N AT I V E
2014 DECEMBER
No. 30
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you are loved here. #givepresence
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Open daily @ 11 am for lunch.
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Clothing and equipment for your adventures this holiday season.
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56 TABLE OF
CONTENTS DECEMBER 2014
48 22
76 THE GOODS
66 28
21 Beer from Here 22 Cocktail 25 Master Platers 86 Hey Good Lookin’ 89 You Oughta Know 92 Observatory 94 Animal of the Month
FEATURES 28 JP Harris and Joe Fletcher 40 Contributor Spotlight: Jonah Eller-Isaacs 48 Jake’s Bakes 56 Fort Houston 66 The Apache Relay 76 Becca Stevens
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You can be naughty if... You make a Christmas Tree Offset donation to SoundForest.org Kinda feel bad for having a tree cut down? Well, feel bad no longer! We’ll plant trees to help the environment. So have yourself a Merry Little Christmas! Give Back To Mother Earth with $1, $5, and $10 coupons
Merry Twenty-fifth-mas! Visit SoundForest.org Now!
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SoundForest.org
Welcome to Our Family
INTERNATIONAL MARKET & RESTAURANT
Come see why the Myint family has been a part of the Belmont neighborhood since 1975. #NATI V ENA S HVI L LE
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DEAR NATIVES,
T
hanks for tagging us, y’all! Be sure to check out these Instagrammers, and #nativenashville to share your photos with us.
@sincenineteen88
@emilerwin
@vocenashville
@thenativetwo
@roamingmemoirs
PRESIDENT, FOUNDER:
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER:
ANGELIQUE PITTMAN JON PITTMAN KATRINA HARTWIG
FOUNDER, BRAND DIRECTOR:
DAVE PITTMAN
FOUNDER:
CAYLA MACKEY
CREATIVE DIRECTOR:
MACKENZIE MOORE
MANAGING EDITOR: EDITOR:
CHARLIE HICKERSON DARCIE CLEMEN
ART DIRECTOR:
COURTNEY SPENCER
COMMUNITY RELATIONS MANAGER:
JOE CLEMONS
COMMUNITY REPRESENTATIVE:
LINDSAY ALDERSON
ACCOUNT MANAGER:
AYLA SADLER
WEB EDITOR:
TAYLOR RABOIN
FILM SUPERVISOR:
CASEY FULLER
WRITERS:
MATTHEW LEFF HENRY PILE JONAH ELLER-ISAACS MATT COLANGELO ANDREW LEAHEY LINDSEY BUTTON MELANIE SHELLEY
PHOTOGRAPHERS:
DANIELLE ATKINS JASON MYERS RYAN GREEN JONATHON KINGSBURY ANDREA BEHRENDS KRISTIN SWEETING BRETT WARREN WILL VASTINE
P.R. INTERN:
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BEHIND THE COVER This month, some really talented people were kind enough to help us with our Jake’s Bakes cover shoot. Local artist and past NATIVE feature Herb Williams arranged around 150 of Jake’s cookies into the pattern we used for this month’s cover photo; Ryan Green shot Herb’s arrangements (along with some great pictures of Jake at work); and Matt Colangelo wrote the feature. We’d like to thank everyone involved—you guys made this holiday season really special (and delicious).
WORK@NATIVE.IS SALES@NATIVE.IS FOR ALL OTHER INQUIRIES: HELLO@NATIVE.IS TO ADVERTISE, CONTACT:
In our last issue, we credited Gummy Soul Record Company’s Wally Clark with the creation of 2012’s Bizarre Tribe. Though Bizarre Tribe was released by Gummy Soul Record Company, the mash-up was actually created by Amerigo Gazaway. Sorry about that, guys!
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RESPECT THE UNEXPECTED.
We are an independent record label born and bred in Nashville, TN. We produce no-bullshit homegrown music for everyone. WE’RE NASHVILLE, DAMMIT.
THE FAUNTLEROYS BELOW THE PINK PONY
AVAILABLE NOW! LP/CD/DD/CS
"The band premiered the first single from their EP, "I'm In Love With Everything," over at USA Today, and it's got the kind of classic rock ‘n’ roll songwriting you'd expect from a group with this kind of resume." - Brooklyn Vegan
CHUCK MEAD/PAUL BURCH SPLIT 7” COMMEMORATING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVIVAL OF NASHVILLE’S LOWER BROADWAY
Limited Edition 7” vinyl featuring 2 songs from Chuck Mead and Paul Burch
AVAILABLE NOW! ONLY AT PLOWBOYRECORDS.COM & NASHVILLE AREA RECORD STORES!
VISIT PLOWBOYRECORDS.COM FOR NEW RELEASES
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OUR ARTISTS: BOBBY BARE • PAUL BURCH • BUZZ CASON • CHEETAH CHROME • CHUCK MEAD • THE FAUNTLEROYS • THE GHOST WOLVES • JD WILKES & THE DIRTDAUBERS •
E
© ¤¨A¦ §¨A§ ¥¬ ¬
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The
Moonpig THE GOODS 1 1/2 oz Tullamore D.E.W. Irish Whiskey 1 1/2 oz Guinness Draught 1/2 oz lime juice 1/2 oz simple syrup 1 small bar spoon of raspberry preserves
! Add all ingredients in a shaker and shake well. Double strain into a rocks glass. —Ben Clemons of No. 308
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HOW TO: MAKE DUMPLINGS WITH BART PICKENS – EXECUTIVE CHEF, PARTY FOWL
THE GOODS: 1 quart of broth (vegetable, beef, or chicken, doesn’t really matter) 2 quarts flour 1/3 cup salt 1 2/3 tablespoons baking powder 5 eggs 1/3 cup butter, melted
DIRECTIONS: ! In a large pot, bring broth to a boil. ! While broth is heating, in a large bowl whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder. ! Add eggs and butter and mix just until combined. ! Portion into 1-ounce balls. ! Working in batches, drop one layer of dumplings into boiling broth. ! Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 12 to 15 minutes, until dumplings are firm. Makes about 20 dumplings.
SER VIN G SUG GES TIO N: SERVE AS A SIDE DISH, OR ADD LEFTO VER MEAT OR VEGE TABLE S TO MAKE A FULL MEAL
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Make your list :
Check it twice... ȗ ȗ ȗ ȗ ȗ ȗ ȗ ȗ ȗ ȗ ǒ ȗ ǻ ȗ ǔǜǔǔ ȗ Ȅ ȗ ȗ ǻ ȗ ǒ ȗ ȗ ǻ ǻ ȗ ȗ ȗ ȗ
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TWO AMERICANA ARTISTS DISCUSS ROOTS, RAMBLING, AND RECORDING BY HENRY PILE | PHOTOS BY JASON MYERS
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##NATI VENAS HVI L L E NATIVENA SHVIL L E
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Johnny was born in Arkansas. Loretta in Kentucky.
Hank in West Virginia. Merle in California. Patsy in Virginia. Waylon, Willie, and George were born in Texas. Dolly was at least born in Tennessee, but way out east. Pull up a list of classic country greats, and you won’t read Nashville on their birth certificates. But that doesn’t matter. So when Joe Fletcher, a school teacher from Rhode Island, and JP Harris, a train hopper from, well, everywhere, settled in Nashville, the city took them in. Joe is quiet and hawkish with a Stetson Roadster hat and narrow eyes. He weaves intricate metaphors with rich lyrical imagery and delivers his Americana songs with a grave, Tom Waits–style voice. JP is the rambunctious and outspoken of the two, with an immense beard that opens with his wide smile. In his music, his voice punches through with classic Haggard twang and a delivery that dips deep into the register. It’s easy to call these guys country, but there’s something more subversive about what they’re doing—something punk rock. Their music says “fuck off ” to country radio and draws in fans who want an honest and raw performance. On the first cold night of the fall, Joe and JP sit down on Joe’s front porch with warm cups of coffee and a few packs of cigarettes and open up about their first tour together, train hopping, and their new albums. ***** JOE: So, what’s your full name? JP: Ugh. The elusive question. [sucks on a cigarette] Joshua Pless Harris. Technically, I’m from Alabama and I’m thirty-one. I never thought I’d make it this long. JOE: Where in Alabama? JP: I was born in Montgomery. Six minutes before Valentine’s Day. The luckiest six minutes of my life! [laughs] My family, on one side, has been in Tallapoosa County since about 1820. My middle name came from an old family member, Lucinda Boone Jane Pless. She negotiated a civilian truce during the Civil War, thusly stopping the last charge on Mont-
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gomery and preserved a large plot of historic buildings from destruction. JOE: I know Vermont figures largely into your story. How did you get there? JP: That is a really long story, but I’ll give you the annotated version. In classic form, my family left Alabama when I was seven. There was a recession in the South, and my dad’s company went out of business. He came home, told us to pack up the Oldsmobile and get ready to head to California for work. He got a job with a dirt moving company in the Mojave Desert. We lived in a shit-hole town called Apple Valley. No offense to anyone from there, but I assure you there are no apples. Just scorpions and cactus, sand and meth. Eventually, the company moved him to Las Vegas. There, I learned about drugs and alcohol. JOE: That’s a good place to do it. JP: Yeah! And naked ladies and punk rock and getting arrested. When I was fourteen, I decided to skedaddle. I left Vegas and headed to San Francisco. After a while, I went back to Vegas and lived in a pill-ridden, booze-soaked apartment, lived in Arizona herding sheep for a while, then followed an old girlfriend to Vermont. I just stayed there and it never occurred to me to leave. For the entire time, I didn’t have electricity or running water or road access in the winter. I didn’t have the option to sing into a microphone. Not having a stereo, you just had to make your own music. Living in a truly rural place, not the country ten minutes outside of a city, gave me more of an appreciation of country music in a broader sense. I stayed for eleven years before I moved to Nashville. ***** JP: I know a little bit, but what’s your family’s history? JOE: I was born in St Louis, Missouri, and I’m thirty-nine years old. JP: [under his breath] Old man. JOE: My parents divorced when I was two. I don’t really remember living with my dad at all. My mom was a nurse and she met my future stepdad, who was from Rhode Island, at the
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“I DID IT BECAUSE IT WAS ROMANTIC. IT WAS ALSO ILLEGAL. THE TRAINS WENT REAL GODDAMN FAST, AND THEY WENT TO PLACES I WOULD NEVER GO ON MY OWN.” —JP hospital during his residency. They fell in love and then moved to Rhode Island. I was in kindergarten at the time. Then my stepdad had to go work in underserved communities and we moved to Thompson, Pennsylvania. The winter was so hard and the town was so remote that he requested a transfer after a year. We moved to a small town in South Carolina near Myrtle Beach. My parents enrolled me in a Catholic school because they heard it was really good. We’d all bring a sack lunch to school and slide it under our desk. At lunch time, someone would be called upon to say grace. During my first week, I was terrified because I didn’t know what to do, and I tried to soak up what the other kids were saying. I figured I could learn this thing if I had enough time, but a few days in, the teacher said, “Let’s let the new kid do it.” I just had to tell the class I didn’t know it. I remember these kids staring at me and it was like a movie— JP: [laughs] The record scratches! ***** JP: How did we meet?
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JOE: I’d seen the name “JP Harris and the Tough Choices” around the internet. My band is called “Joe Fletcher and the Wrong Reasons,” and I remember thinking, who the fuck is this guy? JP: I remember thinking the exact same thing! [laughs] JOE: My friend Dave Lamb, from the band Brown Bird, told me you were playing at Local 121 in Providence, Rhode Island, and that you were really good. I was like, “Oh, that’s too bad. I already hated that guy!” [laughs] I went with Dave to the show, and I met you outside very briefly. JP: Yeah, I remember that. JOE: That one song of yours, which is my favorite song, “Badly Bent,” really registered with me. I got your record that night and . . . I don’t remember— JP: If we ever followed that up? JOE: Yeah. The next thing I know, we were booking a tour together. Seems like there’s a missing piece. JP: You know, I do remember when I saw you next. You played at The 5 Spot. I hadn’t really eaten anything that day and had quite a bit to drink. We wound up out back, and you offered me some fine, fine chiba. I remember at one point, I melted into the wall. JOE: I remember this. JP: My buddy had to carry me out of the bar. I remember waking up the next day thinking, what does he think of me now? [laughs] JOE: Come to think about it, I’m not quite sure how you won me over. [laughs] Get off my porch! JP: I’M LIVING A LIE! [laughs] We must have had enough mutual friends vouching for each other, because the whole idea of this tour was a shot in the dark anyway. But, by the end of that tour, I felt like I had known you forever. JOE: It was definitely a bonding experience. We shared a band and called it “The Wrong Choices.” ***** JOE: Tell me about train hopping. JP: I started riding trains because that was what people were doing. The punk rock
scene adopted the romanticism of it because it was a way to keep moving. It was a holdover from the rebel spirit of Woody Guthrie. It was a way to get around, but it was exciting! It wasn’t some last-ditch option. I did it because it was romantic. It was also illegal. The trains went real goddamn fast, and they went to places I would never go on my own. I remember the first interactions with yard workers. I discovered that, on a basic level, people were good. When I’d bump into these guys at a train yard, some of them would run me off, but others would tell me to wait a minute. They’d give me their lunch and tell me where each train was headed. They’d give me water and make sure I was okay. The last train trip I took was from Winslow, Arizona, up the Mississippi River to the Twin Cities. Then to Vermont. When a train rolls by, I still look for open box cars. ***** JP: What made you want to become a teacher? JOE: [lights a cigarette] I wish I had some sort of mission that I was on, but it didn’t happen that way. I graduated University of Rhode Island with no idea what I wanted to do. I liked to drink, smoke weed, and play guitar, but I never had a band in college. I was pretty unmotivated. I liked to write though. I was an avid reader too. I got a job as a reporter, but that didn’t last. I worked two consecutive cubicle jobs. JP: Whoa. JOE: I played in a few garage rock bands and was looking for something to do with that, but my love of reading and writing made me think I should get a teaching certificate. A friend of mine taught math at a school nearby and told me they were short on English teachers. She said I should at least go talk to the principal. It turned out the Massachusetts teaching shortage was so significant that I was hired before I was actually certified. A combination of bullshitting and someone who saw something in me led to teaching. I ended up teaching for ten years at that school. JP: And music? JOE: Music was always a passion, but it was a
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JOE FLETCHER: JP HARRIS:
joefletchermusic.com Follow on Facebook @JoeFletcherandtheWrongReasons, Twitter @JoeFletcherWR, or Instagram @JosephFletcher native.is/joe-jp
ilovehonkytonk.com Follow on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @ilovehonkytonk native.is/joe-jp
question of could I make enough money to do it full time. For me, there was a combination of unhappiness with my job and my stepdad’s illness—he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age fiftysix. He was a highly functioning pediatrician with his own practice. He worked his ass off and always talked about his retirement plans, but to see his memory go and watch his life be stripped away showed me anything is possible. If you’re thinking about making a change, now is the time. I was teaching tenth grade American literature. I loved teaching Emerson and Thoreau and telling those kids to follow their passions. I believed it, but I wasn’t doing it myself. All these things came together and hit me. If I quit teaching to play music, I wasn’t going to die or starve to death, but I knew what I had to do. My coworkers thought I was insane. My mom thought I was insane, but now she understands and is very supportive.
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***** JP: Your past albums have been full band, but this new one, You’ve Got the Wrong Man, is practically a solo record. JOE: Yeah, I started demoing songs on my blue TASCAM cassette recorder like I always do. I’d always thought about just using that recorder for a record and, after I had a few songs, I decided I would get a batch of songs that stood on their own. I’ve had to play solo on more than half of my tours. I could never afford to pay a band, so I got comfortable playing alone. My favorite recordings have been like these old Lead Belly or Woody Guthrie recordings. They weren’t professional recordings. JP: That’s funny because that’s where you and I are polar opposites. Playing without a full band would mortify me. With the music I write, the idea of playing a solo show is completely out of the
question. JOE: I think early on, I thought that the music I was writing was good, and I was determined not to stop. I’ve never taken a month off since 2005. In order to not stop, I had to play alone. I never had a lot of money, but I wanted to travel and this was a great way to do it. I want to have a set of songs for a specific purpose that I put together in a specific way. JP: There’s a definitive Joe Fletcher– style of singing and songwriting that will be contiguous throughout every record you’ll ever make in your life. There’s something to be said about making one that’s more honest with nothing to hide behind. The reviews aren’t gonna be about the ripping Telecaster player or the incredible lineup of backup singers. It’s gonna be about you and what you’ve done. It’s bold and it’s awesome. JOE: [smashing a cigarette] Tell me about Home Is Where the Hurt Is. Where did you record that record?
JP: Ronnie’s Place. Ronnie Milsap’s old studio. I never imagined myself going into a studio on Music Row and definitely not one of that caliber. It happened by accident. My road guitar player, Adam Meisterhans, told me he knew this guy who worked at a nice studio and that he would talk to him, but I figured it would be too expensive. It just so happened that the studio was completely unbooked, our engineer made a plea with the studio manager to get a deal, and it all came together. We had a few guys on board, but I had to get on the phone and start making calls to get musicians together. We kicked the shit out of it in three days. We spent maybe fifteen days mixing it. I’m pretty passionate about that and like to be very involved. ***** JP: I consider you to be worldly, but what do you tell yourself when you look at the last twenty-one dollars in your pocket and you know that has to last you for the next week? You just played a show for ten people. Nine of them could give a shit about you. What do you tell yourself to fight the disillusionment that people like us can have? JOE: I’m really happy in my life. In the first year that I left my job, it was financially scary and I took measures to stay on the road. The secret for me is to be happy today and have relative assurance that I will be happy tomorrow. I don’t need anything fancy. I’m not living for a record deal or a fancy agent. I just want to keep doing just what I’m doing. Whatever else happens is gravy. I’ve been in a job I didn’t love. Now the worst show still beats a five-day work week. JP: I have to agree with you. I think the best piece of advice I got was that nothing in the music business is fair or equitable. The first rule is to never stop if you want music to be a fulltime living. You can’t ever give up. It’s guided me for a long time, like the way a dog chases a cat. You just do it and keep doing it.
COMMUNITY-BASED OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY FOR EVERYONE!
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CONTRIBUTOR
SPOTLIGHT
BY JONAH ELLER-ISAACS | ILLUSTRATIONS BY COURTNEY SPENCER
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Late last year, my wife, Kathryn, and I moved to Nashville, her childhood home. I started writing for NATIVE in April. As a contributor, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet the people and places that make Nashville all that it is. From watching the mustachioed gentleman-athletes of the Vintage Base Ball Association ply their gloveless trade to my sweat-soaked struggle through my first hot yoga class, NATIVE has given me an intimate look at some of the extraordinary happenings in my new hometown. I feel incredibly lucky to be here. And not just here in Nashville, but simply here at all. In 2008, I found out I had cancer. I didn't expect to live through the year; the average five-year survival rate for my diagnosis was less than 10 percent. After invasive surgeries, intensive treatments, and countless hospitalizations, I scanned clean and disease-free in 2012. Though the cancer itself is gone, the experience left profound physical and psychological scars. My healing has taken many forms, and in particular, I've found the written word an inexhaustible fount of inspiration. I’m truly grateful that NATIVE gives me and so many others a voice. Thank you, dear readers, for joining us.
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MY BELLY BUTTON IS AMAZING. It is a mysterious gastrointestinal portal. It is beautiful, and shapely, and inward looking, and it is powerful. My belly button is remarkable, and not only for its good looks. You see, my belly button produces more lint than a dryer working overtime. Given a week or so, I could harvest enough lint to mold a new human: Homo linteus. This lint-being would be multicolored, and fuzzy, and it would probably not smell great. Also I imagine it would be unhappy, given that it was made of lint. Though, truly, was it not from the abdomen of Adam that God created Eve? It was. And so it shall be for me. With my trusted umbilicus, I will cultivate a virgin species of purely lint-based life forms. I will rally my lint army and wage war against dust bunnies. I am in awe of my belly button and its prowess. I am a navel gazer. I am the ultimate navel gazer. I am obsessed with my belly button and the lint it creates. I stand naked and I stare, longingly, at my stomach,
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wondering what worlds of lint await. The process of accumulation is shrouded in mystery, principles of static electricity, opaque physiologic formulae, esoteric magic. I have discovered that I can manipulate both lint color and lint volume through careful consideration of my wardrobe. From a deep well of faded Tshirts comes a velvet rainbow. The colors! The colors are glorious. On occasion, I neglect to gather my downy cache before stepping into the shower. Water courses down my chest and gives the lint an opportunity to escape. I watch it slide toward the drain and lament the loss. I wonder, how far does it go? Does it make it to the sewer? To the river? To the oceans, white with foam? Does it meld with all creation, finding oneness as it achieves the infinite? I think so. Probably. Definitely. And then, one day, it was very sad. The times, and me, and my belly button; we were all sad. I was sick. Not sick like the common cold, or allergies, or the flu.
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I was not well. Genuinely, dangerously not well. My doctors had to cut a hole in me, just beneath my beloved lint collector. The lint factory closed down. I did not want the hole. I love my doctors. I hate what they do to me. It hurt, that hole. It hurt a lot. It hurt to move, and stretch, and turn, and twist. Have you ever noticed how much you twist? I did not notice until that hole was there. Let me tell you: you twist a lot. Seriously. Chubby Checker levels of twisting, every day. I was in tremendous agony. Above the black tangle of stitches, my lonely, lintless belly button swelled. It approached outie status. Oh god, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to have an outie. I worried for the future of my lint collection. The first miracle: I lived. The second miracle: the lint returned. My belly button began to gather once more. The holes left scars. The innermost whorls and folds of my navel were transformed. My new harvesting equipment was a considerable upgrade. What I had dreaded as the linty end times instead elevated my powers of collection to a heretofore unimagined degree. Where small lint rabbits once played, there were now buďŹ&#x20AC;aloes of lint. Elephants of lint. Lint dinosaurs, once extinct, roamed the canyons and caverns of my belly. It was a hard time, being without the lint. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t realize how much I had missed it until it came back. So now, every evening, as my wife and I settle in for the night, I reach down to my stomach and discover, to my glee, that the day has brought yet another gift to me. My wifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s soft, supple arms are such a good home for the lint. The lint seems happy there. I gently take the exquisite amalgam of cloth and dust and stray hairs and I place it on her. I say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have a present for you.â&#x20AC;? My wife does not share my enthusiasm. She notices the lint. She screams. â&#x20AC;&#x153;OH GOD, GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF, THAT IS SO FUCKING GROSS!â&#x20AC;? She just doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand.
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JAKE’S BAKES TAKES FRESHLY BAKED COOKIES TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL: YOUR FRONT DOOR
BY MATT COLANGELO | PHOTOS BY RYAN GREEN
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JAKEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BAKES: jakesbakesnashville.com Follow on Facebook @JakesBakesNashville or Twitter and Instagram @jakesbakes native.is/jakes-bakes
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Jake Veyhl doesn’t look like the owner of a late-night cookie delivery company. “No,
I don’t,” he responds. “I’m not the person people imagine.” He doesn’t possess the rotundity you see in people who eat cookies every day. He is tall and skinny and can usually be found wearing some sort of athletic garment. When I meet him for the first time, he is wearing a blue Texas Rangers hat and a matching blue Under Armour shirt. He looks like he is about to report to spring training. “I’m a sports guy,” he says, and tips his cap in jest. Though he was never a professional athlete, Jake’s career seemed destined to be in sports. After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in journalism, he got his first job as an editor at Athlon Sports, a sports media company based in Nashville. “They publish annual preseason guides to various sports leagues like the MLB, and I used to work on those.” He spent four years there—researching player statistics and predicting what teams would win and lose— until the recession forced them to downsize in 2010. Not yet ready to leave the world of sports, Jake’s next job was with the WNSL, which sounds like it could be a semi-professional women’s soccer league but is actually the West Nashville Sports League, the biggest youth sports league in town. Coming from a nationally renowned sports magazine, Jake scored a job “coordinating all the leagues,” which means baseball, basketball, soccer, cheerleading, and flag football for kids ages four to fifteen years old. “That job kept me busy,” he says with a chuckle. Cookies didn’t become a career path until 2012, when Jake and his wife, Liz, who happens to be a Shakti Power Yoga instructor, came up with the business idea together. He remembers the scene romantically: “We went to Perdido Key in Florida and came up with the idea on the drive home.” He credits a particularly tasty skillet cookie that they had on the road as inspiration. “Do you know what
a skillet cookie is?” he asks me. Before I have a chance to respond, he says, “It’s amazing is what it is.” Before then, Jake never saw himself as a cookie baker. But he did see himself as an entrepreneur—and this was his chance to flex his entrepreneurial muscles. Once he decided on cookies, the next question was: how? The options were numerous and all great sounding, but he had to pick one. His first idea was to cook them conveyor-belt-style like Quiznos does sandwiches, but that would’ve required a big up-front investment in the oven and retail location. His next idea was to pimp out a cookie truck and drive around town, but he cringed when he found out how much a food truck costs (as much as a luxury sedan). Too much money. He settled on a business model that requires very little up-front investment and risk. Rather than launching Jake’s Bakes at its own retail location, or on a moving vehicle, he decided to deliver them by car. This meant that he could rent space in a commercial kitchen (instead of having his own) and make the cookies to order. From a business perspective, this delivery model was safer and gave Jake more time to build his clientele. From a consumer perspective, it was simpler and required less effort. All you have to do is call Jake and wait for the doorbell to ring. Since launching Jake’s Bakes in January 2013, business has steadily improved. “Our first big day was Valentine’s Day 2013. We sold thirty-eight orders.” A year later, that number climbed to eighty-six orders. (Jake declined to comment on 4/20 sales, but odds are they’re high.) The variety of cookies that Jake bakes has increased as well. After starting with the holy cookie trinity—chocolate chip, M&M, and triple chocolate—he has added five more: white chocolate almond, oatmeal chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, and snickerdoodle. Chocolate chip will always be the biggest seller by far, but the variety is
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good because it tempts people into expanding their waistlines . . . I mean, horizons. Walking into Jake’s kitchen, I see this variety spread out on the counter. Bags of homemade cookie dough, all different types. M&M is the easiest one to pick out. “I just finished mixing some dough,” he says as he carries a couple gigantic ziplock bags to the walk-in freezer. He has a big mixing bowl that can handle about fifty pounds of cookie dough at a time. After mixing it, he scoops it into balls with an ice-cream scooper and puts the cookies-to-be in ziplock bags. These bags stay in the freezer until they’re ready to be used. Unlike some other late-night cookie deliverers, Jake bakes all of his cookies to order: “Other companies just warm them up. We prefer making them when you call.” Then, as if by cue, his phone rings. It’s a girl named Bailey, and she wants a dozen chocolate chip cookies, STAT. Jake springs into action. After taking down her order, he goes through his cookie choreography: he pulls out a pan, lays a single sheet of parchment paper on it, picks twelve balls of cookie dough out of a chocolate-chip ziplock bag, places them on the pan, throws them in the oven, and asks Siri to set his iPhone timer to fifteen minutes. Siri obeys. When he’s in the kitchen, Jake treats cookie baking like a sport. He never stops moving. Even when he’s not taking an order or taking cookies out of the oven, he finds something to do. After Bailey’s
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cookies go in the oven, for example, he asks one of his “team members” to make cookie boxes and head out on a delivery. Then he checks the milk inventory in the refrigerator (yes, they also deliver milk cartons if you haven’t been to the supermarket in a while) and grabs a ziplock bag of cookie dough from the freezer. As he pulls Bailey’s cookies out of the oven, another order flashes on his iPad. He puts the freshly baked amazingness down and loads up another pan: parchment, dozen cookies, oven. Clockwork. “I don’t really need a timer,” he says as he spaces out the cookie dough on the pan. “I have a fifteen-minute clock in my head.” He puts the pan in the oven and tells Siri to count down another fifteen minutes “just in case.” After transferring Bailey’s cookies from the pan to the box, Jake crumples up the used parchment paper and attempts a long-distance toss into the trash can on the other side of the room. He misses badly. Over the course of the night, he is a measly two for eight in parchment-paper free throws, a field-goal percentage that doesn’t amuse him: “I’m usually more
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on point than this. I don’t know what’s going on.” But Jake doesn’t have time to dwell on his missed shots. He has cookies to deliver and cookies in the oven. “We have to deliver these cookies in under fifteen minutes,” Jakes says as he grabs the box and heads out the door. I follow him with my notepad, ignoring the voice in my head telling me it’s a bad idea to leave the oven unattended. Rather than waiting to cook the new batch, we’re putting our trust in Nashville’s traffic. And Jake’s car. And our fellow drivers. Chances that we don’t return in fifteen minutes are not low, but Jake remains positive: “It should be about seven minutes there and seven minutes back.” We set off. To pass the time in the car, Jake proposes a game: “Name a street, and I bet you I’ll know it.” So I open up Google Maps on my phone and start testing his Nashville knowledge. After a few gimmes (Chestnut Street and Bowling Avenue), I stump him: Crenshaw Street. “Where’s Crenshaw Street? I’ve never delivered there.” Turns out it’s a tiny side street with two houses on it, but either way I win the game. Jake contests my victory, but then: Oh look, we’re at the house. Jake jumps out of the car with the cookies and walks to the front door. The clock is ticking. He rings the doorbell. A few seconds pass and he looks at me. Silence. He rings the doorbell again, and luckily this time we hear footsteps. Is it Bailey? The door opens, and a man appears who just stares at the cookies. Jake hands him the box and gets him to sign the receipt. After ten seconds of cookie banter, we’re back in the car. “How long did that take?” he asks me. “Eight minutes,” I respond, rounding down. We’re a couple minutes behind schedule. We peel out of the driveway and book it to
the kitchen. On the way back, we manage to hit a string of green lights and not get a flat tire. The cookies are safe. His iPhone timer goes oďŹ&#x20AC; as we pull into a parking space outside the kitchen. He strolls inside, takes the cookies out of the oven, and jots down another order oďŹ&#x20AC; of his iPad. Then he prepares another batch for the oven. Nonstop cookie making. Always something to do. This continues for as long as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m there, which isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t much longer because I feel like Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m getting in his way. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rush hour in the cookie delivery businessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;9 p.m.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and Jake is running around the kitchen. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is when we get a lot of the college orders,â&#x20AC;? he explains as he preps two more pans for the oven. His clientele changes with the time of night. Earlier in the evening, he gets a lot of families and work events. Later in the evening, until he stops taking orders at 11:30 p.m., he gets college students, whose love of and appetite for cookies never wavers. College students are his bread and butter, so itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no surprise that Jakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bakesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; first retail location will be on Elliston Place, a block away from Vanderbilt. Jake will still be delivering cookies, but this store will give him the ability to sell cookies to passersby. It will also give him the ability to cook in his own kitchen, which heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s itching to do: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The people I rent the kitchen from are great, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like having a roommate in college. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always know where stuďŹ&#x20AC; is going to be.â&#x20AC;? Jake doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to be a college student again; he just wants to sell cookies to them. By the time this article is published, the retail location will already be open and waiting for you. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a cookie fan, and letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s be honest whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not, it might just make your week. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a Vanderbilt student, it might just make your year: imagine how quick deliveries are going to be now that heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basically on campus.
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THE MAKERS AND CRAFTSPEOPLE OF FORT HOUSTON MANUFACTURE HIGH-QUALITY GOODS FROM WOOD, METAL, INK, AND MORE—AND NOW THEY’RE POISED TO PUT THEIR HANDS TO USE IN HELPING SHAPE THE FUTURE OF THEIR HOME NEIGHBORHOOD, WEDGEWOOD-HOUSTON
BY JONAH ELLER-ISAACS | PHOTOS BY JONATHON KINGSBURY
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Greer Stadium looms above me.
The erstwhile home of the Nashville Sounds casts a wide, distinct shadow across the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, an intriguing urban pocket just south of downtown. Beneath the silhouette of the iconic guitar-shaped scoreboard is a small, tight-knit community of artists, musicians, and craftspeople living amidst long-established production facilities like United Record Pressing, “the world’s busiest record manufacturer.” My destination today, Fort Houston, is an unassuming jumble of warehouses that back up to the train tracks that crisscross the area. It’s most definitely not a military installation—the only drills inside are titanium-tipped; the only stockpile is a wealth of knowledge. “It’s like a gym, but for the creative class.” Ryan Schemmel, co-founder and co-owner of Fort Houston, is giving me a tour of his facility. The “creative class” needs a lot more space than your average gym: the fort is a massive maze, and its ten thousand square feet contain a buzzing hive of people making things, fixing things, creating furniture, shirts, dinnerware. Machines and machine parts fill all corners. Down a long, bustling hallway, I watch dust swirl up from an unseen table saw and into the low-angled October sunshine. At the front corner of this monumental complex is the machine shop. You can drive your
bike right in. “Motorcycles are a growing trend around here,” Ryan points out. There’s nothing too fancy on the racks—old Hondas, Yamahas, an art bike or two with wonky windscreens and high-backed seats. These are some well-loved wheels. The bikes spill out of the shop, their headlights pointing toward more work areas. At every turn, Ryan guides me into another workshop. Here is the print shop, where folks from Grand Palace Silkscreen are busy with a run of T-shirts for Edley’s Bar-B-Que. Here is the wood shop, where Ryan raises his voice over the whining saws. Two begoggled men look up briefly from their work and wave to Ryan before leaning back in. From the wood shop, Ryan leads me next door into a room with a blindingly bright, curved yellow wall; it’s a “cyc” wall, an infinity cyclorama. The effect is used for photography and video production to project the illusion of endless space. Local instrumental act Steelism recently recorded a video for their track “Marfa Lights” in here. The clever, pseudoscientific video looks great, like the band is floating in yellow. It’s a bit odd that this professional-grade photo and video space is immediately next to the wood shop, but, as Ryan explains, when it comes to Fort Houston, “everything’s not quite perfect, but that’s what makes it a little bit fun.” He adds with a smile, “Work with what you got.”
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We walk through an orderly array of workbench- in New York . . . It’s just such an obvious thing to es; here, a woman stands next to a lump of clay do. I can’t believe one doesn’t exist down here.’” ready for molding as she polishes and sorts ceramic Ryan immediately latched on to the idea of startplates fresh out of a small kiln she’s installed in her ing a similar project in Nashville. But local artists workspace. At the next desk, someone is squinting and makers here have dramatically different needs as they maneuver the tiny elements within a piece than folks living in shoebox apartments in Wilof delicate, dangly jewelry. Here and there, a few liamsburg. “We realized that we kinda had to focus folks are huddled over their laptops, but the major- on other things aside from saying, ‘Look at all this ity are working with their hands, shaping objects space,’” Ryan explains. Instead, their appeal would be access to a community of like-minded people from clay, or wood, or metal, or ink. Ryan walks me through their small art gallery and a shared collection of tools. They met with Butch Spyridon, president of (“It’s not a gallery. It’s a place where we can show artwork,” he tells me), and we sit down outside the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corporation. Fort Houston at a large picnic table. It’s an unsea- Butch, whom Ryan calls “the biggest mentor I’ve sonably warm day for fall. Halloween is just around had throughout this entire process,” sent them on the corner, and I’m happy to join him in taking ad- a seemingly endless series of meetings (“I eventuvantage of what will surely be our last taste of sum- ally tallied up sixty-six,” Ryan adds). Not everyone was on board or seemed to understand the idea’s mery sun. Ryan is surprisingly young. At just twenty-six value. “I was presenting this concept to a group of years old, he and his friend and co-owner Josh Vanderbilt grad students,” Ryan remembers. “Here Cooper have quite an operation on their hands. was a section about the numbers, how it could pay Josh and Ryan are scruffy—it seems to be part for itself . . . They kinda gave me a little bit of shit. of the men’s uniform at the fort. Ryan has a high Afterwards, during the Q&A, they’re like, ‘Okay, semi-pompadour atop his head, tortoise-shell sun- cool concept . . . how’s it really gonna make monglasses, and a necklace pendant featuring a skel- ey?’ And I kinda got flustered, but my response was, eton riding a bike. His left arm sports a tattoo of ‘Collaboration.’” Eventually the meetings led them to Cummins a copyright symbol. “I had every intention to go to law school,” Ryan informs me. Josh’s single tat- Station, where owner Zach Liff was eager to help too is above his right hip, and I’m not sure what to however he could. The idea needed space, and think when he shows it to me. It’s “Hakuna Mata- Cummins Station had space in abundance—just ta,” written in the classic Walt Disney script. “Got not exactly the right space. The initial foray into that the day I turned eighteen,” he exclaims, a bit the concept was called The Brick Factory, and it too proudly. But he adds with a laugh, “I grew up was significantly hampered by the limitations of the facility. Ryan tells me about the arrangement: real fast.” Fort Houston has come a remarkably long way “We literally had to have been the only place in the since these guys (along with Brent Jackson and world that had a carpeted wood shop. We had this Zach Duensing) began working on the idea, and photo studio in one room and some tools in anothRyan sighs exhaustedly that “the last three years er room, and people just didn’t get it. They’re like, have made me feel like I’m fifty-six.” As he tells me ‘Why? Why wouldn’t you just open a photo studio, or why wouldn’t you just open a wood shop?’ And the story of Fort Houston, I start to see why. Josh was building furniture in New York City the idea was, no, we’re trying to bring all these difwhen he discovered 3rd Ward, a kind of artist col- ferent worlds together to start creating something lective in Brooklyn that doubled as a classroom, more.” Josh, bleary-eyed from a long first week contemporary art space, and work facility for a with a new baby, asserts how much of a pain it wide range of creative endeavors. Ryan remembers was. “We were in there vacuuming sawdust up off when Josh first told him about 3rd Ward: “We’re the carpet all day,” he recalls. “It just didn’t make just sitting on his front porch drinkin’ a beer, and any sense. It was kind of embarrassing, actually, to he’s like, ‘Man, I’ve been working at this place up show people our wood shop. I really hated it.”
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“I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER BEEN ABLE TO GROW OUT OF A VERSIO N OF MYSELF ; I JUST KIND OF CARRY THEM ALL WITH ME.”
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“I DID IT
“ONE THING THAT’S ALWAYS MEANT A LOT TO US IS TO MAKE SURE THAT EVERYONE IN HERE IS DOIN’ WELL.” —JOSH
FORT HOUSTON: forthouston.com Follow on Facebook @FortHoustonNashville or Twitter and Instagram @FortHouston native.is/fort-houston
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And yet, from their start in a shameinducing carpeted wood shop, Fort Houston has shaken the sawdust from the carpet and become a successful enterprise. At present, around one hundred people are paying members of the fort. Tiered memberships are structured to allow members to pick and choose what shops they want to access. Remarkably, Ryan estimates that around 35 percent of those hundred use the fort as a base of operations for their small businesses. This isn’t just a coworking space where lonely freelancers gather for company; this is a job creation machine, an incubator for skilled craftspeople to hone their trade, to exchange ideas,
and to create tangible pieces of what Ryan refers to as the “New Nashville.” And while Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward closed at the end of 2013 amidst controversy and unrefunded membership fees, Ryan and Josh feel that their focus on the well-being of their members will help them avoid a similar fate. “One thing that’s always meant a lot to us,” Josh tells me, “is to make sure that everyone in here is doin’ well. Ryan and I didn’t pay ourselves anything for two years just to make sure this place stayed afloat.” That sort of dedication to their community of makers is paying dividends. Fort Houston has rightfully gained a reputation as a place to find
wide-ranging crafts of the highest quality, and just as the fort hits its stride, the surrounding Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood is perched on the crest of a wave of growth. The area’s close proximity to the downtown area and a wealth of available space make it prime real estate, and Ryan and Josh are firm in believing that Fort Houston can be a significant partner in that change. Core Development has recently purchased a seven-plus acre parcel of land around the corner and has asked the boys at Fort Houston to be involved in making it an effective live-work space, something that Nashville lacks. Ryan excitedly explains how it will work: “You, as an artist with your painting studio, you can live on the bottom floor with your garage door. You can live in there, and guess what, you’re gonna pop open that garage door, and by day, it can be your retail shop. It can be your studio. You’re allowed to invite people in. So you can live and work in the same facility.” Beyond their advisory role with Core, Ryan and Josh continue to consider the needs of their fort members first and have plans to develop what they call “The Fort Houston Finish,” a catalog of all that their skilled craftspeople can offer. A new Wedgewood-Houston homeowner will be able to choose from a number of handcrafted, locally produced home design elements, all available just down the road at the fort. Hobbyists joining Fort Houston may find themselves quickly transformed into design professionals. The tagline on the fort’s website reads, “Facilitators of Human Potential.” Ryan and Josh, in leading the many talented denizens of Fort Houston in an exchange of intellectual currency, are not only facilitating a transformation of each artist and maker that comes to the fort. They’re also illuminating the potential of the surrounding neighborhood from which they take their name. Not bad for a couple twenty-somethings.
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IN UNDER THREE YEARS, THE APACHE RELAY WENT FROM SKIPPING CLASS AT BELMONT TO OPENING FOR MUMFORD & SONS. NOW, ON THEIR LATEST SELFTITLED RELEASE, THEY’RE TRADING THEIR TWANG FOR STRING ARRANGEMENTS
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BY ANDREW LEAHEY | PHOTOS BY ANDREA BEHRENDS IT’S HAPPY HOUR AT MICKEY’S TAVERN, and all six members of The Apache Relay are squeezed around a single table, within arm’s reach of one of the best jukeboxes in East Nashville. They’re making the most of the evening’s two-for-one drink special. “This is an amazing song,” frontman Michael Ford Jr. declares as the first few bars of the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” begin to blast throughout the room, rattling everyone’s pint glasses. To celebrate, he orders another drink. Meanwhile, Kellen Wenrich is having a bit of trouble. The fiddle player and keyboardist recently got into a self-described “debacle with a table saw,” resulting in a nasty wound that nearly sliced off the pointer and middle fingers of his left hand. Tonight, he’s wearing a large cast that reaches all the way to his forearm, making him look a bit like a long-haired MegaMan. Needless to say, he isn’t double-fisting any of his drinks. “The fingers are still there,” he says assuredly, “but I might be down for the count for a minute.” Can you play fiddle right now, though? “Probably not.” But the band is about to perform at a big festival in Fayetteville, right? “Yes.” So . . . what’s going to happen? “We’ll work it out,” Michael answers with a nonchalance that owes
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CHE THE APA
RELAY:
.com herelay theapac book e c on Fa Follow elay R e h c a p @TheA gram a t s In ter and Relay or Twit @Apache he is/apac native.
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“WE WEREN’T THINKING ABOUT HOW THE SONGS WOULD SOUND LIVE, OR WHAT PEOPLE WOULD CALL THEM, OR WHO THEY SOUNDED LIKE.”
Things were gloriously chaless to the evening’s alcohol intake and more to The Apache Relay’s ability to roll with the punches. It’s a otic back home in Nashville skill they learned half a decade ago, back when most too. On a winter night earof the bandmates were still students at Belmont Uni- lier that year, Mike hosted a basement show at his Granny versity. Things were casual during those early days. Michael White Pike house, with a spehad spent years backing up his older brother, Ben, in cial late-night performance a grunge-blues band called The Hollywood Ten. But by Mumford & Sons. The by early 2009, he had started focusing on a solo ca- music ended at 1 a.m., but reer with a batch of acoustic tunes that skirted the more than fifty people stuck line between folk and rock ‘n’ roll. He was listening around for an impromptu to a lot of Bruce Springsteen at the time—specifically jam in one of the bedrooms Nebraska, an album with a raw, stripped-down vibe upstairs, where singalong verthat almost seemed to predate the Americana move- sions of “Amazing Grace” and ment that would sweep the world twenty-five years “Wagon Wheel” were played later—as well as Raising Sand, a Grammy-winning al- by a group that included the bum that paired a rock god (Robert Plant) with a blue- Mumfords, singer/songwriter grass singer (Alison Krauss). Michael loved the idea of Mat Kearney, members of those two worlds colliding. Looking for a backup band Old Crow Medicine Show that could add some rootsy stomp to his new songs, and—bizarrely—actor Jake —MICHAEL he reached out to Mike Harris, guitarist for a Belmont- Gyllenhaal, who’d flown into town earlier that day. How based bluegrass group called The Apache Relay. The Apache Relay and Michael joined forces that in the world were people like spring. They kicked things off with a debut show at Kellen supposed to wake up at 7:30 a.m. for music Bongo Java, billed as “Michael Ford Jr. & The Apache theory class after a night like that? In the end, some bandmates graduated and some Relay.” Several months later, they recorded an album, 1988, named after the year Michael was born. didn’t. No one seems to regret it. When asked to list By 2010, the guys had scrapped the unnecessarily their favorite memories from those years, they all oflong band name and rebranded themselves simply as fer up musical highlights instead of school milestones. The Apache Relay. They specialized in Americana One particular highlight everyone seems to share music, but it wasn’t the sort of stuff you’d hear at the is the October 2011 arena show in Toronto, Canada, Bluebird Cafe. Instead, the guys played rough-edged, where The Apache Relay opened for Mumford & Sons room-shaking anthems that sounded more like indie for the first time. “We were supposed to load in at nine o’clock that rock songs performed on bluegrass instruments. It was a popular sound. As their reputation grew, though, morning,” Michael remembers. “The night before, it started getting harder and harder for the guys to bal- we’d been in State College, Pennsylvania, playing ance schoolwork with the group’s busy tour schedule. a show downtown with G. Love. We got out of that “I remember playing in Austin one night, then get- show around eleven or twelve at night, then drove ting into the van after the gig and driving back through straight to Canada and crossed the border around five the night, and going straight to math class once we hit o’clock in the morning, right at the point where NiNashville,” says Brett Moore, a multi-instrumentalist agara Falls is located. The whole thing was so surreal. who switches between guitar, keys, and mandolin. “I You don’t get any sleep for an entire day, then you load was just over it. Music is a funny thing, because you your stuff into a Toronto arena and play a show for the can’t always institutionalize it. With some styles, most people you’ve ever played in front of, times one you’ve gotta get out there and experience it. That’s hundred. I’ve never been so nervous before a show. I thought I was going to throw up.” what we were trying to do.” “That was next level,” Mike agrees. “It was a sink-or“We tried our best to balance everything,” adds Kellen, who was still a full-time student in late 2011, when swim situation.” The Apache Relay swam, blasting their way through the band spent several weeks touring the East Coast as G. Love & Special Sauce’s opening act. “I’d play a thirty-minute performance at the Air Canada Cena gig and then write a paper in the van . . . possibly tre. Looking back, they all seem to view that show as their big break. As 2011 turned into 2012, the guys drunk. I stuck it out as long as I could.”
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kept hitting the road as often as pos- The Apache Relay, a record that bridges sible, opening a handful of additional the gap between the throwback sounds gigs for Mumford & Sons—who, at the of 1960s California pop—thanks to a time, were enjoying superstardom after handful of string arrangements worthe release of their first album, Sigh No thy of a Hollywood film and an overall More. Not bad for a band that was barely “Wall of Sound” vibe reminiscent of Phil Spector—and the modern sounds of three years old. Last year, without any classes or the American South. It’s a pop album . coursework to keep the bandmates an- . . sort of. It’s also an Americana album chored in Nashville, The Apache Relay . . . sort of. There’s a lot of ambiguity split town again. This time, they headed there, and that’s what seems to fire up to Los Angeles, where they spent sev- The Apache Relay’s engines these days: eral months wrapping up their third al- creating a type of music that’s almost bum in the same recording studio that impossible to pigeonhole. On the album’s kickoff track, “Katie, gave birth to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Damn the Torpedoes and Nirva- Queen of Tennessee,” Michael woos a na’s Nevermind. They pulled long hours, girl over sweeping strings and threeworking and reworking every single part doo-wop harmonies, sounding song on the tracklist. They mixed and like some 1950s crooner asking his girlremixed. They mastered and remas- friend to the sock hop. Three minutes tered. Entire days would be dedicated later, he’s singing Middle Eastern scales to small, specific tasks, like finding the on “Ruby,” a psychedelic campfire tune driven forward by acoustic guitars, right guitar tone for a particular verse. The guys had a reason for working hand claps, and cymbal crashes that so hard: they were looking to redefine sound as though the drum kit was rethemselves as a band. The Apache Re- placed with chains and aluminum trash lay had launched their career as an cans. What’s the correct name for that amped-up string band and grown into sort of genre-jumping style? No one something much, much bigger, with seems to know, which suits The Apache influences that included everything Relay just fine. “We were just trying to write great from Motown to spaghetti western soundtracks. Their music didn’t re- songs,” Michael says of the album’s creally twang anymore; instead, it swayed, ation. “We were trying to make the best swooned, stomped, and surged. It was record we possibly could. We weren’t time to make a new album that reflect- thinking about how the songs would sound live, or what people would call ed that growth. “We rented a cool old house where we them, or who they sounded like. We could sleep,” Mike says. “Technically, didn’t even go into the studio looking to the home was in Bel Air, but it wasn’t make a big, lush album. It just came out like The Fresh Prince. It was a great place that way. All we knew is that we didn’t though. Very ’70s. Rad carpet. A pool. A want to make the same record twice.” hot tub. We stayed there for weeks, go***** ing to the studio six days a week and basically thinking about nothing but Several weeks after our Mickey’s Tavthe album. We purposely removed our- ern meet-up, the guys have left town selves from all distractions back home.” again, making a slow loop around the By the early spring, they’d completed country in their 2011 Mercedes Sprinter
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(an upgrade from their previous van, which died in the desert during a marathon trip from Los Angeles to Nashville). For this fall tour, they’re sharing most of the shows with two bands: Desert Noises, a Salt Lake City–based band cut from the same woodsy cloth as Band of Horses, and The Wild Feathers, another Nashville group on the fast track to something bigger and better. On Halloween afternoon, while all three bands hightail it back home for a half-week break, Michael hops on the phone to give me an update about the first round of shows. “Things are very friendly and very communal out here,” he says. “At most of the venues, there’s different green rooms for each band, but everyone’s hanging out in each other’s rooms instead. Or we’ll hang out on The Wild Feathers’ bus. We’re all doing ‘The Weight’ at the end of each show too, with each singer taking a verse. It’s been like that from the very first night of the tour. We love it. Hey, tell me: how’s Nashville looking right now?” It’s cold. Rainy. They’re calling for a pretty chilly Halloween, honestly. “That’s what we heard! Amazing. We can’t wait to get back there.” But you were just in Los Angeles. The weather is probably much, much better there. “Yeah, but now we’ve got a few days off before going out again, and we’re pumped to spend them at home.” Even if going home requires a thirtyhour trip from Los Angeles to Nashville, on the same roads that killed your previous van? “Absolutely.” The Apache Relay: still rolling with the punches.
Open Tuesday-Saturday 12:00-5:30PM & by appointment.
Making Spirits Bright MUS I C ROW
65 Music Square E.
G E R M A N TO W N 1201 5th Ave N. #NATI V ENA S HVI L LE
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BECCA STEVENS, FOUNDER OF THISTLE FARMS, WANTS TO REFORM THE DARK HISTORY OF TEA AND HEAL THE WORLD WITH PRODUCTS THAT ARE MADE WITH LOVE AND RESPECT FOR WOMEN BY LINDSEY BUTTON | PHOTOS BY KRISTIN SWEETING
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A PURPLE TEAPOT IS PLACED BEFORE ME ON THE WARM WOOD OF THE TABLE as Rev. Becca Stevens, founder of Magdalene and Thistle Farms, makes her own cup of tea behind the counter. Thistle Stop Café is bustling with conversations, many of which Becca pops in and out of as she makes her way to the table. I am drinking the Thistle Stop Café Herbal Blend, a combination of milk thistle, dandelion root, and cardamom. There is little small talk with Becca—she is refreshingly (and proudly) practical and gets directly to the point. “If I had a topic for your story,” she states in her Southern
drawl, “it would be this: the story of trafficking and violence against women is a horrible story. The story of Thistle Farms is a story of hope.” Becca Stevens started Magdalene in 1997 as a residential program for women who survived lives of prostitution, trafficking, and addiction. Thistle Farms is a social enterprise run by the women of Magdalene. They create all-natural body products by hand and package and ship them all over the country. The café we are sitting in today, in the heart of West Nashville, is part of the continual vision of Thistle Farms to build a community where women support each other, support them-
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selves, and ultimately bring to light a At Thistle Farms, they blend these oils oxidant, antiseptic, anticonversation about the larger social is- with other oils and natural ingredients inflammatory, warm and to make their collection of healing soothing,” she starts listing. sues at hand. oils. “We breathe in healing and then “It’s good for digestion. Any “This was never set up to help only a few women who are labeled criminals we send them out with hope all around digestion issues?” We laugh, and the discusor victims or survivors—all of those the country,” Becca explains. “We’re labels get put on the women—but it in four hundred stores now. So this sion of digestion leads her was to really have a conversation about little drop of oil goes from this field in to ask one of the volunteers our culture,” Becca says. “The women Rwanda, across the ocean to this group what the soup of the day is. who come into Magdalene, on aver- of women in Nashville, then possibly She brings us two cups of age, are first raped between the ages to a church in Oklahoma, and maybe mushroom soup. “We built this café,” she of seven and eleven, and they first hit somebody anoints a new baby with it. the streets between fourteen and six- It has intentional healing, it has practi- starts, “because the need teen years old. In my mind, most of the cal healing, and it has a kind of dreamy was there and it was a great way to give women new women in Magdalene have experienced healing.” Becca runs next door to Thistle opportunities. So I started the short side of justice, they’ve experienced what the back side of anger is like, Farms (which is connected to the café) thinking that if we’re making healing what the underside of bridges feels like, to get the oils to show me. She hands stuff it makes sense for the next step and they begin to think that somehow me two small bottles. One is called after oils to be tea.” But when Becca started to research that’s their lot, that that’s their fate. But Compassion, a blend of geranium, what would it be like for young women chamomile, lavender, and myrrh in jo- tea, she quickly realized that it had a who experience sexual assault to expect joba oil. The other is called Inspiration much darker story behind it. “Tea has and includes bergamot, cardamom, and a horrible history: opiate wars, traffickjustice?” While it may not be clear at first sweet orange. “Those are the happy ing, it’s tied to the drug trade, it’s tied what justice for women has to do with scents,” she tells me as I roll Inspira- to some of the most abusive economic essential oils or tea, Becca explains to tion on my wrist and breathe it in. I practices you can imagine. I mean the me, “The women’s stories become heal- mention that I always carry clove bud whole East African Trade Company was ing stories, so it makes sense that the oil with me, and she is visibly surprised. started because of tea. Clipper ships products need to be about healing. This “Awwww, why do you love cloves?” she built because of tea. It’s been in treaties. It’s been at war tables. Anywhere you asks me. tea is about healing I tell her simply want to track colonialism, track tea.” you and offering love All tea (black, green, white, oolong) because it smells like as you drink it, and winter to me and comes from the same plant, camellia that’s as important that winter is my fa- sinensis, and it’s one of the oldest culas anything that will vorite season. I take tivated plants in the world. “It has this happen today . . . It’s it out of my bag and universal aspect,” Becca explains. “It all a healing story. So let her smell. “You has this ancient aspect. It has this relithe oils are one of the know, you’re drawn gious aspect.” While tea may be considways it manifests itto your own heal- ered sacred in many cultures, it is also self, but it should be ing,” she says. I ask a source of great oppression in an ecoin the floor, it should her what she means. nomic and capitalistic sense. “If you’re be in the air you “There’s something in buying a tea from somewhere like Teavbreathe, that we’re clove that’s probably ana, they can’t tell you all of the places doing this for love.” really good for you.” it’s from and all of the hands that have The oils come I must look skepti- grown it. For us, it’s been about trying from a group of cal, because she takes to track the tea to the actual growers, to genocide survivors out her phone and the actual hands that are picking it, and in Rwanda and ingoogles what the uses helping cultivate places where women clude eucalyptus, tea of cloves are. “Anti- are growing tea and actually own the tree, and patchouli.
“THEY BEGIN TO THINK THAT SOMEHOW THAT’S THEIR LOT. . . BUT WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE FOR YOUNG WOMEN WHO EXPERIENCE SEXUAL ASSAULT TO EXPECT JUSTICE?”
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THISTLE FARMS: thistlefarms.com Follow on Facebook and Twitter @ThistleFarms native.is/becca-stevens
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estates as opposed to working their whole lives for not-living wages. Fair trade in tea is not the equivalent to a living wage. That’s a misnomer in fair trade. My hope right now is to blow open the tea market for justice tea. Not just fair trade tea that’s sold still by multi-conglomerate companies, but specific justice teas.” Becca’s new book is called The Way of Tea and Justice: Rescuing the World’s Favorite Beverage from Its Violent History, and it recounts the process of building Thistle Stop Café and how she created alliances to start the team effort of “Shared Trade.” “You want your tea to be good but you also want your tea to be grown with a lot of respect and love for women,” Becca says. “The idea behind it is that you can have the most beautiful Darjeeling tea in the world, but if it’s grown on the backs of oppression, it should have a bitter taste in your mouth. You can have a pretty plain cup of black tea grown with love, and it can feel as regal as high tea at Harrods in London.” She periodically stops to talk to employees and say things like: “Hi Jennifer, is that a new top?” and jokingly introduces me as her potential daughter-in-law. Naturally, that leads me to inquire about her children and whether building all of this while also being a mother was not somewhat challenging. “No,” she bluntly states. “Everybody’s life is full, everybody’s life is busy; you just get to pick what you’re full and busy with. I mean, it’s like being a farmer. You don’t think about, ‘Do I feel like watering the crops?’ You water the crops. You feed your kids, you go to work, you do whatever. I think there’s almost this sense that business is harder than it is. Or more complicated than it is. But I think it’s like farming too. You just grow your business, you go sell your products, and you go meet people. You tell the story, and the rest of it works itself out. Priesthood is that way. There’s this huge complication around it but really, you know, you tell stories about love, baptize and bury and marry people, and the rest of it kind of works itself out.” In addition to her work at Magdalene and Thistle Farms, Becca serves as chaplain at St. Augustine’s Chapel at Vanderbilt University. She remains true to her practicality and to-the-point nature in her priesthood. She wants people to be able to be themselves and to be in a comforting and welcoming environment without fear of judgment, the same philosophy she instills behind Magdalene. After I mention that I have gay friends who go to St. Augustine for that very reason, she says, “I mean before all of this debate, before when, in 2003, I first stood on the floor of the national convention and spoke on behalf of
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the first openly gay bishop, I never struggled with that issue. It was as easy as the death penalty for me. I knew I didn’t want to kill anybody, and I knew I didn’t care what anybody’s orientation was. It seems crazy to not say, ‘Just date who you want and let’s keep going. Let’s keep feeding the hungry. Clothing the naked. Giving drink to the thirsty. Going to visit the prison. Tending the sick. Comforting the dying. Burying the dead.’ That’s what we’re supposed to do. And who you love is who you love and let’s
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move on.” That’s the most endearing thing about Becca: she sees what truly matters, and the rest fades away. Her concern is, and will remain, the simplicity of healing. She tells me she wants to show me one last thing and directs me out of the café through the side door. We enter the small shipping warehouse, and she leads me through the rows of bath salts, healing oils, fragrance oils, and candles, stopping to share the stories behind all of them. Then she shows me all of the
different places across the country the boxes are being shipped to. Outside, a group of women are on lunch break. They cut jokes with each other and with Becca. She introduces me to them and says she wanted me to see the women behind the shipping department, so people know where the products are truly coming from. As I’m leaving, Anika, head of shipping, interjects, “This is all I want everyone to know: when they order our products, it’s shipped with love.”
SH AINND MCA DEENS CI ANR EV ETS E E N 8 8
BY JENNA LANE
W W W. S I N C E N I N E T E E N 8 8 . C O M 2SINCENINETEEN88
“JUST DATE WHO YOU WANT AND LET’S KEEP GOING. LET’S KEEP FEEDING THE HUNGRY. CLOTHING THE NAKED. GIVING DRINK TO THE THIRSTY.” #NATI V ENA S HVI L LE
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SUGAR SCRUB FAIRY When the first blast of winter weather strips your skin of natural moisture, the first place to reach is the kitchen cabinet. “Dry skin is unprotected skin,” says veteran beauty expert Melanie Shelley. “The first step to protecting it is to remove the rough top layer so you can hydrate the fresh skin underneath.” Rub the flakes away with a simple in-shower exfoliant of equal parts brown sugar and coconut oil, then follow with a healthy slather of locally made goat’s milk cream. “Your skin will never feel more alive,” says Shelley. Melanie Shelley, TRIM Legendary Beauty Photo by Brett Warren
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The Face: Sofie Rovenstine @ AMAXTalent.com | Hair + Makeup: Melanie Shelley @ TRIM Legendary Beauty for AMAXTalent.com
Coco Scrubs Vanilla Rum Sugar Scrub, $9, cocoscrubs.com | Coco Scrubs Lemon Almond Lip Balm, $4, cocoscrubs.com | The Honey Bee Farm and Pantry Goat’s Milk Skin Cream, $10, thehoneybeefarmandpantry.com | Phyto Pumpkin Enzyme Peel Service, $85, Private Edition | Oribe Soft Dry Conditioner Spray, $35, TRIM Legendary Beauty
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YOU OUGHTA KNOW: THELMA AND THE
SLEAZE
SURE MAKE NLOAD OW TO D LIKE A T HEAR EP ON S FI T CAMP BAND
We asked Daniel Pujol who he thought we should feature in this month’s You Oughta Know, and he picked local three-piece Thelma and the Sleaze. So we invited Nashville’s resident punk sludgesters down to the office to doodle and answer a few questions. We talked about Snow Leopard (the church van they use on tour), zombies, Pam Grier, and Chyna. And then we talked about Chyna some more. They really like Chyna. Check out Thelma and the Sleaze on their current southeastern tour.
THELMA AND THE SLEAZE thelmaandthesleaze.com Follow on Facebook and Instagram @Thelmaandthesleaze or Twitter @ThelmaandtheSle
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PCTFSWBUPSZ
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ANIMAL OF THE MONTH The
WILD HOG
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