] broke his ankle and he had to go home. So we pushed it back to January of this year. Thank God we were able to record it before the world exploded because we’d have had to go back home again. So we got it finished in the nick of time. Then we went on tour until March and then it was over.

What’s it like recording in such an historic studio? Is there a heavy vibe in that building? Oh yeah, but the thing you have to remember, no matter where you record, you have to remember to play the studio. You can’t let it play you. It’s a well-maintained recording studio, like you’d have in Atlanta or Bearsville or anywhere. But the Beatles did record there and Jeff Beck and a billion other great things. But you just want to make sure that your own songs are good.

As a music fan, it would be easy to get caught up in the history. It’s definitely a hallowed hall. But there are a lot of them, all over the world. Whether it’s the Fox in Atlanta or the Royal Albert Hall, so you have to be kinda hip to that. Most people would just reissue their first album, but for A New Day Now, you basically rerecorded it. Yeah, it’s an interesting way to approach a reissue. Basically I resung the record. I wanted it to be able to listen to it myself and some of the master tapes were lost. In the process, some of the takes are different. We did include some rare demos but the difference is we basically stripped the house back down to the beams and the foundation and put up a new exterior. It’s a different take on the same record, remixed it, re-sang it and pulled from the masters. I never felt like I deserved a guy like [original producer] Tom Dowd to produce my first album. I was so young as far as being an artist. But I think Tom saw a pebble in a stream, that could eventually become this nugget of gold, for lack of a better term. He had a vision for me that I didn’t see. I wanted to pay tribute to him as a man who believed mentored me through that process. So I guess the new version is a forty-year-old edition of my twenty-year-old self. I found that it was hard to sing because of my original lack of melody.

What was it like working with such a legendary producer, especially on your first album? He was a master of everything. There was no second rate with him. No compromise. I don’t think I was developed enough as a musician to rise to his level. But like I said, he believed in me and I certainly gave it my best. When we decided to reissue it, I asked Kevin Shirley to help remix it as a tribute to him. So now I’ve been fortunate to have been surrounded by two of the best record producers anywhere. Kevin produced Royal Tea and you’re presenting it in a new way, as well. You’ll be playing the whole record in an otherwise empty Ryman Auditorium. That’s a unique concept. Yep. Well, I started off my career playing in empty halls and that’s how I can end it, too!

By livestreaming it, you’ll be playing to an audience many times the capacity of the Ryman. Hopefully. They way we’re looking at it is, the livestream is a whole different business. If where our projections are, sales-wise, by the time we get to the show on the 20th, it’ll at least be the equliivent of a stadium show. There could be forty or fifty thousand people watching it. That’ll be pretty cool. We thought it’d be a good way to launch the record. For me personally, it’s a good way to get the band back together and playing, in some way, shape or form this year. The regulations have been changing every hour it seems. At first they said we could have maybe a hundred and twenty-five people there. But the Ryman holds 2,300 people. So what we’re gonna do, for a donation to our charity to help musicians, we’ll actually print out your face, put it on a stick and sit in the pews there at the Ryman. So the audience will be there virtually and every “seat” will have a front-row view. We’ll be back on the road when it’s time. And really, playing to an empty house will time-stamp this show. Everybody’s gonna remember 2020, for good and bad. This show will be a snapshot of a particular moment in time.

STAX EXPLOSION

Atlantan William Bell Looks Back on the Influential Memphis Music Empire

BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH

STAX RECORDS IS AN ICONIC ONEstop for the music and cultural history of southern soul. Besides Motown, no other label so thoroughly documented a sound and a movement. This year, the good folks at Concord, via their audiophile-fave division Craft Recordings, continue to present a series of collectible reissues and newly collected editions of the Stax catalog on all popular formats - including digital and vinyl. Many of the titles are available on vinyl for the first time since the late ‘60s and the deluxe sets span the many artists from the company roster. As part of the label’s “Made in Memphis” reissue series, the lacquers for most are cut and then pressed in Memphis, not far from the lovingly restored Stax Museum and studio. With the spotlight on the label’s stars of the day – Otis Redding, Booker T and the MG’s, Eddie Floyd, the Mad Lads, the Staple Singers, Albert King and many more, it’s a good time to revisit the legacy of Stax hero William Bell. An Atlanta resident since 1969, Bell - now 80 - was signed to Stax as a teen and wrote the soul standards “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” “Born Under A Bad Sign” and “Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday.” In 2016 his album on the revived label was released to international acclaim and ignited a new interest in the cultural zeitgeist of the popular Tennessee landmark. INsite spoke with Bell recently as Craft continues to roll out new titles from the reissue series including the two-album Soul Explosion set last year and the full-length LPs vault on 180-gram vinyl. The new batch includes The Bar-Kays’ Gotta Groove, Melting Pot from Booker T. & The M.G.’s, Delaney & Bonnie’s Home, David Porter’s Victim of the Joke? An Opera, and Johnnie Taylor’s Who’s Making Love? As usual, all the titles are cut from their original analog tapes by Jeff Powell at Take Out Vinyl and manufactured at Memphis Record Pressing. These reissues continue the lebel’s ongoing celebration of Stax, and of the fivedecade anniversary of the legendary company’s “Soul Explosion” - an era of rebuilding that followed a split from Atlantic Records. During this period, the newly independent label began to sign emerging talent while releasing an extraordinary collection of 27 albums and 30 singles in just a handful of months. In honor of September’s Gospel Heritage Month, the music of The Gospel Truth Records is being featured. The campaign features the first-ever digital releases of 25 iconic albums from the label’s rich catalog. The titles will be released chronological order. In addition to the digital reissues, the promotion also includes a singles compilation set, set to drop September 17th on digital, and October 23rd on vinyl and CD formats, as well as several playlists and brand new video content. The offerings include titles by the Rance Allen Group, Maceo Woods and the Christian Tabernacle Concert Choir, Rev. T.L. Barrett and the Howard Lemon Singers. If that wasn’t enough, Stax will also be releasing an original content series focusing on the label’s pivotal influence on the city of Memphis and the world of music in general. Shot in in and around the city, a variety of guests are slated to share their career and life experiences – as seen through the multicultural lens of Stax Records. Each segment is scheduled to feature a different artist and a number of specific vinyl reissues. Featured artists include The Bar-Kays, Johnnie Taylor, Delaney & Bonnie, and David Porter. Details regarding the series title and launch dates soon to be announced at the label’s website www. staxrecords.com.

First, congrats on all the praise and awards for This Is Where I Live. It’s much deserved. Thank you, man. It’s amazing that after all these years, to be still in the game. It’s a good feeling.

There’s been a number of good Stax reissue campaigns over the years, but since Concord took over it’s been a completists dream come true. Soul Explosion has been out of print for years, for just one example. The upcoming boxsets will surely make a lot of music fans happy this coming holiday season. It’s music for any occasion or mood. It’s a good series. There are a lot of gems in every one. You know, as kids we didn’t think any of us would have this kind of longevity. Now when you look back on it, it’s like, ‘Wow, we were pretty good back in those days.’ I’m so happy they are keeping the music alive and available for another generation to enjoy.

Concord has been active with the material for around a decade, but they’re really upping their game this year. Oh yeah, they’ve been great and we couldn’t be happier about it. So many of us have gone on now, it’s good to have somebody to really work hard and incorporate it into a legacy for not only Stax but the artists and the listeners too. I think it’s a testament to the music. The songs we did and the times that we did them in. Back then we were going through the struggles and the freedom things. All of those records and performances were kind of like a time capsule of all of that.

Soul Explosion alone is like a scrapbook of those times and a good place to start for anyone who may not be familiar with the story of the turbulent times that literally surrounded the studio. That’s true. And now, looking back, we’ve come a long way since then. But we’ve got a long way to go, too. It’s amazing to me that the songs have withstood the test of time. Some of them have been used in movies and TV and a lot of people can relate to them, even if you don’t know the history. We were writing about our truth and when you do that, everybody can relate to it, no matter what generation you’re from.

There’s a soulful truth in the music and definite honesty in the actual performances. Right. Well, we were all coming out of the church, so that in itself helped to learn to be true to what we were singing. We were able to then convey that in lyrical content and in the performance. We could feel the truth of it and all of it remains our true expression. You can get lost for two or three minutes in any one of these songs and come back out, feeling better. We told it like it was but we were kinda positive at the same time. There was always the light at the proverbial end of the tunnel in our songs. People could get something special from the message that way. There was a hope that tomorrow things could be a lot better.

IT’S AMAZING TO ME THAT THE SONGS HAVE WITHSTOOD THE TEST OF TIME. SOME OF THEM HAVE BEEN USED IN MOVIES AND TV AND A LOT OF PEOPLE CAN RELATE TO THEM, EVEN IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE HISTORY.

it after so long away was just unbelievable. My single “You Don’t Miss your Water” kicked things off for Stax on a national level, so it’s a good full circle. To come back so many years later is just phenomenal.

You were just a teenager when that single was released. Yeah, I was 19 or so. I wrote it when I was 17. It’s amazing that so many iconic artists have covered it. Even in the Stax era, Otis and several different people cut it. But people from every genre have covered not only my material but all of the Stax artists. So that really speaks to the universal legacy of what we did back then. We just didn’t know how long it would be around. Now I’m 80 and people still love it. Even the rappers have sampled some of it. It’s extremely rewarding to know that something that was created by some kids back in the ‘60s is still around.

For more information or to order individual titles, visit staxrecords.com.

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