PRESENTS
vinyl night APRIL 23RD - 6 O’C LOC K P M
HOST ED B Y WELLS A DAMS
S I P. S A V O R . U N W I N D . O N L Y A T B O N G O J A V A 5 T H A V E N U E
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SARAH SEVEN, CLAIRE PETTIBONE, RUE DE SEINE, SARAH JANKS, HOUGHTON, CHRISTOS, ANNA CAMPBELL, TWIGS & HONEY, TRUVELLE, KATIE MAY, HAYLEY PAIGE, JOHANNA JOHNSON
THE DRESS THEORY BRIDAL SHOP (615) 440-3953 - 1201 5TH AVE N #102 -
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
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WELCOME TO OUR BACK YARD...
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When she’s not serving coffee at Bongo Java on Belmont, Ann Catherine, or “A.C.” as she is known, is creating art, curating for a local gallery, or reading every book she can find on art history. “I kind of obsess over it,” she says. “Every day I push forward in some way toward my dream of being a working visual artist.” Hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, A.C. is a recent graduate of Watkins College of Art, Design & Film. Inspired by artists like Matisse, Warhol, Jessica Stockholder, and Rebecca Morris, she takes an intellectual approach to art—seeing it as a tool for self-expression and social change. “I want my art to reflect what I stand for, which is a diverse society that sees individuals as they are, not just by race, sexual orientation, or gender,” she says.
Her works are mostly vivid abstract designs, which often surprise the eye with a wink to a commercial product’s logo or a familiar digital landscape. “I’m drawn to everyday objects, and I use lots of different tools—brushes, rollers, and digital elements. There are lots of ways to make a mark,” she says. Bongo Java provides a welcome respite for her busy mind, giving her a place to focus on something other than art. Lately, she’s enjoyed introducing customers to her current favorite brew, Ethiopian natural process Sidamo. “I have a lot of ideas for my future, but when I’m here, I can give my mind a rest and just focus on the art of making our customers happy.”
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MARK BRADLEY-SHOUP variations on a theme APR 2015
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TABLE OF CONTENTS APRIL 2015
70
30 62
80
40 THE GOODS
19 Beer from Here 22 Cocktail of the Month 89 You Oughta Know 94 Animal of the Month
FEATURES 30 Stone Jack Jones 40 Stephen Watkins 62 Lauren Snelling 70 Zodiac Killer 80 Tyler Walker 90 Featured Illustrators
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Rejuvenate.
ASHLEY D, practicing since 2008
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president, founder:
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founder:
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creative director:
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managing editor:
CHARLIE HICKERSON DARCIE CLEMEN
art director:
COURTNEY SPENCER
community relations manager:
JOE CLEMONS
community representative:
LINDSAY ALDERSON
account manager:
AYLA SADLER
film supervisor:
CASEY FULLER
editor:
writers: photographers:
editorial intern: p.r. intern:
founding team:
MATTHEW LEFF SCOTT MARQUART BEN HURSTON JONAH ELLER-ISAACS CHARLIE HICKERSON COOPER BREEDEN
Keith 'Chef' Batts @chefbatts
ELENA FRANKLIN SARAH B. GILLIAM JEN MCDONALD WEE SEING NG
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PAY IT SAFE
Six Ways To Reduce Credit Card Fraud Credit and debit card fraud cost consumers, card issuers and retailers $7.1 billion in 2013 – a 29 percent jump from previous years, according to data from Business Insider Intelligence. Yet you can reduce your vulnerability in six easy steps.
1 Carry only the credit cards you need.
Just because you have several cards doesn’t mean you need to carry them all. Minimize the damage you could experience from credit or debit card theft by carrying only the cards you need each day and keeping the others in a safe and secure place.
2 Protect your personal information online and offline.
Be careful about the personal information you share on social networks. Credit card fraudsters often collect details such as birthdates, addresses, passwords and account numbers, then use the combined information to impersonate their victims. Password protect your smart phone, tablet and computer to prevent hacking. Passwords should vary by device or account and include a mix of letters, symbols and numbers rather than a simple word or date. Password-protection programs such as Dashlane or LastPass can suggest some secure options. Also, avoid using a public Wi-Fi network to access personal accounts, such as your bank account. Instead, use a passwordprotected private Wi-Fi network.
3 Review the vendors
5 Tell your credit card
and amounts that appear on your credit card statements.
company when you plan to travel.
One of the most frequent and insidious credit card scams involves a legitimate purchase with an inflated total charge – a doctored tip amount at a restaurant, for example, or a fake “cash back” amount added to a gas station purchase. Keep receipts from gas stations and restaurants, then compare them to the totals on your statement. Also watch for phantom charges from vendors you don’t recognize, and always report suspicious activity right away to your credit card provider.
4 Check your credit
report every four months.
By regularly monitoring your credit report, you can identify and address credit card fraud quickly. You can access your credit report for free once a year from each of the three major U.S. credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion – through annualcreditreport.com. By staggering your requests, you can check a credit report every four months. (For example, you might request your credit report from Experian each year on Feb. 1, from TransUnion on June 1 and from Equifax on Oct. 1.)
Offline, shred sensitive records rather than put them in the trash or recycling bin where thieves can find them.
Traveling out of state or abroad? Tell your credit card providers where you’re going and how long you’ll be there. Not only will this keep your credit accounts from being frozen because of unusual activity, but it also lets card providers know that any activity near the home base during this travel period could be fraudulent.
6 Verify before you
give away credit card information.
Before giving your credit card number or confirming personal details over the phone, call the company back using their official customer service phone number. The same goes for online transactions. Never give out personal information to strangers who contact you via email. If they say they are from a company you do business with, go to its official website and reply directly to the customer service team. Hacker sites may look authenitic, so make sure the URL is the one you’re familiar with. Avoid entering personal information on websites that have strange URLs.
By following these six tips, you can pay it safe and reduce your risk of becoming a victim of credit card fraud.
For additional articles, calculators and tips, visit regions.com. Follow us for helpful tips and information.
© 2015 Regions Bank. This information is general in nature and is provided for educational purposes only. Regions makes no representation as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability or validity of any information presented. Information provided should not be relied on or interpreted as accounting, financial planning, investment, legal or tax advice. Regions encourages you to consult a professional for#advice NAT I Vapplicable ENAS HV to I L Lyour E specifi /////c/ /situation. / / / / / / / / /|/Regions /// 17 and the Regions logo are registered trademarks of Regions Bank. The LifeGreen color is a trademark of Regions Bank.
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Bob Dylan bucked executives at his record label and surprised his fans when he came to Nashville in 1966 to record his classic album Blonde on Blonde, using some of Music City’s incredible studio musicians. Dylan’s embrace of Nashville inspired many other artists to follow him to Music City. By 1969, Johnny Cash was recruiting folk and rock musicians—including Dylan—to appear on his groundbreaking network television show, The Johnny Cash Show, shot at the Ryman Auditorium. This new feature exhibit looks at the Nashville music scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time of great cultural vitality for Music City.
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STONE JACK JONES WANTS TO DISAPPEAR INTO A WORLD ALL HIS OWN, AND HE WANTS TO TAKE YOU WITH HIM BY SCOTT MARQUART | PHOTOS BY ELENA FRANKLIN
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STONE JACK JONES: stonejackjones.com Follow on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @StoneJackJones native.is 32 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / //////
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You can’t smoke in here anymore, but the air is still heavy. The past doesn’t wash out that easily—it lingers in the insulation, in the thick velvet curtains that frame the stage. It’s a quiet night at The 5 Spot, but it’s cozy, and everyone seems to know everybody else. Dressed like a fighter pilot—the loose ends of a black scarf dangling down over the front of his tawny bomber jacket—Stone Jack Jones is fiddling with his guitar cable with a faraway look in his eyes. The bits of conversation that poke out through the rumble of the crowd become more sparse, the distance between them increasing, until finally, the room is all but silent. Then, with that silence as their canvas, the band begins. “We’re going to the other side,” Jack croons over dizzying atmospherics. As the music builds to its crest, Jack bashes his guitar strings with downstrokes, filling the room with a tense energy that peaks early, then recedes. In a photograph, the arrangement on stage might look typically Nashville—Old Nashville, even. Jack plays acoustic guitar, and he’s flanked by Kyle Hamlett on electric banjo and Rodrigo Avendano on keyboard and highstrung electric guitar. But neither of the three plays his instrument the way you might expect. They choose their notes carefully, and the three timbres intertwine to create an ambience that’s alternatingly ethereal and robust. Each note is just one layer, a pigment adding a texture to the portrait they’re painting—which is that of a man caught halfway between this world and the last—or perhaps, the next. GEG
“I really believe that I can learn to disappear. So I’m trying to learn how to do that.” Jack sits across from me at his kitchen table. His
wife, the novelist Hollis Hampton-Jones, sits next to him. Jack goes on, plainspoken, as if he isn’t saying anything out of the ordinary. “There’s some vibration, some point we can hit at—I’m waiting for a band to do it. At some point on stage they hit a certain vibration and all of a sudden they’re just gone.” Jack grins, but as far as I can tell, he isn’t being facetious. “That’s coming. Someday we’ll go to shows and the whole place will be transformed into another dimension. We’re already sort of halfway there, with chemicals and sound and lights, people are being transformed—transported.” For Jack, music isn’t something that should sit comfortably in the background—it should grab hold of the listener and carry them off into another world. Jack doesn’t write songs that most people can relate to, because he hasn’t lived a life that most people can relate to. For decades he lived as a wanderer, following the road wherever it took him and soaking up the experiences that afforded. Jack carries himself with the wisdom of a man who has seen things that we couldn’t, and perhaps shouldn’t, understand. He writes from a place of torment and isolation, but sharing his music with the world has given him the strength to keep diving further into that wellspring. Even though it might hurt, the art that comes from it is worth the pain. “I just want to go deeper into that place,” he tells me. “I’ve gotten a lot more confidence in what I do—in that it is a sound. It’s got its own life now. There’s a body of work that exists, and has a life, and there are a lot of people that are involved in it. I don’t have any confidence, basically, period. But that’s one of the reasons I do music. It’s really an escape from me. I can go into that world, and it’s my world. That’s where I can disappear—I can disappear into music.” Jack has been trying to run away his whole
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life. His story starts in a small town in West Virginia in the decades that followed World War II. The postwar boom had spread prosperity into places where it had never been glimpsed, and Jack’s family—which had been mining coal since the Civil War—benefitted even more than most. But Jack didn’t want that life. “I didn’t fit in . . . so I sort of just left. And they weren’t particularly brokenhearted that I left, I don’t think.” Out on his own, Jack encountered firsthand how bitter the world can be to those who aren’t designed for it. “I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t go to school, I couldn’t learn, I couldn’t be mainstream—as a friend once said— in any way. I was a horrible student. I was an utter, complete failure—a fallthrough-the-cracks kind of person— and I didn’t have any choices . . . So I just went into my own world, literally, physically. I dropped out completely.” Jack lived off passing the hat, getting by on odd jobs, traveling the country with theatre groups, and scraping by on tips from street performances between gigs. He lived that life for years, always performing but never finding his place. Then one day in the late ’70s, broken down in Fort Worth, Texas, he heard Patti Smith. “It was something I wanted to be a part of,” Jack says, his hands folded over crossed legs. “I plugged in my Telecaster through my totally cheap, horrible Realistic amp and started wailing. I just got everything out. That was when I really discovered music—the way I do it now. I had been playing music before, but getting up and performing—these cathartic performances—that started then. So I kept doing that, hooked up with some bands, ended up in New
York, Baltimore, Atlanta, just playing. And then I sort of crash-landed in rehab.” Like so many great performers who can’t separate who they are on stage from their life offstage, Jack bottomed out—but he found water at the bottom of the well. “The only thing I had at that point was the music,” he says, gazing out into the backyard. Unlike so many artists who abandon their craft along with their addiction, isolating the art from the excess only made it clearer to Jack that the music was what really mattered. In that same moment, Jack decided that he wanted to be in love. An astrologer told him that he would meet a Pisces in October of that year—and that was Hollis. They were engaged after nineteen days. “Up to that point, I had been kind of arrogant, angry—I was a good punk—but I was sort of fucked up. I couldn’t do anything, I was always broke, and the love thing just really turned my life around. It wasn’t Jesus, but it could have been.” Jack got married, had a family, and got a straight job working at a railroad—but he never gave up on the music. Jack and Hollis moved from New York to Nashville, and he set his sights on making it in this town. “I thought I was a country musician. I came here thinking, ‘I do country music.’ Then of course the country music people said, ‘No, you’re not doing country music.’” Jack kept writing songs, but he didn’t know what to do with them. At a winter writing workshop at University School of Nashville, Hollis befriended another New York transplant, Barbara Moutenot—wife of producer Roger Moutenot, who has worked with everyone from Yo La
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Tengo to Lou Reed. Through their wives’ friend- and we work together, I’m not going to say, ‘Play ship, Jack and Roger started bumping into each it like this.’ I don’t want them to play it how I hear it, I want them to play it how they hear it. other regularly. “I’d meet Roger, and we’d talk about music, And that opens up the whole thing because I get and he would say, ‘Well, what do you do?’ and I out of my world, and their world comes in.” At the intersection of these worlds, Jack and said, ‘Well, I play country music.’ He wasn’t interested in country music, so no collaboration his collaborators created a sonic landscape that really happened—it was just two parallel lines sounds at once familiar and faraway. It’s hard to going forever.” Jack places one palm flat above imagine a more suitable frame for Jack’s lyrics, which are as rich and imaginative as they are the other to demonstrate the point. “But then he [moved out of his studio], and oblique. “My songs really are not about realI had a place, so we said he could put his stuff ity,” Jack shakes his head. “They’re about otherthere until he found a new studio. He was still worldly things for the most part, even if they’re working on mixing and stuff, so he’d set up his dressed like reality.” I ask Jack where the inspiration for his lyrics stuff in my room. One night I was down there just playing, and he came down and stood out- comes from if not from experience. “Vibrating side the door and just listened for a while. Then strings. Seriously.” His bright blue eyes are open he came in and said, ‘You know, that’s not coun- wide. “I think this is a very ancient thing, vibrattry music.’ He said, ‘Do you mind if I just put a ing strings and the human soul. You can read couple of mics up?’ I said no, and that was the about it with David in the Bible, all the way up to Kurt Cobain. We start vibrating strings and beginning of it.” Roger helped Jack develop his sound into something happens. Something comes out of us what it is now, a unique blend of folk, ambient and up. Literally, I can have no ideas at all and music, and psychedelia that’s difficult to peg start vibrating strings, and things start appearinto any traditional genre. But above all, Roger ing.” Little of the music Jack made as a younger helped Jack find his place in this town, introducing him to like-minded musicians and providing man has survived to this day, and I’m curious if an environment for them to collaborate. For his inspiration has always been so abstract. AfJack, who had been working on his own for sev- ter all, most musicians start out writing songs eral years at that point, this collaboration was about love, sex, money—things that they’re surrounded by in their everyday lives. But not an epiphany. “When I first moved here, if you went out and Jack—not then, not now. “It’s weird how little played, they would EQ your guitar in the most it’s changed [over the years], even the shape of horrible way, and if you did play with people, songs. It’s really just what I do—it’s like chopyou couldn’t hear them. They’d play so far in the ping wood. I was chopping wood at nineteen, background because they didn’t want to disturb and I’m chopping wood now. You just pick up the sacred song. Well, fuck the song. The song is the axe and start chopping.” Even though Jack has been writing songs not really what it’s about. It’s the collaboration. It’s what happens when people are together in for decades, he still doesn’t have a creative a band that’s so beautiful—like Nirvana. Bands routine—he’s always at the mercy of the muse. get together, guys get together, or girls, and they “Songs sort of just come . . . I don’t have certain do something that’s really fucking beautiful. It’s times that I write or any discipline at all not just about one person with a song.” The most powerful quality of Jack’s music is really. I never beits distinctiveness, and that’s owed largely to lieved in discipline, Jack’s ability to let each musician he works with in anything. I always shape the song in his own singular way. “I make thought that desire the statement, ‘I’m never going to tell you what trumps discipline. to play,’” Jack speaks with reverence, as if he Discipline may be a were explaining a sacred oath. “If you come in result of desire, but
“FUCK THE SONG. THE SONG IS NOT REALLY WHAT IT’S ABOUT. IT’S THE COLLABORATION.”
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it’s not really discipline at that point, it’s just doing it. Desire is first.” The doorbell rings, and Jack’s dog, Ellie, darts into the foyer, barking. Before I can probe further, Jack continues, seeming to know what I’m going to ask. “My desire is to disappear.” He brushes a lock of his graying hair out of his left eye. “I have to keep playing music to try to disappear—and I haven’t disappeared yet. But I’ll keep going out there and chopping that wood until I do.”
mon. - fri. 6am-7pm || sat. & sun. 7am-7pm
GEG
Roger Moutenot is watching at The 5 Spot, Hollis is seated at a table up front, and countless other friends and collaborators are packed into the crowd in between. All eyes are fixed on the stage. Jack finishes singing a chorus, then turns away from the crowd to face the curtain at the back of the room. The three musicians pick interweaving arpeggios that cascade out through the loudspeakers. The notes swirl around the room as the players on stage seem to shrink into themselves. In the space between songs, Rodrigo holds a low, oscillating note on his keyboard that sits somewhere behind your ribs and quivers. Their final song, “Say Amen,” is devoid of the atmospherics that characterized much of the set. It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from another world—it sounds like Jack is seated next to you, in a small room, and that intimacy sets the audience back down gently from the trip he’s taken us on. Jack sings, “We’ll set the table, break our bread / Count the living, bless the dead / Say amen.” Jack unplugs his guitar and closes it up in its case. He takes one more look at the audience, and a half-smile forms at the corner of his mouth. Then he turns around, pushes his arms through the sleeves of his jacket, pulls at the lapels to stretch the leather over his shoulders, and just like that, he’s gone.
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CHARCOAL AND GRAPHITE ARTIST STEPHEN WATKINS ON SPEAKING THROUGH SILENCE BY BEN HURSTON | PHOTOS BY SARAH B. GILLIAM
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“Four years,” Benny answers. “Six to get rich. But first you’ll have to dress right, you know. And you’ll have to hang out with famous people, you know . . . go to the right parties . . . Then you gotta do your work all the time when you’re not doing that.” This is a pivotal moment in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 film, Basquiat, when artist Jean-Michel Basquiat asks his friend Benny how long it takes to get famous. It’s also the clip that local visual artist Stephen Watkins randomly shows me on his iPad halfway through our interview. I don’t see the connection between the scene and Stephen’s own story immediately, but I go with it and promise to watch the film later. It isn’t until I’m prepar-
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ing to leave and thinking back on all I’ve learned over the course of my visit that I begin to understand. **** Walking into Stephen’s Germantown studio a couple of hours earlier, I was immediately taken aback by the state of affairs. His small space was cluttered with empty bourbon bottles, yellowed newspapers, crisp suits hanging on a light fixture, and an impressive collection of business cards occupying the seat of the room’s only proper chair. “Where should I sit?” I asked awkwardly with a laugh. He gestured toward a plastic folding chair propped near the door as he took his seat in front of his latest piece.
“I don’t really think they are portraits,” he says. “When people hear portrait, they think precision. And I’m not going for this precision. I don’t use a grid line on purpose.” Stephen is a burly but timid thirty-six-year-old who uses graphite and charcoal to create large, engrossing faces on eight-by-fourfoot wood panels. He shies away from questions about racial interpretations of his art. He admits that he doesn’t like conflict and says it’s painful if even his worst enemy holds something against him. The only time he curses in our interview, he makes a point to let me know that he is quoting somebody else. In short, he’s as inoffensive as they come. “When it comes to my voice, I take a lot of things in and don’t put
“SOMETIMES YOU WANT THE WORLD TO SHUT UP AND HEAR YOU SCREAM.”
STEPHEN WATKINS: See his work at The Elevator Gallery, located at 219 5th Ave North, Nashville native.is
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them back out,” he says. “I’m usually the one who apologizes, and I just suck everything in. It’s a heavy load to carry.” It’s from that silent weight that Stephen finds inspiration for his largerthan-life pieces. The seventh of eight kids raised by religious parents in small-town Waverly, Tennessee, he grew up sketching while his siblings did the talking. In fact, he was so quiet, he was once asked by a classmate on the bus why he didn’t talk more. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t really think I
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And yet it all makes sense. Stephen admits that, since childhood, he’s always wished people could just communicate through images. That’s why he became an artist. “Sometimes you want the world to shut up and hear you scream,” he says. “That’s why I decided I needed to do these big images . . . I think that’s my way of speaking.” I ask Stephen a simple question: What are you trying to say? “I was thinking about that last night,” he responds. “I had a feeling you might ask me something like that.” He answers by pointing to the portraits themselves. On the sides of the wooden frames, he has jotted various phrases, thoughts that come to the surface as he’s working. “There’s beauty in silence,” reads one. “When you cry tears, which one is most important?” he asks on another. On a self-portrait, he has written “The State of Me,” which he says refers to a stage caterpillars experience as they undergo metamorphosis. “They turn into a liquid format. Their enzymes break down, and then they reemerge as a butterfly,” he explains. “In some ways, it’s like I’m in that state.” Coming off a difficult year during which he felt “voiceless” for reasons he doesn’t want to publicly discuss, Stephen is readying for new flight. Last fall, Eric Mellencamp from Rocket Tone Records signed on to manage his promotional efforts. He also recently moved into a new gallery downtown called The Elevator, located in the 5th Avenue have anything to say,’” he recounts. Art District. He shares the space with Fast-forward two decades and he has fellow artists Ian White and Dana Ola lot to say, though he doesn’t do the son, and the trio have already hosted best job expressing himself verbally. several events to showcase their work. His responses to questions are long and And on the subject of his work, he’s detailed, but his words don’t always currently undergoing an artistic evoluwork together. His train of thought tion that’s seeing him experiment with moves rapidly—so quick, in fact, that color for the first time. he only finishes roughly a quarter of After a suggestion from filmmaker the sentences he starts. When he does Harmony Korine, who until recently follow a thought to completion, his had a studio across the hall from Stevoice often trails off into a low murmur phen’s own space, he’s been adding that can be difficult to understand. color paint to his charcoal and graphite
faces. It’s a challenging divergence from the black-and-white rawness he’s used so well to humanize his subjects in the past, but Stephen says it allows him to put more emotion into the pieces. “I was almost at a blocking stage and kept going back to where I felt safe but really wanted to progress, and that’s when Harmony said, ‘Don’t be afraid to fail,’” he says. “He encouraged me to use color.” Next to historical greats like Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Pollock, and Basquiat, Stephen credits Korine as a major influence on his work, bringing him up frequently over the course of our interview. It’s near the end of our time together, after repeated mentions of Korine’s name, that I’m suddenly reminded of Benny’s advice from the clip Stephen showed me earlier. People, parties, work. During the previous two hours, Stephen has talked about the opportunities he’s had to meet and discuss art with well-known Nashville figures like Jack White, “Little” Jack Lawrence, and Harmony Korine. He’s mentioned the East Nashville hot spots he frequents like FooBAR, 308, and Dino’s. And above all else, he has made sure I understand how much time he spends at the studio. “I feel compelled to let you know I am awake at this moment,” he says in a text message sent at 3:19 a.m. a few nights later. “I do not sleep.” Whether he’s knowingly following Benny’s advice or just being overanalyzed by a writer looking for an angle, it’s clearly not fame or riches that he is chasing. Stephen just wants to be heard. “My art is my means of a voice, my means of making noise in a silent form,” he says. “Whether or not I’ll have significance, I don’t know, and I don’t really care because I’m just going to keep doing it. I have to do it.” It’s a good thing he does keep doing it. Nashville is listening to him now.
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IN THE MIDST OF JUST THEIR SECOND SEASON, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR LAUREN SNELLING AND THE LEADERSHIP OF CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE OZ ARTS NASHVILLE HAVE CREATED SOMETHING TRULY SPECIAL
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Day One: Shake “IT’S AWESOME!” A nine-year-old boy is rampaging through Shake, an exhibition of contemporary art. His name is Silas. Silas and his brother each grab a sculpture, pulling with every ounce of strength contained in their young bodies. Their mother and I watch idly. Dragging the objets d’art with long ropes, the boys step slowly from each other, facing away, as if preparing for a duel. When they can force the ropes no further, they wheel around and, shrieking with delight, they let loose their burdens. Momentum carries the sculptures toward an inevitable collision. KA-SMASH! In nearly every contemporary art space around the world, this story ends in disaster. The sculptures are destroyed. Silas is grounded until he’s a teenager. His mother, Julie, spends the rest of her life paying for the art her children obliterated. But this is no ordinary art space. This is OZ Arts Nashville. This is ten thousand square feet meticulously designed for the presentation of multidisciplinary art at the cutting edge of modernity. The forward-thinking creativity in this venue may seem a bit out of place—tucked away a half-dozen miles northwest of downtown, OZ Arts shares a dead-end stretch of Cockrill Bend with industrial depots, a prison, and the John C. Tune Municipal Airport—but those making the trip will discover something special. Today, Silas and a handful of young visitors have come to explore. The children run through the dim warehouse that has been painstakingly converted into an art space. Pausing where beams of bright spotlights pierce the darkness, they find illuminated the imaginative, playful (and, importantly, nigh-indestructible) creations of Alex Lockwood, a selftaught artist from Seattle now living in Nashville. Over the years leading up to this ambitious exhibition, Alex collected countless items most would consider the scraps of society: piles of scratched lottery tickets—I assume no winners among them—become intricate, twisted forms; plastic bread tabs turn into wearable textiles reminiscent of medieval chain mail; a tapestry of ten thousand spent shotgun shells hangs from specialized trusses thirty feet up in the air, a sparkling, vertical ocean of dynamic color and texture. Alex’s art is the ultimate expression of creative reuse. A pair of “Bottle Cap Smashers” are made up of long tendrils of plastic bottle caps in a variety of sizes. Here I recognize a bright green top from a bottle of laundry detergent,
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there I spot a line of Sprite caps. The a modest glimpse of an exceedingly either had a relationship with for a many gathered strands call to mind rare sight: the blossoming of a new long time and I know them personalthe Yip Yips, the hilariously discom- contemporary art space. Lauren’s ly, or I have watched their work over bobulated Martians from Sesame passion, her radiant personality, and a course of years. My job is to know Street. The Smashers hang from her deep dedication to her craft and the community of artists.” Of course, long shock cords attached to the to the institution are all part of the along with keeping the pulse of not high ceiling and, as their name sug- extraordinary skill set she brings to just the local artistic community but gests, they’re designed for smashing. her position. Put together, it makes the broader national and international scenes, Lauren also oversees Alex’s interactive, kinetic sculptures her the perfect guide. We sit together in her office for a “the boring administrative parts . . . are dramatic, enchanting, and totally unique, which just so happens to be chat. Art is everywhere. Art is stacked budgeting and contracts and logisa dead-on description of the magical knee-deep on the floor, and art books, tics and all kinds of things like that.” notes, and articles are piled across Just looking at her calendar gives me world that is OZ Arts. Lauren Snelling, the artistic direc- her wide desk. Art is even on her per- a tremor of anxiety: on top of all her tor of OZ Arts, peeks in to watch the son. As Lauren takes a sip from an responsibilities with Shake schedulchildren at play. I met Lauren during oversized cup of coffee, I comment ing, the slate of upcoming shows in my first visit to OZ Arts early in their on her jewelry, in particular a fasci- March, and preparations for a world premiere in mid-June, inaugural season. I’d come for a per- nating bracelet made she’s also finalizing the formance of The Intergalactic Nemesis, of thin wire mesh that program for what will a remarkable presentation of a “live- she picked up last year surely be an exciting action graphic novel,” with hundreds at the Museum of Conthird season. Oh, and of hand-drawn, comic-style projec- temporary Art in Chicadid I mention she and tions accompanying a staged read- go. “Lots of people like her husband, Rus (who ing with live sound effects and mu- to touch it!” she laughs. happens to be OZ Arts’ sic performance. I was blown away. I recognize some of production manager), Since Nemesis, I’ve rarely missed a the pieces on the walls also have a rambuncshow, and I’ve never been disap- from past exhibitions; tious, adorable fourpointed. Like many local enthusiasts even months after the year-old girl named of contemporary art, I’ve come to artists have come and Indigo? trust that whatever OZ Arts puts on gone, Lauren is still Understatement of the year: Laustage, it’ll be worth seeing. Whether promoting their work. “There’s a reathey’re presenting theater, modern son why we’re doing this,” she tells ren’s plate is full. Thankfully, she’s dance, live music, or an interactive me. “There’s a reason why artists spent years honing her skills, both art installation, Lauren and her team are making the work they’re making domestically at institutions like the provide an experience like no other. . . . There’s a difference between en- Park Avenue Armory and interna“OZ is something unexpected,” Lau- tertainment and art. Art is speaking tionally with the Edinburgh Fringe ren explains. “Something unexpect- to humanity about what we’re doing. Festival and more. Delving deeper ed for me, something unexpected It’s a reflection of where we are, in into her professional history, Lauren for the institution, something unex- this time, right now, and how the de- mentions her long, fruitful working pected for audiences, and something cisions we make every day are affect- relationship with Kristy Edmunds, a ing us as a community, as a human mentor and colleague who is currentunexpected for this region.” race. And that to me is really impor- ly the director of the Center for the tant, that we consistently reflect on Art of Performance at UCLA. In fact, Day Six: Kristy programmed the first season that, look at it, and listen to it.” OZ-ward and Upward I have only a vague sense of the at OZ Arts and continues to volunTo get a better sense of the unexpected story of OZ Arts, I make five visits responsibilities of an artistic director, teer her services. Though Lauren is quick to comover the course of two-plus weeks. so Lauren gives me a better picture I’m present for bustling, packed of everything she does. “My job,” she municate the massive, sometimes houses for major events, and I tiptoe says, “is to see as much work as I can overwhelming nature of her work, through calm(er) weekdays in the and keep thinking about that work she retains an appealing modesty, so labyrinth of offices and production for a long time. Most of the artists I connect with Kristy to get a little workshops. It’s my privilege to get that I currently work with, I have perspective. She writes via email: “It
“THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ENTERTAINMENT AND ART.”
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LAUREN SNELLING: ozartsnashville.org Follow on Facebook or Twitter @OZNashville native.is
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is extremely important that people are in- “Why, yes, I see a contemporary art space terested in the vision of the artistic direc- of the highest caliber.” Who is this mad tor of an arts organization, because that is genius? And why is it called OZ? Are they the first building block of trust . . . Lauren from Australia? Or maybe Kansas? In fact, the person I’m looking for brings a global artistic perspective and does so across numerous art forms. She turns out to be a family. They’re not from has a very large network of arts leaders Kansas or Australia. Cano (pronounced and artists that trust her. She has an un- JOHN-oh) Ozgener, an Armenian born flappable work ethic, and she is not just in Istanbul, spent a long career in engibuilding a program of substance within neering before changing directions and OZ, she is trumpeting the awesomeness founding CAO, a company specializing in of Nashville as a whole.” Kristy concludes hand-rolled cigars, luxury humidors, and her email by saying, “Every single artist custom-carved tobacco pipes made from that I have spoken to after having been meerschaum (a soft, white mineral found on her program is not only forever in love near the Black Sea). CAO’s products came with OZ, but leaves with an incredible en- to be considered among the world’s finest, and Cano was (and still is) proud of thusiasm for Nashville itself.” After our conversation, I shadow Lau- his accomplishments, achieved in part ren as she navigates an already-chaotic with the help of his family. Still, though schedule through unexpected changes. hand-hewn ornamental pipes and fine ciMultiple snowstorms have delayed the gar boxes are indeed a kind of artistry, the opening of Shake. Alex’s exhibit is part of CAO production warehouse would be the the TNT series, or Thursday Night Things. last place one would expect to find a conThe presentations last a single night, mak- temporary art ing for a mad rush of planning and labor. This time, though, OZ Arts will keep Alex’s installation up for one week. Lauren tells me that “it’s heartbreaking to see the work that artists put into this space,” only to have to break it down by morning. She hopes that the weeklong run will set a precedent for longer shows, and even though she explains, “It was never my intention for TNT to have this kind of format,” she adds, “and yet, things evolve.” The monumental scale of Shake makes for a complex and time-consuming assembly and tear-down, and the snow has forced Lauren to postpone the exhibit one week. It’s a logistical nightmare. The rescheduling means that less than twentyfour hours after the Smashers and spent shotgun shells must be cleared out, the main event for the month of March—a performance from legendary avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson—will have its sound check.
Day Fourteen: The Family OZ Allow me to pause here for a moment. What the heck is OZ Arts Nashville doing out by the old airport? Someone looked at a dormant warehouse and said,
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center. And Cano might never have led CAO toward its remarkable transformation into OZ Arts if not for a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. Forced to endure a stem-cell transplant and damaging toxic treatments that led to an open-heart surgery, Cano found great solace in art. In the midst of a frenzied week of programs, Cano generously makes time to meet with me. We sit in his office as the propeller planes come and go beyond picture windows. This man bubbles with energy, passion, and intelligence. Behind him, exquisite meerschaum pipes are inset into a large O, making for an arresting display. I ask him to tell me the story of what he calls his “epiphany.” One night, as Cano was suffering through debilitating pain in his hospital bed, a nurse approached and offered him a gentle back massage. As she began to soothe his aching body, Cano recalls, “She started to sing an Irish lullaby.” The melody was so beautiful, and the moment so tender, that soon, he remembers with a soft smile, “We were both in tears . . . That stopped my pain rather than the medication. That shows you how important art, singing, any kind of art is to you.” Cano shares that, as an immigrant who found great success in his chosen home, “We wanted to give our thanks to this country, and we wanted to do it with art.” And so began the unexpected path to OZ Arts.
Day Fifteen: The Language of the Future Tim Ozgener, Cano’s son and president/CEO of OZ Arts (as well as the former CEO of the family-operated CAO), knows the importance of delivering a quality product: “It was the same [in] the cigar business: the content is king,” he relates. “It needs to be quality. No matter what people come to out here, they need to say, ‘I don’t know exactly what it’s going to be, but I know it’s going to be very good.’ That’s what we’re doing here.” I don’t know exactly what to expect when I return to OZ Arts for Laurie Anderson. Still, I’m absolutely certain that it will be a remarkable experience. I’ve come to believe in OZ. Walking into the
performance space, I can hardly believe this is the same place. Gone are the smashers and shotgun shells. Gone are the children and their delighted giggles. Still, this new audience simmers with excitement. The house lights fade and Laurie steps onto a wide stage lit with candles and gentle ambient lighting. Armed with a boxy electric violin, a small keyboard, an array of effects pedals and a tablet, Laurie sits and begins to play. The music is rich and dense with texture. Laurie’s disarming smile exudes charm and supreme confidence. As she moves from one tale to another, the lighting shifts subtly, creating distinct locations without props or backgrounds. “What I love about stars,” she declares sagely, “is that we can’t hurt them.” Her performance is simultaneously deep, philosophical, and hilarious, a strange and satisfying amalgam. For her encore, Laurie changes positions and stares directly at her audience as she coaxes a final tune from her violin. Her eyes shift from person to person, alighting on each for a moment and then moving on. I can only imagine what she sees in our dark eyes. Laurie Anderson’s performance is another magical moment in the world of OZ Arts Nashville. The next Thursday Night Things, William Tyler’s Corduroy Roads on April 16, is “a multimedia exploration of the American South.” Trisha Brown Dance Company arrives in May, and June will bring the world premiere of Phantom Limb Company’s Memory Rings. We may not be somewhere over the rainbow, but we’re certainly not in Kansas anymore. As Lauren puts it, “I don’t like the cliché of the red shoes and the clicking your heels together. But at the same time, there is very much a sense that OZ is a destination for possibly something that is unknown, something that is an experiment, something that is new. You check your cares at the door. And once you’re here, we take care of you. Everything is gonna be just fine . . . It’s a place where you lean forward. You think. You ask questions.”
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TYLER WALKER, THE MASTERMIND BEHIND METH DAD, TOUR DE FUN, AND QUEEN AVE, WANTS YOU TO KNOW THAT THERE’S NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT BY CHARLIE HICKERSON | ILLUSTRATIONS BY COURTNEY SPENCER
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TYLER WALKER IS PHASING TIE-DYED SPEEDOS OUT OF HIS LIFE. The way other people phase out caffeine, nicotine, or—in more recent years—gluten. These days, he’s transitioning into more conservative stage attire: a tie-dyed, leopard print, spandex bodysuit. According to Tyler, it’s more becoming for someone his age (twenty-seven), and more fitting for the physique that comes with that age (his self-described beer belly). He tells me this as he counts a handful of twentydollar bills in his office space at Queen Ave, his art-gallery-venue hybrid. Once Tyler finishes counting, he puts away the money and rubs his hands in an attempt to stay warm. The money—a cut of the door from last night’s show at Queen Ave—will maybe cover a week’s worth of groceries, but it won’t cover a new central heat and air unit. So Tyler is huddled up in a thrifted parka, looking like a character straight out of Fargo. There’s not enough money to cover a lot of stuff around here. There’s no wall separating the kitchen from the stage area, just a curtain. No cleaning crew that will come around to tidy up after last night’s show. There’s just Tyler—sitting at his desk, shivering and counting money—and a few of his Queen Ave comrades. They’ll spend the rest of this Saturday morning (which happens to be Valentine’s Day) sweep-
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ing, scrubbing, and assessing the damage from last night. Later this week, they’ll wade through emails, Facebook messages, and phone calls to book the next show. And then they’ll do it all over again next week. And the week after that. It’s a thankless calling, and I wouldn’t blame Tyler if he took this opportunity to vent. The post-show mess, the lack of money, the lack of heat—it’s enough to put anyone on edge. Plus, I’m here annoying him at 10:30 in the morning when he could be enjoying his Valentine’s Day. So why can’t he stop smiling while we talk? “There’s nothing to be upset about, ever,” Tyler says. “That’s a thing I try my best to keep up [at Queen Ave]. And if there is something [that upsets people], I’ll flip it and change it to where there’s not anything to be upset about.” Herein lies the Tyler Walker ethos. There’s nothing to be upset about because Tyler doesn’t let anything upset him. Mention his name—or his musical moniker, Meth Dad—around town, and you’ll likely hear a few key phrases repeated: posi vibes, party, chill out. The phrases are printed on Meth Dad merch, chanted between Meth Dad songs, and shouted at Meth Dad shows. Hell, they even come up about ten times during our interview. Coming from anyone else, the constant carpe diem attitude might get a little old—like that person from your high school who closes every Facebook status with a “YOLO” or “blessed” hashtag. But Tyler takes this stuff to heart. When he sings, “This place is cool / This town is the best / My friends all rule / Yeah, my house is a mess” on “Stay Posi,” the veritable Meth Dad manifesto, he really means it. For him, it’s not ironic; it’s an ideology. And luckily for Nashvillians that like to have a good time, it’s an ideology that carries over into the seemingly endless number of artistic endeavors Tyler is involved in here in town. First, there’s the music. Tyler performs what he calls “emotional dance music” with Meth Dad, serves as the “live animator” (which entails live drum machine programming and sampling) for Body of Light with his friends Mike and Mitch Kluge, and remixes top-forty hits on his SoundCloud page. One of those hits, Tay-
lor Swift’s “Shake it Off,” caught the attention of someone—possibly from the Swift camp—who didn’t approve of Tyler pitch shifting T-Swift’s vocals to sound like an effeminate Jay Z. So they deleted Tyler’s SoundCloud account, which boasted around five thousand subscribers. In typical Tyler fashion, he wrote it off as a “bummer tsunami” and made a new account the next day. Then there are the events. Along with organizing shows and galleries at Queen Ave, Tyler’s Stay Magical entertainment group also put on 4DNYE, a fifteen-band New Year’s Eve show at Cannery Row that featured live projection mapping, three stages, and five different costume themes that were inspired by everything from Beyond Thunderdome to ancient Egypt. And perhaps most notably, there’s Stay Magical’s Tour de Fun, a multivenue music festival on wheels that’ll see its fifth anniversary this May (it’s the festival’s second year in Nashville; before that, it was in Murfreesboro). At last year’s festival, Tyler led a crew of approximately 1,500 cyclists to more than thirty local shows atop his doubledecker bike, yelling directions and set times into his megaphone as he rode. If you’ve never been, just imagine Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters riding down Woodland on bikes, and you’ll get the idea. In short: work never really stops for Tyler and his crew. Even as we’re talking, he politely excuses himself to answer the door at Queen Ave, respond to texts and Facebook messages, and talk to Mike about a Body of Light photoshoot that’s happening later that day. But Tyler
doesn’t look like he’s at work. He looks like he’s having a great time. “I was always the goofy kid in all my classes,” Tyler says. “Always joking around, wearing crazy clothes . . . Since I was a little kid, I’ve always been positive. Everybody would be like, ‘Why can’t you think more like Tyler? He’s got a positive mental attitude.’” Maybe that explains the phrases on Meth Dad merch and in Meth Dad songs, but it doesn’t necessarily account for another recurring theme in Tyler’s music: commiseration. His lyrics frequently see him playing counselor and confidant to downtrodden friends and family: “If you’re ever down, if you’re feeling blue / If you need a smile I’m here for you / You can call me up, you can come on over / I got a comfy couch, you cry on my shoulder.” It’s easy to say that Tyler’s music goes well with chugging beer and dancing on furniture and/or stages because, well, it does go well with that. I’ve seen plenty of audience members at Meth Dad shows who prove that it does. But it’s this other side of Meth Dad—the empathy, the compassion, the solidarity—that’s often overlooked. Tyler realizes that the party inevitably ends at some point, and when it does, you’re going to need someone around to look after you. As he explains, “I always wanted to be that shoulder people cry on if they needed to. I just wanted people to know I’m there for them because I’ve been through some dark shit in my time. I’ve gone forward and it hasn’t totally put a roadblock in my life, so you can [move forward] too . . . If I can pull through, you can too.” And there’s been plenty to pull
“IF I SAY, ‘I WANNA PLAY NAKED TONIGHT,’ NO ONE CAN SAY NO.”
through. Take, for instance, Tyler’s run-in with death when he was a teenager in his hometown of Pensacola, Florida. After Hurricane Dennis raged through Pensacola in 2005, Tyler and his brother ventured around the flooded streets of their neighborhood to survey the damage, because that’s just the sort of thing teenage boys do. While they were exploring, Tyler slipped on a patch of grass, fell into the flood’s current, and got sucked into a storm drain. The current dragged him through the drain and spit him out on the other side of the street, where his brother found him naked, unconscious, and half-drowned. In the end, Tyler dislocated both of his shoulders and lost huge chunks of skin on his nose, legs, and ears, which isn’t bad for a guy who got the Augustus Gloop treatment and survived. If you watch Meth Dad’s 2013 video for “Swimmers,” in which Tyler is throwing a pool party and eating peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, you can see the scars on his exposed legs. It’s quintessential Tyler: nearly drowning isn’t going to stop him from throwing a killer pool party, it just might make him a little more careful around floods in the future. Tyler later relocated from Pensacola to Murfreesboro, where he studied music business and played with the now-defunct noise pop band Blastoids. During
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his five-year tenure with the band, Tyler began writing solo material that could be performed practically anywhere at any time. “[Blastoids] just had a lot of gear and a long setup time,” Tyler remembers. “Everyone was asking us to play all the time, but we couldn’t play that often because it was a lot of work. So I started this solo project—Meth Dad—so I could just plug in and play. So I could say, ‘I got a phone, do you have a mic? That’s all I need’ . . . I wanted to start a band where I didn’t have to rely on anyone and I could have 100 percent creativity. If I say, ‘I wanna play naked tonight,’ no one can say no.” And play naked he did. Or mostly naked, at least—he never stripped down beyond the aforementioned speedo. Regardless, Meth Dad’s clothing-optional, glittery theatrics became the stuff of local legend, and lyrics like “We’re growing up faster adding fat to our face /
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Testing and learning and books about vulnerable. You have to wear your heart burning / They’re asking too much, so on your sleeve. And, perhaps most importantly, you have to help other people let’s burn down the school” positioned Tyler as Middle Tennessee’s preeminent do the same. As he sings with Meth Dad: party shaman. After all, what sweaty kid “We wear our smiles big, we let our feelin a house venue basement could resist ings show / Remember we’re human, we can get sad / We can get angry, we can a good ole sing-along like that? get mad / But if we try real hard to keep It wasn’t long until Tyler took the spectacle on a (naturally) self-funded, our spirits high / We live our life one day self-booked tour. Things were look- at a time.” These days, Tyler’s doing just that. ing—to use a term from the Meth Dad lexicon—posi for him: the former class Thanks to help from his girlfriend/Meth clown was finally converting people Dad bandmate Taylor Jensen, the Klugacross the country to his chilled-out es, and the rest of the Queen Ave family, way of life, and by 2012, he was even Stay Magical, Meth Dad, and Queen Ave have emerged as Nashville DIY institutaking his message beyond US borders. But while he was on a summer tour tions. And this spring, they’re busier than ever. in Canada, tragedy struck. Ricki, Tyler’s On top of recently releasing the new then-girlfriend of two years, was hit by a car while walking down Old Hickory single “So Real,” Meth Dad just finished the Infinity High Fives Tour, a thirtylate one July night. “No one really knows what happened,” day/thirty-date West coast run with MiTyler—who has maintained eye contact chael Parallax that included three shows throughout this entire interview until at SXSW. On the Stay Magical end, the now—says as he stares at the floor. “It biggest Tour de Fun yet is scheduled wasn’t the driver’s fault or anything. It for May. This time around, Tyler says was like . . .” he pauses. “No one under- to expect a similar bike route, a couple more venues (including the Basement stood why she was out there. Maybe she had dropped something and had gone East), more bands, and an after-party out to the road to grab it real quick—but at ACME. And of course, there’s still going to be frequent events at Queen Ave no one really knows.” Ricki passed away on impact at twen- like Future Night, the space’s recurring interactive multimedia installation/live ty-two years old. Upon receiving word music combo. I guess there ain’t no rest of the incident, Tyler and his tourmates for the weird. drove nonstop back to Nashville. “When As we’re talking about all of these I got the news, it was . . . heartbreaking,” he laments. “It was a tear-filled twenty- plans for the spring, Tyler stops reciting dates and numbers (the guy is like nine-hour drive back. Luckily, I had good homies I was with on tour that a walking event planner) to interject: “I supported me and helped me drive. just want to promote things I love, honestly . . . The main idea is unity—bringYa know, lend a shoulder to cry on.” A shoulder to cry on. It’s an expres- ing everyone together and not just a certain group or a certain scene or a certain sion you hear a lot from Tyler, and friend group. Bringing all kinds of peoI’m beginning to see why: he knows ple together. Everybody having fun and he wouldn’t have gotten through the “dark shit” in his life without it, and opening their minds to newer, stranger he knows other people won’t get music and all kinds of stuff.” In Nashville, where scenes come and through their dark shit without it, either. He readily go and change as quickly as the buildacknowledges that in or- ings that house them, that’s an ambitious goal. But if anybody can do it, I’m der to move forward from tragedy, you have to be willing to bet it’s Tyler Walker.
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NASHVILLE
FILM FESTIVAL APRIL 16-25, 2015 p r e s e n t e d by
NaFF Schedule for FEATURE FILMS FROM Tennessee Filmmakers: Ain't It Nowhere Friday, April 17 - 10:00 PM Saturday, April 25 - 7:30 PM The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young Sunday, April 19 - 4:15pm Wednesday, April 22 - 4:30pm
Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw Friday, April 17 - 7:45 PM Friday, April 24 - 4:00 PM
Semicolon; The Adventures of Ostomy Girl Sunday, April 19 - 1:15 PM Saturday, April 25 - 5:00 PM
Orphan Brigade - Soundtrack to a Ghost Story Tuesday, April 21 - 7:00 PM Saturday, April 25 - 1:45 PM
Sufferland Sunday, April 19 - 9:30pm Friday, April 24 - 1:00pm
Duty of the Hour Monday, April 20 - 5:30 PM Saturday, April 25 - 1:15 PM
Paternity Leave Sunday, April 19 - 9:00 PM Friday, April 24 - 3:45 PM
Heartworn Highways Revisited Tuesday, April 21 - 6:00 PM Thursday, April 23 - 9:45 PM
Homeless Wednesday, April 22 - 5:15 PM Thursday, April 23 - 3:30 PM
Reminiscent Thursday, April 16 - 9:00 PM Friday, April 17 - 2:30 PM
The Keepers Saturday, April 18 - 4:15 PM Monday, April 20 - 12:15 PM
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YOU OUGHTA KNOW: PROMISED LAND SOUND
PROMISED LAND SOUND: promisedlandsound.bandcamp.com Follow on Facebook @PromisedLandSound or Twitter @promisedlandtn native.is
CAITLIN ROSE THINKS YOU OUGHTA KNOW ABOUT: PROMISED LAND SOUND For this month’s You Oughta Know, Caitlin Rose suggested we feature Promised Land Sound. We, of course, didn’t have any problem with that because we love their Exile on Main St.-era Stones sound—and
it seems like a lot of other people do too. Just this year, the guys have played Freakin’ Weekend, Road to Bonnaroo (where they finished second), and toured with Alabama Shakes. Read above to see them talk about selling their souls, the most feared Nashville monster alive, and Scorpions covers. # NAT I V ENAS HV IHV L L EI L L E ///////// # NAT I V ENAS ///// /////////////////////// / /8/9 8 9
We hope you've enjoyed our second-ever Color Issue. This month, illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, and advertisers came together to create an issue that's exclusively black, white, grayscale, and one Pantone spot color. The idea is that working within strict limitations can inspire creativity. Thanks to our advertisers, who, for one month, modified their branding to be a part of something special. We're so thankful to call the following artists our guest illustrators:
EMILY ELIZABETH MILLER
MICAH SMITH
Emily Miller, a child of the farmland of Illinois and graduate of Memphis College of Art, is a new face in our fair city. Currently focused on revitalizing walls and beautifying old buildings, you can find her artwork in hidden and surprising places around town. When she’s not occupied with making Nashville a prettier place to live, you can find her enjoying a slice of pizza with her bunny, Oscar. emilyelizabethmiller.com
Micah Smith is a creative director living in Nashville with his wife, newborn daughter, and their Basset Hound, Lucy. He’s had the privilege of working with great clients over the years ranging from GQ and TED to bands like Wilco and Spoon. He’s been published in books such as Gig Posters Volume 1, The Little Book of Screenprinting, Illusive, and Neil Diamond is Forever. amicahsmith.com
HANNAH LOVELL
HOLLY CARDEN
Hannah Lovell is a freelance designer and illustrator. hannahlovell.com
Holly Carden has an armful of sketchbooks and a fistful of pencils. After graduating from Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in May, she’s excited to dive into Nashville�s thriving art community. hollycarden.com
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WILL MORGAN HOLLAND
IAN WHITE
Will Morgan Holland is constantly waking and looking for something to do. Paint, draw, write, shoot, direct, sleep, eat, etc. It�s all different attempts to keep from being bored . . . or from thinking too much about dying without leaving something behind that people may give a shit about. Overall, he’s having a good time. willmorganholland.com/art
All of Ian White’s work at the moment is black and white. That goes for his paintings and his tattoo work. He loves how much he can stretch and explore within a confined area like the twovalue system of black and white. He thinks that limitation is sometimes rather freeing. artbyianwhite.com
KELSEY TAYLOR
BRIAN WOODEN
Kelsey Taylor is a local science fiction and Wild West weirdo. She’s also the owner of Little Press On The Prairie.@littlepressontheprairie etsy.com/shop/PressOnThePrairie
Brian Wooden is an artist and musician living in Nashville. His other hobbies include skateboarding and hard-boiled eggs. brianwooden.com
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You can spread your wings and still put down roots.
Nashville thrives on originality and imagination. Where people with small town roots accomplish big dreams. So here’s to the creative spirit. Here’s to dreaming big but never losing sight of where you came from. Here’s to the art of crafting a success story that takes you places you could only imagine…and then brings you back home.
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Silver carp are a vegetarian species that were imported from East Asia to eat the algae out of sewage facilities and fish farms. When these flooded, the fish escaped into the Mississippi River, and they have recently pillaged their way up the Cumberland River to Middle Tennessee. Silver carp are still new to the neighborhood, but if we don’t do anything to control their spread, they may take a devastating toll on our unique freshwater ecosystems. The carp are classified as an invasive species: any plant or animal that is not native to an area and causes harm to the environment, economy, or human health. Hundreds of plant and animal species in Tennessee are classified as invasive. Many of them you pass by every day, and some you may even be quite fond of (the sweetly fragrant honeysuckle, for example). Most invasive species earn their incriminating classification because they out-
compete the native species for food, habitat, or some other vital resource. The silver carp’s advantage stems from its gluttonous and greedy appetite for plankton, the foundation of the freshwater food chain. Whether directly or indirectly, all the animals in an ecosystem depend on plankton to survive. Once the carp establishes its monopoly, its fellow planktivores (some fish, mussels, and other animals) lose their food source and languish. The effects of this dominance over the bottom rung of the food chain ripple upward and change the structure of the ecosystem. Silver carp and other invasive species are a serious threat to biodiversity. As a state, Tennessee has the second highest fish diversity in the country. But as the
silver carp seize our rivers, they’ll rob the river ecosystems of the natural abundance that has been around for millennia. On top of that, invasive species are to blame for the threatened or endangered status of many different species. So far, we haven’t solved the problem of silver carp, but a lot of people across the country are working on it, including President Obama. Here in Tennessee, there was a proposal to fish the carp commercially and sell it in markets. A spike in demand for silver carp fillets would mean fewer silver carp in the river to impact Tennessee’s rich biodiversity. If you prefer to steer clear of bottom-feeders, then you’re in luck because silver carp also steer clear of the river bottoms. So until a more sustainable solution is found, set your dinner table—it’s time to save a native fish and feast on a silver carp. # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E
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