Native | May 2013 | Nashville, TN

Goodbuy Girls | Hello Boys The Joy of Painting Nashville B-Cycle Cafe Fundamental Future Unlimited Michael Carter James Willis Kat Zhang And More!

JUNE 4 | Schermerhorn Symphony Center An amazing entertainment experience featuring music from the most popular video games of all time!

BUY TICKETS AT: NashvilleSymphony.org 615.687.6400

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CONTENTS

THE GOODS

MAY 2013

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BEER FROM HERE

Yazoo and Calfkiller join forces to bring death to beer tax with “The Beacon”

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PRAISE THE ROOF

Meet me at The Hermitage

UNDER HIS SKIN

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For some, it’s a mission trip. For others, it’s a near-death experience.

But for Safe House Tattoo’s Ian White, it was ink that led to his spiritual awakening

Cocktail of the Month

It’s not a secret—this month’s concoction will have you singing “Hallelujah”

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MASTER PLATERS

Mama said eat your greens. But she never said they would be so damn tasty. Change it up with a Mokum Carrot Salad from Chef Philip Krajeck at Rolf and Daughters

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Hey Good Lookin’

When it comes to your next cut and style, don’t overthink it. Just use your head, silly

-COVER PHOTO BY JESS WILLIAMS

FEATURES 8

LEFT, RIGHT, FORWARD. NEVER BACK.

Keith Rawls can save your life, fight a bull, and put your ass on a bike—with Nashville B-Cycle

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YOU OUGHTA KNOW

Lightning 100 presents this year’s winner of Music City Mayhem, Lulu Mae

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36 THE HYBRID I AM

From spoken word to signing with HarperCollins, twenty-twoyear-old Young Adult author Kat Zhang zings

Native Animal of the Month

Lil’ Red’s got shells for days, mad crawdaddies, but she’s known to snap on occasion. We love her lots, but that fish cray

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Overheard @ NATIVE

So outrageous we had to remind ourselves that yes, those things did come out of our mouths

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OBSERVATORY

Get sprung with this month’s street style

44

WHEN IT CALLS

61

MAN IN BLACK

You might not be able to order from a kid’s menu at Cafe Fundamental. But Head Chef Jamie Watson will make sure you get sauced

68

ROUGH CUT

When life gives Michael Carter lemons, he makes movies

Future Unlimited’s Sam D’Amelio and David Miller only needed a few “holy shit” moments to realize that the sky’s the limit

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THE FANTASTIC FOUR

Neighboring boutique clothiers Goodbuy Girls and Hello Boys are more than a brand—they’re a lifestyle. Part rockabilly, part Southern gent, fully badass

RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME

James Willis loves being in Nashville, but he was born about 130 years too late

THE JOY OF PAINTING GETS SUPER CEREAL

For garage-pop outfit The Joy of Painting, there are no mistakes, just happy accidents

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DEAR NATIVES,

president:

ANGELIQUE PITTMAN JON PITTMAN

publisher: editor-in-chief:

It’s May. So wake up and smell the roses. I know—it’s not quite summer yet, but don’t get your panties in a bunch. Soon enough, your face will be melting right along with your Bobbie’s Dairy Dip. It’s the perfect time to hit the park for a picnic, relax on the patio with a brew, break out the shorts, and get that ass on a bike. But don’t forget the deodorant or the helmet.

And another thing to remember: be nice, because the weather is. Whether that means giving that idiot driver a break when he has absolutely no idea how to use the new roundabout on 8th, or actually buying a current issue of The Contributor instead of taping the old one to your dash—it’s important to pay it forward. If your mom didn’t tell you what goes around comes around, Justin Timberlake surely did. While I’m not a mother in the traditional sense, around the NATIVE office, they call me “Mama.” Don’t ask, and I won’t tell. But I will tell you one thing: I’m expecting some badass tokens of appreciation for Mother’s Day. Because I said so,

creative director:

ELISE LASKO BECCA CAPERS LAURABETH MARTIN HANNAH LOVELL

assistant editors:

art director: sales director:

KATRINA HARTWIG CAYLA MACKEY JOSHUA SIRCHIO COLIN PIGOTT JOE CLEMONS ALEX TAPPER

web editor:

TAYLOR RABOIN

account executives:

writers:

videographer:

EDITOR- IN- CHIEF

SARAH SHARP MACKENZIE MOORE

managing editor:

photographers:

Sarah Sharp,

interns:

ANDREA BEHRENDS BRENT LAFEVER LAUREN HOLLAND CAMERON POWELL JESS WILLIAMS RYAN GREEN JEREMY RYAN ALYSSE GAFKJEN DANIELLE ATKINS

WAYNE BLAKE POLLARD

ALI AKEY LEIGH WARE KATE CAUTHEN TYLER WALKER

music supervisor:

brand advisors:

CHRISTINA VINSON MALLORIE KING ZARNA SURTI DAVE PITTMAN ANDREW JOHNSON KRISTEN MCDANIEL GILLIS BERNARD ANN RAVANOS RALPH NOYES JUSTIN BARISICH WELLS ADAMS JUSTINA BIEBER, JR.

to advertise, contact:

JOE CLEMONS DAVE PITTMAN CAYLA MACKEY

for all other enquiries:

SALES@NATIVE.IS HELLO@NATIVE.IS

BEHIND THE COVER: For May’s cover shoot with Ian White, photographer Jess Williams headed to the Safe House Tattoo Studio in Edgehill Village. Luckily, Ian’s fellow artists were more than willing to lend a hand.

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Left, Right, Forward.

Never Back.

FRESH OFF HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE U.S. NAVY, KEITH RAWLS MOVED TO NASHVILLE AND MASTERMINDED THE NASHVILLE B-CYCLE BIKESHARING PROGRAM, ALL THE WHILE LEADING A HEALTH-CONSCIOUS CULTURAL SHIFT IN OUR OWN BACKYARDS by justin barisich | photography by ryan green 8 / / // / / / / / /

Until about three months ago, I hated biking.

On top of the expected backlog of scraped knees and elbows, my siblings and I each have a biking war story from our younger days. My older brother once cruised into the back of a parked and open Ford F-150, flinging himself headfirst into the bed of the pickup truck. My little sister smashed into a concrete-bottomed light post in an abandoned grocery store parking lot after pedaling twenty laps around it. And I, struggling with the combined task of steering and braking, careened face-first into not one, but two, mailboxes and a telephone pole on my block in a single afternoon.

My dad, knowing the cause to be hopeless, would buy my brother, sister, and me the cheapest bikes possible from Wal-Mart.

Despite the fact that Louisiana lacks hills, much less mountains, they were always

mountain bikes. He’d tuck our new mechanical horses under the Christmas tree and convince us that they’d ride just fine on the sunken streets. Come spring, we’d inevitably abandon them in favor of nursing our open wounds and broken egos.

After taking a decade-long break, I thought I’d give biking a second chance. This past March, I met up with a trio of friends at the corner of 5th Avenue and Monroe Street to saddle up with the city’s newest bikesharing program, Nashville B-Cycle. After we rented our bikes from the kiosk, we set off on what I’d describe as the perfect day for biking—sunny, with a slight breeze and little traffic.

Pushing off the curb and pedaling into the street, I felt like I was gliding on air atop the red Cadillac of bicycles. With a sturdy build and a classic design, these bicycles balance the needs of a meandering tourist with the

desire of a health-conscious city slicker.

Plainly put, it was miles beyond my janky Wal-Mart bikes growing up. I felt like I had finally grown into bicycle maturity, despite my desire to ring the bell every forty-five seconds.

Upon rolling up to Fifth Third Plaza, alongside pockets of other red bikes streaming in from every direction, I was immediately greeted by Keith Rawls, the general manager of Nashville B-Cycle. His attention was kept occupied, however. He was busy coordinating the hundreds of bikers packing the square, catering to nearby food trucks and sponsor tents, and arranging a speech from Mayor Karl Dean. So Keith and I only spoke briefly, but I was instantly intrigued by the mind behind this bi-pedal renaissance.

A few days later, I’m sitting inside the Nashville B-Cycle office, located a stone’s throw away from the Downtown Public Li-

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brary. Keith’s wearing a red polo with the B-cycle insignia stitched on the left breast.

The shirt fits tightly over his broad shoulders and upper-body musculature. Bikes are strewn about the room in a manner that seems simultaneously haphazard and organized, and Eric, the head mechanic, keeps walking in and out. Keith seems relaxed but assertive—a man who has a goal and purpose in everything he does.

He originally hails from Braddock, Pennsylvania, which lies about ten miles outside of Pittsburgh. He was shipped all over the world during his twenty-year tenure as a medic and health-care provider

for the United States Navy.

As a naval independent duty corpsman, Keith would see patients without the direct supervision of a doctor. He was aboard submarines and surface ships and out in the field with Marines. “Drop me off with my guys and a medical bag, and we could sustain the beach for as long as you wanted us to,” he explains.

He earned a total of three Navy Commendation Medals and two Navy Achievement Medals while serving as a chief petty officer in far-flung areas such as Benin, West Africa; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Rota, Spain. When I eagerly urge Keith to tell me more about his honors, he becomes reserved— for the first and only time during our conversation—and then launches into the heroic story of how he earned his first award, the only one he feels comfortable talking about.

Keith was stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of a team of marines and sailors who were responsible for maintaining active minefields. Daily, or “365” as Keith calls it, the team would tread around the base’s perimeter to replace the protective, old mines with fresh ones. One afternoon, the minefield team was given an unusual order to act as the first response team for a small flight carrying fruits and

veggies that had smashed into the ground nearby due to heavy crosswinds. Keith and his men raced to the disaster, rescued the crewmembers from the plane, and lost not a single life that day. Despite his obvious valor, he ends the story humbly, “It was the team I was working with; I just happened to be leading them that day.”

After giving two decades of his life to the service, Keith retired from the Navy in 2008 and moved to Nashville that same year to accept a position with the Metropolitan Public Health Department as the Director of the Tuberculosis Elimination Division. In 2010, he transferred to the role of Project Manager for the city’s bikeshare program, one of twenty-two initiatives funded by the Communities Putting Prevention to Work grant, designed to address the obesity epidemic in Middle Tennessee. Two years later, at the age of forty-four, he was tapped to lead the Nashville B-Cycle program with the Nashville Downtown Partnership.

Given his last two jobs, it seems natural that Keith enjoys two-wheeled transit, but I’m curious about his affinity for bikerelated work.

“I just like bikes; I like riding. Other than that, there’s nothing in my resume that says, ‘he’d be a great bike sharer, coordinator, project manager, or whatever,’ other than my leadership skills. I’m always asking questions, so I wouldn’t say I’m an expert by any means.”

However, in trying to get the bikesharing program off the ground, he asked

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himself, “Can we run it? Can we pull it off? Will Nashvillians receive it? Will they even use it?” It was Keith’s years of strategic military training that primed him to get the job done, and get it done well. He can even apply his military experience to bike-sharing logistics: “Resources, personnel, money, and making sure you’ve got the right people in the room for the job.” As an afterthought, he adds, “And the correct leadership.”

In addition, Keith draws upon the lessons learned from other leaders, especially those of former American presidents. Noting works he’s read recently—including books about Harry S. Truman and Bill Clinton’s Back to Work—as well as the recent silver screen rendition of Lincoln, Keith is amazed by, he says, “Their leadership under duress. I harken back to them—that drive, that compass, to navigate through uncharted and difficult waters.”

It’s that continual desire to surpass a challenge, if not an impossibility, that compels Keith to succeed. “Because we all make them, I have to remind myself ‘no excuses, just get results.’

They may not be the best results, but just get them.”

Striving to be that exemplary leader in the arena of disease prevention, Keith reveals the two secrets to his successful workout: consistency and elevated heart rate. “It doesn’t have to be weights; it doesn’t have to be running. Just consistency in whatever gets your heart rate up.” And being so involved with Nashville’s biking scene, Keith fittingly starts gushing about his favorite nearby biking trail—the well-manicured Hamilton Creek. “It’s not like I’ve ridden all over the world. But I find something new that I’m able to pull off that maybe I shouldn’t

NASHVILLE B-CYCLE: To find out more about how you can get your butt on a B-Cycle, visit nashville. bcycle.com.

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"IT’S NOT LIKE I’VE RIDDEN ALL OVER THE WORLD. BUT I FIND SOMETHING NEW THAT I’M ABLE TO PULL OFF THAT MAYBE I SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO." 12 / / / / / / / / / /

be able to.”

And as of right now, Keith is pushing to pull off a “shift in the mindset of what Tennesseans and Nashvillians are used to in their culture and their pastimes,” with B-Cycle at the epicenter. Part of that movement is directly addressing and confronting the stereotypes of what he calls, “Black folks don’t swim or bike,” through a marketing campaign aimed at exposure, because, as Keith wisely puts it “If you can’t see yourself in it, you can’t see yourself doing it.” He recognizes that “the culture change is going to take a while,” but that nucleus will “spread that culture of change throughout the city.” He continues, “I can’t stress enough the importance of a strong health department in a city, and they can do great things with a shoestring budget.”

After planting that positive cultural shift, Keith plans to stick around to watch it bloom. His next step with Nashville B-Cycle: expansion. “We’re looking for and taking all comers— whoever wants to discuss having a BCycle kiosk in their neighborhood.”

He goes on to tell me about some of Nashville’s most marginalized citizens and how, with the aid of the bikes, they were able to find work and travel to their new jobs. And Keith feels honored to be able to make a positive, progressive change for the people of this rapidly growing city.

But he saves the biggest piece of his heart for his family. Every day, his wife of twenty-five years and fifteen-yearold son are the reasons why he gets up in the morning. When not wrapped up in B-Cycle work, Keith can usually be found outside, playing street hockey or kicking a soccer ball with his son.

Going out on a limb, I ask Keith about his being a part of a biracial couple living in the South. He smiles a bit and coolly responds, “I’ve been all over the country, and I’ve been all throughout the South. I have experienced some push back from both African Americans and white folks. But I don’t see it as a huge deal for me. Maybe I’ve become more callous and less sensitive

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to it. To be direct, I feel very comfortable.” It’s in this moment that I see just how well Keith’s relaxed confidence fits him.

As I’m packing up to leave, I notice the mosaic-patterned, ceramic bull standing his ground on the coffee table next to me. Keith sees me studying it, and his eyes suddenly light up as he slips into the story of the time he not only watched a bullfight, but danced with the bulls (in the ring) while stationed in Spain. Keith, along with a few of his navy buddies, decided to try their bodies as matadors. As they were receiving lessons from an old matador trainer who wisely wouldn’t let these tourists advance past the juvenile bulls, the aged man kept repeating the phrase, “Left, right, forward.

Never back.”

As every sailor took his turn tangoing swordless with the young bull, they each failed to remember the trainer’s advice.

They all backpedaled when the bull charged them, and as a result, they suffered a few cuts and scrapes. Noticing the failing trend, Keith refused to partake in what seemed like sheer stupidity. That was until his wife challenged him to get in the ring.

Defending his manhood, Keith suppressed his logic, heeded the trainer’s advice, and somehow willed the bull into submission, prevailing without a scratch.

Having succeeded, he climbed the wall and smugly reclaimed his seat beside his wife.

With the wisdom he gained from the Navy and a master Spanish matador, Keith Rawls is one who can lead just as well as he can follow. And now he’s taking Nashville by the horns— or the handlebars—and leading it “Left, right, forward. Never back.”

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BROUGHT TO YOU BY VILLAGE PUB AND BEER GARDEN

The

Beacon

A Tennessee High Tax Ale

BY JUSTINA BIEBER, JR.

Tax season has come and gone, but you’re still probably feeling the effects of it in your wallet, and perhaps you’re feeling the pressure to “provide.”

Well, you’re in luck, because you can still bring home “The Beacon.”

In honor of the Beer Tax Reform Act of 2013, Yazoo and Calfkiller teamed up to create an “oppressively refreshing” ale to bring attention to Tennessee’s steep beer tax, the highest in the nation by twelve percent (the second highest being Alaska). Brewed with smoked wheat, this light ale

serves as the perfect picnic beer (although we do not condone public alcohol consumption).

As our local craft-brewing community continues to grow, it’s up against an abnormally high tax on wholesale pricing, which supports a law that has been in effect since the 1950s. As the brewers’ tax rises with inflation, so will consumer prices. The proposed reform will shift from the outdated wholesale model to a volume-based tax, making it easier for our local breweries to grow and keep doing what they do best—make delicious beer. ////////// 17

PRAISE THE ROOF

Q:

What famous Chicago gangster has stayed at the Hermitage?

MEET ME AT THE HERMITAGE

Walking into The Hermitage Hotel is like walking into a Fabergé egg. Heavenly light from several grand chandeliers reflects off colossal windows highlighting the lobby’s golden interior. The arches and ceiling, adorned with handmade plaster ornaments and glass mosaics, would have you thinking that you’re not in Music City anymore, but in the “City of Light.” From its grand entrance and sweeping staircase to its elegant artwork and polychromy, The Hermitage is Tennessee’s only remaining architectural example of Beaux Arts Classicism.

In 1910, the hotel opened its doors to Nashville’s high society, and the words “Meet me at The Hermitage” became a beacon for a night of smoking, cocktails, and tasteful debauchery. Today, it stands restored to its historic grandeur, saved from destruction and renovated with a twenty-million-dollar project. Thanks to Historic Hotels of Nashville, the work of original architect John Edwin Ruethven Carpenter can live on without losing its historical significance. Preserving its twentieth-century elegance, The Hermitage

by kristen mcdaniel | photography by cameron powell

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reopened its doors on Valentine’s Day 2003, with some of the largest guest rooms in Nashville.

From the inside out—head to toe—The Hermitage Hotel accounts for every square inch when it comes to glamour and detail. Even the bathrooms glisten. In 2008, Cintas Corporation voted the men’s bathroom the best in the country.

Enclosing the restroom are glossy, black tile walls lined with forest green horizontal stripes. Mint green ceramic sinks sit below the mirror and rest atop terrazzo floor, and an elevated, two-seat shoeshine station faces the mint-colored urinals. It’s art deco meets James Bond.

Between the Italian and Tennessean quarried marble floors of the lobby and the Circassian Walnut walls of The Grand Ballroom, The Hermitage Hotel spares no expense in either luxury or design. With bold French Renaissance embellishments decorating both its interior and exterior, this local gem embodies not only the elegance of the Beaux Arts style, but also the sophisticated nature of early twentieth-century society.

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COCKTAIL OF THE MONTH by No. 308

The Buckley

Back when Ben and Alexis were naming drinks based on all things music (band names, song titles, etc.), they came up with this strong, delicate concoction they call “The Buckley.”

Because, well, this drink is “sexy like Jeff Buckley,” Ben says. Remember the way his wavy brown locks dangled and bounced in front of those dark, telling eyes? He had the swagger of James Dean and a voice so smooth, it had panties dropping faster than acid at a Phish show. So in the name of the late singer-songwriter, May calls for something bold yet subtle—just enough to open up your senses and drown your sorrows. Made with gin, aperitifs, fresh lime juice, and sage, this earthy and refreshing cocktail will have you lullabying “hallelujah, hallelujah” as soon as it hits your lips. But remember: nightcaps, good; night swims, bad.

1 ½ oz. Fords Gin ¾ oz. fresh lime juice ¾ oz. sage syrup

(12-14 leaves for every 2 cups simple syrup)

½ oz. Cocchi Americano ¹⁄₃ oz. Campari 1 sage leaf garnish

Combine all ingredients (minus Campari) into a tin with ice, then shake and double strain in a coupe glass. In a circular motion, add Campari evenly around the glass so it sinks to the bottom. Garnish with a sage leaf.

and water and a handful of

-Ben Clemons, No. 308

sage leaves, bring to a boil.

SAGE SYRUP With equal parts sugar

Remove from heat and let cool for 20 minutes.

intro by sarah sharp | photo by danielle atkins 20 / / / / / / / / / /

“My whiskey is too good to be in a damn Jar.”

©2012, Popcorn Sutton’s Tennessee White Whiskey® 46.5% alc./vol. Distilled and bottled by Popcorn Sutton Distilling, Nashville, Tennessee. Popcorn says “Enjoy My Whiskey Responsibly”

-Popcorn Sutton

Drinking Whiskey.

Not Sipping Whiskey.

POPCORN SUTTON DISTILLERY • MARATHON VILLAGE • NASHVILLE Popcorn always said his whiskey was “too good to go in a damn jar,” but that’s all he could afford.

I’m proud to say we did it Popcorn, we got you the bottle your whiskey always deserved.

-Jamey Grosser

Popcorn’s Partner, friend and master distiller

MASTER PLATERS

INGREDIENTS:

8 oz. Noble Springs chevre goat cheese fresh baby greens (tatsoi or arugula) Mokum carrots pickled carrots rye crumble lemon vinaigrette dressing

MAMA SAID EAT YOUR GREENS. BUT SHE NEVER SAID THEY WOULD BE SO DAMN TASTY.

PICKLED CARROTS INGREDIENTS: 1 cup thinly sliced carrots 1 cup white balsamic vinegar ¼ cup sugar pinch salt 1 sprig thyme 1 each bay leaf DIRECTIONS: Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt, and herbs in a small, non-reactive pot and bring to a boil. Pour the boiling liquid over carrots and allow it to cool to room temperature. Cover and reserve for future use.

ROASTED CARROTS (We use Mokum carrots which come fresh from several different local farmers including Bell’s Bend and Bloomsbury Farm) INGREDIENTS: 2 bunches Mokum carrots 1” piece fresh ginger, sliced 6 sprigs fresh thyme 1 tbsp. grapeseed oil salt and pepper to taste

RECIPE BY CHEF PHILIP KRAJECK OF ROLF AND DAUGHTERS

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DIRECTIONS: Wash the carrots and scrub the exteriors. Toss with the ginger, thyme, and grapeseed oil. Season with salt

and pepper. Place on a baking tray and roast at 325 degrees for 10-20 minutes. They should be cooked through yet maintain a toothsome texture. Cool to room temperature and reserve.

LEMON VINAIGRETTE INGREDIENTS: Âź cup lemon juice 1 tbsp. honey 1 tsp. Dijon 2 oz. grapeseed oil to taste salt and freshly ground pepper DIRECTIONS: Whisk together the lemon, honey, and Dijon. Whisk in the grapeseed oil and season with salt and pepper. Reserve.

RYE CRUMBLE INGREDIENTS: 3 slices stale rye bread 2 tbsp. butter 1 tsp. caraway seeds salt and pepper to taste DIRECTIONS: Pulse the rye bread in a food processor until it resembles breadcrumbs. In a 10" saute pan, heat the butter on medium heat until foamy. Add breadcrumbs and caraway seeds and season with salt and pepper. Toast until crispy and crunchy, tossing every 30 seconds (for approx. 5 minutes).

Transfer to a paper towel to drain excess fat. Cool and reserve.

SALAD ASSEMBLY: Place 5 dollops of cheese onto 8 plates. Toss carrots with a spoonful of dressing, season with salt and pepper, and arrange over cheese. Season greens with a few drops of dressing, salt and pepper to taste. Scatter greens and rye crumble over carrots. Serve.

Photo by Jess Williams

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by ann ravanos | photography by ryan green

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There are many things in this world that go together: cream and sugar, peas and carrots, socks and shoes, tattoos and spiritual awakenings.

As accepted as tattoos have become in our modern day and age, there’s still a common misconception that the only things that go with ink are sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. As my time progressed with the guys of Safe House Tattoo, I realized that tattoos are much more than skin deep.

I can’t think of a better person to be the center of this story than Ian White, prolific tattoo artist and owner of Safe House Tattoo, which opened its doors in Edgehill Village

this past October. Though it’s a new studio, Ian isn’t new to tattooing, and the road to running his own shop wasn’t an easy one. But nothing good comes easily. And Ian’s story is no different.

He was born into a military family, but he didn’t grow up like a typical military brat that moved around all the time. His mother served in the National Guard all the way up to her retirement, only relocating once from Arizona to Oregon, where she still lives. “A lot of people have stereotypes about how military parents discipline their kids—that they’re more stern. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. My

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mom was always incredibly supportive of me.” Maybe it’s the coffee kicking in, but I start to notice that Ian’s expression warms as he retells his childhood.

His mouth parting from the steaming cup, he continues, “I was this little punk kid that got into trouble a lot. I wore this jean jacket all the time because my uncle had one just like it. It symbolized ‘cool’ for me.” He pauses for a moment, then laughs, “Any time I would get in

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trouble, my mom would take it away as my punishment.”

His uncle also happens to be the person who introduced Ian to tattoos. “He had a few of his own, and I thought he was so cool. I started drawing on myself to look like him.”

With his arms covered in his own penwork, it was only a matter of time before the ink would become permanent—as soon as law would allow it.

It was his senior year, and he had just turned eighteen. So one day, Ian decided to skip class, steal his parent’s car, cash his savings bond, and head to the nearest tattoo parlor.

“I was a huge fan of Henry Rollins at the time. But instead of getting a tattoo of him, I just got a tattoo that he had. It was this red stick figure thing, and I had no idea what it meant. Turns out it was the symbol for this German band that

"I HOPE MY MOM DOESN’T READ THIS. I DON’T THINK SHE KNOWS I STOLE THE CAR."

I don’t like at all.” Ian leans back in his chair, turns to his wife Lindsey, and sighs, “I hope my mom doesn’t read this. I don’t think she knows I stole the car.”

C o n s i d e ring his teenage rebellion, I’m a little surprised to hear him say that he was planning on going straight to college after high school with hopes of becoming a teacher.

“I had a couple of really great teachers; there was something about them that brought out the best in me.” He sits up again, continuing, “I love the idea of making an impression on someone who wants to learn, helping them draw out what they already possess but might not realize.” Ian smiles, “That’s what my teachers did for me.”

As many debt-ridden college grads know, higher education isn’t cheap, and due to tuition costs, Ian’s parents couldn’t afford to send him to school.

Instead of sulking in the disappointment of his unfulfilled plans, Ian found a way to continue his education. He decided to join the Air Force. “I think my family was pretty shocked. I mean, I was this punk kid with tattoos who walked around with his sleeves rolled up just to show them off. But it’s what I needed to do so I could go to college.”

In February 1996, Ian headed to Dayton, Ohio, to serve as an Electronic Intelligence Analyst and Honor Guard (his secondary duty), taking part in funeral details, flag postings, and the rifle team. And although he en-

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SAFE HOUSE TATTOO: Is located Located in Edgehill Village at 1201 Villa Place, Suite 203 615.866.9810. For more info, visit safehousetattoo.com or follow them on Twitter and Instagram @safehousetattoo

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joyed his time in the Air Force, he did get into some trouble. The mood then starts to shift, turning a darker shade. “I got in trouble for fighting and underage drinking, and then I started using the government credit card, which payed for about half the tattoos on my right arm. Not a bright move on my part.” Ian stops for a moment, reliving the disappointment he felt, and I can feel it looking right back at me. “I was discharged just a few months before earning my GI Bill.”

He continues the catharsis all the way to its finish. “I felt very ashamed.

It was part of the reason I stayed in Dayton long after I was discharged. I wanted to accomplish this thing that I had started. And when I didn’t, I felt like I couldn’t go home.”

His spirit at an all-time low, Ian started bartending at one of Dayton’s edgier hangout spots and became a little too familiar with the lifestyle. “I partied and drank a lot. It’s how I got to know everyone, and how everyone became comfortable with me,” Ian tells me. But his “bad” decisions were not without purpose. There was a local tattoo artist he would soon meet that would mark the beginning of his new trade. “If it hadn’t been for the way I was living at the time, I don’t think I would have had the courage to become friends with Brian Brenner,” his soon-to-be mentor. Ian continues, “I basically kissed his butt until we became friends.

Then I asked him about being an apprentice.”

When Brian began mentoring Ian at his shop, none of the artists had seen Ian’s work. “They told me it was going to cost a lot of money to become an apprentice. And if my art sucked, they were going to kick me out.” He laughs and takes another sip of his coffee. “It’s kind of funny.

The day before Brian agreed to have me around, I had almost given up on becoming an apprentice. There was a part of me that lost all hope.”

Once Ian started tattooing, he immediately started building a name

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for himself, not to mention a growing clientele base. Soon, he started managing the shop, and he and Brian were working on opening a custom-work parlor that showcased their personal strengths as artists. “It basically set the stage for what I wanted to do with Safe House,” Ian says.

Although he was doing well at the tattoo shop, underneath, he was struggling with an alcohol problem. But the problem wasn’t the drinking; it was the person he became when he drank. It soon turned into bar fighting, and it came to a turning point when, Ian admits, “I got so drunk I had to cancel my next day’s appointments. I was living my lifelong

dream as a tattoo artist, and my drinking was hindering that. I realized something needed to change.”

“My last drink was on June 21, 2004. It’s crazy to think about it now because I feel so far removed from that lifestyle.”

Many that dive headfirst into the party life have a hard time breaking the cycle. But Ian did what most don’t have the willpower to do: he traded in his hardcore partying for a life of sobriety.

Every day a sober one, his career continued to progress. He started touring with various bands as a personal tattoo artist. Needless to say, he made some friends along the way.

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at Warped Tour when he met a tour manager named Russ Hickman. Once they got to know each other a bit, they realized they had a few things in common, including a passion for tattoos, and they became quick friends. The same goes for Jordan Pundik (frontman of New Found Glory), who Ian met the next year while touring with the band Bayside. Little did he know, these two guys would mark the beginning stages of his dream to open his own collaborative tattoo studio.

Constantly on the road visiting other places, Ian was looking for a change of scenery. In 2009, he decided to leave Ohio. “Dayton allowed me to be whoever I wanted to be, which, for a period of time, wasn’t the best me.

I’m thankful for my time there, and it served its purpose.

But I don’t miss it.” He set off on a trip in search of the next place he could call home. He had been to Nashville a few times to attend the Full Moon Tattoo and Horror Festival, where he would always run into his buddy, Russ.

On his journey out of Ohio, Ian thought, why not stop in

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"I LEARNED A LOT FROM THEM AND OWE A LOT OF MY GROWTH AS AN ARTIST TO THAT TIME, BUT I WAS READY TO BE ON MY OWN."

Nashville to visit Russ and give him a tattoo. But while he was in town, his visit took a detour when Russ introduced him to Doy Gardner, the owner of Black 13 Tattoo Parlor.

Immediately, they hit it off, and Doy asked him to guest spot at Black 13, where he would be the featured tattoo artist for the week. “After one week, I was sold. Everything fell into place; it was all God’s work. I thought, this is home.” Doy let Ian live with him while he got settled, and during that time, Ian got a chance to bond with Doy, leading to a full-time position at Black 13.

He worked there for three years before he decided it was time to part ways. “The guys at Black 13 were my family. I learned a lot from them and owe a lot of my growth as an artist to that time, but I was ready to be on my own. It was time for me to do something else.”

Not only did Ian have enough regular clientele to own a private shop, but he was also looking for a space that could function as an art studio where he could paint. And when a

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tiny space opened up in Edgehill Village, he jumped at the opportunity.

Shortly after, Tim Sena came along when they ran into each other at Ugly Mugs Coffee & Tea in East Nashville. Just like when he met Russ and Jordan, the bond between Ian and Tim was immediate, like an act of fate. “The instant I met these guys, I knew I wanted to work with them. I didn’t go out looking; it all just happened,” Ian explains. He then turns to me as we’re sitting in the Safe House shop in Edgehill Village (which happens to be next door to his old private studio), and says with a sense of pride, “All three of them make Safe House what it is. They built it and turned it into the space you’re looking at.”

Ian’s not exaggerating either. The space required a lot of renovation, all by the hands of Ian, Russ, Jordan, and Tim. Ian, however, claims he didn’t do anything. “I still feel bad for Jordan, because the day he started was the day I signed the lease to this place. He came to

work, and I basically handed him a paintbrush and told him to pick a wall. Poor guy.”

It may have been a lot of work, but they did a hell of a job.

The center of the studio (the commons area) is where the guys sketch, make their stencils, and is also where most of the socializing happens. It’s the area that connects all of the rooms, as well as the artists and their clients. The guys’ spaces are decorated with framed family photos, weird trinkets, and their own artwork. It kind of feels like home. And now, they’ve added one more to their family, Zane Pendergast.

Before discovering Safe House, I had eight tattoos, all done at different places by different people. I’ve moved around a lot, so I never had “a guy” that I went to. This is the first time I’ve gone back to the same place (hell, the same artist) more than once. But now, I don’t just have “a guy,” I have an entire studio.

It’s kind of funny how things work out. For Ian, it seems that everything happened for a reason. And now he’s doing what he wanted to all along—teach others. It may not be to a room full of pre-pubescent kids, but his studio serves as a different type of classroom, where he teaches the one thing that led him to all things good in life. His home, his career, his friends, his sobriety, his wife, and his spiritual awakening—all because of tattoos.

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THE HYBRID I AM

WHEN KAT ZHANG WALKED INTO HER FIRST CLASS AT VANDERBILT, HER MIND WAS SET ON MEDICINE. FOUR YEARS LATER, SHE CARRIES A HARD COPY OF HER OWN NOVEL AND A SIGNED BOOK DEAL FOR A TRILOGY WITH HARPERCOLLINS

I dash into Fido on a rainy Wednesday night to find Kat Zhang already waiting for me.

I let her choose the setting, and perhaps it was the closeness of the venue, but as I navigate around tables, I can’t stop thinking about why she chose here. The duality of this particular coffee shop—unique in that it envelops one of Nashville’s most treasured kitchens—makes me think that she picked it for more than just mere convenience. Maybe she’s trying to tell me something. My brain knows better than to write off the locale as mere coincidence, especially after reading her first published novel, What’s Left of Me. As my psychology-minor’s knowledge is trying to guess where Kat would sit, I round the corner to find her sitting at an empty table, blissfully lost in her iPhone.

At twenty-two years, Kat’s inner child has already crafted an entire alternate world inside her novel, where people are born with two souls, one of which disappearing before puberty strikes. Since starting this novel in her teens, it’s been picked up by one of the Big Five publishers and has received rave reviews, including one in The New York Times. It’s been sold in eleven countries and printed in almost as many languages. Regardless of her numeric age, Kat possesses a certain complexity in her writing and thought process that has garnered quite the literary career.

Not to mention, she’s fluent in both Spanish and Mandarin as well as English.

I briskly walk up to the table to find Kat listening to her iPhone as she slouches in her chair, unassumingly ab-

by justin barisich | photography by andrea behrends

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sorbed in her device. She’s been there for the past thirty minutes, having had some time to kill once her film noir class at Vanderbilt let out.

We’re sitting in the back of the restaurant beside a wall lined with several large paintings that appear to be covered in abstract scribbles. Kat’s wearing worn, light blue jeans; a gold, button-up shirt with rolled-up sleeves; and chocolatecolored boots. She looks much older now than when we first met four years ago.

It was her first week at Vanderbilt. She walked into the first meeting for Spoken Word, our poetry club, smiled, and said nothing as she assumed her place on the sofa, quietly nodding while we explained the ins and outs of the club. Near the end of the meeting, the floor was opened to any newbies who felt emboldened enough to take the stage in front of a group of writers they had never met. A few were brave enough to volunteer before the last call for readers, and a few

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seconds of silence passed before a petite hand rose and a delicate voice began to speak. As she read a chilling piece with a blank expression from behind her open laptop, everyone in the room was floored. And so was I. Kat and I would go on to write, critique, and perform many poems together during our shared years at Vanderbilt. Yet it wasn’t until a year later when I found out she had been revising a novel she began writing in high school. We were backstage after one of our guest performances, she was checking a voicemail on her phone. She then modestly admitted that she had just agreed to sign a publishing deal with HarperCollins for

not just her book, but its entire trilogy.

Once again, I was blown away. I hugged her with the pride of an older brother, but in that moment, I realized I had only known a small part of Kat’s story.

She hails from Marietta, Georgia— a small town only forty-five minutes north of Atlanta. Her parents were born and raised in China, got married in Shanghai, and later immigrated to the United States two years before she was born. For a while, they bounced around the states, but eventually planted roots in Georgia when Kat was in third grade. As she tells me more about her childhood, I find out that she went through a phase when she was really into dogs. “I had an encyclopedic knowledge of dogs be-

"I LIKE WRITING YOUNG ADULT NOVELS BECAUSE THE READERS ARE AT A TIME WHEN THEIR MINDS CAN STILL BE BLOWN."

cause I really wanted my parents to get me one.” Later on in high school, she went through a breadbaking phase so intense that she would bake a loaf a week for her parents, and she even learned how to cultivate wild yeast.

During this time of bread and dogs, Kat’s writing was extremely personal—“something that was just mine,” she calls it—so she rarely let anyone read it. However, when she took her first steps as a writer, at the ripe old age of twelve, Kat serendipitously met a woman through an online forum.

To this day, Kat still has no idea who that e-encourager was, but she credits this woman for getting her to think about writing and publishing as a viable career.

Since then, she admits, “I’ve just really wanted to get published.” It was also in this fateful year when she first laid eyes on Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, which inspired her to be daring with her imagination. It’s this type of fantasy world that Kat aims to replicate for her readers. “I like writing Young Adult novels because the readers are at a time when their minds can still be blown.”

Kat always had the feeling that she wanted to write—she just thought she could manage doing so as a side gig while saving lives.

By the age of fourteen, she had her sights set on becoming a doctor.

And when she moved to Nashville in 2009 to study at Vanderbilt, she thought she was walking toward that dream.

But during her junior year, Kat made the difficult decision to focus on writing instead of pursuing medicine. When she nervously informed her parents that she was changing her career path, Kat shares, “They were concerned in the way that doctor parents are concerned.” As if still trying to assure her “doctor parents” that her new career path as a writer was the right choice, she blurts, “Tak-

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KAT ZHANG: Follow Kat on Twitter @KatZhang or visit katzhangwriter.com

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ing science made me appreciate English, and taking English made me appreciate science. I’m still fascinated by the human body, especially psychology, and that lends itself to writing.”

You would think that juggling two worlds—that of a published writer and full-time Vandy student— is nearly impossible, but Kat shares, “I like the fact that I’m still in school and not writing full time. When people read, they judge the book without knowing that I’m also a student. In a way, it’s comforting to go back to being in college. The grades on my papers don’t directly affect my career.”

Aside from Vanderbilt’s appeal of exceptional academic programs, skilled professors, and scholarship money, Kat admits that she was drawn to Nashville for its growing arts scene and evolving progressive community. It was also in her junior year when Kat became a regular at pub crawls—not in the traditional, barhopping sense, but rather, in a professional online writer’s community called Pub(lishing) Crawl.

From her interactions there, Kat began headlining readings and book signings with other published locals, like C.J. Redwine and Sharon Cameron, at schools and bookstores around town, including her release party this past September at Parnassus Books.

Joking with her about her literary superstardom and forthcoming fortunes, Kat giggles and plainly admits, “I don’t feel like I’m super special. There’s always a certain element of

"I’VE ALWAYS LIKED TO HAVE TWO THINGS IN MY LIFE SO I HAVE A BALANCE. THAT WAY, I CAN SWITCH IF I NEED A CHANGE OF SCENERY." luck with publishing, but every writer knows he or she has to do the work required.” Keeping that firmly in mind, Kat doesn’t feel like a particularly young author either. But then again, she doesn’t act, talk, write, or think like she’s twenty-two. Nonetheless, Kat’s dedication to her work and craft is beginning to pay dividends in earning her recognition everywhere from Nashville’s own Southern Festival of Books to New York City’s BookExpo America.

Like any brilliant mind, Kat has a tendency to keep adding hobbies to her pile of successes—“I’ve always liked to have two things in my life so I have a balance. That way, I can switch if I need a change of scenery.”

So, while applying to some of the great fiction-writing MFA programs around the country, Kat has also been trying her hand at screenwriting. Perhaps her interest in this film noir class is no coincidence, as I later find out that a film agent has interest in

ALL SEASONS

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making her book trilogy into a movie series. But, with yet another agent, Kat is one more degree removed from her writing. And as friends, I know she prefers to be hands-on with what she pens.

Akin to her fellow Southerners, Kat takes great pride in her life’s work. Honoring their semi-shared history, Kat sets many of her stories in the South because it’s something she has known since her childhood, and she’s fascinated by its lore.

“I’ve been here all my life, but I’m also Asian, so I’m an outsider. I’ve always been really interested in the history and people of the South, and that bleeds through my writing.” For those who haven’t yet read her novel, the protagonist’s inherent duality grows from Kat’s own existence as a hybrid.

It is this that gives her the power of connecting with her readers. She narrates the time she received a gratifying piece of fan mail from a thirteen-year-old girl who had been relegated to a wheelchair for the entirety of her young life. This fan revealed that she had deeply connected with Kat’s protagonist because she, too, knew the pain of being trapped inside of her own body. And then, in perhaps her most serious moment with me, Kat quickly shifts tone and firmly states, “I don’t write my books with an agenda; I write them to tell a story that needs to be told.”

As our conversation comes to a close, a wizened, young Kat begins to offer some sage advice to Nashville’s budding writers. “Enjoy the process; enjoy everything, because you’ll never really know where you’ll end

up. My life is a lot less settled and planned now, but I’ve sort of come to embrace it, both the scary and the exciting.” Changing gears and showing the deftness of a well-read mind, she recites Henry David Thoreau. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and then shares, “My personal philosophy is not to be one of these men—or women, which Thoreau might have included if he weren’t so nineteenth century.”

Few can encourage aspiring writers and critique literary legends in the same breath, and far fewer can do so with such grace. And while Kat may remain quiet and humble on the outside, her life is far from one of desperation. She possesses a powerhouse of a voice within, and she’s well equipped to speak to the hybrids in all of us.

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WHEN IT CALLS UNTIL THEY DISCOVERED THEIR SHARED LOVE OF FRENCH ELECTRONIC MUSIC, APARTMENT NEIGHBORS DAVID MILLER AND SAM D’AMELIO THOUGHT THE WORST OF EACH OTHER. WHEN THEY DECIDED TO START A BAND, THEY CALLED IT FUTURE UNLIMITED. SOON ENOUGH, THEY WERE ON A PLANE TO MEET SHIA LABEOUF

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It started out as a couple guys meeting by chance.

They had no plans to start a band, but they combined their efforts and ended up with a full-time musical project. They had no idea where it would go—the possibilities were endless—but along the way, they experienced one crazy adventure after another. This is the story of Future Unlimited.

I have a chance to sit down with Sam D’Amelio, David Miller, and Matt McCord at Fido, where studious Vanderbilt and Belmont kids hang out and scroll through Tumblr. The parking sucks, and I’m hungry, so I arrive twenty minutes early to scarf down my Salmon Scramble before they show up.

Dave walks in wearing a hoodie that gives his face a shrouded and mysterious look. He seems to be the introvert of the group, sitting diagonally across the table. Maybe he knows something I don’t.

Matt sits beside me, and I address him by his proper name, Matt McCordinator. “It’s like Terminator,” he explains. Until now, I didn’t actually know he was part of the band. I saw a couple videos of Future Unlimited playing at South by Southwest, and I recognized Matt on bass—holding it as low as humanly possible. I wasn’t sure he was anything more than a touring stand-in, but I am now. He looks like he’s from Nashville—dark

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FUTURE UNLIMITED: For more info, visit afutureunlimited.com.

Follow them on Twitter @UNLTDfuture or on Instagram @futureunlimited

"THEY WOULD ANNOY THE F*CK OUT OF ME WHILE I WAS STUDYING. THE FLOORS WERE PAPER THIN."

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hair slicked back, rockabilly style.

Sam is the most outgoing of the bunch, leaping to answer most of my questions with a certain panache. He exudes suave style and smells faintly of cigarettes. He’s the type of guy that could wear sunglasses inside, and nobody would think anything of it. Some might remember him as the DJ, Hands Off Sam, from nights at Y2K and summer hangs at the old tequila bar, Agave. He immediately recognizes me, probably from the era when we were all living it up at Agave. That’s also when the musical bond between Sam and Dave began.

Even though Dave sings in Future Unlimited, he’s been a drummer since he was fifteen. He grew up in Naples, Florida, where he played drums for an emo-indie band named Salem. They had done a Warped tour with a Nashville band called Scatter the Ashes, whose bass player was Matt. Two years after Salem broke up, Matt and Dave were still in touch. Matt suggested that he and Dave start a band in Nashville. At the time, Dave was living in Lower East Manhattan, and decided to ditch the Big Apple for Music City in 2007.

Upon arrival, Dave moved into a second floor apartment in Hillsboro Village where he and Matt practiced.

“They would annoy the f*ck out of me while I was studying. The floors were paper thin,” says Sam, who had the room below Dave’s. During this time, Sam was finishing up his undergrad in psychology at MTSU. The landlord’s friend had told Dave that Sam was moving in and that he was a great musician. She was talking him up, but Dave was clearly turned off by it.

Dave says, “I saw Sam and was like, ‘That guy looks a like a douchebag.’”

One day, a disgruntled Sam decided to blare some tunes of his own. Overhearing the music, Dave rushed down to knock on Sam’s door and said, “Holy shit, man! You like Alan Braxe?” Dave’s douchebag prejudice quickly dissipated.

From then on, they started exchanging music, hanging out every now and then, but they still weren’t really close because they ran with different crowds—Dave was a rock ‘n’ roller, and Sam was a DJ. But the more they got to know each other, the more they realized they were better friends than they had ever anticipated.

In late 2009, Dave and Matt’s project had dissolved, and Dave decided to move back to Naples to be with his family. But after about a year with his family in Florida, he had a moment of realization. His recalls his mom telling him, “There’s really no reason to stay here anymore. You should move on.” During this time, he was in the beginning stages of recording the soundtrack for an independent movie called Orca Park. Taking his mom’s advice, Dave contacted Sam with hopes of crashing on his couch in Nashville to continue his work there. He returned in April 2011 and completed Orca Park, all the while living on Sam’s couch.

Once Dave had finished the soundtrack, Sam suggested “We need to work on some real shit.”

“Golden,” the first song they recorded together, is an electro-new-wave anthem.

After recording it, Dave and Sam realized their potential and decided to pursue a full-time musical project. They started to perform and record under the moniker Future Unlimited. By December of that same year, they had recorded six or seven solid tracks, with a multitude of unfinished songs. Around that time, Matt had just moved in next door to Sam. They invited him over to listen to what they had been working on, intending to offer him a spot in their band. When he heard the first couple tracks, he said, “Holy shit. This is good stuff.” And that was that. Future Unlimited had a bass player.

At the time, the band had barely surfaced. But when their former manager, E.J. Friedman, pitched “Golden” to the music blog Consequence of Sound, the staff took a liking and co-signed them (in other words, promoted the shit out of them).

Their music continued to navigate through the blogosphere, culminating with a performance at the blog’s showcase at South

by Southwest in 2012.

On stage, you’ll find Sam manipulating synthesizers and drum machines while Dave sings and Matt plays bass. They have a rotating cast of guitar players depending on when and where they play.

In the little time together as a band, they’ve quickly learned the challenges of translating their digital music to a live setup—especially when they have little to

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no money to spend on it. After the SXSW showcase, Future Unlimited decided not to play so many shows. “Initially,” Dave tells me, “we were hoping that we would get some label attention, but we realized we just wanted to write more material and finish our songs.”

However tempting it may be, don’t call their music synth-pop. These guys don’t like that terminology. Sam explains, “It’s pigeon-holing and limiting in what it entails.” And they don’t like limits either.

Future Unlimited’s music is an amalgamation of the band’s personal experiences, executed through carefully crafted digital layers.

Songs such as “The Coast” evoke the natural beauty of water and the atmosphere of a Florida beach strip (which Dave knows well). The song begins with the refreshing sound of flowing water that recalls peace and serenity. Other songs, such as “Into The Sun,” are more emotionally stirring.

Dave sees Future Unlimited as an extension of himself. “It’s just a persona

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that I get into. It’s not me all the time.”

Performing is a way for him to escape the monotony of everyday life.

Their show at the members-only club, Soho Beach House, was their favorite example of escaping this monotony.

“It felt like we were inside of Jurassic Park. There was a tiki bar, and the floor was astroturf,” Sam elaborates. At first, it appeared that the show was going to be a nightmare. There was no backline gear, and the PA looked sufficient only for a bar mitzvah. Sam was stressing out about the sound gear. Meanwhile, Dave and Matt were slamming drinks at the open bar in order to cope with their anxiety.

Luckily, they got their gear up and running through the tiny PA speakers. They started with the song “When It Calls” and almost immediately, 100 people packed into the tiki bar. Their guitarist for the night was hitting chords and enthusiastically pointing at people in the crowd. The show generated great feedback from the audience, despite the fact that the somewhat incompetent “sound guy” stepped

on the power cord, cutting off the sound in the middle of their performance.

The positive reviews that Future Unlimited received from Consequence of Sound landed them an opportunity to work with actor and director Shia LaBeouf (Transformers, Even Stevens, etc.). “Shia emailed us about filming a music video. At first, we thought it was bullshit—too good to be true,” Sam tells me. It was in fact an actual email from the star, who had found out about Future Unlimited by surfing through the blog.

Dave and Sam got on a conference call with their manager and Shia to discuss details, and within seventy-two hours, the band was in Los Angeles working on a music video with him. “It was like a Disney story come true,” says Sam. Well, it was more like a Disney Channel original series/movie come true.

The trip to Los Angeles was an adventure to say the least. Originally, Shia was just going to fly Dave out by himself, but Dave had developed a fear of flying and refused to go without Sam. “I once

bit a friend’s back while flying because I was so freaked out,” he admits. Dreading the five-hour trip above 30,000 feet, Dave decided to heavily sedate himself so he would miss the whole experience.

He was sound asleep listening to A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders, with Q-Tip caressing his ears. Suddenly, he woke up to hear the pilot’s voice over the intercom, calmly explaining that one of the plane’s ailerons (wing flaps) was stuck. He looked at Sam and said, “You gotta be kidding me.” The descent took an hour, and when they finally landed, it looked like the entire runway had been shut down for the plane. There were fire trucks every 500 feet. This was certainly not a royal entrance.

Although they didn’t arrive like royalty, they at least rested in style—in a Santa Monica hotel. And when they arrived on set to film the video for their song “Haunted Love,” costume designers were congratulating them in thick Jersey accents, “You made it!” And the location would have you think so. The video was

shot next to the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, alongside Highway 1. “The mansion looks like it’s falling into the Pacific Highway,” Sam describes.

Dave tells me he had never acted before. “You’d think you can just wing it.

But Shia assured me, ‘Don’t worry, dawg.

I’m gonna guide you through it.’ And after a bunch of bad takes, I got that one golden take.”

But that one golden take wasn’t necessarily the easiest thing to execute. Actress Mia Goth plays his wife, whose arm he chops off with an ax in the video. Dave recalls Shia telling him, “If you miss, you owe me $20,000.” Luckily, she was wearing a prosthetic arm, saving Dave a lot of trauma and debt.

The video will be released in early May on RollingStone.com. Dave and Sam re-

turned to Nashville the morning after they finished shooting and were mesmerized by what had just transpired. “We stared at the wall for three days, like, ‘What just happened?’”

Shia had the answer. “We made something, dawg!”

It seemed as if Dave and Sam were living the life—staying in a beautiful hotel in Santa Monica and filming in a worldrenowned mansion. But appearances are deceiving. While in California, they were scraping by just to eat. At one point, they were forced to call a friend in New York

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City to use her credit card number to buy a pizza, and another friend had to wire them money so they could book a taxi to the airport.

They don’t have the resources for a publicist or a van. They’re not digital music trust fund babies that have the newest equipment. They make do with what they have.

Dave and Sam live together in Hillsboro Village and practice in their living room. Sam sacrifices credit for the band, taking out loans to support their dream. Dave says, “I haven’t had a real job in, like, forever.” He sleeps in a bunk bed that is so uncomfortable he suffers from chronic back pain. “We’re roughing it so we can play music. It’s easy living a normal life. But chasing dreams and eating ramen noodles is harder.”

Even in the midst of their financial obstacles, their following continues to grow, pushing them over this hump toward success. Who knows what the future may hold.

Like most things, the more they give, the more they get. Future Unlimited hopes to release a full-length album and take out a loan to invest in some better gear. Scheduled to play the Jubilee Music Festival in Los Angeles this June, they await the next big adventure.

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THE FANTASTIC FOUR THE DOWNTO-EARTH TRENDSETTERS, GOODBUY GIRLS AND HELLO BOYS, ARE GIVING US YET ANOTHER REASON TO MEANDER AROUND 5 POINTS. AND YES, THEIR STORIES ARE AS ADORABLY INTERTWINED AS YOU WOULD EXPECT

by zarna surti | photography by jeremy ryan ////////// 53

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“We needed a bigger store so we could have more friends,”says a

realized it was time to start selling their finds, especially since they both had singer-songwriter friends who were constantly performing and needed affordable clothing for gigs.

Tanya points to the vintage stage clothing that adorns the walls. “My mom was a big inspiration. My dad is an entertainer, so all through the ’80s and ’90s, they were on stage together.”

So it comes as no surprise that

fashionably disheveled brunette, her back against a case full of vintage turquoise jewelry. Across from her hangs a cream-colored fringe jacket that could have been picked right off Loretta Lynn’s back. She shoots a glance at her partner in crime, wearing fitted jeans and camel-colored leather cowboy boots. Say hello to the Goodbuy Girls, owners Kim Davison and Tanya Coe. These are the girls we all want to hang out with—the ones dripping in vintage gems, effortlessly throwing on denim, bandanas, and boots (in a seriously chic way). Those gorgeous girls that are not only impeccably dressed and fun to hang out with, but could probably drink you under the table any night of the week.

Kim and Tanya met in the most unlikely of places—assigned seats in economics class. “Who even has assigned seats in college?” Tanya laughs, adjusting her leather blazer. They were instant buds and started hanging out in the Nashville music scene, where Tanya remembers that Kim, who worked for Warner Bros. at the time, “would always invite me to all of the cool parties.” Watching them, I could tell they were those college girls that did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. They have this great rapport. It’s a mix between Lucy & Tanya is a singer-songwriter.

Ethel and Destiny’s Child—play- “My mom almost died when she found out this stuff was coming ful and fierce.

The initial stages of what back in style,” she adds, “that’s would eventually be known as where the whole idea was born!”

Before opening Goodbuy Goodbuy Girls began when their friends started giving them items Girls, like many twentysomethey didn’t want anymore. As things, Kim and Tanya ended up Kim pulls up her over-the-knee in career fields they didn’t love. socks, she recalls, “It was bizarre. Tanya worked nonstop in finanWe liked to go thrifting and an- cial accounting software, which tiquing. But people would just most definitely didn’t allow her give us stuff, and we’d give it to wardrobe of vintage concert tees, our friends.” Eventually, they flowy dresses, and cowboy boots

"MY MOM ALMOST DIED WHEN SHE FOUND OUT THIS STUFF WAS COMING BACK IN STYLE."

////////// 55

E "WE GAVE TH LANDLORD S TEN DOLLAR BECAUSE WE DIDN’T HAVE ANY MONEY. IT F WAS SORT O A SECURITY DEPOSIT."

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to shine. “She was wearing loafers,” Kim smirks. Tanya quit her accounting job, and the girls started an online store as a hobby. Soon after, they found an ad on Craigslist for a $250 retail space on 16th and Ordway in East Nashville, and the pair jumped at the idea of having their very first storefront. When they went to see the space, there was no electricity.

They even had to bring flashlights to look around.

“We gave the landlord ten dollars because we didn’t have any money. It was sort of a security deposit,” recalls Kim, “I don’t even think it was our ten dollars—it was from our friend, Brianne!”

After some serious renovation, the pair opened their doors on Saturdays, and soon enough, Kim was able to quit her day job, and Goodbuy Girls expanded their hours to more than just one day a week.

The first location was perfect for creating brand awareness and building regular clientele, but the girls were ready to move closer to 5 Points in East Nashville. Although they enjoyed being off the beaten path and getting to know the community, the owner of Alegria (who was, and still is, their neighbor) recommended a new development at 1108 Woodland Street, called The Idea Hatchery.

In July 2011, Goodbuy Girls opened their new shop and adorned it with vintage gems, trendy new merchandise, and affordable jewels. By this time, Goodbuy Girls was not only a store, but also a brand and a lifestyle. A little rockabilly, a little girly, and totally badass. The GG girl is “independent, freeminded, and free-thinking,” says Kim. “We want to help girls put their looks together. There’s nothing better than walking out of here with something that makes you feel good.”

The store is open seven days a week and offers an eclectic mix of vintage, handmade, and contemporary pieces— something for every shade of woman.

Walking in, you’ll find rows and rows of soft, leathery cowboys boots, lace vintage dresses, crop tops, and vibrant jewelry. Even though Kim and Tanya dress Nashville’s country elite and TV

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Gavin and Kim became especially stars, as well as style video shoots, they’re not close when he came in to buy new too big for their britches. clothes, jewelry, and shoes for his friend “We’re just Nashville girls, whose apartment had just burned down. figuring it out one day at a “Kim had this amazing energy,” he says.

“She was so helpful and kind to me. Ever time,” says Tanya.

Along with the rock since then, we’ve been friends.”

Shortly after, Jeremy and Gavin star-friendly vintage and contemporary apparel wrote a story about and photographed stands a chic little rack in Kim and Tanya for a magazine feathe corner labeled “HB” ture. “That’s when we all really got to (short for “Hello Boys”). know each other,” recalls Jeremy. At the This is where Gavin time, Kim was busy crafting pieces, and O’Neill and Jeremy Ryan, co-owners of Tanya was focusing on writing music.

Although the gals wanted to expand furHello Boys, come in.

In 2010, Gavin, a lumberjack-chic ther, neither one of them had the time Californian, moved to Nashville to be to do so. One night, Kim and Gavin with his boyfriend, Jeremy, a Kentucky strolled over to Drifters, casually disnative who was studying photography. cussing the men’s line. On a whim, Kim While Jeremy was in school, Gavin said, “Hey, why don’t you just open the would hang out at the girls’ boutique. “I men’s store?” Two months later, Hello was the worst little customer. I tried on Boys opened their doors. And the rest is this one pair of boots seven times be- East Nashville history.

Hello Boys had less than two weeks fore I bought them,” says Gavin with a cover boy smile. “I even started slowly to complete the space they were lucky enough to land in The Idea Hatchery, creeping into helping customers!”

just a few steps down from the girls. In less than ten days, they transformed the entire retail space and opened its doors just in time for the Tomato Art Fest this past summer. They used the handiwork of friends like Dan Carr to craft barnyard shelves, and they scoured shops for rustic features to adorn the space. It doesn’t hurt that Gavin has an elegant aesthetic, and Jeremy runs his own photography and design company. The two of them seem virtually unstoppable together.

Hello Boys is dripping with vintage clothes and accessories for the modern Southern gentleman, and most pieces could easily be unisex. Their eye for leather is impeccable, and their collection of men’s vintage clothing is one of the most artfully curated in town. Gavin and Jeremy also make sure to carry pieces by up-and-coming designers, like Christina Postell ties, and bracelets by Renee Nantes. These items maintain the look that has folks like Elvis Costello walking through their doors.

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Gavin says the Hello Boys brand is all about “being authentic and authentically yourself.” And that’s exactly what Kim and Tanya are going for.

“Anytime there is a big deal to be made, we consult each other. We are a team and depend on each other to make sure our branding is respectful of the other store,” says Jeremy, the quietest of the bunch. You can tell he’s one of those people that has a million things going

on in his head at once, but chooses his words wisely. On one side, you’ve got the relaxed Tanya and Jeremy, and on the other side, you’ve got the rambunctious Gavin and Kim. They are the perfect pairings.

As Tanya kicks up her cowboy boots, she says, “I never thought I’d be self-employed, but this has become everything that I ever wanted. It just happened, accidentally and organically.”

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MAN IN BLACK Jamie Watson grew up loving two things: music and food. When he lost a record deal to a future music legend, he ditched the rock ‘n’ roll for something a little more fundamental— the kitchen

by mallorie king | photography by danielle atkins

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You don’t order from the kid’s menu at Cafe Fundamental. When you ask Chef Jamie Watson what’s available for a young diner at his French bistro, his response is seemingly guileless. “I don’t know. Duck liver?” His business partner, Sandra Westerman, shakes her head behind him while he mans the large gas range in their tiny kitchen. Her silence is his cue—he turns around to face her, flashing a giant grin. At least he’s consistent, Sandra’s expression seems to say.

She then pushes through the swinging double doors and into the dining room, where a child waits for his meal.

What began as a culinary instruction and private chef service quickly turned into a full-time restaurant when the two found a space available on the corner of Greenwood Avenue and Porter Road in East Nashville—the location that Cafe Fundamental now calls home. And after years as friends and business partners, Sandra’s versed in Jamie’s antics.

The truth is, Jamie Watson is ever-so-slightly Tom Waits-esque in appearance and demeanor.

He somehow found a way to combine the laid-

back temperament of a Pacific coaster with the slyness of a New Yorker. It’s a little unnerving, but he’s a character to say the least. As I spend a day in the kitchen with him, this sensation is only amplified—especially when the knives come out.

He quickly presents me with a stainless steel case, lined with black velvet and glinting knives. As he lovingly brandishes his favorite tools, I notice his uniform for the first time—a bold contrast to his sous chef’s. In a kitchen full of traditional “chef’s whites,” Jamie opts for something more his bravura: chef’s blacks.

Our evening commences, like many of Jamie’s often do, with a sauce. He chooses a knife from the case, sharpens it, and begins slicing an apple, an onion, and then boils them in port wine.

Even though Jamie is the head chef of a highly skilled brigade, including a sous chef and an hors d’eouvres/dessert chef, he prepares every sauce himself. Today’s sauce is a lamb reduction to pair with the biggest lamb shanks I’ve ever seen. And I don’t mean that in the “you don’t see that in the grocery store” type of way. I worked at a butcher shop for three years. If I didn’t know better, I’d

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CAFE FUNDAMENTAL: 1115 Porter Road 615.915.0738. For more info, visit cafefundamental.com and chefjamiewatson.com

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"WE WANT PEOPLE TO TRY IT THE WAY WE COOK IT. YOU’RE PAYING FOR A CHEF’S FOOD."

think that Jamie sourced his meat from Chernobyl. But he assures me it’s from Colorado.

As he stirs in the ingredients for the reduction, he educates me on the history of the saucier chef, the cook responsible for saucing and sautéing. What once was a position subordinate only to the sous and head chefs, has all but disappeared from most kitchens. Not only does this show me Jamie’s respect for tradition, but I now understand Apocalypse Now in ways that I never had.

Jamie originally hails from Portland, Oregon, but shortly after graduating high school, he moved to Los Angeles. As a young musician, he witnessed 1970s Sunset Strip, and what I like to call the pot de crème of rock ‘n’ roll. Like a vast majority of people who were living in L.A. at the time, Jamie has a rock ‘n’ roll story of his own.

Long story short, he sang lead vocals in a band called Tahanako, and they lost a very important record deal to another band. The name might ring a bell. It was Van Halen. Jamie jokes that his band’s name was probably the reason they lost the deal. So, I’m curious how a rock ‘n’ roller switches gears, beginning a career as an award-winning chef. With ease, he says, “Well, they were basically synonymous.”

From an early age, Jamie had one, maybe two things in mind: the perfect song and the perfect roast chicken. Growing up, his relationship with food was different than most. “I didn’t see my mother open a can until I was in my twenties,” he admits. And while this could sound off-putting to some, Jamie assures me that they weren’t preachy about their organic eating habits. “There was no statement about it. There was no ‘We only eat this.’ None of that shit. It was, ‘This is how we eat. This is what I cook. This is what I grew up eating. So, it’s what you’ll grow up eating.’”

So, after losing the record deal, he focused on the only other thing he knew and loved as much as music: food. He returned home to Portland and started washing dishes at a department store restaurant, making his way up the ranks from station to station and restaurant to restaurant, eventually landing a spot at the famed French Culinary Institute in New York City. Ever heard of Dan Barber or Bobby Flay? They’re some of Jamie’s fellow alumni. He’s even appeared on The Food Network with Flay.

With that in mind, at Cafe Fundamental, not only should you never request a kid’s menu, you should never make substitutions.

You won’t even find condiments on the tables. Salt and pepper are available, if you ask. That’s because Jamie and his team have already worked each meal down to the fundamentals of what they believe is the best meal they can give you.

“The only thing you can do with a salt or pepper shaker is

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CLOTHING & JEWELRY BOUTIQUE

season the outside,” says Jamie. “We want people to try it the way we cook it. You’re paying for a chef’s food.” I couldn’t agree more. As the evening continues, I witness the resolve with which Jamie encourages that lamb reduction all the way to its completion, gradually adding the same ingredients over time. When it comes to making the perfect sauce, slow and steady wins the race.

This self-titled technique, “Southern classique,” is a combination of Southern tendencies invigorated by Jamie’s classical French training. When it comes to his team (comprised of a morning prep staff and evening crew),

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sort of like Jamie’s fusion cuisine, they come from different backgrounds, but all have the same passion for quality food, quality education, and teamwork. Jamie’s Executive Sous Chef, Falon Smith, was trained locally at The Art Institute. Sous Chef Chelsea Calvert attended the Natural Gourmet Institute in Manhattan. Cafe Fundamental’s “much more than a dishwasher” Willie Mason, was a cook in town for many years before joining the team, complacent with leaving the grill as long as he could still be present in the kitchen. In fact, Jamie has invited Willie to the grill a few times now, to which he continually resists. For now, he’s soaking it all in, like a fly on the wall, or even a stain on a dish. Who knows...someday he could be wearing chef’s blacks.

Since attending culinary school, Jamie has made it a point to continue his education. In Nashville alone, he has successfully opened two restaurants, hosts a morning show on WSMV Channel 4 News, is a frequent private chef, teaches cooking classes, occasionally lectures at both Vanderbilt and Belmont, and has most recently been asked to be “Scholar-inResidence” at Hume-Fogg High School.

He’s excited about the opportunity to work with younger students, who are interested in taking part in what has

become a national dialogue about food quality awareness. “Everything is twisted so badly now that the only way to make progress is by telling the youth that all is not what it seems.”

He starts to lose me a little.

Talking about our backwards food system bores me in the same way that talking about global warming bores me, because everyone usually talks in circles around these issues. But, as I already know, Jamie isn’t everyone.

He quickly cuts through the bullshit and says, “To make a blanket statement that salt is bad for you or sugar is bad for you is absolutely and utterly ridiculous. Not only is it ridiculous, it’s practically false. I’m into food and how it interacts with the body,” Jamie continues. “What I’m not into is people speaking in absolutes.” I know I called Jamie Tom Waits-esque, but maybe that isn’t fair, or even correct. Maybe he isn’t so simple, and perhaps no matter how much he can Southern it up, French cuisine isn’t either.

We then move on to the latest movement in food—farm to table.

“Everything, whether it’s a cow or an ear of corn, comes from a farm,” he begins. “Maybe it’s a factory farm filled with men dressed in evil costumes, wandering around laboratories creating hideous things we’d never want to put in our bodies.

But it’s a farm.” Touché.

And that sauce? Finally, it’s ready.

And, yeah, it tastes like pure velvet, if velvet was steeped in onions, apples, and lamb fat for four hours. When I ask him what he calls the sauce, he says to himself under his breath, “What would be a good name for it?” A moment later he decides.

“Apple and lamb reduction.” How simple. Therein lies the beauty of Jamie Watson. Yes, he can be a little rough around the edges, and yes, he sometimes cooks with that part of the animal that you’d rather throw to the dog. But he’s always consistent, which is what Cafe Fundamental is all about. That, and really good duck liver.

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CM

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ROUGH CUT

When local film director and editor Michael Carter was eighteen, he was a punk kid who thought he’d be heading to Boston to study music at Berklee.

But on August 12, 1992, everything changed— leaving him to cut his own path

by christina vinson | photography by lauren holland

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Life isn’t always what we want it to look like. When gritty reality leads to a disheartened spirit, or the dreams of our youth grow dim, we have the choice to succumb in defeat or take a stand. We can find beauty in the struggle, humor in the unfairness, and life within ourselves—if we want to.

Michael Carter, local filmmaker and editor, is doing just that. Under-paying jobs, child support, heartbreak, and creative aspirations run dry are themes in his upcoming, semi-autobiographical feature film, Million Dollar Bash.

“It’s ultimately a story about Nashville. My Nashville,” he says. This may come as a surprise to those outside the film community—a world often perceived as overflowing with money, success, and leisure. This is a story for the artists facing a mountain of unpaid bills, whose hearts have been broken, and for those who have seen their dreams collapse.

He greets me at the front door of his apartment, with a slight Southern drawl as the sunshine warms the fifty-fourdegree afternoon. We walk up a narrow stairwell into his royal blue-painted living room faintly smelling of smoke, and I settle on a couch covered in a leopardprint blanket. Michael sits on the army green sofa perpendicular to me, wearing navy pants and a t-shirt, his light brown hair parted to the side. His tall frame leans forward, his hands comfortably

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clasped in front, giving off an air of laidback, humble wisdom. As he takes me back through the last couple decades, it’s clear that his work is a reflection of every memory and struggle he has come across while juggling his two lives as artist and father.

A Nashville native, Michael embarked on adulthood much sooner than most, while still in high school. He was a classic case of teenage rebellion ready to break free from the system. He would spend his Saturdays at Dragon Park skateboarding, was into punk rock music and philosophical writers like Robert Anton Wilson, and sported dreadlocks before they were cool. He was the kind of kid that resisted authority; he was eighteen. Little did he know, he was about to become the quintessential figure of authority. Michael was to become a father.

“I was terrified. I had seen twentynine-year-old, first-time fathers who were just as scared,” he says. Although

he was planning to attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music to study bass guitar, Michael took the news in stride and realized that he had a responsibility now—to put his family first. So he dropped out of high school, found work, bypassed Berklee, and later obtained his GED. He went from a dream of playing bass to playing family with a baby boy.

Jeremiah was born August 12, 1992, at 2:38 p.m. During this time, Michael was working as a dishwasher at Shoney’s in Hermitage. Soon after, he moved to Faison’s in Hillsboro Village. Despite the fact that he couldn’t be in Boston, Michael stayed home and instead studied philosophy at MTSU for the next three years. Not unlike his college peers, he soon discovered that philosophy wasn’t his thing; it didn’t feed his insatiable need to create. Luckily for him, a new art school had just opened in Nashville—Watkins College of Art, Design, & Film. So Michael transferred, marking the beginning of his journey, fusing all

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his passions into one medium, film. All the while, he was washing dishes to support his young family.

“Filmmaking is like a great collage of everything I love: writing, music, and storytelling,” he says.

Most struggling artists would have let the drudge of scrubbing and rinsing negate any creative impulse, but Michael might be one of the only people you’ll hear say, “I loved dishwashing.” He continues, “I really romanticized it. Above my heart, where you would normally tattoo your sweetheart’s name, I have ‘Hobart,’ one of the best dishwasher machines.” It seems as if he could go on and on, comparing dishwashing to editing. “You have all the dirty dishes on the left, and that’s where the raw footage is. Then, you put it through the machine and clean it, and it’s the finished product. It’s clean; it’s cut.”

During these days, Michael also began working as an assistant at a local film company called Ground Zero. Although most people would have cut back their work hours with two jobs, Michael worked himself to the bone in order to put food on the table.

“I was kind of lucky to have work at all,” he says. “I worked from seven to two, then went to Ground Zero at four until two or three in the morning. Then I’d get home and crash.”

An exhaustive cycle, yes, but necessary to support his family and his creative calling. Finally one night, too weary to finish his work at Ground Zero, Michael wrote a note to his boss that read, “I’m sorry. I can’t finish this. I have to work in the morning.” Then a week later, while plugging away at his assistant duties, Michael was invited into the office of Ground Zero’s owner. He was caught by surprise when he heard, “You can stop washing dishes. You’re going to make a living doing this.” His hard work and dedication was paying off—he was offered a full-time subcontracting position. No more chapped hands and non-slip shoes.

While Michael recounts those long, tiring days, his basset hound, King Diamond, shuffles into the living room, his toenails clicking on the hardwood floors, and settles at my feet with a sigh. As the dog lays down, Michael recounts his

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“YOU CAN STOP WASHING DISHES. YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE A LIVING DOING THIS.” first big assignments at Ground Zero. His first editing project was CMT’s “100 Greatest Love Songs,” and his move into directing began with the music video for Old Crow Medicine Show’s hit single “Wagon Wheel.” Although not all of the work he did in the beginning was tailored to his specific interests, Michael could find the value in every project.

But his most valued contribution, he says, “are my children.”

He is a father of three. His son, Jeremiah, is now twenty and lives on his own in Nashville. Michael’s two daughters, twelve-year-old Edyth and five-year-old Georgia, live with their mothers in Portland and Austin. I glance around his living room, noticing framed photographs and drawings covering the walls and resting on the mantle. I come across a framed drawing by Edyth. Michael chuckles, “She was so embarrassed that I framed it.” He then moves on to tell me about his youngest, “Georgia Rose Carter,” he says with pride. He enunciates her

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name with fragility, like a beaming father would on the day of her birth.

After seven-and-a-half years working at Ground Zero, the economy took a turn for the worse, and Michael received some debilitating news like many of his peers. He was laid off. Let go. Fired.

With no job, he was scared to death of not being able to support those three kids that ruled his world. Even now, the desperation he felt pierces through his hazel eyes, silence taking over as he rolls a cigarette, tapping off the extra tobacco onto a faded china plate.

Just like he did when he was eighteen, Michael knew what he had to do. Whatever it takes. So he set out into the freelance film world—a world ridden with a very unpredictable and inconsistent income. Allowing himself few luxuries, Mi-

chael lives in a tidy, by no means flashy, apartment that’s only “$450 a month,” he admits. And his art is not immune to sacrifices either—his studio doesn’t boast any of the high-end equipment one would assume a filmmaker has. In fact, he gets embarrassed when he shows me his home office. I simply disregard his embarrassment, as I’m amazed at his ability to make do with what he can.

His pain surfaces as he recounts dealing with the tangled custody battle over Edyth and the long distances in between seeing his girls.

He’s only thirty-nine. It’s strange to think that, at such a young age, he already has an empty nest.

But this empty nest is not without purpose or value, because Michael’s career continues to evolve and grow as

he takes on more projects.

Since his directorial debut, 3 Minutes From Opryland, and his documentary on cult musician Dave Cloud, A Difficult Days Afternoon, Michael has gone on to work with a plethora of local filmmakers. He has worked with fellow Nomadic Independence directors Brent Stewart and Matt Boyd, co-directing and editing, and he assistant directed on Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers. He’s also collaborated on music videos for JEFF the Brotherhood, Caitlin Rose, and for Jack White’s “Love Interruption,” among others.

For someone who’s been featured in Sundance, Cannes, HotDocs, Sarasota and South by Southwest Film Festivals, not to mention Nashville’s own, he’s awfully modest. I’m surprised when he tells me, “I’m proud of most things now, but it was really hard to get to that point.” I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that he couldn’t see how talented he was. But then again, he is an artist, and an artist is his own biggest critic.

Well, he should be proud. All monetary hurdles and personal struggles aside, I would say Michael has achieved the ultimate success—passing on his legacy, not only as a filmmaker, but as a father. Jeremiah’s not even twenty-one, and he’s already tried his hand at film. “When he was fifteen,” Michael beams, “I watched him and his friend, Ethan Gibson, win four awards.

And Jeremiah received Best Director at the 48 Hour Film Project at The Belcourt.”

Whatever reeled Jeremiah into film and now into politics (particularly, the Occupy movement), much like his father, he followed his heart and passions at a young age. For Michael, that passion was film editing.

“I always had a knack for it—even the first scene I cut at Watkins. I remember telling my professor, ‘Sometimes you have to close your eyes to get the cut right.’” Considering I’m not a film editor, he elaborates, “At some point, it feels like a disaster, like it will never come together. But then I just follow my instinct. It’s best when it feels like it’s cutting itself.”

And much like editing, when life throws you into the eye of the storm, your instinct is all you have. This has proved to be true for Michael—in life and in work. In many ways, his journey has cut itself—pulling him away from Berklee, heaving him into fatherhood, and later, into film.

Maybe life for Michael Carter didn’t turn out the way he envisioned it. But he found its silver lining.

“SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO CLOSE YOUR EYES TO GET THE CUT RIGHT.”

////////// 75

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RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME An obsessive observer and a Renaissance man, James Willis believes in honest self-expression, not compromising, and good composition above all else. He’s a multi-faceted creative born of the 1800s, and that’s just the beginning of the strangeness that defines him

by dave pittman | photography by alysse gafkjen

////////// 81

“I’m from 1880,” James Willis tells me. “I guess I was just born at the wrong time. If I could get away with wearing a three-piece suit with tails and a top hat everyday, I would.” It’s not hard to believe him. Most of his things aren’t as old as 1880, but there’s a certain impressionism-meets-steampunk-meetsVoodoo-meets-Wild-West ethos clearly at work. It seems his world and his taste are at least partly in the 1880s, defined by his fascination with the imaginations of people of that time, namely Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jules Verne.

James’ studio is littered with old machine parts and brass objects. On one wall, there’s a row of electric guitars he built from old cigar boxes, accompanied by leather that he’s worked into impressive motorcycle seats and guitar straps. A kangaroo rug rests in the middle of the room, and his paintings of motorcycles, telephone poles, water towers, and New York street scenes (which he’s perhaps best known for) hang near the windows in the front. There, they are paired with various kinds of animal and human skulls, folk art treasures from faraway lands, and a Rodin-esque bronze statue.

All of that given, simply saying he’s from 1880 is too simple of an explanation. For

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example, he has a wild pet squirrel named Junior (currently missing), he collects (and names) Jeep Wranglers, he obsessively photographs everything, he built a motorcycle inspired by a poet, and he plays a game where he allows his friends to steal his gloves and keep them, as long he doesn’t catch them in the act.

The “when” from whence he came is debatable, and the “who” is hard to pin down, but the “where,” “what,” and the “how” are a bit easier. James Alfred Willis was born and raised in Bainbridge, Georgia, a small town near the Florida state line. His family has lived in the area since the late 1600s, and James is the seventh to hold the name “James Willis” in his family.

After leaving Bainbridge, James attended the University of Georgia and The Art Institute of Atlanta. When he graduated, he found work as a freelance artist for Disney and Charles Schulz, among other clients.

He married a magazine editor, and they now have two daughters—one in college, the other in high school. Eventually, James established his own multimedia firm in New York, producing websites and content for large organizations like the Navy and Hanes.

During his years in media production, he

spent a lot of time filming and photographing, but gave up on drawing and painting entirely. Then, after selling his company in the early 2000s, James dropped filmmaking and found his way back to painting and drawing (though photography is still a hobby). Not long after that, his paintings were beginning to garner attention from prominent art dealers and collectors. After a few important shows, his paintings began to sell and now hang on the walls of notable collectors, including director Tim Van Patten and actor John Slattery.

James is an artist, but that word doesn’t accurately describe him, at least not completely. He spent the last year working as Gibson Guitar’s first (and so far only) Artist-in-Residence—a job that he “invented” for himself. “When Gibson and I started talking about a job, I didn’t really want one.

But I wanted to work with them, so I suggested the concept of being an artist-inresidence.”

When Gibson agreed, James partially relocated to Nashville and built a studio in Marathon Village where he spent the last year creating high-end, playable art guitars along with help from the Gibson Custom shop.

To understand James is to understand

the definition of “Renaissance man.” For his work with Gibson, he had to be a designer, a finish luthier, a leatherworker, a fabricator, and a wood carver, among other things. Apparently, he enjoyed it, because after completing his residency, he has taken on a similar position with Bedell Guitars.

James is naturally a tinkerer and a builder.

He builds and creates constantly, and as far as I can tell, he keeps busy. He draws. He makes guitars. He builds motorcycles. He designs furniture, fixtures, and stage pieces for his friends. He is a sculptor, a filmmaker, a mechanic, but the only title that he uses to describe himself is “painter.” It doesn’t do him justice. He’s a great painter, but he’s so much more than that.

When I suggest to him that he may be things other than a painter, he shrugs off my compliments and supporting evidence humbly. “I don’t know. I guess I do a lot of different things,” he says. But I learn one thing quickly—he doesn’t consider himself a photographer. James always has a camera with him, no matter what he’s doing. But it’s the one accusation, the one word, that he seems to fight off, like denial of an addiction.

“I’m not a photographer. I do take a lot of photos, but I don’t think I have the same goals as a photographer. When I take pictures, I’m not looking at color, exposure, or contrast— the only thing I’m worried about is composition. The camera’s a tool for me. It’s a way to capture what I’ve seen. I’m a painter, and I’m not really sure what else I am.”

Perhaps “mad scientist” would be fitting, as he’s passionately pursuing his creativity, wherever it takes him. “It used to be that I would paint all the time and occasionally take on other unexpected projects. Now, when I paint, it’s unexpected. In a way, being in Nashville has allowed me that freedom.”

As of right now, James is busy with many projects. E. T. Burke in the Gulch has just become his exclusive art dealer in Nashville, and in addition to his mostly secret collaboration with Tom Bedell of Bedell Guitars, James is somewhat secretly working with local musician Tristen on stage pieces for her upcoming tour. With pride and excitement, he shows me

some of his preliminary sketches, and they’re definitely worth getting excited about. When asked how his partnership with Tristen came about, he explains, “I like what she’s doing, and she likes what I’m doing, so we started working together.”

James tells me that he’s inspired by the characters and aesthetics of popular poetry and prose of the 1800s—Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and everything by Edgar Allan Poe. The work he’s doing for Tristen certainly showcases that interest, as does another one of his current projects—designing furniture and fixtures for William Collier’s, the new bar next to Marathon Music Works.

William Collier was the early-1900s engineer and industrialist who founded Marathon Motor Works (for which Marathon Village is named) and designed the Marathon automobile. “I imagine the bar that’s named after him as a place where Nemo, Sherlock, and Edgar would all be comfortable.” But those aren’t the only places where he summons those characters.

When you arrive at his studio, you are instantly reminded of Poe. A wooden raven sits on the floor next to a low, glossy black, chopped-up motorcycle that James built from the ground up. The engine is from a Triumph, the headlamp is from a Ford Model T, and the front fork is from a WWII-era Harley-Davidson. It has gold and copper details, clothwrapped pipes, and there’s a handpainted portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, the bike’s namesake, on the bottom of the carefully worked leather seat. The bike is like Frankenstein’s other, far more elegant and beautiful, monster.

And that’s only the entranceway on the first floor. James’ studio itself feels like a hasty, theatrical approximation of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus submarine, complete with a metal staircase and a second-story floor made from subway grating. It’s part Navy and part Jules Verne, with a touch of New York City. The space is long and narrow, and the front quarter of the second floor feels like the bridge of a ship. It has floor-to-ceiling windows, giving an

"I’M A PAINTER, AND I’M NOT REALLY SURE WHAT ELSE I AM."

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////////// 83

JAMES WILLIS: For more info, visit jamesawillis.com

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unobstructed view out onto the world.

Poe found his way into James’ guitars, too—both explicitly and implicitly. Three of them directly reference him—“The Mask of Red Death SG,” “The Raven Flying V,” and a Les Paul named “Edgar Allan Poe.” Even in making a New York–inspired guitar, he borrowed from his Poe-themed motorcycle. “The New York City Special” features a glossy black water tower silhouetted against copper clouds and a pickguard carved from a piece of wood from a water tower.

And even though the Revolutionary War predated Poe by thirty-three years, James also built a guitar that he conceived as a musket-turned-guitar called “The Warhorse.” Recently, it was included in the Tennessee State Museum’s “The Guitar: An American Love Story” exhibit and has drawn quite a lot of interest beyond.

James tells me though, that in a fire, if he could only save one thing from his studio, it would be a small electric guitar he made from a deer skull.

He points to it on the wall. It has a small, flat piece of wood mated to it seamlessly, and another, longer piece of wood extending from the snout.

The wood helps the resonance of the skull and provides a playable neck, and there’s a microphone pickup inside, instead of a traditional magnetic one.

He shows me where it plugs into the amp that he built to go with it. It’s an old wooden cigar box with all the electronics packed inside like the innards of a clock.

While he is certainly a Renaissance man, there is a common thread to his work beyond aesthetics that he’s committed to, and it’s one that he often loses opportunities over—“Honest self-expression and not compromising. Those are the things that I value most in projects, and I’m really lucky to work with people who let me express myself without addressing some other agenda.”

His desk is in the middle of the room, on an elevated platform, which only helps to reinforce my sense that this is his Nautilus. A number of anon-

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"IT’S ALMOST LIKE I WANT EVERYTHING TO BE A LITTLE STILL LIFE."

ymous pipes run through the space and add to its oldindustrial-building-turnedsteampunk-submarine essence. The walls are made of brick, and he’s carefully placed each object in the room, according to his obsession with composition.

“It’s almost like I want everything to be a little still life,” he tells me. “Like, take that bird on the Geiger counter.” He gestures to a small, metal bird sculpture. Yes, it’s sitting on top of an actual Geiger counter from the 1950s. “I know it looks haphazard, but I really think about where I put things, and how they relate to their surroundings. For me, composition is everything.”

It’s clear to me that James has been influenced by the last 140 years of art history, specifically, by the Impressionists. His color palette and brush strokes vary from realistic to highly abstract, but generally conform to styles prescribed by the Impressionist movement. One of the major differences, however, is subject.

Instead of painting Paris, tranquil gardens, quaint church steeples, or sailboats in small harbors, James has focused almost exclusively on the contemporary urban American landscape. Of

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course, his taste for Impressionism is fitting. He is from 1880, after all. Many of his paintings look as if Cezanne, Renoir, Manet, Monet, or even Post-Impressionist Van Gogh were brought to New York in a time machine and forced to paint.

One of the basic principles of Impressionism is choosing relatively ordinary, overlooked things as subject matter. In line with this idea, James has long been obsessed with New York City water towers, and more recently, Nashville telephone poles. Not for their symbolic meaning, but for their aesthetic value. “I just find them really interesting as shapes.

People don’t usually notice them,” James tells me.

Another basic Impressionist principle is documenting the passage of time. This is often implied with the light of the setting or rising sun, or through people and things in motion.

In this way, James is very much an impressionist. His New York street scenes often show people and cars busily moving through the frame, and his motorcycle paintings are all about motion—the cafe racers and track bikes in his paintings could easily be Degas’ dancers.

However, the biggest way he shows the passage of time is by documenting the progression of technology. “Part of the reason the water towers are so interesting to me is that they’re all disappearing. They used to be everywhere, and now they’re not. Telephone poles are aging quickly, too.”

Plus, they both lend themselves to his obsession with composition. “I’m trying to remind people to look at these ubiquitous things that are compositionally interesting as abstract lines and shapes. I’m not thinking about them as wires or water tanks. On some level, I’m probably thinking about what they mean, but it’s kind of like going down

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a set of stairs—some part of your brain is thinking about it, but it’s not a conscious or deliberate process.”

This is the point in our conversation where I begin to understand what he means when he says he’s not really a photographer. In his view, he’s more like a camera, or an editor—cropping out the rest of the world and capturing a specific part of it from a specific angle.

He’s not trying to make a statement or create meaning; he’s simply trying to compose the world around him.

He invokes a guitar metaphor to explain his perspective. “Out of tune, that’s how I experience the world,” he tells me. “When a guitar is out of tune, or notes are discordant, you can easily hear that discord, and as you tune closer and closer to harmony, the sound becomes more pleasant.” Likewise, according to James, if he tries to look from just the right angle, or arranges objects in a room carefully, he can get closer and closer to creating visual harmony that doesn’t grate on his eyes the way most of the world does. It’s the reason he takes so many pictures— because when he does see something that’s just right, he has to capture it. It’s this act of composing and extracting beautiful scenes from the chaotic world in which we live that drives him—finding the harmony in chaos.

Simply put, James Willis is one of the most broadly creative people I’ve ever met, and he is uncommonly optimistic.

He approaches his work with curiosity and humility, but he doesn’t fear ambition. Even if he is “just a painter,” he’s not afraid to follow his creative impulses, wherever they lead him. James tells me, “I go to bed telling myself, ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to do the best thing I’ve ever done.’ That’s a gift.”

Another gift is his fearlessness in expressing himself. “If someone likes a piece, I love that, but I don’t care why someone does or doesn’t like it. I don’t really know what else to say about my art. Take a look.”

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SUPER CEREAL THE JOY OF PAINTING GETS

Garreth Spinn has always been a man of priorities. He was writing songs by ten, had a band by twelve, and finished his first album of originals by thirteen. With another decade’s worth of experience, he’s now blowing it up with his garage-pop band, The Joy of Painting

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L

by ralph noyes | photography by brent lafever

Exiting off I-24 onto Murfreesboro Pike, I know I’m in a seedy part of town. I drive down the empty street, passing several international markets with flickering neon signs. My car struggles up the long hill to the apartment complex, passing a man carrying an extra large jug of laundry detergent. He glares into my headlights before moving closer to the shoulder. My pocket vibrates with a message from Garreth Spinn. “Don’t park anywhere covered. There’s a toothless man who’ll cuss you out and probably slash your tires.” Joking or not, I decide to take the warning as truth. Having knocked on what I hope is the correct door, I feel a sense of relief when I see Garreth’s tall, thin form appear.

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THE JOY OF PAINTING: For more info, visit joyofpainting.bandcamp.com or follow them on Twitter @JOPband 92 / / / / / / / / / /

He shuffles around the house in untied black boots, jeans, and a fitted black t-shirt—typical attire for him, on or off stage. His apartment is somewhat empty, with only two nondescript couches surrounding a coffee table and a floor-to-ceiling shelf full of records.

A life-size cardboard cutout of Dos Equis’s “The Most Interesting Man in the World” stands with a beer in hand in the corner. The cutout strikes me as a little ridiculous for a living room decoration, but Garreth is a huge fan of goofy pop culture. So it comes as no surprise that his garage-pop band, The Joy of Painting, is named after the popular 80s and 90s TV series starring Bob Ross, America’s favorite puffy-haired, hush-toned painter/narrator.

Interestingly so, their music is just as swift and effective as Bob Ross. Most of the songs clock in well under three minutes, but stamp a hummable melody nonetheless. With Garreth and Josh Nelson on guitars, Mark Bullock on bass, Kyle McCormick on keyboard and saxophone, and Chris Hauser on drums, they manage to maintain rock volume without smothering their tight vocal harmonies. The quintet was recently signed to South Division Records and will be releasing their new EP, Tender Age, on May 21, after months of intense, living-room recording.

Garreth is sitting upright, his long fingers stretched out on his knees. It’s strange to see him so quiet and still. I try to reconcile this image with the one I’ve grown used to—him standing slouched and pigeon-toed center stage, howling upward into the downwardfacing microphone with a sneer. When Garreth sings, he never breaks away from the audience. But as we speak, he doesn’t make much eye contact.

“I have to be memorable to a group of strangers. I’ve never been that guy who gets self-conscious around people. I was on the speech team, leader of my youth group, did skits—but those people were already on my side. Now, the second we start, I know we have to win people over, especially in Nashville.”

Garreth is keenly aware of Nashville’s critical ear, and he embraces it. He seeks criticism at every opportunity, even during our interview. Anytime I mention one of his songs or albums, he interrupts with, “Oh yeah? What’d you think about it?” or “Which one was your favorite? Why’d you like it?”

Like a dog that’s spotted a squirrel, he chases the idea down, and suddenly, I’m the one being put on the spot.

Garreth stares at me with intent, and I get the impression he’s not asking to be polite. Some of my answers are enough to provoke his excited agreement, and others produce a grunt and another series of questions.

There isn’t any beer available, and it’s too late for coffee, so Garreth offers me a glass of milk. “We have no gimmicks,” he announces. “No ostrich feathers or hats or props.” Munching on the last of his Oreo cookies, Garreth offers the first of many analogies, “We have this cupcake. And then we put some frosting on it, now some

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"I GET NERVOUS THAT WE’RE GONNA USE THOSE POWERS NOT FOR GOOD."

sprinkles—glow-inthe-dark sprinkles.

Put a big ass candle on top and blow it up. That’s when we step back and ask, ‘Is this good?’

I get nervous that we’re gonna use those powers not for good.” I assume he’s talking about the power of being on stage.

“Then what is it that you’re using your powers for?” I ask. “Party jams,” he replies. There’s a playlist of the same name on my computer. I go back to days at the skate rink busting ass to “C’mon ‘N Ride It (The Train),” and middle school dances when we discovered what “grinding” was. But that’s not what Garreth’s referring to when he says party jams.

“I don’t want people to be confused when they listen to us. It has to feel somewhat familiar,” he explains. “It’s a lot harder to make that kind of music than people realize. It could be easy

for us to make left-ofcenter, out-there shit, but we really pick apart the songs so they’ll be memorable.”

The Joy of Painting wants to make music that sticks. The result is an eclectic mix of songs, ranging from the hyper synth-rock of “No Bones” to the fifties rock homage with a full horn section better known as “Good Mood.” Their strategy is to include just enough familiar elements—a traditional song structure or a common chord progression—that your foot starts tapping on its own.

“Isn’t that just good pop music?” he argues. “Look, when Paul McCartney wrote ‘Yesterday,’ he held onto it for six months ’cause he thought he’d heard it somewhere else. Finally, he decided that it was original. Everything comes from somewhere. People still dance to Motown music every Monday night.”

The hours roll on, and as we begin to veer off on tangents, he talks forever

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about Dr. Dog, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Beyoncé. I usually assume that people’s musical tastes are an extension of what their parents listened to, but Garreth’s first comment about his background surprises me. “My parents weren’t even music people.”

Although raised in Chicago, a city bustling with music, it was in his childhood home that he made his first big strides. At eight, he began playing his sister’s guitar by sneaking up to her room and practicing on it while she was gone. Eventually, he convinced her to trade her guitar for something of his. “I gave her all my Harry Potter books in hardback, and she gave me the guitar.

I still write songs and play on it to this day.” It was a shrewd bargain, but also a characteristic defiance that has stayed with him.

He was writing songs by ten, started a band by twelve, and finished his first album of originals by age thirteen.

Although he claims that he wasn’t very good in high school, he also tells me that he won a Battle of the Bands

and opened for Joan Jett in front of a songwriter, provided some of his thousand people before graduation. He staunchest competition, but also discovered MTSU when his music theory some willing ears.

“He was the first person I had teacher recommended visiting, and what he encountered there was typical for many ‘musical sex’ with. I showed him some songs and he said, ‘These songs new arrivals to Nashville.

“Everyone was light years ahead,” he suck.’ Then he showed me his, and I complains, a look of surprised frustration said, ‘These songs are good, but you on his face. “All around—better songwriters, need to stop screaming ’cause you musicians, lyricists.” Among these looming sound like shit,’ he reminisces with a musical giants were Mark, Kyle, and Chris, smirk. We were like the dynamic duo whom Garreth met while participating of Murfreesboro.” So Garreth pieced in MTSU’s recording industry fraternity, together the full band by January Omega Delta Psi (ODP). On top of that, 2011, and has managed to retain they all ran in a larger group of friends who all members, minus Dave, whose mixed and matched to form bands while ambitions have recently pulled him away to front his own group. juggling multiple projects.

Since graduating, the band has “The captain of the high school basketball team goes on to play college ball, where migrated to Nashville and hunted everyone else was also the captain of his down the necessary restaurant, team. I’m not the best anymore; I’m on grocery, and freelance work that the bench,” he says, patting the couch. “It allows them the flexibility to leave sparked a competitive spirit in me. I was on small tours and sit in with other really intimidated by Mark and his band, groups. Garreth settled at Apple One Big Owl, who had a stranglehold on after quitting his music business the Murfreesboro scene for a while.” Dave internship and spending two Armstrong, a fellow Murfreesboro singer- unsuccessful months sniffing out

ballet

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jobs on Music Row. “I don’t think any of us are looking for fame or fortune. We just don’t want to do the grind. My dad works in fire protection and has deadlines for several hundred-page reports a week. If my deadline is to create music, then I don’t have problems.”

But his parents are happy about his situation. It’s Garreth who chooses to put the pressure on himself, a fact that he reiterates several times throughout our chat.

Plopping down on the carpet in front of his record shelf, he wraps his arms around his knees in sort of a fetal position and talks about his favorite source of feedback— his mom. “After a while, she was like, ‘You know, you need to start writing songs about things other than girls,’” says Garreth. His songs still might be about girls, but they’ve broadened to what he calls “the various existential

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crises of a twentysomething”—an he has a melody, he flips through the where “the people with power” go for entertainment. I look up from my bag as umbrella idea that he counts as the main book and simply matches them up.

Pacing around the coffee table, he’s he acts out a skit where he’s sitting at inspiration for The Joy of Painting.

Perhaps the real challenge is point-blank about his band’s all-day the bar with a beer and just so happens creating something lighthearted out of practices. “We start at ten and go for four to bump into the right concert promoter, something so heavy. I never realized the hours, then take an hour lunch, then go chatting him up and charming him into seriousness of the subject matter until I for another four hours, then run through pliancy.

When I get up to clean my glass, I started to look closely at the song titles the set two to three times, then….” My and lyrics. “I Didn’t Think I’d Make it mouth hangs open before he can finish. stop next to “The Most Interesting Thru the Day” and “Dontchu Wanna” “A lot of bands fall flat because they Man in the World” and stare at his read like something sad jotted down don’t look at it like a business. When sleazy tuxedo and serious face. My eyes on a napkin after your lover walks out someone’s late for practice, I address it wander down to the bottle he endorses, and I can only think of Garreth at the on you, both visceral and immediate. immediately like a boss would at work.”

This regimen isn’t anything new for bar, peddling his music with the same Seeing them live, you’d never suspect that the stuff was born from negativity. him. He’s had his priorities mapped out zeal. “Does this guy stay out here?” I ask.

The energy is manic, the chords too since grade school: Record an album “Nah. My roommate likes to move him bright to allow you to become stuck in live to vinyl. Start an awesome band. around, put him in the shower or behind Go on tour. “I’ve reached all these goals my door and scare the shit outta me,” he the emotional muck.

Garreth stands up to stretch and I thought were so big. I guess the next jokes.

Garreth returns to the couch, relaxing pulls his phone out of his pocket. He step is to find someone who believes in thumbs through it silently, and I wonder us so we can quit our jobs and become fully into the back cushion for the first time. “This might be the most un-rock if I’ve overstayed my welcome. “This is self-sustaining.”

The recorder is off, and as I’m packing ‘n’ roll thing to say,” he begins. “We try The Hook Book,” he mumbles, flashing the screen towards me. “It’s basically up to leave, Garreth starts reading so hard to look like we don’t give a shit. an electronic journal of possible song off names—as if from some invisible But in reality, we just really want people names, themes, and lyrics.” Whenever list in his head—of bars and venues to like us.”

APRIL 21 MAY 19 JUNE 23 JULY 21 AUG 18 SEP 15 OCT 20

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lightning strikes

YOU OUGHTA KNOW: LULU MAE

by wells adams, lightning 100

Let’s be honest. Lightning 100 isn’t perfect, but we do a couple things right. First and foremost, we can throw a damn good party for free. We’ve got Secret Shows, On Tap Showcases, Friday Afternoon Live, Miller Made Showcases, Music City Mayhem, and Live On The Green.

Secondly, we support the hell out of some local music. We’ve got Local Lightning Spotlight, 615 Day, Local Artist of the Week, and the615 Monday night radio show featuring all local music starting at 6:15 p.m.

Now, marry the two, and you’ve got Music City Mayhem—a yearly battle of the bands modeled after an NCAA basketball bracket. We start with 300 local submissions, whittle it down to thirty-two, and draw up the showdowns.

Two bands duel on air every day, and the listener votes for their favorite one online.

Eventually, we arrive at the “Fantastic Four” and throw a massive party. The battles are live and so is the voting.

This year, the band that cut down the nets was Lulu Mae. Yeah, they got a trophy, studio time, musical swag, and a month of heavy airplay. But most importantly, they’ll

FUNFAC T:

Lulu Mae, name is t he of Joel frontman 's g r e a gran t dmot her.

be the first band announced to play at Live On The Green 2013.

In this year’s NCAA tournament, Louisville won the championship for two reasons—they were super talented and they hustled like crazy. And at this year’s Music City Mayhem, Lulu Mae was that team—equal parts musicianship and neversay-die attitude. It was a hard-fought battle all the way down to the wire, but when that clock hit zero, Lulu Mae had a crowd full of supporters cheering them on. That next big game will take place in front of ten thousand people at Public Square Park this summer for Live On The Green.

Lulu Mae released their sophomore album The Mockingbird and the Dogwood Tree this past year. It sounds like a mixture of The Decemberists, Arcade Fire, and Edward Sharpe. I could tell you how you need to go buy their record yesterday. But I don’t need to—they broke the record for the most votes. They hit the streets, passed out flyers, bugged the hell out of their fans, bringing the largest crowd and winning the biggest prize. So keep an eye out for Lulu Mae, because they’re setting the standard for hustle in Music City. But seriously, buy their record...yesterday.

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animal of the month

by Gillis Bernard

Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Anthropoda Subphylum: Crustacea Class: Malacostraca Order: Decapoda Family: Cambaridae Genus/Species: Orconectes schoupi

Thank freaking Mother Nature.

Spring has finally arrived in the city we know and love as Nashvegas. Yeah yeah, April showers bring mayflowers. And those white, flowery trees are now in bloom and giving off that peculiar smell that you can’t quite put your finger on. Everything’s green, it’s getting hot, so go ahead—you’ve got the green light to pop that cold brewski, kick up your Chucks on the picnic table, and Instagram a selfie while lounging in the shade (#nofilter). This balmy month brings us recent grads, a shit ton of pollen, and barbeques on every corner.

But amidst this superfluous amount of sun-soaked goodness exists a rare greatness. And that greatness is known as the Nashville Crayfish, aka Lil’ Red. Hold up—we don’t mean the straightfrom-the-bayou, Cajun crustaceans you peel and eat by the pound out on the Titans lot tailgatin’. Shove all your preconceived notions of mudbugs, yabbies, and crab legs back into your closet next to the pair of Crocs you thought were cute once (#guilty).

Neither your assumptions nor that conundrum of a fashion trend are worth a second thought. Also, we’re talking about two inches of pure invertebrate éscrevisse tail here. Oh, quoi? Pardonnous. Craylady.

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Okay, so maybe Lil’ Red can be a bit bougeouis, or in other words, cray, but she’s truly a Dixie doll. Your girl’s got shells for days. A classic “Decapoda Next Door,” she’s as much of a catch as she is hard to find. We mean that seriously, because the Nashville Crayfish is on the Red List of Threatened Species for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. You’d have a better chance of running into T. Swift at Fido than catching up with Lil’ Red. She’s only been officially spotted around town in the Mill and Seven Mile Creeks. Don’t worry, though, she rolls deep. Lil’ Red is one of the four crayfish species in the United States that is federally protected. She’s got more security than Britney Spears during her shaved head, umbrella-swinging days. And we’re not only talking about manpower—she’s got mad claws that are about as big as her bust. Eyes up here, boys: it’s not polite to stare. She’s known to snap on occasion.

In the 1940s, a pair of Vanderbilt professors by the names of Horton Hobbs Jr. and C.S. Shoup first met our darling crayfish on the rocky bed of Mill Creek. Are they adoptive crawdaddies?

We don’t know. What we do know is that Hobbs and Shoup treated Lil’ Red like Kanye treats Kim—wining and

dining at her uncle’s restaurant Red Lobster, stackin’ her fridge with caviar and Cristal, and lining her closet with Louis Vuitton. After a life of use and abuse—literally, fisherman using her as bait—Lil’ Red was finally living the crayfish dream. The trio lived happily ever after for two years until Lil’ Red 1.0 met her fate, because, well, that’s just how long these crustaceans live. Live fast, die young.

And to make matters worse, the contamination of the water source continually threatens the life of Lil’ Red 2.0 and beyond, making their short albeit sweet lives even shorter.

Sure, we offered her some Perrier and Pellegrino, but all Lil’ Red wants is some so fresh and so clean, clean agua. Is that too much to ask? After all, she does her part of the spring cleaning, i.e. chowing down on decay and debris. She hit it so hard one year, that she straight up put Music City Maids out of business.

She’s not messing around, so why can’t we manage to do our part and reign in the water pollution levels? Chivalry is already dead, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat Lil’ Red like the lady that she is. Because we can all learn a little something from this little diva. From the words of Lil’ Red, herself: Life is short. YOLO.

Overheard @ N A T I V E

Can’t get enough? Follow us on Twitter @nativenashville for even more Overheard @ N A T I V E quotes ////////// 101

The Rosebud Bistro is pleased to introduce its new Chef de Cuisine, Andrew Coins, formerly of the Charleston Place Hotel.

Love this new cat, Coins, in the kitchen.

Ah, the food is coming.

Rosebud.

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observatory by leigh ware

MELAENA, 32, AND MIKAEL, 33: Vintage finds on her: Hillside scarf and Pinello shirt

WHITNEY, 26: Jumper from Anthropologie’s sale rack

BILL, 26: Vintage shoes from gilt.com; plaid shirt from Local Honey

CECELIA, 24: Printed Kimono from a local vintage shop

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Regions supports Nashville GreenBikes, Nashville's first free bike share program. Regions has donated over 100 bicycles to the Nashville GreenBikes fleet to promote bicycling, our greenways, and our public green spaces. Nashville Greenbikes links 94 miles of greenways, and 133 miles of bike lanes and routes, including the Music City Bikeway. Residents and visitors can use Nashville Greenbikes for free with an ID or proof of address.

Check out a bike at these parks and greenways: Wakins Park, Hadley Park, Riverfront Park, Morgan Park (Morgan Park Greenway), Buena Vista Park, Hartman Park (Whites Creek Greenway), East Park, Shelby Bottoms (Shelby Bottoms Greenway), Sylvan Park (Richland Creek Greenway), Antioch Park (Mill Creek Greenway).

Visit NashvilleBikeShare.org for times and availabilities and join the Nashville GreenBikes movement!

the spirit of a healthy, active, and green city

Partnership of: Metro Nashville Public Health Department | Metro Nashville Parks and Recreation | NashVitality | Nashville Downtown Partnership

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Regions Mobile Banking. Bank anytime, anywhere, on almost any device. Just download the Regions app for your smart phone.

Then you can check your balances, transfer money, pay bills, and view and activate rewards. Plus, with Regions Mobile Deposit you can deposit checks right from your mobile device. It’s easy, just like riding a bike.

That’s why Regions supports the Nashville GreenBikes initiative – we go where you go! For more information, visit your Regions branch, call 1.800.regions or go to regions.com/open.

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