NATIVE | ISSUE 66 PT. 2 | NASHVILLE, TN

ISSUE 67 K I YA L A C E Y

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RESPECT THE UNEXPECTED. VISIT PLOWBOYRECORDS.COM FOR NEW RELEASES 2

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

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FA R E W E L L

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A L E X I S A N D B O L T. C O M

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@ A L E X I S A N D B O LT

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506 MONROE STREET

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(615) 578-8257

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CONTENTS DECEMBER 2017

38 48 THE GOODS 19 Beer from Here 21 Cocktail of the Month

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24 Master Platers 83 You Oughta Know 87 It’s Only Natural

FEATURES 28 Rudy’s Jazz Room 38 Proper Saké 48 Kiya Lacey

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60 The Peanut Shop 72 Peninsula NATIVE NASHVILLE ////////////////////

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PRESIDENT, FOUNDER: PRESIDENT, FOUNDER: OPERATIONS MANAGER:

ANGELIQUE PITTMAN JON PITTMAN JOE CLEMONS

EDITOR IN CHIEF: COPY EDITOR:

CHARLIE HICKERSON DARCIE CLEMEN

CREATIVE DIRECTOR: ART DIRECTOR:

HANNAH LOVELL COURTNEY SPENCER

SENIOR ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVE: ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVE:

KELSEY FERGUSON SHELBY GRAHAM

PRODUCTION:

GUSTI ESCALANTE

WRITERS:

COLIN POULTON NATHAN DILLER HILLI LEVIN CHRIS PARTON JONAH ELLER-ISAACS COOPER BREEDEN

PHOTOGRAPHERS:

NICK BUMGARDNER AYLA SADLER EMILY DORIO ANDREA BEHRENDS DANIEL CHANEY DANIELLE ATKINS

EDITORIAL INTERNS:

LORENA MORA COLLINS DE LA COUR

DESIGN INTERNS:

MADDIE RICHHART GIGI HULL

PHOTOGRAPHY INTERN:

NICOLE TAYLOR

FOUNDING TEAM:

MACKENZIE MOORE JOSHUA SIRCHIO TAYLOR RABOIN

FOUNDER, BRAND DIRECTOR:

DAVE PITTMAN

FOUNDER:

CAYLA MACKEY

FOR ALL INQUIRIES:

HELLO@NATIVE.IS

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Happy Holidays EDGEHILL VILLAGE castillejanashville.com

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Home for the Holidays

PHOTOGRAPHER: EVAN DAVIES PHOTOGRAPHY - @IAMEVANDAVIES MODEL: KAZMIRA ELDALY - @THEWILDFLOWERWORDS

202006 NATIVE NASHVILLE   //////////////////// BELMONT BLVD

- WWW.HOUSEOFNASHVILLE.COM - @HOUSEOFNASHVILLE

WOO HOO

BY BEN CLEMONS OF NO. 308 PHOTO BY NICK BUMGARDNER

It’s the holidays. That means lots of reasons to drink your bubbles.

Sometimes a glass of champagne, cava, or prosecco doesn’t cut it, and it’s a little too late in the day for a mimosa. French 75s are always nice, but here’s a little something different for all you Negroni fans out there . . .

Cheers, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

THE GOODS 1 oz Campari 1 sugar cube Bubbles of your choice 1 lemon zest Build in glass, top with bubbles, and garnish with lemon zest.

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LUNCH SPECIALS HAPPY HOUR MONDAY - FRIDAY 3PM - 6PM 2 FOR 1 SANGRIA ON THURSDAYS

Have your event catered with Nashville's best Puerto Rican food.

Call the number below for details!

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MASTER PL ATERS

SLOW COOKER POT ROAST

BY AYLA SADLER FOOD DIRECTOR OF AXE WELLNESS

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THE GOODS 1 3-lb boneless chuck roast 2 parsnips, chopped 4 carrots, chopped 3 stalks celery, chopped 1 red onion, chopped 1 ½ tsp thyme 1 ½ tsp garlic 2 tsp salt 2 tsp pepper 2 bay leaves 2 cups beef bone broth 2 cups water

DIRECTIONS Add all the ingredients to a large crockpot and cook on low for 8 hours.

You may serve as is or add half of the vegetables and some of the liquid from the crockpot to a blender or food processor and blend on high to create a velvety base for the roast.

Serves 6–8.

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C U I S I N E O F T H E I B E R I A N P E N I N S U L A I N T H E H E A RT O F E AST N AS H V I LL E S PA N I S H ST Y L E G I N & TO N I C M E N U

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C O C KTA I L S

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O L D WO R L D W I N E S

1 0 3 5 W. E A S T L A N D AV E . - @ P E N I N S U L A _ N A S H V I L L E NATIVE NASHVILLE ////////////////////

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RUDY CAN'T FAIL RUDY’S JAZZ ROOM LOOKS TO HONOR AN OLD FRIEND AND SHED LIGHT ON A SCENE THAT’S OFTEN OVERLOOKED IN MUSIC CITY

BY COLIN POULTON PHOTOS BY EMILY DORIO

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IF YOU’RE IN A MAJOR METROPOLITAN city in North America, odds are you’re not too far from a vestige of yesteryear: a jazz club. Today, jazz clubs are intimate spaces populated with late twentysomethings and early thirtysomethings in horn-rimmed glasses stealing licks from older musicians that look like your neighbor. Until recently, the Nashville jazz musician has been quasihomeless, convening in houses, churches, and clubs that shut their doors after a few months (it’s a struggle that bizarrely parallels the plight of DIY punk rock scenes). Rudy’s Jazz Room, which opened in the Gulch in May, seeks to stake its claim as the home of jazz in Nashville by pairing music with chef and co-owner Michael Braden’s Creole menu.

Michael Braden and fellow co-owner Adam Charney are lifelong friends. When Braden was seven, his family moved from New Orleans to Nashville and settled next door to Charney’s family. “We played together every chance we got; we were best friends growing up all the way through high school. He went up to New York for college, and I went down to the University of New Orleans, and after a semester or two, we decided to take some time off and rented a place together in Nashville.”

The two eventually parted ways again to return to school. Life has its way of working out, though, and the pair soon found themselves cubicle neighbors at a medical software company in Brentwood. Braden began tweaking a recipe for a seafood pie that his father used to make when he was growing up.

“He made these pies for us when we were kids.

They were crawfish, a lump of crab meat, and

shrimp. He would make a whole bunch of them and freeze them so we would have something to eat while he and my mom were at work during the summer. The cool thing about the pies was that you didn’t have to thaw them—you put them in the oven at 450 degrees for 25 minutes frozen, and they would come out perfect.”

Selling the pies became a fun side business for Braden. What started at farmer’s markets in Nashville and Chattanooga eventually expanded to being stocked locally at Whole Foods in Nashville and Franklin. “I leased a commercial kitchen to start cooking in and got all of the certifications that I needed. After a couple of months, they wanted the pies in their stores throughout the Southeast. That was awesome, except I was making them all by hand, and it started to take up too much of my time. I didn’t want to sacrifice the quality of the product.”

Braden and Charney became disillusioned with the direction of the software company and the corporate world in general and wanted out. The natural fusion of Braden’s culinary talent and Charney’s passion for music led to the idea of starting a jazz club. To Charney, this was the right time to fill the city’s jazz venue void. “I think Nashville is now at a point to where it can support something like a jazz club.

We have around a hundred people moving here every day. We’re an It City that’s building. It can support a jazz club if you do it right.” An idea turned into a forty-page business plan that took on a life of its own.

Rudy’s is named after the late Rudy Wooten.

His brother Victor, a virtuoso bassist known for playing in Bela Fleck and the Flecktones as

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well as his solo and instructional work, learned a lot from playing in a family band with his older brother: “He was always our horn section. As far as I can remember back, he was playing two saxophones at one time. He would play a C melody saxophone and he would also play an alto, so he could play these funky horn lines harmonized or in unison. It was amazing. At the same time, he could also play jazz like Charlie Parker.” Coming of age in the ’70s, the band naturally played the music of the day with prominent horn sections, like Chicago, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Tower of Power.

Rudy was also a regular collaborator with Charney, who is a guitarist. “We had a special bond. We would play together a few times a week for years, and he was a really close friend of mine. I was talking to my brother when we were still working on the business plan, and he suggested that we called it Rudy’s. That’s when it really gelled for me.

It was personal to me, and it’s also honoring the Wootens and what they’ve contributed to Nashville’s music scene.

They’ve inspired so many people.”

Rudy’s soon became a passion project as Braden, Charney, and their families put their blood, sweat, and tears into cleaning out the space and curating the room.

Collectively, they built a bar, scoured antique stores for eclectic furniture, painted walls, and dialed in lighting, amongst a million other meticulous tasks.

Charney took cues from his experiences in New York, specifically Smalls Jazz Club in Greenwich Village.

“It’s the same shaped room. I designed the stage after Smalls—I wanted a really low stage so that you feel more connected with the musicians. You become a part of it.”

Creating the right vibe for a venue is almost like the task of creating the vibe for a house of worship: you want it to be a place that puts you in a certain frame of mind and alters your perception. On the right night, a band in the right set and setting can jubilantly improvise and create an experience for the listener that verges on sacred.

Part of what adds to that vibe at Rudy’s is a Steinway piano that was funded via Kickstarter. Supporters helped clear the goal of $40,000, with the excess going toward quality sound reinforcement for the club. “It attracts the serious jazz artists in town. It’s a real-deal piano,” says Charney.

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Are you Holiday ready ?

MEN. WOMEN. HOME. GIFT.

New name, same great people and services!

We are thrilled to announce that we are merging with our sister skincare experts at Ona Belle Meade and changing our name to Ona Skincare East Nashville. We look forward to the year ahead and continuing to serve your skincare needs!

Jazz is an umbrella term in our day and age, and Rudy’s welcomes different styles that live in that world. The inclusion of swing and salsa sometimes leads to an unfamiliar sight for modern eyes: dancing in a jazz club. While Rudy’s does function as a listening room for the right combos and a home for bebop and modern jazz players, it’s nice to see a jazz club that can mix it up and be fun for civilians too.

“Our vision is working,” says Charney.

“We see a really diverse audience on any given night: older, young, black, white, Latino. The biggest thing now is getting the word out about it.”

Braden and Charney’s goal is to eventually expand to booking national acts, and they recently hired local drummer (and a pretty bad motherfucker of one at that) Nioshi Jackson to help to that end. In the meantime, they’re open seven nights a week, hosting music late into the night.

That’s an exciting prospect for Nashville, especially because there are more jazz players lurking here than one would think. Nashville’s session elite, players you would associate more with Alan Jackson than Art Blakey, are often comfortable—and pretty damn good to this writer’s ear—in a jazz setting.

Charney and Wooten both agree that what generally sets Nashville jazz musicians apart from players in other cities is this type of versatility. Plus, while the cost of living in Nashville is still rising, it’s still cheaper to live here than New York City or LA, and we have more general opportunities for said versatile musicians than a place like Kansas City or Chicago. Rudy’s looks to become a fixture in this diverse musical landscape—a landscape where one can see an indie show at a dive, Western swing at a honky tonk, and geriatric rockers out on perpetual farewell tours at Nissan Stadium all in one night. At times, a show at Rudy’s can be a nice change of pace for musicians and patrons alike. It’s a place where you can experience uniquely American food and music that provide some much-needed nourishment for the 21st-century soul.

Rudy’s Jazz Room is open Sunday through Tuesday from 5 p.m. to 12 a.m. and Wednesday through Saturday from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m.

East Nashville:

1013 Fatherland St. 34 NATIVE NASHVILLE ////////////////////

Belle Meade:

6592 Highway 100 Suite 1

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FOR THE SAKÉ OF IT HOW BYRON STITHEM TURNED HIS HOME-BREWED PASSION PROJECT INTO YOUR NEW FAVORITE DRINK

BY NATHAN DILLER PHOTOS BY ANDREA BEHRENDS

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I TURN THE CORNER ONTO EWING AVENUE and pull up to Proper Saké Co. headquarters, a nondescript one-story building just south of downtown in an area rife with scaffolding and the sounds of construction in the distance. Inside Nashville’s first craft saké brewery, though, it’s quiet—almost tranquil—and founder Byron Stithem greets me at the front door.

“Nashville’s been the most welcoming place I could imagine, and especially Nashville now,” he says as we settle onto sofas in the back of the warehouse space, which also houses Carter Creek Microgreens. “It’s leaps and bounds beyond when I moved here in 2003. It’s really cool to see how it’s grown, and it’s really cool to be a part of that too.”

Stithem, who is wearing a Kansas City Royals baseball cap, moved to Nashville from Kansas to go to Belmont University, where he studied music business. He spent a few years tour managing and worked in restaurants to pay the bills while he was home. “At some point, after the first couple years of being on the road so often and not making any money and just getting beat up, you know, you just kind of realize, like, ‘Oh, my passion is not music business in any capacity ever,’” he says, laughing. “It was actually food all this time.”

Stithem’s interest in food— especially fermentation science—led him to New York, where he worked at Brooklyn craft cocktail bar Clover Club. He started in the kitchen but soon moved on to bartending and coming up with new tinctures and bitters to use in drinks. He also began experimenting with home brewing and making his own saké and koji (a kind of fungus used to make saké), miso, soy sauce, and other products.

After moving back to Nashville to raise his nowsix-year-old son, he helped open Husk and worked with Dinner Lab. When the latter closed down last year, he decided it was time for a new project

and toyed with the idea of opening his own saké brewery. He reached out to his friend and mentor Jason Crockarell, who owns Flavor Catering, to run the idea by him. He was all for it and offered Stithem the space in which Proper Saké Co. now operates.

Within a week, Stithem started filing permits.

Nearly a year and a half later, Stithem, thirtytwo, now sells to retailers like Woodland Wine Merchant and Craft Brewed, as well as restaurants and bars like Bastion, Sinema, and Lockeland Table.

“Those are the types of restaurants who have been the most receptive right off the bat. Obviously they don’t do Japanese food, but it’s also a really good indicator of where the Western market is moving toward accepting saké as just another beverage that you drink just because it’s a Thursday, not because you went to get sushi, you know?”

Much of the saké found in Japanese restaurants in the United States is made with distilled alcohol and has a lighter, less distinct flavor than the kind Proper Saké Co. brews, which consists of just rice, koji, water, and yeast. The rice is washed and steamed, then mixed with the yeast and koji.

The ingredients are added in progressively larger quantities as the yeast grows, and then the batch is left to ferment for four to five weeks. After fermentation, the rice solids are separated out, and it’s ready to filter and bottle—though Stithem also brews a version with some of the rice sediment still in the saké. It’s a lengthy, labor-intensive process, and for now Stithem does it all on his own.

“Hopefully it becomes unmanageable soon,” he says. “It feels like it is some days [laughs] . . . Yeah, it’s been a real learning experience. A very humbling learning experience.”

Stithem has made it a point to learn from the experts—he takes regular trips to Japan to study and work alongside local saké brewers. He just got back from a two-week stint where he met with

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the president of the Brewers Association of Japan. He connected Stithem with other brewers all over the country, who all do things a little differently. “There’s obviously a very high-scale, full-operation, mechanized approach, but there’s still so many very traditional breweries that are doing everything by hand,” he says.

“So, yeah, there’s a lot of techniques and really cool things I haven’t even scratched the surface on.”

He’s also working on an exchange program of sorts with Japanese brewers who are interested in updating their models, particularly in regard to marketing and approaching the Western market.

Saké sales are up worldwide, but in Japan they’re down from years past, partly due to the fact that young people in Japan are more interested in drinks like craft beer, whiskey, and French wines, which have a fuller flavor. “That said,” says Stithem, “the style of saké that we’re trying to do here is a little more in the same vein as those styles of beverages . . . and for that reason, I think they’re infinitely more pairable with Western cuisine and definitely more applicable to the style of beverage that the youth culture of Japan and the food and beverage culture of the Western world are interested in.

That’s my hope anyways.”

Proper Saké Co. currently has three varieties in distribution: The Diplomat, which is a balanced, more traditional brew with hints of coconut and vanilla; an unfiltered version of The Diplomat that has a texture almost like almond milk; and The Grand Parlay, which is made with a Belgian Saison yeast typically used to make beer and fortified wine. In many ways, The Grand Parlay encapsulates Stithem’s mission to bring saké into Western culinary contexts in new ways. “It’s a nice marriage of these cultures,” he says. “It’s a really interesting flavor. It tastes more like a crisp Eastern European white wine than a beer, but it also has a lot of nuances that you might find in a Saison-style beer . . . And hopefully it brings some people over into the saké world that wouldn’t have normally thought it was something they wanted to try.”

Because saké isn’t as common in this country— particularly in the South—Stithem hopes to pique local curiosity with a tasting room he opened a few weeks before our conversation. In the intimate space, complete with enclosed booths and a bar that Stithem built out of raw pine lumber with a friend, saké connoisseurs and newcomers alike can try the products, learn about the brewing

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NASHVILLE'S COMMUNITY CENTER FOR JAZZ, WITH CLASSES, PUBLIC PERFORMANCES, AND SPECIAL EVENTS. THE NASHVILLE JAZZ WORKSHOP IS A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION SUPPORTING JAZZ MUSICIANS, JAZZ FANS, AND THE //////////////////// COMMUNITY. JAZZ COMMUNIT

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process, and enjoy special varieties that aren’t always available to the public. In an effort to maintain the integrity of the product, everything in the tasting room is unpasteurized, and the bottles that are distributed to retailers are only minimally pasteurized.

When Stithem talks of sharing his knowledge and products with the public, his excitement is palpable, but he’s also equally eager to learn. He is an avid reader of John Gauntner, one of the world’s foremost saké experts. Gauntner’s repeated references to the proper rice and proper water for brewing saké stuck with Stithem when it came time to name the brewery. “In no way is it me being like, ‘This is the only and appropriate way to make saké,’” he stresses. “And sometimes I feel like, Dammit, I hope people don’t think I’m being a little aggressive with my language. Because it’s meant to be a very humble product and humble offering, and it really is just me trying to put forth the fact that this is all done in what I hope is the most appropriate manner and what is arguably more traditional than what is typically available in the States.”

Before I leave, Stithem shows me the brew room, a small square space in the center of the building with tons of barrels and bottles all neatly aligned along the walls. It’s chilly, and he explains that the room must be climate controlled while the ferment matures. As it grows, it generates heat, and because the tanks aren’t internally regulated, he sometimes has to use ice that is made from the brewing water to bring the temperature back down. He points to the barrels in the corner and tells me that he’s working on some whiskey-barrel-aged saké. He tells me how eateries like Rolf and Daughters and The Catbird Seat have begun using his koji to make cheeses, charcuterie, and other ferments. He’s in his element here, like an Adidas-clad scientist in his lab.

“I guess it’s pretty straightforward,” he says. “I’m the only one in Nashville dumb enough to be making saké right now [laughs]. But I think it’s a cool thing to be doing in Nashville. I’m so lucky that I get to do it.”

Proper Saké Co.’s tasting room is open Fridays 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturdays 12 p.m. to 9 p.m.

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UP UP AND AWAY INSIDE THE WORLD OF EVER-EVOLVING ALTERNATIVE R&B ARTIST KIYA LACEY

BY HILLI LEVIN PHOTOS BY DANIEL CHANEY

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UNDERESTIMATE KIYA LACEY AT YOUR OWN PERIL . At just twenty-two, the boundary-pushing alternative R&B singer is already used to proving herself to her older peers in the music industry. “They don’t expect me to be this professional or know what I’m talking about,” Lacey tells me. “People have their own ideas about what’s going to help me be successful. But I’ve reached the most success by just being me.”

It’s dreary, cold, and raining outside, but we’re sharing a cozy booth right before the dinner rush inside East Nashville’s The Wild Cow. She’s starving right after her long photoshoot for this piece, and she’s beaming after hitting it off creatively with our photographer. He sent her a mood board beforehand that coincidentally included some images Lacey had already filed away for style inspiration.

Today, that style includes bright blue dreadlocks twisted into high buns, playful iridescent green eye makeup, and an avantgarde outfit. It seems like she’s channeling her inner Björk, and that’s no accident. “If I could work with anybody it would be her,” Lacey says.

“She’s my number one goal right now. I study her.”

Lacey says the experimental Icelandic songwriter might seem like a surprising role model for a young R&B singer, but she’s used to subverting expectations with her art. “What’s pushing me is my younger self who lived in the projects and didn’t know anybody that was into the creative things that I was into.”

Being true to herself and conveying her eclectic yet distinct creative vision is paramount to Lacey, whose “imaginative, coolly delivered alt-R&B” has already been noticed by NPR and PAPER. “To be here now . . . it’s crazy [to have] people interested in interviewing me about anything. I’m the oldest of six,” she says. “We grew up in the projects right over here by The Basement East. I grew up knowing about struggles before I should have. I’m ahead of my time in that aspect, but I’m very thankful about it. I didn’t have nothing, but I grew up in a blended family and I didn’t have as much as my peers. I cry for the younger girl inside me

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who used to think, I have to get my family out of this circumstance. Any time I get a show or an interview I always flash back to my family trying to figure out how to pay bills.”

Lacey’s background, stories, and AfroLatina heritage are integral to her art. She wants her fans—a word that makes her cringe each time she uses it—who are experiencing their own hardships to feel uplifted and inspired when they hear her songs and show up at her live performances.

“When I’m on stage, I feel like I’m untouchable. I can do what I want, I can say what I want,” Lacey explains. “Sometimes I’ll do a speech and try to do affirmations with people. It’s almost like preaching. I want people to understand that [with] my career . . . You can come from nothing and be somewhere. I just want to be a representation of hope.”

Dedicating her life to her passions—art and music—has helped lift Lacey during periods of anxiety and depression. It makes sense, then, that balloons are a recurring symbol in her work. They pop up on stage with her, on her album covers, in her music videos, and even on her clothing.

“Everyone is always happier when you see a balloon,” Lacey says. “It’s a very cool symbol for me. It’s definitely my symbol of hope—that everything is going to be okay. It’s uplifting.

It’s everything that I’ve hoped for or dreamed about.”

And people are starting to connect with that message. Take her recent Chicago show, as part of the Red Bull Sound Select showcase.

“One girl drove an hour and a half for the show, and I looked out [into the crowd] and she was crying—she knew every single word!”

Lacey beams. “It is a beautiful thing right now to meet people in different states that know my music. I’m on my way to doing something very great, but I’m in transition right now. I have to face my reality of figuring out how to pay bills, but there are also people that are nervous to meet me. It’s a very interesting place to be in.”

It’s a humbling experience for someone who started out writing songs about her first crush at fifteen (“I went to Harpeth Hall. My first crush was a big deal because I was at an all-girls school!”).

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“I used to write poetry in high school that I would never share,” she says. “I taught spoken word classes for this program called Southern Word. We worked with high schools [on] how to perform your spoken word, but I would never share mine. I’ve kept them in my notes and have turned them into songs. Sometimes I just write on a receipt or on a napkin, and I just start collecting all this stuff and I write [a song] based on just a snippet of something.”

In a previous interview, Lacey said of her songwriting: “I share my story, family stories, and other experiences that everyone can relate to.” Knowing this, it’s surprising she didn’t have much of a hand in writing her first album.

“When I first started out, I did a bluescountry-jazz-fusion album,” she explains. “It was written by two of my high school teachers.

I enjoyed the process, but it wasn’t me. I don’t feel like I should be genre specific. I feel like I should do whatever I want. It was a learning process, but it definitely wasn’t my sound.”

The album landed high on the iTunes jazz charts, and Lacey even opened for Brandy.

But it never quite felt like she was being true to herself. A brief brush with reality television served as a wake-up call and set her on her current path.

“I tried out for American Idol when I was fifteen,” Lacey says. “I got to the second round of auditions. It’s nothing like they tell you. It’s so fake. I don’t think I’ll ever do reality TV or a vocal competition—that’s not my route.

“I want to have creative control. I would love a partnership more so than to be on a label because I like expressing myself. I’m young, I’m still learning myself, but I feel like I have a vision now of what I want. Even when I collaborate with a stylist or a makeup artist . . . I’ll ask if they can help me further expand my ideas.”

Since graduating high school, Lacey has shifted her focus to crafting R&B with touches of pop and neo-soul. Her bright, honeyed voice—expertly controlled after that early training as a jazz singer—shines through

on her first EP, Fail in Love. Long past first crushes and throwback crooning, this set of decidedly modern and polished songs deals with intense early love and loss—those collegeera experiences that tend to leave you a little bit jaded. The first track, “Take a Ride,” is an almost bubblegum-sweet snapshot of the joy and seemingly endless possibilities that come with cruising around town with a crush. But much like celebrated alt-R&B songwriter SZA, Lacey is not afraid to dive into self-reflection and raw emotion. In the intense lead single “I Know,” she delivers confessional lines that deal with uncertainty and self-doubt: “I can’t escape my thoughts, my flaws stick out like thorns / They cut deep.”

In 2016, she continued to push herself artistically and visually, releasing a collection of three singles and an accompanying video titled “Earth Wind & Fire.” With these tracks, the vocal processing is darker, the harmonies are layered, and there are icy electronic flourishes. It all adds up to a ghostly tone that leans toward the witch house movement or James Blake’s early output.

This is a distinctive shift in just one year, and Lacey prides herself on her willingness to jump into different sounds, aesthetics, and artistic mediums.

“I don’t have a traditional look—I have dreadlocks. I used to think you have to be sexy.

I love Beyoncé, but I felt like I had to look like her and have a long weave in the wind and wear bodysuits,” Lacey says. “It doesn’t have to just be long hair and bodysuits. It can be short hair, it can be dreadlocks. I wanted to be hot, but now . . . I just want to be art. I feel like being art is more important. I want my [albums] to be collections of art. Designers have collections, and not every collection is the same. If I want to release a whole acoustic album, I might do that. I might want a rock album. I want to be able to experiment with my sound but still be Kiya.”

Lacey has always been proud of Nashville’s influence on her songwriting, even though the

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city tends to neglect her genre in favor of more established scenes.

“The R&B scene is not as known, but Nashville R&B is not like a lot of other cities.

I feel like the hip-hop scene in Nashville is bigger, [and] I feel like they’re starting to work together and are featuring each other on tracks.

They’re starting to lift each other up, but they still have a lot of work to do, and that’s what I tell my friends all the time.”

Lacey’s quick to admit that she’s looking at her career in music from a global perspective.

She spent some time living in Atlanta, and she still frequently hops on a bus to spend a few days there in order to perform and learn from the artists in their more established hip-hop and R&B scenes. “I feel like living in Atlanta for a bit helped me figure out how to perform on another level. In Nashville, I’m going to win over hearts because I’m from here. I started doing music at fifteen, so I’m everyone’s little sweetheart. In Atlanta, I’m just another artist.”

Regardless of the city she’s in, Lacey puts in countless hours of serious, grueling work, and it’s already paid off with substantial media buzz and prominent spots in local and national showcases.

“I make daily goals, I make monthly goals, and I make yearly goals, because I do everything,” Lacey says. “So I have to be overly organized, overly prepared. Sometimes I used to feel like that got in the way of my creativity, but now it’s helping because I know what’s going on with my career . . . The more work I put in, the further I go. If I’m slacking then no one’s going to know about me, so I have to be organized about generating mood boards,

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budgets, and sponsorship decks.”

When asked about her biggest influences, she cites artists like the aforementioned Björk, Janet Jackson, Sade, FKA Twigs, and Grace Jones. I can’t help but recognize a common theme here: strong, highly individualistic women.

“I want to inspire other women and encourage other women. As I meet other artists that are women, I want to inspire them, I want to encourage them. If we don’t do a song together, I might know someone who will produce something for you. I’m really about encouraging women to do this. We think of the industry as male-dominated right now, and I feel like a shift is going to happen.”

Lacey’s been focused on a new project, and she promises she’ll have new music out in December. And judging by her latest single, “Runaway,” she’s stepped up her game yet again by blending her otherworldly vocals with sleek, club-ready beats.

It looks like she’ll also play some Nashville dates soon, which are not to be missed if you’re a fan of high-energy and incredibly moving performance art. But she’s quick to remind me that she’s thinking beyond Nashville, so touring will be her main focus for 2018.

“I am a Nashville artist. I want to be a Nashville artist. But that’s not my end goal. I don’t want to just be a local artist that everyone knows, I want to be the artist from Nashville that everyone knows.”

Kiya Lacey will perform January 13 at The High Watt.

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A AH, NUTS AT NINETY YEARS OLD, THE PEANUT SHOP OFFERS A PIECE OF NASHVILLE’S OLD DOWNTOWN

BY CHRIS PARTON PHOTOS BY ANDREA BEHRENDS

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PICTURE A SUNNY BUT CHILLY DAY in Nashville, December 1945. World War II is finally over, and as the first Christmas of the Atomic Age grows near, American life is slowly returning to normal. There are still some last-minute gifts to pick up, so you and the family pile into the Packard and head downtown to Harveys department store on 6th Avenue.

Sleigh bells ring all over town, and after lunch at Harveys’ famous Monkey Bar, the kids want to explore. You walk across the street to The Arcade—an old covered shopping mall built in 1902 and modeled after the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II Arcade in Milan, Italy, hidden in plain sight between 4th and 5th Avenues. People in trench coats and felt hats bustle about, coming and going from the post office, Walgreens, and dozens of other storefronts.

But the kids cut straight through the crowd, making a beeline for a peanut shop whose warm aroma fills the corridor. They’ve been good all day, you figure, so you buy a big bag of freshly roasted nuts . . . plus a few pieces of hard candy.

Fast forward to December 2017, and much of this idyllic picture remains.

Harveys is long gone, cast aside by the likes of Rivergate Mall and Hickory Hollow, but The Arcade lives on—and so does The Peanut Shop. Sleigh bells jingle again as an ancient door squeaks open, and as a man steps through, a friendly voice calls out in greeting: “Hi! How are you today?”

Opened in 1927, The Peanut Shop is one of The Arcade’s oldest-surviving tenants, and every day customers walk in to rekindle fond memories of their youth, chat with owners Kathy Bloodworth and Olivia Swallows, and, of course, find something to satisfy their sweet tooth. The sisters sell nuts roasted

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right there in the shop, homemade sweets, ice cream, and chocolate-dipped everything, and they occupy a prime spot in the city’s once-again thriving core.

The air inside is a delicious mix of salty and sweet, and the man inhales a deep, luxurious breath while neon lights and antique treasures fight for attention with a large, brightly lit display case. “Can I get a quarter pound of salted cashews?” he says.

And after hesitating for just a moment, adds sheepishly, “And maybe one of those peanut butter cups.”

“They love this place,” Swallows says about her customers. “We get it all the time: ‘We’re so glad y’all are still here, we hope you never go anywhere.’ It takes them back.”

From the time it opened through the early ’80s, The Peanut Shop was the place to go for a special treat while shopping downtown. Harveys opened just around the corner on Church Street in 1942 and eventually became a local landmark, drawing thousands of people every week.

But as the suburbs sprang up and downtown business fell off, The Arcade—and with it, The Peanut Shop—turned into a desolate, often dangerous place to be.

A native of Goodlettsville, Bloodworth bought the shop in 1989 after a car accident left her unable to keep working for Nissan. At the time there was no indication downtown would make a comeback. Almost everyone told her she was crazy.

“The Arcade was shady back then,” recalls her sister. “My mom used to work downtown, and she’s like, ‘You can’t buy that place.’ She would tell stories about how the pimps would hang out in The Arcade, and when Kathy first bought it there was a knife fight in front of Greek Touch in the middle of the day. So I mean, it was kinda

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rough . . . But Kathy came in, fell in love with it, and just completely turned it around.”

Incredibly, the store has only been owned by a handful of families in its ninety-year history, and most of the original space remains unchanged. After scrubbing away the tar left behind by decades of cigarette smoke, Bloodworth got to work redecorating, but she kept the antique scales, the custom-built nut roaster, and the official Planters Peanut wallpaper on the ceiling. The wallpaper is a remnant of the store’s past—up until the ’60s the shop was one of two thousand Planters Peanut stores. Today, it’s one of four original Planters stores still in existence.

“It’s not anything fancy at all, but this is what it’s always been,” says Swallows.

Within a few years, things started to get better. The Arcade hired a security firm in the ’90s and local workers returned, and recently it feels like the good old days are back. Now that Nashville’s charm has been “discovered” by the outside world, people are moving back downtown, and tourists line the streets yearround. A giant new skyscraper now sits down the block from where Harveys once was (soon to be filled with potential customers), and over on 4th a boutique hotel is going up.

Business used to evaporate in the afternoon when workers headed home, but now the sisters are busy right through closing time—they’ve even hired two more employees to help. Ten years ago, the shop was lucky if a few CMA Fest fans stumbled in, while today people from around the world seem to seek it out.

“All you gotta say is ‘Let me know if you want to try something,’ and it’s sold!” says Swallows with a laugh.

Likewise, The Arcade itself is once again feeling alive. It fits right in with Nashvillians’ renewed appreciation for locally sourced

goods and has the added bonus of letting folks experience an authentic piece of Old Nashville.

“It’s like a little Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood,” Swallows explains. “People are gravitating back to mom-and-pop style everything. I remember the days when we were thinking, ‘Gosh, we should be more like [the mail-order gift service] Harry & David,’ but that’s not who we are. Now I don’t feel like we need to be Harry & David.

It’s The Peanut Shop, and people like it.”

Indeed, what was once written off as a curious relic of days gone by is now being embraced for that very same reason. It’s true that Nashville’s future looks brighter than ever, but in saving a small link to its past, the owners of The Peanut Shop have actually helped preserve the city’s soul.

Another group of customers walks in—this time clearly from out of town. The bells and that now-familiar greeting both ring out, and in between “oohs” and “ahhs,” the questions begin. “How old is this place?” “Where do the nuts come from?” “Can I try some of those hot nacho-flavored peanuts?”

As unofficial ambassadors for Nashville’s vibrant downtown history, Swallows and Bloodworth have an answer for them all. The group buys a few things and goes on their way, not even realizing they’ve just become the latest page in a nearly century-long story.

All they care about are those bags of roasted goodness in their hands and the smiles on their friends’ faces. And for Swallows, that’s plenty.

“That kind of stuff makes me feel good,” she says. “When you can make somebody’s day with something from our store, I’m all about it.”

The Peanut Shop is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday.

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SOUTH BY NORTHWEST PENINSULA MIGHT BE THE NEW KID IN TOWN, BUT THEIR TAKE ON SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE CUISINE IS ALREADY WINNING THE HEARTS—AND GUTS— OF NASHVILLE’S DINERS

BY JONAH ELLER-ISAACS PHOTOS BY DANIELLE ATKINS

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WE SHOULD CLEAR THIS UP FIRST: tacos aren’t from Spain. I’m chatting with the three co-owners of Peninsula, a restaurantshaped love letter to the cuisine of the Iberian Peninsula. Chef and co-owner Jake Howell loves the food and drink of Spain and Portugal in part because it’s not as well known here.

But he’s found that brings a potential for misunderstanding. “For some reason, in the US, it’s a reasonably overlooked cuisine. To no fault of people, you say ‘Spanish,’ and they’re like, ‘I love tacos and burritos!’—which is completely wrong.”

Peninsula’s other co-owners, wife and husband team General Manager Yuriko Say and Bar Manager Craig Shoen, worked with Howell at The Walrus and the Carpenter, a highly esteemed Seattle eatery. When I ask why they left, Say gives a diplomatic response. “Let’s just say that, to start, we’re all very happy to be living here and not in Seattle anymore.” Schoen adds his opinion, with many unprintable curses to the same effect. Say and Schoen had moved from New York to start a restaurant in Seattle, but the economy tanked and their chef walked, along with his investment. That left them, as Say puts it, “playing with other people’s money for the better part of a decade.”

Lacking a ladder to climb and tired of Seattle (you can ask Schoen more about that), the trio began a nationwide search for a new home. Say is a San Francisco native, and she and Schoen still had connections from their years together in New York, but neither city seemed possible for starting a restaurant. Say recalls, “It was finally time to make our dream happen, and we knew it just wasn’t feasible in Seattle, New York, or San Francisco, three of the most expensive cities in the country.”

Finding Nashville took a nudge from a former Seattleite who’s now established herself as one of Nashville’s leading young entrepreneurs.

During his Seattle years, Schoen played in the alt-country band Legendary Oaks for seven years alongside his friend Brooke Asbury Allison. A few years ago, Allison moved to Nashville, where she first opened Hot Yoga of East Nashville, followed by a string of successful Scout’s Barbershops. Allison planted the seed for Nashville as an attractive, affordable option

for their venture, and when Schoen ended up in town for a business consult, he was smitten.

“I just fell in love with the opportunity. Not just the city, but the tremendous opportunity that exists here. In three days, I met half of the chefs in town that I wanted to meet—half the bartenders I wanted to meet. Everyone was super supportive and psyched about it, as opposed to weird and competitive.”

With Schoen on recon, Say and Howell talked, agreeing it was far past time to tackle their own project. Say laughs about Schoen’s return. “I could tell when he came back from that trip, he was about to launch into this sales pitch, like, ‘Nashville, Nashville!’ And everybody’s like, ‘Know what? No need, I’m totally on board.’ I don’t know why! Jake [Howell] and his girlfriend, Sophia, and I had literally never been to Nashville before we arrived.” Schoen adds with force: “They’d never been to the South!”

The move was clearly an easy decision. The time between their relocation and opening Peninsula’s doors last month was, the trio reports, not at all easy. They managed to find the perfect space, an intimate room with less than forty seats, in a perfect location on West Eastland near its intersection with Gallatin.

But even with a space to call their own, there was no corporation with million-dollar pockets prepared to finance the build-out.

The trio embarked on more than two months of backbreaking work. Say kept asking herself, “When can we stop playing construction crew and actually do what we do for a living? We want to play restaurant! That’s what we came here to do!”

Howell chimes in with a sigh. “I would say the last three weeks were at stress level seven million. It starts to reach a point where it’s like, alright, this sort of feels like I’m on a hamster wheel. Not going anywhere. It’s not getting any closer.” Still, the team found their creative spirit; Howell points out that he and his father tiled both the bathrooms and the bar, which makes Say smile. “We always knew that we wanted an actual partner for our chef. We didn’t want to hire a chef, we wanted someone who’s actually going to be in the thick of it with us.” Howell gets big laughs when he realizes

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they wanted “a guy that would tile the bathroom and make a steak the next day.”

And what a steak he would make. Now that Peninsula’s owners are done absorbing carpentry tutorials on YouTube, they can finally focus on their true expertise. Initial concepts for their dream restaurant were more seafood focused, but they’re not in Seattle anymore. Instead, they looked for a place in history where they might find a strong link between inland Spanish/Portuguese and American food traditions. Schoen lays it out. “We started geeking out over it. Alright, well, we’re not gonna be on the coast, so let’s see what people were eating a hundred and fifty years ago in the middle of Spain [and] Portugal. It’s not that different than what people were eating in the middle of the United States one fifty, two hundred years ago. You ate what you shot. You ate what you harvested. Usually you had a pot to throw it into.”

The distant countrysides also shared a common element that now runs through Peninsula’s menu: limited spices. “Americans a hundred and fifty years ago didn’t have any spices, and Spanish and Portuguese are known as people that don’t use any spice except for salt and pimenton,” Schoen says.

Howell’s menu lets the core ingredients speak for themselves. The chef explains that it’s a natural evolution of his cooking. “I never cooked with a lot of spices, so it wasn’t a challenge to just sort of eighty-six that out. Most restaurants, you look and they have like seventy-five different spices. We have”—pause for dramatic effect—“none.”

Howell makes his food pop in other ways.

Peninsula has only been open a month, but diners already have a clear favorite in the Springer Mountain Farm chicken liver mousse with tomato toast. Smokiness from the charred edges of the toast give this best-seller a rich dimensionality that a straightforward cracker would never achieve.

An appetizer of puffed beef tendon with a hint of lime turns the usually chewy tendon into a crisp chicharron with an umami crunch and soprano high notes of citrus. Howell serves his catfish with an egg, pulverized sourdough, and a remarkable coriandercilantro broth, which Say gushes over. “You have a broth that seems really, really simple. And I can’t tell you how he does it, because he likes to keep some of it secret. But that broth that seems really simple goes through four different phases before it’s actually ready to complement a dish.”

Schoen jokes that he uses more spices at his bar than they do in the kitchen, which I believe after looking over Peninsula’s menu of complex cocktails.

Beyond the staples of Spanish and Portuguese wines, Peninsula also features a gin and tonic menu that offers imbibers an opportunity to sample lesserknown gins paired with unusual ingredients like fermented blackberries, bergamot, and cinnamon.

Say wasn’t on board at first: “I was like, ‘Seventeen different types of gin, Craig? Really? Seventeen?’ But I was wrong—people are going crazy for it.”

Like nearly every Nashville chef I’ve interviewed over the last few years, the Peninsula team calls out the generous nature of our city’s diners and fellow restaurateurs alike. Schoen recalls his immediate and long-lasting friendship with No. 308 bartender Jaime White. “That’s how fucking nice people are.

And talk about wanting to learn about shit! Here’s a guy with intensive experience who openly admits there are things he doesn’t know. That’s awesome!

That’s humbling! Everyone pretends to know everything in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.

That’s the key, right? No one’s tasted it all. No one’s seen it all. That’s stupid. I thought that way for a long time. But once I got out of New York, it was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s not really the case.’”

Peninsula’s décor reflects the humility that Schoen espouses. There’s nothing fancy, just large doses of greenery and antique elements. Floating beams above the dining tables are 16th-century poplar. A line of hanging plants create a natural wall separating the small kitchen from the rest of the interior. There’s a warm friendliness to the space that matches the welcoming, hospitable nature of its owners. And Nashville is responding to that hospitality.

“It’s been such a continuous pleasant surprise at how open people are to being adventurous, to being like, ‘I’m here for an experience; guide me through it,’” Say explains. “I find it to be a much more gratifying work experience too. There’s just been this big reminder for us with moving here like, Yeah, this is why I wanna do this. This is why we love hospitality, because we actually enjoy serving people and giving them an experience. Southern hospitality is real!”

Peninsula is open Tuesday through Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

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Husband and wife duo Elenowen (Josh and Nicole Johnson) will help Musicians Corner ring in the holidays during the first of two Christmas shows at City Winery on December 22nd. Their rootsy, country-tinged folk songs and supple harmonies are the gift that keeps on giving.

DON’T MISS MUSICIANS CORNER’S CHRISTMAS SHOWS AT CITY WINERY 22 AND 23, FEATURING ELENOWEN, KYSHONA, LEVI HUMMON, LILY HIATT, SUGAR + THE HI LOWS, ERIN RAE, TOMMY WOMACK AND MANY MORE.

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YOU OUGHTA KNOW: ALEXANDER WREN PHOTO BY EMILY DORIO Writing a sad song is tricky. Play up the angst too much, and you’re in Taking Back Sunday territory (not that we don’t love Tell All Your Friends); play up the heartbreak too much, and you sound like Adele (which doesn’t really work if you’re part of the 99.99 percent of the population that can’t sing like Adele).

Crafting the perfect sad song—a track that brings more emotion than melodrama—can take months or even years.

Such was the case with “The Good in Goodbye,” the title track from singersongwriter Alexander Wren’s debut EP. The song, which boasts nearly half a million streams on Spotify, took four years to write.

During that time, Wren appeared on American Idol (where he made it to Hollywood), ditched plans to attend Belmont, and connected with producer (and one half of MYZICA) Micah Tawlks. The resulting EP is a vulnerable, swaying collection of songs that reveal heartwrenching introspection well beyond Wren’s twenty years.

Just because you write some sad music doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a good lunch.

That’s why Wren picked Taqueria El Dolar as his favorite Nashville dish. “They’re honestly the best tacos I’ve ever had in my life,” he says. “I think they’re only like a dollar too?

And it happens to be right next to the studio I record in, so it’s a perfect lunch break.”

The Good in Goodbye is available now, and look out for new music from Wren in early 2018.

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THE NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS:

Jeff Pettit grew up in central Wisconsin the son of a numismatist and an art teacher. Building upon a foundation of art and history given to him by his parents, he became a rabid collector of music at a very young age. After being involved with a couple of bands in his teens, Jeff quickly realized that his talents were better utilized on the other side of the business. Getting his first record store job at age 18, Jeff became hooked and has spent the remainder of his life working in the music industry in some capacity. After living in a few st states and working at various record stores, labels, and one-stops, he decided in 2012 that it was time to take the leap into business ownership. Jeff then moved to Nashville and with partners Jem Cohen and Coco Hames, opened Fond Object records in East Nashville on April 20th, 2013. The rest, as they say, is history.

J E F F ’ S P L AY L I ST I N C LU D E S LO CA L S S U C H AS :

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N LY O S L IT’ A R U N AT

The world is a complex place full of riddles and puzzles.

At some point, our search for answers became formalized into a process called science, and for a while the answer-finding was largely entrusted to an elite group of nerds. But in the last decade or so, more and more people have been helping the nerds out, because frankly, they have a hard job and could use some help. Thus science was democratized, a notion that is now generally referred to as citizen science.

There is no official definition of citizen science, but most of the definitions you’ll come across will be some variation of “engaging the community/public in scientific research.” If you’re familiar with the term crowdsourcing, it’s a similar concept. Citizen science, as an idea, is not a new one, but it has certainly become much more popular in recent years, undoubtedly due in large part to developments in communication technology. There are countless opportunities to get involved in citizen science projects, and they certainly run the gamut. Here’s a rundown of a few local and national/international projects.

Rather than pout about the impending cold temperatures, let Old Weather get you in the mood for winter.

This project enables participants to examine excerpts of Arctic-bound whaling ship logs from the past two hundred years. The goal is to locate passages mentioning weather and sea ice, but you stand the chance of unearthing some interesting stories, like that of the USS Jeannette and her crew of thirty-three sailors, twenty of whom died during the three-year expedition. Climate scientists can use such data to examine how weather and climate may have changed since the logs were written. This is a fun and easy platform to use whenever you have some free time, but be ye forewarned: after attempts to decipher the penmanship, you may harbor some suspicion that the logs were kept by a scurvy scallywag rather than an accomplished captain.

Of all the living organisms, birds are among the most popular with wildlife enthusiasts, and that seems to hold true for citizen science projects. There are a number of different observation projects out there that record everything from hummingbirds to raptors to baby

birds. Others, like the Great Backyard Bird Count or the Christmas Bird Count, are more focused on what you may see at a specific time of the year. One of the simpler platforms to use is eBird, a program launched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society to log bird observations. These observations, while not a single project with one unified goal, are still valuable to many areas of research.

Like birds, pollinators get a lot of attention—and rightly so. A number of different projects specifically deal with monitoring monarch butterflies. One such project is Monarch Watch, which provides a plethora of monarch resources: you can learn how to raise your own caterpillars, tag butterflies once they emerge from their chrysalises, and then report tagged monarchs that appear in your yard. A more general and widely used platform is iNaturalist, which allows you to upload observations of any plant or animal anywhere in the world. While its focus is broader than other programs, it’s possible to create specific projects on the platform.

For instance, in Nashville there is a collaborative effort between iNaturalist, the Master Gardeners of Davidson Count and Nashville A Rocha to document pollinators County, in the area by uploading observations to the Nashville Pollinator Project.

Water quality projects are often used to inform local agencies about the health of nearby waters. One of these is an app called Water Reporter. While it is usable nationwide, local groups can use it to keep track of issues relevant to them. For instance, the Harpeth Conservancy encourages anyone enjoying the Harpeth River or its tributaries to report issues like trash, pollution, algae blooms, or simply nice photos. Staff members will receive the report and take the appropriate action.

A number of websites—NatGeo, for instance—list citizen science projects, but you would probably also have success just googling “[topic] citizen science.” The variety of citizen science opportunities is astounding!

There is something out there for you whether you’re looking to get your hands dirty in the field or examine data on your computer.

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CIDERY OPENING EARLY 2018

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