Native | September 2013 | Nashville, TN

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COMING SOON TO

East Nashville From your friends at

VILLAGE PUB &

BEER GARDEN

growlers & tap room

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CHEESE

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Coming Soon to War MeMorial auditoriuM 301 6th avenue north, located in the ♥ of doWntoWn nashville Presents

CHriS iSaaK Beyond tHe SUn with special guest Sam Lewis

10 off

$

September 8 • 7:00 p.m.

each show with

promo code

NATIVE

Joe Satriani

offer valid for Chris Isaak, Joe Satriani, and Mavis Staples & The Blind Boys of Alabama.

UnStoPPaBLe MoMentUM toUr with special guest Steve Morse Band

September 17 • 7:30 p.m.

offer applies to all price levels.

Not valid for previously-purchased tickets. valid online or present this ad to the box office in person at 505 Deaderick Street.

MaViS StaPLeS & tHe BLind BoyS of aLaBaMa with Jacob Jones September 25 • 7:00 p.m.

102.9 the buzz presents

3 DoorS DoWN a one time only intimate acoustic engagement September 27 • 8:00 p.m.

Here CoMe tHe MUMMieS Concert Film Shoot

oCtober 4 • 8:00 p.m.

Disco Donnie presents and Ultimo

KreweLLa Get wet toUr

all ages

November 12 • 8:00 p.m.

a JoHn waterS CHriStMaS DeCember 11 • 8:00 p.m.

Tickets to these shows and more are on sale now!

WMAROCKS.COM • 615-782-4030

WmArocks.com is the official online source for buying tickets to War memorial Auditorium events.

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Made fresh daily.

Because that’s how we roll.

Downtown Library • Hillsboro Village • Peabody Library ProvenceBreads.com

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Everyone deserves to live a long and happy life.

That’s why we only sell the best holistic foods, toys, treats, and accessories for dogs and cats! Our East Nashville location also offers a self-serve dog wash.

12 South: 2222 12th Ave. South (Backside of Building) (615) 292-9662

Five Points: 1008 Forrest Ave. (Backside of Building) (615) 228-9249

Hours for both: Weekdays: 10am-8pm Saturday: 10am-6pm Sunday: Noon-5pm

WagsAndWhiskersNashville.com

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FREE SALSA DANCING LESSONS ON TUESDAYS FROM 8-9 2 FOR 1 HOUSE WINE ALL DAY ON TUESDAYS ASK ABOUT OUR LUNCH SPECIALS! LOCATED IN THE 10TH AVE DISTRICT NEAR CANNERY AND CUMMINS STATION MONDAY – THURSDAY 11 - 9 FRIDAY – SAT 11 - 11 HAPPY HOUR FROM 3 - 6 818 PALMER PLACE SALSARESTAURANTNASHVILLE.COM 615 401 9316

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THE GOODS 17

BEER FROM HERE

Meet Randy, the good ol’ boy behind Jubilee’s latest IPA

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Cocktail of the Month

Who’s creepin’ while you’re sleepin’, cruisin’ while you’re snoozin’, and scorin’ while you’re snorin’?

That’s right—No. 308’s the Night Owl

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MASTER PLATERS

Celebrate the last of the warm weather with Mas Tacos’ Tortilla Soup

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OBSERVATORY

Nashville street style

Hey Good Lookin’

Crazy-colored hair isn’t just for street kids and circus freaks

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The white-tailed deer keeps it trill in the 615

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FEATURES

Seventy-year-old Klyd Watkins once led an avant-garde poetry movement. Now, he’d rather sing poetry into the night

Native Animal of the Month

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The FrontrunneR

What do you do when something you create begins to take on a life of its own? For East Nasty Running Club founder Mark Miller, the answer is learning to let go

Nashville Reincarnated

As the city transforms, Steve, Manley, Luke, and Tanner of Powell Architecture and Building Studio are reincarnating the soul of Nashville

YOU OUGHTA KNOW

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Jeff Garner’s sustainable, organic designs have walked the runways from London to Monaco to Rosa Parks Boulevard. These aren’t your average eco-clothes

Lightning 100 thinks you oughta know about dancy hyper-rock outfit The Future

Overheard @ NATIVE

The Complexities of Modern Peasant Food

Rolf and Daughters’ Chef Philip Rolf Krajeck is armed with a pig’s head, and he’s not afraid to use it

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When All is Said and Done

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IN THE WINGS

Marin Miller is an actor and writer whose past is full of silos, stages, and cinema

100 On Par

Fishing lines, driving ranges, and Rocky Top rock: on the road to Knoxville with The Kingston Springs

The Eco-Couturier

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

72 The Royal(e) Family You may think that Alanna Royale is one person—the soul-singing vocal powerhouse ruling Nashville’s music scene. But behind every queen is a royal family

58 The Pope of Hip Hop Chancellor Warhol is an art-collecting, animé-loving, pinot noir-sipping grunge head. But most people know him as one of Nashville’s leading hip hop artists # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E

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B

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MESSENGERS LEGAL DOCUMENTS LUNCH BANK DEPOSITS THOUSANDS OF MAGAZINES BICYCLES GROCERIES PRESCRIPTIONS COURT FILINGS

Y O U N A M E I T, W E ’ L L D E L I V E R I T

(615) 707- 9 6 9 5

W W W . R U S H B I C Y C L E M E S S E N G E R S . C O M 12 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

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BRANDON ROSS KEEPS HIS COFFEE SIMPLE AS HIS LIFE GETS MORE INTERESTING. He’s a first-time café manager at the newest Bongo Java location in the Omni Nashville Hotel and about to become a first-time father. “It’s like I’m having two babies,” he says, “There’s no telling what will happen.”

Brandon arrived in Nashville three years ago to pursue music.

Although music led him to

his wife Ellen (they met at a dance party at the 5 Spot), he soon decided to focus on coffee.

He has worked as a barista at Fido

for 2 ½ years.

“Coffee has replaced music as my creative outlet,” he says.

With so many changes coming, this Brazilian native who came to Nashville via Texas and the Midwest keeps some things simple.

He’s

taking fatherhood, management, and the new career one step at a time.

And while he waits, he drinks single-origin coffees brewed with a Chemex.

Currently his

favorite is Rio Azul, a light and crispy limited offering from Bongo Java.

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DEAR NATIVES,

president:

ANGELIQUE PITTMAN JON PITTMAN

publisher: editor-in-chief:

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

creative director:

“Congratulations.

Today is your day.

You’re off to Great Places!

You’re off and away!”

-Dr. Seuss

assistant editor:

ELISE LASKO CHARLIE HICKERSON

art director:

HANNAH LOVELL

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

web editor:

TAYLOR RABOIN

account executives:

It was off with a bang to the Hermitage Hotel, not to eat eggs Benedict, but to the men’s WC beneath the Capitol Grille.

No, we did not take a poo or a pee.

We hung with Chancellor Warhol while he dropped a beat.

So off to the next destination— some call it “the booty station,” with Alanna Royale, funk-rock sensation.

Buffalo wings, karaoke, and keepin’ it trill.

It’s like Hooters for butts, except classier— it’s Donks Bar & Grill.

After that, we still had so much to do.

But, there’s not enough room to tell you!

Oh, we did go to so many places.

And you’ll get to see all of them in these pages.

Sarah Sharp Editor-in-Chief

writers:

photographers:

JOE ALLMAN JUSTIN BARISICH NICOLE BURDAKIN LEIGH WARE RALPH NOYES HENRY PILE BECCA CAPERS CASEY SMITH MICHAEL ZACHARY MELANIE SHELLEY WELLS ADAMS RYAN GREEN QUINN BALLARD DANIELLE ATKINS ANGELA CONNERS SARAH BARLOW EMILY HALL JESS WILLIAMS REBECCA ADLER ROTENBERG MARY-BETH BLANKENSHIP ANDREW WHITE WILL HOLLAND ELI MCFADDEN SHAWNA CARTER

design intern:

COURTNEY SPENCER MARY-BETH BLANKENSHIP ANGELA CONNERS KRISTEN RINNER

photo interns:

video intern: music supervisor:

JOE CLEMONS

film supervisor:

CASEY FULLER

brand director:

DAVE PITTMAN

brand manager:

Hail to the King and Queen— Alanna Quinn-Broadus and Chancellor Warhol. No longer is Nashville just for country stars, garage rockers, or singer-songwriters. The funkrock and hip hop powerhouses spent an evening with photographer Jess Williams (who shot our Ian White cover) and put Music City stereotypes to rest.

SARAH SHARP MACKENZIE MOORE

managing editor:

sales director:

For this month’s issue, we voyaged through the city, hopped over the river and through alleys itty bitty.

BEHIND THE COVER:

founders:

founding team:

CAYLA MACKEY ANGELIQUE PITTMAN JON PITTMAN DAVE PITTMAN CAYLA MACKEY

to advertise, contact:

MACKENZIE MOORE JOSH SIRCHIO TAYLOR RABOIN

for all other enquiries:

SALES@NATIVE.IS HELLO@NATIVE.IS

*CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, WE’RE NOT PERFECT—TURNS OUT WE MADE BOO BOOS IN THE AUGUST ISSUE. DANIELLE ATKINS SHOULD HAVE BEEN CREDITED FOR THE MASTER PLATERS PHOTO, AND YVE ASSAD SHOULD HAVE BEEN QUOTED AS A PHOTOGRAPHER, NOT WRITER. ALSO, THE BLACKBIRDS’ GROUP PHOTO WAS TAKEN BY CALE GLENDENING.

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WRITTEN BY

JOE ALLMAN ILLUSTRATED BY

HANNAH LOVELL

Randy’s IPA is more than just a beer— it’s a gateway drug to the finer things in life. If you’re confused about what this means, it might help to understand a little bit about Randy, Jubilee’s unofficial ambassador.

When founder Mark Dunkerley came up with this brew, he wanted it to represent all the Randys out there— the down-to-earth, jorts-and-cutoff-tee kinda guys. You know, the type of dudes any red-blooded American would have a beer with, just like W. Bush. But, like “Dubya,” craft beer ain’t for everyone.

Randy has a dull past of drinking American swill—Bud, High Life, Natty Lite, heck, whatever worked. But it

took a real friend to introduce him to something new.

And that’s just what Mark did for Randy.

Mark has created an approachable IPA, one that won’t overwhelm the taste buds. Now make no mistake—EKG, Cascade, and Zythos hops give this beer a real backbone. But Mark balances them with four varieties of more laid-back hops, and he uses 12% wheat in the grain for a fuller mouthfeel and smooth finish.

The fact of the matter is, he’s not just into selling beer—he’s into helping people, too. That’s why fifty percent of the profits from every pint of Jubilee beer goes straight to The Oasis Center,

a local agency that dishes out some invaluable help to Nashville’s youth.

When it’s hard to find a friend, Oasis is there for kids in need, providing everything from shelter to college counseling. Good beer for a good cause—that qualifies Mark as a rare breed of barfly.

You can find Randy’s IPA on tap at about sixty bars all over town. So, saddle up at one of these watering holes and make sure you take a look around.

If you happen to see a beautiful blonde mullet spilling out of an old trucker hat, swept back by those wholly unnecessary Blublocker shades, then you’ll know you’ve found a friend. # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E

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THE FRONTRUNNER

What do you do when something you create begins to take on a life of its own? For East Nasty Running Club founder and president Mark Miller, the answer is learning to let go

by justin barisich | photography by ryan green

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Back in high school, I ran cross-country for about a month before quietly quitting. In fact, growing up as a husky kid who got winded after ten minutes of rapid movement, slinking away was probably the quietest thing I ever did in that jersey. I’ve since written the “sport” off as “insanity” for six years straight, and I wasn’t looking to revise that judgment anytime soon. So when I make my way over to the East Side to meet Mark Miller, the founder and president of the East Nasty Running Club, it feels like I’m about to enter a mysterious cavern enshrouding the feared guru of some lean-people’s cult.

I know it’s his place by the “East Nasty” bumper sticker on the back of his red truck parked out front. As I get out of my car, Mark rounds the alleyway beside his house with a small child in his arms.

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“Justin!” he calls, beckoning me inside, where I’m promptly greeted

by Ryman, his all-bark-but-no-bite Husky.

Since it’s Wednesday afternoon, Mark’s supposed to be preparing for the weekly East Nasty run, scheduled about an hour from now.

But Erin, his wife of three years, was unable to leave work early today, so he’s babysitting their daughter Leena instead. As we sit down to chat, Leena offers me her shoe as a welcoming gift.

“This is probably the first interview you’ve done where the person is feeding his fifteen-month-old, huh?” the dad laughs. As a teacher, he’s long mastered the art of the rhetorical question. Tending to Leena every few minutes, he begins to unfurl the path that his almostforty-year run has taken so far.

Mark spent most of his life in Peoria, Illinois. He recalls his initiation into the world of running during his high school years. “Ironically, I used to think that distance running was stupid. I was like many people who’d say, ‘I’ll run after a ball all day, but running for no reason? That’s just idiotic.’”

But his sophomore year, he tried out for the track team anyway, “as an excuse to goof around the pole vaulting pit,” he says. One meet, however, his coach decided to put everybody in the 400-meter dash.

As Mark tells it, “When I ran it in like fifty-two seconds, he rushed up to me and said, ‘You’re no longer a pole vaulter!’”

Discovering unknown abilities became a trend for Mark. In college, the cross-country coach asked him to walk on the team. Running his last three years at Bradley University, he admits, “The average person has no idea how much talent is out there. In all honesty, I was okay in college. I would have described myself as an ‘also ran,’ as in ‘Mark Miller also ran.’”

After earning a degree from

Bradley, where his dad was a professor, the graduate stayed in Peoria working as an engineer at the world headquarters of the construction equipment megacorp, Caterpillar. After four years, they transferred Mark to Atlanta in 1996, then from Atlanta to Nashville in 1999.

“By that time, I was calling that job the ‘golden handcuffs.’ It was an amazing place to work, but I was twenty-five and looking at my 401K daily,” he remembers. And then it hit him. Mark asked himself, What am I doing?! I’m looking at my retirement account every single day. Realizing the absurdity of planning out the next forty-plus years of his life, the twenty-five year old planted his heel and took a sharp right turn— he quit his job at Caterpillar and began searching for something less secure.

Then fate, perhaps even divine intervention, stepped in. “Teaching really ended up finding me,” Mark insists. “I come from a family of educators, so I figured education sooner or later as a career path, but I always thought I’d give medicine a shot first. I love how the human body works.”

He was taking organic chemistry at MTSU and studying for the MCAT when the principal of Hillsboro High School called. The voice on the other end of the line said, “Hey, will you come in and apply for a math position?”

Ready to take a chance on something new, Mark went for an interview and left with the job. He went on to teach at Hillsboro for three years, all the while coaching crosscountry and track. But his career path changed again when a friend who taught calculus at Christ Presbyterian Academy called to offer her position. In 2005, he transferred to CPA, and he’s been there ever since.

Fascinated with the math behind incremental improvement, the

EAST NASTY RUNNING CLUB: eastnastyforlife.com native.is/eastnasty # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 2 1

teacher meshed his running ability with his natural gift for leadership. “Running redefines success,” he says before delving into his own coaching philosophy.

He remembers a bad running coach from college whose theory was, “‘Hang on for dear life. And you’ll either get good, or

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you’ll get hurt.’”

Mark disagrees, “That doesn’t work for me. While I love the competitive side of running, there’s something about outrunning yourself that no other sport can match.”

Now, after years of practice and per-

severance, not only is Mark an Ironman triathlete, but he’s also the CPA Math Department Chair. And he admits that he actually found the triathlon easier than teaching.

People often ask him about this seemingly random (and radical) career change.

“I used to be sort of self-righteous, like, ‘You’ve gotta do something that’s your passion,’” he recounts. “But you know what? Sometimes your job’s your job, and your life’s your life—especially now that I have a wife and daughter.”

Given Mark’s many talents and commitments, you would assume he’d be selfish with his time. However, he shares a valuable lesson he learned while volunteering in the construction of East Nashville’s Christ Community Church: “One should not be self-indulgent with his gifts, but rather, very outwardly focused.”

This experience further invigorated a passion for community involvement, and he goes on to quote author Os Guinness, “‘Your calling is where your gifts and tal-

ents meet the world’s needs.’”

This is how East Nasty came to be.

The founder struggles to remember the exact details of the group’s genesis, but it was never intended to become an official club. In June 2008, he and a few friends got together and began running through East Nashville’s neighborhoods for the fun and exercise. They liked it so much, they made it a weekly thing—every Wednesday—and he’s missed maybe a total of ten runs in five years.

While they don’t have an official membership, Mark can’t remember the last time East Nasty had under 150 people show up for a Wednesday run. He reflects on this growth, “It resonates with the direction running is going. It’s moving away from type-A personalities driven by time goals and drifting into the realm of a social experience where people want to challenge themselves. There’s no real set goal out there for them—they just want to get better than they were before.”

With East Nasty, Mark wanted to do something different. He argues, “Nowa-

days, people don’t start running clubs because they want to run. They start running clubs so they can start charging people.” After giving the lay of the land, he differentiates his group from other profit-engine running clubs. “We had a different focus—we wanted to put on a great weekly run, promote the neighborhood, and make running accessible to everybody here.”

But a mission this ambitious comes with responsibility. As founder, Mark was liable for any incident, which spurred him to apply for East Nasty to become a non-profit organization. This status also meant that the club could solicit donations, achieve tax exemption, apply for grants, and accept corporate sponsors.

“But East Nasty’s never supposed to be someone’s profit center,” he reiterates.

Rather, his main concern is, “How can we exist in East Nashville and be good neighbors to everybody here?” The club wants to make East Nashville a great place to live and to run, so they sponsor local businesses like I Dream of Weenie,

host alley cleanups, collect used running shoes (1,000 pairs and counting) for lowincome schools, and meet after every single run for drinks at 3 Crow Bar. It’s been their “Cheers bar” for so long, that the owner once walked up to Mark, shook his hand gratefully, and called that back patio area “the bar that East Nasty built.”

Mark’s commitment as a leader, however, is becoming increasingly challenging to maintain. As he gives me the rundown of his roles as teacher, coach, husband, and new father, his wife, Erin, walks through the front door and picks up roaming baby Leena. He looks down at his watch and notices it’s ten till six.

While he rushes out of the room to change into his running clothes, Erin echoes some of his concerns: “He works harder than people think. There are board meetings, money to be managed, and constant emails and phone calls to respond to.”

I slip on my running shoes and follow Mark to the corner of 11th Avenue and Holly Street—about a block away from 3

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Crow Bar and less than a mile from the Millers’ house. It’s my first time here, and I estimate about 170-plus folks wearing all sorts of running gear and neon shoes.

Scanning the crowd, I see everything from full-blown marathoners to first-timers to a few older folks happy to just walk the route.

Of the four different speeds of runner groups, I start off at the back of the slowest one, just to play it safe.

I gradually work my way up to the second slowest group, where I meet Elizabeth—a girl in her late twenties (and also an East Nasty firsttimer)—who is training for a halfmarathon.

Our route takes us through East Nashville, past beautiful homes and underneath shady trees. A live chicken crosses the road and runs alongside us for a block or so. Mark speeds past, directing runners and stopping traffic for folks to cross the street safely. By the end, I’ve completed the longest non-stop distance I’ve ever run (in my best personal time, too).

Unknowingly, I had found a rare communal aspect of group motivation—a certain accountability.

Reminiscing about his favorite East Nasty run over the years, Mark shares, “Two winters ago, it had been snowing all day, and there were maybe six inches on the ground. I wasn’t expecting anybody to come, but I jogged down there anyway, and there were probably four or five of us. Nobody else was out, so we ran in the middle of the road. We were sliding around everywhere, and it was fantastic.”

Now that there are a few more than six runners on the road, Mark’s certainly aware of the power in numbers. As he takes on more responsibility with his growing family, he’s learning to share the leadership. It’s bigger than him now, and the East Nasty founder is proud to pass the torch to the next frontrunner.

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Nashville Re As the city transforms, Steve, Manley, Luke, and Tanner of Powell Architecture and Building Studio are reincarnating the soul of Nashville by nicole burdakin | photography by quinn ballard 26 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 26 / / // / / / / / / / / / / /

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incarnated

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Most people interact with an architect maybe once in their life, if that.

Hollywood architects cast a certain shadow over the profession. Figures like Ayn Rand’s misanthrope Howard Roark, or Bravo reality star and neurotic tyrant Jeffrey Lewis paint the portrait of an architect we all know: a vainglorious, impersonal visionary with attitude to spare.

“Most people think architects design rich people’s houses and drive fancy cars,” Manley Seale, Powell Architecture and Building Studio’s co-founder, tells me.

Luckily for Nashvillians, that is a far cry from their mission.

Powell operates out of a small residence-turnedcommercial office on Shelby Avenue in East Nashville.

This self-described “oddball” firm houses resident architects Steve Powell, a silver-haired father of two most often seen about town riding an ’05 gray Vespa; Manley Seale, a home brewing enthusiast who rocks a Joe Manganiello haircut; Luke Tidwell, former Belmont soccer standout, public artist, and fashion designer; and Tanner Rollins, ardent furniture designer and model. Mark Dail, veteran construction estimator, also shares the space, along with Sharon Powell, office manager and Steve’s wife of thirty-four years, and the office mascot, Juno, a retired racing greyhound.

We meet at Fat Bottom Brewery on Main Street in East Nashville. It’s a hot day in June, and I see construction workers walking outside the building in long jeans and sweatshirts. Steve and Manley have already arrived and suggest we sit outside in the beer garden— what used to be the inside of a Fluffo Mattress factory, now unroofed. Steve wears a Hawaiian-printed shirt and Manley, the Powell Studio logo tee. They assure me they’ve spruced up for an art show they’re hosting later that evening, not for me.

Walking through the space, they point out reclaimed industrial pallets and wood from the original building that now make up the bar counter and ceiling. The garden is landscaped and furnished, and from inside, we hear the intermittent clang and bang of remodeling.

Fat Bottom Brewery is among the most recent in a long list of Nashville haunts the Powell team has created. Yazoo Brewing Company, Five Points Pizza, Silly Goose, Two Old Hippies, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, Ugly Mugs Coffee & Tea, Hot Yoga of East Nashville, and The Crying Wolf are samples from their portfolio. Believe it or not, Powell Studio has amassed all of these successes over the last seven years, starting with East Side Smiles on Main Street.

At the time, Steve was one of three individuals in the state to hold both an architecture and contractor’s license. The firm could see a project through entirely, from a napkin sketch to closing construction. “We are

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architects first,” Steve explains, “but we love the fact that we can build.”

Powell Studio has a record for partnering with young entrepreneurs and independent startups.

“We’ve done a lot of firsts over the years. I get a kick out of doing something different and new,” Steve says.

“I don’t want to do eighty-three McDonald’s.” He speaks fondly of tackling projects with three wildly successful East Nashville entrepreneurs—Roderick Bailey, Silly Goose head chef and owner, and Alexis Soler and Ben Clemons, creators of bar No. 308.

Unlike architectural giants like Frank Lloyd Wright, Steve shies away from the spotlight. Rather than becoming a “star-chitect,” he prefers the team approach to design. The office layout reinforces this: as soon as Steve acquired the Shelby Avenue house, he tore out the doors and opened the walls so that he could make eye contact with anyone sitting at a desk. True to form, the open space mirrors the company dogma of “recycle, reuse, remake,” allowing them to better collaborate and play off of each other’s strengths.

“What we do is greater than what I would ever do,” Steve tells me. That being said, he has no problem bragging about his antique bike collection that hangs from the ceiling of his home workshop—not to mention, he’s particularly proud of his restored 1971 Vespa VBC Super 150 from Vietnam. “I had to get the registration papers translated into English,” he says.

A Boston native and son of a packaging designer, Steve was encouraged to develop an artistic, spatial mind. “To this day,” he says, “every time you buy a package of Junior Mints at the movie theater, you’re buying my father’s box.” His first taste of drafting was in the sixth grade, when he borrowed his dad’s tools to draw the site plan of Stonehenge— he wasn’t interested in just tracing the diagram out of a textbook.

After graduating from Georgia Tech College of Architecture in Atlanta, where he met Sharon, he moved to Charleston to work for mentor Lloyd Gragg, who had recently left the Nashville firm Gresham Smith to start his own in South Carolina. After three years, Lloyd -STEVE POWELL headed back to Nash-

“WHAT WE DO IS GREATER THAN WHAT I WOULD EVER DO.”

ville, and Steve followed suit.

Manley recounts his own introduction to building design. Describing his childhood in the small town of Andalusia, Alabama, Manley says, “I never knew what architecture was. I didn’t know the term ‘architect.’”

He recalls playing alone, tinkering with Legos, Lincoln Logs, or any impromptu modeling materials he could find. He would often draw sketches of dream homes and imagine other places. Manley studied architecture at Auburn, completing his senior capstone at the school’s Urban Studio, an off-campus design program focusing on urban design, though he says his most formative experience was during a semester at the Rural Studio building a house.

He explains, “This had a great impact on forming my philosophy of recycling, reusing, and remaking”— a philosophy he brought to Powell Studio. “It also impacted how I view architecture as a mechanism to foster healthy and sustainable communities.”

After graduating, Manley moved to Birmingham, where he met his future wife, illustrator Rebekka Mann.

Shortly after their wedding, the pair relocated to Rebekka’s former home, Nashville. Then, Manley met Steve.

They were both working at a multi-office firm when they decided to team up and open Powell Studio on the second floor of Marathon Village in 2007. Despite working for one of Nashville’s leading firms, Manley reveals, “If there was one thing I could really do other than architecture, it’d be brewing.” In fact, he keeps a home brewing beer kit on his kitchen counter. After he finishes brewing the self-named “Manley Stout” or “Hairy Porter,” Rebekka designs the labels. Luckily, if he needs a backup plan, Nashville’s craft-brewing community is on the steady rise.

But something tells me that Manley won’t be needing to take his home brewing to the level of mass production anytime soon. Powell’s client list isn’t slowing down.

Most of their catalogue utilizes eco-designed fixtures that recycle building materials original or local to a site.

Manley tells me this isn’t a ploy to attract the Nashville hipster as Starbucks buys another street corner shop.

He stresses, “The philosophy drives the aesthetic.”

The two proceed to give me a crash course in green design, providing me with the term, “embedded energy.” The concept is fairly intuitive: it’s the energy required to build a material and put it into place. When you throw a roof into a dumpster, you lose the material itself. Recycling is a reuse of the embedded energy in a different direction, in order to salvage what’s intangibly lost in disposal.

As the afternoon winds down and we finish our beers, I ask what advice the accomplished pair would

Steven Buhrman, CEO (top left) Tasha Ross, CMO (top right) Katherine Richardson, Community Manager (bottom left) Shawn Chapman, CTO (bottom right)

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POWELL STUDIO: powellarchitects.com

(left to right): Manley Seale, Tanner Rollins, Steve Powell, and Luke Tidwell

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give to someone just going into their profession.

They explain to me how often young architects at larger firms are assigned repetitive design tasks, thus lacking a working knowledge of design and construction—a hard dose of reality for a creative mind fresh out of college. Steve clarifies, “Our studio’s goal is to replicate the team dynamics and varied experiences of that university setting.”

Steve recollects his college days at Georgia Tech, remembering professor Frank Beckett telling him, “Architecture is an old man’s game.” Steve amends this to say, “an old man and woman’s game.”

Though, he ultimately finds truth in this observation, admitting, “The search for design excellence is a lifelong journey.” Manley adds, “While this is

a common reality, we at Powell are certainly a contradiction to that sentiment.

We are a mix of young and old working together to create interesting and meaningful architecture.”

We leave the brewery just before seven, and I follow behind the tan ’71 VW Camper, their “mobile office.” They’re hosting an art show and have invited me along. Assorted wine and cheese gives the facade of a highbrow arts exhibit, but really, this is a neighborhood party. Friends and clients—those terms not mutually exclusive—drop by, including Brooke of Hot Yoga of East Nashville, her Labrador Retriever in tow. Manley’s wife, Rebekka, stops by the party, and Juno, the retired racing greyhound, follows Steve around the gathering before settling in one of her three dog beds strategically scattered throughout the office. I look around, eager to meet Luke and Tanner—the two other members of Powell Studio.

Luke Tidwell came to Nashville once Belmont University offered him a full scholarship to play soccer. There, he ma-

jored in English, reading the works of Proust, Faulkner, Sartre, and Freud, and it was around this time that he stumbled upon sculpture. He began with smallscale concrete projects, and quickly moved toward large-scale public art installations for Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Nashville Metro Arts Council, among others. Luke attributes his enthusiasm for architecture to working with the team that gilded the Parthenon’s Athena in Centennial Park. “I remember being at eye level with the architrave for days at a time and seeing the building in a new light.”

After his work on the Parthenon, Luke was approached by Manley—whose wives met in college—to join the Powell team after completing his masters in architecture. Along with his penchant for building, Luke’s inherent eye for design led him to fashion, specifically to start his own men’s clothing line, Tidwell and Perryman, with longtime friend Kevin Perryman. Luke reveals that fashion also brought him and Tanner Rollins,

the fourth member of the Powell team, together. Tanner modeled in several of Luke and Kevin’s fashion shows, some of which were held at Local Honey—also where their clothes are sold. He sifts through old phone messages to show me some of the racier editorials of Tanner’s international modeling career.

Tanner, standing in the doorway wearing cuffed denim cutoffs and Converse sneakers, looks nothing like the model in the pictures. “It was a fake scar,” he explains, accounting for his now missing battle wounds that were prominent in a vampy photo spread. After modeling in New York and Hong Kong doing campaigns, runways, and editorials, he settled in Nashville with his wife. He hasn’t given up modeling completely, though. Tanner’s one of the faces of local agency MACS/AMAX—located in the same building where Powell started. But he has focused his energy on his passion project, furniture design, or what he calls “functional art.” He’s now renovating a new house to make room for his six-

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month-old daughter and is building a vision much larger than furniture with the Powell team.

The four of them convene near Tanner’s desk, and they invite me to join them. Finally, I have the privilege of seeing the Powell creative process in motion—I watch them sketch design concepts for the future tables of Tennessee Brew Works.

They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of high tops and communal tables, of benches and individual chairs, of bolting down furniture or using weighted steel cross-supports. Intimacy, personto-person visibility, accommodations for things like jackets and bags, and furniture mobility are all things they factor into designing a space.

They sketch fifty tables. Some have benches, some crumb gaps, some are floating barrels without chairs. Tanner drafts an intricate triangle of rotating wooden flat tops and explains how they could spin to make varied combinations of seating capacities.

Then, they sketch another fifty.

Even at their own party, they’re working. Powell Architecture and Building Studio is not just a fixture in Nashville’s community—they helped reinvent it. They are beginning projects in The Gulch and Germantown, but they intend to stay local. “If I can’t ride my Vespa to the project site,” Steve says, “it’s too far away.”

Twenty years ago, Nashville was a much different place. There was no Music City Center or The Gulch, and Broadway more closely resembled a bigger Printer’s Alley than a tourist attraction. Now, construction is constant, and it seems as if new buildings go up every day. But something sets Powell apart. When every building added to our city seems new, Steve, Manley, Luke, and Tanner remain true to their philosophy of recycle, reuse, and remake—building Nashville from Nashville.

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EE *COFF : SODA a home

ave If you h e 2 cups eam, us sodastr ffee and brew co of cold f water.

6 cups o

Who’s creepin’ while you’re sleepin’, cruisin’ while you’re snoozin’, and scorin’ while you’re snorin’? That’s right—the Night Owl. While you’re scrambling eggs, he’s crawling into bed. But his nocturnal tendencies aren’t merely the product of Folgers, Adderall, and Mountain Dew. It’s actually No. 308’s cocktail of the same name that lets this guy break it down till the break of dawn. This uncanny combination of Chattanooga Whiskey Co.’s 1816 Cask whiskey, No. 308’s signature coffee soda, and fresh lemon juice will have you staying up later than a procrastinating college freshman. So cancel tomorrow morning’s big meeting, put on the house music, and get ready to rage, ’cause nighttime is the right time for this libation.

THE GOODS: ½ oz.

Chattanooga Whiskey Co. 1816 Cask*

1½ oz. simple syrup ½ oz.

fresh lemon juice coffee soda*

* The 1816 Cask whiskey is 113.6 proof. Cask whiskey is taken straight from the (cask) barrel, devoid of dilution, which makes it considerably higher in alcohol content.

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Build drink over ice in a highball glass. Top with coffee soda. Garnish with a slice of lemon.

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MASTER PLATERS As Ned Stark said in the first episode of Game of Thrones, “Winter is coming.” While that may seem a little melodramatic in this context (after all, it’s only September), the threat of cooler weather remains. So head to Mas Tacos to celebrate these final moments of warmth with their famous tortilla soup. With hints of cilantro, garlic, and jalapeño, the dish’s heat will bring you back to those steamy nights spent with Javier during your vacation in Cozumel—even if you’re stuck raking leaves back home.

INTRO BY CHARLIE HICKERSON | PHOTO BY ANGELA CONNERS

THE GOODS: 1

4-lb. chicken

5

corn tortillas, cut in ½-inch strips

2 ears

husked corn

1

onion, quartered

1

carrot, peeled and chopped

5

garlic cloves, smashed

2

chipotle chiles, dried

1 jalapeño (w/ seeds), halved lengthwise 7

cilantro sprigs

3 tbsp. fresh lime juice taste

kosher salt

taste

freshly ground black pepper

vegetable oil (for frying) chopped fresh: cilantro, halved cherry tomatoes, avocado wedges, queso fresco (for garnish)

RECIPE BROUGHT TO YOU BY TERESA MASON OF MAS TACOS POR FAVOR

DIRECTIONS: FIn a large pot, bring chicken, onion, carrot, garlic, jalapeño, and 16 cups of water to a boil; skim foam from surface. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, skimming the surface frequently, until chicken is cooked through (about 1 hour). Transfer chicken to a plate. Strain broth into a large pot.

Discard remaining solids. Shred chicken meat; discard skin and bones. Transfer chicken meat to a medium bowl and set aside.

FMeanwhile, set pot with strained broth over medium heat. Add cilantro sprigs. Bring broth to a simmer and cook until reduced to 8 cups (about 1 hour). Discard sprigs and chiles, if using. Stir in 3 tbsp. lime juice. Season with salt, pepper, and more lime juice, if desired. Add chicken to broth.

FAttach deep-fry thermometer to the side of a heavy skillet. Pour oil in skillet 1-inch deep. Heat on medium until thermometer registers about 350°F. In batches, fry

tortilla strips, turning occasionally, until crisp and golden brown (2 or 3 minutes per batch). Transfer to paper towels to drain. Season with salt.

FCook corn over a gas flame or under a broiler, turning occasionally, until charred. Let stand until cool enough to handle. Cut kernels from cobs in strips.

FDivide soup among bowls. Top with corn, tortilla strips, cilantro, tomatoes, avocado, crumbled queso fresco, and lime.

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THE ECOCOUTURIER He’s acted alongside Barbie, exhibited at the Smithsonian, and sometimes sleeps outside. Clothing designer Jeff Garner’s threads aren’t your average eco-clothes

BY LEIGH WARE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARAH BARLOW

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JEFF GARNER: prophetik.com. Follow on Twitter @prophetik native.is/jeffgarner 40 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

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Jeff Garner gets his dresses in dreams. Dresses so sumptuous—with Old World cuts fused with sustainable, naturally dyed fabric—that they could only hail from a romantic past life. It may sound crazy, but it’s not. And neither is he. One look at the career of the locally based, internationally renowned eco-designer, and it’s clear that his star’s meteoric rise is far from over.

I meet Jeff Garner at his studio in Hillsboro Village, discreetly situated atop POSH Boutique. Climbing up an unassuming back stairwell with boxes scattered along its concrete corridor, I silently berate myself for the polyester dress I donned on such a sweaty summer day. Polyester, to interview an eco-designer, no less.

The door thrusts inward and before me stands a mixedup time traveler—a toned and tanned surfer shot through a wormhole back to the Civil War. His long golden hair, whisked into a relaxed pony, primes him for the cover of a Danielle Steele novel. A pair of fitted jodhpurs sleeve his legs, and a loose white shirt covers his torso. But this ready-to-ride attire is no mere fashion ploy.

“I’m a mess,” Jeff explains, looking down at his shirt.

“My horse got hurt when I was riding this morning, and I had to bring out the iodine.” Not the tone I expected from a superstar designer and Casanova doppelganger.

If Jeff ’s personal appearance surprises, then one step into his showroom stuns. Racks of clothing encompass the bright, airy room—icy blue silks peek behind swaths of muted pink fabric, and a row of tailored men’s coats hangs beside a tartan skirt. The unadorned windows spill light onto the wood floors, and in the corner sits a red velvet couch with three pairs of women’s heels and a pair of riding boots beside it.

We settle into a couple antique chairs. “Let me turn this off so we’re not interrupted,” he tells me, pulling out an iPhone deceptively hidden in a leather sleeve—which I find out was his own design. He may be a world traveler, but his Southern manners have trained him well.

Jeff steps as confidently through life as he does through a room. The man that sits before me has traveled a seemingly impossible route, one that has taken him across states and coasts and across the world. He’s brave, not only in the pursuit of his career, but to buck convention and do things his way.

The designer grew up on a horse farm in Franklin, and his days were spent horseback riding. Even as a child, his budding artistic inclinations singled him out from his classmates. “I started when I was six. I’d borrow a sketch pad from my sister, and I’d sit in my room, cutting clothes apart, then put them back together. Sometimes I’d wear them to school,” he smiles. “The good ol’ boys made fun of me a bit.”

Jeff ’s friends were musicians and artists in their own right, not the good ol’ boy types. In high school, as they continued their musical careers, Jeff handled the merch,

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Hair: Rodney Mitchell; Makeup: Kristen Motil; Models: (top left) Chelsea Calvert, (bottom right) Kristen Motil 42 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

# N AT IVE N AS H VILLE

jumping on tour buses and offering to dress them. “I would sketch on napkins, creating graphic designs,” he remembers. “Without them, there’s no way I would’ve turned out this way.”

Life on the road may have given him an outlet, but Jeff’s grandfather was the one who lit the fire of his creativity.

He explains, “My grandfather worked at an underground factory, and basically, it made the fuel for the atomic bomb. But at the time, it was top secret.”

During days spent in his grandfather’s basement, it quickly became evident that Jeff was a natural-born problem solver. “We built engines, radios, everything, with no blueprints or plans—just figuring it out.” During his senior year of high school, he took the ASVAB, a multi-aptitude test designed by the military to evaluate problem-solving skills. When he scored in the top percentile, West Point approached him with a scholarship.

“They came to me and said, ‘We want to give you a full ride, give you a Corvette your junior year.’” Trying to picture Jeff in fatigues, I ask him why he turned down the offer. He responds, “I said, ‘No thanks. I don’t want you shaving my head.’”

Little did he know, the same skills that made the student an attractive West Point candidate would serve him well on the catwalk. He’s hardwired with an inventor’s brain. But instead of using it to make nuclear arms, he makes the fashion world a better place.

In a gutsy move against his parent’s wishes, Jeff not only refused to attend West Point, but decided to travel as far away as possible—the West Coast. He had one friend in California, whose mother happened to be the admissions counselor at Pepperdine. He landed a partial scholarship at the university (where he was introduced to costume design as a theatre minor), and that was it. He was going to California.

“I was on my walkabout. I drove my Jeep, top off, all the way to Malibu. I didn’t have any expectations. I could go along with what presented itself.”

Once in California, Jeff morphed into the quintessential surfer boy. No, really. His buddy who was an actor set him up with an agent, and Jeff fit the bill for a role as a surfer for an international Barbie commercial campaign.

Barbie ended up paying for the rest of his education, and the surfer role soon turned into a lifestyle. “It was the way I woke up, and it was how I re-energized myself from nature,” he recalls.

During his junior year, an international entertainment company, STILETTO, hired him for a position in creative development and merchandising, giving Jeff invaluable leeway to explore his creative passions. “They let me redesign the offices, and I was doing $20,000 ads for The New York Times.”

He states these numbers casually. It was only a year out of Pepperdine, and he already had his own Malibu beachfront condo and Porsche. Coming from anyone else, I’d

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“I REALIZED I CAN'T BE INVOLVED IN SOMETHING THAT I LOVE, LIKE FASHION, AND HURT SOMETHING THAT I LOVE, LIKE THE ENVIRONMENT.”

probably roll my eyes, but there’s a humble nature about him.

Yet again, Jeff would rebel, choosing to nurse his sartorial ardor by interning with L.A. designer Artine and apprenticing under Calvin Klein while still working at STILETTO. When the entertainment company asked him to create stage costumes and production merchandise, he jumped at the opportunity, becoming fascinated with the methods and mediums behind these processes. Jeff recounts, “I started learning about the paint, the plastisols in the inks.” He’s clearly about to educate me on a topic he considers to be of the utmost importance.

“I just started asking dumb questions. Like, ‘Why are they wearing masks?’ Because in the dryer, the inks give off gas. ‘What does that do to the lungs?’

And I thought, Wow. This is legal? They let people do this?”

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He continues, “I realized I can’t be involved in something that I love, like fashion, and hurt something that I love, like the environment.”

Enter his line, Prophetik. To hear Jeff tell it, he woke up one day and knew he needed to approach fashion design his way. “I know my family thought, There goes your paycheck. And you don’t even have a business plan.”

“But it wasn’t about a business plan.

I had more of a message,” he counters.

With Prophetik, he envisioned a different future for fashion, one designed with the lowest possible impact. In essence, Prophetik became the change he wished to see.

“We can’t curb the appetite to buy—we’re an addicted society. When you think about fashion, you don’t think about the environment. But I can educate and bring awareness, and they can buy something that’s less impactful.”

Jeff began sourcing hemp and other natural fabrics and launched Prophetik in 2002 while still in California.

With no real formal schooling in fashion design, the entrepreneur muses, “Nobody said, ‘You can’t do it that way.’ I just did what I felt was in the air.”

The first collection drew inspiration from his childhood on the farm, equestrian background, and life in Nashville. He calls it “Civil-Warinspired, yet rock ‘n’ roll.” He began with pants, t-shirts, and jackets. The stunning gowns—those would come later.

Describing his collection, he explains, “I’m a romantic and want to tell a story. I see the guy as more of the gentleman, and the girl as the princess bride. I like the feminine energy—like your dress,” he nods at me.

Cue me squirming in my seat. My inner feminist doesn’t identify with anything close to a princess bride.

“Many women don’t wear dresses anymore,” he continues. “They wear that yoga stuff. But back in the day, people wore the same riding boots, the same jodhpur pants, the same jacket.

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You would see them on the street, and go, ‘Oh, there goes Jefferson.’ Now, we quickly follow trends.”

After starting his line, Jeff returned to his roots in Tennessee. “I was making no money!” he exclaims. “Plus, I’d always wanted to come back.” So, he set up in downtown Franklin and started hosting catwalk shows. He remembers, “The guys who now run Nashville Fashion Week would come to my shows and take notes.”

Experimenting with various plant and earth-based dyes, he began growing his supplies in Prophetik’s local community garden. The designer still cuts no corners with his craft, down to the fair wages that he pays his team.

While Jeff continued to pursue his vision of a purer future, the popularity of his designs was growing. In 2008, he was invited to show during London Fashion Week, a natural arena for his work, due to the city’s predisposition to sustain-

able initiatives. The success of his darkly romantic, theatrical collection led to descriptions of him as America’s “leading eco-couturier.”

Jeff ’s detailed creations, rare in an industry where “sustainable” is usually synonymous with “frumpy,” garnered a massive following. After a Malibu fashion show in 2009, Lani Netter, wife of film producer Gil Netter, approached Jeff about documenting his process.

They made a short film, launching it at the Monaco Film Festival. He shares, “One of the directors of the festival was also in charge of Princess Grace’s 30th anniversary event, so I was asked to put together a collection based on her.” The designs were shown in Monaco in 2012 as part of the Grace, A Symbol of Change event series, and again at Lipscomb University this past April.

In 2012, Jeff received another surprise. “The curator of the Smithsonian called me and said, ‘We want you to be

POWELL

“…I’LL SLEEP OUTSIDE SOMETIMES. IF YOU’RE TOO COMFORTABLE, YOU BECOME NUMB. YOU LOSE YOUR SENSES.” a part of an exhibition.’” The exhibit, 40 under 40: Craft Futures, celebrated influential artists of his generation.

He debuted in the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, the perfect Civil Waresque venue. “We had to get clearance from the Secret Service to bring in a

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# N AT IVE N AS H VILLE

horse,” Jeff shakes his head. On a more serious note, he remembers, “All the donors came from the Smithsonian. They loved seeing art in motion.”

They’re certainly not the only ones appreciating Jeff’s art. He counts famed director James Cameron, and his wife, Suzy, as close friends. The three share a strong commitment to the environment, with Jeff often dressing Suzy for various red carpet events.

In 2010, the pair flew to Nashville to host one of Jeff’s fashion shows, which he presented directly on Rosa Parks Boulevard, in front of The Standard— yes, right in the street. In true Jeff Garner fashion, the show featured live music and models on horseback.

Though you’d assume such a level of success could go to one’s head, I’m impressed by his ability to stay grounded.

He’s truly passionate about what he pursues. It’s not just his business—it’s his calling.

“I pour my heart and soul into this stuff, so I feel transparent,” he explains.

“I think people look at the exterior and probably think I’m this crazy party animal that sleeps with his models and does cocaine. Or they think I’m a hippie that smokes pot.”

Though Jeff was once an actor, this is no act. “It sounds weird,” he hesitates.

“But I’ll sleep outside my house some nights. If you’re too comfortable, you become numb. You lose your senses.

Not when you’re outside, not when you’re on a horse.”

When Jeff puts his mind to something, no obstacle is insurmountable.

Future endeavors include both hometown and faraway locales. He’s spearheading a possible sustainable fashion program at Lipscomb University, and in the fall, he will be showing in Paris and Shanghai.

Curious about these upcoming collections, I ask where he finds inspira-

tion for his designs. “I get my dresses in dreams.” He recalls, “I kept having this recurring one—I couldn’t shake it, and my friend said, ‘Oh, it’s a past life thing.

Just go to a hypnotist.’”

I ask, “In California?”

“No, in Belle Meade!” he says incredulously. “It felt like five minutes, but I was in there for two hours.” He continues, “It was right before Fashion Week, and I couldn’t complete the line. This one dress just wouldn’t leave. In the dream, I was at dinner in a chateau in the English countryside. And I saw the dress walk out of the door. So I followed it.”

Jeff whips out an iPad, stored in another handmade leather case. A strapless gown regally wraps a model posing at the end of a catwalk. It falls gracefully to the floor—it’s beautiful, exactly how he described. And it’s the vision of this dress that sums up Jeff Garner. He doesn’t just let dreams be dreams. He chases them.

PRB

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DRAWING INSPIRATION FROM ALL OVER THE GLOBE, CHEF PHILIP ROLF KRAJECK OF ROLF AND DAUGHTERS BRINGS AN INTERNATIONAL TOUCH TO SOUTHERN CUISINE. HE’S ARMED WITH A PIG’S HEAD, AND HE’S NOT AFRAID TO USE IT

With a name like Philip Rolf Krajeck, I expected a bearded, strangely spectacled, Dumbledore type— someone who delegates in a thick Slavic accent. What I found was an internationally recognized chef and globetrotting nomad, someone whose food was as hard to pin down as his history.

by ralph noyes | photography by emily hall

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Philip Rolf Krajeck (center)and staff

ROLF AND DAUGHTERS: rolfanddaughters.com Located in Germantown at 700 Taylor Street. Follow on Twitter @rolfndaughters and Instagram @rolfanddaughters native.is/rolfanddaughters

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“Hot! Behind you!” an urgent male voice sounds off. In the kitchen of Rolf and Daughters, my legs pressed against the trash bin, I move my torso forward and hold the position for a few seconds to let someone pass. Sweat beads drip from a server’s neck as he carefully wipes a smudge from a plate. Hanging above the hot chaos is a large, framed poster of Rambo First Blood that reads, “This time he’s fighting for his life.”

There’s a long, multi-leveled prep table that splits the small kitchen in half, creating two thin aisles for five cooks and ten or so floating servers. Various kitchen utensils shine in silver and black, carefully used and put back in their spots. Immaculate, clear Tupperware containers of all sizes are placed around the room and labeled methodically with blue tape and black Sharpie. The sprinklers stand like sentries, watching over the sizzling stovetops that I expect will erupt any second.

Then there’s the food. It’s everywhere, in every conceivable color, consistency, and stage of preparation, and I don’t have any idea what to call most of it: egg yolks floating in pans covered in Saran wrap, translucent white Communion wafers, carrot and celery salsa, and beds of beans. I see piles of pork, there’s sausage on the grill and in the oven, unbaked sourdough resting on flour, and there’s seaweed butter scraped all over brown bread.

A cook with gauged ears pulls out a drawer full of chicken, brushing his back against his stove neighbor, who works two burners, a flattop grill, and an oven—all within arms reach. I spin in place, arms and notebook tucked, and can’t find a single free person to talk to.

A tiny machine near the serving table spits receipts, the chaos climbing. “I’m gonna need you to hop over there,” Philip points, distracted, at the ice machine in the corner.

••• It’s now past 10 p.m., the official ending time of service, but several tables linger, unbothered by the staff chattering behind the grey marble bar. Philip drums his fingers on a can of Coors Banquet, his preferred warm-weather drink.

Rock music bounces off the wood floors and high ceilings, amplified by the sparse metal fixtures and interior brick walls characteristic of Germantown.

A connected line of communal tables runs through the center of the room parallel to the

“ What we do is a style of life. Some people go to a foreign city and visit museums to experience culture. I eat their food.”

bar, and single booth tables line the perimeter. We’re sitting in the only full booth, close to the door, which puts him within talking distance of the host area, the bar, and the back door to the kitchen.

Philip looks tired.

He doesn’t bother to remove his blue apron, but instead delves straight into his immediate plans to close the restaurant for a week while he’s in Portland with his wife. He raves about all the seafood he’ll be eating. It’s his first break after a very busy first seven months.

“Is this vacation or research work?” I ask jokingly, unable to see the logic of leaving town to test more food. “It’s a lot more than just work.

What we do is a style of life. Some people go to a foreign city and visit museums to experience culture. I eat their food.”

I’m anxious to hear him describe the food at Rolf and Daughters. I’ve already studied the menu and just can’t imagine the rigatoni with the country ham. Mediterranean and Southern seems like such an unlikely pairing, but Philip’s background marries the two. And his explanation is as winding as his personal narrative.

He was born on an air force base in Germany to a Norwegian mother and an American father who worked for NATO. His family moved to Florida when he was a toddler, then moved back to Brussels, where he spent his formative years. After graduating from an international high school, he left his family and returned to Florida, where he tried studying economics, then computer science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

His short attention span and love for food drove him back across the Atlantic to attend hotel school in Le Bouveret, Switzerland (fifteen minutes from France). Later, he went south to the Italian border to work as a hotel cook in a town called Zermatt, which lies at the base of Matterhorn Mountain in the Swiss

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Alps. He and his wife, whom he met in Huntsville while in school, married and had their first baby girl. Eventually, they moved back to the U.S., and Philip bounced between kitchens in Boston, Atlanta, and New York. Finally, he landed at The WaterColor Inn in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, where he was repeatedly recognized as one of the best chefs in the South.

“I’ve experienced all these things in my life, and they just show up on the plate,” he says seamlessly.

“Those are the things I really like, and am good at, or...” he amends, “okay at. So we focus on them.”

Despite the broad spectrum of food that Philip has been exposed to, his aim is to use local ingredients to create simple dishes that fit the season, what he calls “modern peasant food.”

I have no idea what that means.

“You mean like gourmet food in a rustic area?” I struggle to understand, realizing that we don’t even have the common vocabulary to communicate.

“We call it ‘modern peasant food’ because we don’t know what the hell to call it. Before mass transportation, people had something in their region they had access to, and their styles of cooking evolved around having this one thing at this time of year.” He continues to make his point, “They had to store it, preserve it, and stretch it out. That’s how different parts of the world developed their own food cultures.”

“So you’re getting the ingredients from here, but ending up with a foreign product?” I continue.

“No,” he eases into the corner of the booth. “We’re using a foreign vernacular of cuisine. What we import is the idea.” Philip explains, “Food has a language in each culture. In Italy, there are hundreds of names for pastas—in one town, one thing might have a name, then the town across the river uses a different name.” He laughs, “And they all

what’s

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“ We’re always learning new things to do with the animal.

Some people don’t want the heads. So we’re like, ‘Give ’em to us.”

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argue with each other about who’s right.”

Philip cruises forward, touching on regional differences, the yeast fermentation process, and all the different things you can do to an onion. I’m beginning to get lost in the language. Instead of keeping pace, I generalize the food as “gourmet” until he pumps the brakes. “The problem with words like that is some people will put us in the fancy box, the special occasion bubble. We want to match the level of intent that those restaurants have, but keep our family walk-ins.”

A little embarrassed at my misuse, I continue, “How do you get a hold of this foreign foo—” He interjects, “We make it—everything in-house.” Gaining speed, the chef breaks down his threeday bread-making process, as well as the weekly delivery schedule of vegetables, dairy, dry-aged beef, farm-raised chicken, and pork. “A whole pig every week,” he beams. “We’re trying to figure out what to do with every single part.”

My mind drifts, first to the mystery

substance that hot dogs and gummy bears are made of, then to the hog maw and pigs feet at Kroger that I gawk at in horror. I snap back into focus as Philip launches into a visceral description of his coppa di testa, a deboned pig’s head that’s cooked in a water bath for seventytwo hours, then hung, dried, shaved, and served cold with dandelion greens and shaved radishes. “It’s a bitter, sharp, rich, and fatty unctuous mosaic of pig face,” he finishes with hungry relish. “We’re always learning new things to do with the animal. Some people don’t want the heads. So we’re like, ‘Give ’em to us.’”

Philip applies the same spare-nothing principle to the space itself. The area that is now Rolf and Daughters used to be the boiler room that powered the Werthan textile factory. “There was no ceiling—just a roof three stories up and these semi-permeable brick walls. So, I went out to the sawmill with my friend Matt Alexander,” he pauses to praise the man who’s provided the restaurant’s fur-

niture and new stools. “And we made the ceiling from the scraps.”

“Would you like another beer by the way?” he offers.

Before I tell him what I’m drinking, he already knows it’s Kölsch by sight. He returns with another Coors Banquet and sets my Kölsch on the table with the practiced ease of a server. When I begin asking questions about the music and the drinks, Philip turns me over to Molly Ward, the general manager, and Matt Tocco, who manages the bar.

The three of them, together with the other thirtyone employees—half of them musicians—run the restaurant on a “democratic utilitarian system.” Again, I ask for clarification. “We wanna be approachable and accessible to our audience,” Philip explains. “We’ll work together to figure a dish out, but once we figure it out, it has to be consistent. Every single dish gets tasted inside the kitchen.”

He reflects on the communal aspect of cooking. “It’s really something that’s a trade, something you learn from different people,” he explains, relating his yearly three-week stints in Boston and New York. “Sounds like a lot of free labor,” I snort. “Three weeks isn’t enough,” he muses, continuing, “it takes at least a year to learn how to use all the different ingredients as the

seasons change.”

But Philip doesn’t have to travel to the Northeast to learn new tricks of the trade—he admits that he learns something from his staff every day. “People become really close in restaurants because of what they go through, the transformations that happen all the time.”

When I ask him the obligatory question of how the “daughters” came into play, he shrugs. “My wife mentioned it at dinner one night, and it resonated.”

His thirteen and fifteen-year-old daughters, currently

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in Greece visiting their grandma, helped him landscape the space outside the restaurant. He tells me about spending time with them— seeing Grizzly Bear and Feist, visiting friends’ farms, and going on bike rides. But for the most part, my attempts to dig into his family life lead us straight back to food.

“I don’t have enough time. I’ll have Mondays off, and I’m usually catching up on life, cooking with my family—no TV, no phone, no distractions,” he states with deep reverence.

His family eats at Rolf and Daughters once a week, but family time outside of the restaurant is of the utmost importance. He talks about his co-workers and family in the same breath, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which “we” he’s referring to.

But as much as Philip’s staff has become his family, he knows, “I’m not gonna do it forever, ’cause I can’t. When you get too old, you can’t stand in front of a stove sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. But that’s what it takes. The reward is the experience we create for others, but the process is the romance.”

The last of the waiters is walking out, and Philip shifts anxiously on his side of the booth. “We wanna avoid labeling ourselves too much, because we don’t want to lose the freedom to be able to play around. We just...” he pauses in thought, “ are.”

I’m beginning to grasp Philip’s dilemma. He’s trying to give a perfect answer for an imperfect question.

There are no correct words. Tastes and names are still up for debate, and they always will be.

“I don’t want people to come in and be daunted by the language. We don’t want to be fussy or precious.

We just want to be a good place to have quality life experiences,” he finishes.

I may not be bound for Brussels or Boston, but at least I’ve learned a word or two.

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by elise lasko | photography by jess williams

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ATIVE IVENNAS ASHHVILLE VILLE ##NNAT

Chancellor Warhol is an art-collecting, animÊ-loving, pinot noir-sipping grunge head. But most people know him as one of Nashville’s leading hip hop artists # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E

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“Intro” “Chancellor Warhol” is a name almost exclusively for an artist—a title few could wear well. The first half invented and the second an homage to the “Pope of Pop,” it’s quite the departure from Antonio Dewayne Boleyjack. Even so, his moniker suits him as well as his spotless Hawaiian-ocean-hued Vans.

It’s the Monday after he opened for Ice Cube at Marathon Music Works, and I can tell Chance is still recovering by the circles under his eyes. Despite his sleepy appearance, he looks and acts dignified, and with good reason—he’s the first hip hop artist to be on the cover of local industry publication Music Row Magazine, and he continues to prove his promising foothold on the future of hip hop. But his successes haven’t jaded him. He’s down-to-earth—a welcome relief from the “f*ck bitches, get money” mantra that often embodies his genre.

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“I’m On” When I ask what transformed him into his stage name, Chance fingers the bill of his signature “Paris is Burning” snapback— the phrase stamped on a metal plate—and answers in all seriousness, “Well, a spaceship landed on a farm in Indiana...” before his mouth gives way to a modest smirk, developing like Polaroid film in the light.

He pauses for a second before answering again. “I believe that life experiences push you into who you’re supposed to be. I think I was shaped to be Chancellor Warhol.”

He crosses his arms, bringing attention to his tattoo collection. The muted ink designs look more like delicate watercolor sketches than dark markings. On his left arm, I make out Edgar Allan Poe’s line “Take thy beak from out my heart,” positioned next to a raven with a heart in its beak. Chance describes his initial inspiration, “I was watching the original Batman, and before the Joker shoots Bruce Wayne, he says that phrase. I knew then that I needed to get it tattooed.”

Chance lifts his right shirt sleeve and I recognize another, this one a mostly-complete replica of Salvador Dalí’s Galatea of the Spheres. To him, it represents the wom-

en in his life—his mom, sister, and others, past and present, who’ve impacted him. “It reminds me that you creatures are the essence of life.”

His new last name was in the making ever since Chance was twelve. As a gift, his mother gave him a pillow stamped with a print of the pop god’s iconic Campbell’s tomato soup can, and when Chance first saw it, he thought, I wanna draw this!

Just like that, he was hooked. “I became a sponge for art,” he confirms. Like Roald Dahl’s Matilda, whose quest for knowledge supersedes the classroom, Chance sought answers the only way he knew how—by frequenting the library. “There was no internet then,” he explains, hinting to his age. But books work like Wikipedia linkchasing: one interest leads to the discovery of another, and Andy Warhol soon became Chance’s portal to not only Postmodern art, but to the formation of his identity.

“Dope.Fly.Fresh” He found companionship in the work of Warhol, Dalí, and Lichtenstein before falling for music, but the second followed closely behind. When hip hop, grunge, and punk rock were ruling his adolescence, his mother was introducing him to the clas-

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NASHVILLE sics—Blood, Sweat & Tears; Terry Reid; and Earth, Wind & Fire. But like most teens, he made sure to hold on to what he could call his own. “As youth, we always want to discover our own things. We want to be able to say, ‘This is my music,’” he shares.

While in the company of a musically inclined mother (a singer and pianist) and sister (a saxophonist), Chance gave a few instruments a try, but to no avail. “I didn’t inherit that talent,” he smiles. He’s a man who’s realistic about his limits, but never rules out the impossibilities.

Defying expectations, Chance’s idol during his teens wasn’t Biggie Smalls or the Beastie Boys. It was Kurt Cobain. In Chance’s words, the late Nirvana frontman and grunge icon “spoke to me as the leader of my generation.”

“Nirvana took the torch away from hip hop in the early ’90s,” he continues. “When Cobain died, it was back to Tupac, Jay-Z, and Eminem. Then it blended with tastemakers like Kanye and Pharrell.” And it’s this new hybrid of hip hop that Chance wants to represent—“the Kanyes and Pharrells who grew up on skateboards and grunge rock.”

Having attended a public school in Hendersonville with mostly white students, followed by a majority-black school in the city, Chance was exposed to two spheres of music that overlapped to produce what would later become his sound. “When you mix them, there’s no limit to what you can make. That’s what I like to embody.”

“I’m Gone” As his Dalí tattoo tells, women hold a special place in Chance’s heart. When I ask about his home life, he speaks fondly of his mother, calling her “a mover and a shaker” and a Southern Baptist that’s “still a little artsy.” She’s also the one who raised him, as his dad was absent for a significant period of his childhood. But even then, he had a closer relationship with his father, though they had an unconventional bond—one that was obstructed by visiting hours and bars.

“Most people in my situation say, ‘Yeah, my dad was locked up and was never there for me.’ But my dad was.

I’m proud of him.”

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“Bleeding Hearts” His first album, 2010’s Japanese Lunchbox: A Love Story, wasn’t supposed to be an album. Instead, Chance envisioned six or so songs to “throw up on MySpace.” What began as a fledgling transformed into a fourteen-track mouthpiece for broken hearts everywhere. With lyrics artfully strung together like, “These are the memoirs of a forehead kisser / The more that I give up / The more that I miss her,” fans took notice, relating Chance’s heartache to their own.

But prior to the record’s inception, Chance was part of an “electro-rap Daft Punk thing” with his friend, Ducko McFli. They went by NOBOTS—or No Other Band Of-

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fers This Sound. Though they split so Chance could pursue his solo career, Ducko makes guest appearances, most recently at last weekend’s show at Marathon.

Returning to the topic of Japanese Lunchbox, I think I’m witnessing Chance have a revelation. “My rap career started out of a breakup. I felt like, ‘F*ck the world, this girl just broke my heart. Just say what you gotta say,’” he says slowly, slipping into the visceral memory. His mind refocuses as he amends, “Luckily, as a musician, I can transform the shit I go through into art.”

“The Right One,” just shy of two and a half minutes, seems to epitomize the album’s sentiment. He describes it as being about “the right one, but also about the one who broke your heart.”

The narrative involves a red button, a Pandora’s box of evils that kills the future of couples. “In the song,” Chance tells me, “the guy warns his girl about pressing the red button, but what does she do? She presses it.” Producer, singer, and friend known as Boss of Nova collaborated with Chance on the track, singing the swelling refrain that sounds

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like early John Legend.

But it was the conception of the album cover that made the album itself, Chance attests. While at an art show in Open Lot—a former East Nashville tire warehouse—he spotted his new inspiration. He describes, “I was drinking my pinot noir, and I looked in the corner, and there was this amazing piece of art just leaned over collecting dust”—what would be the robot on the cover. “I remember the room stopping and me thinking, This is me. Everything came together.”

Dubbed The Twenty-First Century Thinker by its artist, Paul Clement, the robot is one of two figures on the cover—the other is Chance’s friend Amanda, whom he went to school with in Hendersonville. The photo shoot for the cover took place in the same factory, and the product is, to this day, one of his favorite works that he strives to top.

“Infinite Sunrise” Japanese Lunchbox, along with his 2012 sophomore album The Silver Factory, landed him on stage at festivals like Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, SXSW, Austin City

Limits, and Sundance Film Festival.

He’s gotten a little more than love at festivals. Recalling SXSW with that same smirk, he tells me about a female fan that approached him after the show. “She showed me her tits, and then gave me a super rare Astro Boy sticker. Apparently, it was from this Canadian museum,” he notes nonchalantly. Chance points to his most prized tattoo, a custom design of the “Mickey Mouse of animé,” Astro Boy. “Part of the reason for the name of the first album,” Chance begins, “is that I’m an animé nut.”

It goes without saying that the list of musicians and hip hop masterminds Chance has kicked it with is enviable, to say the least—?uestlove, Taylor Swift, and Drake are some acquaintances of his. But of all the fellow musicians he’s come across on tour, it was longtime hip hop artist and Chance’s top influence, Pharrell Williams, who made the greatest impact. The two talked after a show, and their conversation quickly turned to the true intent behind art. They agreed, “Don’t make music to make money.

Make music to make music, to touch people’s lives—the money will come,”

he insists.

Chance knows there’s a place for name dropping and a place for remaining humble. He’s been surrounded by good company for the past few years, including the likes of some of hip hop’s most revered leaders. But he considers himself a realist at the end of the day. He confirms, “I’m still me. I’m still Chance from Nashville, and I’m going to be that way till I die.” While some become blinded by privilege, he wears his status as realistically as he wears his name.

But he won’t deny that he considers himself a pioneer in his field. “I feel like the leader of the new school of hip hop,” he confirms, though he specifies after, “I’m not into the sugarcoated privileges that come with that sort of recognition.

That stuff means nothing to me.”

Instead of the bling, he’s interested in his legacy. “For me, it’s about living forever. A wise man once said, ‘A real man only dies once, but a man who didn’t live his life dies twice.’ I think the most important thing to me is that I don’t want people to forget me.”

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“The Kennedy’s” “People either look up to me or they hate me,” Chance continues. I can tell that he’s thought about this a lot. “But I don’t hold any grudges, even when people don’t like me.” Coming from a self-proclaimed “introvert by nature,” this philosophy seems easier said than executed. Then again, most reticent types wouldn’t immerse themselves in a career that demands “being on” more often than not. I consider Chance an exception.

Changing the subject, I ask what song he’s most proud of, and he answers without hesitation, the single, “The Kennedy’s,” deeming it a metaphor for how his life has unfolded. After actually kicking it with a member of the family, Chance started reflecting on the notion of “selling out” for fame and approval.

He begins reciting the song’s lyrics, his eyes closed and his hands moving in a way that looks like he’s practicing tai chi, “You better make ya bed when ya sleeping with the enemy / Friends say I

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CHANCELLOR WARHOL: chancellorwarhol.com Follow on Twitter and Instagram @ChanceWarhol

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changed, / Shit, what has gotten into me? / You get a lil’ change now you kicking it with Kennedy’s.”

Chance breaks character, opening his eyes and adds, “It makes me wonder if I’m the one who’s changing, or if it’s my friends.” Either way, the question of authenticity looms over him and makes several guest appearances in his more recent work. He finishes the stanza, “Fought through demons and No Doz, just trying to paint this Rococo,” admitting offhandedly to popping a few of the over-the-counter alertness aides to finish writing songs at 4 a.m.

“The Right One” Removing art from the equation would erase every one of Chance’s muses. He fuses his passions for the sake of creating, dabbling in set design and executing concepts for his album covers from start to finish. “I convinced this girl to get naked and be spray-painted for the cover of The Silver Factory. Art is the greatest excuse to get people to do stuff,” Chance says with a hint of sarcasm.

The only thing he brags about is his art collection, specifically his Lichtenstein prints and a rare black-and-

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white shot of Andy Warhol wearing a Boy London hat.

He also mentions a favorite book of his, Covers of the Twentieth-Century by Orion.

Out of the cover anthology, the one that sticks out to him most is from France’s weekly Paris Match, of a Frenchman waving his country’s flag in front of a tank during the Paris riots in the ’60s. For Chance, the photograph sparked an inspiration in him, as well as the phrase, “Paris Is Burning.” “I saw the cover and knew what I wanted to title my next album,” he explains.

Paris Is Burning, set to release the seventeenth of this month, features local collaborators like TORRES, Cherub, and Madi Diaz. And a week before the album drops, his new tracks will accompany a laser show at Nashville’s Sudekum Planetarium.

Unlike his earlier repertoire, this record draws heavily from unconventional influences. “It starts sort of like Enter the Void,” he explains, with “Collapse” as the opener that Nashville electronica group Makeup and Vanity Set produced.

Overall, the tracks that comprise the album are darker than Chance’s earlier testing of the waters— even darker than Japanese Lunchbox. Chance specifies that it revolves around the “rise and fall of fame and the pressure of it all.” Mirroring his current style, he intended for the album to evoke images of a black-andwhite Paris, “like if Michel Gondry could do a movie in the ’60s, this would be the soundtrack,” he finishes.

The opening measures of his song, “Other Side,” have an uncanny similarity to College’s “A Real Hero,” the recurring track in Nicolas Refn’s crime drama Drive. Chance confirms, “I do a lot of my writing after watching movies, and that song was in my head after watching it.”

Looking at the three years between his debut record and Paris Is Burning, he realizes he’s seen “a lifetime of stuff” and met a handful of people who have shaped and evolved him—and continue to.

Returning to our talk of Nirvana’s frontman, Chance explains, “I love how Cobain was very honest with his music, and I feel like this is my most honest album. I’m not holding as much back, and I’m not as polite.”

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It seems as though Chance is defined entirely by people, paintings, photographs, and albums—a hybrid of the new-age hip hop artist. “Sure, being a rapper is part of who I am, but there are many, many layers to human beings. You don’t have to be one extreme all the time,” Chance realizes, as he bends to examine the condition of his shoes. And in that moment of watching him, I realize that it wasn’t his life experiences that transformed Antonio Dewayne Boleyjack into Chancellor Warhol. It was his own determination to be in the running for the next pope of hip hop.

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The Royal(e) Family YOU MAY THINK THAT ALANNA ROYALE IS ONE PERSON—THE SOUL-SINGING VOCAL POWERHOUSE RULING NASHVILLE’S MUSIC SCENE. BUT BEHIND EVERY QUEEN IS A ROYAL FAMILY

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) by henry pile | photography by rebecca adler rotenberg

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(left to right): Diego Vasquez, Matt Snow, Jared Colby, Alanna Quinn-Broadus, Kirk Donovan, Gabriel Golden

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When Alanna Quinn-Broadus and Jared Colby came down from Boston almost a year and a half ago, one thing was on their minds: to “make it” in Nashville. From day one, they formed a kickass band, met as many people as they could, played every show possible, and made friends—lots and lots of friends. Now, they’ve recorded a vinyl EP and seven-inch, played at Bonnaroo, and have become something of a household name—all in one year. You could say their hard work is paying off. But in their eyes, their success can’t simply be attributed to themselves. A few good Nashville friends have undoubtedly played roles in their story.

“Alanna Royale is a collective of people. They’re a big party machine, and Alanna is the engineer driving it all.”

—Mike Grimes, co-owner of Grimey’s and The Basement

Diego Vasquez: Trombone

they scream, “GET THE F*CK UP!” The music bursts through the speakers, trapping the audience in a groove, thus beginning their sonic assault.

Enter Alanna, lead singer and vocal powerhouse known for her filthy mouth and tenacious stage presence.

SUPPORTING CAST

END SCENE

PLAYERS Alanna Quinn-Broadus: Vocals Matt Snow: Drums Gabriel Golden: Bass Jared Colby: Guitar Kirk Donovan: Trumpet

Seth Thomas: Merch guy Larry Kloess: Founder & CEO of Cause A Scene Mike Grimes: Co-Owner of Grimey’s and The Basement Wells Adams: DJ, Lightning 100

INTRO:

ACT ONE:

“YOU’RE GOIN’ COUNTRY?” Jared: Alanna and I planned to move to L.A. after she graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston. We traveled to Nashville on a school trip and never really left Music Row.

Nashville six-piece funk-rock band Alanna Alanna: We saw this much of Nashville Royale emerges from the darkness and onto [fingers in a tiny pinch]. the stage. Matt, redheaded and Viking-esque, takes to his drum throne, spinning his sticks Jared: But everyone here was so nice, and between his fingers. Gabriel flashes a smile as the vibe was different from any place we’d he straps on his bass. Jared jumps from the ever been. We wanted to move somewhere, pedal to the amp, pulling his guitar strap over and we knew we wanted to play music. So the jet-black pompadour resting atop his head. we said, “Let’s give this a shot.”

Kirk, sporting gigantic sunglasses, runs his fingers over the keys of his trumpet, and Diego Alanna: Our friends in Boston said, peeks at the crowd from under a newsie hat, “You’re moving to Nashville?!” [Insert seriwith his trombone hanging from his arms. ous twang] “You’re goin’ country?”

The snare fires a shot, the lights explode blue and red, the horns blast a warning, and Today, they’re far from Boston and far from

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Hair and Makeup

by McKenzie Gregg, Photos shot at Donks Bar & Grill on West Trinity Lane

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country. They call their sound neo-soul, pop-funk fusion. The key to this sound lies in the brass section—made up of Kirk and Diego. They fall somewhere in between symphony and street musicians.

ACT TWO:

“WE DIDN’T WANT TO HAVE HIRED GUNS. WE WANTED TO HAVE A BAND.” Alanna: In Boston, we started playing rock ‘n’ roll. That’s how we write, and that’s our stage presence. The horns were never really part of the plan.

Matt: I don’t remember thinking that [laughs]. I take credit for the horns.

I’ve never had a bad idea.

Jared: Matt has all the good ideas!

Diego: The first time I played with them was at East-Centric Pavilion in East Nashville. Alanna emailed me sheet music, and I’d never heard them before.

Alanna:

And through Diego, we met

Kirk.

Kirk: Which was the best thing that ever happened [laughs]!

After a drawn-out discussion about when Kirk joined the band, they finally determine that he sat in for a Halloween party.

Kirk:

After that party, they asked for the charts back. I was bummed.

Jared: Kirk didn’t realize we were just trying to be organized.

A week later, Kirk officially joined the band. In Nashville, the advent of horn sections is new, and these players are sparse.

In one month, Diego and Kirk played with twelve different bands. Jacob Jones (musician, DJ, and co-owner of Electric Western Records), who also plays with Diego and Kirk, explains that sharing musicians is nothing new. If being successful in one band wasn’t difficult enough, try playing in a handful. As Alanna Royale got more serious, they had a decision to make.

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He was yelling, “PUT MONEY IN THIS!”

Jared:

We didn’t want to have hired guns—we wanted to have a band. We wanted everyone to be in this together.

When we get paid, everyone gets paid.

When we don’t get paid, no one gets paid.

Alanna:

Making money is a requirement in the business of music. It might be a cover charge at the door or writing songs, but strong merchandise sales keeps the gas tank full. To sell merchandise, you need a salesman. Or a crazy person. Or both.

We made over $170, and we only played for fifteen minutes.

Alanna:

I always stand at the front and yell at people if they don’t buy our stuff.

Seth:

ACT THREE:

“PUT MONEY IN THIS!” Seth: I saw the first couple shows, and when they started going out of town, doing bigger things, I offered to help with merchandise.

He’s like one of those street performers in New York. While you’re watching this kid tap dance, he’s picking your pocket.

Alanna:

ACT FOUR:

Seth: For the record, I do not steal mon-

Seth is a hustler. When we played the $2 Tuesday show at The 5 Spot [their third show ever], Seth took the tip jar, walked around the crowd—

Alanna:

Instagram photos document their high-energy performances, while their reputation for quality musicianship continues to grow.

The truth is, being a good player is key, but it doesn’t always break you through the market. It might not even get you to the door for a knock. Luck, though, can be the sweetest of all divinities, and it was on their side.

ey [laughs].

CDs and t-shirts make their way out into the world, and Alanna Royale picks up steam. Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, and

“I’D MOW HIS LAWN IF HE ASKED ME TO” Mike Grimes: My business partner and I were having lunch at The Pharmacy, and Alanna waited on us. She was so outgoing—talking about her tattoos,

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Boston—and it was an intriguing conversation. I said, “You should play our ‘New Faces’ night at The Basement,” but she wanted to wait until she was perfect. I said, “You ain’t getting no f*cking younger!” [laughs]. “Come play ‘New Faces’ in three weeks.” She nailed it the first time!

Immediately, I knew she was somebody I wanted to help.

my lawn or plant my flowers. They have day jobs.

Everyone wants something, but Mike assures me he just wants success for them. That, and maybe coming back to play Record Store Day when they get famous. On a serious note, Alanna appreciates the support, but she’s concerned about the strings attached. How real is the unspoken quid pro quo? Wells Adams admits, “Very.”

He has nothing to benefit from our success. He doesn’t want to be our manager or booking agent. He genuinely ACT FIVE: likes our band and wants to help us. In “IN THIS CYNICAL MUSIC turn, we feel that way about him. If he TOWN OF OURS...” calls us for anything, we’ll help him.

Gabriel: Wells and I have been friends for years. He would always come out to hear me play.

Jared: I’d mow his lawn if he asked me to.

Wells: The first Thursday of every month, The Basement hosts CommuAlanna: Maybe that’s it! Maybe he just nion Nashville, which was created by Ben needs some landscaping?!

Lovett of Mumford and Sons. They do one in London, New York, and L.A., too.

Matt: There’s always an angle [laughs].

They book really well, and Mike Grimes doesn’t mess around with this show.

Mike: [laughs] I don’t want them to mow Alanna:

Gabe had asked me to come out and sent me early, early stuff. He said, “This girl has serious chops and stage presence like crazy. You’ve got to check it out.” To be honest with you, I totally blew it off. I was like, “Oh, it’s another one of my buddy’s bands.” But after they finished, both Lt. Dan [Buckley, fellow DJ at Lightning 100] and I were blown away.

Gabriel: The next day, they were talking about us on air.

Wells: Dan and I walked into the studio separately and were both saying to Dave Rossi [Lighting 100 Program Director], “I got wowed last night!” In this cynical music town of ours, that doesn’t happen a lot.

Alanna: Then we got an email from Dave

asking us to come to his office.

Jared: We had no idea what he wanted.

Matt: The boss wanted to talk to us!

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We didn’t even have a physical copy of a song to give him!

Alanna:

After hearing rough cuts from the band and recommendations from Wells and Dan, Dave knew what he had to do.

Wells: We started booking them for shows and got them in the studio.

Kirk: Now I’m driving, listening to Lightning 100, and I’m on the radio!

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Gaining recognition in Nashville is a challenge, but creating a tribe outside your city is an even taller order. Aside from practicing constantly with the band, Alanna tirelessly networks with promoters and venues, and clearing the path has proven to be laborious.

By October, they’ll have played Record Store Day, Bonnaroo, and Austin City Limits, and they’ll be taking their new fifteen-passenger van, “Ron Van Burgundy,” on tour. Their reputation, spreading quickly, is a product of born-to-hustle spirit and commitment to

delivering—on time, every time.

Kloess: They play every show like it’s their last, like they have an hour left on this planet, and they’re going out with guns blazing.

Larry

Mike: I think they want to go and start a f*cking party in every city in America.

Matt: That’s what soul music is, man.

You’re supposed to feel it.

ed ign des s l ode of new Martin guitars incl uding several custom m line ull f a

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We’re trying to make somebody else feel exactly what we’re feeling.

Jared:

Diego: Yeah, new songs.

We never got to go through the period of having only twenty people come to a show as we worked on new songs. Now, when we play a new song, there are 100 to 200 people there—like at Musician’s Corner.

Diego: We’ve gained a lot of confidence.

We’ve gotten to know each other better, and we’re at a point where we’re picking up pace.

Alanna:

That’s the best way to describe our band. From the depths of the entire music community to the bands in Nashville, we’re only this much [fingers in a pinch again]. But we’re grateful.

Alanna:

Jared: What’s next?

Matt: New music.

Alanna Royale is not just a band. It’s a hustle, a spirit, a collective, and a family. Alanna is the mama bear that keeps her cubs—Jared, Matt, Gabriel, Kirk, and Diego—together.

In the cutthroat fight that is the music industry, she’ll show her teeth and claws to the ones who get in her way just as fast as she’ll open her arms to those who give love and support. One thing’s for sure: she’s not afraid to act like an animal.

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WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE Seventy-year-old Klyd Watkins once led an avant-garde poetry movement. Now, he prefers spending his time in the company of friends and family singing poetry into the night

by becca capers | photography by mary-beth blankenship, vintage photos courtesy of klyd watkins

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Klyd Watkins lives with his wife and an entourage of sons and grandchildren in Crieve Hall, a South Nashville suburb. His home, which he in-

herited after his parents passed, is solid brick, neo-classical, and richly cavernous inside.

“Please take off your shoes,” he asks as I walk through the door. Leading the way, his bright white socks shuffle across several Oriental rugs, through the aroma of burning Virgin Mary candles, and arrive at the two doily-clad wing chairs where he has chosen to host our interview.

The seventy-year-old poet was born in a rural town outside Cleveland, Tennessee, and never wandered very far from it.

But his writing life didn’t start until his family moved to Nashville and enrolled him in high school at Peabody Demonstration School (now University School of Nashville). There, he cultivated a love for the written and spoken word.

“I was especially enthralled with Dylan Thomas,” Klyd remembers. “I didn’t realize it then, but it was because of the recordings he made, which I would listen to on headphones in the library. That

voice would be dancing in my head even when I was reading his work.”

After graduating high school, Klyd enrolled at Belmont University, where he met future wife and poetry partner, Linda, who was studying chemistry. She dropped out before the year was over, and Klyd transferred to Peabody University (now Vandy) as a sophomore, where he also earned his master’s. The same year he transferred, he and Linda got married, and Nashville became the place where they forged bonds with local artists, musicians, and writers, thus shaping their creative future.

It was 1963, and Klyd was working at Zibart’s Books on Church Street. While at the store, he met a man named Peter Harleman, who was visiting his mother from St. Louis, and they immediately hit it off as friends. Over the next couple years, the two would correspond about poetry, and eventually started discussing theoretical blueprints for a series of improvised recordings they would call Poetry Out Loud.

Before utter confusion ensues, I want to warn you that there’s another Poetry Out Loud—a nationally-funded compe-

tition for literature students to recite the works of established poets—but the two organizations could not have less in common. Klyd’s version, which preceded the other by a decade, was an avantgarde poetry experiment.

“Linda and I made the trip to St. Louis in 1965, to visit Peter and his wife, Patricia. Pete hit me with the radical idea that poetry should be made with the voice— since we had tape recorders now—and not by writing.”

Chronologically, the idea for Poetry Out Loud was a predecessor to slam poetry and other kinds of performance art that still thrive today. Whether it was a true ancestor—a movement that spawned these more popular movements—is unclear, and perhaps unimportant. What matters is that this new wave of poetry created by the two couples was spontaneous, oral, and social.

“Poetry Out Loud was about taking a concept that you’re working with and teasing it out in front of your peers and the microphone,” Klyd muses. But it wasn’t much of a day job, so he picked up a teaching gig in Kentucky in 1970. He taught poetry, or what he calls “textual

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poetry,” to community-college students, giving him a complicated perspective on his new project.

Though he was totally on board with Poetry Out Loud in theory, Klyd admits it took him some time to let go of the pen and paper. He chuckles, “Saying that talking is more important than writing is like saying that water is more important than

Klyd Watkins: Klyd’s books are available at East Side Story. For a copy of the Poetry Out Loud reissue, visit destijlrecs.com 86 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

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food.” He continues, “Peter ended up convincing me that the human voice was the most direct way to create poetry, and the tape recorder was its partner.”

It wasn’t too much of a stretch from his earliest sources of inspiration, like those recordings of Dylan Thomas. He always had a penchant for the oral traditions. “My favorite rockers were the ones with distinct voices—Carl Perkins, Little Richard, Little Willie John. They all have a certain je ne sais quoi that makes you tune in and care.”

So when he made the jump to doing Poetry Out Loud, he recalled role models in all kinds of fields: Native American song, Gregorian chant, even breath-sucking Southern preachers.

Once Klyd was convinced by his partners that the world of voice was poetry’s most fertile ground, the idea stuck. For their compilations (they made upwards

of a dozen during the ’60s and ’70s), they amassed beautifully improvised poems.

Famously, in ’72, Klyd and his partners rejected a poem by Alan Ginsberg for Poetry Out Loud’s fourth compilation. The famed beatnik poet committed a Poetry Out Loud faux pas, Klyd says, by submitting a poem that “was ever written down at all.” He continues, “I’m very ambivalent

about these bragging rights. Alan Ginsberg’s early poetry is a huge inspiration to me, and probably one of the reasons I’m a poet. But we couldn’t publish him just because he was famous.”

After a ten-year run, Klyd admits to feeling creatively spent. “I was tired of the avant-garde,” he says. And at the age of thirty-five, he picked up a bass guitar and became part of a different oral tradition—playing bluegrass, country, and rock ‘n’ roll in honky tonks and VFWs (or military hangouts).

Klyd’s well-oiled poetic voice, textual and oral, deals with a variety of themes.

He religiously pays homage to a natural universe that is peaceful, feminine, and aggressively human. His muse, which he never explicitly defines, seems to be a harmony of his five senses. Sometimes it motivates him toward the pornographic and lewd, sometimes toward the pure and the natural. Always, his work concerns the divine.

After ten years away from Nashville, he and Linda moved back in 1980, where they raised their sons. Klyd even began to sell real estate. “I didn’t mind the job, but I was experiencing that ethereal tug of my muse.” He fell into the habit of going to Radnor Lake.

He recalls, “I wrote over a hundred pages at Radnor Lake. I wrote streamof-consciousness poems when I should have been working on blueprints and paperwork.” This describes the decade-long period spanned in Klyd’s 1992 long-form poem, Ghost Trees.

With more Radnor Lake material than he knew what to do with, Klyd began looking for a publisher. He stumbled upon a literary magazine out of Walla Walla, Washington, called The Temple.

“They just wanted to publish the heck out of me!” the poet remembers. He published half a dozen chapbooks (pocketsized, low-budget publications) including Ghost Trees and 5 Speed—the only two still available.

But he still wanted to cultivate that primal urge to use his own voice. That’s part of why he built a fully-fledged recording studio from the ground up in his own backyard five years ago.

He instructs me to pick up my shoes and carry them through the rooms of his labyrinthian farmhouse to the back door.

There, we put our shoes back on and head to the studio. Inside, it’s a recording artist’s playpen. A two-meter-long soundboard and pre-amp stacks are closed off from a recording area with soundproof glass. On the walls hang framed CDs and signed photos of Klyd’s sons’ and friends’ bands. He points out a signed, black-andwhite picture of four men leaning against an iron gate, rock instruments in hand, cowboy boots on their feet.

“That’s my son’s band, The Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies,” he boasts. “They got pretty popular among blue collars and hillbillies in New York and New Jersey.

There was some kind of resurgence of Southern rock in the ’90s or something.”

His fans are many, but far between— most of them, fans of experimental music and The Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies.

After all, Poetry Out Loud’s vinyl recordings were re-released on iTunes through internationally renowned avant-garde label De Stijl.

Last year, Klyd and Linda visited New York to perform in a show celebrating this reissue. A whopping seventy-five people showed up, and Klyd says that some of the younger fans knew his earliest poems better than he did. After the performance, the couple was invited to tour in Europe, but they declined, preferring the quiet life at home in Nashville.

Klyd denies that he ever truly entertained the thought of living a hip artist’s life in an edgy city like New York or a gypsy poet’s life in a hippy town like Walla Walla. “The Southeast—specifically Nashville, and more specifically my treefilled lot in Crieve Hall—has that perfect equilibrium for me,” he says, stroking his coarse, white beard. “It’s that crucial harmony between city and country living.”

Indeed, the idea of being thrilled by a seventy-five-person turnout seems like the result of a country boy’s state of mind.

But Klyd’s thinking, as he reflects on (but never analyzes) his quasi-fame, is not so much naive as it is realistic.

“I feel like I’ve put more than enough into the world,” his voice dominated by a

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An excerpt from Klyd Watkins:

12/9/01 OTTER CREEK ROAD Don’t get excited—when I say one reason god loves cedar trees at night is it’s so dark in there he can hide and watch us up close and no one see he’s there, and that tickles him— it’s just a description. It’s just to make you sniff the black between the unseen laced green branches.

There are two rules against writing about god.

The one that’s in fashion in poetry now and god’s own older one, which we are incapable of breaking. Don’t get excited. If tonight you were here by the water with me looking into this cedar we could be puzzled together how close we seem to being able to say what the mystery is, certain it is something we know. I can call it god if I want to. It is safe from names.

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warm Kentucky twang. “If someone has not heard of me, I feel no need to change that.”

On summer nights, he and his son go out on the porch with a guitar. His son will strum lazily as Klyd “sings poetry into the night,” the father says. “Sometimes we won’t even record it, but that’s how it was with Poetry Out Loud. There are so many poems that are only ever spoken once. Some have been recorded and released; some just fade upon time.”

Pondering his poetic life in an essay ten years back, Klyd created a solid analogy for his inspiration.

With Poetry Out Loud, Klyd, Linda, and the Harlemans were going primal. He tells me his mantra: “I am working to explore the whole range of my voice and the whole range of song, the wild song as the huntergatherers find it, raw and intuitive— all that is part of me, all that is part of man.”

But written poetry? “That’s like farming,” Klyd says. “It requires more technology, and it’s more convenient. Society can eat it up.”

To extend the analogy, one might say his current phase of poetry is like gardening: it’s for the self and for the home.

Klyd Watkins and his muse have built a life together that’s like a quiet, ever-blooming garden. Progress is subtle, and the mark he has made on the world is only slightly more measurable, but neither is in question. His house and the surrounding property are like living heirlooms—an organism that fuels Klyd’s muse toward purely personal ends. His creations—whether artistic or material—are for his kids, now grown. He’s run his course, taught his young, and now he sits back and enjoys the feast.

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MARIN MILLER

IN THE WINGS MARIN MILLER IS AN ACTOR AND WRITER WHOSE PAST IS FULL OF SILOS, STAGES, AND CINEMA by casey smith | photography by andrew white

Photos taken at Nashville Children's Theater

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Walking up the concrete steps of Marin Miller’s charming home on Shelby Avenue, I see a wild and flourishing vegetable garden in the front yard. I tap on

the door, and Marin, with a floral maxi dress draped over her slender frame, smiles with her big blue eyes.

Marin personifies Nashville. She’s graceful and warm, her laugh robust and vivacious, drawing me down the hallway into her kitchen like a bowl of fruit summoning the flies. The perfect Southern hostess—she’s prepared fresh cherries, cinnamon tortas, and cottage cheese.

I sit down, and she begins the interview with questions about my life and past—her face, oval-shaped and structured, an expressive canvas that changes with every word. As a professional actress with a lifetime of experience, I’m sure these exaggerated faces are now second nature.

Born and bred on theater, Marin grew up in the wings of Southern Stage Productions, which later evolved into the Tennessee Repertory Theater. Her parents, Mary Jane Harvill and Myke Mueller, founded the organization with some friends, but their daughter was too young to realize her parents were a little out of the ordinary. As she puts it, “To me, growing up in the theater wasn’t a novelty. My parents just so happened to play pretend all day.”

Her time spent behind the curtain led her to study theater and modern dance under the well-respected teacher, performer, and choreographer, Donna Rizzo. Marin recounts a performance in which Donna instructed the group to personify a patchwork quilt, each dancer representing her own patch. When I ask her how she can recall it so distinctly, she responds, “I think I have such vivid memories from my childhood because I actively decided that I had to.”

Halfway through the fourth grade, Marin and her family moved to her grandparents’ farm in Bon Aqua, Tennessee. There, she lived in a country fantasy world that set the stage for young Marin’s imagination to

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“I THINK I HAVE SUCH VIVID MEMORIES FROM MY CHILDHOOD BECAUSE I ACTIVELY DECIDED THAT I HAD TO.”

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bloom. She fondly remembers, “The farm extended my childhood. There were only four channels on our TV— so really, it was just ourselves and our thoughts. We would run around in the woods making bows and arrows and building rafts, then sail them down the creek. We’d chomp on wild mint and watercress and ride our ponies bareback,” she reminisces.

But Marin’s fantasy world was crushed when she received news that her father’s car had been hit by a train.

“I’ll never forget that moment—my mother in the kitchen on the phone, telling me my dad was gone. It was like everything stopped. Next thing I knew, I was underneath the dining room table, screaming.”

As she sits there in silence, I can tell this memory still stings. She looks down at a cherry in her hand, carefully studying it before popping it into her mouth. The somber rest in conversation dissolves quickly as Marin assures me that this is just part of her story, a derailing from the way she imagined her life would be.

“The farm was the perfect place for us to heal,” she begins. Raising chickens and milking goats were welcome distractions during her recovery. “We came home to a house full of people, mostly from the theater community, that wanted to wrap their arms around us in support.”

Aside from life on the farm, Marin continued theater and dance, and it was around this time that she explored other performance-based hobbies, like the marching band, with her sights set on becoming field commander. She remembers, “I thought about being so many different things— conductor, news anchor, massage therapist. Then one day, it dawned on me. I loved acting.”

“I remember telling my mom, ‘I know I want to be an actor, so I might as well study it, right?’” So she decided on Sewanee for its theater program.

Soon after, Marin took an internship with the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, where she learned the art of

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comedy in the form of “sketches created as an ensemble, with Renaissance-flair. It was kinda like Saturday Night Live, but with people wearing crazy Elizabethan garb,” she jokes.

As Marin explains one of her characters—a burly, slow-minded suitor in “The Princess and the Pea”—she transforms into the role. Popping seamlessly into a hunched stance, her face falls into a frown with furrowed brows and flaring nostrils.

Her shoulders become broader and footsteps heavier with the load of imaginary weight, and she starts to speak in character, a few octaves lower than normal and a few paces slower. It becomes clear to me that acting plays a role in the comedy of life—a skill that Marin has flawlessly perfected.

To master her art, she moved with her husband, Taylor, to the mecca of theater performance in 2008. “I realized that going to New York was now or never. I could wake up one day with a five year old in elementary school and a two year old on my hip. Moving there at that point in life would be so much more difficult. I needed to explore that city and its career options first in order to move confidently toward my future.”

Two years later, Marin and Taylor returned to Nashville, and soon after, Marin got a phone call from producer and former Nashville native Drew Langer, offering a role in his film, The 30 Day Challenge.

Marin saw this as an opportunity to try something new—cinema.

She describes her experience, “It was the first time I felt creative and alive work-

ing on camera. I had no idea I was going to fall in love with working in film. I thought, This is a game changer. I need to make room in my life for this.”

Along with mastering drama and comedy, Marin was trained in the Suzuki method and studied children’s theater in Roanoke, Virginia, where she was part of an artist-in-residency program.

For the past few years, she has continued with theater, but she’s more selective of the roles she accepts. Instead of “grabbing for anything and everything,” she only takes on projects that inspire her. “It would be a waste of my time if I wasn’t passionate about the role, but I wouldn’t be serving the company, the production, or the audience as fully as they deserve.

The way I see it, there are other actors out there, and they’ll totally nail it, because their hearts will be in it. You have to put your all into being someone else, and it’s obvious when you don’t.”

But the role isn’t the only thing that Marin can conquer. She’s been known to write and produce, blurring the lines between actor and writer. Her first taste of this was in early 2012, when she premiered a skit called Whether You Like It or Not— a vaudevillian musical that “started as a joke, turned into a song, then into a sketch.

I gave it a setting and dialog, and it came to life.” The skit became so popular, she adapted it into a six-minute short film that will premiere at the Austin Film Festival in October.

After becoming so close to the project, Marin “couldn’t even see it objectively anymore. You know it like the back of your

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MARIN MILLER: To see the trailer for Whether You Like It Or Not, visit vimeo.com/72355306

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hand, then it’s time to get it out there in front of people and let it have whatever effect it’s going to have. What that will be, who can tell.” She submitted the short to the Nashville Film Festival and says of the experience, “Suddenly your work becomes not for you anymore. You’ve given it to the world.”

A few weeks later, I’m on my way to The Building in East Nashville to see an installment of No Shame Theater— a DIY style of performance that Marin stumbled upon while living in Virginia.

The beauty of this type of theater is that anyone can sign up and perform acts ranging from modern dance to stand-up, with only three rules—“all acts have to be five minutes or less, completely original, and can’t break any laws,” Marin explains.

At the door, a jokester teases me by saying that Marin isn’t allowed to let me in. He chuckles and introduces himself as Taylor, Marin’s husband,

and grants me entrance.

The room is intimate and quickly fills with aspiring comics, actors, and supporters. It doesn’t take long for me to realize that this is a hot spot for some of the city’s funniest up-andcomers. The show begins with a standup routine about bad acid trips. I catch a glimpse of Marin and her skit partner and co-creator, Jenny Littleton, wearing matching giant red flowers in their hair and talking to themselves as they rehearse their lines.

The pair takes the stage and begins in silence, portraying actresses competing for the same role at an audition.

A passive-aggressive, body-language battle ensues and peaks when Marin stuffs her mouth with an empty pack of cigarettes.

The audience erupts in a fit of laughter, and I’m reminded of what Marin told me was her favorite aspect of No Shame Theater, “There’s a lot of hon-

esty and transparency between the audience and performers because the audience members are the performers.

The thought, that could be me up there, suddenly spawns the question, what have I got to bring? It opens the door to creative potential, whether we consider ourselves artists or not.”

And an artist she is. Her upcoming projects include portraying Cecily Cardew in TN Repertory Theater’s production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (to be performed in October at TPAC). In addition, she’s finishing up the latest What The Film project with Drew Langer, called Lower Broads, a comedic short film about rival bachelorette parties honky-tonking their way through Nashville.

From farm girl to vaudeville performer, to actor, writer, and comedian— Marin Miller can conquer any character. But if there’s one thing that’s true, she’ll never stop growing her role.

MODA

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by michael zachary | photography by will holland

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ATIVE IVENNASH ASHVILL VILLEE ##NNAT

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Fishing lines, driving ranges, Rocky Top rock: on the road to Knoxville with The Kingston Springs

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Half the boys in The Kingston Springs are barely old enough to get into a bar, but they’ve already played hundreds of shows, completed several extensive tours, and released a full-length album.

They pick me up on the side of the street in their clunkity green van, headed to a one-off show in Knoxville. I slide into the front seat as the boys (Ian Ferguson, Alex Geddes, Matt DeMaio, James Guidry, Will Brown, and manager Carl Gatti) are cuttin’ up and freestyle rapping, all of us ready for good times—none of us really knowing how to make formal introductions. We fill up the gas tank, put on a Willie Nelson tape, and take off.

I break the ice. “I have to be honest, guys. I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing.” With a sigh of relief,

they tell me that they don’t really know what they’re doing either, making us perfect guinea pigs for one another.

Passing through the foothills surrounding Knoxville with classic rock turned up and the dirty jokes rolling, the van becomes a spectacle of off-kilter humor, with every passerby subject to the line of fire. We go over a bridge, and Matt points at a large body of water and says, “Damn! I bet that’s got some big cats in it!” (referring to catfish).

Alex, the bass player and “team mom” (as described by his bandmates), keeps sighing and rolling his eyes as if to apologize for the somewhat offensive banter of the group.

We (Alex, Carl, I) keep meeting each other with a shoulder shrug as if to say, “Well, here we are, gotta love it.”

We start to get hungry, but they

can’t make up their minds about where they want to eat. “No corporate! Local only,” James insists. Matt counters, “I’d give both my nuts for a Golden Corral sponsorship.” They meet somewhere in the middle, opting for a down-home meal at a smalltown cafe—the type of place where you can’t help but take on an exaggerated Southern accent. This sort of environment might send a Yankeeborn Nashville band into culture shock, but for The Kingston Springs, small-town, Southern living is nothing new.

The band, all of them now at the ripe old age of twenty or twentyone, grew up in a sleepy town on the outskirts of Nashville that would later inspire their name. True to their small-town heritage, the group has a passion for the outdoors. While all the other kids were playing video

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The Kingston Springs hit the green (left to right): Ian Ferguson, Alex Geddes, Will Brown, Matt DeMaio, James Guidry

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games, the young band was busy jammin’ and hittin’ the riverbeds. And they still haven’t lost their love for the country. When asked what he wants included in the article, Matt says, “Tell them we love to fish.”

Ian and James first met in early junior high on the golf team. James says, “We were terrible golfers. But we decided to stick together because everyone else was much better than us.” To this day, the band still hits the links, and James quips, “We hold a lot of our business meetings out on the course.”

They all started playing music individually in junior high, and as high school approached, the four began jamming together. The guitar was the only instrument each of them knew at the time, so naturally, they all wanted to be the guitar player. But James saw the real potential in his friends and convinced Matt and Alex to try other instruments. He and Ian felt more of a gravitation toward the songwriting, so they knew they would remain with the six strings.

As for the rhythm section, Alex found his dad’s old bass, though he admits, “My dad was never really a bass player, just a big music fan, especially of The Grate-

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THE KINGSTON SPRINGS: thekingstonsprings.com Follow on Twitter @tkingstonspring and Instagram @thekingstonsprings Native.is/thekingstonsprings

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summer lovin’ ful Dead. The coolest gig he probably ever played was ‘Purple Haze’ at his high school talent show.”

Matt eventually picked up the drums after losing a bet as to who would be the guitar player. It didn’t take him long to come around, owning his new role as drummer. (Will, whom they call “Willie B,” also grew up with the guys, but he’s just recently become The Kingston Springs’ keyboardist.)

They started practicing in Ian’s basement, covering Rage Against the Machine and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. (I can definitely hear a little Rage influence in “Lowest of Animals,” which breaks into something of a rap towards the end of the song.) They were soon ready to play house shows with older metal bands, because that was the scene in their hometown.

James recalls one of his most memorable house-show experiences: “The only reason we didn’t get our asses kicked by a bunch of metal kids was because I cut my hand and bled all over my guitar.”

Feeling somewhat out of place, they started connecting with bands in Nashville. As they played more and more in the city, they picked up steam, recording a seven-song EP. Still, they jokingly admit that they’d be nowhere and possibly dead if their manager/ surrogate father, Carl Gatti, hadn’t shown up.

“The first time we met up with Carl was at Fido. We were expecting an old bald guy, and in walks this young, hip, Lebowski lookalike,” James remembers. In his late twenties, Carl is a Belmont music business graduate who’s connected in the industry and passionate about the bands he’s come to manage. He first heard The Kingston Springs while working as a radio DJ at WRVU. A friend gave him an early version of Vacation Time EP, and Carl ended up playing the entire record on his show.

He later reached out to them, encouraging the young band to take their sound outside of Nashville. But

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it wasn’t that easy—Ian was a grade below the rest of the boys. With the other three graduating, they all decided that college wasn’t the route they wanted to take. So, the band linked up with local entertainment lawyer Kent Marcus, who helped convince everyone’s parents to let them pursue amplifiers over undergraduate education.

He even coaxed Ian’s parents into letting him drop out before senior year of high school. So, with a new fulltime manager and no other distractions, they followed their passion and went on their first tour.

Although Kingston was Carl’s first try at managing a band, both parties could not have fallen into a better fit. Whereas Alex is the “team mom,” Carl is like the “team dad.” “Pour that whiskey back in that bottle. You’re breaking shit already,” he warns Ian later that night. Carl explains his relationship with the guys by using a bowling analogy. “I’m the bumpers, and they’re the ball. Eventually, they’ll get down the lane and knock down the pins. I just make sure they don’t fall into the gutter.”

After Carl and the guys finished a pretty successful first tour, they were ready to get into a real studio to start recording their debut full-length.

However, finding a quality space that gives artists time to find their creative voices (for a reasonable price) is impossible for most bands. Luckily, through family ties, they scored time at Oz Studio in Franklin, where they recorded on tape for free. Who could pass that up? They spent half a year recording, averaging a few days a week of work on it. In step with the analog vibe, there wasn’t much digital enhancement on the record. So it has a raw, live feel. They produced and mixed the album themselves, eventually cutting it to vinyl.

Listening to the record, traces of folk, heavy rock, classic pop, and rootsy blues are all present, creating a sound that’s always changing. Though this eclectic mix is hard to define, Kingston describes their sound as

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“Rocky Top heavy blues.”

•••••

Back to the Knoxville road trip. It’s late afternoon when we arrive at the venue.

Carl goes inside, and Matt hops out to stretch his legs just as the event coordinators walk out to meet the band. They wait in the van, laughing as they watch Matt squirm into his best serious face.

“We usually don’t let Matt do any of the talking, but I guess he can wear that hat,” Alex jokes.

The event promoters book us a fancy hotel—three and a half, maybe four stars—so nice it didn’t even have a continental breakfast. We stroll up to the front door, all a little uncomfortable in such comfort. Everyone inside is wearing dress slacks and button-downs, staring as we skip through the front door. “This hotel lost a star with us being here tonight,” Alex laughs. We go up to the room before the show and flip on the television. Matt turns down the volume and begins to insert his own voice into the dialogue. We hang for a while before heading to the venue again.

With college out for the summer, the crowd is much smaller than expected.

The sound quality of the venue isn’t great, either. But none of that seems to faze the boys. They’re just stoked to be playing.

Later that night, I ask Carl what he thinks the band’s greatest weakness is.

He takes on a more serious tone and replies, “They don’t fully realize the potential of their talent yet.”

I take that many different ways. They are young and have worked hard at developing a classic sound for themselves.

Still, something sets them apart—they play music for music’s sake. It’s a luxury that many successful artists will never experience.

As they step off the stage in Knoxville, I realize they’re a tribe with a bond, a shared goal of musicianship. And just as they grew up together, they’ll take on this journey like eighteen holes of golf.

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Crazy-colored hair is no longer just for street kids and circus performers. With fashion cycles twisting and turning, we realize that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. “In the animal kingdom, the brightly feathered birds are the most attractive to mates,” says TRIM’s resident color mixologist, Laura Beth Stephenson. “It was only a matter of time before humans returned to their wild sides.”

Melanie Shelley, TRIM Legendary Beauty Photography by Eli McFadden

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YOU OUGHTA KNOW: THE FUTURE

by Wells Adams, Lightning 100 | Photo by Shawna Carter

I wasn’t sure how to start this month’s “You Oughta Know” about Nashville quintet The Future. So I did what every red-blooded American with a smartphone would do—I went straight to Google. In the search bar, I formulated the simplest question I could conceive, “The Future is?”

Here were the first three results: “The future is wild. The future is unwritten.

The future is now.” I sipped on my beer, zoomed in on my touch screen, and pondered for approximately the length of a Yazoo Gerst. Was this the work of some crazy binary algorithm, or some artificial intelligence matrix agent with awesome taste in music? I don’t know, but I hope for Zion’s sake (and ours), it was the latter.

“The future is wild.” Hit the nail on the head. Have you seen frontman Adam Culver perform? He’s a madman! His stage presence is a mixture of Dave Matthews’ riverdance flailing and Mick Jagger’s bizarre yet sexual jiving. Without a doubt, The Future puts on my favorite local live show. They accomplish what so many bands struggle with—balancing sonic talent and visual flair.

“The future is unwritten.” The band is currently releasing one single a month and giving their diehard fans a constant stream of new music. With every new moon comes a new tune, and with five amazing singles in the books, like “Slow Fast” and “Baby You’re Golden,” the unre-

leased hits are much awaited.

“The future is now.” Deep, brah—like Philosophy 101. The recognition of real talent can be a bit delayed these days with so many entertaining distractions. Whether you take my advice to check out their music immediately or wait until they’re a huge national act, it won’t change the fact that The Future is now. The quintet— brothers Adam and Jordan Culver, Eric Sadowsky, Bryan Feece, and their newest addition, John Michael Ford—are playing shows locally and nationwide, building a solid fan base, and releasing dancy, poppy, well-produced, heartfelt music. The Future is now, and it looks and sounds pretty awesome.

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Overheard @ N A T I V E

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animal of the month

by Charlie Hickerson illustrated by Courtney Spencer Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Artiodactyla Family: Cervidae Subfamily: Capreolinae Genus: Odocoileus Species: O. virginianus

As Three 6 Mafia made abundantly clear in 2005, it’s hard out there for a pimp. There’s money to collect, illicit substances to sell, and Cadillacs to keep fueled. On the whole, it’s a thankless, underappreciated profession. So, as DJ Paul, Juicy J, 8Ball & MJG, and Nashville native/former G-Unit member Young Buck aptly put it, staying fly is crucial to success in this industry.

Young Buck isn’t the only buck keeping it trill in Tennessee, though.

The white-tailed deer is a natural-born hustler that runs the trap. He spends his time hollering at the finest does by secreting pheromones, rolling with his antlered crew, and chowing down on acorns, fruits, and grass (who knew Gs were so passionate about farm-to-fork?).

However, there’s only one thing that stops Tennessee’s 900,000-deep whitetailed posse from thuggin’ 24/7: hunting season.

Every September to January, Duck Dynasty-lookin’ good ol’ boys take to the tree stands with their compound bows, .12 gauges, and every camo accessory under the sun in hopes of baggin’ ’em a big one.

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While you might disregard these NRAlovin’ sportsmen as relatively harmless, the white-tailed deer hates them more than Death Row hated Bad Boy. This is undoubtedly ’cause hunters can tag up to 179,542 white tails in a single season, with each Mossy Oak-clad hunter bagging up to four males.

And as if those hunters weren’t trippin’ enough, the white tail also has to worry about wolves, coyotes, and bobcats tryin’ to suffocate them by nipping at their jugulars.

Luckily, the white tail is a born thug, so he’s naturally ready for street scrapping (or in this case, forest scrapping). For example, the inside spread of ya boy’s antlers can range anywhere from three to twenty-five inches. Plus, these racks regrow every spring, so white tails don’t have to worry about permanently losing their manhood in a turf war with some punk-ass bobcat. Basically, you could say these dudes are always strapped.

But a true G doesn’t always “shoot first and ask questions last”—sometimes he’s gotta pack up the gat and head back to the hood. When this happens, the white

tail takes off like Weezy in a brand new Bugatti, running up to forty-seven miles per hour and jumping up to nine feet high.

Fleeing the scene of the crime ain’t easy, but it’s necessary. And when you’re on the run, you’re forced to make do. That’s why the white tail has a four-chambered stomach that allows him to digest poison ivy and wild mushrooms—stuff your average gangsta can’t handle (ain’t no Pepto on the streets, son!). But don’t get it twisted, this thug ain’t a Subarudriving, granola-crunchin’, Chaco-wearin’ vegetarian. He’ll eat nesting songbirds and field mice if it’s an especially rough day. So I guess what I’m trying to say is... homie don’t play, ya dig?

At the end of the day, it’s tough being an O. virginianus. If you ain’t running from some Davy Crockett wannabe, you’re planning ways to escape carnivorous conundrums on the daily. Fortunately, Mother Nature’s “got his back like chiropract,” so no matter how much they try to knock the white tail, he and his crew manage to be the baddest motherhoovers on the block. Just remember, you can’t knock this animal’s hustle, baby.

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