AUGUST 2014
17 menu items 36 craft beers 612 combinations Good thing we open at 11:30am Pair a fresh salad, some piled-high nachos, a hot dog on a pretzel bun, or delicious ice cream with a broad selection of porters, pales, sours, wits, and ciders sunday - thursday 11:30am - 12:00am friday - saturday 11:30am - 1:00am
growlers & tap room
The Hop Stop is located at 2909 B Gallatin Pike Nashville, Tennessee 37216
# NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E 615.739.6547
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EAT. DRINK. BE ENTERTAINED. Acme Feed & Seed creates a uniquely “Nashville” atmosphere that honors the city’s past, present and future. With 22,000 square feet of cocktail, culinary and entertainment space, The Acme invites you to experience an entirely new Lower Broadway.
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FOR MORE INFO
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N
W O
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M E N ' S STO R E • CUSTO M C LOT H I N G B A R • B A R B E R S H O P
FO LL OW US O NLINE FO R G RAND O PENIN G EVENTS ALL M O NTH! ALDEN BOOT COMPANY • BARBOUR STEVE MCQUEEN • DEUS EX MACHINA • GITMAN VINTAGE • FAHERTY BRAND • FARIBAULT WOOLEN MILLS • THE HILLSIDE • HAMILTON 1883 • IMPERIAL BARBER PRODUCTS • IRON & RESIN • JACK SPADE • LBM 1911 • LEVI'S XX VINTAGE CLOTHING • LIFE AFTER DENIM • NAKED & FAMOUS DENIM • NEW BALANCE MADE IN USA • NEW ENGLAND SHIRT CO. P.F. FLYERS • RALEIGH DENIM WORKSHOP • RICHER POORER • TODD SNYDER + CHAMPION • SOUTHWICK CLOTHES • SAVE KHAKI UNITED • THE WEST IS DEAD • WILL LEATHER GOODS • WOOLRICH • WOLVERINE 1K MILE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS AUGUST 2014
66
21 56
THE GOODS
24 34
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17 18 21 86 89 92 94
Beer from Here Cocktail of the Month Master Platers Hey Good Lookin’ You Oughta Know Observatory Animal of the Month
FEATURES 24 Heart, Soul, and Horns 34 The Thyme of the Season 46 A Screen of Their Own 56 Contributor Spotlight: Cool Sign! by Andrea Behrends 66 Retreat from the Noise 76 All the Young Dudes
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OW N ES BLE! M HO AILA AV
��.. . ... . . . .
R I C H L A N D S TAT I O N H O M E S.CO M S Y LVA N PA R K | N A S H V I L L E
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DEAR NATIVES,
W
hen Napoleon III (the Napoleon’s nephew) staged a coup d’état and overthrew France’s Second Republic in 1851, Charles Baudelaire was pretty pissed. And rightfully so: as France’s new self-appointed emperor, Napoleon III took it upon himself to start destroying all of Baudelaire’s favorite Parisian cafés and hangouts. Baudelaire being Baudelaire, he naturally wrote about the transformation in “Le Cygne,” saying, “La forme d’une ville / Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d’un mortel”—or, “The form of a city / Changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart.” Living in Nashville in 2014, we can’t help but think about ole Chuck’s words. Even as we write this, our whole office is rumbling with the sounds of construction next door. Whether you love, loathe, or simply don’t care about our changing landscape, the fact remains that Nashville is changing, no matter what you are or aren’t doing about it. Lucky for us, you can always look to the past to help you make a better future, which is exactly what our features this month have done. In this issue, you’ll meet Elizabeth Suzann, a designer who makes long-lasting, timeless garments inspired by 1939’s vision for a future with fashionable and—more importantly—functional apparel. You’ll also meet COIN and GED Soul Records, two sets of musicians that are combining elements of the past and present to give Nashville hopeful, albeit nostalgic, albums. Then there’s the one, the only, “Nashville’s Alice Waters”: Margot McCormack. Like Baudelaire and Paris, she’s stuck with Nashville her whole life, and fortunately, she’s a little more optimistic about her city’s future than the Les Fleurs du Mal poet. Her culinary achievements serve as both a reminder of Nashville’s place in history and a preview of what’s to come. And for that, we—and more specifically, our stomachs—can’t thank her enough. Whatever the future holds for Nashville, we’re just happy you’re willing to spend it with us. Je vous envoie mes bien amicales pensées,
president, founder:
ANGELIQUE PITTMAN JON PITTMAN associate publisher: KATRINA HARTWIG publisher, founder:
founder, brand director:
DAVE PITTMAN
founder:
CAYLA MACKEY
creative director:
MACKENZIE MOORE
managing editor:
CHARLIE HICKERSON DARCIE CLEMEN
art director:
COURTNEY SPENCER
editor:
community relations manager:
JOE CLEMONS
community
representative:
LINDSAY ALDERSON
account manager:
AYLA SITZES
web editor:
TAYLOR RABOIN
film supervisor:
CASEY FULLER
writers: photographers:
editorial interns:
p.r. interns:
CHLOE HALL MOLLY MCGHEE DALY CANTRELL KELSEY HUTCHINSON
founding team:
DANIELLE ATKINS EMILY B. HALL ISAAC LADD ERIC BROWN ANDREA BEHRENDS JESSIE HOLLOWAY ZACHARY GRAY LEAH GRAY BRETT WARREN KATE LOEHRER WILL VASTINE
design intern:
MATTHEW LEFF SCOTT MARQUART JONAH ELLER-ISAACS DAVID GARRIS ARMSTRONG LINDSEY BUTTON CHARLIE HICKERSON MELANIE SHELLEY PHILIP OBENSCHAIN
CHRISTINE CRAFT
MACKENZIE MOORE JOSHUA SIRCHIO TAYLOR RABOIN
want to work at native? contact:
WORK@NATIVE.IS SALES@NATIVE.IS for all other inquiries: HELLO@NATIVE.IS to advertise, contact:
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Can’t get enough of O k t o b e r f e s t ? B u s t o u t yo u r lederhosen and Alpine hats for Te n n e s s e e Vo l k s f e s t , September 13-14, at the N a s h v i l l e F a r m e r s ’ M a r ke t ! Fo r m o r e i n f o , ch e ck o u t t e n n e s s e evo l k s f e s t . c o m
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The PAPAW Southern day laborers had short lunch breaks in the 1800s, so they’d “drink their lunch” by dumping a bag of salted nuts straight into a bottle of Coke. Ben Clemons of 308 really wanted to recreate that in a cocktail. He tried making his own syrups, but nothing tasted authentic. Finally he said, “Fuck it,” bought himself a bottle of Mexican Coke (for the cane sugar), and got some bourbon. Note: this drink IS NOT a cocktail; it’s an American novelty. Classic American. American as fuck (except for the Mexican Coke).
THE GOODS 1 12-oz. bottle of Mexican Coke 2 oz. of Belle Meade Bourbon 1 handful of salted peanuts
F Pour out 5 ounces of Mexican Coke (give it to a kid or something). Pour 2 ounces of Belle Meade Bourbon directly into the bottle. Add a large handful of salted peanuts. The longer the peanuts sit, the more peanut brittle taste will show up—there is no right or wrong amount of peanuts. —Ben Clemons, No. 308
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ATIVE IVENNASH ASHVI VILLE LLE ##NNAT
photo by danielle atkins
O PEN AUGU ST 2 0 14 !
burgers
Come check out ouu nee bbb li!
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craft beer
BB B t f a r D 30 GULCH:
420 11th Avenue South (615) 915-1943
shakes
BB B t f a r D 20 LENOX:
6900 Lenox Village Dr. Ste 22 (615) 499-4428
RED QUINOA PAPPARDELLE THE GOODS: FOR THE PASTA: 1/2 cup ground fried red quinoa 2 cups gluten-free flour 1 Tbsp. salt 2 eggs plus 8 egg yolks 1 Tbsp. olive oil 1 Tbsp. milk
DIRECTIONS: F Fry raw quinoa at 375° F using a mesh strainer, shaking it around till it’s puffed like popcorn. Let cool, then grind the fried quinoa into flour. F Combine flour, salt, and quinoa in a bowl. F Mix and make a shallow well in the center of your mixture. F Add eggs, olive oil, and milk into
the well and gently beat until eggs are lightly mixed. F Slowly fold in flour until a loose dough forms. F Move dough to stand mixer with paddle attachment and mix on medium for 3 minutes. F Using a pasta sheeter cleaned of any flour, take an extra handful of glutenfree flour and spread on machine and table. F Starting at the 9th setting, send half of the dough through, folding 3 times. F Go through settings 9 to 5, feeding the dough through each number once. F Using a pastry cutter, cut your dough into 1-inch strips, and then blanch in salted boiling water until al dente. F After roughly 4 minutes, remove from water and toss in oil. Add your favorite pasta sauce and toppings.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY ROBERT McGRATTAN, SOUS CHEF AT 1808 GRILLE
PHOTO BY DANIELLE ATKINS
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HEART, SOUL, AND HORNS
WITH FIRE-SPITTING BRASS AND CLASSIC CROONING, THE GUYS BEHIND GED SOUL RECORDS ARE BRINGING GROOVE BACK INTO NASHVILLE—ON THEIR OWN TERMS BY SCOTT MARQUART PHOTOS BY EMILY B. HALL
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GED SOUL RECORDS: gedsoulrecords.com Follow on Facebook @GEDSoulRecords and Twitter @GEDSoul native.is/ged-soul-records 26 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / //////
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BEWARE OF DOG. The sign hangs loosely folding chairs to form a loose circle. Nick leans on the rusting chain-link fence, the crimson let- coolly against the wall. There’s history between these guys. If I didn’t ters bleached orange by the same sun that hangs know better, I’d have guessed that they grew up above me now. Picturing the Beast from The Sandlot, I call on the same block, playing backyard baseball afahead to be safe. The glass door swings open, and ter school until they finally figured they could get Nick DeVan—cofounder, producer, and house more girls if they started a band. They have the drummer for GED Soul Records—waves me up unmistakable camaraderie that comes from surthe path and into the plain white house. No Beast viving more than a few all-nighters together in the studio. in sight. Nick tells me that he and Dave Singleton had His aptly named Poor Man’s Studios has a spartan charm. Garage sale rugs and upholstery foam played together for six years before they started drape down from the walls; microphone cables are the label in 2007, and the GED mantra (think high pushed into the space where the molding meets school equivalency) had been around nearly as the champagne carpet. Up above is a stucco ceil- long. They had a band called GED Funk and a raing that reminds me of the ’60s suburban house dio show called the GED Soul Revue. When they needed a label to put out the music they had been where I grew up. It may be spare, but like many legendary studios making together with DeRobert, GED Soul Refrom Muscle Shoals to Memphis, it’s not the looks cords seemed fitting. The label was born out of necessity, without that count. As any seasoned soul player will tell delusions of grandeur. Leaning back calmly on you, it’s all about the vibe, and this place has it. I hear laughter bursting out from another room. a brushed metal folding chair, Dave explains, “I Following Nick into the kitchen, I come upon AJ think we just wanted to put records out. But at the Eason and DeRobert Adams, front men of AJ & same time, I don’t think Nick and I thought that the Jiggawatts and DeRobert and the Half-Truths. trying to get another label to do it was . . . I’d rathThey’re watching video of a recent show, compar- er just do it ourselves.” AJ nods his side-cocked ing notes on the backup singers, and generally giv- fedora in agreement, “When you’ve got a shit-ton ing each other a hard time. AJ’s charisma hits you of original material, you’ve got to record it . . . and right away, though DeRobert, who comes off like put it out.” Nick makes the whole process sound simple. the little brother of the two, counters with an innocence and upright likeability unique among the “We just started it out of nothing. You put out a record and you say you have a label and you do pantheon of soul singers. David Guy, bassist for the Half-Truths and the have a label.” Laughing, he insists, “It’s as easy as Coolin’ System, and Dave Singleton, bassist for that . . . all you have to do to start a label is say that The Magic in Threes and The Grips and drummer you have one.” I’m taken by how natural they make this sevenin the SkyHi Funk Band, stand off to the side. Nick year journey sound. The way Nick tells it, they’ve offers me a drink, and we all take him up on it. I sit down on the tracking room carpet, leaning just put one foot in front of the other, year after against the grille cloth of an Ampeg bass cabinet. year, accumulating a distinct catalogue of fourteen DeRobert, AJ, Dave, and David gather stools and seven-inch singles and eight LPs along the way. In
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the process, GED Soul Records has become a beacon for what people are starting to call Nashville Soul—blue collar, earnest music that pushes the genre forward without ignoring its past. Still, no one is shy to admit that it has taken equal parts hard work, good fortune, and community support to get to where they are today. Like their soul music forebears, they started out only pressing vinyl and put out 45s from The Grips, SkyHi Funk Band, and DeRobert and the Half-Truths in quick succession. Nick and Dave mailed them out to DJs from St. Louis to New York to Berlin, and GED began to build a name for itself. They started branching out from their own projects, working first with soul-jazz combo the Coolin’ System, whose bassist, David Guy, quickly took an interest in the label. David set off to sell the label’s 45s to record stores door-to-door. In a Boston store, he bumped into a rep from Traffic Entertainment Group and eventually convinced him to give the label a distribution deal. With global distribution in place, the label was ready to make the jump to releasing full-length LPs—they just had to figure out where the money was going to come from. David chuckles a bit nervously, “My parents, Nick’s sister, and the bands pitched in to get to about $6,500 to put out two records, on the same day, in March 2011. And those were the first LPs we put out.” Two years later, however, they found themselves in the same predicament. They had finished new records, but they needed capital to give them a proper release. This time, a successful Kickstarter campaign came to the rescue, providing $11,000 to release all three. With this influx of cash and the growing popularity of the label’s artists, GED Soul Records achieved financial solvency, paid its debts, and now has the reserves to keep putting out records. Through it all, the label has embodied the DIY attitude seen throughout Nashville’s underground music scene. Nick’s house serves as the label’s de facto headquarters and recording studio. The bands record there for free. Dave and DeRobert have both lived there over the years, and the house serves as a meeting place for the group of local musicians that make up the GED Soul family. “It’s a group of about fifteen to twenty musicians, a community of people who have known each other for years . . . and they’re all kind of figuring out the business stuff too, and you’ve got this beautiful situation with a studio that we’re not paying for,” says David, smirking. Because they record everything in-house, the label’s releases have a cohesive sound, a vibe, just like the labels used to in the heyday of soul. Nick is behind the boards on every project, and
he has his own way of doing things. He’s especially particular about the sound of the bass and drums, the bedrock of soul music. Often, he tracks them both straight to cassette before dumping them to a one-inch reel-to-reel and then into Pro Tools. There are no handwired Neumann microphones and no vintage guitar collections in sight. Nick makes do with what he has—most importantly, good ears and experienced players. AJ is quick to point out that the studio’s technical limitations don’t come without their benefits. “Some of the best horn players in town will come into this place with one call from any of us, because they want to be a part of it. There’s a respect factor because we’re doing stuff so au naturale that people really enjoy it, and they’re free over here . . . We’ve got respect in this town because we do it so damn raw.” This rawness flows into GED Soul’s business practices as well. Unlike a traditional label, none of the bands are under contract and are free to stay or go as they please. When he’s not recording, Nick serves as the mail clerk for all online orders. Dave and house guitarist Andrew Muller do all of the design work, and they have screen printed hundreds of T-shirts and LP jackets by hand at Nick’s house. Leaning on an open-hammered upright piano, DeRobert speaks up from the corner of the room, “That’s who GED is to me right there. We’ve all been doing this for so long, and we never got a certificate for it, never got a piece of paper for it, but we can do it. We’re just as capable as anyone out there who has the right label, the right exposure, or the right radio play.” Still, no one is too proud to admit the downside of doing everything in-house. When I ask if it would be better to have a manager or a label staff to run the business side of things, Nick is quick to agree. “Oh yeah, it would be better, I wish . . . I don’t want to fuck with that shit.” Though they agree that the grunt work of running a label can be exhausting, they share a strong sense of pride over the work that they’ve put in. When AJ asks, hypothetically, what everyone would think if a larger label offered to buy them out, they all agree: only if they retained control over the music itself. Nodding, DeRobert notes sincerely, “I don’t want to lose that creativity.” Though it might seem like a pipe dream at the moment, such an offer would not be out of the question down the line. Soul music has proved its staying power in the present age time and again, from modern progenitors D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, to straight-up pop musicians like Amy
“ WE’RE
BRINGING BACK THAT
OLD-SCHOOL
STUFF...”
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Winehouse, CeeLo Green, and Aloe Blacc. The press attaches the appendages “neo,” “retro,” and “revival” at regular intervals, but the music never goes away. AJ is characteristically confident about their position within it all. “We’re at the forefront, I really do think. We’re bringing back that old-school stuff but doing it in such a modern way that everybody can relate to it.” In this light, GED Soul has positioned itself wisely as the home of soul music in the music capital of the South, the genre’s birthplace. “Us being from the South, where Stax [Records] is from, it helped from the beginning. That’s stuff we grew up on, that we could drive down the street and see,” DeRobert says earnestly. “That spirit that’s connected to all of that runs through us.” Whatever it is, it’s working. DeRobert and the Half-Truths’ January release I’m Trying was the label’s fastest selling record to date. By February, David was already on the phone to order a second run of vinyl. But even as the label starts to see the first fruits of its hard-earned notoriety, sales aren’t the true motivation. DeRobert paraphrases a line Nick once told him: “Records are forever.” If someone were to stumble across the GED Soul catalogue in eighty years and appreciate it for the work that went into it, that would be good enough for them. Bringing the conversation back to center, David confesses, “We’re working toward a paycheck, there’s no doubt about that. But at the same time, the idea is so strong that the long game will keep going, regardless of the short game successes.” He continues, “We’ve been going from having money to broke, and having it, to broke—” AJ quickly cuts him off. “Ain’t that the story of the bands, though?” Then, with a smirk, he starts to hum Sam Cooke under his breath, and DeRobert joins him on the chorus: “That’s the sound of the men, working on the chain–gay-ee-ang.”
Visit our campus to pick up your shades while supplies last. While you're here, make your future brighter by taking a tour and learning about our associate degree and diploma programs in music business and audio technology.
G O TH I ? SUS
SUSHI LUNCH BUFFET
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5 0 5 1 2 T H AV E S . ( 6 1 5 ) 2 5 2 - 8 7 8 7
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THE CRYING WOLF IS A YEAR OLD!
LET’S PARTY!
A POP-UP POOL PARTY AT THE CRYING WOLF
th @ 12pm AUGUST 10 DJs + Bands + Boutiques + Pools + Yoga + Eats & Drinks PART OF THE WOLF PACK WEEKEND:
AUGUST 8TH: YEAR OF THE WOLF ARTSHOW AUGUST 9TH: NASHVILLAGE POP-UP BOUTIQUE & BRUNCH
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Nashville legend Margot McCormack works tirelessly to promote the local and seasonal ingredients that delighted her as a young girl. Lucky for us—and our mouths
By Jonah Eller-Isaacs | Photos by Isaac Ladd
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It's a Tuesday night when I pull up to Margot Café & Bar for the first time. The air in Five Points is sultry, but only
just so. Summer’s primordial tendrils are rambling through the late June evening. I can feel the season’s implied power, though I know we have a long hot slog ahead of us yet. This is my first summer in Nashville, and I’m learning quickly that air conditioning is a necessity. When I open the door to enter the restaurant, I’m not greeted by the blast of central air frigidity I’ve already come to love. It’s not too warm, but it’s not cold either. The aging HVAC is on the fritz, and though the staff is working their hardest to keep the place cool, I’m grateful that the evening’s heat is reasonable. An enormous standing unit next to the front window is partially covered with a sheet. It’s a cerulean blue beast, its long tubes jutting out. The hulking box reminds me of nothing so much as B9—the wonky robot from the original Lost in Space. You know, the “Danger, Will Robinson!” one. Except he’s an air conditioner. Jay Frein, Margot Café & Bar’s bespectacled coowner, welcomes me in, and I take a seat at the triangular marble bar. I spend the next few hours watching the place hum, listening to the echoing laughter and muffled conversations of happy diners, observing their wine-flushed satiety as they head out into the warm night. Ryan Adams’s “New York, New York” fades into classic Zeppelin. Various copper pots line the exposed brick walls, and weathered pieces of furniture hang from high odd angles. I’m slowly sipping a Parisienne, a delicious, delicate cocktail that perfectly balances gin, elderflower, and grapefruit. At least, that’s the local iteration—it’s traditionally made with gin, vermouth, and crème de cassis—but I’m partial to the drink in my hand. I usually am. Margot McCormack, head chef and the restaurant’s namesake, comes to chat with me as her kitchen duties allow. She has a warm, unassuming presence. When I ask what she would recommend for dinner, she says her favorite is the sweet and sour eggplant with basmati rice and feta cheese. “That’s probably what I’ll have for dinner,” she tells me. She then proceeds to talk excitedly about the beets and peaches with pistachios and mint vinaigrette. And the roasted mahi mahi with sweet corn, peppers, and baby leek oil. And the grilled golden trout. And the tri-tip steak with fries, escarole, and lemon-anchovy dressing. And the pork tenderloin. After she suggests nearly the entire menu, I’m not
any closer to making a choice, and I don’t want to miss out on anything spectacular, since Margot’s menu changes every night to match seasonal availability. I decide on the aged Vella Jack cheese with peach preserves, followed by the grilled pork tenderloin with grits, swiss chard, and a cherry mostarda (an Italian fruit and mustard condiment). I don’t regret it. The handmade California cow’s milk cheese makes me want to go home and throw my Kroger cheese in the trash. The Vella Jack is complex, dead dry, and lovely, especially with the peaches, which taste as if they were picked that morning and preserved by noon. The pork is masterfully cooked, with a crisp crunch to the exterior but an interior that’s moist and holds just the right amount of pink. It’s a pinkness that declares supreme confidence in both the quality of the meat itself and of the chef responsible for its preparation. With the mostarda and the bed of freshly farmed swiss chard, it’s rich, sweet, spicy, and utterly tasty. Paired with a glass of red, a Grenache-Syrah blend, I begin to understand the gleeful faces of departing patrons. This is world-class food, prepared simply and lovingly and without great fanfare. When I return the following afternoon to chat with Margot, I discover that the food is a reflection of the woman herself: she’s a masterful chef who carries herself confidently and without great fanfare. Margot invites me into her “office,” a table for four close to the kitchen that’s already set, each place setting adorned with a single fragile plate of mismatched antique china. Spilling over the neat arrangement is a pile of standard food industry detritus: bills, seating arrangements, calendars, a cordless phone. Margot greets me wearing a shirt with her name on it, but it feels like her everyday uniform, not an oversized ego on display. No one would blame her for feeling a little puffed up. With Margot Café & Bar and its nearby sister spot Marché Artisan Foods, Margot has established herself as one of the culinary treasures of Nashville. Though Time earlier this year called her “Nashville’s Alice Waters,” there’s much more to this native Nashvillian than adherence to Waters’ principles of locally sourced, farm-to-table dining. I ask Margot to tell me about her Nashville childhood and how it changed her understanding of food. “Well, I grew up here in West Meade, which is a nice ZIP code,” she begins. “My mom was very particular . . . She cooked everything from scratch,
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which is not to say that we had very extravagant meals, but it is to say that we had fresh food. We wouldn’t have canned peas or canned asparagus or some of these other horrors that I hear people telling me here in the restaurant. We had fresh food, and we had seasonal food. She didn’t buy tomatoes in the wintertime.” But when it wasn’t wintertime, and the tomatoes and peaches were in season—Margot waxes poetic when she reminisces on that fresh Southern produce. “I remember eating the ripest, juiciest peaches on our patio and just really going, ‘Wow.’ And really, everything tastes amazing when you’re a kid, because you’re a kid. And, I don’t know, it’s new and it’s exciting.” Before I can ask her if she’s able to recreate those moments in her kitchen, she adds, “I have yet to really duplicate some of those food memories when we were little. But I just remember the tomatoes being amazing, and the peaches. I’m sure part of that’s just rose-colored glasses, and mom, and lilac bushes.” As we talk, Margot laughs and runs her fingers through her thick, black, curly short hair. She likes to tap the table to drive home a passionate point (of which there are many), and I start to worry that my recording of our chat will sound like I’ve tried to interview a jazz drummer mid-solo. Lucky for me, other than the occasional slap of a palm that reverberates through her “desk” when she gets especially worked up, it comes out just fine, and our conversation begins to yield some insight into Margot’s journey. Her efforts to understand food and the art of the chef led her far from West Meade to the bluffs of the Hudson River and the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York. Naturally, she brought along both her Southern charm and her mother’s traditions. “When I went to New York,” Margot tells me, “people made fun. Hee Haw. Country. They made fun of your accent. Basically, if you were from Nashville, for some reason, it was Elvis and not the Grand Ole Opry that people thought about. And people thought you were stupid. Your Southern accent meant you were a dumb hick.” Even with all that she’d picked up in the kitchen from her mother, Margot still had to learn “proper” cooking techniques. She recalls a breakfast class at the Institute, when she was casually peeling a banana, just like her momma taught her—holding the banana sideways and cutting gently to the palm, letting the slices fall into the bowl. But the chef overseeing the class was less enthused. Margot remembers what happened next: “He comes over and he grabs the banana and takes it out of the peel, and spots it on the cutting board and chops at it real fast . . . Basically like, ‘That’s how you do it. You don’t do it like that.’ It’s like, ‘Wow, okay. He told me!’” Still, in the face of hard-nosed culinary traditions, Margot held dearly to her roots, and the care and love with which her mother assembled every home-cooked meal continues to inform her own cooking. When she arrived at the school of her son, Jacob, with (gasp!) store-bought cookies, it felt
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“IF YOU WERE FROM NASHVILLE, FOR SOME REASON, IT WAS ELVIS AND NOT THE GRAND OLE OPRY THAT PEOPLE THOUGHT ABOUT.”
MARGOT McCORMACK: margotcafe.com marcheartisanfoods.com Follow on Facebook @Margotcafeandbar and @marcheartisanfoods # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L Enative.is/margot ///// / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 3 9
so wrong: “We don’t do it that way!” she exclaims. Her mother taught her, “If you take the time to make it yourself, it’s more special than if you pay three dollars for it. Because it’s something of you . . . The kind of food we do here, even though I went to culinary school and did work in New York, it is just very super simple stuff. My mom could make a lot of the dishes that we have on our menu. Now, would she top it with a cherry mostarda? Probably not.” When I ask Margot about her Nashville homecoming, I hear a familiar refrain. I left Brooklyn last year to join my wife as she returned to her childhood home, and I’ve come to the conclusion that New York City is awesome if 1) you’re in your twenties and/or are willing to live on the edge, or 2) you have millions of dollars. When we hit our
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thirties and were only hundredaires, we decided it was time for a change. Margot’s experience is remarkably similar. She explains that she “started thinking like a grown-up and was like, ‘Wow, I don’t have insurance. I’m living very month to month. I’m making a lot of money, but I’m spending a lot of money. And that ing time . . . My mom was all of a sudden was fun for a while, but now I feel like I my unemployment officer. She was like, need to be thinking about other things.’” ‘Well, did you go here? Did you go here? One of those “other things” for Mar- Did you go here?’ And I was literally, the got was starting her own restaurant, but next day, about to pack the car and go she was nervous to try and establish her- back to New York, and she said, ‘Well, self in the unforgiving New York food you haven’t been to F. Scott’s—you scene. A trip home for the holidays was need to go to F. Scott’s.’ So I went there, all it took for her to find her place back and it just so happened that someone in Nashville. “I had been in a relation- had cut themselves, the chef was moved ship that wasn’t working out any longer. from LA and was working with a very Came home for Christmas, never went limited Nashville pool of cooks. Took back. I kinda hung out for a little relax- one look at me and went, ‘CIA? New
York? You’re hired.’” Within six months, Margot was named F. Scott’s Executive Chef. From there, it didn’t take long before she launched her own spot, and just a few weeks back, on the fifth of June, Margot Café & Bar celebrated their thirteenth year. Margot has watched the city grow and change since she was a little girl, and I ask her what’s next—for her, for Margot Café & Bar, and for Nashville itself. She tells me about her many goals: A cookbook. Twelve more years to give the restaurant an even quarter century. Time with her son. Time to guide her kitchen staff on their own culinary adventures. Margot speaks with particular fervency about her recent focus on “grassroots-y, more issueoriented things,” like her position as Board Chair for the Nashville Farmer’s Market, or the “Meet Me at the Market” program, which works with the AARP to bring seniors to the market and provide them with much-needed access to fresh, healthful food. Nashville is in the midst of a population explosion, and Margot’s lifetime of experience gives her great insight into the city’s future growth and transformation. She’s excited that the blossoming of artisanal, locally driven businesses around town means that “people are finding us, and they’re liking us. We’re not the ugly step-kid anymore . . . It runs the gamut from clothes to cars to bicycles to food—to everything.” Still, she adds, “Having said that, I think that it’s equally as much the problem. We don’t want to become some façade of ourselves. When you have all these new people coming into town, you don’t want to dilute the authenticity.” Native Nashvillians concerned about the rapid pace of change should be reassured by Margot’s steady presence as a defender of Southern cuisine, a lover of local peaches and tomatoes, and a staunch advocate of food prepared with genuine integrity. With Margot McCormack, the only thing that changes overnight is her menu.
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THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT A GREAT STORY THAT CAN CAPTIVATE JUST ABOUT ANYBODY. MEET TWO YOUNG GIRLS WHO WON AN OPPORTUNITY TO TURN THEIR STORIES INTO PROFESSIONAL SHORT FILMS THROUGH THE POWER OF NASHVILLE’S CHARITABLE FILM PROGRAM, ICIT 46 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / //////
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BY DAVID GARRIS ARMSTRONG | PHOTOS BY EMILY B. HALL # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E
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I’m sitting dead center in the top row of a set of bleachers in Oz’s auditorium. Dim and spacious, the room
is filled with young students, teachers, family members, and a handful of pros from Nashville’s film community. It’s the night before the Nashville Film Festival, and all of us are waiting for the premiere of two professionally produced shorts that were both written by . . . highschoolers. In particular, two young girls ages fifteen and eighteen, respectively, named Jaida Utley and Jessica Polk. Somewhere beneath me in the bleachers, they’re sitting with their friends and family, waiting eagerly to see their dreams brought to life after two years of work. Before any of this, three people had a vision for a program that could bring a moment like this into reality: Inspiring Creative Innovative Thinkers (ICiT). The founder of this program, David Perry, is making his way to a microphone in front of the projection screen to give his opening address. Clean cut with short curly hair and a charming smile, David looks up into the bleachers. Silence settles over the room, and he clears his throat before speaking confidently into the mic. “Stories are the cornerstone of our culture. And if stories are the cornerstone of our culture, then storytellers are the architects that build the world that we live in. ICiT is about cultivating storytellers; it’s about empowering them and giving them a platform.” David’s voice fills the room as it is cast out of the loudspeakers. Those words reveal what Nashville is all about: people and their stories. With only three years under its belt, ICiT has developed into an extensive network of people, including the program’s founder, the youths he is working with, and the professionals that are on board. Paul Andrew Skidmore and Motke Dapp were the respective directors of Jessica’s and Jaida’s films, and they were all under Rob Chepliki’s guidance as producer. From start to finish, these and many others—we’re talking hundreds of people—all faithfully invested in the power of great stories and great storytelling. In 2011, David set out with cofounders Elena Dering and Matthew Rampulla on a quest to
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offer something to our community through storytelling and film. He recounts their mission: “The program really started with this idea of youth in and of themselves—forget class— have stories to tell, they have a voice that needs to be heard, and if you give them a chance they can wow you with what they have to say. Underserved people, but especially youth, have the same capacity but even less chance of being heard, and they also need and want to be taken seriously. Seeing all of that combined, we saw a huge need. We saw a huge void of arts education that went to the extent of empowerment.” Fast-forward to the premiere night, and you have a room full of people who are actually experiencing how powerful ICiT and the films they’re making are. Their latest offerings have me shedding empathetic tears. One carries you into the world of a young girl with problems at home and bullies at school (The Upside of Down, by Jaida), and the other busts out some unexpected laughs while following a shy, lovestricken bookworm and a not-so-capable cupid, both of whom are on a comedic quest for true love against unlikely odds (Love Is Alive, by Jessica). A couple of weeks after watching the two films, I’m sitting with David, Jessica, and Jaida having coffee and discussing the journey that ICiT has taken them on. The girls are bright and energetic. Jessica has a smile and a sense of humor that could cheer up a war vet, and Jaida is remarkably mature and thoughtful for her years. “So how did you two get involved with this?” I ask. Jaida looks over my shoulder and recounts, “I was in the YMCA camp with my aunt, and she’s the head director. She asked me if I wanted to go to a summer camp or ICiT, and I chose ICiT. I don’t really like nature.” She smiles wryly, and we all laugh at this. Jessica finishes chuckling in time to share, “I was in the Boys & Girls Club and they said, ‘Hey, anybody want to learn how to make a movie?’ and I was like, ‘Me!’ But I didn’t know we were going to write the movie; I thought we were going to videotape it. When I found out there was writing, I thought, I don’t wanna
ICiT: icitfilms.com Follow on Facebook @inspiringcreativeinnovativethinkers native.is/ICiT # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E
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do this. I’m not gonna win. I suck. But I said to myself, Screw it. Do it.” She taps her fingers on the table, making keyboard noises. “And then they said I won and I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ I thought I was second or something.” Jessica calls her triumph a “cryingon-the-ground-oh-my-gosh-I-madeit” event. But both of the girls put in some effort to earn that opportunity. As a program, ICiT is fast paced, academic, and personally challenging. Over the course of four weeks, a small group of youths are divided into two separate age groups, attending classes three times a week at the YMCA on Church Street. From day one, they are writing their scripts and being guided by their teachers on what a great story is and how to tell their own. Once complete, the scripts are taken in by a group of anonymous judges who have never met the youths, and the judges
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narrow them down until one script from each group has been selected to be transformed into a short film. This makes me curious about the other youths and their scripts. David points out that all of the scripts have offered up compelling, powerful stories. However, the selection process involves finding a good story that also works with ICiT’s production budget. They stress merging art and commerce early on in camp, focusing on the quality of the actual story. “One of the things that we really want to teach them is this simple, yet highly complex idea of how to tell a great story.” Thinking back, David recounts something he told Motke during the early stages of creating The Upside of Down. “You know, if I were really honest, I would prefer a single-shot, one-scene, one-take film that communicates a great story over all the
bells and whistles and fireworks that come with a mediocre one.” The two films presented are certainly not epics, but neither are they stripped down to their bare bones. The girls were invited to the sets during filming, and Jaida shares what she experienced: “It was chaos, but it was a good chaos. I saw cameras, and how they use them, and the directors saying ‘cut’ and stuff, and that little— what’s it called?” She looks over to David, who responds, “Clapper?” “Yeah! Clapper. It was cool to be on the set because I’ve never done that either. Especially acting in the film, because seeing myself on the TV was weird, but it was cool.” Jaida looks at Jessica, who elaborates further, “ICiT helps you to look deeper into a movie. I actually want to look through the credits now. I don’t
just skip through the credits—I take the time to see who made the movie and give them their props.” At the heart of this whole experience, there are simple messages these girls are trying to convey. “I like comedy.” Jessica pulls out a big smile before she continues, “I’m a funny person. I really didn’t want to -JAIDA get too serious with it. So it’s more of a spoof.” “So you just wanted to have fun with it?” I ask. “Mmhmm.” She nods quickly, and remaining true to form, counters with, “And then if that didn’t work, I was
“IT WAS CHAOS, BUT IT WAS A GOOD CHAOS.”
gonna go totally Tyler Perry on ‘em and just have a random song in the middle.” Despite all her light-hearted talk, Jessica eventually gets a little serious when elaborating on the ideas behind Love Is Alive. She looks me in the eyes to say, “Don’t get in the way of other people’s destinies. Be strong. Fight your own battles. Don’t rely on a lot of people to do everything for you. Be comfortable in the skin you’re in. It’s pretty much a moral bungee. Any way you can get it, that’s how it’s gonna go.” Jaida has a more simplistic response to questions about The Upside of Down’s message: “Don’t judge a book by its cover. Being different isn’t wrong. Both of those things are morals. I was just trying to let people know that bullying isn’t right and you shouldn’t do it.”
The directors, Motke and Paul, were both very concerned with making sure that these basic truths came to life on camera during the filming process. Motke opens up with a sense of urgency. “We tried to capture as much of Jaida’s personality as we could—and keep it in there—while taking the story to that next level and really hoping that it will become something that will transcend all of us. It’s like gardening in some ways. The writer plants the seed and as it starts to grow, it doesn’t look like a seed anymore, but all of that personality is still in there.” Paul agrees and makes an eloquent point about what’s happening to the youths in that process: “It shows them that they matter and what they have to say matters. And the correlator to that is, what they have to say has consequences, good and bad . . .
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They could say something that could be uplifting and enriching; if they would just say it, somebody would hear it. What they could say could hurt and destroy somebody, and they should know that would be heard as well.” What’s truly unique about ICiT is how much potential the program has in its back pocket. David points out that with each year, the program will grow and expand, and they hope to offer longer forms of production to create new challenges for youths that are taking it seriously. All of this is with the hope that a resume and portfolio of several years with ICiT could produce scholarship opportunities when applying to colleges.“That’s where this thing can go. ICiT could set people up for success so that they get to college and say, ‘I have actually been in the trenches for seven years.’ I mean, that’s incredible. Who has that?” Jaida hits this point home when I ask her about what it was like to win. She tells me a story of when she won a hundred dollars, which she used to go out shopping afterward. “A hundred dollars is nice, you know. Really nice. Very nice. But this carries on with you—it’s something you can keep. A hundred dollars goes away because you buy stuff, and I guess materialistic things don’t matter. So this is way better than a hundred dollars.” With hundreds of people getting involved, ICiT is a beautiful expansion and embodiment of those three sentences David chose to open with at the premiere. The program is unlocking the creative potential of underprivileged youths in Nashville by providing them a voice, and more importantly, a platform for them to share their experience and touch the lives of others. There’s no way to convey how big it really is, or how big it will become, but with so much heart and a great vision, ICiT will only continue to change lives and leave a lasting impression on Nashville’s creative community.
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COOL SIGN! INTRO & PHOTOS BY ANDREA BEHRENDS
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CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT
HEY GUYS, ANDREA HERE. You might have seen my photos in these pages before. Usually, I photograph bands or food or people doing things, but sometimes I find myself driving around, shooting old buildings with cool signs. I shot these because I liked the font of the sign, the vintage aesthetic, or just because “the photo will look cool in twenty years.” Of course there is a lot more to it than that . . . We could talk about how landmarks and businesses are being rapidly replaced by giant condominiums. We could even talk about how a neighborhood looks one way when the average household income is $20K, and how it suddenly looks very different when a neighbor moves in who makes four times that. We could talk about it. But instead, let’s just look. Because that’s the thing about photographs: they do the talking for us. —ANDREA
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Retreat From The Noise
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By Lindsey Button | Photos by Jessie Holloway Model Photos by Zachary Gray
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“ I JUST HATE THAT SO MUCH OF WHAT WE WEAR ENDS UP IN THE GARBAGE.”
THE YEAR IS 1939, AND A VOICE RADIATING her branding team, pours me a FROM A BLACK-AND-WHITE SCREEN AN- glass of water that drips with conNOUNCES, “ONE IDEA IS A DRESS THAT CAN densation. She’s wearing the Mara BE ADAPTED FOR MORNING, AFTERNOON, jumpsuit, a piece from Elizabeth’s OR EVENING.” The sleeves of the dress zip off, spring collection. and the young woman excitedly demonstrates While we may not have airthe way the dress effortlessly becomes a new look. conditioned dresses or belts that Another woman appears on the screen wearing a adapt to climatic changes, the free-flowing jumpsuit, and the same voice narrates, past’s prediction that the twenty“Another designer predicts that skirts will disappear first century would become obentirely and an electric belt will adapt the body to sessed with versatile clothing was climatic changes.” Seventy-five years ago, these not so far-fetched. “That’s the exwere designers’ predictions of what women would treme of the idea,” Elizabeth says, dress like in the twenty-first century. “but it really fascinated me. I want“It’s a weird thing I can’t stop thinking about.” ed to take that and do something Elizabeth Suzann recalls her initial historical inspi- small with it if I could.” ration for her simple and versatile style with exciteFor Elizabeth, designing was born out of personment. al necessity. She never imagined she would make “I studied this sort of strange phenomenon in clothes for anyone but herself. “I was looking for college,” she explains. “I was really interested in comfortable clothes that would meet the aesthetic clothing during the time of war, especially during I had in my head, but I could never find anything. fascism. While there was this terrible thing hap- Everything was polyester and everything was made pening, there was also this world of creative people in China, and the shapes that I wanted weren’t sold who were doing some wildly amazing things and for my demographic. I hated clothes for a while, very off the wall but brilliant when you really look and I didn’t feel comfortable in much of anything. into it. There were a few different French designers And I didn’t feel comfortable wearing things that that were working really hard on this idea of cre- were popular. That’s why I started sewing for myating a single garment—they called it a unit—that self in college.” you could wear for everything. It would turn into Observing her strategically crafted clothes and pants and you could unzip it and it would become the intentional aesthetic of the studio space, it’s a dress, and you could take off the leg pieces and hard to believe this was never part of Elizabeth’s make it into a coat, and then you could wrap it up plan. “I didn’t consider myself a designer,” Elizaand make it into a bag, to carry it like a suitcase.” beth says. “Not until it became time to go to grad Over the buzz of sewing machines, Elizabeth dis- school or do something else and I found myself cusses her inspiration for and philosophy of fash- putting off applications for school.” ion. She is a soft-spoken, charming woman with Elizabeth’s style partly stems from her educashort dark hair and a comfortable attitude. Look- tional background. She studied art history and poing at her, I am tempted to believe that what you litical science in college but had always been drawn wear really does affect the way you feel. It’s hard to the idea of fashion, specifically the way it fits to tell if her clothes reflect her attitude or if the into social history. “There aren’t as many stories clothes themselves are the reason she seems so told about the connection between fashion and calm and relaxed. history, so when we would go into details about Despite the whirling of the fan near the ceiling, certain images, I was always drawn to what they the steamy air from outside finds its way indoors were wearing. For some reason that really appealed and wraps around the room like a thick blanket. to me—the untold story of the clothing of the time There is something immediately calming about the and what was happening socially.” atmosphere—the whitewashed walls, the textures Possessing the knowledge of fashion’s place in of the linen and silk, the rows of neutral colors—all history, Elizabeth is gifted with creating garments in contrast with the pops of green from hanging that feel timeless. The notion of a trendless and plants, floor plants, and table cacti. seasonless wardrobe is at the heart of what she beElizabeth’s husband, a bearded man with bare lieves fashion should aim to be. “I think there is feet, is standing at a table, working from his Mac- a lot of waste in the industry because of seasons. book on his wife’s new website. Elise Joseph, Eliza- I often think of military clothing—it’s made to be beth’s ideal customer, muse, and vital member of worn and not made to be disposed of. It’s made
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to stand up to time, and the fabrics are high quality. I don’t like the idea of buying something at a price point that lets me feel comfortable throwing it away. I just hate that so much of what we wear ends up in the garbage.” Her solution to avoiding disposable clothing is creating a signature collection that will be available yearround, composed of items that can be worn in any season. “These are the pieces that I really feel strongly can stand the test of being worn through all seasons. Especially if you’re trying to afford nice things, it’s hard to buy a large amount of them. If you make that choice to buy more sustainable, made-in-America, quality goods, it’s hard to say you’re going to revamp your wardrobe like that. But if you can buy a piece that really serves you in a lot of different ways, that makes it an easier decision.” Included in the signature collection are pieces such as the Marlena Tank, which is an ideal example of the way Elizabeth’s pieces fulfill her aspiration of creating true versatility. “It has both a V-neck and scoop neck, so you can wear it with the V in the front or in the back—it becomes two shirts in one. And of course you can wear that in the middle of summer because it’s very lightweight, but you can easily layer that under sweaters and coats and jackets. It’s a piece you can wear really anywhere, anytime.” The twentieth-century collective may have imagined fashion would become more intricate and complicated as technology progressed and as artists continued pushing boundaries, but it almost seems as if the opposite has happened. Simplicity is what young women of the second decade of the twenty-first century look for in the clothing they wear. The world around us is blatantly—almost vulgarly—complex and full of technological chaos. In the midst of this noise, to put on a white linen tee and simple pants, if both are made with quality and structure, is a refreshing and mind-clearing experience.
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ELIZABETH SUZANN: elizabethsuzann.com Follow on Facebook and Twitter @elizsuzann native.is/elizabeth-suzann
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“I think fashion can potentially be extremely distracting, even in a physical way,” Elizabeth notes. “If you’re wearing a lot of bells and whistles, you feel it all day. You feel the necklaces, you feel the bracelets, the tight shoes, and the hose and tights—it physically weighs you down. I’d rather not be thinking about what I’m wearing. I’d rather put it on, be completely comfortable, feel like I look good, and that be the end of the story. I think there’s a purity of thought that comes from not having to think about that.” Elizabeth’s target market is women who believe the comfort of the clothes they wear has real power to affect the way they feel and process the world.
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desire for simplicity, especially starting right now with the independent designer realm. I think everyone is expressing the same need for simplicity and quiet and quality. There is a huge draw for people wanting things of quality again. The ’90s and early 2000s were this frenzy of excess, and we had these new fibers we could do anything with, and designers were like, ‘Let’s just see what we can do with this, we can make anything.’ I think it got a little out of hand, and people are reeling in from that.” Beyond a personal level of freedom that Elizabeth’s clothes can provide, she adds that she also believes social awareness plays a role in why there has been a clear shift in concern for buying local, handmade items. “People want to feel like they have less of a footprint or are contributing a little bit less to the negativity of the world,” she says. “That’s how I feel—any small way I can help is good.” Elizabeth has eight people on her team, and she hopes to continue growing organically. “While we do need a lot of help with production, we don’t need Perhaps millennials cling to the idea of a factory, so it’s kind of a good system. simplicity because it seems everything And I think it’s kind of an interesting rerapidly became too complex in their turn to the cottage industry system. But childhood. Maybe they’ve become ob- it’s working well.” Her collection is full of linen and sessed with handmade goods because commercialism and technological pro- silk—both strong, versatile fabrics with gression drained quality out of the first the initial impression of being more delicate than they actually are. Linen decade of the century. “That’s a huge reason I felt a need to doesn’t degrade with wear, it can be retreat away from all of that—all of the warm or it can be breathable, and it only noise,” Elizabeth muses. “Something gets better with age. Silk, she explains that’s simple and clean and not fussy is to me, is actually one of the strongest fibers, though many people are afraid freeing.” I ask Elizabeth if she has an idea of to buy it. It is fluid and one of the most what modern clothing will really say comfortable materials to wear, but it’s about this generation. It seems she has durable and lasting. Elizabeth’s own personality reflects asked herself this question before, that it’s one of the many historical ques- this notion perfectly—while she may tions lurking behind her philosophy of initially seem soft spoken and gentle, fashion. “There’s so much more variety she’s actually as tough and timeless as now that it gets harder to map those the fibers and designs that make up her connections, but I think there is a clear clothing.
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ALL THE YOUNG DUDES DUCKTALES, DADS, AND DEATH: INSIDE THE WORLD OF COIN, NASHVILLE’S MOST OPTIMISTIC INDIE BAND
BY CHARLIE HICKERSON | PHOTOS BY LEAH GRAY
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“COIN IS ALWAYS
1992. Jay Leno takes over for Johnny penders and wide-brimmed hats for vel- lines. The melodies Carson, Microsoft launches Windows vet crop tops and jellies. aren’t obscured by 3.1, Barney and Friends airs on PBS, and But as I look across COIN’s patio ta- calculatedly lo-fi a charismatic young candidate from Ar- ble, I don’t see four extras from Empire compression, the kansas takes the Oval Office on behalf of Records hanging out at a house full of guitars aren’t run the “forgotten middle class.” intentionally kitschy ’90s memorabilia. through vintage Though self-described “swirly indie Instead, Joe Memmel, Zach Dyke, Ryan fuzz pedals, and party pop” band COIN’s latest EP is Winnen, and Chase Lawrence lounge on the rhythm section titled 1992; and though they proudly the back porch of the band’s headquar- doesn’t chug along call themselves a “product of the ’90s,” ters—a stone-sided relic of ’70s subur- at a Kim Deal clip. they don’t remember the King of Late bia hidden behind Nolensville Road’s As Joe puts it, Night leaving his upholstered throne or auto body shops and fast-food chains— “COIN is always goClinton being sworn in. That’s because in clothes that are distinctly 2014. We’re ing to have a pop most of the band was still in utero while talking this season’s H&M and Gap, structure. It’s easiNirvana was working on In Utero (sorry, nothing vintage in sight. Well, nothing er to listen to—it’s some puns are too good to pass up). vintage if you don’t count their tour bus, friendly.” “We want to make something This borrowed nostalgia for the ’90s a red 1985 Dodge Ram van aptly named that’s good in everyone’s eyes,” Chase isn’t uncommon among other Nash- Clifford. echoes. It’s hardly the Stephen Malkvillians who aren’t old enough to reCOIN hasn’t adopted the detached mus or Thurston Moore philosophy to member the Cold War, so I realize I’m smartassness and angst common among rock music, but then again, I don’t think not telling you about some burgeoning ’90s alt acts—and contemporary ’90s COIN plans on trying to become Pavesocial phenomenon. If you’re not fa- alt revival acts—either. 1992 is devoid ment or Sonic Youth any time soon. miliar with this trend, here are some of ironic, tongue-in-cheek rock n’ roll So why is COIN fixated on the Clin(slightly exaggerated) examples of what posturing or odes to the joys of slack- ton era if they don’t look, sound, write, it entails: Facebook event page photos erdom. Instead, lead singer, keyboardist, or act like bands from the Clinton era? featuring Seinfeld or Full House–inspired and lyricist Chase opts to sings earnest “We’re not the band right now that’s art, tattoo choker necklaces, all VHS songs about actual human emotions: regurgitating the aesthetic of the ’90s,” everything. Carrie Brownstein and Fred falling in (and out of) love, worrying Ryan explains. “We called the record Armisen said the “Dream of the 1990s” about the future, missing the past. It’s 1992 because that’s when all of us were proceeded the “Dream of the 1890s” in the same brand of wide-eyed sincerity born. We called it that because all of our Portland, but you could argue that the found on Pet Sounds—just replace the personalities are very similar to how we opposite is true in Nashville. The kids theremin with Chase’s Microkorg and were when we were kids. And we see have exchanged their handcrafted sus- the harpsichord with Joe’s crisp Tele that in each other . . . This band brings me to childlike optimism.” It’s this sense of “childlike optimism” that not only informs COIN’s music, but their lease on life as well. They’ve got youth and good looks (Ryan has actually modeled for local boutique Savant Vintage); they’ve played a sold-out show with Young the Giant; they’ve inked a deal with Columbia Records/ Startime International—which means they’re now labelmates with Foster the People and Peter Bjorn and John. My point: if anyone has the right to fall victim to the pitfalls of stardom, it’s COIN. But after five minutes with the band, I
GOING TO
HAVE A POP STRUCTURE . . .IT’S
FRIENDLY.”
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realize that a viral TMZ freakout or court- help you move or the kind of guys that your ordered community service isn’t in their mom loves to have over for dinner. At first glance, you could mistake this sinfuture. “We don’t have the rock n’ roll lifestyle. cerity for naivety, but it’s not that the memWe don’t care about that, that’s not what bers of COIN are gullible; they just haven’t the band is about,” Ryan begins. Chase cuts succumbed to the aloofness and cynicism in, laughing: “We don’t trash too many ho- that often comes with being in an indie rock band. tel rooms—we’re pretty clean-cut guys.” “We’re going to grow up,” Chase begins, COIN isn’t doing their best Guns N’ Roses impersonation, and that’s because they “But I don’t think we’ll ever lose that sense collectively share an enthusiasm for—at of childlike wonder . . . We all maybe overleast as far as I can tell—pretty much ev- romanticize our childhoods, but I really like erything life has to offer. Over the course the idea of being young forever.” And after hearing about their childhoods, of the afternoon, they answer my questions from the edge of their seats, maintain eye I can’t blame the guys for being a little contact with me, and politely laugh at my sentimental. Chase’s dad grew up playing shitty jokes. They’re the kind of guys that churches and USO shows around the coun-
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try, so it was only a matter of time before the future COIN frontman started praising the Lord by playing piano alongside his old man. Similarly, the rest of the band was raised by fathers who encouraged their sons to get involved in music from an early age. For Zach’s and Ryan’s dads, that meant sending their kids to rock camps with ridiculous names like Power Chord Academy and Camp Jam. Ryan’s dad even weathered an Aaron Carter show for his son. It makes sense, then, that COIN “over-romanticizes” their (very short) past: if your dad was nice enough to suffer through “Aaron’s Party” live, I think it’s safe to assume you probably had an enjoyable adolescence. It’s not all fun and tween-party-anthem
games in the world of COIN, though. Sure, their songs are hopeful, and sure, everyone from college kids to soccer moms can probably bob their heads to Ryan’s bass drum and Joe’s highlife riffs on “Atlas.” But behind the spring reverb and airy synths, there’s subtle bittersweetness and even morbidity. For instance, Chase and Joe’s harmonies on the shout-along chorus of “It’s Okay,” COIN’s latest single, fool you into thinking you’re listening to a feel-good summer anthem. One SoundCloud user even called it the “perfect song for the beginning of spring ahh” (smiley face emoticon not included). Give it another listen, however, and you’ll notice that Chase isn’t exactly singing about your typical synth-pop subject matter: “Cut
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“WE HAVEN’T DONE A 180. WE’RE NOT RECREATING OURSELVES, WE’RE JUST MAKING A BETTER VERSION OF OURSELVES.”
me down or cut me open / Don’t even but it means you just have to live now tell me why / We’re all promised some . . . that’s sort of our motto: being here misfortune / We come and then we now and living with whatever hapdie.” I hope that commenter listens a pens.” “We are young—not the FUN. few more times and moves “It’s Okay” from her “Spring Jams” playlist to her song,” Joe jokingly clarifies. “And we “Existential Crisis” playlist (frowny don’t want to look back on our lives in twenty years and be like, ‘I had face emoticon not included). “It’s just a song about being okay my eyes closed the whole time, and I with death,” Chase nonchalantly says. didn’t experience anything.’” But something tells me COIN “I was going through a time when I didn’t want to die at all, but I just kind doesn’t need to worry about having of realized that it comes and it goes their eyes closed: they’ve already finand we’re all promised death. That’s ished writing a follow-up to 1992, and all we’re promised—death and taxes, they’re slated to start recording it I guess. It’s super depressing, I know, with producer and guitarist Jay Joyce
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(Iggy Pop, Cage the Elephant, Eric Church, Emmylou Harris, Little Big Town) this month. They promise that the forthcoming album, which will be the band’s first full-length, is more guitar driven and “sonically mature” than their previous efforts, but still true to 1992’s synth-pop sensibilities. “We haven’t done a 180,” Chase says. “We’re not recreating ourselves, we’re just making a better version of ourselves . . . Everything is off of our plates at this point except for making this record. We’re 100 percent creative, 100 percent of the time—or at least we try to be.” At the moment, that means the guys are writing and rehearsing from nine to five (okay, maybe more like ten or eleven to five) every day, preparing for their upcoming fall tour with Kopecky Family Band, drinking a ton of coffee, and generally bro-ing out. It’s the COIN version of The Endless Summer, and they certainly aren’t taking the freedom for granted. “We’re all on the same page and writing the same kind of music, and we all agree on everything now. It’s really cool—we’re like brothers. It’s like DuckTales,” Chase jokes. Ryan sits up in his chair to say, “We’re like the team in Miracle!” But COIN’s odds of success look better than the 1980 US hockey team’s did before playing the Soviet Union. All signs—a major record deal, a notable producer, a steadily growing fanbase—point to a prosperous future, but they aren’t concerned with checking items off of some musical bucket list. They just want to bring the childlike optimism of COIN to as many people as possible. “We want millions of people to know that we’re good people with good intentions in this industry, because that’s really hard to come by sometimes,” Ryan explains. “And I don’t care if that’s cheesy—that’s what we’re all about. We’re not going to change that about ourselves.” I don’t think you’ll have to work too hard to convince them, Ryan.
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YOU OUGHTA KNOW: FOREIGN FIELDS
By Philip Obenschain of No Country for New Nashville | Photo by Kate Loehrer
HAILING FROM THE “WINTERY PLAINS” OF WEST BEND, WISCONSIN, the duo who make up self-described “electronic folk” act Foreign Fields, Eric Hillman and Brian Holl, made Music City their home in 2011. Friends since their early teenage years, Hillman and Holl have experienced enviable success, due in no small part to the unlikeliest of fans: Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz. Before Duritz came into the picture, however, the pair spent months between an abandoned office building in wintery Wisconsin and a makeshift studio in their new home of Nashville, writing and recording what would become their debut album, Anywhere But Where I Am. A flourishing, restless, and nuanced epic akin to albums by Sigur Ros, Broken Social Scene, and fellow Wisconsinite Bon Iver, Anywhere was released with
little fanfare online in 2012, employing a pay-what-you-want approach. The band, at the time called Flights (they later changed their name to avoid internet search confusion), harbored no specific expectations; the press, however, fell in love. As word of Foreign Fields began to spread, their music found its way to Adam Duritz, a passionate advocate for emerging artists. Having only ever played a handful of shows, the group soon found themselves on the road with Counting Crows (with a live backing band in tow), spending time in New York, and adopting Duritz as something of a mentor figure. Continued media buzz would follow, as would a string of music videos, an impromptu live EP (last summer’s Tuscaloosa), more tour dates, and appearances at the likes of SXSW, CMJ, and Bonnaroo.
While the band has retreated from the public eye a bit in recent months, it’s all for good reason: they’re hard at work on their sophomore album. The as-yetuntitled release is nearing completion and is expected to arrive later this year. Though its genesis can be traced back to demos in Wisconsin, it will mark Foreign Fields’ first effort recorded solely in Nashville. The process—much more involved and deliberate this time around—has yielded a record the group describes as more dark and introspective while also maintaining a theme of hopefulness. Album news, as well as live dates and additional surprises, should be right around the corner, but while you wait, you have plenty of time to familiarize yourself with one of Nashville’s most promising bands on the rise.
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