NATIVE | OCTOBER 2015 | NASHVILLE, TN by Native

O C T O B E R

LIZA ANNE

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event spaces C615 offers multiple indoor and outdoor event spaces ranging in size from 1,400 to 10,000 SQ FT. Corporate functions, wedding receptions, art shows, parties of any kind â&#x20AC;&#x201C; you name it, we have the space!

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TWO INCREDIBLE HAUNTED ATTRACTIONS IN ONE LOCATION

NIGHT HORROR TERRORS HIGH S: E T A D T C E L E OPEN S TH

8 1 R E B M E S E P T THRU ST 1 R E B M E NOV

E L L I V H S NA 1016 MADISON SQUARE - NASHVILLE, TN 37115 - 615 864 7481 6 / // / / / / / / / / / / / / /////

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TABLE OF CONTENTS OCTOBER 2015

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THE GOODS 12 Behind the Screams 15 Beer from Here 18 Cocktail 20 Master Platers 90 Observatory 95 Animal of the Month

FEATURES

24 Kit Kite 34 John Dyke 44 Liza Anne 56 Fable Cry 68 Clawsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pub & Deli 76 Erin Naifeh and Drew Langer

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DEAR NATIVES,

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:

creative director:

MACKENZIE MOORE

managing editor:

CHARLIE HICKERSON DARCIE CLEMEN

art director:

COURTNEY SPENCER

community relations manager:

JOE CLEMONS

film supervisor:

CASEY FULLER

editor:

@willygreg

@christynnicole

writers: photographers:

@alyssa.jb

@zerinarazic

production:

@natalieroseart

@eastsidemusicsupply

MATTHEW LEFF JONAH ELLER-ISAACS HENRY PILE CHARLIE HICKERSON SCOTT MARQUART CASEY FULLER COOPER BREEDEN

JEN McDONALD DANIELLE ATKINS KIT KITE EMILY DORIO DYLAN REYES JONATHON KINGSBURY AUSTIN LORD

GUSTI ESCALANTE

founding team: founder, brand director:

DAVE PITTMAN

founder:

CAYLA MACKEY

MACKENZIE MOORE JOSHUA SIRCHIO TAYLOR RABOIN

to advertise, contact:

for all other inquiries:

SALES@NATIVE.IS HELLO@NATIVE.IS

special thanks to nashville nightmare for letting us shoot fable cry in their space.

@gabrielmaxstarner

@lovejealousonelove

PROUDLY DELIVERED BY RUSH BICYCLE MESSENGERS

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BEHIND THE SCREAMS: Death Yard, one of Tennessee's top professional haunted houses, is composed of a group of incredibly talented and hardworking performers that take the stage every Friday and Saturday night to scare you senseless until October 31st. Carroll Moore, the twisted mind behind Death Yard, strives to bring the audience a completely authentic and terrifying experience. And though the satanic clowns and axe murderers may look like something straight out of your nightmares, just remember that they're people too. PHOTOS BY MORGAN YINGLING

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JAVA•5TH AVENUE

A TH

C L U F T OUGH

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JOHNNY APPLESEED

CARROTS, ROASTED GARLIC, FRESH SAGE, HONEY, A PINCH OF SALT, AND HALF N HALF

APPLE CIDER CARAMEL, APPLE CIDER WHIPPED CREAM, TOASTED SESAME SEEDS, ESPRESSO, MILK

SIP. SAVOR. UNWIND.

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lens: @nolanfeldpausch beauty: @hellojennross pup: @theinfamousollie

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Erin Borzak approaches her creative work in cyclic patterns. "My dream day would be spent in a hammock somewhere in the Smoky Mountains, reading a book that would inspire me to draw, then drawing until I felt like reading again." Born and raised in Nashville, the illustrator/printmaker cut her teeth on Bongo Java culture. "I grew up in East Nashville. In high school I used to do my homework at Bongo Java East." She joined the team at Hot and Cold in April this year, making the leap from customer to counter staff. She brought her artistic ability along. Within six months, Erin mounted her ﬁrst solo print work show at Hot and Cold, selling multiple pieces by the show's end. That collection was so well received that Hot and Cold will present more of her new work, on display from November to December. She is also the designer behind Bongo Java’s Fall Signature Drink postcards. postca

Her work explores the relationship between humanity and nature, using the symbolism of natural images (moths, flowers) to facilitate self-reflection. Erin seeks inspiration in unexpected places, often watching horror films while drawing. "I try to draw things creepy, but they always come out cute," she says. Her Nashville upbringing also plays a role, with Southern gothic elements appearing wi frequently. "I try to put an image to anxiety and its effects, creating creepy unease for the viewer." Erin currently plans to expand her work into wearable form, designing and screen printing tee shirts for local musicians. Her sewing skills also come into play through a new series of banners, patches, and pins featuring her work screen printed onto felt. The very act of sewing provides a calming outlet for this prolific artist: "I feel better because I'm still something." making some

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SALT OF THE EARTH We’re not talking about the Stones tune, Matthew 5:13, or the 1954 or 2015 movies. We’re talking about the actual salt of the earth here. This light scotch cocktail beautifully blends lowland single malt with sea salt and a quinine aperitif to create a stiff drink that won’t beat up your taste buds. I love using salt in drinks, as it both accentuates the subtle flavors sometimes lost in colder temperatures and helps your body maintain electrolytes (weakens the hangover is what I’m getting at).

THE GOODS 1.5 oz Auchentoshan American Oak single malt scotch 1.5 oz Cocchi Aperitivo Americano Rosa .25 oz simple syrup good pinch kosher sea salt 2 lemon zests

F Stir all ingredients (including 1 zest) and pour into freshly iced rocks glass. Garnish with remaining lemon zest.

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photo by jen mcdonald

by Ben Clemons of No. 308

MASTER PLATERS

HOW TO: MAKE SAUSAGE BALLS WITH

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COURTNEY WEBB, OWNER OF Y’ALLS BALLS AND HEY ROOSTER

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PHOTOS BY DANIELLE ATKINS

THE GOODS

DIRECTIONS

1 pound pork sausage (we recommend Porter Road Butcher or Wedge Oak Farm)

F In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients together by hand, or use a stand mixer with the paddle attachment.

2 cups biscuit mix (we love Bluebird’s Sea Salt & Buttermilk Biscuit Mix by Forage South)

F Form into bite-size balls, about 1 1/4 inches around, and place on a baking sheet about 1 inch apart.

3 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese (Sweetwater Valley is great)

F Bake at 350 F for 17–19 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool in the pan for a few minutes. F Enjoy as is or with jam or hot sauce! We love The Jam Stand Peach Sriracha Jam, Nashville Jam Co Smokey Tomato Jam, or Jojo’s Sriracha. Yields 60–65 pieces. # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E

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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

KIT KITE

THE X SOUNDS: Displacement, rearrangement, and subjectivity of memory are all the emoted states explored in the self-portrait series The X Housewife Portraits. The series began when conceptual artist Kit Kite started shooting a prolific amount of self-portraits in her bathroom mirror while posing with everyday, common objects found around her home—documenting the artist’s personal isolation in light of discarded or overlooked material. The inanimate thing becomes the setting subject while Kit plays the backdrop in The X Housewife Portraits. What came later was a collaboration between Kit Kite and Burlei Music + Creative Group to form the concept album X Sounds. Burlei first created recordings with the household objects found in Kit’s portraits. These “field recordings” were then sent out to a diverse network of forward-thinking musicians (including Those Darlins, Free The Robots, Hezus, and Angel Snow), who composed original songs/scores based off of Kit’s individual portraits.

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COLOSSUS, AFTER GOYA 2014, Oil and acrylic resin on linen, 80” x 96” # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E ///// / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 2 7 # NAT I V ENAS HV I L L E //// / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 2 7

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MN-AD11-12 2012, Oil on canvas, 22” x 33”

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POLYSEMIC COLOSSUS 2015, Oil on linen with acrylic resin, plant resin, Tahitian pearls, 80” x 96”

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Premier smoke shop for all your smoking needs

West End Functional Glass Art

CARRYING the largest selection of local glass! 3404 West End Ave #206 - westendfunctionalglassart.com - 615.401.9422

Join Kit Kite & Burlei for the official X Sounds release event at Fort Houston on October 3. Visit burlei.com for more info.

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EVERY NIGHT AFTER 6pm

110 Lyle Av e. 615 -321-1224

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FARM TO STOREFRONT THE TURNIP TRUCK, NASHVILLE’S INDEPENDENT NATURAL FOODS STORE, IS OPENING A NEW FLAGSHIP LOCATION THIS FALL. OWNER JOHN DYKE IS EXCITED, NOT FOR PROFITS, BUT FOR ALL IT MEANS TO THE COMMUNITY AND THE MANY FARMERS SUPPORTED BY THE STORE BY JONAH ELLER-ISAACS | PHOTOS BY EMILY DORIO

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ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO, I was living through the frigid depths of a brutal Minnesota winter. Desperate for a break, I split for the coast and headed back to my childhood environs of the San Francisco Bay Area. The tropical trees blossoming in February were a glorious sight. I went to my old grocery store, the world-renowned Berkeley Bowl, famous for its produce section that holds more than a thousand individual items. I didn’t expect to be so overwhelmed by my shopping experience, but the fruits and vegetables—likely from farms just a few hours away—were so fresh they seemed to glow. I started to get a little choked up, remembering my young self walking the aisles of the store with my mother, stopping by the meat counter where the butcher always passed me a few slices of salami and a pickle. Walking through that produce section, I was six years old again. My regular chain grocery store here in Nashville certainly doesn’t have that effect on me. It is conveniently located, but it is nothing special. The clerks aren’t outwardly aggressive, but they aren’t particularly friendly either, and beyond our transaction, they aren’t interested in interacting with me (and my wife wishes I would stop trying and embarrassing her). The store’s offerings are delivered in huge trucks sent by international food distributors. Nashville is surrounded by rich farmland, but only a tiny percentage of the store’s

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produce comes from Middle Tennessee. It’s a generic, bland experience, and one that is all too common across the country. Nashville shoppers are fortunate to have another option. Head to Five Points, and you’ll find a store where community comes before commerce, freshness is paramount, and making customers happy is of the utmost importance. You’ll find The Turnip Truck. I sit down to chat with John Dyke, long-time Nashvillian and founder of The Turnip Truck, in a conference room above the new location of beloved venue The Family Wash. The Wash isn’t the only business on the move. Now, nearly fifteen years after opening The Turnip Truck, John is taking his business to the next level, literally and figuratively: just around the corner from our meeting spot is the future location of the new Turnip Truck, scheduled to open later this fall. The new location is set to rise three stories, eventually including a roof garden that will look out over the adjacent East Park and feature a western-facing view of the downtown skyline. John is a passionate man, a man who cares deeply for the food he procures and the farmers with whom he partners. These traits are the byproduct of his upbringing on a farm in East Tennessee. John doesn’t just have fond memories of his childhood on the family farm; he’s certain his early years shaped him as both a person and a

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‘‘‘THIS IS Y’ALL’S STORE. I HAPPEN TO OWN IT. BUT YOU TELL US HOW Y’ALL WANT IT.’’’

business owner. “Every bit of The Turnip Truck is related back to the farm,” John tells me in a long, lilting accent. “As a child, I got my hands dirty. I loved what we did. We grew up raising most of our own vegetables—” he stops to correct himself. “No. We raised every bit of our vegetables.” The farm bestowed in John a love of produce, in the most general sense of the word. Whatever product the farm wrought, John loved the making of it, whether it was those vegetables, tobacco, or the animals that he and his family raised for slaughter. He explains that he’s incredibly grateful for the farm giving him an “entire world” to explore. While some kids might get irritated with the long days and backbreaking labor, John recalls, “There was such a freedom. And I loved the hard work . . . I was beggin’ to get on top of the tractor at the age of four, and I would stay out there in that field until the afternoon . . . Most kids in summer wanted to lay around. I just wanted to get in that truck and I wanted to go.” John wistfully describes a critical part of his journey from farm boy to grocer: “Being on the farm allowed me some open spaces to be a dreamer. I was always a big dreamer.” His dreams of the “big city” brought him to Nashville more than twenty-five years ago, where he discovered Sunshine Grocery, a natural foods store founded in the early 1970s, making it one of the earliest shops in town offering locally sourced goods. “I really loved some of the things they were doin’,” John recalls. “They were already, twenty years ago, reaching out, buying local farmers’ products such as heirloom tomatoes. They were doing the Bucksnort trout. They were getting local bee pollen and honey. There was just this really cool dynamic. ‘Cause it was different. I loved it.” And importantly, John adds that Sunshine is “kinda where I modeled my store from.” John was living in the East Nashville neighborhood of Edgefield, but when he would make his way across town to Belmont to shop at Sunshine, he would consistently run into his friends and neighbors from the East Side. The store was more than just a local grocer; it was a community. And if folks were coming to Belmont, John imagined, they’d be even more likely to support a similar store closer to home. “This is what East Nashville needs,” John remembers thinking. Though he has a business and finance degree from the University of Tennessee, the intricacies of running a grocery store were well beyond his experience. “I had no idea what I was doing,” he admits. So John immersed himself in the industry with the same fervor he brought to his family’s farm, spending a few years researching, networking, and making trips to annual natural foods conferences. Soon, he was no longer a natural foods neophyte, and he began looking for a location for his new store. Turnip Truck’s current location on the corner of Woodland and

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South 10th Street—the store that will that East Nashvillians would welcome be open for just a few more months— The Turnip Truck, he describes the was, appropriately, an H.G. Hill grocery initial response as “truly amazing.” He back in the early 20th century. At the says, “There’s a whole community betime, it was one among hundreds of hind the store, and they’ve been behind H.G. Hill locations throughout Nash- us since the first day we opened. The ville and beyond. John delights at the neighborhood gave me a gift by helpbond formed across the centuries. “In ing me make the store successful, and the early 1900s,” he explains, “you got- hopefully we’ve given them a gift by ta really think, most of their food was being able to bring in more local food.” sourced locally. People came in, bought Again and again, John comes back fresh. There weren’t the chemicals in to the local food, the local farmers: the food at that time, so no one had to “That’s always been our focus, from day think about it. That was the real nature one. It will always be our focus.” And within the year, The Turnip of food. And basically what we’ve done at The Turnip Truck is kind of take Truck’s ability to support local proback food to where it was in the early ducers will increase exponentially. In 1900s . . . That is the real deal. We are 2010, The Turnip Truck opened a satellite location in The Gulch, but the the real deal.” Though he was generally confident new East Nashville flagship store is

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massive compared to either present location. John’s new store expands his retail square footage four times over. The site, on Woodland and South 7th Street, is only a few blocks from the original store, but those short blocks move them closer to downtown, closer to the interstate, and closer to neighborhoods with limited grocery options, like Germantown. John and I walk over to see the construction, and it’s hard for me to believe that the handful of standing steel beams will support a store in a few short months. But John’s not worried, and he can hardly contain his excitement about everything that the new store will offer: a full-service butcher, a bakery, a growler bar with kombucha on tap, and more. But out of all the new options, John is

most thrilled about the ways that the new store will more effectively foster community. The design features copious amounts of glass, so that “the world can see in, what we’re doin’. We can see out, what the world’s doin’ as well. I think it’s very important for the employees to have that light and that energy of the world coming in.” A community room will provide space for classes, and while the top level won’t be finished with the initial phase of construction, John is hopeful that a rooftop deck will be along soon, as well as a greenhouse that will provide produce for the store below. The main space will feature a mezzanine level, so patrons can purchase prepared food and head upstairs, remaining together on-site rather than eating elsewhere. “I wanted the community to be the heart of the store,” John explains. “We built our business on knowing our customer, speaking to them. I would always say, ‘This is y’all’s store. I happen to own it. But you tell us how y’all want it.’” John has given the city an incredible gift in The Turnip Truck. His passion for community and high-quality goods has brought us a place where a new generation of shoppers will create memories like the ones from my childhood. And The Turnip Truck’s support for farmers beyond the boundaries of Nashville ensures that our residents will have access to fresh, local goods for years to come.

Madeline Harper Photography

65 Music Square E. - 615.942.8100

THE TURNIP TRUCK: theturniptruck.com Follow on Facebook @TheTurnipTruckNaturalMarket, Twitter @TurnipTruckEast or@ TurnipTruckWest, and Instagram @TheTurnipTruck native.is

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FINE BUT DYING SINGER-SONGWRITER LIZA ANNE DISCUSSES DUALITY, JESUS, AND TOURING IN EUROPE BY HENRY PILE | PHOTOS BY DYLAN REYES STYLING BY BALEE GREER, HMU BY LINDSAY LEVINE

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LIZA ANNE IS BUOYANT. She moves on greased skids. Unbothered by the activity around her, she floats down to the blanket spread over the grass and squeals. Garlic chevre. Tomato basil cheddar. Crackers. Grapes. A cold bottle of pink Cava. “It’s like we’re in Paris!” she says as she sips from a blue plastic cup. Liza Anne is as effervescent as the drink. She beams. She’s made for sunny, Saturday afternoons. We’re at Public Square Park at the top of 2nd Avenue downtown. Live On The Green is about to kick off the last day of music. The Districts are on stage for soundcheck. They are one of her favorite local bands. After listening to her latest album release, TWO, I am surprised to meet such a jubilant woman. This afternoon, she could be a 1950s TV kid. But like every human in the universe, Liza Anne is not one thing. This vivacious personality is pierced by moments of darkness that stew just below her broad smile. TWO is a gob of relentless heartbreak, love denied, and a desire to be released from pain. The musical arrangements lift like hot air balloons, moved by the wind but powered by some overhead furnace. The lyrics shift from fear to doubt to terror to power and switch back without notice. The song “Take It Back” begins with a pop guitar hook and dance-ready drum beat. But the first line betrays the sweetness: “I would rather have it fall apart than act like we’re on solid ground.” She’s powerful at twenty-one years old. Her voice is effortless. Her lyrics are confident. “I was terrible at singing as a kid,” she admits. “Some kids are cute, but I was trying so hard.” Liza Anne grew up an hour or so south of Savannah in St. Simons Island, Georgia. At that time, the little beach town was underdeveloped and quiet. Her parents were (and are)

deeply religious. They spoke often of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. One night, in the bath, a young Liza Anne looked at her mom and asked, “What if I drowned myself? Could I go to heaven faster?” Somewhere around third grade, she began writing poetry. “I had always been outgoing,” she says. “I didn’t have trouble with people, but inwardly, there was chaos.” Writing helped her cope with the swirling thoughts of death, pain, loneliness, loss, and fear. And Jesus. Everything is so terrible, she remembers thinking as a child. Why doesn’t he come back now? Her parents were patient. Rather than telling their daughter to just believe, they explained their own beliefs and let her decide on her own. To this day, they still discuss the complexities of religion. They appreciate her liberal views. “I think it’s why I am able to write freely. Nothing is out of bounds,” she explains. A turning point occurred when Liza Anne decided to stop singing along with her favorite karaoke tracks on the machine in her bedroom and put melody to her poems. She shook with fear as she stood in front of her friends and opened her mouth to sing her own words for the first time. She smiles as she recalls it. “You know that moment when you’re so nervous you’re about to cry? This was that moment.” Throughout high school, she took the stage at open mic nights. As her confidence grew, her voice and guitar playing improved. Her friends showed up to support her, and her family encouraged her musical pursuits. After graduating, she moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and lived with her aunt and uncle. She worked as their nanny. She painted with her aunt. Her uncle helped her build an electric guitar. After a few months, she

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continued north to Nashville as a Belmont student, her handmade guitar in tow. Liza Anne studied songwriting at Belmont. Deadlines forced inspiration and exercised her creative writing muscles. “It was like a mini publishing deal,” she says. “But I also had to take math classes.” Math classes aside, she enjoyed Belmont. Best of all, she realized the possibility of a singersongwriter career. With a catalog of songs, she took advice from friends and booked weekend tours. The tours taught her the ropes of the music industry, but they didn’t make ends meet. Back in Nashville, she worked two jobs and continued school. She also took her road-tested tunes to the studio, and, from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. on any night that allowed, she recorded the tracks for her first album, The Colder Months. The breakneck pace and rapid shift of gears led to exhaustion. “When I am focused on something, there’s no room for anything else,” she admits. “I didn’t want to keep spending money on school. I was only giving music and school 50 percent each.” She was losing her mind. She was creating something of value but couldn’t focus on it. So, she pulled the plug. In 2014, she quit her jobs and school. From then on, she would be focused on music. Over the summer, she bought a ticket to London. She met some family and friends there, but for months, she was on her own. “I’m restless,” she says. “I felt there was a part of me there I could find.” With only two shows booked, she hustled, shook hands, and said yes to every opportunity.

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She connected with Sofar Sounds, the global secret show group. She joined an open house show in Paris. “I played a show for The Kale Project. It was a weird underground Parisian crowd,” she laughs. Over the following months, she met people who connected her with venues and shows in Norway, Ireland, France, and Germany. These DIY shows eventually led to New York, London, and Nashville shows presented by Communion, the artist-led movement founded by Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons to discover new music across the globe. She returned to Nashville with an amazing experience and a backlog of new material. She recorded the tracks for TWO in early 2015. Shortly after its release, she’d travel back to Europe with shows booked in London and Paris. On this trip, she had a plan. “I partnered with a visual artist in a Parisian gallery,” she says. “We faced each other for a few hours, and while I sang, she painted over eighty abstract portraits.” Back in London, she returned to Communion for the European release of TWO. Based on her relationships and reputation, the promotion was a success and she played to a sold-out crowd.

LIZA ANNE: lizaannemusic.com Follow on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @LizaAnneMusic native.is 50 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / //////

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“IF YOU’RE A PERFORMER AND BELIEVE IN WHAT YOU’RE DOING, TELL US WHEN TO BE THERE AND WE’LL BE THERE.”

At this point, she’d released two albums, appeared on Daytrotter, toured Europe, and made videos. By all accounts, she was making a living as a singer-songwriter. “Outwardly, I am fine,” she says with a fading smile. “But inwardly, things are dying.” Liza Anne, like all of us, carries baggage. She shifts from one state of mind to another. “I may be happy at breakfast and sad by lunch time,” she admits. She embraces the duality of her humanity. In this embrace, she understands that opposites don’t really exist. She is both “fine” and “dying” at the same time. On the LOTG stage, The Districts run through a song to test their mix. Liza Anne turns to watch. The band moves like lab mice fighting for cocaine-laced water. She is beaming again. “So, so good!” she shouts. “They are my favorite!” The band finishes their audio onslaught. They unplug and leave the stage. Liza Anne turns to me. “My biggest struggle is feeling like I’m not sad enough to make people think I really struggle, or I’m not old enough to make people think I have something to say, or I’m not young enough to make people pity me,” she pauses. “It feels like I’m in a weird middle ground, but it’s also anxiety tricking me. Everyone feels this way.” Three thin-lined tattoos, representing a college-ruled notebook, wrap around her forearm—a reminder to keep

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exorcising those pent-up feelings through writing. Inspiration urges her to jot down a line, a poem, or capture a friend’s stutter or mixed-up metaphor. Still, she searches deep inside for the real stuff. Her brooding, love-lost lyrics come from personal experience. The musical arrangement is inspired by poppier means. “My music has a commercially valuable aspect, but there’s also a part that isn’t appropriate for dinner conversation,” she says. “I don’t want to spoon-feed my music to people. I’m not going to hold people’s hands. I’m gonna make what the fuck I want to make.” Liza Anne turned twenty-one during a Moeller Mondays session on Daytrotter, where she sang with Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes. She recently signed with Paradigm Talent Agency. She’s scheduled a West Coast tour for winter 2015. Despite all of this, she’s stymied. “Right now, it feels like a garage door has closed between my mouth and my mind. Everything is there, but I can’t get to it.” The writing process is a practice of willpower. At this moment, the darkness has closed in. To break it loose, she’s diving into books and discovering new music. Liza Anne lifts her face to the sunlight. She giggles at a toddler who stumbles past us. She takes a drink. “I am two people,” she says. “When I am on stage or writing, I am a dark person, but I’m not that way all the time. Sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes I’m not.” She’s less happy and more intrigued. Her curiosity moves her. She listens with intent and responds thoughtfully. She’s far older than her twenty-one years allow. She asks, “Do you know that Albert Camus quote?” I shake my head. She says she loves it and recites it for me: “In all things, we are merely ‘in a way.’” I ask her to explain. She says, “I’m sad all the time. I’m this person all the time.” She laughs and adds, “But no, I’m not. I’m all over the place.”

Some people might see a geeky boy with no social life. We see a determined young man who will be the first person in his family to go to college.

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THEATRICAL SCAMP ROCK OUTFIT FABLE CRY WANTS YOU TO GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR INNER FREAK BY CHARLIE HICKERSON PHOTOS BY JONATHON KINGSBURY

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“Oh Jeffrey, you don’t look well!” Zach Ferrin says as he caresses a plastic skeleton’s cheek. We’re at local haunted house Nashville Nightmare for today’s photo shoot, where Zach is sprawled out like Beetlejuice in a fake graveyard, chatting with this inanimate object like it’s an estranged family member. Over the hiss of fog machines and the shutter of the camera, the unsurprisingly one-sided conversation continues. “Oh, excuse me, sir,” he says, when he repositions and accidentally bumps into Jeffrey. Then, with an outrageous vaudevillian frown coming to his face: “It really has been too long, friend.” Later, as we’re walking through various rooms of the haunted house—a ghostly study full of dust, a dining room full of corpses, a bedroom full of bloodied baby-dolls—Zach continues to crack macabre dad jokes. It’s like hanging out with the lovechild of the Crypt Keeper and Dr. Frank-NFurter; the guy just can’t resist a good pun when there’s so much fake gore around. Coming from someone else, the corny double entendres and over-the-top gestures might elicit eye rolls or irritated sighs. But when they come from Zach, they’re somehow endearing and, as much as I hate to admit it, pretty funny. He’s having a great time, and he’s doing whatever he can to ensure everyone at today’s shoot is too. And judging by the chuckles of violinist and vocalist Jo Cleary, bassist Scott Fernandez, and drummer Rachel Gerlach, I’d say Zach’s strategy is working. It’s this sort of dark charisma that makes Fable Cry, Zach’s self-described “theatrical scamp rock” brainchild, and their second album, We’ll Show You Where the Monsters Are, so appealing. Yes, the band is goofy. Yes, the songs often sound like Gogol Bordello got trapped in The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Halloween Town. Yes, there are lyrics about combining corpse parts to create the perfect monster (sample line: “Henry Idle he was suicidal / But his lower brain was fucking right as rain”). And yes, the band is extremely polarizing. But if you can let go and allow Zach and the gang

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to lure you into the weird cosmos of Fable Cry, the band is also a lot of fun. That was certainly the intent when Zach started playing music as a teenager with his family. He grew up in Denver with musical parents who played what he describes as “very sweet, very Carpenters-esque” folk (“That’s the reason we play the way we do,” he later jokes). In 1998, his dad’s day job as a machinist brought the Ferrins to the outskirts of Lebanon, where Zach began playing guitar, and his sister, Kirstie, began playing violin. Inspired by the likes of gypsy jazz progenitor Django Reinhardt, Danny Elfman, and Tom Waits, they played in a series of “rock-folk-Celtic-gypsyhorror–vibe” bands throughout high school. Zach explains that their gravitation toward theatrical rock grew from the simple desire to put on a live show that wasn’t boring. “The connection to the crowd was very important in every band that we always played with,” he tells me over beers at Mickey’s, a couple of hours after the photo shoot. He’s still wearing his Fable Cry regalia and makeup, which oddly enough, no one at Mickey’s has seemed to notice. “It was always important to get the crowd involved and make them feel like there was a reason they were there . . . We liked being interactive and engaging.” After their last high school band broke up, Zach and Kirstie decided to ditch the full band and create their own surreal spin on a Carpenters-esque folk duo. The result was Fable Cry’s whimsical self-titled debut, which they recorded in Zach’s childhood bedroom. Sonically, the record isn’t as dynamic as We’ll Show You Where the Monsters Are; there are little-to-no electric instruments, and as a result, the songs don’t venture into the rockabilly and punk influences that seep into Fable Cry’s latest effort. However, that’s not to say that the album doesn’t possess the band’s usual jaunty morbidity—within five minutes, they’re warning the listener to “hide yourself, lock the door and wait for hell.” It’s just jaunty morbidity on a less grandiose scale. Though he’d like to say the scaled-back sound

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FABLE CRY: fablecry.com Follow on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @FableCry native.is

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was planned, Zach concedes that it was actually born out of necessity. “We couldn’t really afford good instruments, so our drum set was just pots and pans in the beginning. And we built around that with cymbals that were all cracked and shitty. We made it look intentional, and it worked,” he remembers, laughing. Armed with pots, pans, and a collection of other shitty instruments, the duo embarked on a national DIY tour before recruiting cellist Josh Dent. The addition added a new dynamism to the Ferrins’ songs, but shortly after he joined, Kirstie left the band. There weren’t any hard feelings—she’s still Zach’s roommate, and she’s even lent some of her old gear to the current lineup—she just didn’t feel like driving across the country and singing songs about galactic seahorses, yetis, and sand cyborgs anymore. I mean, we’ve all reached that impasse in our lives, right? Kirstie’s departure left Fable Cry temporarily out of commission until fate brought three-fourths of the group together in the form of a classical string jam at Josh’s house. Jo, who’d recently moved to Nashville after studying violin and voice at Berkeley, walked in on what initially seemed liked a pretty lackluster affair. “It was just Josh sitting there all by himself with his cello,” she

“WE COULDN’T REALLY AFFORD GOOD INSTRUMENTS, SO OUR DRUM SET WAS JUST POTS AND PANS IN THE BEGINNING.”

es among us). His top says. “He had menvideo, a tutorial with tioned Fable Cry his beloved twelveto me, and I didn’t string, Sophie, has have a band yet, so I more than three millooked up the album lion views. and learned a bunch It’s a far cry from of songs . . . Zach comes into the jam, and of course Scott’s humble beginnings in Puereveryone knows it’s him because of to Rico, where he used to steal inhis mustache and his big ole earring struments from his “really small, impoverished” school’s band room. and he is just overall fabulous.” The three hit it off, and Zach de- “I’d steal [instruments] and go play cided to call the band’s first meet- under a bridge with my sad saxoing to order on the back deck, where phone and try to figure out songs an unsuspecting Scott was taking a I had heard. So by the end of donap. “Zach just came up and sat on ing that, it was like, seventeen inScott’s bum, and me and Josh we’re struments,” he says, laughing. “[I crisscrossed around him,” Jo says. played] whatever I’d pick up from And in that cuddle puddle, Fable school and learn under that bridge, ‘cause my grandfather wouldn’t let Cry’s new lineup was born. Even before that night, Zach and me practice in the house.” During a particularly heated Scott had been friends for years. Scott had offered to join Fable Cry family argument, a twelve-year-old multiple times in the past, but the Scott ended up throwing live chickthen-duo thought there was no way ens at said grandfather (one of the he was being serious. “Kirstie and chickens even died). Following the I thought he was joking because fight, he was perhaps unsurprishe’s phenomenal,” Zach remem- ingly sent off to live with his mom bers. “We talked about it and said in Nashville, where he became the he doesn’t want to play with us . . . bass virtuoso he is today—without any formal training or the ability to He was already kind of famous!” By “kind of famous,” Zach means read music. The fact that Scott can’t read YouTube famous—or as Scott calls it, “weird famous.” He has a chan- music is even more impressive nel where he plays original compo- once you hear We’ll Show You Where sitions and gives tutorials on four, the Monsters Are, the album Fable twelve, and eighteen-string basses Cry recorded shortly after recruit(yes, there are eighteen-string bass- ing Jo’s friend Rachel as their new

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drummer. The album’s tracks are slices “[It’s] loosely based on Frankenstein. ly planning an October 23rd costume of prog rock, metal, rockabilly, and gyp- But it also—and this is much of what party extravaganza at the Firebreath sy jazz hidden under tales of treachery Mary Shelley is doing with the book— Records house that will help promote that wouldn’t be out of place on a Dis- draws the parallel between what Victor the Halloween video release of “Dead ney villain greatest hits album. Sure, the Frankenstein the character was doing or Alive (For Now).” It’ll be the latest in a steady string of tunes will probably make you chuckle and what she as an artist was doing by or even grimace, but they should also creating this thing . . . That’s kind of high-production videos that the band make you pause and appreciate the what we all do as musicians and artists: (with help from artist Coco Bridges, complex interplay between Jo’s violin we take influences, memories, and all who did their album art, and Ryan and Zach’s guitar, Josh’s chugging cello these different pieces and kind of Fran- Rehnborg of Surly Urchin Studios) has (he unfortunately left Fable Cry to play kenstein them together to communi- released since its inception. They tell on a cruise ship shortly after record- cate with people. And we don’t really me that in an ideal world, they’d make ing the album), the impossibly low know until we bring it to life whether a video for every song on the album, rumble of Scott’s twelve-string when it’s going to be beautiful or horrifying but for now, they’re happy with the paired with Rachel’s bass drum, and . . . So you are kind of playing God by Washington Irving–esque visuals for “Fancy Dancing,” the puppet show that the ghoulish blend of caricatured gang creating.” If that’s the case, Fable Cry is playing accompanies “The Good Doctor,” and vocals. Lyrically, the album sees Zach rei- God all the time. In addition to record- the single-shot nightmare that is the magining classic literature and folk- ing and writing, they put on regular “You Ain’t My Baby No More” video. “People asked us if we were ‘satanic’ tales as off-kilter myths that are at live spectacles around town. Four buronce familiar and unsettling. Citing lesque dancers joined them onstage at after the ‘Fancy Dancing’ video,” Ratheir single “The Good Doctor” as an Exit/In back in August, and their album chel says with a laugh. “But kids like example, Zach explains that there’s release party at East Room last month it—they like spooky music.” Scott adds, often personal meaning beneath the featured a light show, puppets, and “They like the puppets and the goofinarratives he uses as source material: skeleton dancers. They’re also current- ness and the pirates and the whatever

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nonsense we are. And the parents like us, too, and they take their kids to the show, which is surprising.” But it’s really not that surprising. Maybe the reason everyone from kids to parents to oddball twentysomethings enjoy Fable Cry is because they allow you to release your inner freak—even if it’s just for an hour-long show or a fiveminute video. Your only obligation at a Fable Cry show is to get weird, and in a local music scene that can sometimes take itself too seriously, that’s refreshing. “What’s more profound than having fun and doing what you’re good at?” Rachel asks earnestly. “There’s so much serious shit in the world, and this is an escape for a time.” I’ll escape to Fable Cry’s neck of the woods any day. Even if those woods—like their songs—are populated by murderers, witches, and zoo animals from hell.

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CLAWSON’S PUB & DELI FEELS LIKE A PLACE OUT OF TIME—A HUMBLE LUNCH COUNTER WHERE YOU CAN ENJOY A BEER, STRIKE UP A CONVERSATION WITH A STRANGER, AND HAVE A DAMN GOOD SANDWICH BY SCOTT MARQUART PHOTOS BY DANIELLE ATKINS

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When’s the last time you walked into a place, ordered a sandwich, and didn’t have to say, “No tomato”—they already knew? As more and more of Nashville’s neighborhoods are booming with revitalization, all the new commerce seems only to increase our anonymity as consumers—so it’s rare to find a new shop that has the ability to bring us closer together. Nestled in a corner of the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, Clawson’s Pub & Deli is a small-town oasis in a city that grows evermore bustling by the day. The quaint storefront is tucked into the basement of a rehabbed industrial building, next to the train tracks that cut across Chestnut Street. The gravel parking lot is worn down to the mud with tire tracks from cars turning around. Not long ago, this was just a neighborhood you passed through between downtown and the southwest side—there wasn’t much to get out of your car for. But now a new wave of food spots—Clawson’s, Smokin Thighs, Dozen Bakery—are joining old stalwarts like Gabby’s Burgers to enrich the identity of the neighborhood. When I pull open the deli’s latching door, I see Ann Clawson squint over from the other side of the counter. She doesn’t recognize me. For a spot as sewn into the fabric of its neighborhood as Clawson’s is, I gather that’s a bit unusual. I pull up a stool at the lunch counter, and she gets right to making me feel at home. Despite the seventy-two canned beer offerings in the display refrigerator (not to mention the four rotating tap handles), I can’t pass up a glass-bottle Coke.

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Ann’s husband Jens smiles at me from the back, where he’s busy hot-pressing a sandwich. They’re the only two people working on this shift, and though they say there are four other employees, I get the feeling it would be rare to walk in here and not see at least one of the Clawsons behind the counter. The space the deli sits in used to be an industrial freezer, and the heavy door still has an emergency handle in case someone were accidentally locked inside. But despite the industrial trappings, the Clawsons have managed to make the space feel warm and inviting. “We tried to model it after our home,” Ann says of the cozy interior decorations. “Like you’re walking into our home and hanging out in our kitchen.” Not feeling qualified to impose my will in their inner sanctum, I let them choose my sandwich for me. It’s an easy choice: the #8. The sandwich reminds me a bit of the classic Reuben, but with the corned beef subbed out for pastrami and the sauerkraut replaced by house-made coleslaw, all between Swiss cheese and marble rye. It’s both Jens’ and Ann’s favorite, exactly as it comes. Ann is covered in tattoos and looks perfectly natural in overalls and horn-rimmed glasses, and it’s hard to imagine her doing anything but her own thing—so I’m surprised when she tells me her last gig was as a corporate general manager in DC. But that’s actually the end of the story, not the beginning. First she went to art school, then headed out to California to study mortuary science, left that to work for a jewelry designer, hightailed it to North Carolina to be a white-water rafting guide, went back to Califor-

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nia to study horticulture, got sucked into the corporate rat race, and landed out in DC about a year and a half ago. As Ann says, “It all makes sense from thirty thousand feet.” Now, countless years into the journey, she’s finally found her calling. Starting a business from scratch isn’t easy. You hit one roadblock after another, from funding to construction to staffing. But even though the hours are longer than the corporate nine-to-five, they don’t sting the same way. The Clawsons are building something—their way—and they couldn’t be prouder. Jens is somewhat more guarded than Ann, though equally kindhearted. When I ask what he was up to before this, he says, “Well, this actually, but for other people. I’ve been a career cog in the machine.” He doesn’t bring it up, but Ann later tells me that he was a touring musician for many years, playing in a few bands of his own, and even taking a stint as the touring drummer for Neville Staple’s late revival of The Specials. Like many musicians, he worked hard in restaurants between tours, but working that way without having a stake in what you’re doing wears you down over time. When Ann decided to quit her gig in DC, Jens was an easy sell on starting something of their own. “After so many hours and so much corporate,” he sighs, “it was time.” The couple went all-in for Nashville, and thanks to a friend on the ground here, they landed in the Wedgewood-

“A REALLY GOOD SANDWICH AND A REALLY GOOD BEER CAN SOLVE ANYTHING.”

Houston neighborhood right around the time it started to boom. Tired of the corporate slog, they set out to make Clawson’s exactly what they wanted. “This is largely a selfish endeavor,” Ann admits, leaning on the counter. “We wanted to make the place we wanted to hang out at, with food we’d want to eat, and beer we’d want to drink.” They opened up in November of last year, and the neighborhood quickly took notice. There are twenty businesses in their building alone—a hair salon, a law office, an inventor, two art galleries, and a gourmet mac and cheese shop among them—and everyone had been looking for a good spot to grab lunch on weekdays. After their first month, they started garnering buzz in the local media, but business was still inconsistent. “Some days it was a couple of wicked games of Scrabble,” Ann says, “and some days you wouldn’t stop moving once you walked in the door.” Despite the inconsistency, Ann and Jens didn’t succumb to any gimmicks to lure in patrons; they just did their best to make everyone’s experience authentic

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and unique. “We want to be a product of integrity,” Ann says. “We don’t need tricks to lure people in.” Before long they developed a regular clientele—and it wasn’t just because of the food. Ann answers the phone (which doesn’t stop ringing the whole time I’m at the bar). “How’s it going, Alan?” She turns to Jens and whispers, “I know his voice by now,” smiling. “Ah, the Alan special. Will that be all for you, my friend?” People call people friend for a lot of reasons—usually because they want something. Ann and Jens call people friend because everyone is their friend. The Clawsons strive to make their shop a place that fosters community. There aren’t any TVs in the space, and if you sit at the bar, you’re guaranteed to be brought into a conversation not only with Ann and Jens, but also with the people seated next to you. If the anonymity of the corporate world is what Ann and Jens were trying to distance themselves from with Clawson’s, they’ve succeeded. Their shop is imbued with personality, and you can trace every thread right back to its owners. In turn, Ann and Jens are injecting the personality of Clawson’s back into themselves—literally. They have an appointment to each get tattoos of the twenty-five-year-old meat slicer that they’ve had since they opened. Ann plans to have the ink done halfway down her arm, between a tin watering can and the tombstone sketch from Slaughterhouse-Five that reads: “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” A woman walks through the heavy wood and iron door at the side of the bar. Before she crosses through the doorframe, Ann hollers to Jens, “Get that woman an Einstock [an Icelandic white ale that’s becoming ubiquitous around town].” That woman’s name is Lynne, and she might be the Clawsons’ biggest fan. “This is where I come when it’s good, and this is where I come when it’s not so good,” she tells me, taking a sip of her beer. “A really good sandwich and a really good beer can solve anything.”

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REEL SACRED

PART ONE* A CONVERSATION BETWEEN SUNDANCE INSTITUTE LAB PROGRAM INVITEES ERIN NAIFEH AND DREW LANGER

*Emily Newman and Allison Hughes Stroud were also selected for the Sundance Institute Lab Program. We’ll be interviewing them in a follow-up piece.

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INTERVIEW BY CASEY FULLER | PHOTOS BY JONATHON KINGSBURY | HMU BY BRITTNEY HEAD

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Saying grace, a.k.a. the blessing, is something Southerners are very familiar with. We often ask the blessing over the majority of shit we do every day, and very casually at that. But I don’t know many people that have literally been blessed—“really blessed”—in the field they are working in. Except camera operator/assistant Erin Naifeh (Stoker, Nashville, Boulevard) and assistant director and producer Drew Langer (The One I Love, “Lower Broads,” Blue Like Jazz). They received a blessing from a Native American chief in Park City, Utah, upon arriving for their monthlong stay at the Sundance Institute Lab Program, where film is a celebration and a process that demands reverence. Created by Robert Redford in 1981, the Sundance Institute Lab Program is a yearly opportunity for up-and-coming film professionals to incubate projects in an experimental, low-pressure environment. Notable projects that started at the lab include Whiplash, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and many, many more.

CASEY FULLER: So tell us about Sundance Institute Labs. DREW LANGER: Sundance Institute Labs is about providing a safe environment for filmmakers to develop screenplays, direct scenes, and have post production without the fear of a studio being at your back or an investor pushing you constantly. It’s like film school, except Ed Harris and Caleb Deschanel [cinematographer of The Patriot, Jack Reacher, Killer Joe, The Passion of the Christ, and many more] are advising you one-on-one [laughs]. They pair two directors to a six-person team. Each person on the team represents a department: camera, audio, gaff or grip, AD [assistant director], and art department. ERIN NAIFEH: And a DP [director of photography]. We were on different teams. DL: At the same time, though, we all ate together every day and hung out at night. We did the same roles for two different directors. My first director had only done documentaries. He dove into the intense “actor directing” mode because he had never directed

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actors before. The next day we were with the other director, and she was very minimalistic. She gave the actors a lot of space. My documentary director was also Chinese. So we shot a scene that day in Mandarin. It was amazing. EN: You fall in love with the process of filmmaking again because you are surrounded by a group of people who are in love with telling stories, and it inspires you. I came back and I’m like, I get it now. I understand the process and I’m in love with it. CF: Are the labs something you do once and move on? EN: No. You can definitely get invited back. DL: Filmmakers who have been to the labs sometimes get invited back as advisory roles or they come back to show something they’ve done since their time there. EN: There is a screening room that has movie posters everywhere. They are from directors that went to the labs. DL: Yeah, and not just directors though. There are also films that were developed there at the labs. EN: Right. Like, really iconic movies. DL: Paul Thomas Anderson. EN: It’s so inspiring. I thought the film fest was [Sundance’s] only entity, and I did not know that the fest pays for the labs. CF: How many attendees go to the lab every year? DL: There are about forty that go, and then you have the staff plus special guests that come as well. Once you arrive at The Mountain, there is a huge blessing ceremony. A Native American chief blesses you. EN: It’s very sacred. CF: Seems very intimate. Once blessed, what type of resources do you have at the lab? DL: It’s very “community theater.” And that’s the point. It is not all about production value. EN: It’s all about the story. DL: One of the directors was extremely visual. He had the worst time because he was so obsessed with getting the props right and totally neglecting the scene 80 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / ////// 80 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /////

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itself. CF: Drew, you attended the labs as an AD/UPM (assistant director/unit production manager). Erin, you went as an assistant camera operator. You both are already professionals at these respective roles. How is going to the Sundance Labs different from what you do already? EN: It’s different from the real world. DL: What I got as a crew member/aspiring filmmaker is how a scene is broken down along with the script, how to direct actors, and I got to piggyback advice from the best. It’s invaluable. EN: You are learning from the best people in the business. Every night you screen scenes/movies and you watch the directors get advice. You get to sit in on Q&As with people like Robert Redford. J. C. Chandor [director of All Is Lost and A Most Violent Year] and Robert Redford did a Q&A with us in a small theater, and that was the greatest experience to have. The director from Walk the Line, James Mangold, screened his dailies [footage shot during each day of production] from the movie, and you could see his progressions with his actors. The thing was, “How do you get actors to where you need them to be?” He screened his dailies, and you could see [from] take one to the last take. You could hear his direction to his actors and physically see the progression of the scene and its characters take place. It was beautiful. DL: It is not a crew training thing. It is a filmmaking thing. EN: The advisors always said it’s all about the process. And I was like, Shit, what is the process? I remember going through and working with all the directors and hearing what they were being told from the advisors. Now that I am back on working sets, I am much more calm as a camera assistant because I realize it’s all about the story. Sure, my role is important, but it’s so much about the story that I am not going to stress about the minute things. DL: Ilyse McKimmie, who runs the program, she said our motto is “Fail Better.” I am so used to seeing myself and my peers sitting on stuff and not releasing it out in the world because it is not perfect,

it’s not ready, yadda yadda. You can only get to a certain point before you must take the risk. You don’t need the perfect environment. You just need a compelling story. As complicated as we like to think filmmaking is, we are kind of fooling ourselves. EN: Caleb Deschanel was on set with us, and we noticed the framing of the scene through the camera lens. It exposed a bit of the ceiling, and it was a big deal to a few of us. He was like, “So what?” He said that he can barely see it and we may be the only ones who know it’s there. But the important thing is this: the scene going on. Focus on that. CF: So, do y’all work together a lot outside of the Sundance Labs? DL: We do. CF: Nashville obviously has the video/ commercial world down. Many people in that world want to—or are attempting to—also make movies. What’s the difference between the two worlds, and can they be blended? DL: We have an insanely talented crew base, fantastic line producers, but few initiators of content. So a true producer, who’s like, “I have a kernel of an idea; I’m going to go raise money; I’m going go get a great director attached to it; I’m going to get a script made out of it; we’re going to get great actors; and you put it together and execute it here” are very limited here. We’re waiting on the initiators of content. So make your movie, readers! EN: I feel like Nashville is getting to a spot where it recognizes independent filmmaking. DL: As someone who participates in the Tennessee Film Night at the Nashville Film Festival, I will say the quality of short films, from the first year I did it to the last year, is getting stronger and stronger. EN: There’s more people moving here, there are filmmakers here now that I don’t even know yet, and there’s definitely more people that are wanting to shoot their own stuff—and are actually doing it. And there are more movies coming here. DL: Yeah, we’ll have Nashville, the TV

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show, Still the King [CMT’s first scripted TV show], and two features all happening this year. And I’m also trying to bring one here as well. CF: What else are y’all working on now? DL: We just finished, well, almost finished, a movie called Triumph. I think that has one more week in November. EN: I’m going to LA to work on a reality show. It’s union now, which will be awesome, because I’ll get to keep my insurance . . . It would be nice if Nashville got more union stuff. DL: You can always tell which states get the best incentives, because you’ll always get offers. “Oh yeah, we’re shooting in, you know, New Mexico, shooting in Georgia, shooting in Arizona.” So shooting more work here would be great. CF: Was Nashville a destination to do the crew work you are currently doing? EN: Well, for me, it was closest to home and my parents weren’t ready for me to go anywhere farther. DL: Yeah, and what’s fun is you are changing Nashville little by little, to suit your dream, which is the way a city should be. So maybe Nashville wasn’t a film city when you got here, but little by little, you’re making it your city. And that’s what’s exciting about the filmmakers here. People are moving here from LA or NY, and they are choosing to move here. And by making films and hopefully selling them, then that’s how Nashville becomes a film city.

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EN: You get a sense that everyone is so surprised when they come to Nashville and they’re like, “Holy crap! There’s tons of talent here!” DL: I’ve worked in twelve states, and as an AD who has to push and motivate and crack a whip, Nashville crews are the best. I don’t know if it’s the work ethic, or if people are happy to have stuff, but it is like, hilarious how strong they are. They have the best attitude. EN: How did you start in this business? DL: Well, I came in the back door; I was a producer/manager. How about you? Were you like, “Camera is my thing?” EN: I figured it out after my first job as a PA [production assistant] on a reality show when I was eighteen. I was like, “Yep, camera. I want to do camera.” DL: And that’s a blessing. It took me a lot longer to navigate. Because even to this day I feel like I’m a crew member as a means to an end of being a filmmaker. It’s funny how we navigate. CF: As a producer, do you ever worry about typecasting people? DL: For the stuff that I make and the actors that I love working with, it’s fun that we’re completely different. So, my favorite people in the world, Travis Nicholson [cocreator of CMT’s Still the King] and Marin Miller [Blue Like Jazz, “Lower Broads”]—I’ve done three things with Travis, and he’s been a conservative, Christian, uptight husband; he’s been a white rapper; and he’s been a re-

pressed thirty-year-old still living at home. And then Marin has been across the board: she’s been a drunken bachelorette, the conservative, repressed wife . . . so I think, part of the fun of the Nashville community is to not typecast at all. Let’s go against type and find something. A little more dangerous. CF: Let’s chat tech, Erin. What do love to shoot on? EN: I love using the Alexa, Amira, or that whole line of cameras. CF: Tell me about your “Captain’s Log.” EN: I got this idea: both of my grandparents have Alzheimer’s, and I got this idea, where, you know, when I get older, I want to remember my life and the people in it and the memories I’ve had. And I was like, What better way to do it than to get a camera? And then I was like, Okay, but what kind of camera? I want something small enough to put in my pocket and be discreet about it. I started looking at the GoPros, and I had to get the Hero4, the one that shoots 4k, because I am a filmmaker and I want to get those cool shots. Maybe I want to use it on a film I shoot later down the line and get some motion. I just started doing this video journal where I will pretty much document almost every day if not every other day, and I always start off by saying, “Captain’s Log,” and I will tell the date and time. CF: Drew. What is always on your person or how do you compete with her Captain’s Log? DL: I’ve been, for the first time in my life, writing down every single movie idea into a journal and forcing myself to at least do an outline for each one. CF: Anything else? EN: We should start a lab here. DL: Yeah! EN: We could start a small one. Bring in advisors. It makes perfect sense. DL: We could do it in the Smoky Mountains. EN: OMG. I just went there and I cried the entire time I was there. It’s so beautiful. DL: We can call it the Native Institute Labs. EN: Done.

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ANIMAL OF THE MONTH

Written by Cooper Breeden*

THE HELLBENDER Tennessee is unrivaled in the world when it comes to abundance and diversity of salamanders. This is especially true in the southern Appalachian region, where the Smokies of Tennessee and North Carolina are dubbed the Salamander Capital of the World. However, salamanders are common throughout the state, and among the most distinguished and enigmatic of the salamanders is the eastern hellbender. As if salamanders weren’t cartoonish enough in appearance, the hellbender enhances the caricature. It has the ﬂabby, wrinkled body of a Shar Pei and the disproportionately ﬂat head and beady eyes of a hand puppet. Despite this, the hues of its skin allow it to blend in with the rocky stream bottoms where it lives, rendering it invisible. The hellbender—or snot otter, as it is sometimes called—is in the Cryptobranchoidea (or giant salamander) family and is the largest species on this side of the world, averaging from one to two feet in length. The only other members of this family live in Japan and China. Hellbenders are entirely aquatic and can be found in clean and quick-moving streams with rocky bottoms from New York to Indiana to northern Alabama. At one point, th were abundant in the river systems of Middle Tennessee, they

but now the only healthy populations are in a few pristine rivers in East Tennessee. As you’re reading this, many male hellbenders in Tennessee are standing guard on a fresh clutch of eggs. Beginning in the fall, the male makes a nest beneath flat rocks or other debris in the river bottom and lures in females to lay their eggs, which he then fertilizes. The males then stick around and guard the nest from predators until the eggs hatch. The larvae—baby salamanders are referred to as larvae—have feathery looking gills behind their head until they mature, a common trait among salamanders. The hellbender has lungs, but it uses them for buoyancy rather than breathing. To get oxygen, it breathes through its specially adapted, wrinkly skin—a process known as cutaneous respiration. Hellbenders stay out of sight during the daytime and come out at night to hunt crayfish, insects, fish, worms, and even other hellbenders. Outside of the breeding season, the hellbender lives a solitary life, and an encounter with another hellbender could be a violent one. If the rival hellbender is small enough, it could mean a hearty midnight snack for the defending giant.

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