JANUARY
2015
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Welcome to Our Family
INTERNATIONAL MARKET & RESTAURANT
Come see why the Myint family has been a part of the Belmont neighborhood since 1975. 2 / // / / / / / / / / / / / / /////
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NEW LOCATION COMING SOON TO SYLVAN PARK!
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Open daily @ 11 am for lunch.
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RESPECT THE UNEXPECTED.
We are an independent record label born and bred in Nashville, TN. We produce no-bullshit homegrown music for everyone. WE’RE NASHVILLE, DAMMIT.
JIM ED BROWN IN STYLE AGAIN
AVAILABLE 1/20/15
Brown is also familiar to audiences through his extensive work in television, with his Country Place syndicated series in the early 1970s, Nashville On The Road from 1975-1981, and You Can Be A Star and Going My Way from the 1980s. Since 1963, Brown has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry. His weekly radio show, Country Music Greats Radio Show, is heard on over 200 radio stations per week.
THE FAUNTLEROYS BELOW THE PINK PONY
AVAILABLE NOW! LP/CD/DD/CS
VISIT PLOWBOYRECORDS.COM FOR NEW RELEASES
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OUR ARTISTS: BOBBY BARE • PAUL BURCH • BUZZ CASON • CHEETAH CHROME • CHUCK MEAD • THE FAUNTLEROYS • THE GHOST WOLVES • JD WILKES & THE DIRTDAUBERS •
The twenty-two-year-old barista is one of ten children—five boys and five girls—all homeschooled on a horse farm in Lake Tahoe, California. “We are all so close, I was probably thirteen before I interacted with anyone outside my family,” she says. “It was definitely unusual. But I wouldn’t trade my childhood for the world.” Lydia moved to Nashville five years ago to be near her oldest brother and was surprised by how quickly she fit in. “I love Nashville—and at Fido, we’re all a bunch of crazy, creative misfits,” she says. “I feel right at home.” Lydia’s artistic outlets include impressionistic oil painting, ceramics, and writing poetry. “I got into oil painting after my mother passed away,” she says. “It was my therapy; it got me through.”
An avid traveler, Lydia has hitchhiked across New Zealand and explored Iceland, among other adventures. “I’m not very good at staying put; I like to wander,” she says, “but it’s nice to have Nashville as my home base.” Thailand is at the top of her travel wish list, not only so she can experience the food, beautiful landscape, and culture, but also so she can begin the next phase of her career. “I want to help victims of sex trafficking,” she says. “It’s so hard to believe this still goes on in the world. I plan to get a degree in art therapy so I can open a safe house and use art to help people heal.” When customers ask her to recommend a coffee brew, her response often induces blushes. “I like the Orgasmic Organic. It’s dark, rich, and tastes like caramel,” she says.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS January 2015
50 62
78
38 THE GOODS 26
21 Beer from Here 22 Cocktail 25 Master Platers 89 You Oughta Know 92 Observatory 94 Animal of the Month
FEATURES 26 Jawws 38 Miranda Whitcomb Pontes 50 Contributor Spotlight: Alysse Gafkjen 62 Morgan Higby-Flowers 70 Black Abbey Brewery 78 Drew Holcomb
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DEAR NATIVES,
T
hanks for tagging us, y’all! Be sure to check out these Instagrammers, and #nativenashville to share your photos with us. president, founder:
ANGELIQUE PITTMAN JON PITTMAN associate publisher: KATRINA HARTWIG publisher, founder:
@nolannomad
@dearhaleynicole
@camilleeileen
@nolanfeldpausch
founder, brand director:
DAVE PITTMAN
founder:
CAYLA MACKEY
creative director:
MACKENZIE MOORE
managing editor:
CHARLIE HICKERSON DARCIE CLEMEN
art director:
COURTNEY SPENCER
community relations manager:
JOE CLEMONS
community representative:
LINDSAY ALDERSON
account manager:
AYLA SADLER
web editor:
TAYLOR RABOIN
film supervisor:
CASEY FULLER
editor:
writers: photographers:
@mattself
@simonandruby
founding team:
MATTHEW LEFF CHARLIE HICKERSON MATT COLANGELO LINDSEY BUTTON SCOTT MARQUART ANDREW LEAHEY COOPER BREEDEN
DANIELLE ATKINS JONATHON KINGSBURY ANDREA BEHRENDS ALYSSE GAFKJEN JESS WILLIAMS AMY RICHMOND CAMERON POWELL AUSTIN LORD
MACKENZIE MOORE JOSHUA SIRCHIO TAYLOR RABOIN
want to work at native? contact:
@cowboy615
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WORK@NATIVE.IS SALES@NATIVE.IS for all other inquiries: HELLO@NATIVE.IS to advertise, contact:
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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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ry
Brewe
Bearded Iris Brewing
101 Van Buren in Ger mantown next to 100 Taylor Ar ts Collective Founded by Paul Vaughn and Kavon Togr ye
More excitement is coming to the Nashville beer scene, as Bearded Iris Brewing will open its doors in Germantown in early 2015. Founders Paul Vaughn and Kavon Togrye are proud to bring their creations to Nashville and act as Germantown’s only brewery-taproom. Paul and Kavon have been greatly influenced by both Russian River Brewing Company and Dogfish Head Brewery for their unique beers and bold approach to being a brewery. Bearded Iris will use a fifteen-barrel brewing system and ferment their beers in both stainless steel and various oak vessels. They have five stainless steel fermenters and two foeders (one-thousand-gallon oak vessels used previously for wine) that will allow them to make truly original beers.
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“I like to tell people when they are drinking it that it’s the closest they will get to putting their lips on Ryan Gosling.” —Ben Clemons, No. 308
Rye ‘n’ Goslings THE GOODS 1 oz Wild Turkey 101 Rye 1 oz Gosling’s Black Seal Rum 1/4 oz juiced ginger 1 egg white 1/2 oz lime juice 1/2 oz simple syrup nutmeg for garnish
F Chill a coupe glass. F Add all ingredients to a shaker and shake with ice. Strain and garnish with nutmeg.
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ATIVE IVENNASH ASHVI VILLE LLE ##NNAT
TOP 5 WINNER
WORLD FOOD CHAMPIONSHIP OF BURGER LAS VEGAS 2014
COME TRY THE 96 BURGER! THE HIGHEST RATED BURGER IN THIS YEAR’S WORLD FOOD CHAMPIONSHIP
AVAILABLE JANUARY 15TH
burgers
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craft beer
420 11th Avenue South (615) 915-1943
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BB B t f a r D 20 LENOX:
shakes
6900 Lenox Village Dr. Ste 22 (615) 499-4428
HOW TO MAKE: CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT & BUCKWHEAT GRANOLA WITH LAUREN COWLEY, BAKER AT THE POST EAST
THE GOODS: DRY INGREDIENTS: 1 cup buckwheat 3 cups rolled oats
WET INGREDIENTS: 1/4 cup coconut oil 1/4 cup almond butter
1 1/2 cups large flake coconut
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup hazelnuts, roughly chopped
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup almond, roughly chopped 1/4 cup chia seeds
SU BS TI TU TI O N
S:
SU BS TIT UT E AN Y OF TH E NU TS , SE ED S, OR SW EE TE NE RS TO YO UR LIK IN G, OR AD D PU RE ED PU MP KI N FO R A SE AS ON AL TA ST E!
1/2 cup sifted unsweetened cocoa powder 3/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup sugar
DIRECTIONS: F In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients. F Melt coconut oil and almond butter and add to other wet ingredients. F Mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients together well and spread evenly over large sheet pan. F Bake at 350째 for 15 to 20 minutes. Use spatula to toss granola, then bake for another 10 minutes.
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SPENDING A SATURDAY WITH JAWWS, NASHVILLE’S FIRST SONS OF PUNK BY CHARLIE HICKERSON | PHOTOS BY JONATHON KINGSBURY
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PART I: “BUILT TO DESTROY” It’s the afternoon of the 30th Annual Donelson Hermitage Christmas Parade, but Hunter Tidwell isn’t in the holiday spirit. He’s sitting in his parents’ house— about a mile away from the festivities—and his thumb is gushing blood. “We told him to be careful, but as soon as he started the first one, he cut himself,” says Hunter’s older brother, Eli. “Then he went to the bathroom, came back, and cut himself again on the second one.” The “first one” Eli is referring to is the first of many record sleeves for S/T 7”, the debut release from Nashville’s resident punk wunderkinds, Jawws. Hunter’s run-in with a mat cutter came as he—alongside his fellow eighteen-and-under bandmates, vocalist/guitarist Eli, guitarists Ash Wilson and Conner Sullivan, and bassist Jacob Corenflos—was scrambling to assemble and package 150 vinyl copies in time for the S/T 7” release show tonight at Exponent Manor. The guys have been working on a DIY record assembly line in the Tidwells’ living room all afternoon, and Hunter has (perhaps wisely) just relinquished control of the mat cutter to his dad, Todd Tidwell. Cortney Tidwell, Eli and Hunter’s mom, brews coffee in the kitchen and asks Jawws if they want her to make dinner before the show. “You’ve got to get a good-looking girl to work the merch table tonight, boys,” Todd halfjokes as he squares up another sleeve on the cutter. “That’s how you sell your stuff.” Something tells me Jawws’ merch is going to sell no matter who’s behind the table. Since their formation in February 2014, the band has emerged as—in the words of Eli—“the freshest wave” in a scene that’s birthed hometown heroes like Natural Child, Jeff the Brotherhood, Cy Barkley, Diarrhea Planet, and PUJOL. And they’re honored to be in that position. As Todd explains: “[Jawws growing up in Nashville] is like being a Dead fan and growing up in San Francisco in the ’60s. Jeff, DP—those are their favorite bands . . . What a fortunate time for these boys to come up in.” And like their favorite bands, Jawws’ sound is difficult to define. They play loud, fast songs about skate-
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boarding, disdain for the police, and generally raising hell. It’s too sludgy for hardcore, too fast for grunge, and too heavy for garage. But none of those labels really matter anyway. All you need to know is this: Jawws kicks serious ass. And the rest of Nashville seems to agree. In the past year, the band has performed at Third Man’s Record Store Day event (where Jack White created the world’s fastest released record), played Exit/In twice, contributed a track to Infinity Cat’s Hits from the Streets Vol. 2 compilation, and earned the title of “Best Teenage Punk Band” in the Nashville Scene. Not bad for some guys that can’t legally buy cigarettes. Despite their age, this kind of presence in the Nashville music scene isn’t foreign to the members of Jawws. Eli and Hunter’s parents are Nashville royalty: Todd’s a producer at Reba McEntire’s Starstruck Studios on Music Row, and Cortney, as both a solo artist and half of acclaimed duo KORT, has been a staple of Nashville’s music scene for years. Plus, her grandfather owned the iconic Chart Records country label, and her mom was ’60s and ’70s country singer Connie Eaton. Similarly, Jacob’s dad, J.T. Corenflos, is one of the most sought-after studio guitarists in town. He’s played with everyone from Tim McGraw to Martina McBride, and he used to take Jacob to Bob Seger sessions as a kid. And while neither of his parents are professional musicians, Ash says there are pictures of him wearing Black Flag onesies as a baby. “We grew up seeing our parents talk about music, fight about music, talk about their records. I’ve seen every aspect of them doing their music,” Hunter explains. “They put together CDs and records—just like we’re doing today. I watched them do that when I was like five years old.” Jacob laughs and adds, “Todd told me a story where the first time he took Eli and Hunter to a friend’s house, they said, ‘Where’s the drum kit?’” It’s only fitting, then, that the guys developed eclectic—and really good—tastes in music early on. Black Sabbath, The Who, Ramones, Bad Brains, Nirvana, Minor Threat—there really aren’t any embarrassing, God-I-can’t-believe-I-listened-to-that bands in Jawws’
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past (though Conner does admit to going through a “weird metalcore phase”). But when I ask what inspired them to move from appreciating music to performing it, Jawws doesn’t name big, internationally renowned artists or classic albums. Instead, they rattle off beloved local venues and events: The Other Basement, Freakin’ Weekend, The End, The Stone Fox—Jawws could name places and shows all day. “The guys have frequented shows at these places since the eighth grade.” Hell, Eli and Hunter even say their first Jeff (then called The Sex) show was at the age of four. While most kids only get to dream of seeing their favorite bands live, all Jawws had to do was bum a ride to Local Honey or The End and be home before curfew. “At Freakin’ Weekend IV, we [he and Eli] saw DP for the first time ever, Cy Barkley—who we love—and Jeff,” Hunter remembers as he rolls a souvenir Titans helmet back and forth in his hands. “It was probably the most amazing show I’ve seen in my life. The second I walked out of there, I was like, that’s what I fucking wanna do.” And that’s exactly what he and Eli fucking did. After forming a Jeff-esque duo with Hunter and finishing freshman year at McGavock, Eli transferred to NSA (Nashville School of the Arts), where he met the rest of the band’s current lineup. One Circle Jerks cover and a few dozen practices in the Tidwell basement later, they were Jawws. As Conner puts it, “It just all lined up and was paral-
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lel—it was the right time at the right place for us.” But it wasn’t just a case of “the right time at the right place.” Jawws also got some serious help from the bands and venues in Nashville’s DIY scene. The venues that once hosted their favorite bands now welcomed Jawws with open arms—or in this case, open stages, living rooms, and basements. “Because of Katherine at The Other Basement, we got our start here [in Nashville],” Jacob asserts matter-of-factly. “House shows are the best—at least in my opinion.” “Some of our best shows have been house shows . . . And they’re dirt cheap. At Exit/In, you’re paying like fifteen bucks to go see four bands and all that shit . . . but with a house show, you can see an onslaught of bands for four dollars,” Eli says. Ash laughs, “I’ve seen so many house shows I don’t even remember what show was what.” This admiration for the Nashville house-show circuit and the people that make/made it is one of the major guiding principles in the Book of Jawws. The guys are a product of a Nashville that’s far removed from the Music Row studios their parents record and work in, and they’re damn proud of it. “There’s a Nashville sound. I can listen to a band—like PUJOL, like Heavy Cream—and I can tell they’re from Nashville . . . It’s creative, raw, heavy,” Jacob says with conviction. “It’s about creativeness—do it your fucking self and don’t rip off other people.” Ash earnestly adds, “We love those [Nashville] bands so much, and they like us too. So they try to help us out and support us as much as possible.” While most of the bands that epitomize this “Nashville sound” are still alive and well, some of the all-ages venues they—and Jawws—used to play aren’t. The Other Basement closing hit Jawws particularly hard. That, combined with The Owl Farm closing in 2013, leaves show-going minors with few options. “Now a lot of the good shows are happening at places that are eighteenand-up. So we’re trying to open it up and do a lot of house shows and make things available,” Hunter shrugs. But “opening it up” is easier said than done. While Jawws admits there are still great house venues in town (like the one that’s hosting their record release), many of the houses are simply too small to accommodate large crowds. And then there’s the ageold problem of police, a state entity Jawws isn’t too fond of. “The houses just get shut down so quick now,” Ash sighs. These issues, along with the general frustrations that come with the territory of living under your parents’ roof, are all ad-
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JAWWS: jawwsmusic.bandcamp.com Follow on Facebook @JawwsNash, Twitter @JawwsBand native.is/jawws # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E
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dressed on S/T 7”’. For instance, the forty-nine-second “Twelve” is the most pissed-off song on the record, and it certainly doesn’t mince words when expressing Jawws’ feelings toward the boys in blue: “You are just a liar / You are just a joke / And you don’t mean shit.” It’s a slice of classic ’80s hardcore that makes you wish Henry Rollins would sing “Police Story” again instead of writing insensitive op-eds about suicide. By comparison, the jarring opener, “Thrashin’”—a song about “just fucking shit up,” according to Eli—and “Livingston”—an ode to a Freakin’ Weekend patron who was “on some type of psychedelic”—seem upbeat. Or at least as upbeat as a song with a gang vocal refrain of “No more resolution / No more constitution / I want violation” can be. S/T 7”’s pinnacle, though, is the closer, “Built to Destroy.” As Ash explains, it’s “a fuck you to establishments for not throwing enough all-ages shows for us to go to and hassling kids.” It’s also got a descending major-chord progression that sounds like the intro to “Anarchy in the UK” on speed. Plus, any song with an outro that encourages kids to chant, “You’re trying to think / But no one can
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sitting in his pickup truck. He’s on the phone and he’s not happy. “I can’t even make it down the damn street for all the cars . . . Well, I don’t know what’s going on . . . No, no I don’t know. There’s just all these kids everywhere.” I get to the front yard of the Exponent Manor, and I realize what I’d previously assumed would be the case tonight: as a twentysomething, I’m a good bit older than most of the crowd (aside from Cortney, Todd, and a handful of other brave souls). What’s that LCD Soundsystem line again? “But I’m losing my edge / to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent / And they’re actually really, really nice.” I don’t think I ever had an edge to begin with and I’m not as old as James Murphy, but yeah, the scene at Exponent is something like that lyric. Inside, the house is crowded and hot, with low ceilings—I’m starting to see EGG why there were so many people outside. PART II: “THRASHIN’” A few hours after I leave the Tidwells’, But the cover is low ($5), the owners I’m walking down Georgia Avenue on are welcoming, the soundboard is killer, my way to Exponent Manor. A couple and like the people in the yard, everyone hundred yards from the house, there’s inside is “really, really nice.” As far as a fifty- or sixty-something-year-old man “opening up” opportunities for underage think / No one will think / You won’t fucking think,” is alright in my book. Eli says the song’s outro is “Me trying to change stuff and think outside of the box to open new things for kids to come to . . . Sometimes I feel like I’m one of the only ones trying to make a difference for kids trying to see shows, and everyone else is just saying, ‘Oh, it’s eighteen and up, and it’s going to be this way forever.’” He might not have to think outside of the box for too much longer. Once Hunter turns eighteen, his and Eli’s parents plan on moving out, which will leave the Tidwell boys to host house shows to their hearts’ content. Who knows, maybe they’ll even inspire underage Jawws fans to start bands just like the shows at The Other Basement and Freakin’ Weekend inspired Eli, Hunter, Jacob, Conner, and Ash. One can only hope.
fans goes, I’d say Jawws and Exponent are off to a pretty good start. After parting the Red Sea of kids in the living room to get gear in and tuning up, Jawws is on before 10:30. You don’t get much in the way of stage banter from Eli—just a quick thank-you and one command he repeats throughout the night: “Let’s get fucking rowdy.” Like Jawws’ one- to two-minute songs, the guy gets straight to the point. The show opens with “Thrashin’,” and from there, we’re all lost in a hardcore haze. I see at least five kids crowd surfing, including Jacob (even though he spends most of “Holy Ghost” six feet in the air, he still doesn’t miss many notes on his Squire Precision). A few of the skinnier attendees come dangerously close to smashing into Exponent’s light fixture. One guy in the front has wisely donned Hunter’s Titans helmet. Another guy is flung from the pit and crashes into me. After apologizing, he says, “Fuck man, it’s hot.” In less than thirty minutes, Eli is already giving his final send-off before the last song—“Thanks to everyone who made this, thanks for letting us play at this, and thank you to the people that own the house”—and I’m exhausted. Judging by the sweatdrenched T-shirts and panting around me, I’d say everyone else is too. The second the set ends, Hunter and Eli both push through the crowd and run out the front door. I follow suit and eventually find them in the front yard. Even though it’s in the thirties out, Eli lies on his back in the grass, his hands on his head and his T-shirt soaking wet. Hunter’s sitting on the curb, chatting with one of the girls that nearly broke the light fixture while crowd surfing. So, how do you think the show went? “We played horrible.” What was so horrible about it? “Tuning malfunctions, general hotness. But I like that. It was probably the best show we’ve ever played.” Here’s to many more in many more houses. Long live Jawws. Open Tuesday-Saturday 12:00-5:30PM & by appointment. 9 1 6 8 t h Av e • 6 1 5 . 5 9 8 . 2 0 7 4 • t h e r e d f e a t h e r g a l l e r y. c o m # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E
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AT IVE N ASH VI LLE ##NNAT IVE N AS H VI LLE
THE NEWCOMER MIRANDA WHITCOMB PONTES DISCUSSES DINO’S AND GETTING BACK TO “HER CORE” BY MATT COLANGELO | PHOTOS BY ANDREA BEHRENDS
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ON OCTOBER 23, 2014, Miranda Whitcomb Pontes—the restaurateur behind Frothy Monkey, Burger Up, Josephine, and Prima—confirmed rumors that she and a business partner were taking over Dino’s, a beloved dive bar on Gallatin Avenue. The following are some reactions to this news culled from the Internet. FACEBOOK: “Please, no. No, no, no, no, no! It’s fine the way it is currently.” “Noooooooooooooooo” “Why y’all afraid of change????” INSTAGRAM: “RIP to the real Dino’s.” “Sob sob sob sob” “Sad day. Such a rad dive.” “Dang!! They need to preserve the Nashville staples” EGE Miranda Whitcomb Pontes walked into a shitstorm. When news broke that she was taking over Dino’s, people flipped out. For opponents of the switch, this wasn’t just another example of New Nashville stripping Old Nashville of its history and soul. This was something different. This felt like the last straw in a neighborhood’s fight against gentrification. Not that the change in ownership came as much of a surprise. On weekends, when nearby watering holes like Bar 308 and Edgefield were packed to the gills, Dino’s was often empty. You might have seen a handful of regulars knocking down $2 PBRs, but not enough to keep the bar open—not in that part of town. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), the stretch of Gallatin Avenue that Dino’s calls home is a hotbed of new real-estate development. As a result, rent is going through the roof. That’s true for homeowners as well as business owners, and it’s one of the reasons that Rick Wildeboor, the former owner of Dino’s, was unable to hold on to his business. Dino’s revenues simply weren’t high enough to cover the new rent that his landlord wanted to charge. And rather than selling $6 beers and doing karaoke nights, Rick decided to sell the business. In the middle of East Nashville’s rapid development, Dino’s sticks out like a sore thumb. Its brick facade (if you want to call it that) looks like it hasn’t been washed in a couple decades; its windows are made of thick bulletproof plexiglass (though you can’t see through them because the blinds are usually drawn); and the four beers it advertises (unironi-
cally) are PBR, Miller Lite, Yuengling, and Bud Light. From the outside, Dino’s looks like a classic American dive bar that hasn’t changed since the ’70s. Inside, the bar looks even less like other businesses in the neighborhood. The mismatched barstools are falling apart; the linoleum floor tiles are peeling up; and the smell of cigarette smoke permeates everything—because you could still smoke inside as of a few weeks ago. That was Dino’s charm, though. While everything in the area seemed clean and new, Dino’s looked like it had been around for a while. It had character and soul. That appearance, combined with former owner Rick Wildeboor’s couldn’t-care-less attitude, gave the bar a sense of authenticity. Compared to all the other businesses nearby, Dino’s was considered Old Nashville. Miranda, on the other hand, is considered one of the most recognizable faces of New Nashville. In 2004, two years after moving here from Boulder, Colorado, she opened the first Frothy Monkey on 12th Avenue South. Though Frothy “almost didn’t make it,” according to Miranda, she eventually turned a profit and hired a manager whom she would later sell the business to, Ryan Pruitt. Five years after opening Frothy, she opened an upscale burger joint two blocks down the road called Burger Up. After the financial and critical success of Burger Up, it was another three years before Miranda opened her second restaurant on 12th Avenue South: Josephine, this time with business partner Jim Lewis (with whom she formed a restaurant group called Community Hospitality). That was just over a year ago. Since then, she and Lewis have opened Prima, a swanky steakhouse located on the ground floor of the Terrazzo building in the Gulch. With this resume, it’s no wonder people associate Miranda with New Nashville. Not only are her restaurants new, but every single one of them is located in a newly developed part of town—12South and the Gulch. But does that mean she’s going to ruin Dino’s? As Miranda takes me on a behind-the-scenes tour of her Dino’s cleanup, I’m reminded of how dingy the place was. Dirty bathrooms, stale French fries on the floor. That dinginess was part of Dino’s charm, but it was probably one of the reasons business declined. Rick recalls rainy nights when his bar would be empty and there would be a horde of people smoking outside Bar 308. To Rick, that meant something had gone awry. “The neighborhood changed,” he tells me over beers at 308, “people didn’t come to Dino’s anymore.” Ironically, it was only when peo-
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ple found out Dino’s was closing that it became popular: “Our last month in business was our best ever, by a long shot.” If Dino’s is going to make money, it has to attract people on a consistent basis. And to do that, certain aspects of it will have to change. How much changes is something that people are curious to see. Miranda specifies what some of these changes will be as we make our way to the kitchen. Besides cleaning it up, she’s going to add booths, new plumbing, an outdoor seating area, a few new menu items, and a controversial new rule: no smoking. For opponents of Miranda’s ownership, this is a “hugely monumental shift” that will strip Dino’s of its smelly charm. But for everyone else, the no-smoking rule seems to be welcomed. One commenter on Instagram exclaimed, “Looking forward to getting a burger without a side of cigarette smoke!” Another wrote, “Hopefully it’ll be non-smoking!” At the very least, these comments suggest that there’s a group of people who didn’t go to Dino’s because it was a smoking bar—and who might go now that it’s non-smoking. But the issue of smoking comes back to authenticity. The fact that Dino’s allowed smoking meant that is was an authentic dive bar in a sea of new bars. The smokiness and dinginess and smallness of the place made it real. Another thing lending Dino’s authenticity is its reputation for having the oldest continuous beer license in Nashville, something that Miranda confirmed for me over coffee. That reputation has added to Dino’s legend and made it seem like Dino’s has been around forever. Another piece of Dino’s mythology is that it was the inspiration for Thin Lizzy’s 1976 hit “The Boys Are Back in Town.” The lyrics go: “Friday night they’ll be dressed to kill / Down at Dino’s Bar and Grill / The drink will flow and blood will spill / And if the boys want to fight, you’d better let them.” All this was, though, was mythology. Dino’s— our Dino’s, at least—was not the one being referenced by lead singer Phil Lynott. According to information gathered by Alex Wendkos, Miranda’s business partner, Dino’s was called Cas-
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sidy’s Restaurant in 1976. Records show that it has been a restaurant of some kind since 1934, but it was only named Dino’s in 1977. Originally, it was registered to a man named Lawrence E. Ford. He sold it in 1961 to a man named Ernest O. Towns, who in a flash of originality named it Towns Restaurant. In 1967, it became Merrill’s Grill, under the new ownership of a certain William A. Merrill. After five years in business, Mr. Merrill sold the business to Charles T. Brown, who changed the name to—you guessed it—Brown’s Diner. Two years later, in 1974, it became the Sandwich Shop; and then in 1975, it became the Catfish Shack. Then Cassidy’s Restaurant in 1976. Cassidy’s finally became Dino’s Restaurant in 1977, but it wasn’t the Dino’s we know. That’s because Rick and Linda Wildeboor weren’t on board. They didn’t take it over until 2007. This fact is significant for several reasons. First, many people assume that Rick has owned the bar for much longer than seven years—an assumption that adds to its authenticity. Second, Rick took over Dino’s after New Nashville started happening. (Miranda, for one, had already been running Frothy Monkey for three years.) So while Dino’s the bar exudes Old Nashville, its last incarnation with its previous owners was actually pretty new. East Nashvillians who know this and still mourn the death of Dino’s don’t do so because of Rick’s departure, but rather because of the supposed inappropriateness of his successor. Just as people equate Rick with Dino’s, they define Miranda by the restaurants she’s opened: upscale, clean-cut, and fairly expensive. Not particularly Dino-like. But as is often the case, her biography tells a more nuanced story, one that’s a little more self-made than self-indulgent. To start, she was adopted at birth. The only thing she knows about her biological parents is that she “believes they’re from Mississippi.” Her adoptive parents raised her in Ruston, Louisiana, a town of about twenty thousand that is known for its university, Louisiana Tech, and its annual peach festival. She went to school in Ruston, at the local high school, then attended LSU for a couple of years, where she “got ad-
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venturous and experienced everything [she] could, except school.” Her grades were abysmal. So bad that her mother took her out of LSU and got her to transfer to Centenary College, a smaller school closer to home. Immediately after graduating from Centenary, Miranda moved to San Francisco. To convince her mom that it was a good idea, she lied about landing a job as a fashion buyer at Neiman Marcus. “The funny thing about that,” Miranda recalls, “is there isn’t even a Neiman Marcus buying program in San Francisco. There’s one in Dallas, which I applied to and didn’t get into, but not San Francisco.” Knowing that her mom would eventually find out that she was lying, Miranda found the nearest Neiman Marcus and got a job there. Seven years later, at the height of the late90s dot-com bubble, she switched careers and got a marketing job at a tech startup called ProxyNet. According to Miranda, ProxyNet “developed the very first images on a handheld screen” and was soon bought by Handspring, the makers of second-generation Palm Pilots like the Visor and Treo.
Despite that being a “fun, creative place to work,” Miranda’s dream was to work in fashion, so she left ProxyNet and got a job at Chaiken Clothing. That’s when she met Lance Whitcomb. Meeting Lance was a major turning point in her life. After a few months, they decided to leave the craziness of San Francisco and move to Boulder, Colorado. Deciding that she “was going to be a fifth-grade teacher and that life would be wonderful and everything would work out,” she enrolled at the University of Denver and got a master’s degree in education. Then one day, Lance dropped to one knee and asked her to move to Nashville. Nashville was unexpected, but it wasn’t totally new to her: “I’d been to Nashville to run the marathon because I lost a bet.” Having crisscrossed around the city, Miranda was familiar with a few parts of town already. What she wasn’t familiar with, though, was having a child. But as soon as she moved to Nashville, newly married, she found out that she was pregnant. “We were elated,” says Miranda, “but our dreams were about to come
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to a screeching halt.” With a kid on the way, Miranda decided to postpone her plan of becoming a teacher and focus on being a mother. Her son, Landon, was born in May 2003. The decision to open Frothy Monkey in 2004 was a naive and impulsive one, driven by an urge to get out of the house and do something. “I had no idea what I was doing,” she says with chuckle. “I actually bought a book: How to Open and Run a Successful Coffee Shop.” When she got the keys to the building, she immediately drove to Home Depot and bought tools to start demolishing the space, unaware that you need permission from the city first. It all worked out in the end, though. Frothy Monkey led to Burger Up, which led to Josephine and Prima. The adopted girl from Ruston had become a full-fledged restaurateur. Somewhere along the way, though, she got off track. As we’re finishing up the interview, she interjects, “I want to say something.” She pauses. I grab my notepad. “I’ve gotten far away from my core, the business of community and people. I’m doing Dino’s to get closer to that. That’s why I’ve taken a backseat at Josephine and Prima. I’m only a consultant for them now.” The idea of Miranda Whitcomb Pontes makes people not want to believe her. When I ask her what people think of her, she says, “They think I’m rich and highfalutin.” She understands the perception. She just doesn’t agree with it. “I have a nice car, but I’m old school. I like to be behind the bar, meeting people.” Of all the things that will inevitably change about Dino’s, hopefully that won’t be one of them. Will Dino’s be the same? No. It can’t be. Not after the neighborhood changed and people moved away and Rick sold the business. But only time will tell if Miranda’s version of Dino’s resembles the old one. After meeting her, I’m willing to give her a chance. So is Rick: “I’ll be the first person there, day one.”
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PAYING HOMAGE TO THE ’60S, THESE IMAGES REPRESENT A PIVOTAL DECADE IN NASHVILLE’S HISTORY AND THE
CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY ALYSSE GAFKJEN | HAIR AND MAKEUP ALYSSA KRAUS FOR AMAX TALENT | STYLING CARMEN JAUDON OF CLOSET CASE VINTAGE | MODEL ASHLEY
HISTORY OF ALL MUSIC. BY THE ’60S, NASHVILLE HAD BECOME THE CENTER OF COUNTRY MUSIC RECORDING AND WAS THE PLACE TO GO TO “MAKE IT” IN THE INDUSTRY.
FISHER OF AMAX TALENT
TAKE A LOOK AT A LIFE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN AT THE DRAKE MOTEL IN 1960 —Alysse 50 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / //////
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JAKE’S BAKES TAKES FRESHLY BAKED COOKIES TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL: YOUR FRONT DOOR
BY MATT COLANGELO | PHOTOS BY RYAN GREEN
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MORGAN HIGBY-FLOWERS UNLOCKS THE MYSTERIES OF TECHNOLOGY WITH HIS NEW MEDIA PROJECTION ART BY LINDSEY BUTTON | PHOTOS BY JESS WILLIAMS
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Morgan Higby-Flowers’ studio is located at Ground Floor Gallery + Studios,
across the street from the Nashville City Cemetery, which looks expansively gray-washed on this rainy December day. Morgan and I barely have a greeting before he leads me to his work area and shows me some of the analog machines from the ’80s and ’90s that he uses to create his performances. He demonstrates on a small screen the way the signals create visual images and sound waves. As a new media artist whose work is steeped in technology, Morgan is specifically interested in discarded technologies. “I problematize a process where the outcome is variable,” he says. “I make systems. It would be hard to say that the outcome is expected. It’s about using technology in unexpected ways . . . which is freeing. I can play in a space that’s full of discovery, and I’m constantly learning what that space is capable of.” Morgan creates his pieces by working with a technological system, finding the problems within that system, and then exploiting them for visual purposes. Morgan comes from an artistic background. His mother is a videographer and his father is a painter. He completed his undergraduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. While in Chicago in the early 2000s, he became involved with a Chicago-based mini movement called “Dirty New Media,” which sought to challenge the organization of technology while complicating our relationship with computer culture. Before recently moving to Nashville, he lived in Clarksville for two years. “I was a little worried about moving to this area and whether or not these kinds of things were going on or if people would be interested in the work that I did,” he says. “But Clarksville actually ended up being really great because there was this alternative community center/bar [the Coup] that had noise shows that I became involved in.” Morgan received his MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University in Alfred, New York, and currently is a professor of time media at Watkins College of Art, Design, and Film. His curriculum primarily
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focuses on video, sound, and creative coding. In addition to his teaching and art, he is also a part of the Coop Collective—a group of artists in Nashville who run the Coop gallery at the Arcade. “Our mission is curatorial,” he explains, “where we don’t necessarily display our own work; we bring in outside sources and artists to come show their work in Nashville. It’s a mission to educate on contemporary art outside of Nashville.” They also host a monthly event called Nashville Artists Drink Beer, located at Craft Brewed. “We get together once a month to give five-minute presentations on any subject that we are interested in. It may or may not have anything to do with our personal artwork. I recently gave a short presentation on The Singularity and artificial intelligence.” While Morgan does create prints and still images on occasion, for the most part, his work exists as a performance that must be seen live. He plays me a video of a recent live performance at The Packing Plant. It shows rapid flashes of light, lines, shapes, patterns, colors— an enhanced moving form of technological glitches. His work is an experience for the senses (though maybe not the most comfortable thing for anyone with a neurological disorder). But he warns me that you can’t get the full effect with just a video of the performance: “It’s in a dark room with loud speakers. The synesthetic quality of it can lull an audience in a way. You can get sucked into it.” To get sucked into it, to see the wonderment of technology, seems to be the point of Morgan’s art. “A phrase that I like, that I take from the new media historian and SAIC professor, Jon Cates, talks about the difference between m-a-g-i-c and m-a-g-i-c-k—stage magic vs. séance magic. I want to cast spells with code. Not maliciously or anything like that. Like this, for example.” He pulls up his website, which at first seems rather overwhelming or as if there is something wrong with it. But he explains that that’s part of the experience, that the website itself is a piece of interactive art. “My website works with code and is difficult to navigate,” he explains as he runs his mouse over the screen.
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“THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VIDEO OR TEXT. AT THE END, IT’S JUST ONES AND ZEROS.”
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“As you move around, it begins to break down. I want the user to think about a larger system than the website and reconsider their relationship to the media that they are using . . . Computers are not clean magical boxes. They’re messy and filled with problems.” The code he uses for his website is a very simple one. The “magical boxes” that appear on his webpage take images that are stored in the RAM (random-access memory), so when you close a tab, pieces of your last screen are left behind and ghosts of them appear on Morgan’s webpage. “I consider that, in the environment of the computer, kind of like magick,” he says. “Yet, there’s nothing that crazy that I’m doing; the script is about five lines of CSS code.” Morgan demonstrates the way it works and adds, “I like this because I am collaborating with the processes of the computer, where another person, depending on their actions, might get something very different. And this is something I recently figured out and I need to package a little bit better where there’s a specific website for it, instead of just a background to my website. This is kind of a work in progress. But I like collaborating with systems and working within systems.” His website, however, doesn’t seem to be working as well as he wants it to on his Internet connection. “It might be that Chrome updated and fixed some problem that I was exploiting. And there is always that potential problem. I love new technology, I use it, and I can play with it as much as I can, but at the same time, I’m really afraid of updating things because previous work could possibly disappear.” His performances incorporate both sound and video and I ask him how he coordinates the two, but he explains that the sound and the video are not different from one another. “I send the video signal into the projector, and then the same signal is carried into the speaker. Each time I alter the video, the audio changes
too.” This connection of two senses in the same analog signal has led him to believe in what he calls an “agnostic point of view of technology.” He claims, “There’s no difference between digital video or text. At the end, it’s just ones and zeros. It’s just how you open them. It’s a way of thinking about data agnostically.” I didn’t completely believe him, or at the very least couldn’t comprehend that behind every image on your computer there is a text equivalent that could be changed by anyone, until he demonstrated how easy it was to change an image by messing with its equivalent text. Here’s something anyone can try on her or his own computer. Save a picture on your desktop. It should be a JPEG file. Now, as Morgan explains, “All you have to do is trick the computer. The only reason it knows that the data is organized as an image is because it’s a JPEG.” But all you have to do to trick it is resave it as a text file. Do this by manually changing it from a “.jpg” to a “.txt.” The computer will warn you not to do it, but do it anyway. Then you’ll see the image rendered as text. It will just be a bunch of numbers and letters and symbols. All you have to do is play around: cut and paste some stuff, move a chunk from the top to the bottom and vice versa. Create your own data by putting in random letters and numbers. Then, change it back to a JPEG. The image will look significantly different. It might be different colors, arranged in a different order, pixilated into a rainbow through a person’s face. It will look pretty damn cool. And this is essentially where the concept of glitch art comes from. “Operating system politics is something I’m interested in,” Morgan explains. “The default action if I double click a JPEG is for it to open as an image file. When people use an operating system, there are already rules set up for you. Not many people know that you can look at the source code of any web page you go to and see
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how something is made. But you’ve been able to do that since the beginning of the web. Understanding these coding languages equals empowerment for the individual user. We’re all capable of affecting the future of the technology that we live with. So in many ways, I am interested in cultivating digital agency.” Most of us use technology daily but know nothing about the processes behind it. We either don’t think about what’s making it work, or it seems as if it must be too complicated for anyone but technological geniuses to understand. “We’re in a Plato’s Cave situation,” Morgan states. “We only know the back wall of the cave. In regards to developing and code, I think there is a barrier that exists where developers are perceived as geniuses and untouchables. They’re not—we’re all human and capable of affecting the tools around us.” Morgan’s art may put you in a bit of a trance, but he never wants his process to be hidden from others; he never wants it to be stage magic. “New media art is usually very clean. The projectors and cords are hidden,” he says. “But I enjoy exposing the cords and showing you exactly where the projector is. It’s a part of the piece, not something that is hidden.” The computers we sit behind each day and the phones that rarely leave our hands feel so simplistically clean and flawlessly designed. But Morgan displays the inherent mess of technology while simultaneously revealing that the systems and the glitches of the universe within our computer screens hold more beauty and magic than the outer layer of these objects. Beyond the shadows of the cave walls, there is a whole reality within our technology, waiting to be revealed, waiting for its potential to be fully discovered.
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HAUS IS WHERE THE HEART IS BLACK ABBEY IS REFINING NASHVILLE’S PALATE FOR BELGIAN BEER BY SCOTT MARQUART | PHOTOS BY AMY RICHMOND SINCE THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION, BEER HAS BROUGHT PEOPLE TOGETHER. On any given night, if you go into a restaurant or bar in Nashville, you’ll find musicians, artists, businessmen, lawyers—grouped off at tables or shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar top—joined together by a familiar concoction of yeast, hops, malted barley, and water. And chances are, somewhere in the city, Carl Meier, John Owen, and Mike Edgeworth—the three founders of Nashville’s only Belgian-centric brewery, Black Abbey—are sitting around a table, sharing a pitcher themselves. Black Abbey’s taproom and production facility is unassuming from the street, one of many warehouse buildings in Berry Hill. But once you pass through the gothic arches formed out of the entryway drywall, you can’t help but feel like you’ve walked into a sixteenth-century monastery chapter house. The corner of the warehouse that serves as the taproom boasts long wooden mess tables with benches. Lanterns hang overhead, creating an intimate space that almost makes you forget about the hulking fermentation tanks off in the distance, just beyond a wall of white oak whiskey barrels.
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“SOMETIMES IT WASN’T SO MUCH BUSINESS PLANNING AS IT WAS SITTING AROUND DRINKING.”
I find Carl and John hard at work behind the is what enabled them to hit the scenes—as I suspect they usually are. Carl is in the ground running when they fioffice adjacent to the taproom, and John is climbing nally opened their doors in the up on the brewing equipment, working on a batch of fall of 2013. “We’ve been very methodical The Special, a Belgian-style mild that they brew year round. A mechanical chime rings off the tanks as a throughout the process of movforklift rounds the corner of an enormous refrigera- ing from home brewers who have jobs doing something else tion room that stands in the center of the space. Long before they dreamed of starting their own to people who have jobs in the brewery, John and Carl were home brewers. Like most beer industry,” Carl explains. professional brewers, they started fermenting beer in “So that was a very deliberate their kitchens and garages to save money. They met transition, both in terms of as members of the Antioch Sud Suckers—an offshoot what beer we wanted and how of the famed Music City Brewers club that has pro- it was named, and what the duced much of the current crop of brewing talent in brand was supposed to look and feel like.” Nashville. From the stained glass window on their logo to the Before long, the two of them started collaborating, sharpening each other’s skill set by brewing every- gothic tips of their tap handles, the Black Abbey brand thing they could think of, and adding smoke malt to is such an important element of the brewery that it’s the recipes whenever they could get away with it. Af- hard to imagine them ever planning to call it anything ter one of their collaborations—a barrel-aged Belgian else. But the original plan they hatched was very differdark strong ale—won a silver medal in the National ent from what Black Abbey would eventually become. Homebrew Competition, the two hobbyists began to They’re tight-lipped about what the original name was wonder if they could one day turn their side passion going to be, but at some point in the planning process they decided to go back and start from scratch. One into a business. Carl and John started meeting up regularly on day, after sweating over the name again for months, Thursday nights, working on a business plan. “Some- Carl had something of a revelation. “Carl was brewing on Halloween,” John tells me, times it wasn’t so much business planning as it was sitting around drinking,” John recalls. Carl laughs, “and about midnight he was cleaning up and realized that it was Reformation Sunday, and he was like, Hmm, “Well, that’s why it took so damn long!” They met up and planned out the future of their Martin Luther was a monk, and monks make beer, and brewing operation each week for several years before Belgian beers are made by monks. Let’s go take a look at they actually got it up and running, and they share that.” Carl brought the idea to John and Mike, suggesting a camaraderie that reflects that time spent together. Though there were many long nights, they both admit they call the brewery Black Cloister, after the Augusthat the time they invested into the planning process tinian dormitory where Luther once resided. John
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liked the idea but didn’t like the word cloister being in the name. “After the third beer, it’s hard to say,” he laughs. So they settled on Black Abbey instead. Everything from the names and descriptions of their beer to the layout of their brewery flows out of this connection to Luther. But although they have fun with having a sixteenth-century theologian as a mascot of sorts, they’re aware that playing too heavily into the branding can feel forced. “You have to walk a very fine line between historicity and religiosity . . . Even in the design of the taproom, we wanted this to feel middle of the way between a German beer hall and a monastery chapter house,” Carl says, gesturing toward the lanterns that hang overhead. This taproom is a core element of the Black Abbey brand, and it’s easy to see that they take pride in it. Carl explains, “[Luther’s home] Lutherhaus was a place where people would come and drink and be entertained and interact with one of the major political and religious figures of the day, and have conversations and discussions and fellowship with one another.” The Black Abbey taproom operates the same way, serving as a connecting point between the brewers and their loyal following. “We get asked all the time if we want to put TVs in here, and the answer is no,” Carl says. “We have plenty of accounts that serve our beer, [places] where you can go watch a football game. And we encourage you to do that—we do that—but this is an opportunity to interact with the brewery and with one another. That fellowship has always been really important to us.” John nods his head as Carl reiterates, “That’s how this whole business got started . . . sitting around a table talking to each other.” This focus on community doesn’t
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stop at the design of the taproom—it directly informs the beer that flows from its taps. While many breweries are busy trying to outdo each other with daring and sometimes alienating recipes, Black Abbey focuses on making beer that brings people together. “We try to make beers that are balanced and accessible. Unique, but approachable,” John says. “It’s easy to brew a kumquat beer—you can make crazy stuff—but are people going to want to drink more than one pint of it?” John and Carl know that their customers also drink beer from other breweries, and they’re content with letting them get their fill of eccentric and polarizing recipes elsewhere. John explains, “A lot of our customers try other beer, and that’s good. What I want is for them to see our tap handle and think, that’s always good beer.” In order to keep their end of that bargain, John and Carl hold the beer they produce to a high standard of quality and consistency. Though this can lead to inconvenient and sometimes costly realities—such as having to dump an entire batch if it isn’t up to their specifications—Carl and John are willing to make those sacrifices in order to maintain the integrity of the brand. Though Black Abbey deserves high marks for maintaining a clear focus on quality and community, Carl is quick to point out that this is a common theme throughout the Nashville brewing community. “When we were under construction, Kent Taylor from Blackstone sent his maintenance manager over here about once a week to check on us . . . It’s a very tight-knit community of people, and Kent is a great example of somebody who really cares not just about what Blackstone is doing; he cares about the Nashville beer community and making sure that the bar in
BLACK ABBEY: Follow on Facebook @TheBlackAbbeyBrewingCompany, Twitter @BlackAbbeyBrew, or Instagram @blackabbeybrew native.is/black-abbey # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E
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Nashville is set high as far as quality product.” The seeds of this cooperation were sown more than a decade ago, when many of the people that would become figureheads for the city’s top craft breweries worked together as home brewers. Carl tells me, “When I joined Music City Brewers in 1999, the people who were in that club were Karen Lassiter [former head brewer at Bosco’s], who’s now at Corsair, Linus [Hall, founder of Yazoo Brewing Company], Steve Scoville, who’s the brewer at Little Harpeth, Ken Rebman from Czann’s, and me. We were all homebrew guys meeting at Bosco’s the second Saturday of the month, and now five of those people who were in that home-brew club are professionals in the beer industry . . . We’re like the Music City mafia of beer.” To this day, the would-be-rival brewers remain friends, often visiting each other’s taprooms to sample their latest creations, offer advice, and come together over a shared love of beer and the brewing process. And in a tough industry largely controlled by outside factors—consumer tastes, agricultural production, government regulations—the support that these brewers receive from one another is paramount to their survival and success. Carl breathes deeply. “It can be such a fun thing . . . but there’s not a lot of money to be made, and it’s a lot of work, long hours, and it’s dangerous for a lot of reasons—both for external hazards and for your liver—but beer builds a culture of camaraderie.” Still, there are only so many tap handles to go around, and more breweries are opening their doors each year. As the marketplace becomes increasingly crowded, one could imagine competition between the breweries growing fiercer by the day. But Carl seems unfazed. “If you have a commitment to success and a high level of consistently excellent product . . . people will keep drinking it and let you continue to do what you love to do.”
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DREW HOLCOMB ON WANDERING, WRESTLING WITH LOSS, AND MAKING THE ALBUM OF HIS CAREER BY ANDREW LEAHEY | PHOTOS BY CAMERON POWELL
THE RYMAN AUDITORIUM ISN’T THE BIGGEST VENUE IN NASHVILLE. The Bridgestone Arena, which looms just across the street at Broadway and 5th Avenue, can hold eight times as many people, while the Woods Amphitheater at Fontanel has room for 4,500, doubling the Ryman’s capacity. When you’re dealing with more than one hundred years of history and top-notch acoustics, though, size doesn’t really matter. The Ryman’s where Johnny Cash first met June Carter. The place where the Grand Ole Opry spent its glory days. The place where—in the past six months alone—everyone from
Robert Plant to Loretta Lynn has stepped to the front of the stage and sung to an auditorium full of church pews and music fanatics. The Ryman Auditorium is not, in other words, the sort of place that’s likely to set aside a weekend night for a hometown show by your average independent band. That rule doesn’t exactly apply to Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, who’ve spent the past decade making sure they’re anything but your average independent band. Since 2006, when Drew left his native Memphis and moved into a rental home in Inglewood, the songwriter has built his band into
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the sort of DIY outfit that can headline the Ryman—which the guys will do in February, halfway through their winter tour in support of this year’s Medicine— without playing by Nashville’s traditional rules. In a city where many of the best musicians hop from bandleader to bandleader, bound by rising rent prices to take shows with multiple groups, the Neighbors are more or less a permanent stable band. Their lineup includes guitarist Nathan Dugger—who was a senior in high school when he first started taking gigs with Drew, the two of them playing bars that Dugger wasn’t even allowed to legally enter— and bass player Rich Bransfield, both of whom have been with the group for a decade. Drew’s wife of nine years, Ellie, once played a big role in the band, too, before motherhood and a growing solo career as a Christian artist focused her priorities elsewhere. Together, Drew and company have created a sound that’s big and broad enough to gain fans in areas that don’t always overlap. Their songs have enough chest-beating uplift for the churchgoers, enough rootsy stomp for the Americana fans, enough genrebending quirk for the indie pop crowd. Tying the package together is an appreciation for old-school folk singers like Bob Dylan, Jim Croce, and Cat Stevens, three musicians who—like Drew himself—kicked off their careers with acoustic guitars and sharp lyrics, using both as launching pads to explore new ideas and newer sounds. Perhaps more than anything else, Drew’s music owes a lot to the roar and rumble of the road. Years ago, when he was still a teenager, his family would hit the highway on a yearly basis, taking a string of road trips across the country in a big conversion van. Drew had visited more than forty states by the time he entered his final year of high school, with his parents’ tape collection—
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“THE GUY TOLD ME, ‘ONCE YOU WRITE THE RIGHT SONGS AND MAKE THE RIGHT RECORD, THE MUSIC WILL DO A LOT OF THE WORK FOR YOU.’”
that Jay died, but look at which included evall these things he was able erything from Moto do during his time here.’ town collections to Songwriting was one of the classic rock albums— things that finally let me go providing the deeper. I just started writing. soundtrack. Shortly When I got back to college before graduation, in Knoxville, I had fifteen he took a similar trip songs.” with one of his high Drew began booking gigs, school friends, who starting with a short set at brought along a Brita Knoxville barbecue joint ish import of David called Lucille’s. One show Gray’s White Ladder led to another. Before long, for the ride. The two he was hitting the road played the CD for again, this time as a tourthe first time during musician. His first tour ing a midnight drive brought him to New York from Memphis to Oxford, Mississippi, and Drew’s mind City, where he found himself playing to a small crowd at CB’s 313 Gallery, an was blown. “I was really into Radiohead and U2 art space adjacent to CBGB’s. One of back then,” he says years later, during the final songs of the set was a cover of an early morning coffee run to Portland the Ryan Adams/Emmylou Harris duet Brew East, “and White Ladder had some “Oh My Sweet Carolina.” He was halfof that sonic quality to it . . . but it also way through the tune when the realjust had these songs. Gray’s writing was life Ryan Adams walked into the room. amazing. I fell in love with that album, Embarrassed, Drew muscled his way which led to falling in love with albums through the rest of the song before getby Ryan Adams, Springsteen, Tom ting offstage, where he exchanged a few Waits, Patty Griffin. Every door led to pleasantries with Adams, who’d come another door. And then another door. to the gig to see some friends in another band. When Adams took the stage And then another door. I was hooked.” Although he spent most of his col- later that night to play an impromptu lege years in Knoxville, it was during set of his own tunes, he invited Drew to a semester spent abroad in Edinburgh, join him for an encore performance of Scotland, that Drew started writing his “Oh My Sweet Carolina.” “I was super green,” Drew says, reown music. His brother, who’d been born with spina bifida, had died several membering that pivotal show in early years back, and Drew needed a place to 2005. “Ryan asked me to come up onrelease some of the grief he’d allowed stage, and when I got up there, I whisto build up. He set up shop in his dorm pered in his ear, ‘Hey, I don’t know how room, where he could see Arthur’s Seat to sing harmony!’ He was really classy from the window, and began strum- about it and whispered back, ‘It’s alright. I’ll sing Emmylou’s part in the ming his acoustic guitar. “I was starting to finally do some chorus, you’ll sing the melody, and we’ll business with my brother’s death,” he rotate verses.’ What a generous thing to remembers. “The first three years af- do. I was twenty-two. It was maybe my ter he’d died, I’d learned to paint over tenth gig ever . . . and I’ve never forgota lot of the pain. I’d say, ‘Yes, it’s sad ten it.”
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The days of playing shows in cozy art galleries are over. When Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors hit the road during the first weeks of 2015, they’ll step up their game in virtually every market, playing larger venues than the ones on their past tours. They’ll hit the road again once the weather starts to warm up, joining a collaborative tour that will include two other to-be-announced bands. Then, once that trek is done, they’ll launch their third major tour of the year, this time headlining their own shows in cities that the multi-band tour also visited. It’s a sharp, solid strategy for building an audience one gig at a time, a strategy that would benefit greatly from, say, a bit of support from national radio—something Drew has never enjoyed, apart from Lightning 100’s loyal airplay. But he doesn’t really rely on it. “A producer gave me some advice when I was just starting off,” he says. “The guy told me, ‘Once you write the right songs and make the right record, the music will do a lot of the work for you.’ I think that’s been proven true. It started happening with the song ‘Live Forever,’ which came along right when I was about to quit. We’d been doing music for five years, and it wasn’t really working. I wasn’t really bitter about it, but I basically said, ‘This is not feasible anymore, so let’s finish off the year and then do something else.’ We had two shows that fall, both in new towns: Athens, Georgia, and Austin, Texas. ‘Live Forever’ had just come out on our EP, and when I showed up at the 40
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DREW HOLCOMB AND THE NEIGHBORS: drewholcomb.com Follow on Facebook @DrewHolcombandtheNeighbors, Twitter @drewholcomb, or Instagram @drewholcombmusic native.is/drew-holcomb # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E
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Watt in Athens, there were 180 people something you can play when you’re ing with it an entire year’s worth of there. I had never played Athens before, sitting out under the stars by a fire, by highway miles and hard-won encores. and I was like, ‘Who are these people?’ yourself or with a friend. There’s a Years ago, he wouldn’t have been able to Then, when we played ‘Live Forever’ Keruoac line from On the Road that says, relax knowing that three tours loomed that night and the whole room started ‘Ah, it was a fine night, a warm night, a on the immediate horizon. These days, singing along, I understood what that wine-drinking night, a moony night, and he’s confident that the music will do a producer had told me five years ear- a night to hug your girl and talk and spit lot of the work for him. “Medicine is the creative pinnacle of lier. For some reason, people are letting and be heavengoing.’ If I could paint a these songs into their lives. They’re picture of how I wanted people to feel what I’ve done,” he adds. “The songs are the best songs I’ve written. The coming out to the shows. We don’t need my music, that would be it.” With that, Drew finishes his coffee recording is the most natural and mato put on a big production, nor do we want to, really. It’s just us playing our and gets ready to leave Portland Brew, ture thing I’ve ever done. This isn’t a headed back home to spend a few hours breakup record or a marriage record or music and people coming to see it.” Recorded in eight days in producer with Ellie and their baby daughter, Em- an ‘I’ve got a kid now’ record. In twenty Joe Pisapia’s East Nashville studio, mylou—who joined her parents on tour years, if someone wants to start getting Medicine feels like a battle cry from a last year, visiting thirty-two states by into my music and they ask, ‘Where do rock-and-roll lifer who’s ready to de- the time she was six months old—be- I start?’, I hope that people would say, vote another decade—or four—to the fore flying to the East Coast for a duck- ‘You should start with Medicine.’ I hope this record is the chapter that reglamour and grind of the road. It’s an hunting trip. Christmas is just album filled with anthems about stick- two weeks away, and ally makes the book.” ing to your guns, as well as slower, soft- Drew wants to enjoy spoken songs about love lost (“Ameri- some free time becan Beauty”) and found (“Avalanche”). fore 2015 starts, Throughout Medicine’s twelve tracks, bringDrew wears his heart and his influences on his sleeve, unafraid to tip his hat to Crosby, Stills & Nash on the ’70s-inspired “Avalanche” or pay his respects to Bruce Springsteen with the bombastic “The Last Thing We Do.” “I’ve always wanted my records to be the kind of thing you can have in the background when you’re driving down the highway,” he says, citing Tom Petty as a major influence, “but also
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“I’VE ALWAYS WANTED MY RECORDS TO BE THE KIND OF THING YOU CAN HAVE IN THE BACKGROUND WHEN YOU’RE DRIVING DOWN THE HIGHWAY.”
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