No’Ala, May/June 2017

HUNTSVILLE’S MERV WARREN | 5 MUSICIANS TO WATCH | ROCK AND ROLL FASHION

MAY/JUNE 2017 $4.95

The Secret Sisters, Laura rogers and Lydia slagle

noalastudios.com

820 Monte Sano Boulevard Huntsville, AL 35801 256-539-9699 | thelittlegreenstore.net

The Quad Cities

TUSCUMBIA

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May/June

contents

108 WELLKNOWN SECRETS

BY JENNIFER CROSSLEY HOWARD  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE

On the eve of their latest album release, The Secret Sisters dig deep into their hard-won, homespun musical success.

© Abraham Rowe

Kitchen + Bar Essentials | Catering | Goods for the Home Monday – Friday: 10am – 5pm · Saturday: 10am – 3pm Weekday Lunch: 11am – 2pm · Saturday Brunch: 10am – 2pm 462 Lane Drive · Florence, AL 35630 · 256.760.1090 · www.alabamachanin.com

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contents 20 PAS DE DEUX

BY PAUL WHISENANT  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE

The Huntsville Ballet Company soars with its bravura performance of a Balanchine classic.

52 MERV WARREN

BY ROY HALL

From Huntsville to Hollywood: the Grammywinning producer, arranger, and film composer goes on the record on life after Take 6.

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52 © Courtney Barron

62 WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

BY ANDY BAXTER  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE

Catch a Rising Star: profiles of the next generation of North Alabama musicians, on the brink of breaking through.

76 GOD BOXES AND BELLOWS

BY ANDY THIGPEN  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE

The hidden treasures and musical history lesson tucked not-so-quietly away inside an East Florence warehouse.

86 THE GRAND OLD OPERA

BY MICHELLE RUPE EUBANKS  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE

UNA’s Department of Music makes the classical accessible—and SRO popular—with their boffo opera series.

15 CONTRIBUTORS 16 CALENDAR SELECTED EVENTS FOR MAY/JUNE 2017

26 RED MOUTH

BY ERIC GEBHARDT

30 MARKET: WEST

BY SUSAN ROWE  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE HAIR AND MAKEUP BY JANAÉ BURNSIDE

42 THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT, PART II

62

76

BY ANDY THIGPEN  PHOTOS BY ABRAHAM ROWE

58 OLD SCHOOL

BY CHRIS PAYSINGER

100 MARKET: EAST

BY AISSA CASTILLO AND LAUREN MCCAUL PETERSEN PHOTOS BY LAUREN TOMASELLA CARNEY HAIR AND MAKEUP BY GLENN KING

120 A FAVOR FOR ELEANOR

BY ALLEN TOMLINSON  ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROWAN FINNEGAN

128 FOOD FOR THOUGHT

BY SARAH GAEDE

86

130 PARTING SHOT

BY ABRAHAM ROWE

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editor’s letter « Roy Hall

“An embarrassment of riches.”

That phrase rings in my ear, every year from April ’til May, when we hunker down in the No’Ala office to decide which of the talented multitude of North Alabama-based musicians to feature in our annual music issue. This year, we’re proud to introduce you to five young singer-songwriters we’re pretty sure you haven’t heard from yet, but whom we’re certain you’ll hear much from later.

no’ala advisory board Dr. Terrance Brown Dr. Tiffany Bostic-Brown Maggie Crisler Michelle Rupe Eubanks Guy McClure, Jr. Abraham Rowe Susan Rowe LuEllen Redding Andy Thigpen Mary-Marshall VanSant Carolyn Waterman

And, in a No’Ala first, we’d like to cordially invite you to our first-ever listening party, at Florence’s 116 E Mobile, Saturday, May 20, where we’ll introduce you to them in person.

If Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle need any introduction, it’s probably because you know them by another name, The Secret Sisters. Laura and Lydia have spent the better part of a decade compiling a catalog of emotionally-charged lyrics set to complex, haunting harmonies, and making themselves beloved in the process. We sat down with the (surprisingly hilarious) Muscle Shoals born and bred duo to dish record company blues, the muse, the value of home, and their June release, You Don’t Own Me Anymore.

Now, here’s a name you might not know: Merv Warren. If his doesn’t ring a bell, here are a few that will: Quincy Jones, Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton, The Preacher’s Wife, and The Wedding Planner. Huntsville-native and founding member of gospel group Take 6, Warren has spent the last 25 years arranging and producing for some of the biggest names in music during his spare time between film composition gigs. He’s got five Grammys on his mantel for his trouble, and we’ve got his story, direct from Warren’s home-recording studio in sunny Hollywood USA. If the words “classical music, foreign language, and tragedy” don’t exactly sound like seatfillers…Surprise! They are. At least, when they’re in the hands of the astoundingly talented student-players of UNA’s Department of Music, whose April production of Puccini’s La Bohème filled the Shoals’ largest venue—yet again. Selling out opera performances has become something of a habit with these folks; we went fishing for their secret, and got an earful.

Near the top of the list of most-influential choreographers of the 20th century sits perched the name George Balanchine. Understandably, the trust that protects Balanchine’s legacy is more than a little jealous about just whom they let perform the master’s works. At the top of that esteemed list, this year, is the Huntsville Ballet Company. In March, we eavesdropped on the principal dancers as they rehearsed Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. It’s poetry in motion. And on film.

And last but certainly not least: Eleanor. Spiteful, batty, lovelorn, incarcerated Eleanor.

What a ride it’s been, from the first chapter of No’Ala’s debut serial, in July/August 2015, to this, the final installment in the saga of River City’s least eligible bachelorette. Allen Tomlinson, No’Ala publisher and co-founder, returns to bid a fond, felonious adieu to his fictional creation.

May/June 2017 VOLUME 10: ISSUE 3

Allen Tomlinson PUBLISHER

Roy Hall EDITORINCHIEF

Matthew Liles PRESIDENT

David Sims CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Jamie Noles ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

Rowan Finnegan GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Justin Hall WEB DESIGNER

Carole Maynard PROOFREADER

Kathleen Bobo DISTRIBUTION

Tiffany Evans DESIGN INTERN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Andy Baxter, Michelle Rupe Eubanks, Sarah Gaede, Eric Gebhardt, Roy Hall, Jennifer Crossley Howard, Chris Paysinger, Andy Thigpen, Allen Tomlinson, Paul Whisenant CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS & STYLISTS Courtney Barron, Janaé Burnside, Lauren Tomasella Carney, Aissa Castillo, Melanie Hodges, Glenn King, Chris Paysinger, Lauren McCaul Petersen, Abraham Rowe, Susan Rowe CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR Rowan Finnegan No’Ala is published six times annually by No’Ala Studios PO Box 2530, Florence, AL 35630 Phone: (256) 766-4222 » (800) 779-4222 noalastudios.com Standard postage paid at Florence, AL. A one-year subscription is $19.95 for delivery in the United States. Signed articles reflect only the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors.

Advertisers are solely responsible for the content of their advertisements. © 2008-2017 No’Ala Studios, All rights reserved.

Send all correspondence to Roy Hall, Editor, at the postal address above, or by email to roy@noalastudios.com.

To advertise, contact us at (256) 766-4222 or sales@noalastudios.com.

The editor will provide writer’s guidelines upon request. Prospective authors should not submit unsolicited manuscripts; please query the editor first.

No’Ala is printed with vegetable-based inks. Please recycle.

Connect with us on Facebook: No’Ala Studios, Instagram: noalastudios, Pinterest: NoAlaStudios, and Twitter: @NoAla_Magazine

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contributors

Andy Baxter is precisely 50 percent of the band Penny & Sparrow. He, his wife, Sarah, and their dog, Gator, packed up and moved to North Alabama two years ago from Fort Worth, Texas, where Andy was born and raised.

He collects rare books, bourbon, and trivia. He thinks that about sums it up.

Florence-native Janaé Burnside is a hair stylist and make-up artist. She caters to a broad range of clientele, including celebrity clients on film and TV sets. Her passions lie in helping empower women by realizing their own beauty inside and out.

Lauren Tomasella Carney is a Huntsville-based lifestyle and wedding photographer. She’s married to her best friend, dog-mom to the world’s cutest Yorkie, and proud aunt to two adorable nieces. She loves travel and homecooked meals.

Retail manager, wardrobe stylist,

blogger, and mom of two boys, Aissa Castillo has called North Alabama home for 17 years. A graduate of the University of North Alabama’s Radio, TV, and Film program, she lives in Huntsville.

Michelle Rupe Eubanks lives and works in the Shoals.

She’s the marketing director at Shoals Hospital in Muscle Shoals as well as the District 4 Florence City Councilperson.

She’s married to Jeff, a chef, and they have two daughters, Maeve and Ally, and two dogs, Olive and ’Tini— Martini, if you’re nasty.

Sarah Gaede is an Episcopal priest, yoga teacher, and good cook—not chef!

She loves to share her tried and true, accessible recipes with No’Ala readers.

Like her inspirations Julia Child and Ina Garten, she vehemently eschews cilantro.

Eric Gebhardt is a Shoals-based singer/ songwriter and musician and a product of the area’s mid ’90s punk scene. After a stint in Orlando’s punk/ garage scene and a tour of the States, Eric came home to rediscover his roots. He performs from North Alabama to

Estonia and everywhere in between under his nickname, Red Mouth.

Jennifer Crossley Howard is an awardwinning freelance writer who lives in Decatur, Alabama. She considers Florence her surrogate hometown and her muse. She has reported on the South for 12 years in daily newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times.

She started her journalism career, after graduating UAB, writing about the Shoals. She enjoys biking Point Mallard Trail and listening to records.

A native of Alabama, Glenn King lives in Huntsville with his husband, Patrick. An independent hairstylist and makeup artist working out of Fringe Salon, his work has been featured in various local magazines, newspapers, and Food Network’s Bama Glama.

Chris Paysinger lives in downtown Athens, Alabama, in a perpetually cold old house, the c. 1825 Mason-Looney Home.

His wife, Suzanne, director for Hospice of Limestone County, tolerates his bad sense of humor and love of

Continued on page 17

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calendar

Now – Thursday, October 26 (Thursdays Only) Biergarten Enjoy a festive atmosphere with imported and domestic beers and German wine. It’s family friendly, and leashed dogs are welcome. Rain or shine. 4:30pm-7:30pm; Free; Food and beverages available for purchase; U.S. Space & Rocket Center, One Tranquility Base, Saturn V Hall; rocketcenter.com

Biergarten

Thursday, May 4 – Sunday, May 7 Defiance Set in 1971 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Lt. Col. Morgan Littlefield and his reluctant protégé, Capt. Lee King, clash over issues of race and authority within the Marine Corps, as the civil rights movement and Vietnam War divide the world outside. Thurs-Sun 7:30pm and Sun 2:00pm; Admission charged; Shoals Community Theatre, 123 N Seminary St, Florence; (256) 764-1700; facebook.com/ ShoalsCommunityTheatre Friday, May 5 Shoals Symphony at UNA presents Disney Live: The Jungle Book The Shoals Symphony at UNA once again brings Disney LIVE to the Shoals! The full-length G-rated animated Disney classic The Jungle Book will be presented on a giant screen on the Norton stage with the Shoals Symphony at UNA providing the musical underscore live! The concert is licensed by Disney Concerts, a division of ABC, Inc., Walt Disney Music Company, and Wonderland Music Company, Inc. Tickets are available at shoalssymphony.una.edu or at the Lindsey Box Office. 7:30pm; Admission charged; Norton Auditorium, UNA; (256) 765-5122; shoalssymphony.una.edu Friday, May 5 and Friday, June 2 Florence First Fridays The exciting monthly event gathers artists of all kinds–musicians, painters, sculptors, photographers, hand-crafted jewelry creators, and more–for a community-wide celebration. 5:00pm-8:00pm; Free; Downtown Florence; firstfridaysflorence.org Saturday, May 6 HSO presents Video Games Live! Bonus Round Video Games Live! is an immersive concert event featuring music from the most popular video games. The Huntsville Symphony Orchestra and guests will perform along with exclusive video footage and music arrangements, synchronized lighting, solo performers, electronic percussionists, live action, and unique interactive segments to create an explosive entertainment experience. 7:30pm; Admission charged; Mark C Smith Concert Hall, VBC; (256) 539-4818; hso.org

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contributors

Continued from page 15

old junk. With 10-yearold daughter, Avery, he plies the backroads of the South looking for bad BBQ and good history. He is a partner in the Southern culture brand Reconstruction South.

in the power of good stories, good food, and good drink. He works in communications at the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), and is always looking for an excuse to adventure.

Lauren McCaul Petersen is a Huntsville-based interior designer.

When she’s not shopping locally for No’Ala’s buying guide, she’s traveling the world curating products for her global style brand, Agra Culture, or supporting Army medical facilities for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Allen Tomlinson remains connected to North Alabama through his writing, his Southern accent, and his commitment to baking cornbread for every new Pacific Northwest friend he makes. He is the retired Founder of No’Ala Studios, and currently serves as the Director of Marketing and Communications for the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute in Portland, Oregon. He swears that the stories about Eleanor, which end in this issue, are not based on a true story, the details of which could probably be found in the TimesDaily, circa 1996.

Or so he’s been told.

Abraham and Susan Rowe are Florence, Alabamabased wedding and commercial photographers and stylists. Their clients include Alabama Chanin and Billy Reid.

The Rowe’s work has appeared in Elle, Elle Décor, and T, The New York Times magazine.

Paul Whisenant is a dilettante who dabbles in writing, photography, and filmmaking. He is fond of crosswords, Tagalongs, and the Ramones. He believes in the Oxford comma, two spaces after a period, and jail time for anyone who says irregardless. He holds an A.S. in Mathematics and lives in Huntsville.

Thursday, May 18 – Saturday, May 20 Front Porch Storytelling Festival This annual event presents a variety of professional storytellers and musicians sure to captivate your imagination. Come embark on a journey to different times and places through the vivid stories of some very talented friends. For event locations, dates, times, and other information, visit kdartcenter.org/ storytelling.

Saturday, May 20 – Sunday, May 21 Arts Alive Arts Alive attracts arts and crafts lovers from across the Southeast to downtown Florence’s Wilson Park for two, family-friendly days of art browsing and buying.

Come to the park, chat with artists, and enjoy beautiful downtown Florence as you stroll through booths featuring a juried collection from across the country.

Sat and Sun 9:00am-5:00pm; Free; Wilson Park; alabamaartsalive.com Thursday, June 1 Listen Local Huntsville Alan Little hosts Ryan Keef, Tony Perdue, and Reno Roberts in a not-to-bemissed listening room performance. Doors open at 6:00pm, music starts at 7:00pm; Admission charged; Tangled String Studios, Lowe Mill, 2211 Seminole Dr SW, Huntsville; listenlocalhsv.com Thursday, June 1 – Saturday, June 3 Buskerfest Arts Huntsville and Downtown Huntsville, Inc., will fill downtown Huntsville with live music from 25 local performers. The community is encouraged to head to the Downtown Arts & Entertainment district to enjoy three evenings of live music and to show their support for our local talent by dropping a tip in their buckets! Thurs-Sat 5:00pm-8:00pm; Free; Downtown Huntsville; artshuntsville.org Friday June 2 – Saturday, June 3 13th Annual Cigar Box Guitar Festival The longest running cigar box guitar festival in the world honors the makers, musicians, and fans of these unique, historic instruments with a two-day event full of live music, engaging demonstrations, hands-on workshops, folk art, vendors, food trucks, and more. Fri 6:00pm-9:00pm and Sat noon-9:00pm; $5 suggested donation; Lowe Mill, 2211 Seminole Dr SW, Huntsville; lowemill.net Sunday, June 11 Edsel Holden presents What a Wonderful World A Shoals tradition, the annual benefit concert features Holden, a stage full of local talent, and the Edd Jones Orchestra performing jazz favorites. Proceeds benefit UNA Bands. Tickets are available at the Kennedy-Douglass Center for the Arts. 2:00pm; Admission charged; Norton Auditorium, UNA; (256) 760-6379 Thursday, June 22 – Sunday, June 25 Helen Keller Festival Over 100 events including musicians, fine arts and crafts shows, a parade, and Keller Kids educational activities. This annual event in Sheffield is one of the largest festivals in North Alabama. For event descriptions, times, locations, and other information, visit helenkellerfestival.com.

Sunday, June 25 Microwave Dave Day The family-friendly event features performances from some of the finest local musicians including Microwave Dave and the Nukes. Proceeds benefit the Microwave Dave Music Education Foundation. For event location, times, line-up, and other information, visit microwavedavemef.org.

Andy Thigpen is a storyteller and traveler based in Florence, Alabama. Andy believes may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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scene

Artists George Taylor, Courtney Allen, and Mayor Battle Jim Holtkamp, Andrew Kattos, Tommy Battle, and David Chenault Katherine Newman Jerry Nutt and Debbie Washburn

Courtney Gattis and Susan Todd Jennifer Penifield and Pam and Tony Gann

Above: 2017 Painted Violin Society Reception february ,  · servisfirst bank, huntsville

Judy Hanby and Justin, Nicole, and Ella Wall

Dan Halcomb, George Taylor, and Gregory Vajda

Sarah and Tom Hereford © Linda Akenhead

Below: LEE Loves Local february ,  · riverworks design studio, muscle shoals

Chef Josh Quick, and Garland and Paula Bissinger (bar-side); Rear, left to right: Danny Murner, Kimi Samson, Kristy Bevis, and Leigh Ellen Melson Garland and Paula Bissinger Kimi Samson, Danley Murner, Cullen Stewart, and Reid Ware

Chelsea, Grant, and Huston Kennedy Kristy Bevis, Kayleigh Henderson, and Lauren Brink * Names for photos are provided by the organization or business featured.

Karen and Ronnie Garner Huston, Chelsea, and Grant Kennedy and Kara, Sophie, and Justin Lanfair © Abraham Rowe

The Quad Cities

FLORENCE

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te x t by

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Paul Whisenant

» P h ot o s by

abraham rowe

TWENTY YEARS have elapsed since the Neutral Buoyancy pool at NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center was last used to simulate zero gravity in preparing astronauts for space walks. Today, eight miles away, at the studios of Huntsville Ballet Company, observers might at times feel as though they are seeing a new exercise in simulated weightlessness; such is the supernal grace of its dancers as they rehearse for the company’s 2017 mixed repertory.

Watching the proceedings with justifiable pride stands Phillip Otto, the company’s artistic director. The son of a New York ballet instructor who inculcated an enduring love of dance in all seven of her children, Otto has been involved with ballet for his entire life, having danced in his childhood with the New York City Ballet, and having trained with such venerated choreographers as Peter Martins, Jerome Robbins, and George Balanchine. It is one of the latter’s ballets, Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, that is being rehearsed for inclusion in the repertory, and for Otto, for the company, and for Huntsville, it is momentous.

All of Balanchine’s works are copyrighted, and the Balanchine Trust jealously protects their standards by placing stringent conditions on the licensing of those works for live performances.

A company seeking to perform a Balanchine ballet is carefully vetted in the application process, and the granting of a license is evidence that the Trust is satisfied with the caliber of its dancers. It raises the bar for HBC, and with it Huntsville assumes its place among the premier ballets of the southeast.

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Among the Trust’s requirements is that the company engage a Balanchine-approved repetiteur to oversee the staging of the ballet.

That’s where Patricia Blair comes in.

Ms. Blair possesses an intimate acquaintance with the Balanchine Technique, acquired through her training with the School of American Ballet, the Eglevsky Ballet, and Ballet Chicago, and that knowledge is in evidence as she supervises the rehearsal. Her manner is authoritative but not imperious.

She knows the Pas de Deux on a molecular level, and she tweaks the performances of the dancers in a businesslike voice. When she adjusts the angle at which the ballerina holds her head during a particular pose, her tone is of neither exhortation nor entreaty; it is matter-of-fact, as though she were straightening a picture on a wall. This equanimity belies the passion for artistic and pedagogic excellence that has fueled her career. That fervor is reciprocated in the principal dancers, two consummate professionals who are honing their performances with laser precision.

The ballerina, Sarah Pautz, began training at age three in San Antonio, Texas, and her love for performing has never flagged. When asked how much of her day is spent preparing, her answer is, “All of it.

Because even when we’re not in the studio actively rehearsing or training, there is mental work to be done. There’s a psychological zone you have to remain within to be effective in the studio and on stage, and I can’t get out and then come back in to that mindset. I have to stay.”

When she is away from work, she is always thinking about what she will do in the studio tomorrow: how to build on the successes of last week. As her body is her “instrument,” staying in prime physical condition requires vigilance in exercise and diet. She’s “constantly sewing pointe shoes, or gluing them, or putting extra nails in them to make them survive longer.” She’s unlikely to be found on a Netflix binge or hunched over a Facebook app. In an era of manifold distractions, she has cultivated an admirable power to stay focused. The control she exerts over her entire form renders her dancing a marvel to witness. It is a visible manifestation of an inner discipline that is scarce in this day.

The danseur, Jayson Pescasio, having begun dance training at the age of 10 in Cavite, Philippines, discovered early in life that dance is the thing he is most passionate about. In fourth grade “I fell in love with the physical training aspect of it. There’s an almost instant gratification” in pushing his own limits.

He concurs with Pautz on the matter of continuous engagement. “Physically, we rest, but mentally, we’re always in that state of improving our art form and growing as partners.” That ardor is such that the rigors of training scarcely register when weighed against its rewards. “While we’re dancing, exhaustion is inevitable, but the amount of joy that we get doing it is greater” than the demands of the body for rest and air. Immediately after breaking past a limit “you want to do it again because it’s so much fun.”

It induces the rush of feeling very much alive. That’s a powerful motivation to endure the demands of a round-the-clock regimen.

Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux runs eight minutes, and demands unremitting concentration on the part of both dancers. Pautz likens it to a sprint as opposed to a marathon: “In a full-length ballet, there is some acting on stage, and there’s some interaction with other characters, and there is pacing. But in a pas de deux, from start to finish there’s no resting, or character development. You come out, you go all out, and then it’s over.”

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“Physically, we rest, but mentally, we’re always in that state of improving our art form and growing as partners.”

Jayson Pescasio

“There’s a psychological zone you have to remain within to be effective in the studio and on stage, and I can’t get out and then come back in to that mindset.

I have to stay.”

Sarah Pautz

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Again Pescasio concurs: “It’s very different. With a fulllength ballet, doing the lead role, you go in and out. You have time to breathe, gather yourself, be in the character.

In a way you get to warm up for the audience. In this one, there’s no time for that. You have to be in the moment. If you’re not, you’re going to get behind. You’re going to lose it. No time to think.”

The Pas de Deux serves as the Grand Pas in Act Three of Tschaikovsky’s Swan Lake, wherein Prince Siegfried dances with Odile (disguised as Princess Odette) at a costume ball.

As part of HBC’s Repertory, it serves to exhibit the fruit of those strenuous hours of preparation. The dancers are at once elegant and ebullient. The entrée commences, the characters encounter each other and join hands, and there ensues a succession of leaps, balances, and turns that defy de-

scription, as well as gravity. The culmination, the “fish dive,” in which Odile leaps into Siegfried’s arms and is suspended with her face perilously close to the floor, cannot fail to take the spectator’s breath away.

Edmund Burke wrote of Marie Antoinette, “[S]urely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.” He might well have directed such an encomium at HBC’s Pas de Deux. When they dance, Pautz and Pescasio occupy a stratum at the outer limits of Earth’s pull. We terrestrians are fortunate indeed who can, from time to time, join them there.

Information about Huntsville Ballet Company and Huntsville Ballet School can be found at huntsvilleballetcompany.org.

“In a pas de deux, from start to finish there’s no resting, or character development.

You come out, you go all out, and then it’s over.”

Sarah Pautz

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The Quad Cities

MUSC LE SHOALS

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red mouth » Eric Gebhardt

I’ll use this space to pass along record reviews, both from our incredibly talented, homegrown acts as well as other, lesser-known, far-flung acts I think are worthy of your attention.

My name is Eric Gebhardt.

If you’ve ever packed yourself into Pegasus Records on a Florence Saturday night, there’s a strong likelihood I checked your I.D., served you free beer, or kicked you out o for underaged drinking. You may know me as Red Mouth. There’s a long story s around that odd moniker; here’s the condensed version: I have (what’s left le of ) a head-full of red hair and a beard to match. And at 6’3” I’m kinda hard h to miss. If you see a red Big Bird walking in the rain, it’s likely me!

© Claire Nich

ols

If you’re wondering what a ginger-bearded musician with a wild streak as long lo and twisting as the Tennessee River is doing writing a music column for No’ No Ala, here’s your answer. I’ve been playing shows as a singer and songwriter in North Alabama for more than 20 years—from shows at Gorin’s (Huntsville) and an The 19th Hole (Madison) in the mid ’90s, to the present at 116 E. Mobile (Florence)—and (Flo I’m still quite active.

My M music career has taken me all over the globe, too, and wherever ev I go, people express great reverence for North Alabama and the th music we share with the world. I always point out to these fans of our musical heritage that North Alabama’s influence isn’t just an important chapter in American musical history; we’re also producim ing in some of the finest, most influential new artists around. I have great respect for this younger generation, bands like Planet Ink, g as a well as a loving reverence for songwriters from our past, like the great Donnie Fritts.

Personally, I sit between those two generations, with a foot—or at least a toe—in both. With this column, I intend to deliver information about events not only in an attempt to get you to go to them, matio butt also b l tto educate d t us all ll on why h I tthink they’re important.

Top: 1996 or 1997.

Riot City Carnival at The 19th Hole, Madison. On bass, the infamous Bill Conflict, one of my dearest friends and founding member of Random Conflict, likely Alabama’s longest running punk band of 30 years.

Above, right (from left to right): Nathan Grissett, Trey Nichols, Zane Bowling, and Caroline Webb of Florence’s Electric Zen.

That’ll involve a bit of an education for me, too. Confession time: I admit to not knowing a heck of a lot about the Huntsville music scene. In fact, I’ve often joked that it’s easier for me to book an Estonian tour than a show in Huntsville. At times that has been true. With this column, I greatly look forward to discovering all the bad news bears and light brights in and around Rocket City.

So, I’ll use this space to pass along record reviews, both from our incredibly talented, homegrown acts as well as other, lesser-known, far-flung acts I think are worthy of your attention.

Because I’ve been playing live for longer than some of the acts I share stages with have been alive, I’ll also use this space to point out performances all over North Alabama that deserve your love. When a tourist asks, “Where do the locals go?” I want this column to be your resource. “Shop local” has been a continuing refrain in No’Ala since Issue 1. I’ll be exploring the “Support local music” side of things.

From time to time, I’ll also take time out to remind us all of our amazing musical heritage and of the folks who inspire new generations to express themselves through music. With this first column, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank some teachers who inspired me.

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I wrote my first song around eight or nine years old, describing, in great detail, a bar fight set to a melody whose origin I still can’t pinpoint. To have written such a tail with such detail and breadth of characters still awes me. I sang it myself over and over. However, it wasn’t until Art II at Florence’s Bradshaw High School, where I studied under Mrs. Weatherford, that I got my first real focus in creating art. Mrs. Weatherford retired while I was in school, and I could’ve cried. She took time out of her class to council me after the death of my grandmother; she opened my imagination and showed me its depth through colors; she taught me that in order to show darkness to others, you must use light.

After that, I took a creative writing class from Mrs. Freeman.

She helped me complete my high school education in art and nurtured my subversive spirit, while revealing its positive and valuable possibilities. I was ready to see the world after that, and screw myself up and find myself time and time again.

The lessons those women taught me still reverberate in my mind. They helped save me over and over and are still helping as I type this now.

Today, in that same building, the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, one of the country’s most impressive, immersive arts programs, is educating the next generation of great North Alabama artists. Young people are taking classes in band, choral, creative writing, dance, digital media, orchestra, recording arts, theatre, and visual arts, programs created to stimulate the minds, bodies, and spirits of children in the very town I grew up in. Imagine the number of teachers, the number of children this program will affect. The positive outcomes are countless.

This past March 23, Florence High School hosted a FAFA fundraiser. Local bands Furniture and Willis—Florence High School alums among them—came back to play alongside Electric Zen, a band of teenagers currently benefiting from FAFA. When I was young, my friends and I were too cynical and jaded to take much pride in our school. This program is already producing students who not only appreciate their education in the arts, but want to give back. These young ones today seem to really have their fingers on what is truly important to them and the desire to make an impact on the world.

So, in honor of my inaugural column, here is the first of many musical manifestos to come: Let’s listen, so we can help ensure that future kids will also be all right.

I’ll see you back here in this space, in July. Until then, save up your cover charges and clear your calendars.

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SATURDAY | May 20th | 7:00 PM may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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market: west » By Susan Rowe » Photos by Abraham Rowe » Hair and Makeup by Janaé Burnside

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For the use of their space (and their hit-making mojo), No’ala thanks the world-famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studios.

To inquire about tours, visit msmusicfoundation.org.

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The Quad Cities

SHEFFIELD

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scene

Deke Damson, Stuart Evans, and Kohler Damson Lee Foster, Elizabeth Foster, Tom Delay, Jason Shoemake, and JJ Shoemake Tabby Ragland and Leslie Evans Cindy Gray and Ronnie Robbins

Amy Henrich and Ted Henrich Jay Hartenbach, Nicole Hartenbach, Christine Wicks, and Mike Wicks

Mike Levine, Paige Prozan, Lindsay Murphy, and Rob Murphy

Dr. Larry Collier and Rita Collier

Huntsville Museum of Art 26th Annual Gala Black Tie Event march ,  · huntsville museum of art, huntsville

Jean Warren, Ashley Walker, and Belle Kelly Dana Houser, Ashley Mitchell, Elisa Haley, and Lori Meyer Sally Ann Culver and Dr. Wayne Laney

Patrick and Elizabeth Fleming

Katheryne Rice, Renee Elliot, and Beverly Alm

Sarah Gessler, Susan Todd, Sherrie Russ Levine, and Dr. Carl Gessler

* Names for photos are provided by the organization or business featured.

Tabby Ragland, Christopher Madkov, and Leslie Evans

Ginney McDonald, Foster McDonald, Dianne Sammons, and Dr. Calame Sammons © Jeff White Photographer

SHOP / E AT / PL AY

114 Clinton Avenue | Huntsville, Alabama | shopclintonrow.com may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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Phot Ph oto by

by Amand nda Chapman

921-C East Avalon Ave, Muscle Shoals, AL 35661 256-320-2150 • www.dynamicshoals.com Dr. Mary Leigh Gillespie • Dr. Hiba Abusaid • Dr. Julie Rice may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

text by andy thigpen » photos by abraham rowe

In early 2017, photographer Abraham Rowe and writer Andy Thigpen set out to document a stretch of highway North Alabamians use often, but seldom think about: Highway 72. Over the next few months, the duo will explore life along the highway, as it runs from Mississippi to the Tennessee and Georgia lines.

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THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT

Another bright Saturday morning in early March, and Abraham and I were cruising down Highway 72. Having gone through Cherokee and Leighton previously, we decided we’d stay north of the Tennessee River and start east of Florence.

I’ve heard people say that the drive on 72 between the Shoals and Huntsville is long and boring, especially if you’re in a hurry. But life in this section of the highway doesn’t lend itself to bustling.

Here, it’s all about slowing down and finding the right pace.

We pulled into a gas station with no name, right between Poplar Creek and Shaw Drive. Google said it was Athens, but we didn’t believe it. Stars and stripes flew from flagpoles and trucks; the smell of fried chicken wafted by. Inside, the golden-brown glow of crispy chicken under heat lamps and the smiling face of Brad Zirbel greeted us. Brad stood a solid six-feet and wore a shortsleeved button up with his sleeves hugging tight on two rocks of biceps. He looked like the type of man who earned his physique from throwing bales of hay or bench-pressing bison.

He also served as the welcome committee and after a firm handshake and name exchange, talked about the restaurant and life around the area. He called our attention to a wood-paneled dividing wall push-pinned full of pictures, maps, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera. One headline read, “Cotton Picking Good Time,” and featured a picture of Brad in overalls in a cotton field with a picking sack over his shoulder.

“Why’d you pick it by hand?” Abraham asked. “Oh, we do it once about every five years or so,” Brad said. “If we had

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BRAD ZIRBEL

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THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT enough hands, it didn’t take but about three hours.” Brad is a lifelong farmer who works with mostly cotton and soybeans.

While he didn’t say how much he farms now, he said at one point he farmed 1,040 acres.

he laughed. “Much more than what I figured it would be.

There’s going out and getting stuff, bringing it in, having to repair some, throwing away some—it’s quite a bit of work.”

He stood in the center of the room with a hand in his camo pocket and watched us poke around.

East of the gas station at the corner of Shaw Road and Hwy 72, where men read obituaries and eat fried chicken in silence, sits a little house with the sign “Redneck Garage Sale.” The owner sat on the porch in a wooden chair and camo jacket, holding a cigarette.

He greeted us and invited us to look around. Inside was a small room filled with trinkets, baubles, books, knives, video games, and almost anything else you could think of. A room off to the left held tools and hardware, and a doorway toward the end of the room led to more rooms in the back.

He said he retired from work as a carpenter several years ago and decided he still wanted to be active. “Come to find out there’s more work in this than there was at my regular job,”

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“I do that storage unit thing,” he said. “Just whatever you get is what you get. You don’t get to look and see what’s in there.

You just get it, and when they raise the door up, you buy it as is.”

“What’s the coolest thing you’ve found so far?”

Without hesitation he said, “Five brand new 30-06 rifles.”

We parked off the square in downtown Athens and wandered over to Dub’s Burgers, which proved an excellent backup plan. Located in an old strip mall, next to a Goodwill store, Dub’s has everything you want from a greasy spoon

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT diner. Family pictures and local heroes line the old walls. The menu is that marquee-style block lettering. There’s a never-ending line of patties rendering and sizzling on the grill.

Stone-faced waitresses take your order, but not without their own brand of charm. And all of the locals look you up and down before diving back into their burgers.

One of the best—and possibly most frustrating—parts of Dub’s is the fact that their meat is fresh. Talking with owner Derek Pirtle, he said they use a combination of fresh pork and beef that he orders daily. This is obviously good, because the fresher the better. This could be frustrating, because they only order so much per day. If you get there late in the day, or if they’ve had a busier lunch than usual, you might be out of luck.

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Thankfully, we got there in time to sink our teeth into the greasy slab that is Dub’s Burger. Since 1961, Dub’s grinds their beef and pork together with bread. This was a tactic used in old days to make the meat stretch farther while still keeping the flavor. Now, it’s used by Dub’s to give it just the right consistency to be crispy on the outside, yet soft enough to melt out of the bun. I got mine “all-the-way,” which means you get all the regular burger fixings plus their own tangy slaw. It was stunningly delicious, and I all but inhaled it.

We were way too early for the peaches; we were almost too early for the blooms. We didn’t even know we were walking through peach trees when we stopped at Isom’s Orchard. We didn’t know until Mr. Isom himself came out to greet us.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

THE HIGHWAY 72 PROJECT JOE ISOM

He walked right up to a tree, plucked off one of the pink blooms, split it open with his thumbnail, and held it out for us to see. “See that in there? How it’s all dried up?”

In 1957, Joe took up where his dad left off and set out his first peach trees. Now, 60 years later, Joe’s son Wes and his wife Marlene run the 250-acre farm.

Looking into the split flower, I could see a tiny, dried stalk that looked like it should be green.

“Everything we sell is local. We don’t sell to wholesalers anymore. We take our stuff to Florence, to the Huntsville farmers’ market, or to Decatur.”

“Frost killed that one. They’re blooming a little early,” he said.

Joe Isom has a gruff voice, and I could listen to it all day. He described the different kinds of peaches and apples they have around the orchard: 27 varietals of peaches, 16 types of apples. Nectarines, plums, pears, Chinese persimmons, grapes, watermelons, and a slew of vegetables, too.

“I’ve been here since day one, I think,” he laughed. “First it was the dirt and then me.”

Joe’s father planted the first trees as a part of the business that is now Isom’s Orchard. During the Depression, Joe’s father “couldn’t sell peaches for a quarter a bushel.” So, oneby-one, he took an axe and chopped all of his trees down.

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We thanked Joe for the tour.

“Oh, I wasn’t doing nothing. Eight bucks a show!” he laughed.

He invited us to come back during the summertime when the market gets going. He said there won’t be any strawberries this year, but reiterated how many vegetables they are trying this year—and they shell all the peas there for you.

Then in fall, once the apples come in, they make their own apple cider and blend it into apple cider slushies. Every season offers something new.

“Yep, they raise a little bit of everything,” he said, standing under his huge pecan tree. “Little bit of everything and a whole lotta Hell.”

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Courtesy photo

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ppearances to the contrary, the road to success for Merv Warren—multiple Grammy-winning former Take 6 member and acclaimed film composer— has not been without its bumps.

True, the Huntsville native’s very first gig, as arranger and accompanist for a girl group, was a smash. But when the fickle chanteuses dropped Warren after a single performance, he felt the sting of showbiz rejection.

“I was heartbroken,” Warren recollected, over the phone from his home scoring studio in the Hollywood Hills.

The heartbreak didn’t last. When the group returned, hats in hand, to beg his return, Warren reluctantly agreed to again provide his special blend of keyboard magic. But not before reaching an exclusivity agreement with the group.

Warren, for the record, was 10 years old at the time.

Even by that tender age, the future arranger and composer of Sister Act 2, Dreamgirls, and the Whitney Houston monster-hit The Preacher’s Wife had already been dabbling in music for half his life, reflecting a talent as much the result of nurture as nature.

“Oakwood University has a very rich musical tradition and legacy, and I grew up surrounded by all that,” Warren said of his formative years spent in faculty housing on the Seventh-day Adventist college campus, where both Warren’s parents were professors.

Inspired by the music around him, and with a precocity to match his talent, fiveyear-old Merv asked his piano-playing mom to teach him some chords. Mom agreed, but the impromptu lesson was short-lived. “Mom likes to say that she taught me a few chords, and then I left her in the dust,” Warren said with a chuckle. Those early lessons may have been brief, but their impression proved indelible. “I still remember the songs she taught me.”

text by roy hall

Warren recalled something else, too, an epiphany. “I soon realized that the chords in those songs were the same chords used to play other songs, too.” With the dore-mi code cracked, young Warren’s future was set.

A couple of professional piano teachers, a few years apart, entered the picture after Mom, both lasting about one year each. “I hated the lessons,” Warren said, not mincing words. “I was bored regurgitating other people’s music.” For young Warren, there was no greater joy than sitting at a keyboard playing songs he’d penned

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Ironically, sneaking jazz into ecclesiastical settings was nothing new at Oakwood; getting caught doing it was the new part. “A couple of organists would play soft music as people filed in to church, but it was straight-up jazz. But because it was an organ, it sounded reverent. Those of us who knew better,” Warren said, referring to his crew of decadent jazz lovers, “were kind of snickering.”

Controversy aside, Alliance proved true to its name, surviving beyond Warren’s and his band members’ high school years—beyond Huntsville, too, all the way to Tuscaloosa, where Warren earned his Bachelor of Music degree and then his Master. or restyling a familiar tune into something different and new, “something more fun for me and my classmates to sing.”

Warren understood intuitively how to translate familiar melodies into something more engaging, “more interesting, or jazzier, or more gospel. Or, not adding any rhythm at all, but making a song harmonically more complex.”

“Mom likes to say that she taught me a few chords, and then I left her in the dust.

I still remember the songs she taught me.”

Skills like that don’t go unnoticed, even among the din of Oakwood’s other accomplished musicians—including a quartet with a most unlikely practice space—who would change Warren’s life.

One afternoon during his sophomore year, Warren’s friend and musical sidekick, Mark Kibble, happened onto a quartet rehearsing in, of all places, the Oakwood gymnasium’s men’s room. (“Ceramic tile makes for the best acoustics,” Warren explained.) Kibble auditioned and was accepted on the spot, and the quartet became a quintet. With the addition of Kibble’s buddy Warren, five became six. And six, as history proved, turned out to be something of a magic number.

Warren, 15 or 16 at the time, and his bandmates called themselves Alliance. Acclaim came quickly for Alliance, and with popularity, something unexpected for a gospel group: controversy. “The Huntsville Times did a story on us,” Warren said. The title of the piece, to the best of Warren’s recollection, went something like, “Oakwood College Group Jazzes Up Gospel Sound.” The jazz part did not sit well with Oakwood’s older generation.

“At the time,” Warren explained, “Oakwood was very conservative. We were sort of reprimanded.”

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“The moment we hit campus,” Warren said of his arrival in Tuscaloosa, “some folks wanted to interview us.” Warren recalled the experience as “bizarre.” “At Oakwood, we were kind of underground. Now, I’m at Alabama, and I’m being interviewed on the radio and in the newspaper.”

There would be much more of that in the years ahead.

Warren completed his undergraduate work, while somehow managing to find time not only for Alliance, but another group, too, a co-ed quartet, called A Special Blend. In 1984, Warren’s senior year in college, A Special Blend released the album Nowhere But Up. Warren produced, arranged, and played the piano. The album’s modest pressing, no more than 500 copies, prevented widespread popularity, but not critical acclaim. Or more controversy. Yet again, the album’s jazz-tinged sound ran afoul of Oakwood’s conservative sensibilities.

Others were more enthusiastic, notably jazz super-group The Manhattan Transfer.

When a college friend invited Warren to a Manhattan Transfer concert in Toronto, Warren demurred. “I didn’t have any money,” Warren said of his depleted college-student bank account. Then he remembered his brand-new Citibank Visa.

He booked a flight.

“I waited backstage,” Warren said. “When they came out, I handed them two copies of Nowhere But Up, with my business card taped to both.” It’s the kind of bold move every aspiring artist has tried, usually to no avail. “Several months

Courtesy photos

Clockwise, from top left: Merv accompanies Dolly Parton on Letterman in 2014; Patti Austin and Merv; Merv and Lisa Kudrow in 2000; Take 6 in 1989 with A Different World star Dawnn Lewis; Quincy Jones with Take 6 in 1989; Merv in 2001, with super-producer David Foster; Merv with the one-and-only Whitney Houston.

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and his five bandmates to a record contract before Warren submitted a single job application.

Take 6 So, why is the jazz-infused a cappella gospel group familiar to everyone as Take 6, and not Alliance?

“There was already a band out there somewhere going by the name Alliance,” Warren explained. If the rumors Warren has heard are true, the Alliance who beat Warren’s Alliance over the trademark finish line was a hard rock metal band. Warren doesn’t know for sure; he’s been on the lookout for years, but he’s never managed to track down an Alliance record.

As arranger, producer, composer, or songwriter, multi-talented Warren added heart and soul to some of the most popular film musicals of the past 25 years.

In contrast, both Take 6 records on which Warren served as producer and arranger are easy to locate. The genrecrossing sextet earned immense popularity—and five Grammys—right out of the gate. Take 6 also performed all over the country with the biggest names in music, among them Stevie Wonder, The Manhattan Transfer, kd lang, BeBe and CeCe Winans, Whitney Houston, and Warren’s musical hero Quincy Jones.

In 1991, after two albums and a whirlwind of touring, Warren left the group.

later, my dad calls me in Tuscaloosa. ‘You got a call from a Janis Segal.’”

Dad might not have recognized the name, but Warren sure did. That was not a Janis Segal calling the Warren residence; that was the Janis Segal, member of The Manhattan Transfer. Segal called to inform Warren that she and her fellow Transfers had listened to Warren’s LP, and they had loved them. They loved them so much, The Manhattan Transfer submitted the album for a Grammy nomination. The submission didn’t turn into a nomination—it would have been something beyond a miracle if it had, given the limited release and the fact that A Special Blend was all but unknown outside the South. Still, what a graduation present.

And what a high bar to sail over two short years later.

“The summer after my master’s degree, I was preparing to apply for music theory teaching jobs at universities.” Warner Bros. Records executive Ed Norman had other ideas.

The Nashville music honcho caught Alliance’s act during a performance in a Music City coffee shop and signed Warren

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“I decided to move on,” Warren said, succinctly. “I wanted to produce other artists, and I wanted to work in film.”

He would do both, and in that order. In fact, one of his first producing and arranging gigs post-Take 6—and to this day one of his most auspicious undertakings, a multi-artist, gospel and jazz reimagining of Handel’s Messiah—would lead Warren to a new life and a new career in Hollywood.

“Disney saw our performance of the “Hallelujah Chorus” on the Grammys.” Specifically, film composer Marc Shaiman (Broadcast News, A Few Good Men, Beaches, Hairspray) saw Warren’s Messiah masterpiece and recognized right away that the talent behind translating the canonical work from the classical to the contemporary was the perfect person to reimagine the pop songs Shaiman had chosen for his upcoming score for the Whoopi Goldberg film Sister Act 2.

Disney flew Warren—already home in Nashville post-Grammys—back to L.A. to meet with Goldberg and Shaiman, whom Warren describes as “unselfish and magnanimous; a brilliant composer.” A deal was quickly struck. Veter-

“I hated [PIANO] lessons. I was bored regurgitating other people’s music.”

For young Warren, there was no greater joy than sitting at a keyboard playing songs he’d penned or restyling a familiar tune into something different and new,“something more fun for me and my classmates to sing."

an Shaiman would arrange for Whoopi and her fellow nuns, while newcomer Warren would tackle the music for the child actors. Warren went to work right away in Los Angeles. He’s still there, 25 years later.

“Play rain; play thunder” “When I was a kid, playing piano and arranging, people would ask me to ‘play rain; play thunder.’” On cue, Warren would coax out of the ivories a musical proxy for the elements, the first rumblings of a knack for translating emotions into music, something of a job requirement for a film composer.

Warren’s success on Sister Act 2 led to his first solo gig scoring a film, on the Shaquille O’Neal vehicle Steel. Warren remembers the experience fondly, for the 105-piece orchestra he was given to work with, and for the film’s producer, Quincy Jones.

“I’ve done a lot of work with Quincy over the years,” Warren said, “including his last three albums.”

Is it intimidating to work with one of the most successful and acclaimed musicians and producers of all time? “Yes and no,” Warren said. “Yes,” presumably, because the Thriller producer is an icon. “No,” because, as Warren relates, Jones is exceedingly generous. “Two years ago, Quincy asked me to arrange and produce a song for him. It just so happened that on the day we recorded the song, Quincy was in the studio. He’s in the chair next to me,” Warren said. “I felt obligated to defer to him. But he insisted that I do my thing. So I did, and he loved it.”

Warren shoehorns one-off projects, like the Jones single and “You Have More Friends Than You Know,” an original song benefiting the It Gets Better project and featured on TV’s Glee, into his busy schedule as a film composer and arranger.

The scoring process Warren describes for his film work, including the number-one hit The Wedding Planner, is intensive, enlisting the left and right lobes in the creation of music that emphasizes the dramatic and emotional content of a scene, and then inserting that music, with mathematical precision, into the final edited product.

“The score is the last thing that’s added,” Warren said of the journey to a finished film. The composer walks a fine line, ensuring that his “music correctly supports the scene, without being so obtrusive it calls attention to itself.”

From contract signing, through collaborative sessions with the film’s director, to the composition process—Warren scores from a state-of-the-art station in his home—to still more meetings, tweaks, additions, and edits, all the way to the premier, a month or more of intensive work goes into creating and honing less than one hour of film music.

For his work over the course of his two decades of diverse film and television work, Warren has been honored by his peers with five Grammys, six Dove awards, and a Soul Train award.

Recently, Warren enjoyed another honor, with the premier of his original piece for orchestra and voices at the Kennedy Center, in commemoration of the opening of the Smithsonian’s African-American wing. The piece, We Are All America, celebrates the diversity of the American experiment. The premier also served as a kind of coming home for Warren and his former Take 6 bandmates, who joined the choir on the Kennedy Center stage.

And in April, Warren enjoyed a literal homecoming on the campus of Oakwood University, when his alma mater paid tribute to Warren’s musical legacy, by featuring his body of work in concert.

Jazz and all.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

58 »

old school » Text and Photos byy Chris Paysinger y g

LET THERE BE ROCK rowing up in tiny Elkmont, Alabama, there were few opportunities for entertainment. Desperate for fun, I once participated in a green pinecone war to pass an afternoon while in middle school. Covered in bruises, I quickly realized that there had to be better options.

G

During the early ’90s, my friends and I found one, in music. One of those friends, Andrew Dubois, brought cassettes to school from the likes of Public Enemy, Pantera, Doug E Fresh, and White Zombie. He went on to write The Anthology of Rap Music, published by Yale Press.

We fell into concerts early, back when Starwood Amphitheater in Nashville was hosting Lollapaloozas. I saw Ice Cube, Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, Tool, Fishbone, and Pearl Jam, among many others.

But a handful of other shows standout.

THE BLACK CROWES The tickets came from Florence’s Pegasus records, I believe. But I didn’t drive over to pick them up. Instead, I slipped a 10-spot to a girl from a nearby school who offered to get a couple for me and a buddy. She had flame orange hair, talked too

loud, and drove too fast. But she was willing to head to Florence on a weeknight, burn her 90-cents-agallon gas, and pick up tickets to see The Black Crowes at Flowers Hall (aka “the gym” at UNA).

It was the first concert I had ever been to. For some reason, our parents trusted us to make our way over.

I was 16, my buddy 15. I can only hope my parenting skills include better discernment.

The Crowes album Shake Your Moneymaker had just come out, and I had a bootleg copy in my tape player. The band that opened couldn’t have been worse. But when the slow strum of “Jealous Again” emerged from the darkness, and the lights exploded to reveal a funky Chris Robinson strutting across the stage, I was hooked. By the time the bass player chugged a handle of Jack Daniels from an amp, I was a convert.

That night, as we headed back across the Elk River towards home, I carried great memories of my first concert and a T-shirt I would proudly wear the next day at school with the manifesto to “Shake Your Moneymaker” emblazoned across the front.

HELMET My students are surprised to learn that I have always had a soft, mushy spot in my heart for heavy metal.

While in high school, my super-dork friends and I would often load up and drive to Nashville or Atlanta to catch a show. My favorite band at the time was Helmet, a group of skinny dudes who looked more like accountants than headbangers.

We left school one afternoon and rushed to downtown Nashville for one of their shows. This was not the gentrifying Nashville of today, but a barren landscape with questionable characters prowling the streets.

The gig was in a “concert hall,” which was more like a semi-abandoned warehouse. Earlier in the day, I’d donated a pint of O-negative, and I regretted not taking the Red Cross girls up on their offer of a Fig Newton. No hipster restaurants in those days meant there was no grass-fed charcuterie tray to be had.

I have two endearing memories of that show. First, standing in line to get in, there was a very scary, short, and stout young man who sported a sleeveless shirt on a bitterly cold night. I guess he was proud of that tattoo that proclaimed that he was “Horny For Evil.”

Second, the venue was small and only a few hundred people were packed into the main room. As the show cranked up in earnest, I found myself sandwiched against the stage. And then I found myself lifted onto the stage by the crowd and standing next to the band as they thrashed about.

My first attempt at stagediving was halfhearted as I launched myself back into the crowd. The second time, I threw myself with gusto far into the mass of people. Luckily, someone caught my feet. Unluckily, no one caught my torso. My head slammed onto the concrete as the mass trampled me. A young girl with the sweetest voice and so many piercings in her head—I’m sure her nickname was “Colander”— yanked me up by the shirt and said thoughtfully that she hoped I wasn’t too hurt. I would have proposed had I not been so concussed.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

Let Old School: There Be Channeling Rock Ghosts

WE FELL INTO CONCERTS EARLY, BACK WHEN STARWOOD AMPHITHEATER IN NASHVILLE WAS HOSTING LOLLAPALOOZAS. I SAW ICE CUBE, ALICE IN CHAINS, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, TOOL, FISHBONE, AND PEARL JAM, AMONG MANY OTHERS.

LITTLE JIMMY KING AND THE KING JAMES VERSION

had done since. He bought me a beer—I assume to keep the conversation going. But I didn’t need a beer to do that.

Obviously, the best band name, ever. My buddy (the same one from the Black Crowes concert—our parents still seemed to trust us together) and I set out on a college road trip to Mississippi that involved primarily beer, humidity, and a fire ant attack. We were also briefly suspected of committing a murder in Vicksburg—a long story, too long to relay here.

Bottom line: we didn’t do it.

A few years later I stumbled into that same bar with my girlfriend (now wife). On stage, in a suit with creases that would cut you, Little Jimmy still held court. He told my girlfriend he liked her red pants, so much so, he dedicated Hendrix’s “Red House” to her. I think we danced cheek to cheek to it.

I swear.

We found ourselves pulling into Memphis amid a HarleyDavidson rally. Among the rowdiness of Beale Street, we ducked into a small dive. Little Jimmy King, a dead ringer for Jimmy Hendrix, prowled the stage. He played a Gibson Flying V left-handed and upside down. And he was bad as hell.

That night I drank cheap beer and listened to the blues. I talked to a Vietnam vet about his time there and what he

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WEDDING My favorite concert involved a band that could only be loosely defined as such. My wedding to the pretty blonde in the red pants was quickly approaching. The reception was going to be at a very “dry” event space. We had a jazz band, good cake, and the grandparents enjoyed the punch. But I had dreams of something a little more fun for our friends.

A local honky-tonk just into Tennessee had been my watering hole since moving back north. I screwed up the courage to ask the owner if we could have a post-reception party

there. After he agreed, I told him we were getting the band back together. The “band” consisted of my high school buddies, all talented musicians. They played well into the night.

The bar regulars shared dances with bridesmaids.

And I couldn’t tell you a song they played that night.

owadays, my music nights are pretty tame, in comparison. I like to catch Rob Aldridge at local spots— just a few songs and a couple of beers with my BBQ before rushing home to an early bedtime. I like to walk in and catch Matt Prater playing on the Square in Athens and hear him warble like Waylon.

N

We head to the Shoals Theatre now and then and catch Athens’ own Anderson East, Dawes, and others. I dig the retro vibe and enjoy Billy Reid’s Shindig.

But I thought my hardcore concert days were far behind me.

Turns out, my 10-year-old daughter, Aves, has caught the bug. On beach trips or errands around town she sits in the backseat, “device-less.” No DVD player strapped to the headrest, no tablet in her lap, just the steady drum of conversation and music.

Aves has a thick, syrupy Southern drawl. One night when she was four, we were at a friend’s when someone picked at her a little about her twang. On the way home I told her I loved the way she talked, to not worry about it. From the darkness of the backseat she said, “Daddy, don’t worry about losing your accent. A Southern man tells better jokes.” And then she died laughing.

Not every kid can quote Jason Isbell; maybe I’m doing something right as a parent.

She now begs to go to shows, and we take her to a few. One night she fell asleep in my lap at the Ryman while Isbell tore the roof off the place. And she likes to listen to Etta James and Clarence Carter, too.

But rest assured, Aves and her friends likely won’t head out for concerts alone for a while. Somebody has to catch them after they jump from the stage.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

W h at HA P P E N S N e x t t ex t by

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ANDY BAXTER

» Ph o t o s by

abraham rowe

As you read this, the music you’ll give a damn about in the next decade is being written and recorded—in home studios, on iPhone voice memos, during local house shows, and on scratch paper during college lectures. Caring about this music will be easy, once we hear it. And therein lies the dilemma. If listeners aren’t careful, our musically dense and diluted society will obscure the progress the next generation is making, overwhelming us with a myriad of unheard bands, singles, and LPs. In our frustration, we may opt to stick with what we know and let new beauty pass us by, like a ship in the night.

Or, we can make the choice to listen.

We can choose to sift through what’s being recorded and digest the lyrics, to rekindle an appreciation for the songwriting craft, to reverse the damage done by an excess of choices. In short, we can choose to give a damn. The young musicians in this article hope you make that choice.

They are the ones creating the tunes you’ll cry, kiss, and tap your feet to in the years to come. For your sake, as much as theirs, give them a listen.

Give them a listen the way music ought to be heard—live— when No’Ala hosts our first-ever showcase, Saturday, May 20, at Florence’s 116 E Mobile.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

What Happens Next

With a voice like a curled fist, Birmingham-born Emmie Chambers is the type of singer you fall for from note one.

Her delivery packs a punch, and that wallop is delivered with a spooky degree of ease. If you listen to Chambers with your eyes closed, you’ll quickly note the strength of her sustained notes; the lilted, endearing twang of her accent; and the masterful control she has over her vocal instrument.

With eyes open, watching Chambers perform is akin to seeing old footage of Loretta Lynn gliding through “Harper Valley PTA.” Go ahead; try not to grin.

Chambers was first handed a guitar at age eight, at which point she’d already been singing and plunking away on a keyboard for half a decade. Music is a nurtured skill in her family and Chambers recalls coming home from church at five years old and playing part of the “Doxology” by ear, and her old man having to be talked down from investing in a baby grand, on the spot. To this day, her dad, Alfie, still plays lead guitar for most of Chambers’ concert videos.

Two years ago, Chambers relocated from her native Texas to Florence to attend UNA. A junior now, Chambers is neckdeep in writing, performing, and recording, as well as the demands of college life. Through it all, Chambers makes time to write.

The songwriters she stores away as inspiration are all experts at slice-of-life beauty and hurt. Jason Isbell, Ryan Adams, Holly Williams, and Patty Griffin serve as a veritable royal court of advisors in the art of heartbreak goodness. It’s these folks Chambers conjures to sharpen her own music.

Although her online presence is mostly populated with cover songs, they’re enough to make you hungry for more.

(Anytime the crummy Dad-cam audio of a Tom Petty cover recorded at a high school choir recital leaves you crying onto your iPhone screen, you know you’ve hit pay dirt.) A voice like hers makes a promise that whenever we get to hear songs she’s written, we’ll be impressed.

What song do you wish you’d written and why?

“Okay, this was very hard, but I’m choosing ‘Hallelujah’

by Leonard Cohen. It’s an iconic song, and I love the incredible blend of religion and love. It’s one of those songs that will never die, and that’s the kind of songwriter I want to be someday.”

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E mmi e C ha mb e r s

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What Happens Next

Hay d en Sc o t t face b ook .com /hayden sc o ttm u si c

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A well-written song can leave you feeling stung. For the writer, delivering that sting is an accomplishment; it means the lyrics and the melody were delivered with surgical precision. For the listener, it can mean a different kind of intervention: therapy.

Hayden Scott’s “Little Things” gently nudges the listener in the direction of difficult memories. Once there, Scott doesn’t abandon you. His lyrics serve as gritty catharsis for anyone who has known lost love and wants to sleep soundly again. Scott’s music is vulnerable, angry, endearing, and chest-tightening, all in equal measure, the kind of writing usually associated with a road-wise troubadour, who has spent the better part of decades honing his craft. The thing is, Scott graduated from Athens’ East Limestone High School last May. Scott’s musical inspirations are young and poetic; they tread boldly in directions most of their peers avoid.

Listening to the inventive production that surrounds his music, and the lyrical substance, it’s no wonder Lorde and Solange are among his influences. When asked who, if given the opportunity, he would love to collaborate and tour with, Scott expands his list to include the vibe-y arena DJ duo Disclosure and the prolific genius of James Blake. Scott has managed to glean beauty from these artists without parroting or plagiarizing their sound; to the contrary, Scott manages to deliver newness and intrigue.

Scott logs serious hours sharpening his craft. Hearing him describe his process is like listening to a blue-collar sermon on the value of calloused hands and elbow grease. Touting a shelf of six different notebooks he writes in every day, Scott carries a creative work ethic uncommon among his contemporaries. He doesn’t wait on the muse to show up.

He goes hunting. Daily.

Scott has taken the year off from school to focus every bit of energy he can into his music. In the meantime, until his album drops, we’ll have to content ourselves with the melancholic, sexy single “Little Things.” Patience, as they say, is a virtue.

What song do you wish you’d written and why?

“It would have to be ‘Weary’ by Solange. I find myself thinking a lot about my place in the world and hearing a song communicate that feeling so clearly and poetically is something I value as an artist.”

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What Happens Next

C aleb We l sh sou nd cl ou d.com /cal eb w el sh

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At the age of 16, Caleb Welsh signed up for a piano class accidentally. Once there, his teacher convinced him to stick around. She also convinced Welsh that choir and theatre might be good fits, too. He trusted this cosmic nudge, and later that year his parents bought him his first keyboard.

Welsh’s heart spontaneously erupted over his parent’s gift— he bawled his eyes out.

“I felt this huge flood of joy and sadness pouring out of me. Being heavily introverted, I never really had a way to express my emotions truly, so at that moment music became so much more important to me than I had ever imagined it would be.”

Evocative lyrics and hypnotic soundbeds are Welsh’s sonic calling cards. The ethereal production showcased in “Sign of Rain” finds Welsh channeling the likes of Jose Gonzalez and Terry Reid. Yet when you flip over to the sparsely decorated “All the Same” or “Lay Down Mary,” you find trace elements of Conor Oberst, Elliot Smith, and Nick Drake. Welsh dwells comfortably in this house of bleeding heart romantics, but only as a renter. He never wants to steal his roommates’ songs. “I strive not to be a copy of anyone else. For me, the greatest accomplishment in life is creating something new and genuine.”

Welsh’s fractured tenor is fragility personified. His peaceful timbre leads the listener through hopelessness into the clearing at the end of the path. We follow Welsh willingly because we trust his lead. A basic sense of integrity moodily washes over his music, and we believe him when he sings about moments in which hope is deferred yet still survives.

The Maryland native and UNA student doesn’t have any full albums beneath his belt, but he hopes to release a five-track EP this summer. Expect tenderness without pulling punches.

Expect vulnerability with a strong jaw. Expect excellence.

What song do you wish you’d written and why?

“I would choose ‘A Song for You’ by Leon Russell. Ever since I heard Donny Hathaway’s version, it resonates with me so much on a deep level. I believe it’s one of the best lyrically written songs ever, and I just feel really connected to it.”

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

What Happens Next

“Elegant” is an adjective usually reserved for galas and high fashion, so it’s no coincidence it applies perfectly to Kat Elizabeth’s lush voice. Born and raised in Summerville, Alabama, Elizabeth cut her performing teeth crooning in churches, school musicals, citywide talent competitions, and local gigs. Before turning 18, she had already spent thousands of hours singing and playing for audiences.

(Especially, if you count, as she does with a smirk, the seven years she clocked playing the French horn in middle and high school.)

Elizabeth’s performance of her original song “Simple Words” serves as a kind of thesis in her protean talent. Operating as a sung eulogy to a recently lost family member, “Simple Words” grapples deftly with mortality, grief, and identity in ways that are emotionally mature and therapeutic. Musicians rarely ever accomplish such things with sincerity—even less often, musicians under the age of 20.

Among her musical influences, Elizabeth lists a Broadway hero (Lin-Manuel Miranda), a pop icon (Ed Sheeran), and a grit-riddled actor-turned-songwriter (Shakey Graves).

Drawing inspiration from these diverse musical offshoots has left Elizabeth an able style chameleon, someone unafraid to paint with the full spectrum.

Elizabeth has released one full-length record, in 2015, and a single, “Tangled Strings,” in 2016. In addition, she has multiple pieces on YouTube and Facebook and an original musical she’s currently workshopping. With such a prolific and talented artist, her next experimental release is never far away. And with the already impressive musical wake she trails behind her, we know she’ll deliver.

What song do you wish you’d written and why? “‘Cherry Wine’ by Hozier. This song is beautifully simple with just him and a guitar. Every time I hear it, I torture myself wishing I could write and play like he does, to the point where I actually wrote a song about its brilliance and my shortcomings. Though, in a way, I’m glad I didn’t write it, because not writing it has pushed me to become a better, more thoughtful, writer.”

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K at E l i z a b et h

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What Happens Next

M atti e St e m b r i dge

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To be in Mattie Stembridge’s presence is to take an interactive tour of a joy factory.

With a style both loud and red-carpet grand—and a smile as expansive as Texas—Stembridge oozes happiness.

She exudes originality, too, by recruiting underused themes in her songwriting, with lyrics that read like poetic short stories, and a musical knack for unlikely metaphors that are not merely palatable, but relatable; splendid, even. Whether using agriculture to unpack shallow relationships (“Backbrain Garden”) or dream catchers and bottle collecting to sum up a kindred spirit (“Dents”), Stembridge’s music is a psychedelic museum of intoxicating imagery. Equally impressive is her tendency to teleport between genres from song to song.

Stembridge’s Saltillo, Mississippi, childhood offered no shortage of musical outlets—church and school choir, a flautist in the marching band, and guitar lessons. Fastforward to August after high school and Stembridge has learned a new definition of “music scene.” College means personal growth and newfound strength as a songwriter.

“Life in Florence has been magical for me so far. It’s helping me tremendously in my music journey and in my becominga-better-human journey.” Coming from a young artist with talent and indomitable spirit, it’s safe to say that North Alabama just got one hell of a compliment.

Stembridge intends to release an EP this summer. She doesn’t have a specific date or title yet, just a promise to herself to put music into the world that’s “out of the ordinary.”

What song do you wish you’d written and why?

“I wish I had written ‘There Is a Dark Place’ by Tom Rosenthal. It’s all the happiness in the world rolled up into a three-and-a-half-minute song. It uses the simplicity of one powerful phrase and organized chaos to convey such a great message. I wish I could do that with only one line.”

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text by andy thigpen » Photos by abraham rowe

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GOD BOXES AND BELLOWS

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Coleman Kimbrell places his fingers on the keys of a pump organ, in smooth indentions worn into the ivory well before his 87 years began.

“This one here is not restored. See how they’re worn through? A lot of people have played this through the years,” Coleman says.

“Before we gave away a lot of them, we had one of the 10 largest reed organ collections in the world.”

Coleman pumps the pedal at the base of the organ, and the bellows inside swell with air. When he presses the keys again, the small room fills with the living sound of wind breathing over small metal reeds. The sound is like a deep, breathy accordion.

“This is called a Seraphine organ,” he says. “It’s from 1790, and it’s the oldest known reed organ anywhere.”

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

GOD BOXES AND BELLOWS

Through more than 70 years, Coleman and Stan have repaired more than 500 pump organs and melodeons, most of them from within a 100-mile radius of the Shoals.

For perspective, the organ he plays was made when George Washington was president. It’s just one of many exotic treasures Coleman and his son Stan have found and housed over the years.

Located in an unassuming blue building on Royal Avenue in East Florence, Coleman and Stan are constantly busy repairing and refurbishing pump organs—an unsung instrument in the musical heritage of the Shoals.

“Before we gave away a lot of them,” Coleman says, “we had one of the 10 largest reed organ collections in the world” The Kimbrells have donated many of the organs they’ve repaired through the years to historical organizations and museums to be preserved. But don’t assume that means the organs live behind glass cases or velvet ropes.

“We stipulate when we give an organ that they must allow people to play it. It’s not to sit there,” Coleman says. “We don’t spend 250 hours restoring it for somebody to just look at.”

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may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

GOD BOXES AND BELLOWS Is 250 hours the average time necessary to repair an organ?

“If you did a complete restoration that included a lot of the woodwork and veneer—stripped it, sanded it, and refinished it—just the cabinetry part is a big chunk of it,” he says. “Then the mechanical portion is still somewhere around 150-175 hours. There’s just a lot of detail.”

Organ restoration has been a labor of love for Coleman Kimbrell, as well as a business, dating back to the first organ he ever repaired, in 1944, in his hometown of Jasper, Alabama.

All because of a pig.

“When I was five years old, my mother traded her organ for a pig during the heart of the Depression,” Coleman says. “I missed that organ. I loved it. When I was 14, I heard about a lady who had an organ that wouldn’t play. I paid her a dollar for it, and they brought it to me about seven o’clock on Saturday morning on a horse and wagon.”

Coleman got to work, and by the wee hours of Sunday morning, it was playing. There was only one problem: it sounded terrible.

“I had an eighth-grade teacher with a blind husband who worked on pianos and organs. He would come over to the school to repair the piano, and I’d help him. I was anxious to tell him about my find. I told him it didn’t sound good, and he said, ‘You come over here on Saturday, and I’ll come look at it.’

“I walked three miles over to his house, and he walked the three miles back with me. He pumped up the organ, went across the keyboard, and said I’d mixed up all the sharps and the flats.”

The blind repairman helped him swap out the correct reeds, and then he played an organ composition of his own.

“I thought it was the most beautiful song I had ever heard,” Coleman says. “In fact, I’ve still got the music.”

From there, Coleman began repairing organs in his free time; he started making a business of it around 1964. Between his full-time job as an investigator with the Department of Labor, enforcing minimum wage, child labor laws, and government contracts, and his repair work on the side, Coleman was never short of work.

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While Coleman and Stan still earn livings repairing pump organs, much of their work is devoted to historical preservation. They have donated organs to 46 museums or historic sites.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

GOD BOXES AND BELLOWS “It took off,” he says. “I was busy every spare minute. It was wonderful.”

“He did well enough with them that he put four kids through college, plus my mom,” Stan says. “She went back to college and got her bachelor’s when she was 40, and then her master’s.”

Through more than 70 years, Coleman and Stan have repaired more than 500 pump organs and melodeons, most of them from within a 100-mile radius of the Shoals.

“It makes you wonder just how many of them are out there,” Stan muses. “When you look at how many were made, many of them have not been restored.”

And there were many made. In the years after the Industrial Revolution, pump organs were mass-produced.

Today, we think of mass-produced items as having interchangeable parts.

That was not always the case.

“Once you get into an organ, you find that a lot of the pieces aren’t interchangeable, even if it’s between two different organs from the same company that were made on the same production line,” he says.

Even though these instruments were mass-produced, there was still an entirely human element, which caused minor discrepancies from bellows to bellows, keyboard to keyboard, reed to reed. When trying to repair one today, this often means trying out many different pieces from other organs and making them fit, or just making the parts from scratch.

Mass production made pump organs an affordable option from the Victorian era into the 20th century, and the quality of extant organs can serve as a socioeconomic indicator of the place where they were purchased.

“It reflects the economy of the area,” Stan says. “The majority of the organs we’ve refurbished around here are of low quality, compared to what some companies manufactured back then.”

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As may be expected, Stan says most of the nicer pieces they have seen are in bigger cities, with greater concentrations of wealth.

“1907 was a good cotton year around here,” Coleman offers, as an example. “We’ve repaired seven 1907 organs from Lexington, Alabama.”

But even during tough economic times, music remained a pleasure people were willing to pay for. “They didn’t have the technology option we do today. So many people knew how to play an instrument then. It was important to have music,” Stan says.

In addition to their value as economic indicators, it’s easy to get lost in the organs’ histories. When taking in the organs, harmoniums, and melodeons crammed into the Kimbrells’ shop, speculation inevitably arises about the people whose hands and feet made those indentions in the keys and pedals, like the one from 1790.

There are lap organs played like a sideways accordion, “God Boxes” used by traveling preachers, and children’s organs with little stools for little legs. At his home, Coleman has the organ that was in the Forks of Cypress plantation, which he acquired right before the home burned in 1966.

While Coleman and Stan still earn livings repairing pump organs, much of their work is devoted to historical preservation. They have donated organs to 46 museums or historic sites, including W.C. Handy’s home in Florence, Helen Keller’s Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Colbert County Tourism Department, Athens State University, the University of North Alabama, Burritt on the Mountain in Huntsville, and the Georgia Mountain Fair in Hiawassee, Georgia.

While the pump organ may not be as sexy as the Swampers’ horns, or as mysterious and celebrated as the Yuchi tribe and their Singing River, it remains a touchstone of the music history in our corner of the world, a reminder of a time when people gathered in boxcars, parlors, and fields, to fill their lungs like bellows and make a joyful noise with the reeds in their throats.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

UNA’s Department of music Stages a Classic

text by michelle rupe eubanks » Photos by abraham rowe and melanie hodges

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

“I encourage students to take every opportunity that comes their way to perform ... to understand all of their talents and to market themselves.”

—Tiffany Bostic-Brown

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When Terrance Brown and Tiffany Bostic-Brown arrived at the University of North Alabama Department of Music seven years ago, the idea of implementing an opera program in their new North Alabama home was not on the agenda.

“When we got here in 2010, I think we had something like seven students,” Bostic-Brown said of the nascent program. “So this is an idea that really has been several years in the making.”

The Browns began their UNA opera adventure with well-known titles, like Romeo and Juliet, which, in a happy harbinger of future success, sold out before opening night. Emboldened by their early success, the Browns branched out and, in the process, broadened their students’ and audiences’ horizons with the music department’s first foreign language show, Orfeo ed Euridice in 2013.

“It was our first show in Italian,” Tiffany Bostic-Brown said. “Along with Romeo and Juliet, it showed us that we were attracting audiences from diverse backgrounds—socially, economically, culturally.”

“That one sold out, too,” Terrance Brown chimed in, “even though it was

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

up against the Alabama versus Louisiana State University football game.”

Tough competition, indeed.

“I don’t know if I would have come to the opera over that game,” Brown added, laughing.

Over the next several years, the program continued to grow, with productions of Cinderella, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Steven Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Each show brought with it larger audiences as the music department successfully introduced the idea of opera-as-entertainment into the cultural life of the Shoals.

With musical appetites whetted and the stage set, as it were, UNA’s Department of Music set out to mount one of the most celebrated operas of all time: Puccini’s La Bohème.

Setting the Stage for a Classic Originally performed in Turin, Italy, in 1896, La Boheme tells the tragic tale of a group of bohemians living in the Parisian Latin Quarter in the 1840s. The opera made its American debut in Los Angeles in 1897. Yet, despite its reputation as one of the most enduring works in the classical canon, La Bohème has never been performed at UNA. Why did it take over a century for La Bohème to make its way to the Shoals?

At least some of the credit goes to another show, a Broadway rock opera and one of the most popular and influential musicals of the last 50 years: Rent.

“Audiences know Rent, and Rent is based on La Bohème,” Tiffany Bostic-Brown said.

Notwithstanding audiences’ familiarity with Jonathan Larson’s stage musical and the popular film based on it, the Browns acknowledge a full Italian opera represents something of a learning curve for audiences. But the success of Orfeo ed Euridice convinced the Browns of their audience’s receptiveness as well as their students’ ability to pull off such an audacious undertaking.

On a Friday before spring break, the Browns, along with a few dozen of those students, gathered inside Norton Audito-

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

© Melanie Hodges

© Melanie Hodges

© Melanie Hodges

© Melanie Hodges

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

“[Romeo & Juliet] sold out, even though it was up against the Alabama versus Louisiana State University football game.” —Terrance Brown

rium on the campus of UNA to rehearse Act Two of Bohème.

On stage, a great crowd has gathered in the marketplace to sell their wares as Mimi, one of the main characters, learns that her true love, Musetto, loves another.

The student actors are engaged and attentive as they look to Terrance and director Tiffany for guidance. For those opera majors who are not also theatre students, the basics of stage craft and performance techniques are incorporated into rehearsals.

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“I’m one of those who has never had a theater class,” Jessica Rice said. A junior at UNA, Rice is majoring in vocal performance and opera. Originally from Haleyville, Rice had never performed in an opera before arriving at UNA from Northwest-Shoals Community College.

“I realized after coming to UNA that opera could be engaging and entertaining, and I wanted to study it.”

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Rice’s choice in majors came as something of a surprise to her parents, she said, but they’ve been supportive, even if that has meant learning about the genre.

“My mom really didn’t understand it,” Rice said. “When I told her opera would be my focus, she was concerned because she didn’t see it as a career. I told her it’s about art, and it’s something I felt led to do.”

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“As a teacher, it 's a beautiful thing to see your students blossom and to see what they can do.

It 's been great to go from trying to get seven students to understand why opera is important, to this show, at this moment, with this many students involved.” —Tiffany Bostic-Brown A Tale of Two Mimis Like most of the students who will perform in La Bohème, Rice got her start at UNA performing minor roles; Rice’s were in Romeo and Juliet and Into the Woods. “If I hadn’t done those smaller parts, I wouldn’t have learned how to read and memorize a score.” With La Bohème, Rice takes her star turn in the role of Mimi, a role her professor and mentor, Tiffany Bostic-Brown, also performed when she was a graduate student at Louisiana State University.

“I never imagined I’d play Mimi,” Rice said of a role coveted by every diva who ever graced the stage of La Scala.

Beyond the technical requirements of the role, Mimi is an emotionally draining part for the actor. “Her story is so beautiful and so tragic. Playing Mimi has taught me about the theatrical aspect of opera and how a performer has to be vulnerable. You really do have to sell the role to the audience.”

“I encourage students to take every opportunity that comes their way to perform,” Bostic-Brown said. “You might be singing all of these leading roles in undergraduate or graduate school, but you don’t know what could happen after graduation. I want the students to understand all of their talents and to market themselves.” As she has internalized her teacher’s advice on how to perform as Mimi, Rice has also taken Bostic-Brown’s career advice.

“I want to finish my degree and get a doctorate, and I’d like to be a vocal performer. Right now, I’m very much focused on the short-term and this performance,” Rice said.

Even before the first curtain rises, Rice said she has learned a great deal from the experience.

“I really want to become better vocally and grow as a performer,” she said. “This experience has taught me that I can do that if I work for it.”

A performer’s vocal instrument is vulnerable, too. Among the many lessons Rice has learned over the course of her opera education is the necessity of letting her voice rest when she’s not on stage, and how to project her instrument from all areas of the stage without doing harm to her vocal chords.

It’s been equally as rewarding for Tiffany Bostic-Brown. “As a teacher, it’s a beautiful thing to see your students blossom and to see what they can do,” she said. “It’s been great to go from trying to get seven students to understand why opera is important, to this show, at this moment, with this many students involved.”

“Tiffany knows this role and how it’s done,” she said. “If I’m struggling, she knows how to help me through it.” The Browns draw on their own backgrounds as performers to prepare students for La Bohème, often providing private lessons and helping them gain the confidence and skills required for the show.

Forty students, to be exact—well north of the Brown’s inaugural opera class of seven—are performing in La Bohème.

With the addition of the set builders, the total number involved in mounting the production swells past 60, and that’s not counting the full orchestra.

This relationship has been particularly helpful as Rice learns the Italian.

“In our lessons, I worked on my Italian,” she said. “I’d performed in Italian before, but this was different. There were words I’d never seen or used before. It’s a difficult but beautiful language.”

Practice makes perfect, whether it’s learning Italian, singing an aria through a tubercular cough, or honing the art and craft of opera.

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Already, the Browns are looking ahead to the fall of 2017 and the spring of 2018 and how they’ll grow the program even more, giving next year’s students a chance at the spotlight and the starring role. “We’re planning on doing Little Women,” Tiffany Bostic-Brown said. “In the spring, we’re planning Hansel and Gretel.

“It’s a challenge,” Bostic-Brown admitted. “We keep upping the ante—for ourselves and our students.”

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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And thanks to Tangled String Studios, makers of high-quality, custom guitars and mandolins, and one of Huntsville’s most sought after live-music venues, for welcoming us into their exceptional space. tangledstringstudios.com

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“There’s just this climate right now that really appreciates great songwriting an d w e’ v e always wan t ed t o be g reat s ong wri ters m ore than anythi ng el s e. ”

text by jennifer crossley howard » photos by abraham rowe

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

trusty Shoals muse pulled sisters Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle out of a dry songwriting spell. After successful debut and follow-up albums produced by Nashville heavyweight T-Bone Burnett, the Americana duo from Greenhill known as the Secret Sisters was dropped by Universal Records in 2014. They declared personal bankruptcy and contemplated getting day jobs and chalking up memories such as finishing and recording a Bob Dylan song and playing the Grand Ole Opry as the time in their lives when they made music.

The music is back. It was when the sisters met at a friend’s house on the Tennessee River that they wrote again for the first time after a dark period.

“We were particularly frustrated because we hadn’t written together in so long, and we were still kind of coming off this really stressful and tumultuous period,” Rogers said.

They were being picky and getting on each other’s nerves.

“Finally, we were like, let’s just go to different places on the property and sit by ourselves for 20 minutes and write ideas, record beats, whatever, and that’s when that song came to us,” Slagle said.

The song, “Tennessee River Runs Low,” is the first single off their third record, titled How to Live Without, released in May. The song opens the album, and for those who worship at the shores of the Singing River and delight in pristine harmonies, hairs on arms will rise.

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

“The more Southern you are the cooler you are.”

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

The song is as much an ode to home as it is to the mighty river that runs through it.

“I don’t think we’ve ever written a song more about the Shoals than that one,” Rogers said.

The album’s title hints at what listeners are in for: a bare bones love of music and home that got them through to the other side. Any woman who’s ever loved and lost will appreciate “He’s Fine,” a song about hard-won triumph over unrequited love. In “King Cotton,” Queen Anne’s lace gets a shout-out. Rogers describes “Mississippi,” a chilling song about familial jealousy, as their first “murder love ballad.” The Southern gothic tale could have easily fallen from the pages of a William Faulkner novel. Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile, who co-produced How to Live Without, told the sisters their songwriting took on a biblical tone this time around.

That’s no accident since they learned to sing in their Church of Christ congregation that was free of instruments.

“People are more encouraged to read music and learn harmony and learn shape-note singing,” Slagle said. “We probably attribute most of our sound to the church. There’s a very specific way people sing harmony in our church. I don’t think we could get rid of it if we tried.”

Their third album captures complicated emotions hard to come by in one’s early twenties, which is how old the sisters were when their self-titled first album came out. That album covered mostly classic country and Americana songs as well as original pieces, including the standout, “Tennessee Me.”

New West Records is releasing the record, where their label mates include Rodney Crowell, Ben Folds, and Sara Watkins. Grammy-winning producer Trina Shoemaker, who’s worked on albums by Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, and Steven Curtis Chapman, mixed the record in Mobile.

She never met the sisters, but their writing and live vocals floored her. She was impressed they chose to tell “Mississippi” in third person, the toughest voice in which to write, she said.

“The last time I heard it done that good was on ‘Nebraska’

by Bruce Springsteen,” she said.

Shoals born, Shoals bred Rogers and Slagle are the youngest of a generation of wellknown musicians who were born here or have an umbilicallike connection to the Shoals, including Jason Isbell, John Paul White, and the Alabama Shakes.

“The next generation of musicians coming from the Shoals have maybe been inspired by the music that came from here in the ’60s and ’70s, and maybe they feel an obligation to bringing that out again,” Slagle said. “Now, we’re actually having artists come from here who are natives and making a name for the Shoals itself.”

The distance of a major interstate leaves Florence somewhat isolated on the map, an environment ripe for rural creativity.

“If you live in a rural part of this neck of the woods, the only thing you can really get into is sports or music,” Rogers said.

“I feel like this new album represents the Secret Sisters grown up and telling their story,” said their manager, Erin Anderson. “It’s their story told their way, from their perspective. It feels like women coming into their own.”

“I used to entertain myself by driving around the Walmart parking lot when I was a teenager so music was a hobby,” she added. “Now, I’m so proud of it, and I’m glad I had my childhood here.”

They agree. “With this new record, we’re finally learning how to say the things we want to say in a way that is beautiful, and I’m so proud of the imagery in this record,” Rogers said.

In December, their hometown audience returned the love.

The Secret Sisters opened for Rosanne Cash at Shoals Community Theatre, where they debuted most of the songs from the new album. Everyone wore black, and the sisters engaged in their self-deprecating banter and apologized for making listeners cry over depressed lyrics. In lieu of tears, they received an ovation.

Rogers and Slagle settled into a long chat at Rivertown Coffee Co. in downtown Florence, a regular spot for them.

Over muffins and coffee, they kidded each other but spoke with conviction about their music.

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

“We probably attribute most of our sound to the church. There’s a very s p e c ific way pe ople sin g h a rmony i n our church. I don’t thi nk we could g e t rid of it if we t ried.” —Lydia

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

“If you live in a rural part of this neck of the woods, the only thing you ca n re a lly ge t in t o is sports or musi c.” —Laura

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After the bottom fell out in their professional lives, their first glimmer of hope arrived in an informal business meeting.

Runs Low” below the Mason Dixon Line, it would have been likely tempting to add more to the song.

They came to Erin Anderson and Olivia Management in 2015 through their tour mate and mentor Carlile. Anderson met them for coffee in Nashville.

“If we had recorded anywhere in the South, it would have been really easy to go, ‘You know what? This song needs an accordion, and it needs a trumpet with one of those things in it,’” she said. “But because we knew that that’s what was expected, we didn’t do that.”

“It was one of those things, and we clicked instantly,” Anderson said. “It felt almost like a therapy session. They are the most kind and generous people I think I can say I have ever met.”

Anderson was impressed that the sisters knew who they were musically, and previous records left them good relationships in the music industry.

“When they were young and out of college, they were put on a path, and maybe didn’t have a say or maybe didn’t know they had a say in what was happening,” Anderson said. “I love partnering with people who already have their own vision.”

That new scope led them to record outside the South and their hometown in order to distill and purify their sound.

“One thing we really learned with this record was Lydia and I are so Southern, and I think that there’s this trend right now, the more Southern you are the cooler you are,” Rogers said. “The South is really cool, and it’s hip right now. But when you are really Southern—and even if you wanted to change that about yourself, you couldn’t—it’s hard to see people trying to create this image of what you know to be authentic, but what they maybe don’t have the same kind of appreciation for.”

S ou th by N o r th we st One doesn’t have to squint very hard to see how Alabama women would feel at home in Seattle’s Bear Creek Recording Studio, nestled in a weathered barn surrounded by a forest. The location allowed the sisters to record a song with Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready and one of Nirvana’s early drummers.

Seattle allowed the sisters and producers Carlile, Tim Hanseroth, and Phil Hanseroth to simplify the truest flavors in their music. Rogers said if they recorded “Tennessee River

As their music grew a few shades darker, so too did their onstage style. Gone are the polka-dot dresses and glamour curls the sisters adopted for their first two albums. Flowing bohemian gowns and lots of black influence their stage style these days. Their signature red lipstick remains.

“We’re trying to achieve something a little more timeless because if we were to continue with that pin up ’40s look, that would have boxed in our music and that’s the last thing we want,” Slagle said.

“I don’t want to be putting victory rolls into my hair when I’m 60,” Rogers added.

In May, they began what will likely be a 75-city tour across the U.S. with plans to head to the U.K., according to Anderson.

They went on back-to-back music cruises in March and played with idols such as Rufus Wainwright. Then, they headed to Austin to perform at SXSW. The next aspiration in their career goals: the Ryman.

Rogers and Slagle know that to hold the control they have over their career may limit their reach. And they are fine with that.

“If you want to make all the calls yourself and play the exact kind of music you want, you may not be on the radio, the TV, or the Grammys,” Rogers said. “If you want to stay true to yourself, you have to recognize you might not be a household name.”

They are already thinking about the fourth album because, as Slagle says, “You really can’t afford not to.”

Music is their day and night job. They’re considering recording a gospel record, a tribute to the music that got them here. Slagle feels the tug of motherhood and knows a baby will heavily affect career plans.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

“I can’t tour for four weeks with a newborn,” she said.

Rogers launched into a ditty about how tired motherhood is making a singing mama with nods to stretch marks and a postpartum body.

“Okay, that’s good,” Slagle told her.

They shared a laugh of excitement fostered by a sisterly bond that is just as apparent offstage as on.

First comes love, then comes marriage …

Both sisters have married since their debut album, which has brought them newlywed bliss that put a bit of a damper on the heartache from which so many songs are mined.

“Lydia and I take our marriages very seriously, and so it’s a little difficult to be in a really happy, healthy relationship where you are genuinely fulfilled,” Rogers said. “But you still have to go momentarily to those bad relationships, and you may write a song about the last guy who broke your heart or a person you remember from your past who you felt very strongly towards. And that’s a little hard to channel now that you’re happy.”

They thank their husbands for understanding that sometimes they must delve into the past.

“I don’t want to see pictures of my husband’s ex-girlfriends, and I imagine there are times when he’s like, ‘I don’t really want to hear this song about this guy,’” Rogers said.

The sisters are grateful to be creating among peers who honor the art of the song over watered-down mainstream radio fare.

“It’s especially neat to live in a world where people like Jason Isbell or Sturgill Simpson or John Moreland or Dawes, all these writers who are writing lyrics that are absolutely ridiculous,” Rogers said. “I mean it would be stunning if it were just a poem. It would be incredible, but they put it to a melody and harmonies and instrumentation that just hits you.”

“There’s just this climate right now that really appreciates great songwriting and we’ve always wanted to be great songwriters more than anything else,” added Slagle. “Your

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

words are what remain and what stand for a long time. Our voices may not always be great—I’m not saying they’re great now—but these things deteriorate. Words don’t.”

These days most of their songwriting is done long distance as Slagle lives in Birmingham, and Rogers lives in Happy Valley in the one-bedroom home in Greenhill that their mother grew up in. Jason Isbell and his former wife, Shonna Tucker, lived there after the sisters’ grandmother, and Tucker offered it back to their family when she wanted to sell it. Rogers, who was tired of Nashville, moved to the house where she and Slagle ate every Saturday with their grandparents when they were children. It is her respite from the road and inspiration.

Southerners seem to eventually find their way back home, or destroy themselves with denial of their origins. The Secret Sisters took the former route.

“I think there is a geographical pull, like if you were raised here there is something about being a Southerner that pulls you back. That happened for me 100 percent. It called me back, and now, if I’m gone for a long time, I’m in a funk. I need to go to Happy Valley and put my feet in the dirt. It’s definitely a spiritual place.”

As the recently departed Tom Hendrix believed, the Tennessee River sings. He built a mile-long rock wall off the Natchez Trace in Lauderdale County to honor his grandmother, Te-lah-nay, a Native American who walked home to Florence for five years after being displaced in the Trail of Tears.

A frustrating professional period taught the Secret Sisters they possess a similar kind of verve.

“It took that kind of inspiration to make us want to be writers and perform again,” Rogers said.

SEE YOU ON C AMPUS .

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DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 17, 2017

It’s Your Big Day Tell your love story in your own special way

No’Ala’s annual wedding issue is a keepsake, a bride-to-be inspiration board, and a beautiful way to introduce your new family to the world.

No wonder it’s our most popular edition of the year!

If you and your sweetheart are planning your own Big Day for 2017, reserve your place in next year’s Wedding issue by visiting noalaweddings.com today.

We’ll hold a spot for you, and you can return with your photos anytime between now and November.* To gift a Wedding announcement, or to announce your engagement or the engagement of someone you love, visit us online.

noalaweddings.com

Choose from these packages:

Includes one feature photo, and text highlighting your favorite details from your upcoming wedding!

One-Page Wedding Feature

Two-Page Wedding Feature

Four-Page Wedding Feature

Includes 4 photos, the names of your wedding party, favorite vendors, and more!

Includes 9 photos and up to 250 words describing your beautiful wedding!

Includes 12 photos and up to 700 words describing your beautiful wedding!

$150

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$800

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Engagements

* Deadline subject to change based on package availability. may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

In our July/August 2015 issue, No’Ala introduced readers to the fictional town of River City, Alabama, and its most notorious resident, the serial marrying, serial murderess, Eleanor McIntosh Darby Foster Dauterive Smithfield Harrison.

In the 11 issues since, Eleanor’s constellation of neighbors, friends, no-good children, late-exhusbands, and traumatized hairdressers have come forward to tell their stories, aided and abetted by 11 of the finest writers in North Alabama.

In this, the final chapter in Eleanor’s torrid, twisted tale, we return to where we began: Eleanor’s dining room table, as two curious hairdressers join Miss Eleanor for a slice of her world-famous apple pie.

Allen Tomlinson, No’Ala co-founder and publisher, and Eleanor’s creator, bids her adieu.

a Favor for Eleanor Chapter Twelve: Just Desserts by allen tomlinson » illustrations by rowan finnegan

“Have some more mashed potatoes, Tommy. I swear you’re going to dry up and blow away.”

Tommy smiled at Eleanor and took the serving plate, although he was stuffed and was earnestly still trying to lose 50 pounds. He plopped a dollop on his plate and began to play with it using his fork. “This is delicious, Miss Eleanor,” he said.

“Oh, honey, I’m so glad you two came over for supper,” Eleanor said. She folded her hands in front of her, on the table. She looked at Tommy and Randy and smiled. “I know it must have been strange, us not seeing each other for 20 years or so, but it means so much to me that you would come.” The men looked at each other, and then smiled at Eleanor; they had not wanted to come to dinner tonight at all, but she sounded so pitiful and said she just wanted to make everything up to them, so how could they refuse? Besides, after all these years thinking she was dead, and then suddenly learning she was still alive—well, the curiosity was too much to resist.

“Honestly, Miss Eleanor, we were so surprised to find out you were still alive, we wanted to come over and see for ourselves,” said Randy with a laugh. “We went to your funeral 15 years ago and thought you were frolicking with Jesus. Imagine our surprise to hear that you were alive and well here on earth!”

“And mean as ever,” said Tommy, under his breath.

“Well, aren’t you sweet?” Eleanor replied. “I will never forgive those no-good children of mine for pulling that prank. Haven’t spoken to them in years, since all of that happened.

For all I know, they are rotting in hell.” She sniffed in disgust at the thought.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

A Favor for Eleanor Chapter Twelve: Just Desserts

not the one who fondled his advisor and got kicked out of the Baptist church, but the one in between) decided, in his infinite wisdom, to close Bryce Hospital. The 300 or so certifiably insane people housed there were sent home to their families, if their families would have them, or turned out on the streets. Tutwiler, already 200 percent over capacity, conveniently deemed Eleanor to be no longer a menace to society, and released her, into the wild.

When people began to notice that lights were on in Eleanor’s old house—empty all of these years, but still maintained—followed by Eleanor sightings, the news spread through town like wildfire. Eleanor wasn’t exactly welcomed back with open arms. She didn’t get invited back to any Daughters of the American Revolution luncheons or monthly Bible studies, for example. Gradually, though, people would nod at her in the Piggly Wiggly without staring at her too much, and the family’s tale unraveled. Needless to say, Billy and his family never came back to town to visit, and Eleanor’s antics continued to haunt them.

Five years after Miss Eleanor was convicted of killing her last husband and sentenced to life at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, she suffered a nervous breakdown after an incident with another inmate involving dinner rolls, cigarettes, and hot coffee. The details of the incident are sketchy, but her breakdown was spectacular, and she was transferred to Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa, where she underwent a series of electroshock treatments. None of this was known to the outside world, and Eleanor’s son, Billy, his wife, and their children took the opportunity to manufacture a story that would get her out of their lives forever.

Secure in the knowledge that Eleanor would be confined to Bryce for the rest of her life and unable to endure one more moment of humiliation because of Eleanor’s actions, they circulated the news that she had died. They even went to the expense of purchasing a casket and going through a closed-casket funeral at the Baptist church. Carl Johnson, the owner of the funeral home, was the only person who knew the truth, and lots of cash kept his mouth closed. For all the community knew, Eleanor was dead and buried, and the family felt they could move on.

Never underestimate Alabama politics. Fifteen years later, one of the Alabama governors (not the indicted one, and

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

“I really asked you to come over because I wanted to make sure you knew there were no hard feelings between us,” Eleanor continued. “I had 20 years in prison and that awful mental institution to learn kindness and compassion and forgiveness, and I wanted you to know that I don’t really blame you for turning me in that night, so long ago. “ She stood up and went to the sideboard to get the beautiful apple pie that had been tempting them all evening. She began to cut and serve, talking as she passed out the plates.

“I had lots of time in those hell holes to think about my life and what had become of it,” she said, cheerily. “My last husband, Jimmy, married me for my money, I know that, but he was so cute and so much fun…” Her voice trailed off, knife hovering in the air as she considered Jimmy, who had been an overweight, bald little man, fond of wearing overalls stained with chewing tobacco. Randy couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile and didn’t want to think about what Eleanor might consider “fun” about him.

“Oh, Miss Eleanor,” said Randy, “we just felt awful about that night. It was almost surreal, like another lifetime away.” The past 20 years of standing on his feet, tending to the hair of

“I had lots of time in those hell holes to think about my life and what had become of it.”

the women of this town, listening to their gossip, and learning just about everything about just about everyone, made him wise and tired and made his feet hurt constantly.

Tommy, a few years his junior, retired from hairdressing shortly after the incident with Eleanor and had become a sought-after inspirational speaker, telling his story to Rotary Clubs and women’s sewing clubs all across the tri-state area.

There wasn’t a storytelling festival or church retreat he had missed these past 20 years, and he had made a nice living telling people about the night Eleanor asked them over to bury Jimmy in the backyard, and how it had led to his spiritual awakening. Being here tonight seemed, well, appropriate. After all, he owed his fame and a great deal of his small fortune to this slightly disturbed, harmless old woman. And she was one hell of a cook.

Eleanor slid the plates toward the men and fixed one for herself. “I used a special ingredient,” she said. “I sure hope you like it…”

Randy, who had grabbed his fork and was about to dig in, paused. A special ingredient sounded ominous. She couldn’t—she wouldn’t—try to hurt them, would she? He waited a second longer, watching as Eleanor dug deeply into her slice of pie and brought a huge piece to her mouth. She chewed, closing her eyes to savor the taste; she swallowed and sighed with contentment. She didn’t fall over from anything bad in the pie, so Randy figured it was safe. He dug in and took a bite. Oh, my. This was good.

“Nutmeg,” Eleanor said. “I found a recipe that uses a lot of nutmeg, and that’s the special ingredient. It’s pretty good, isn’t it? Even if I say so myself.”

Randy could only nod, his mouth was so full, and Tommy started shoveling pieces of pie into his mouth as well. There was silence for awhile, the only sound the scraping of forks

against the china as the three made sure there were no crumbs left.

“Oh, Miss Eleanor, you sure didn’t lose your talent for cooking while you were away,” said Tommy, dropping his fork next to his plate and pushing them both away. “I am so stuffed I think I’m going to pop.”

“Well, let me get us some fresh coffee,” Eleanor said, standing up and moving to the sideboard. “You boys move to the sofa and I’ll be right in.” The silver service was perfectly polished, and the sterno can under the pitcher had been keeping the coffee hot. It smelled delicious, and Eleanor poured them each a cup.

“Oh, I know!” she said, excitedly, handing them their cups.

“Let’s have a toast! Let’s toast to fresh starts and new beginnings and lessons learned.” The men raised their cups and clinked them together, and then, in unison, lifted the cups to their lips. Eleanor lifted her cup, but didn’t drink; she eyed the two of them instead.

Randy reacted first. His eyes widened as he clutched at his throat. Tommy just gurgled. The cyanide worked much faster on him. He was unconscious before he could react, his cup and saucer slipping out of his hands and clattering on the wooden floor. “Oh, Tommy, you are such a slob,” said Eleanor. “That coffee will never come out of the Oriental rug.”

“And you, Randy, don’t you dare make a mess in my living room. Lord knows it will be hard enough getting your fat rear out of this house when you’re dead.” Randy’s eyes were wide, but he was frozen and he couldn’t speak. He stared at her unblinking. “You stupid old man,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d let you get away with everything you did to me, did you? Now hurry up and die so I can go watch my TV show.”

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

A Favor for Eleanor Chapter Twelve: Just Desserts

they had not wanted to come to dinner tonight at all, but she sounded so pitiful and said she just wanted to make everything up to them, so how could they refuse?

Besides, after all these years thinking she was dead, and then suddenly learning she was still alive— well, the curiosity was too much to resist.

He obliged, slumping back into the sofa. Miraculously, he didn’t spill any of the remaining coffee. Eleanor took the cup and saucer out of his hands and put them on the sideboard.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” she said to no one in particular. “’Course, I used enough of that poison to kill a couple of racehorses—didn’t want to take any chances now, did I?” She laughed. “Oh, Tommy, you are such a lightweight. I wish you could have seen the look on your face! Serves you right, though. If you hadn’t done all of this to me, I wouldn’t have spent 20 years of my life away from this place and the people who love me. It was all of your fault, both of you.”

Humming softly to herself, she tidied up around the bodies as best she could, but she didn’t bother to move them. She took the dirty dishes to the kitchen, rinsed them off, and put them in the rack to dry, and then went back to the dining room to put the cover on the sterno and blow it out. She took a clean cup and saucer, lifted the silver pitcher, and poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. And then she went down the hall to the bedroom.

Setting the cup and saucer on the side table, she picked up the remote and turned on her very favorite show of all time, Wheel of Fortune. All the contestants were new this time, and she certainly hoped that handsome young man would win; he reminded her of one of her husbands, Billy, the father of her son, a man she had tolerated way longer than any of the others. Let’s see—was he the second one, or the third?

She shook her head—it didn’t matter.

Climbing into the bed, she plumped up the pillows behind her back so she could see the television. “I’d like to buy a vowel,” said the young good-looking man. “An ‘E’, please!”

The board behind Vanna White dinged five times and she

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

rushed to turn the letters. Eleanor picked up the cup of coffee and paused; what could the answer be?

It looked strangely familiar. Suddenly, as Eleanor lifted the cup to her lips and took a strong drink of poisoned coffee, she knew the answer.

It was a big weekend in that little town.

Tommy and Randy were buried on Friday, in a joint service at the Episcopal Church, where both had sung in the choir.

It was somber and sad, and packed to the rafters—when the Episcopalians have to drag out extra chairs, you know something big has happened. The town seemed to be in shock.

Both these men had been such important parts of the community. Besides, a double murder/suicide just didn’t happen around here, so there was the novelty of all of that. Every woman over the age of 70 was there to mourn the loss of the constant companion who had made them look good for all the important occasions of their lives—like waking up and facing their husbands and children, or hosting bridge at the country club. Not a single one of them could comprehend how they would cope after this.

Eleanor’s funeral was on Saturday. The Baptist church, where she had spent her life, wouldn’t take the funeral because of the scandal attached. They were also embarrassed that they had hosted her first service, and didn’t think it becoming to hold her second there, so she was memorialized at the funeral home, with the Reverend Douglas Charles Glover, the formerly fat child who used to hide in her bushes and eat his hoarded candy, presiding. Brother Doug, as he was called now, had

grown from a fat child to a fat man, but he was kind and compassionate, and gave sermons you would never forget.

The crowd was sparse; Eleanor’s children and grandchildren would never show their faces in that town again, especially after they found out that the new will—renegotiated after she reappeared and took all her money back—specified that all of her remaining estate would go to a shelter for the homeless and not to them. Lily Herbert Peach was there, on her motorized scooter; she was 90 years old if she was a day, but she still had enough energy to hold her head high as she paid her respects to her lifelong friend. Ida Rasch was there, too; she was one of the few in town who had not gone to Randy and Tommy’s funeral, because she was still mad at them for betraying Eleanor (and a little scared that they would hurt her because of the tricks she had played on them). Lucille had passed on several years earlier, but Ruth Bryan managed to show and proceeded to fall asleep and snore through most of the service.

The only other person in attendance was a stranger, a handsome older man who had pulled into the parking lot in a huge truck with Nevada license plates. He sat in the back and left as soon as the service was over, without speaking a word to anyone.

Brother Doug cleared his throat to begin the service. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of a most unusual person,” he began. He paused for a moment, searching for words. “Yes,” he said, finally. “Most unusual. Our lives are different because of her…and there’s really only one thing we can say about her. Lord have mercy on her soul.”

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

126 »

scene

Sue and Steve Johnson Toni Bridges, Zara Edwards Lowry, Bonnie Everage, and Anna Manning

Houston Llew

Zara Edwards Lowry and Kate McElvoy

Chong Brizendine, Don Gold, and Vance Davis The Musgrove Sessions

Above: Houston Llew Art Exhibit and Reception april ,  · the little green store and gallery huntsville

Marcia and Peter Cobun

Cathy Van Valkenburgh, Alice Battle, and Mimi Salmon Austin

Below: HSO Guild’s 2017 Crescen-Dough Auction april ,  · vonbraun center, huntsville

Brandon Damson, Nicole Hartenbach, Jordan and Troy Sutherland, Cohler Damson, and Dalton James Anne Burke, Lewis and Kathryn Price, Fredrick and Alice Lanier, Renee and Al Elliott

Vijay and Kala Patel Paula Renfroe and Carolyn Parker

Amelia Summerville and Theresa Taylor (front), and Stacey Gardner and Brenda Milberger

Colby Wallace, Jordan McMullan, and Darlene and John McMullan

* Names for photos are provided by the organization or business featured.

Katherine Newman

Jeff and Lisa Abbott, Michelle and John Omenski, Francy and Clint Kirkland © Jeff White Photographer

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

128 »

food for thought » Sarah Gaede

I usually stick with pound cakes or tortes, the kind of cake you can leave on the counter and eat just a sliver of at a time, whenever you happen to walk by. The walking to and fro burns off the calories and cutting slivers lets more calories out.

LET THEM EAT CAKE OR TORTA The year I turned , longer ago than I care to reveal, I lost over 20 pounds following a program called Weigh Down Workshop, aka Exodus Out of Egypt. The originator of the program, which “the Google” confirms is still in existence, Gwen (Gwee-yun—she’s from Tennessee) Shandlin, is a fervent Christian and powerful motivator. WDW featured weekly group meetings, during which we watched videos and prayed for each other, and motivational audio tapes we listened to in the car. (It was quite a while ago.) The program is not a diet. Rather, it teaches you to listen to your body and determine whether you are hungry, or just bored or depressed, when you hear that pan of brownies calling you from the kitchen. You can eat whatever you want; you just have to put your fork down between every bite and take a sip of your drink. This helps you eat slowly enough so your brain can register fullness before you’ve stuffed everything on your plate into your mouth. It’s where I learned the trick of cutting my sandwich in half and saving the rest for another day and eating only the soggy French fries, my favorites. (I admit that going to Jazzercise five or six days a week helped too. Woo!) As part of my discipline I gave up eating Publix birthday cake at work. I have never let it past my lips since then, or any baked goods that are not completely preservative and chemical free. Good thing I love to bake. I enjoy the process and tasting the results, but after that, I’m ready to share with friends, much to the dismay of my husband. I usually stick with pound cakes or tortes, the kind of cake you can leave on the counter and eat just a sliver of at a time, whenever you happen to walk by. (Don’t tell Gwen.) The walking to and fro burns off the calories and cutting slivers lets more calories out.

Maida Heatter’s Best Damn Lemon Cake, or BDL cake for short, is one I’ve loved since the 1980s. My dear departed friend Park Callahan used to give me one for Christmas every year. We made this cake with slivered almonds ground in the food processor, but now you can buy almond flour everywhere, which is easier and less expensive to use. BDL cake would make a lovely base for strawberries or peaches and whipped cream, but it is fabulous on its own.

Torta Caprese, from the island of Capri, is a recipe I found on Epicurious during my Italian cooking phase. Like BDL cake, it features almonds and lemon, with a chocolate enhancement. And it’s glutenfree. I would suggest using ground almonds instead of almond flour in this recipe because you will get a stronger almond flavor. But either will work fine.

Here are a few handy hints: (1) Do not neglect to cover the container in which you melt butter in the microwave—every time, Sarah, you idiot. If you don’t cover it, the butter will inevitably explode and you will have a big mess. (2) If you line the bottom of the baking pan with parchment, you will never be sorry, but you may be very sorry if you don’t. (3) Use both hands when removing a pan from the oven to check for doneness, lest you drop the cake upside down on the floor. (4) Buy a kitchen scale.

Weighing dry ingredients, especially flour, produces far better baking results.

Glaze • 1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar • 1/3 cup lemon juice from zested lemons Heat sugar and juice in a small saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. Do not boil. When glaze is ready, brush it over the hot cake (or drizzle with a spoon), letting it soak in slowly. Spend about 5 minutes in total. You can gently pull the sides of the cake in with a spatula so the glaze can seep down to the bottom. Keep going until it’s all used up. Cool for about an hour, run a spatula or knife around the edges, and turn out on a rack to finish cooling. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight before cutting, if you can wait that long. This freezes well wrapped in foil.

Note: It doesn’t matter whether you use a stand mixer or a handheld mixer. I’ve done both with equally good results. Same number of bowls to wash.

Torta Caprese

Maida Heatter’s Best Damn Lemon Cake • • • • • • • • • •

1/2 cup (2 1/2 ounces) almond flour, plus extra for pan 1 1/2 cups (6 3/8 ounces) all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted and cooled 1 cup sugar 2 large eggs Grated zest of 2 large lemons 1 ounce (1 small bottle) lemon extract—I like McCormick best 1/2 cup whole milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch (8 x 4 works too) metal loaf pan with cooking spray. Line the bottom with parchment; spray parchment. Dust the inside of the pan with almond flour (about 3 tablespoons) and gently shake out extra.

Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Place melted butter in mixing bowl, add sugar, and beat until wellmixed. Add eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides with each addition. Add lemon zest and extract; mix well. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and mix on low until combined. Add half the milk, then 1/3 of the flour, then the other half of the milk, and the remaining flour. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed. Add the 1/2 cup almond flour; beat on low until just combined.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The top will crack; don’t panic—it helps soak up the glaze. Remove to a cooling rack and prepare glaze.

• 1 1/2 cups blanched slivered almonds, or 7 1/2 ounces almond flour • 1 cup sugar, divided • 8 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate or 4 ounce bar of each (I use Ghirardelli bars) • 5 large eggs at room temperature, separated • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract • 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel • 1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted and cooled • 1/4 teaspoon salt • Powdered sugar Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9- or 10-inch springform pan with cooking spray, line bottom of pan with a parchment circle, and spray parchment. Combine almonds and 1/3 cup sugar in a food processor. Process until almonds are very fine but not clumping. Transfer to a bowl; do not clean processor. Break chocolate into chunks; add chocolate and 1/3 cup sugar to processor. Process until chocolate is finely ground but not clumping, about 45 seconds. Add to almond mixture.

Using the whisk attachment, beat egg yolks and remaining 1/3 cup sugar in stand mixer at medium speed until mixture falls in a heavy ribbon when beater is lifted, about 5 minutes. Beat in almond extract and lemon peel. With a rubber spatula, fold in chocolatealmond mixture, then melted butter.

Using your hand-held mixer, beat egg whites and salt in a large bowl until just stiff but not dry. Stir 1/3 of the egg whites gently into the chocolate batter to lighten it, then gently fold in the rest in two additions. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out with moist crumbs attached, about 40 minutes (check at 35 minutes— you don’t want to overcook it). Cool cake completely in pan on a rack. Run a knife or spatula around the edge to loosen; unlock pan and remove cake. Gently flip it over to remove the bottom of the pan and parchment paper. Sift powdered sugar over cake before serving. (Cake can be made a day before. Cover and store at room temperature.)

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

130 »

parting shot » Abraham Rowe

ROCK OF AGES TOM’S WALL, FLORENCE, ALABAMA  | noalastudios.com | may/june 

- D I S C O V E R -

STORIES T H AT

A C T U A L L Y

HAVE *

E THA

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OR

140

CHARACTERS

H & M + A P P L E + A N T H R O P O L O G I E + K AT E S PA D E N E W YO R K SEPHORA + DSW SHOES + CONNORS STEAK & SEAFOOD + 70 MORE

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

College of Arts and Sciences

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT AT UNA DEPARTMENT OF ART

R

t

s

ART Ceramics Digital Media Painting Photography Sculpture

DEPARTMENT OF ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY E N T E R TA I N M E N T I N D U S T R Y Business Technology T H E AT R E

DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC MUSIC Instrumental Music Performance (Instrumental, Piano or Voice) Vocal/Choral Music

Follow us! @UNACOAS www.una.edu/artsandsciences  | noalastudios.com | may/june 