NATIVE | MARCH 2017 | NASHVILLE, TN

MARCH

2017

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BLACKFOOT GYPSIES

ALBUM RELEASE SHOW AT LITTLE HARPETH BREWERY ON APRIL 14TH - 8PM

RESPECT THE UNEXPECTED. VISIT PLOWBOYRECORDS.COM FOR NEW RELEASES 8 / // / / / / / / / / / / / / /////

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OUR ARTISTS: BLACKFOOT GYPSIES • BOBBY BARE • PAUL BURCH • BUZZ CASON • CHEETAH CHROME • CHUCK MEAD • THE FAUNTLEROYS • THE GHOST WOLVES • JD WILKES & THE DIRTDAUBERS • JIM ED BROWN • THE KENTUCKY HEADHUNTERS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS MARCH 2017

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24 68

28 48 THE GOODS

19 Beer from Here 20 Cocktail of the Month 24 Master Platers 77 You Oughta Know 81 Animal of the Month

FEATURES 28 Brandon Donahue 38 Peter Frampton 48 Ron Gallo 58 The Porch and East Side Story 68 Sarah Bandy

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Riverside # N AT IVE N ASH VI LLEVilliage - 1400 McGavock Pike - d o s e n a s h v i l l e . c o m

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president, founder:

publisher, founder:

ANGELIQUE PITTMAN JON PITTMAN

creative director:

MACKENZIE MOORE

managing editor:

CHARLIE HICKERSON DARCIE CLEMEN

art director:

COURTNEY SPENCER

community relations manager:

JOE CLEMONS

copy editor:

community representatives:

production:

POLLY RADFORD KELSEY FERGUSON

GUSTI ESCALANTE

writers:

photographers:

CAT ACREE CHARLIE HICKERSON CHRIS PARTON CHLOE STILLWELL COOPER BREEDEN JEN McDONALD DANIELLE ATKINS SARAH B. GILLIAM AUSTIN LORD DYLAN REYES CHRISTOPHER MORLEY ANDREA BEHRENDS

marketing interns:

CAMILLE FAULKNER LAUREL SORENSON

founding team:

founder, brand director:

DAVE PITTMAN

founder:

CAYLA MACKEY

for all inquiries:

MACKENZIE MOORE JOSHUA SIRCHIO TAYLOR RABOIN

HELLO@NATIVE.IS

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COFFEE BREAKFAST LUNCH OPEN DAILY 7AM-4PM

700 FATHERLAND ST. 615.770.7097 SKYBLUECOFFEE.COM E S TA B L I S H E D 2 0 1 0 16 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / //////

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IRISH COFFEE

by Ben Clemons of No. 308 photo by j e n m c don a l d

I lived in an Irish neighborhood in Queens for many years. I learned firsthand which “Irish-themed” drinks were legit and which were extremely offensive. Long story short, pretty much just whiskey is legit. Anyway, one of my favorite things to drink is an Irish coffee. This recipe comes straight from sitting at the Buena Vista in San Francisco. In my opinion, that bar is the home of the perfect Irish coffee.

whipped cream *Soft-peakt hea vy cream

1 pin ar 1/4 cup powdered sug 1 tsp vanilla extract am, sugar, and Beat together the cre ks form. pea t sof il vanilla unt

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THE GOODS 2 sugar cubes 2 oz Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey French roast coffee soft-peak whipped cream* FAdd the sugar cubes and whiskey to a pilsner glass. Stir to dissolve the sugar.

FAdd the coffee, leaving about 1 inch of room at the top of the glass. Top with the whipped cream.

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MASTER PLATERS

BAKED BEANS ON TOAST WITH W HIPPED P ORK FAT

B Y TO M B AY L E S S & C O DY B AG L E Y O F U R B A N C O W B OY P U B L I C H O U S E PHO TOS BY DAN IELLE AT KIN S

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THE GOODS FOR THE BEANS: 1 quart dried navy beans 3 tbsp lard 3 sweet onions, diced 10 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 2 jalapeĂąos, seeds removed, diced 2 poblano peppers, diced 8 oz tomato paste 2 Budweiser beers 1 cup black coffee 1 quart pork or chicken stock 8 oz molasses 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 bay leaves FOR THE WHIPPED LARD: 1 cup cold, rendered lard 1 tbsp crushed dried rosemary 1 tsp kosher salt FOR THE TOAST: 1 tbsp lard 1 one-inch-thick slice sourdough bread (we like Dozen Bakery) 1 clove garlic flaky sea salt

DIRECTIONS METHOD FOR THE BEANS: F Soak the dried beans overnight in 3 quarts of cold water. Drain the beans.

Add the beans to a large pot with enough water to cover them by an inch.

Cook the beans over low heat, stirring often, until just barely done. Drain the beans and set aside.

F Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. In a Dutch oven over low heat, combine the lard, onions, garlic, jalapenos, and poblanos. Sweat the vegetables until soft and translucent. Add the tomato paste and increase the heat to medium.

Caramelize the tomato paste until it turns dark red, stirring often with a rubber spatula. Add the beer, coffee, stock, molasses, brown sugar, and bay leaves, stir to combine, and bring to a simmer. Add enough cooked beans to the sauce so that it looks just barely soupy. Stir and transfer to the oven, uncovered. Bake for 8 hours. This allows the flavors to mature and the sauce to thicken without overcooking the beans.

Remove the bay leaves and season with salt to taste.

METHOD FOR THE WHIPPED LARD: F Add the lard, dried rosemary, and salt to a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Whip on high speed until aerated. The lard should resemble buttercream frosting.

METHOD FOR THE TOAST: F Melt the lard in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Add the bread and cook until deeply caramelized on one side. Remove the bread and rub the cooked side with the raw garlic and sprinkle with salt. Cut the bread in half.

ASSEMBLY: F Place one half of the bread, cooked side down, and add a generous helping of beans on top. Make a little well in the beans with the back of a spoon and add a dollop of whipped pork fat. Sprinkle with flaky salt and crushed dried rosemary. Add the other half of the bread on the side, cooked side up.

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B A S K E T B A L L S , H U B C A P S , L I Q U O R B O T T L E S , A N D

Y O U R

P R E C O N C E I V E D N O T I O N S R A C E FA I R F O R

A B O U T

A R E

A L L

G A M E A RT I S T

B R A N D O N D O N A H U E

B Y

C A T

A C R E E

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P H O T O S

B Y

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G I L L I A M

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NASHVILLE-BASED ARTIST Brandon Donahue street signs are scattered throughout the room, may be best known for his mandala-like basketball tucked between cardboard boxes full of spray paint.

Donahue may identify as an object maker now, arrangements, or “ballflowers.” Most Nashville natives have probably seen his work without realizing but his career began with paint, specifically airit, from murals on East Nashville garages to the brushing. Born and raised in South Memphis, Doenormous Gibson guitar mural downtown (a con- nahue picked up airbrushing at age thirteen, a trade tribution to the Nashville Walls Project). But for all passed on from an ex-gang member and neighborhis public art and his roots in painting, Donahue de- hood institution known as Fuma. He owned a shop that sold incense and airbrushed T-shirts, and he’d scribes himself first as an object maker.

Basketballs, footballs, hubcaps, liquor bottles, burn you CDs for cheap. Donahue calls him his dominoes, chicken bones, hair clippings from a mentor, a teacher of common sense, “kind of a revobarbershop floor—Donahue samples every kind of lutionary.”

“He wasn’t like a popular, citywide [artist],” Doblack stereotype you could throw at him. He’s owning, dismantling, rearranging, and repackaging them. nahue says. “He was a gem. You had to dig for him.

“I love things that are ready made,” Donahue says. He didn’t give out his number to everyone, but he “It already has its own language, and I can either add taught me . . . That was my hustle: instead of selling drugs or doing other kinds of crap, I learned how to or take away from it.”

It’s a perspective similar to object-based work take art and make a little profit.”

Not only that, but it was a way for Donahue to

by New York artist David Hammons, who erected three-story-high basketball hoops in 1980s Brook- learn to speak to the public, a particularly useful lyn. When the language of your identity is so often outlet for a young man with a speech impediment, formed by the objects that stereotype you, it’s pow- which he mimics with a rush of chopped syllables. It erful to use those objects to your own end. It also wasn’t until college, when Donahue studied abroad may be one of the quickest ways to communicate in Italy and was introduced to tai chi, that the stammer went away. But as a young person, he says, “I with an intended audience.

“So for example, the basketballs,” Donahue ex- felt blessed to be able to have art, because I didn’t plains. “When I find them, they’re dirty, they’re have to speak to anyone. I could just draw someused. Millions of hands have touched them al- thing.”

By eleventh grade—at which point he had moved ready—just the history of them, it’s already there . . . to Nashville with his mom and brother—Donahue Some people talk to animals, I talk to objects.”

And through that conversation, he’s document- was “on a roll,” airbrushing T-shirts and backpacks ing culture, symbols, iconography, and habits, “a for high school friends. “Buddies were the public,” set of things to be passed down from generation to he says. “I looked at it as though they were walking generation.” He emphasizes: “Documenting, while advertisements, billboards.”

This relationship with public art is clearly an imI’m here on earth.”

We’re speaking in Donahue’s studio, located just portant one for Donahue, who emphasizes the disoff Lebanon Pike on the backside of a cable installa- tinction between street art and graffiti. He’s done tion company that has “PRINTIN” in big pink neon, both, though he’s recently stopped doing graffiti. the G unlit. His studio is temporarily functioning “Street art is the child of graffiti and outdoor mural as his home (that he shares with his Maine Coon, painting—sign painting as well,” he explains. “GrafSmokey), which isn’t a bad setup; its secluded en- fiti is originally an element of late ’70s, early ’80s trance and parking lot backyard are surprisingly hip-hop culture, used as a voice of the disenfranchised.” Graffiti is usually illegal; street art is compeaceful.

The studio has two main rooms. On the white missioned and legal.

He’s been airbrushing for sixteen years, but he walls of the living room hang older pieces next to unfinished work, including a cross-shaped soccer- didn’t take his art seriously until college. At eighball mandala. A broken television sits in the corner, teen, he attended Virginia Commonwealth Unispray-painted in rainbow colors with droplets that versity in Richmond for art and to run track. He dropped out for two years—“fell in love, worked, look like the screen melted in heat.

The adjacent workspace isn’t quite as brightly lit, almost had babies, could’ve had a bunch of babies”— and our voices rattle around the concrete walls. If then returned to school. It took him six years to get his basketball mandalas are flowers, then the seeds through Tennessee State University’s art program, are piled three or four high along one wall—deflat- followed by earning his MFA at UT Knoxville. He’s ed, busted balls of various colors and types. Altered been a professor at TSU for the last three years.

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“MILLIONS OF HANDS HAVE TOUCHED THEM ALREADY— JUST THE HISTORY OF THEM, IT’S ALREADY THERE.”

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It wasn’t until Donahue’s senior year of undergrad that he “I cut it open, and I found the inside of it to be, just void.” Laid began to incorporate scavenging into his work: scrap doors, flat, the ball took on a flower shape. “I connected a flower then orphaned hubcaps and discarded basketballs. It all goes budding, something becoming, blooming. I thought about back to his childhood, whether it’s the objects themselves or [how] as a child, you want to aspire to be something great, the act of acquiring them. If it’s trash that someone probably like a flower wants to grow toward the sun. You want to jump didn’t want, is it really stealing? “People just leave shit around, higher, dunk.” A basketball is a basketball is a basketball—unand I find that if someone leaves something, either it’s going til it’s not.

Donahue’s ballflowers are often described as “meticulously to get thrown away, or someone comes and does something great with it. Or not great, but just something,” he says. “I’m arranged,” and in a way, they are. And in a way, they’re not.

They’re held together with shoestrings. They’re sliced careattracted to stuff that’s just left behind.”

It was also in grad school that he began to play with vac- fully but arranged imperfectly. They are more organic this way, uum-forming objects, heating plastic to form molds around more like something out of nature. That’s intentional, and it’s dominoes, sneakers, and liquor bottles. An artist in residence because of his work’s intersection between hip-hop and folk at UTK, Josephine Halvorson, introduced him to an Israeli art.

“Everything was rhythm and rhyme, everything was, to an artist who was vacuum-forming bomber jackets as a commentary on feeling like being “shipped from one country to extent, hypermasculine,” Donahue says of hip-hop’s influanother.” So Donahue built his own vacuum-form machine, ence on his Memphis upbringing. “Take that and mesh it with a “bootleg-looking” device that seems half Mad Max and half folk art. I learned a lot of things secondhand but not the cormad scientist. The completed vacuum-formed work begs to rect way . . . I learned how to build stuff half-assed, but it still be touched, to be flipped around and checked to see if the worked. Folk art was where I took that notion of ‘things work even though they’re not flush.’ If it’s a quarter inch off, to me dominoes are still stuck in the plastic.

At the moment, Donahue’s basketball blooms are stacked that was a black aesthetic . . . Put some superglue on that shit, on top of each other. Now he plops them on the floor, though turn it sideways. It’s fine, putting towels under the door to in an exhibition they’d be hung vertically against a wall. But stop a [draft] as opposed to getting a door that fits. My work here they look like lotus flowers blooming up from the con- is that way.”

Donahue’s newest works incorporate pieces of wood he colcrete floor, or like rubber alien spores. Some are still covered in mud, others have names written in Sharpie. Some have lected after the Gatlinburg fire while attending a residency at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in January. There, he strange designs on them, like plaid or a Bugs Bunny pattern.

He describes the process of dismantling that first basket- assembled his first self-portrait in years by painting his image, ball, questioning the physics of it, wondering about its interior. placing it in different desolate scenes around the burned-out

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town, and photographing it. He also borrowed relief ink from printmakers attending the residency, slathered it on a basketball, and dribbled crossovers onto a sheet of paper, another homage to David Hammons.

His most striking new piece features five Gatlinburg logs of descending height, each with a basketball affixed on top, with real hair transforming the balls into faces. It’s Donahue’s Starting Five. Each player has his own identity, his own personality. Hair glued on a Nike symbol (“Hair Nike!” Donahue quips) appears like an intimidating eyebrow.

Although Donahue connects the Gatlinburg-found wood to the hardwood basketball floor, Starting Five initially began as an exploration of black hair and the communal setting of the barbershop. Donahue shows me a plastic bin full of a week’s worth of clippings, collected by his friend Big Keith, a barber at Mohawkz in Antioch (Big Keith even gave Donahue his first wall to paint a mural, when Donahue was still in high school).

Ultimately, each work Donahue creates adds a footnote to an object we already know. But as communal as these questions of identity are, they’re also personal. If Donahue’s hoping to comment on how young black males too often aspire to the NBA, he also acknowledges that he still dreams about being Michael Jordan. Donahue frequently references the concept of double consciousness as explored by W. E. B. Du Bois, of being two things at once: “I’m conscious of myself as a black man and as a man.” And with multiple selves, contradictions are inevitable.

But conclusions aren’t necessary here. What Donahue hopes is for his audience to look again, to reconsider something they thought they already knew. “You can’t dribble it anymore, so you’re forced to work your brain and dissect: What is it then? How can I apply this to what I know? That’s all I want.”

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PETER

FRAMPTON HIS

DISCUSSES ADOPTED

HOME

GOING

NASHVILLE, ACOUSTIC, THE

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( I N E V I TA B LY )

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REVAMPING CULTURAL TOUCHSTONES with the house band during intermission, which IS A TRICKY THING. At best, it enriches art really blew Frampton’s mind: “Where else in the that’s already crucial to millions of people’s lives. world at a hockey game do you see Vince Gill get At worst, it messes with something that was per- up and take the back seat?”).

It’s indicative of what Frampton loves most fectly fine in the first place. Nobody wants to see Anakin Skywalker superimposed into Return of the about Nashville, a city that he’s proud to call his Jedi, nobody wants Queen without Freddie Mer- home. “The community here is so great and supcury. In Southern parlance: if it ain’t broke, don’t portive. People really do come to other people’s [aid] here . . . Certain places you just feel more fix it.

That’s why the thought of Peter Frampton re- comfortable than other places, and this has the recording some of his most beloved work, includ- big C for comfort.” He tells me about his time ing tracks from Frampton Comes Alive!, is poten- here, his admiration of Django Reinhardt, and yes, tially cause for concern. The eight-times platinum, the talk box, via phone from his Music Row condo decade-defining live album—the album that was, on a weirdly warm February morning. as Wayne Campbell joked, “issued” throughout the suburbs and mailed with samples of Tide— You finally made the full-time move to Nashville in doesn’t exactly beg for revision. For fans that 2011 . . . As someone who has been involved in the grew up with the record, the thought of a talk- Nashville community—you even played Mayor box-less, acoustic version of “Do You Feel Like Barry’s first State of Metro address, the subject of which was growth with intention—what do you We Do” might seem downright blasphemous.

But that’s exactly what Frampton did on last think about Nashville’s seemingly never-ending year’s Acoustic Classics. The album reimagines the growth and national exposure? rock icon’s staples as sparse, jazz-tinged stan- I’m not going to say we build a wall [laughs]. I dards that wouldn’t sound out of place in a living would prefer that it doesn’t get too big too quick . room or on a front porch (think recording a demo . . I love Atlanta, but you saw what happened there. with your buddies over a long weekend). And People say we don’t want it to turn into Nashlanta. the album’s intimate feeling carries over to Raw: There’s nothing you can do about it . . . It’s no An Acoustic Tour, which will make its way to the longer a secret, not that it has been, anyway. It Schermerhorn Symphony Center later this month. just seems Nashville’s time for people to graviThere’s no triple-pickup black Les Paul, no white tate toward here. I’ll do whatever I can to help . bell-bottoms, and no talk box stage banter. Just . . I’ve spoken with Megan, Mayor Barry, on quite Frampton and Music Row mainstay Gordon Ken- a few different occasions. We’ve emailed and evnedy—who’s penned hits for Eric Clapton, Ricky erything, about Nashville and the country in genSkaggs, and Garth Brooks—swapping solos and eral. I applaud her. She’s wonderful. She’s done so much already. [It’s] a continuation of the last singing honest songs.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Frampton mayor, who was also great. Nashville’s very lucky tapped Kennedy to be his right-hand man on to have her, I think. the tour, considering the English expat has lived in Nashville for the past six years. However, it’s I think that a lot of our readers might not be aware hardly Frampton’s first stint in the city: he lived that you’re an avid Django Reinhardt fan. That here for about half of the ’90s, and he’s made makes sense, because I can hear hints of Django, countless trips to record with friends like Ken- or even somebody like Al Di Meola, in your playing nedy and Vince Gill, who recently took Frampton on Acoustic Classics. Was Django on your mind to his first Preds game (Gill sang backing vocals as you were recording and reworking these new

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songs?

Django’s always been on my mind. He’s always with me.

I think I have every recording he’s ever made, but then every now and again, someone sends me something [and says], “Have you got this?” I’m close. It started when my father brought our first record player, the one where you lift the top and you lift the arm up, and you put the arms on it. It’ll play like ten albums, with a volume control that is the On/Off and one sound control. It was a Dansette in England, I don’t know what the equivalent is [in the United States]. Everybody got those when they came out.

Anyway, my Dad brought home our first record player. For Christmas, I got The Shadows’ first album. Hank Marvin was the lead guitarist of The Shadows, he’s a dear friend now. They were like the instrumental Beatles, just before The Beatles, like ’59 or ’60, something like that. So I was just gung ho, I learned every lick. I can still play it, all the early Shadows tunes. Then when I would take that album off, my Dad would reach for the other album that we had—we had two [laughs]. It was what my mother and he, their kind of music, that they danced to during the war, pre-war, after the war, whatever. It was Hot Club de France, which was Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Django’s brother [Joseph Reinhardt], a bass player, and a drummer.

He put this music on, and I couldn’t get out of the room quick enough. This was old, fuddy-duddy jazz. I’m into rock guitar now. I’m eight years old, nine years old. Each time this would happen, it would play over and over again. I’d take the album off.

After about a couple of times, I decided I would stay in the room and listen. That’s when it clicked. I went, “Holy crap. This guy is incredible.”

More than anything else, Django has been the [soundtrack] to my life. I go through phases where I reopen the thesis [laughs], and I go back in with today’s technology. I’ll take a solo, or I’ll take a melody part that is just unbelievable and beautiful and fantastically played.

I will just put it into this thing called Amazing Slow Downer—that’s what it’s called. I’ll slow him down, just like I used to in the old days, slow down the albums. The thirty-three and a third you could put on sixteen, and that would be an octave lower, but slower. There was method to our madness back then too. But that’s it. Yes, Django has always been an incredible inspiration to me. Inspira-

tion—I chose someone that I will never be as good as, because I don’t think there’s very many people on this earth that have been or maybe will be.

That makes sense that he had always been with you, though, because when I first heard Acoustic Classics, I thought it was interesting because Humble Pie, obviously, had acoustic songs on Town and Country [1969], and you did an acoustic set on the accompanying tour when no one else was really doing acoustic stuff. I wanted to know: Do you feel like you’re coming full circle in this odd way since you’re now on another acoustic tour?

It’s just part of what I do, and I never incorporated it into the live playing before. Like as you said, with Humble Pie we started off coming out and doing two or three acoustic numbers when we first came to America.

But it’s something that I’ve always done [on my own]. I write mainly on acoustic, sometimes on electric, sometimes on a keyboard . . . When I made Acoustic Classics it was just an idea to, rather than redo all my songs that people really knew well the same way—I never want to repeat myself that way—[I’d instead] go back and take those songs and reverse engineer them back to when I’d just written them. Where forty years later on stage, they’ve taken on a whole different life of their own.

When I went into the studio to cut songs that I’d played over and over again with the band, I started with one acoustic [guitar] and came into the control room, thought I’d done a great job. Then listened and went, “No, this isn’t what I want.” [It sounded] like me with the faders of the band down. It [wasn’t] the intimate, just-finished-the-song performance that even I would get myself when I would be playing it for the first time in its entirety. So I wanted to go back and try again and make it much more intimate, as if you had come round, we’re having coffee, and I said, “Oh, I’d really like to play you a song I wrote last night.” Hopefully you’d say yes [to hearing it], and I could play it to you [laughs].

I would be a little nervous, I would be very passionately involved with the song, as it was just written. It would be a completely different performance of say, “Show Me the Way,” or “Lines on My Face,” or “All I Want to Be,” than you would see me do live with the band. That’s what I wanted. I feel I achieved that.

“WHAT I’VE GOT IN MY HAND IS ALL I’VE GOT TO MAKE IT WORK: ONE GUITAR.”

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I read somewhere that you called it “playing without a net.” It’s a very naked thing. Were you nervous that maybe people wouldn’t like the way that you reworked these iconic songs that they had all these memories to?

Well yes, actually. That’s another reason I didn’t want to do it for so long, I think, was I just didn’t know whether people would want to hear it this way. So yes, I was nervous. I was nervous until I was on stage for thirty or forty seconds.

Then I looked up, and everyone was sitting forward with a big smile on their face. I went, “Oh, I think I’ve done the right thing.” Again, when I meet the people afterward that have chosen to come back, whatever, I ask, “What did you think?” They say, “We’re not sure which one we like better.” They’re 180 degrees different, the electric show with the band and the acoustic show, obviously. They said, “You’ve got to see both.” That’s what I feel. I’ve found another outlet live for what I do that I really enjoy, but it’s completely different.

There is no net, you’re right. There’s no feedback from my Les Paul and my ten thousand watts of Marshall amplifiers.

What I’ve got in my hand is all I’ve got to make it work: one guitar. Obviously I have Gordon Kennedy, my dear writing partner for seventeen years . . . He comes out and joins me so we can both play some lead guitar and have a rhythm playing. That’s as big as the band gets.

I did notice, though, that even on the Acoustic Classics version of “Show Me the Way,” you include the talk box.

I know [sighs].

It’s an effect that’s obviously become synonymous with your name. Do you ever get tired of the association?

I don’t get tired of the association . . . The reason it was so successful for me is that I only use it on a couple of songs. A little bit goes a long way for me [laughs]. It’s such a powerful effect for $150, which I didn’t pay. I got given one in the beginning. 150 bucks, I think it was. That’s a pretty cheap gadget that changed my career by now being asso-

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ciated with this. Along with Joe Walsh, who is a dear friend, and was the first guy to have what I call the iconic solo on “Rocky Mountain Way,” that talk-box solo—it was fantastic. He’s tremendous.

We’ve spoken as the guardians of the talk box.

What advice would you give to young songwriters—particularly the swaths of young songwriters living in Nashville— looking to write the next “Baby, I Love Your Way,” or some huge hit like that?

Well, the thing is that I have never been able to sit down and say, “Today I’m going to write a hit song.” They turn out that way or they don’t [laughs] . . .

There are format songs that can be written that way. There are specific writers that don’t seem to have a problem with repeating themselves, and it’s the same three chords and it’s that high melody for the chorus. That’s the last thing I’m interested in. It’s something that moves me first—I’m not writing it for anybody other than me. Every time I sit down to play, it’s a totally selfish thing. If I like it, and I come up with a new idea, then I’m going to finish it.

You’d be amazed at the amount of stuff I throw away. I mean, I sit down with my iPhone or my digital recorder— I’ve got one in every room. I pick up a guitar or sit down at the piano, and I record everything I play. Then at the end of the day I throw away 99 percent of it, and maybe have one little riff [where I say], “Oh, that’ll be something.” You just can’t stop it, stop writing, because it’s not like riding a bicycle . . . I need to constantly keep pushing myself to find something different. [While writing, I’ll say], “I’ve done that. I did that. No, not that chord with that chord, no. Oh, I’ve never done that chord. Wow. You get a little goosebumps on that.” Then you go, “This is one I’m going to finish right now.” That’s what I’m looking for all the time: the one that gives me goosebumps.

Acoustic Classics is available now, and Raw: An Acoustic Tour is coming to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center March 26.

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RON GALLO SETS OUT TO CHANGE THE WORLD WITH HIS GARAGE ROCK MANIFESTO, H E A V Y M E TA

B Y

C H R I S

PA R T O N

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P H O T O S

B Y

D Y L A N

R E Y E S

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IT’S A DREARY FEBRUARY AFTERNOON, and most of the city is still hungover from the previous night’s Super Bowl orgy of beer commercials and disposable violence. But inside the confines of East Nashville’s Family Wash, transplanted punk revivalist Ron Gallo is content and bright-eyed.

Munching a muffin and sipping from a travel mug, he watches Gallatin Road reluctantly go about its business, a paperback copy of Autobiography of a Yogi within easy reach.

Just a few years ago, this scene would have been much different.

It would have taken place in Philadelphia, and Gallo would be far from content, pissed off and feeling hopeless about the sorry state of his life. But a crisis, a move to Nashville, and a miracle transformation have changed all that.

In Heavy Meta—his debut album for New West Records—Gallo channels the rage and wisdom of his journey into a modernphilosophy version of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, a musical manifesto that should be digitally nailed to every Facebook wall in

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existence.

Aggressive, brash, and unapologetic, but also tempered by hope and a splash of dark humor, Heavy Meta is a punk record in the truest sense: a slap across the face of society, a mosh-pitting release of frustration, and then a hug afterward. And back at Family Wash, Gallo explains that the hug has become the real focus for him—even when he was screaming tough love at drunk tourists on Broadway in the hit-and-run video for his first single, “Please Yourself.”

“I cover a lot of different topics on the record, but if I had to pick one thing to inspire people, it’s an idea of self-empowerment,” he says, tussling his mop of curly hair and glancing at the peaceful face on his book’s cover. “Realizing their limitless value and to stop giving the outside world the power.”

Autobiography of a Yogi is famously what led The Beatles’ George Harrison to explore Indian culture, and it also helped bring meditation and yoga to the West.

But right now it’s only reaffirming the compassion Gallo discovered

“A LOT OF THE RECORD COMES FROM ME JUST ASKING MYSELF WHY .”

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on his own.

As he explains it, each of us has “infinite power” to transform our lives and make the world a better place, but we avoid examining ourselves, afraid of what we might find. Instead, we retreat into distractions like work, shopping, building online personas, and self-medicating with drugs or alcohol. That’s what he did for twenty-seven years, he says, but when he finally gave up running from himself, everything changed.

“I’m all about going within,” he says. “A lot of the record comes from me just asking myself why [and] trying to get to the root of everything. If you look at the world around us, I think it’s time to start taking some personal responsibility. There’s a lot of things going on right now that people are really unhappy about, but nobody wants to do the work of turning inward and getting themselves right. It’s just a lot of finger-pointing and a lot of noise.”

Over eleven tracks, Heavy Meta gathers that noise and throws it back at the collective “us,” hoping to deliver a serious message of brokenness the only way it might cut through—by being even louder.

The guerilla-style video for the lead single, “Please Yourself,” is a prime example.

Commandeering the intersection of Lower Broadway and Fourth Avenue on a busy November night, Gallo’s three-piece band plugs in and unleashes a calling to rise up out of the digital-consumer muck, but it falls on deaf ears. As the video ends, two bachelorettes prance up and snap a selfie in front of the band, oblivious to the irony and highlighting the difficulty in Gallo’s task.

“It’s brutal,” he admits. “I think until you’ve done it, it seems impossible. It’s like, ‘Feeling down? Take some pills. Having a problem? Go on the Internet and put it out there.’ This is a society of keeping things at bay, dealing with symptoms, temporary relief, and instant gratification.

That’s why I didn’t do it for myself for the longest time.”

Gallo’s background is centered in South Jersey and Philly, a middle-class kid chasing rock ‘n’ roll dreams. He found some initial success with the Americana collec-

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tive Toy Soldiers, but their momentum soon stalled. At the same time, the girl he loved was spiraling into depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, and the world they inhabited became too dark to bear. She moved to South America and began studying with local shamans, then experienced what can only be described as enlightenment. Most of the songs on Heavy Meta were inspired by her transition.

“We were completely out of communication for seven months and then she resurfaced and we started talking, and a lot of this stuff came from our conversations,” he says. “Being able to witness someone that was this ‘thing,’ and then seeing them as the complete opposite, that was mind-blowing for me and it got me questioning my own self. It was literally proof that any person has the ability to completely become whatever they want to be.

“For me it was like, Well, maybe everything I think about myself and the world is not 100 percent true. Let’s start there and work our way backward.”

Gallo began changing his life. He stopped partying, backed away from social media, and started living in the present. And to his surprise, it worked.

The couple reunited and he really did feel better, but it came with a price—a newfound loathing for the trappings of the modern world.

The songs on Heavy Meta are Gallo’s attempt to share what he learned and to shake listeners out of the haze he escaped. “Why Do You Have Kids” is aimed at careless parents. “Kill the Medicine Man” rails against advertising and escapism. And “All the Punks Are Domesticated” laments the garbageization of food, thought, and public discourse, along with the complete lack of opposition to it. All are aggressive, bold, and wide-eyed, unflinching in the assertion that we are the root of the world’s ills. It might sound harsh at first, but it’s ultimately meant to help.

“To begin the process, I do think people need a rattle,” Gallo says. “They need to be shook up a bit . . . I needed

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“I’m trying to counteract that.”

But after you push all that political noise and through the initial change, getting caught up in the he goes on, the anger sub- fakeness and the Internet. sides. Most of these songs People are getting high were written about three on notifications—and I’m years ago, and Gallo has completely guilty of it since moved further along too—but you don’t have to save the world with his self-empowering path.

“I spent a lot of time a Facebook post. Everydoing the exact things I body thinks they’re going wrote about, just being to change the universe by pissed at people and be- making this witty Instaing pissed at the world gram.”

It takes courage to like, ‘What the fuck?!’” he says. “But that wasn’t re- stand up and say, “This ally a good way of looking whole thing is fucked up,” at it either. This last year but that’s just the beginespecially—long after the ning—the wake-up call. record was done—that’s According to Gallo, the when I started to recog- true message comes after nize the other side: love the alarm goes off: hope.

“I never like to say, ‘You and compassion and positivity, trying to understand are fucked up,’” he caupeople and how we’re all tions. “Because we’re in in the same boat. That’s this shit together, and I am really how you can make no different. I’m just trying to point stuff out. The change.”

“Please Yourself” is only hope is in people’s ability one minute and twenty- to change, and I’ve seen it three seconds long, and myself. The ability to belike the rest of Heavy Meta, come happy and put light owes an inspirational and goodness out into the debt to punks like The world. Everybody has that Stooges, Richard Hell, and power, it’s just that some The Clash. Post-Trump, it people get caught in the sounds utterly disgust- illness of being a human. ed with the state of the So it’s trying to chip away world—but it’s personal, at the bullshit and get to that good core. You gotta not political.

“I think people would start somewhere.” assume that I’m highly poHeavy Meta is available now. litical, but I’m almost anti- Gallo tours with Hurray for the political, which is kind Riff Raff throughout April and early May... of the point,” says Gallo.

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THE PORCH COFOUNDER SUSANNAH F E LT S A N D EAST SIDE STORYTELLIN’ FOUNDER CHUCK BEARD O N T H E S TAT E OF NASHVILLE L I T E R AT U R E

BY CHARLIE HICKERSON | PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

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WALKING INTO CHUCK BEARD’S ALL-LOCAL BOOKSTORE, East Side Story, can feel a bit like stepping into a Nashville version of Gertrude Stein’s Paris salon. At any moment, any Nashville author, musician, or artist—many of whom have participated in Beard’s semimonthly live reading/music event, East Side Storytellin’—may walk in to browse, book a slot at the next East Side Storytellin’, or simply shoot the shit.

Such is the case when I go down to the Woodland Street shop the day after Valentine’s. I’ve come to shoot the aforementioned shit with Beard and Susannah Felts, the cofounder of The Porch, a literary nonprofit dedicated to fostering the artistic and professional development of Nashville writers. It’s not long before Kendra DeColo, author of (the very good) My Dinner with Ron Jeremy, pops in and hangs with us for a while. Her visit reaffirms how special a place like East Side Story is: while you can walk into virtually any Five Points bar and talk to somebody about the genius of Gram Parsons or the idiosyncrasies of Fender Twin Reverbs, it’s rarer to find a spot that encourages discussion about literature and writing.

East Side Story and The Porch provide such opportunities, and both organizations are enjoying watershed moments right now. East Side Storytellin’ recently completed its one hundredth (and counting) event at The Post East, and The Porch is gearing up for Mercy & Magic, its third annual fundraiser, which will feature performances by and discussion between New York Times best-selling author Wally Lamb and Americana luminary Mary Gauthier. While both organizations have experienced success over the past few years, they need Nashville’s support to continue growing. I took an afternoon to ask Beard and Felts about the current state of Nashville writing and what’s needed to make literature even more prominent in Music City. *** You both work with organizations that aim to make literature and literature events more accessible instead of this snooty, high-art thing. As a city, do you feel like we’re doing better at bringing literature to the masses? Do we still have work to do? What are some of the big hurdles in doing that?

Chuck Beard: I think it’s getting better, just like with everything, the more exposure, the more inclusion, [the better] . . . We live in a day and age where—Bret [MacFadyen, cofounder of The IDEA Hatchery, which houses East Side Story] always says it over here—it’s easy to open up something and sell food or liquor. It’s harder to get people to slow down. That’s the whole art of writing and reading is slowing down and actually thinking. We’re

doing more of that these days, because of certain circumstances in the world, and Nashville is doing better and better as far as offering places to showcase people, their thoughts and ideas, their writing or reading, and hopefully it will continue to get better. I’m not saying it couldn’t [grow]—that it’s at its peak or anything—but like I said, hopefully we can do it as a community better and better.

Susannah Felts: There’s only room to grow, right? I think we’re doing a lot better in terms of the sheer number— the quantity of opportunities—for people who love books and literature or who are interested in the craft of writing to: (a) find other people that feel the same way, that are their counterparts, and (b) to experience that in a public setting. Maybe that’s the thing. I don’t know, I was thinking about what you first said about the highartness of literature and making it more accessible. My first thought is like, Do people think of literature that way? I do think there is something about the word literature that just sounds, ya know, fancy pants.

Yeah, I think some people do. The idea of a reading evokes images of cheese and wine sometimes.

Felts: Yeah, I guess it does. That’s something that I really bristle against and I want to tear down. In my mind it doesn’t at this point, just because I feel like I’ve been to so many [readings]. I’ve been going to East Side Storytellin’ and went to countless readings throughout my twenties in Chicago that were not that at all, that were taking place in dive bars and quirky bookstores. It was a very artsy, almost lowbrow sort of thing to do. I guess in my head, I don’t even come at it from that perspective, but I get that people do . . . I guess with all of the arts there’s that sense for some people—that that’s something that they can’t participate in or aspire to. I don’t want that to be the case for writing and for books and literature.

I saw Chuck Palahniuk read at the Southern Festival of Books four years ago, and it was this very cutesy, tonguein-cheek thing where he came out in a bathrobe and they threw beach balls around. It was fun, but I couldn’t help but wonder: Is this adding to the reading? Do you think that readings lose some of their importance when you put them in a more lowbrow situation?

Felts: Not if the work is treated as important and people are being appreciative and respectful of the [work]—if the work that’s being presented is good and it’s not being diminished in some way. I guess what you’re saying with the beach balls and whatnot could diminish the work. I would never want to do that. We have a reading this Sunday at Jackalope Taproom. It’s called Heartbreak

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Happy Hour, and we’ve done it for four years.

It’s basically a fiction storytelling show. We first did it at Stone Fox for two years, and then they closed down. Last year we had to scramble to choose another place, so we went to Jackalope.

It’s in a brewery, so it feels fun and casual and easygoing. The idea is still that you’re coming there to listen to people tell stories and read from their work. I don’t think that diminishes what they’re sharing.

Beard: I was at an art show, a visual art show, a couple years ago at a building off of Chestnut, before Wedgewood and Houston and all that stuff took off. One of the artists, she had a long day, and she was showing in this show and being featured. We were just talking candidly, and she was like, “I didn’t really want to come out tonight. I probably wouldn’t have come out tonight if I wasn’t showing.” It was just one of those ideas that stuck where it was like, if it’s not entertaining to the actual artist [there’s a problem]. It’s hard enough to get people out unless you’re selling beer or food in this day and time, regardless of the reading.

I’m not going to spend money just to go hear David Sedaris read from books that I’m just going to read eventually anyway—with the same words. It’s gotta be fun for them. There’s got to be some kind of entertaining aspect other than just somebody reading.

Do you think there’s a literary voice, an identity, shaping around the changing city? And if so, what are its defining characteristics?

Beard: There is a literary identity shaping up. I think it’s an abstract concept and identity in a nebulous form right now, and we won’t know how it turns out or what it turns into until years down the line, depending on how these artists grow and how the city decides to support and invest in it now and in the near future.

Whether it’s the events, or the books that are coming out, or Kendra [DeColo] who just came in, or Tiana [Clark], or Ciona [Rouse], or any of the people that are leading the way, these people are going to be nationwide names . . . I don’t want to say names, but it’s one of those things where Nashville is more than just one author. A lot of people that are creatives know that, so it’s a matter of spreading that word and getting people to appreciate the stuff.

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One thing I did notice in our coverage of local literature—and then when I talk to people about who they’re reading right now—is that Nashville’s lit scene seems pretty predominantly female.

Felts: How’s the gender breakdown for East Side Storytellin’?

Beard: Fifty-fifty on that, but I see what you’re saying as far as the female [writers here]. I think that that goes into the creative process. Not that everything is about where you are, or what time period you’re in, but definitely—whether it’s politics or anything else—the voice is going to be heard or needed to be heard from that perspective. Again, not that every woman writes about other women protagonists, but at least we’re getting notoriety from Tiana [Clark] and some of the other Nashville poets that are getting a lot of awards and worthy recognition.

They are speaking from a voice and a position that needs to be heard globally—and not just for Nashville. They’re doing a superb job at it, in my opinion. There’s also a layered thing where as far as racially, we need more diversity in the writing—at least for published stuff, not the stuff that’s going on in the workshops and stuff [which is already diverse] . . . Speaking as a white male, we need more diversity in published works from Nashville.

Felts: I would second that. I would say, “Hell, if Nashville gets to be known as the place that champions the female writer, I’m all for it.

That’s great.” I’m in that boat, I will go with it.

Do you guys feel that there are adequate places to have readings here, or do you feel like it’s the same spots like The Post over and over again?

Felts: I did want to speak to that . . . because the answer is no. I think decentralization can be a boon for literary culture in Nashville, in that it does force us to get out and pair and partner with other businesses and organizations and sort of attract their audiences and clientele through that cross-pollination. That can be a very useful thing. It can be a way to sort of sneak literature into people’s lives when they’re maybe not expecting it, or kind of [put] it in surprising places, which I think is pleasurable for people. I just simply like the idea of hold-

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ing hands, or joining forces, with some of the businesses and organizations in town whose work I admire.

[The Porch] dreams of having a physical space that is really a hub for not just readers, but for writers. So there might be some retail, there might be some books being sold or some other sort of writerly objects being sold, but really the purpose of that space is to create an environment where writers can mingle with other writers, come and maybe have work stations where they can work, check out or browse literary magazines, and attend readings. So it’s a space that when writers are coming through town—people from outside of Nashville—they’re like, “Oh, we can set up a reading there.” It would attract talent from other places and kind of put Nashville on the map more as a space that embraces literary culture. We’re really trying to figure out how that’s the next step for us.

Beard: There’s plenty of people with power or real estate in locations here, still even today, that do believe in the arts and are not just about the profit. It’s about combining those things—whether it’s changing a venue and working with different people or just getting the [funds]. You just never know when that one person who believes in what you’re doing, who has the money and power to invest in that, [will invest] and not necessarily want their name behind it . . . There are so many different businesses in town that have silent partners that you would never know about . . . It takes those kind of people. Otherwise, Susannah, [The Porch cofounder] Katie McDougall, myself, other people, we’re still going to find a way. We’re like the weeds in the crack that are going to come out and hopefully bloom into a flower.

The Porch’s Mercy & Magic will take place March 11 at Green Door Gourmet. East Side Storytellin’ #102 and #103 will take place on March 7 and March 21, respectively. Cheekwood in Bloom, a children’s edition of East Side Storytellin’, will take place April 8 at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art.

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New name, same great people and services!

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SARAH BANDY IS G E N E R A T I O N O F F E M I N I S T, YOUTH THROUGH HER WORK AND SOUTHERN GIRLS

INSPIRING A ANTI-RACIST WITH YEAH! ROCK CAMP

BY CHLOE STILLWELL | PHOTOS BY ANDREA BEHRENDS

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IF MOVIES LIKE AMERICAN PIE and Wet Hot American Summer prove anything other than America’s love of raunchy comedy, it’s the impact that camp can have on our youth. Whether it’s a day camp that sends kids home in the evenings with mud pots and lanyards, or some pilgrimage to an isolated land with no cell service, most young American lives have been touched in some way by the unbridled self-discovery of camp. I personally can look back on one terrified summer spent at orchestra camp pretending I could sightread music, and another at a Christian camp pretending I believed in Jesus, both surprisingly formative times. But one Nashville organization is conjuring up a whole different idea for what camp can foster in our youth, an experience rooted not in nature and sport—but in activism and art.

Sarah Bandy is the executive director of the local organization Youth Empowerment through Arts and Humanities, Inc. (or more commonly known as YEAH!). Through that position she operates as the enthusiastic organizer behind the Nashville chapter of Southern Girls Rock Camp (SGRC)—the second of its kind, belonging to a group of now more than forty camps in the Girls Rock Camp Alliance started out of Portland, Oregon. The day camp, founded by Kelly Anderson in 2003, has now seen more than one thousand female, gender-nonconforming, and trans youth (and adults, as part of Ladies Rock Camp events) enter as wallflowers and leave skipping into a field of possibility.

Armed with a vast knowledge of community organizing, Bandy is unexpectedly bubbly when she could play the too-cool-for-school card that so many Nashville tastemakers lean toward. But maybe when you run a school that teaches kids leadership, activism, and rock ‘n’ roll, you don’t

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have to be too cool for anything—because that’s about as cool as it gets. Or maybe it’s just the opposite. In Bandy’s words, the camp “aims to destroy the cool,” insofar as it dismantles the idea that you have to be an expert before you pick up an instrument. She asserts that stigma is tied up in the way that it’s difficult for youth to take up space and claim it for their own, as well as in the way that musicianship has a cult of personality around it that makes it feel unapproachable for those that are just beginning to explore making sounds of their own. Perhaps that’s why SGRC has been teaching “little shredders” for fifteen years how to not just play music, but how to feel comfortable in their own skin and empower themselves and others.

Part of what makes Bandy such an apt and able organizer on behalf of the organization and the camp is that she knows the experience of nervously starting off at SGRC as a novice. She says of her first experience with the camp eight summers ago, “I was convinced that making music was for the experts, for the rock stars, but definitely not for me. I visited a friend in Murfreesboro and she convinced me to help her teach drums at SGRC, although I had never picked up sticks in my life.

The first day of camp, I didn’t know anyone and felt a lot like the ten-year-olds that I was supposed to be leading—nervous and unprepared, but longing to feel a part of the palpable positivity and energy flooding the hallways. I peeked into a tiny window and saw a classroom of girls, all sizes and shapes and skin colors and gender expressions, all learning the chord progression to ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ by Iggy Pop with wide bright eyes, and I finally felt like I had found an entry point to the intersection of the things that I’ve always been passionate about: community build-

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ing, empowering youth to take derstands, as any female-identifying activist would, that the up space, and rock ‘n’ roll.”

Bandy’s resume reads like situation is layered. Although something a nonprofit head- she tells a story of how this past hunter could only dream of. Af- year at camp, a male volunteer ter that experience, she went on spoke about how important it to volunteer with the Bay Area is for men to support women Girls Rock Camp in Oakland, in thought and action, she also California—a city known for isn’t hesitant to point out that being at the forefront of com- there is still a huge problem— munity organizing and social that young girls still aren’t enjustice. She also spent time couraged to pick up guitars, and working with Girls Rock Aus- if you see a woman on the cover tin before heading to Charles- of Guitar World, “She’s probably ton, South Carolina, to assist in a bikini.”

This begs the question of them in starting a program. In each city Sarah helped to create SGRC’s place in the Nashville programs that speak to specific music scene as a whole, which community needs and continue like most things, is a boys’ club. to churn out feminist and anti- Yes, there are many pioneerracist youth leaders by blending ing women making huge waves music education, political edu- around town and beyond, just as there are many men who valcation, and DIY media making.

Bandy is also a musician ue and support women’s voices these days—something that (like those who volunteer at happened to her just as unex- SGRC). But to pretend we’ve pectedly as it’s happened to reached an equitable utopia many SGRC alumni. Her expe- would be dangerously reducrience with making music start- tive.

There are still more men on ed, like many southern musical narratives do, in church with most bills, more male headlinher parents, but she “didn’t ers, more male band members, think [musician] was a name more male residencies, and a that fit.” Now that has all world of sexism still abounds changed, with Sarah playing in green rooms, record label ukulele and singing in the band boardrooms, and living rooms Hula Hi-Fi, which she describes in general. Margo Price, one as “’50s dark Hawaiian.” But of Nashville’s most successful SGRC is much more to her than artists of 2016, put it simply in a conduit for her own music— a recent social media post: “If it’s allowed Bandy to enjoy the people really want to support same musical renaissance her ‘women in music,’ they should stop making silly hashtags like campers experience.

Despite the fact that Bandy is #womeninmusic that classify quick to sing the praises of the us by our gender.” And you can feminist men who volunteer bet if she’s feeling domineerat rock camp and who support ing male energy in her current local female talent, she also un- career ascent, young girls just

“WE SAY ‘GIRL DRUMMER’ BECAUSE WE OPERATE IN A PATRIARCHY.”

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deciding to play music feel more intimidated than anyone, especially in the social media age when sexism is as simple as a tweet. Bandy echoes this sentiment, saying, “We say ‘girl drummer’ because we operate in a patriarchy.”

When prodded about this, Bandy has the air of any nonprofit director, especially one working with youth, as it’s hard to believe in radical change and the power of community organizing with a pessimistic attitude. But she is also quick with buzzwords like safe space, preferred pronoun, holding space, gender binary, cisgender, identifying, and intersectional feminism—not typical language of camp organizers, but of activists in today’s age of resistance—which makes it incredibly apparent that SGRC is in the hands of someone who sees it more than just a bow or a bandaid.

In Nashville it’s possible for kids to be interested in the camp only to have their conservative parents be horrified by their child learning about the gender spectrum. But Sarah isn’t afraid of these conversations, even though it’s obvious that the fun part is teaching the kids about these concepts rather than warming parents up to them. She is armed to do both, so it’s possible her ideal vision of a music scene for Nashville and beyond can exist—“Where DIY spaces are honored by protective legislation and funding. Where youth who have participated in the camp trust themselves and value the generations after them. Where young women remember that their reflection is only a fraction of who they are.

Where Ladies Rock Camp participants walk into their offices every day standing up for their inner rockstar. And where government institutions prioritize the voices of marginalized people and funnel money into the arts and local organizations that work for equity.” That’s a pretty tall order. But with people like Sarah Bandy helping to shape the minds of little shredders everywhere, perhaps it’s a future we can believe in too.

W W W . M U S I C C I T Y O P T I C A L . C O M

25 MUSIC SQUARE EAST

(615) 750-5943

E-C P H O TO M M E R C E M A D EO G R A P H Y

EASY

The SGRC 2017 sessions will take place July 10– 15 at Vanderbilt University. Ladies Rock Camp 2017 will take place April 6–9 at Red Arrow Gallery. Sign up at southerngirlsrockcamp.com.

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L A T E S T P R O D U C T S A T W W W. S W I T T E R S C O F F E E . C O M

YOU OUGHTA KNOW: THE NEW RESPECTS

THE NE RESPECTW S

From The Kinks to Arcade Fire, there’s a tightness and unity that comes with being a family band. Whether it’s the product of some kind of hereditary telekinesis or simply the result of spending a whole lot of time together, something good usually happens when you get talented, related people together in a room. It’s certainly worked for The New Respects, a soul-pop-rock quartet comprised of the Fitzgerald siblings—Alexandria, Alexis, and Darius—and their cousin, Jasmine Mullen (Alexandria and Alexis are actually twins).

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For more info on The New Respects , visit thenewre spects.c om or follow @TheNewR espects

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