The East Nashvillian 7.1 Sept-Oct 2016 by The East Nashvillian

Air Americana: WMOT ROOTS RADIO 89.5 LAUNCHES

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER VOL.VII ISSUE 1

2016 MUSIC ISSUE Featuring

Robyn Hitchcock +

ANDREW LEAHEY • ANDRIJA TOKIC • CAMERON HENRY • DUALTONE JOSH FARROW • THE DEAD DEADS • TODD AUSTIN • 3RD POWER • TOMMY WOMACK TIM EASTON • PASHUN MUSIC BRANCH • COWBOY KEITH THOMPSON MARK ROBINSON • FINANCIER • COSMIC THUG RECORDS • SARAH POTENZA

CANNERY BALLROOM

RYMAN AUDITORIUM

SEPTEMBER 16

SEPTEMBER 19

with Kind

with John Reilly & Friends

ST. LUCIA

NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHT SWEATS

OCTOBER 5

SEPTEMBER 25

with Swear & Shake

with Handsome Ghost

THE OH HELLOS

MELANIE MARTINEZ OCTOBER 2

OCTOBER 7

CHRIS ROBINSON BROTHERHOOD

RYAN BINGHAM AND BRIAN FALLON & THE CROWES with Paul Cauthen OCTOBER 7

NOVEMBER 2

TODD SNIDER

LUCIUS

with Rorey Carroll

NOVEMBER 9 AT MERCY LOUNGE

LANY

OCTOBER 9

SWITCHFOOT AND RELIENT K

with Transviolet

OCTOBER 15 & 16

NOVEMBER 12

THE HEAD AND THE HEART

GROUPLOVE

with Declan McKenna

OCTOBER 23

CHARLIE PUTH

3RD & LINDSLEY

OCTOBER 24

ALESSIA CARA

OCTOBER 8

with Ruth B and Nathan Sykes

BOY & BEAR

with Roadkill Ghost Choir

OCTOBER 26

OCTOBER 9

with Haywyre and The Geek x Vrv

THE TEMPER TRAP with Coast Modern

GRiZ

NOVEMBER 7

ELLE KING NOVEMBER 10

ASCEND AMPHITHEATER

INGRID MICHAELSON with AJR

SEPTEMBER 16

APRIL 8

AMOS LEE

with Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors

PASSENGER

GET TICKETS AT AEGLIVE.COM 2

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

IN EAST NASHVILLE AT THE FOLLOWING VENUESâ&#x20AC;¦

THE GROOVE FOND OBJECT RECORDS T H E FA M I LY WA S H B A S E M E N T E A S T A M E R I C A N L E G I O N THE 5 SPOT THE CRYING WOLF CATCH PERFORMANCES BY THESE GREAT ARTISTS

LEE ANN WOMACK JOHN PAUL WHITE SONS OF BILL LUCIE SILVAS BRIAN WRIGHT WILLIE SUGARCAPPS STEVE POLTZ CORDOVAS THE BALLROOM THIEVES SAM LEWIS JON LATHAM SARAH POTENZA J P H A R R I S LY D I A L O V E L E S S B O T T L E R O C K E T S KASEY CHAMBERS GARRY TALLENT THE BLACK LILLIES SERA CAHOONE HOLLIS BROWN All-Americana Fan packages, conference registrations and $60 festival wristbands available at:

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

1015 Glenview Drive | East Nashville $ 599,000 • • • • • •

2,255 square feet 3 bedrooms 2.5 baths 2 car garage roof deck w/ downtown views mls #1758680

615.249.8076 license #262424

Adam Gleaves 615.243.6666 adam@thirdcoastre.com license #328837

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Ann Small 615.540.9881 ann@thirdcoastre.com license #335131

prudent penny “the fiscal fireball”

Budget planner

crafty drafty “puttin' the ill in bill”

windy window

SEPT. 24, 2016

OCT. 15, 2016

NOV. 5, 2016

BELLEVUE YMCA

CHRIST CHURCH YMCA

NORTHWEST YMCA

all workshops are from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Space is limited. Arrive early. visit nespowernews.com for more info. September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Still in the groove (since 1984)

graffitiindoorad.com 8

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

PUBLISHER Lisa McCauley EDITOR Chuck Allen ASSOCIATE EDITOR Daryl Sanders COPY EDITOR John McBryde CALENDAR EDITOR Emma Alford CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Collin Czarnecki, Warren Denney, Randy Fox, Holly Gleason, James Haggerty, Craig Havighurst, Nicole Keiper, Andrew Leahey, Luke Levenson, Jack Silverman, Tommy Womack CREATIVE DIRECTOR Chuck Allen DESIGN DIRECTOR Benjamin Rumble ADVERTISING DESIGN Benjamin Rumble

ILLUSTRATIONS Benjamin Rumble, Dean Tomasek

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Stacie Huckeba

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER John Partipilo SOCIAL MEDIA Nicole Keiper Kitchen

Table Media Company Est.2010

ADVERTISING SALES Lisa McCauley lisa@theeastnashvillian.com 615.582.4187 ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Jaime Brousse, Jillian Reed, Shauna Rae Samograd DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Christina Howell

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

©2016 Kitchen Table Media P.O. Box 60157 Nashville, TN 37206 The East Nashvillian is a bimonthly magazine published by Kitchen Table Media. This publication is offered freely, limited to one per reader. The removal of more than one copy by an individual from any of our distribution points constitutes theft and will be subject to prosecution. All editorial and photographic materials contained herein are “works for hire” and are the exclusive property of Kitchen Table Media unless otherwise noted. Reprints or any other usage is a violation of copyright without the express written permission of the publisher.

Earn up to 45 hours of college credit prior to graduation. Choose from electives such as engineering, audio production, video production, graphic design, and numerous dual enrollment and AP courses! Award winning fine arts programs, championship athletic teams and the latest educational technology are found on campus! A NEW robotics lab for students in K-6 along with 3D scanning and printing are offered.

Building Confidence, Intellectual Growth and Spiritual Strength. Call 615-868-2600 ext. 259 or email Jmorgan@goodpasture.org

Bus transportation available from Gallatin, Hendersonville, Springfield, Pleasant View, Joelton, Mt. Juliet, and Old Hickory.

Goodpasture Christian School

goodpasture.org Mandarin Chinese class September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

2016 MUSIC ISSUE 70 MENTAL CASE

ROBYN HITCHCOCK

THE DEAD DEADS

COWBOY KEITH THOMPSON

JOSH FARROW

TIM EASTON

ANDREW LEAHEY

MARK ROBINSON

PASHUN MUSIC BRANCH

3RD POWER

At home in the ‘groover’s paradise’

Keeps growing, one custom case at a time

By Tommy Womack

By Jack Silverman

Alive — and killin’ it! By Andrew Leahey

Inglehood impresario By Randy Fox

For the love of Brittney By Collin Czarnecki

Sticks a fork in Americana By Warren Denney

Burning bright to the wax By Tommy Womack

From hotshot Hoosier to Nashville cat By Randy Fox

Putting the spotlight on Hip-Hop in Music City By Collin Czarnecki

ANDRIJA TOKIC

COSMIC THUG RECORDS

TOMMY WOMACK

TODD AUSTIN

DUALTONE

CAMERON HENRY

SARAH POTENZA

100

Creating ‘emotional translation devices’ By Jack Silverman

Gimme shelter

By Luke Levenson

Throwback to the future By Randy Fox

‘One of Nashville’s oracles’ By Holly Gleason

Toddzilla conquers the world! By Randy Fox

The little label that could By Holly Gleason

King of the grooves By Randy Fox

Finding her own ‘voice’ By Randy Fox

FINANCIER

Slow-brewed synth wave takes flight By Collin Czarnecki

Visit

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM for updates, news, events, and more! CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

COVER SHOT The Singularity of Hitchcock

EAST SIDE BUZZ

Photographed by John Partipilo at Bongo East

19 Matters of Development By Nicole Keiper

COMMENTARY

16 Editor’s Letter By Chuck Allen

26 Astute Observations By James “Hags” Haggerty

PARTING SHOT

29 Air Americana

Sisterhood of The Dead Deads

By Craig Havighurst

128 East of Normal

Photographed by John Partipilo at Urban Cowboy BnB

By Tommy Womack

IN THE KNOW

105 East Side Calendar By Emma Alford

Visit

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM for updates, news, events, and more!

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

UPCOMING SHOWS

SYLVAN ESSO

SEPT 8

DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT & BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME

SEPT 9

WITH ALL DOGS

WITH FALLUJAH

THE KILLS

SEPT 14

101.1 THE BEAT PRESENTS:

SEPT 23

WITH KIM AND THE CREATED

SCHOOLBOY Q WITH JOEY BADA$$

LIGHTNING 100 PRESENTS:

FRIGHTENED RABBIT

SEPT 26

WITH JULIEN BAKER

LIGHTNING 100 PRESENTS:

ALL THEM WITCHES

SEPT 29

WITH BLANK RANGE AND PATRICK SWEANY

PERPETUAL GROOVE

SEPT 30

TICKETS AVAILABLE AT MARATHONMUSICWORKS.COM MARATHON MUSIC WORKS BOX OFFICE (FRIDAYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S 10-4) OR BY PHONE (877) 4-FLY-TIX 1402 CLINTON STREET | NASHVILLE, TN 37203

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

EDITOR’S LETTER

Love This Town!

ashville is like an ever-evolving song, with roots going back for over a century. The lyrical narrative has always been one of community in some form or another. As it’s so aptly put by the thoroughly British and resident East Nashvillian Robyn Hitchcock, we live in a “groover’s paradise.” This town is bursting at the seams with talent, so much so that it’s easy to take for granted how incredibly fortunate we are to be so completely steeped in it. Take, for instance, Tim Easton’s release show at Fond Object for American Fork. Easton is a troubadour’s troubadour, and he repeatedly mentioned how much it meant to turn his new record over to the universe at a neighborhood show. His neighborhood. Or The Dead Deads, whose recent show at The Basement in celebration of their new record, For Your Obliteration, saw Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger of Halestorm opening for them with an acoustic set (while sporting Dead Corps X’s over their eyes, no less). The house was packed, and, as they say, faces were melted. Then on to PaShun Music Branch, a Hip-Hop collective recently hosted by The East Nashvillian for a recording session at House of David. This group of artists, DJs, and producers showed up ready and made the most of the opportunity, knocking out raps on seven songs in the process. They finished the day discussing their creative relationship with writer Collin Czarnecki. Our very own Tommy Womack spins a yarn about his first real guitar in “East of Normal,” and he’s the subject of a profile by Holly Gleason. He also wrote our feature on the aforementioned Robyn Hitchcock, as well as a profile on Andrew Leahey. Speaking of whom, Leahey makes his first appearance as a contributor with his piece on The Dead Deads. We delve even further into the underpinnings of the East Side’s music community with Gleason’s excellent piece on Dualtone, an independent record label with big-time success. The ever intrepid Randy Fox — working overtime by not only contributing six stories to this edition, but also serving as one of the principles behind the launch of WXNA 101.5 FM — checks in with Justin Collins regarding his collaboration with Adam Landry to launch Cosmic Thug Records. Fox rounds out our indie label profiles with a story on Cowboy Keith Thompson, whose Inglehood Records will soon issue an album that features legendary harmonica player Charlie McCoy covering Henry Mancini songs (yes, “Baby Elephant Walk” and the theme from ’70s TV show “What’s Happening!!” are included), which Thompson also produces. Lathe operator Cameron Henry is also profiled by Fox, and is a must read by all you vinyl aficionados interested in the most critical of processes required to bring you analog bliss.

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

The man on the other side of the glass — engineer and producer Andrija Tokic — sat down with Luke Levenson recently to discuss his career, background, and what he brings to the record-making process. Tokic produced Alabama Shakes’ Boys and Girls, the record that, it could easily be argued, launched the East Side music scene into interstellar orbit. Rounding out our features are profiles of the inimitable Todd “Toddzilla” Austin, the new “Nashville Cat” Mark Robinson, synth-wave trio Financier, powerhouse-vocalist Sarah Potenza, and East Nashvillian by way of love, Josh Farrow. Craig Havighurst pens the guest commentary “Air Americana,” providing us with his perspective on the recent launch of WMOT Roots Radio 89.5 FM. Transitioning from classical and jazz programming, the Middle Tennessee State University-based station will be the first anywhere to provide commercial-free Americana music programming. And then there’s Hags, who needs no introduction. Although I began compiling the editorial for our annual music issue long before Stugill Simpson wrote his recent rage against the machine, I find the context timely. Having lived in Nashville for long enough to witness the ongoing evolution of the music scene (not to mention everything else), Simpson’s Facebook diatribe managed to obliquely strike a resonant chord. In it, he laments the way in which he perceives “everybody on Music Row is coming up with any reason to hitch their wagon to (Merle Haggard’s) name,” and specifically calls out the Academy of Country Music for pumping “formulaic cannon fodder bullshit down rural America’s throat for the last 30 years.” The post ends with an alleged quote from Haggard himself: “Fuck this town, I’m moving.” I suppose the argument could be made that arriving at the point of “Fuck this town, I’m moving” is a rite of passage. The Outlaws were basically saying “fuck this town” in the ’70s. Everyone I knew carried the tradition into the ’80s, and even Johnny Cash famously joined in with a full page ad in Billboard featuring the iconic 1968 photograph of him flipping off the camera overlaid by “American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to thank the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support.” Apparently, winning a Grammy for Best Country Album doesn’t necessarily require establishment support, so Sturgill’s probably going to do just fine. Besides, there’s always been a tension between art and commerce, and Nashville is no exception. The point is, the establishment is a byproduct of and not the reason for Nashville’s greatness as a music town. It’s the community of artist, songwriters, and musicians that make this Music City USA. Always has been, always will.

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Finally.

AMERICANA. DEEP AND WIDE

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

EAST SIDE B U Z Z FOR UP-TO -DATE INFORMATION ON EVENTS, AS WELL AS LINKS, PLEASE VISIT US AT: THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Matters of Development NEW AND NOTEWORTHY THE PAST FEW MONTHS BROUGHT A burst of creative new flavors to the neighborhood — both literal and figurative — and that looks to continue through the fall. New East Side brewery East Nashville Beer Works — led by District 7 Metro Councilman Anthony Davis and brewmaster Sean Jewett — held its grand opening party in early August at 320 E. Trinity Lane. The names of the introductory brews at their new East Nashville taproom underline East Nashville Beer Works’ “Beer is Community” motto: Pours of an American wheat beer called Cumberland Punch, their Woodland Street Session IPA, and others offered a delicious buzz and a nod to home.

Along with their titular beer, visitors can also grab artisan pizza and salads at ENBW’s taproom, which includes a stylish inside space and a large, family-friendly outdoor beer garden. The initial focus is on serving Beer Works brews out of their taproom home, with flights, pints, and “shorty” pints available there. But you can cater your home imbibing, too — they do growlers and can “crowlers,” and kegs and half kegs. Down the line, they’re aiming to be on local taps and on local craft beer sellers’ shelves, as well. For more, visit eastnashbeerworks.com. Walker Creek Confections has opened in the space formerly occupied by Hello Boys at 1108 Woodland St., Suite G in The Idea Hatchery. The retail store brings small batch, hand-crafted candies made in Watertown, Tenn. to the neighborhood. Hours are 11 a.m.

to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Learn more at walkercreektoffee.com. Dose Cafe & Dram Bar opened its doors in late July at 1400 McGavock Pike — the former Watanabe space in Riverside Village, vacated in late 2014. This new Dose is a sister to proprietors Keith Steunebrink and Heath Henley’s first location on Murphy Road near West End. And like the original shop, our Dose offers high-quality coffee (from roasters like Counter Culture Coffee and Intelligentsia) and a food menu to accompany. Since the East Side space has a larger kitchen than its older sister, Dose East is able to spread out a little on the food side, expanding from sandwiches and salads to items like Boudin Balls with pepper jelly and smoked oyster aioli and all sorts of housemade pies.

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

EAST SIDE BUZZ

We’ve got that “Dram Bar” thing, too, so we may be looking at a nice cocktail menu by the time this hits stands (at press time, Dose was still waiting on permits to get that going). Hours at the East Nashville Dose are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. More at dosenashville.com. Local upscale burger brand Burger Up opened its new East Side stop at 970 Woodland St. in mid-July, taking over the space formerly occupied by The Turnip Truck. At the new restaurant, you’ll see menu favorites from the flagship Burger Up in 12 South, like the Benton’s bacon-decked Woodstock burger and fried mac & cheese bites, plus desserts that show East Side love, like an Olive & Sinclair chocolate brownie and Jeni’s ice cream duo. Hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday to Sunday. More at burger-up.com. In late June, long-loved tacos-and-more spot Mas Tacos added even more to the “and more,” opening up a cantina component and slinging margaritas, Micheladas, and other adult beverages. Expanded hours came along with the addition, too; these days, they’re keeping the doors at 732 McFerrin open until 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday (opening at 10 a.m. on Saturday, 11 other days). Keep up

at facebook.com/mastacos. Still on the literal flavor side: New Shoppes on Fatherland bakery Couture Cakes & Sweets opened at 1006 Fatherland St., Suite 206, in late July. Those folks specialize in near-Ace of Cakes-fancy custom-designed cakes and cupcakes, plus a mix of other sweets, like brownies, cookies, Chess squares and chocolate-covered apples. Hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Learn more and/or place your custom order at designyouacake.com. Couture got a colorful neighbor in mid-August, as Gift Horse, “Nashville’s spot for paper goods & gifts,” opened up at 1006 Fatherland St., Suite 301. At the Gift Horse helm are designers Jessica Maloan (former proprietor of East Side paper goods shop PULP and one of Porter Flea’s cofounders) and Andy Vastagh (of Boss Construction), and those two have stocked the cute shop with lots of handmade/local/ regional goods, from greeting cards and art prints to jewelry and ceramics. The two owners are longtime East Nashvillians, and they tested the Gift Horse waters a while back with some branded pop-up shops

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

inside East Nashville’s Sawtooth Print Shop. That all reinforced a feeling, Maloan told us, that “our neighborhood really needed a place to showcase some of our most talented local artists and offer unique and affordable gifts.” Hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10 to 6 Saturdays and noon to 5 Sundays. More at gifthorsenashville.com. Some cool new additions for creatively minded East Nashvillians, too, starting with a trio of new neighbors: Turnip Green Creative Reuse, Make Nashville, and Platetone Printmaking, Paper and Book Arts relocated to our side of the river in late July, sharing a space at 947 Woodland St.. All three organizations contribute to Nashville’s creative community in different, but complementary ways. Turnip Green Creative Reuse’s focus is on finding ways to make arty use of unwanted residential/industrial materials — like fabric, metal, and wood scraps — keeping it out of landfills and putting it into the hands of artists and teachers at low to no cost. They host workshops and events, and partner with schools, teachers, and artists, and have a retail space stocked with reuse-ready supplies. Learn more about what they do at turnipgreencreativereuse.org. Meanwhile, member-run collective Make Nashville focuses on “all things Maker, Hacker, Coder, and Builder,” with classes, events, and workspace available in their all-ages, nonprofit makerspace. Inside their doors, you’ll see everything from circuit-bending to woodworking to sewing to 3D Printing. Info on the space, events, and membership options at makenashville.org. Platetone is a little more self-explanatory, with print/paper/book arts in the foreground, and like Make Nashville, they offer workspace, workshops, and more. Their fundamental purpose: “to support local artists, inspire and create new artists, and serve as a local institution for all things book, paper, and print.” More on those folks at facebook.com/platetone. Turnip Green president Kelly Tipler told us that the spacemates were all really excited to move East from the other side of the river. “Make first saw the space (on Woodland) and invited Turnip Green and Platetone to explore the opportunity,” she said. “Turnip Green immediately knew the groups would be great collaborative partners and that East Nashville would be the perfect home for our creative missions. East Nashville has a creative vibrancy that we appreciate and are honored to now be part of on a larger scale.” More new neighbors with an educational bent: Local “active transportation” advocacy

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

EAST SIDE BUZZ

organization Walk Bike Nashville moved into a new space at 943 Woodland, so their efforts to expand the walkability and bike-ability of Nashville are now headquartered on the East Side. Workshops and classes are part of their mission, and an update from the Walk Bike folks indicated that their new home offers the opportunity for expansion on that front: “The much enlarged office space will better accommodate conferences, workshops, meetings, and supplies for our events and education programs,” the move-missive said. More at walkbikenashville.org. Good news for neighborhood pet lovers, too: The Pet Community Center on Doctor Richard G Adams Drive is set to double its surgical capacity, after a successful crowdfunding campaign. The organization, which offers low-cost spay/neutering and other services for dogs and cats, had hit its limit, seeing 700 animals per month, and turned to the community for help growing their space. The funds will allow the center to add a second surgery table (and the tools to go with it), and accommodate two veterinarians working in the space at once. Learn more at petcommunitycenter.org. CLOSINGS AND MOVES WE ARE SAD TO SAY GOODBYE TO Idea Hatchery shop Hello Boys, whose doors were closing at press time. The cozy men’s vintage store had been in the Hatchery hub at 1108 Woodland for four years, offering clothing, accessories, and more. Co-owner Gavin O’Neill encouraged us against any bummage, though — he and

partner Jeremy Ryan were just ready/excited for new adventures that the busy life of shop owners didn’t accommodate. “Hello Boys has been the best four years of my life,” he said. “I never imagined I’d be able to open up a store at the age of 22. It completely changed my life and allowed me to tap into resources that continue to pay forward to me.” As mentioned above, the new occupants will be Waller Creek Confections. This go-around, we also have the unusual opportunity to revisit some past moving updates. Back in May, we passed along Porter House Bistro’s announcement that a search for a new location had begun, after lease negotiations at 1115 Porter stalled. In June, we got fresh news that the French-inspired restaurant would be staying put. So if you’re looking for your PHB fix, head right back to the place you know. Hours are 5-9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 5-10 p.m. on Friday, 10 to 10 on Saturday and 10 to 9 on Sunday. Regular updates at facebook.com/theporterhousebistro. In June, we also shared news about neighborhood restaurant Little Octopus picking up from pop-up spot POP (604 Gallatin Ave., Suite 202) in July, and winding its way over to The Gulch to take over the former Ru-San’s space. That’s still in the works, but we’re getting a bit of a Little Octopus stay — in August, those folks announced that the restaurant would remain in the POP space through the fall, move date TBD. “Well, what can we say? .... We live in a booming metropolis and building a restaurant takes time,” the announcement read, “but luckily we have POP and we get to stay until

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

our forever home is ready.” If you’d like to dine with Little Octopus before they leave, they’re open 6-10 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. When Little Octopus does go Gulch-ward, plans are for a new restaurant concept to take over POP. No specifics on that yet. COMING SOON BAD NEWS FOR DIETS, GOOD NEWS for sweatpants: Ferociously decadent local sweet-slingers Five Daughters Bakery is working on a third location, taking over the former Cumberland Transit space at 1900 Eastland Ave. (Outdoor/active gear retailer Cumberland Transit closed its East location in early 2016, after almost two years in that space.) An exact opening date wasn’t set yet at press time, but early September was the hope. And once those doors do open, Five Daughters will be bringing along their trademark creations, including the 100 Layer Donut, which those folks accurately describe as “like America and France made slow sweet love and had a pastry baby.” The family-run business’ other locations are in Franklin and 12 South, and a bunch of East Side businesses — Ugly Mugs, Barista Parlor — have been serving their baked goods here in the neighborhood for a while, to much acclaim. Keep up with the latest from Five Daughters at fivedaughtersbakery.com. On many an East Nashvillian’s most-wanted list: good Chinese food options in the neighborhood. Music to those ears: Former Margot chef de cuisine Ryan Bernhardt and City House GM Anne Bernhardt are working on opening

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

EAST SIDE BUZZ

a new Chinese restaurant with a Southern slant, called TKO, at 4204 Gallatin Pike. An early menu peek on the Inglewood restaurant’s website, TKOTN.com, included twice-cooked pork ribs, succotash fried rice, steamed buns, and lots more. Though that won’t necessarily be what’s on plates come opening day, it’s an indication of the blend the husband and wife team is going for. At press

time, a fall launch was the aim. While we’re up in Inglewood, keep an eye out for a big expansion over at Sinkers Wine, Spirits & Beer. In late June, those folks announced plans to more than double the size of their shop at 3304 Gallatin Pike, adding on two adjacent spaces and growing into a two-level, 20,000-square-foot home for East Nashville imbibers.

Plans include: expanded wine and beer selections, beer and wine taps with growler service, cigars, specialty food items, and more. “It’s going to look totally different,” owner Bill Sinks said in a release. (And so will the rest of the complex — a new stone facade and lighting were among planned improvements.) All told, it should take six to eight months, but Sinkers will remain open during the renovation. More at SinkersWineandSpirits.com. Another space aiming for a fall opening: Urban Cowboy Public House, a bar and restaurant in the cozy building behind the Urban Cowboy B&B at 1603 Woodland St. Owner Lyon Porter told Noble Nashville that a 2,000-square-foot indoor space, 3,000-square-foot patio, and a permanently parked food truck are in the works for/ around the building, which was originally a stable house. If you haven’t had a look at the changes over at that property since Porter took over (it used to be Top O’ Woodland), drop by urbancowboybnb.com. Come October, we should be welcoming The Soda Parlor to East Nashville, too. The ice cream/floats and clothing shop was shutting its doors on Clinton Street in Marathon Village at press time, with plans to set up at 966 Woodland St., next to the East Side Burger Up. Also aiming for an October opening in that new Woodland spot: new pet food shop Pet Wants Nashville, at 962 Woodland St. Their approach is different from other pet stores in the area, in that they won’t carry other brands, but their own “carefully developed proprietary pet food,” plus treats, supplements, and other all-natural pet items. Pet Wants is a growing chain, launched out of Cincinnati, and this’ll be the first Nashville location. Keep up at petwantsnashville.com. In late July, The Tennessean reported that Andy and Chad Baker (who brought us The Dog Spot and Spot’s Pet Supply, among other businesses) were working on renovating 811 Gallatin Ave., to house up to three “restaurant, retail, even office” tenants. The Nashville Post reported in August that a Holiday Jones boutique hotel was still in the works for East Nashville — an 805 Main St. location with 64 rooms was first talked about, but plans have shifted to a 100-room hotel taking over 809, 811 and 813 Main St.

Have East Side development news to share? Reach out to nicole@theeastnashvillian.com 24

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

BNA EXPRESS PARK Visit flynashville.com for a

$5 per day coupon good through October 31, 2016 A NEW WAY TO VALE T.

flynashville.com MNAA-27170-16-East Nashvillian Ad_EXPRESS PARK_FINAL.indd 1

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

8/17/16 1:32 PM

Astute OBSERVATIONS James “Hags” Haggerty

The musical neighborhood

rescendo, decrescendo, rubato, desafinado, 1-4-5 in the key of A, 1-6-2-5 turnaround, intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro. Those are a few words and numbers that are part of the language of music. Popular wisdom says that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill, 10,000 hours to gather the knowledge. In Aristotelian, that’s 10,000 hours to know the gnosis. You dig what I’m saying? But how does the pupil put that knowledge into praxis? It’s my column and I’ll wax Hellenic if I want to; I may even wax literary. In 1579, my favorite Elizabethan, Sir Phillip Sidney, wrote The Defence of Poesy wherein he asserts that poetry, unlike history, mathematics, or science, presents a picture of what could be and not simply what is. Poetry, unlike those drier disciplines, can teach as well as delight. Poetry takes knowledge and makes something tangible from it. Praxis, if you will. To summarize Sir Phillip, poetry paints a talking picture of truth and beauty. In the words of Top 40 radio philosopher Casey Kasem, “Keep your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds.” Here in 21st century Inglewood, Music City USA, I, James Haggerty, musician, writing in the music issue of The East Nashvillian magazine, put forth the notion that the talking pictures of poetry have become the singing pictures of song. What are pop songs after all if not poetry set to music? (Of course there is that whole bro country phenomena. I guess some people will never get past the nursery rhyme.) The musicians here are blue-collar folks. They are working for a living. It’s not a star trip — it’s a love of and commitment to craft, a strong work ethic, and a desire to make something lasting.

You might see your neighbors on The Tonight Show one night. The next night, they’ll be in the club playing different songs on another gig. To be able to make music in this town with some of the best musicians playing today blows my mind. The scene we have going on in East Nashville right now is the stuff that gets written about in history books. The spirit of creativity and inspiration is alive and thriving in our community. That’s one of the things that make our neighborhood truly special. It’s an oasis in the desert of a world gone mad. I can check the stress and lose myself in the joy of creativity. I can get together with my friends and work on songs; try to craft the perfect bass part. I can connect to the long history of Nashville music-making and try my best to make a contribution to that rich fabric. In the midst of the psychedelic nightmare of this election cycle, I can go out and play a gig in the neighborhood and restore my faith in humanity. A bunch of music geeks have everything they need to make the thing they love, and there is an audience that wants to hear it. The days of big budgets and corporate largesse have come and gone. The wheat has been separated from the chaff. Since there’s no one to sell out to, we get to make the music we want to make, and we get to live the life we love. Like my man Sir Phillip said, paint a picture of truth and beauty. To me, that is the essence of our scene. You walk into the coffee shop and overhear a conversation about which vacuum tubes create the best tone in a Fender amp. People here know what pulling out all the stops really means (type “Hammond B3” into your search engine of choice). Around here, music is a living, breathing, foot-stomping, joyful noise, and to top it all off, we have two new commercial-free radio stations! There’s a renaissance going on. Dig in!

Hags is a part-time bon vivant, monster icon-about-town, and contributor to The East Nashvillian who earns his keep as a full-time bassist extraordinaire. As an interlocutor, he is often overheard demonstrating the fluency with which he speaks Greek. Admired both at home and abroad for his indefatigable work ethic, Hags still somehow finds time for life’s simple pleasures; notably, enjoying smooth jazz sounds on his cherished collection of vintage analog tube equipment.

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

“The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.” — Flannery O’Connor, 1955 —

Sundays at 10:00 am Stratford High School Auditorium www.midtownfellowship.org

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Air Americana After decades of waiting and wishing, Middle Tennessee has a powerful Americana radio station

By Craig Havighurst

hen I moved to Nashville in late 1996, the buzz was about Americana music, even if nobody was calling it that yet. The New York Times Magazine had recently profiled BR549’s honky-tonk transformation of Lower Broadway and the country-blues indie label Dead Reckoning Records. The Ryman had reopened and its well-attended summertime bluegrass nights were magic. Nearly everything that’s happened since has vindicated belief in a bull market for roots music: The Americana Music Association was born and AmericanaFest has grown into a fall extravaganza. O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which was made and marketed here, became an iconic album and a generational signifier. Satellite radio launched full-time folk, alt-country, and bluegrass channels that actually pay artists well. Companies like Thirty Tigers built new business models. And I like to think the weekly show, Music City Roots, my partners and I produce has done its part to elevate Americana. Everything has clicked except for one huge factor: traditional, terrestrial radio. If country music, the commercial pop format, and Americana are at odds (and they kind of are), then it seems to me Americana has the better ground game, while country wins in the air. Major label country music gets played on about 2,000 radio stations around the nation, subsidized by millions in major label promotional dollars. Americana, by contrast, has no money to spare on mass market promotion and gets played and promoted on radio unevenly around the country, often part-time, over fewer than 100 stations. If you’d expect a full-time Americana station to be anywhere in the nation, it would be Nashville. But we’ve not been so fortunate. Certainly WRLT and WSM play some roots music some of the time, and there are excellent, very diverse new radio players in town in ACME (online) and WXNA (Low Power FM at 101.5). Some people, I daresay many people, have long craved a local station that spun new and classic Americana all day and night. Wouldn’t it be cool to hear, just for instance, Margo Price, Derek Hoke, and the North Mississippi All-Stars next to The Staple Singers, Jean Sheppard, Willie Nelson, and Tony Rice? Well, it’s finally happening. Last December, Ken Paulson, dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, quietly floated the idea of partnering

with Music City Roots to turn WMOT-FM 89.5 into a full-time Americana radio station. Paulson is the former editor of USA Today and currently president of The First Amendment Center. A journalism guru for many people (including me) — not to mention a roots music fan and booster — the credibility of his vision was never in doubt. The 100,000-watt FM signal, owned by the university since 1969, had been struggling for an identity for some time, splitting its days and nights between classical music and jazz. It wasn’t a clear reflection of MTSU’s impressive music programs or the Center for Popular Music that’s housed and hosted there. Our teams talked at length, and a big win-win scenario came into view. By the time you read this, we’ll be on the air as WMOT/Roots Radio 89.5. What’s taking shape is a music format rooted in Nashville’s strengths and local artistry, but standing for a national ideal — a radio voice that reflects the best of American music and music cities everywhere. We’re calling it “Americana: Deep and Wide.” Our music director, through several miracles of kismet, is Jessie Scott, who’s arguably the nation’s most admired and accomplished Americana programmer. This pink-haired force of nature and fountain of musical joy will be on the air every weekday drive-time from 4-7 p.m. Rounding out the daily air staff will be Roots cocreator and executive producer John Walker, along with former Hippie Radio broadcaster Bill Edwards, in the morning, country DJ legend Keith Bilbrey, and Lightning 100 /WRVU veteran Whit “Witness” Hubner in middays. I’m going to focus on music news and a weekly interview show called The String, taking you inside the minds of great artists as well as producers, filmmakers, authors, and media pioneers. Greg Reish, director of the Center for Popular Music, will mine its archives for a weekly theme-driven show called Lost Sounds. Mike Farris will spin roots gospel. Many other local figures will turn up on WMOT airwaves. We’ve planned and schemed, but we can’t predict what these next few weeks and months will be like. We’ll surely make some clunky mistakes, and we’ll struggle to get the many deserving, worthy artists on the air. We’ll work out new routines and refine our efforts, learning on the job. Bear with us. Work with us. Most of all tune in and listen. Radio is still the most electrifying medium on Earth when it’s done well, and that’s certainly our aim.

Craig Havighurst is a founding producer of Music City Roots and a writer who lived in East Nashville from 1996 to 2008.

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Robyn Hitchcock in his milieu at The 5 Spot during soundcheck for David Olney and his band. Seated (L-R): Hitchcock, Emma Swift, Allen Thompson, Terry Rickards, Bex Chilcott. On stage are Ward Brian Stout, Justin Amaral, Olney, and Daniel Seymore.

Robyn

HITCHCOCK

At home in the ‘groover’s paradise’ 30

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

“

’m sort of surprised there aren’t more of me around,” Robyn Hitchcock muses, stirring an iced coffee at Bongo East on a blistering Nashville afternoon, looking about like what you’d expect him to, in an untucked flower-print white shirt, dark jeans, and what look like low-cut Beatle boots. He’s just been confronted with the notion that there is only one of him, and how he stumps any “sounds like” attempts there might be to pigeonhole him, as the industry always feels the need to do. “I suppose I’m quite proud of that,” he says, English vowels bouncing around. “At least it means I’ve done something nobody else has done. It may be something that nobody else wanted or needed to do. It might be like somebody building an extravagant folly, making a 50-foot statue of → Mickey Mouse out of pine cones or something.”

story by Tommy Womack photography by John Partipilo

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

obyn Rowan Hitchcock was born in 1953 in Paddington, London. He is a man of both pop hooks and delicate sculpted silence, profoundly influenced by Bob Dylan and sounding nothing like him, curator of surrealist lyrics leavened with mordant mother country wit. He wrote one of the loneliest lyrics of all time, “Television, say you love me” and followed it with “bing a bong a bing bong!” Right around a year ago, he and Australian singer-songwriter Emma Swift chose East Nashville as their home, and that probably says as much about the East Side as it does about Hitchcock. This loam has proven friendly purchase for the man who wrote “Sandra’s Having Her Brain Out.” From his classic work in the ’70s with The Soft Boys, to his MTV success in the ’80s as leader of Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, to his collaboration with Peter Buck in the Minus 3 and his important work in the new millennium with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, among others, Hitchcock has danced to his own beat and carried his own water. Be it electric jangly guitar riffs that ring and chime, to quiet acoustic moments that warm the room, Hitchcock is less psychedelic in the notes he plays as opposed to the words he sings. His lyrics are by turns whimsical and lacerating. He sings of love, he sings of lost love, he sings about insects, he sings about anything he bloody well wants to, and he’s been doing it for a fervent bunch of followers going on 40 years now. He has the voice to sing, “it rained like a slow divorce” with no smile, daring the listener to ask whether he’s being funny or is as serious as any man could be. You might say that’s the Dylan influence, but you can’t learn to be wry. You’ve either got it or you don’t. Sipping his coffee, he gets back to the subject of his singularity. “I’m so obviously a product of my time,” he says, “My musical and lyrical approach comes out of the late ’60s, the kind of wordgasms that Bob Dylan and Captain Beefheart engaged in, to name two; I remember getting into them, William Burroughs, and Shakespeare when I was 16, and just everything opening up, word-wise. There were a lot of receptive minds around listening to and reading the same stuff. The cross-pollination between Dylan and the Beatles is legendary, and goes on to this day. So I’m surprised there aren’t more people who sound like me and have the attitude I have.” To an observer, Hitchcock must leave all eccentricities to his art. There’s no hipster genius catatonia, none of Dylan’s Chin Gigante routine. Clear-skinned, bright-eyed, and delectably sane, white-headed and personable, he looks nowhere near his age of 63, suggesting that the man so steeped in psychedelia has done his composing with no more chemical goosing than what he was born with. He answers every question thoughtfully, occasionally pausing at some length as he divines just the right lyrical turn of phrase, being it of Mickey Mouse pinecone effigies or anything else of his choosing. Speaking of singularities, Bryan Ferry was

playing the Ryman that night and Hitchcock was excited to be going. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of person you can imagine actually existing in real life,” he says, as one might speculate of Hitchcock himself. “But he does exist on stage, and for a mortal he’s in good shape. He’s like a life-size Bryan Ferry doll which ages as everybody must. He’s neither fallen apart like Keith Richards, nor has he desperately tried to fight off time like Jagger. I haven’t seen him for two years, so maybe it’s all changed, maybe he’s sprouted brambles and tulips and is staggering around carrying a watering can patting a horse, talking in a west country brogue.” Have they ever met? “I poured a cup of tea for him once in Norway.” In and amongst his touring schedule, Hitchcock has been holing up, a bit at a time, in Raconteur Brendan Benson’s well-appoint-

that never quite arrives, but the closer you get to it the more terrifying it looks. But you have no choice but to go into it. I think a lot of people are just reversing into the future. There’s more than they can stand. It’s bad enough getting old without your phone getting old as well, you know, or your belief system getting old. We on the left, you know, we mourn the ’60s and ’70s, and the other side mourns the ’50s and the ’30s. It’s the same in Britain, too.” Hitchcock was born into a quintessential English upper middle class household, with a sister and two loving parents. His father was the novelist Raymond Hitchcock, who had success with Percy, about a man who receives a penis transplant and embarks on a quest to find the donor. It was made into a movie in 1970 with The Kinks providing the soundtrack. “It was slightly risqué in its time,” Hitchcock says, “My mother and grandmother were a bit shocked when it came out, I suppose. But some people gave Raymond an absolute shovelful of money for making a movie out of his book, in exchange for which he gave away all the rights, and as it turns out there’s only one sentence from his whole book that made it into the movie.” His father was a bit of a Renaissance man. He wrote and painted and drew cartoons, he did everything except play music. “And maybe,” surmises Hitchcock, “I went into music so I wasn’t in competition with him.” Even if his parents didn’t play music, they liked having it around. “My father used to buy skiffle and rockabilly records for us,” he says, “so we had Lonnie Donegan and Bill Haley. About the third thing I can remember in life is spinning around in a circle singing ‘One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock rock!’ so I knew that stuff from the time that I was 3, and some folk songs he used to buy, and then later on The Beatles came. “One day my father turned up with a transistor radio,” Hitchcock continues. “He liked gadgets. But they were quite big in those days, about five times the size of a laptop. He was very proud of it. I came in from school one day, he pointed at the table and said, ‘Look! My wireless! It doesn’t plug in!’ There was an hour a week of the Top 20 on British national radio. This was 1963 and The Beatles had just hit, and he said, ‘Why don’t you listen to this?’ — which was nice because I don’t think he was listening to it, but he thought we might like it. So we listened to The Beatles and The Shadows and Roy Orbison, and things like that. And the next week, my sister and I just pushed the radio around outside in the garden in a pram, like a stroller posh Brits put their kids in. We had a toy one and like some post-apocalyptic couple, we shuffled through the hedges pushing this pram and listening to ‘From Me to You.’ ” Soon enough came an English rite of passage for upper crust boys or those near enough to it, in which young and tender fellows are wrestled away from home and Mum and Dad, and are sent off to boarding school, where homesickness is expected to be dealt with by keeping a stiff English upper lip and getting on with →

I didn’t know what the job was called because there wasn’t a description for what a trainee Bob Dylan was. There wasn’t really a guidebook for being a spokesman for Western youth.

“

ed studio just off Music Row. A few days after meeting at Bongo Java, Robyn sits in Benson’s control room with a hollow-bodied Gibson diffidently finger-picking an overdub. The track they’re working on, “1970 in Amber,” about days gone by and memories that remain, is signature Hitchcock, but also not. With a pumping acoustic rhythm guitar, stacked harmonies from Wilco’s Pat Sansome, Swift, and fellow Aussie Anne McCue, and, snaking through the mix, a pedal steel guitar courtesy of Russ Pohl, there’s a whiff of Son Volt. It’s nothing overt; this isn’t Robyn Goes Twang! — but it is there, Hitchcock taking in his surroundings and putting it back out again. A few days later, Gillian Welch would again show up and add her two cents. And there may be other guests to come. “Everyone plays beautifully,” Hitchcock offers, “They’re all professionals, and they’re quick. Half of it wasn’t even rehearsed.” Welcome to Music City, Robyn. “The record is seen through the prism of Nashville, largely about people who have gone,” he says later. “I’ve always been pretty backward looking. I was never a sort for rubbing my hands together and going, ‘Boy, howdy, I can’t wait for the future.’ The future is a very ominous place

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

RIVERSIDE VILL AGE PHARMACY We’re more than a pharmacy!

With a large selection of supplements, local and natural body care, Riverside Village Pharmacy has all your wellness needs under one roof. Drop in today and chat with our experienced pharmacists or on-staff nutritionist – knowledgeable service is in your backyard here in East Nashville!

Riverside Village Pharmacy

C G AV O C K P I K E 1406-A MC 615.650.4444 W W W. R V P D R U G S . C O M

FULL SERVICE PHARMACY OFFERING FREE LOCAL DELIVERY PRESENT THIS AD TO RECEIVE $5 OFF YOUR PURCHASE OF $20 OR MORE* *Not to be combined with any other coupon or discount. May not be used towards prescription purchases or co-pays. Expires 11/1/2016.

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

things. “That’s what they do in Britain, the upper classes,” Hitchcock says now, “First, they cripple you emotionally, and then, they send you out to run the country. It’s a neat one-two.” As it was, from a pop music perspective, there might have never been a better time to be an English lad off at boarding school, even if you just listened and didn’t play. “I loved all that music, but I didn’t see myself as doing it,” he says. “And then I heard Bob Dylan do ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ while I was feeling cut off in this male, monastic community, in a strange town. There I was, my parents having paid all this money for me to be expensively educated, and all I can remember from my school days is the sequence of Bob Dylan albums, Beatles albums, the Stones, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, The Incredible String Band, The Doors — that’s all I remember! “One day, some hipster turned up asking if I’d heard of The Velvet Underground. He said, ‘Oh, it’s something else. It’s quite naughty.’ I remember listening to ‘Heroin,’ and just — oh my god. I was 15, I think. So those four years from ’66 to ’70, I just marinated myself in music as pop turned into rock; about halfway through all that, I knew I wanted to do this.” Knowing what he wanted to do and doing it were two different things. “I didn’t know what the job was called because there wasn’t a description for what a trainee Bob Dylan was,” he says and laughs. “There wasn’t really a guidebook for being a spokesman for Western youth. On a personal level, you’d say you were going to be a troubadour or psychedelic folkie.” He was a total child of his era, and his music reflected that from day one. “It was a straight line,” he says. “You can look at my record collection and me and totally extrapolate where I am today. I’m completely predictable. It’s just a fast track from there to now.” As a teen (with Brian Eno as a classmate) nestled in that green and pleasant land, America might as well have been another planet. “I remember first reading about Nashville,” he says, “and I was wondering, ‘Where’s Nashville?’ Oh, it’s mentioned in Blonde On Blonde. And then 50 years later, Pete Finney’s taking me around the Nashville Cats exhibition and explaining exactly who Kenny Buttrey was and how I could still see Charlie McCoy, and how he might even turn up at The 5 Spot!” Upon his graduation from boarding school, he spent the ensuing years painting pictures in art school, playing in cover bands and busking on street corners. He’d started writing songs when he was 16. “I only played covers in public for years because my own stuff wasn’t any good,” Hitchcock demurs. “It probably took me 10 years to write a decent song. I think I wrote my first songs that I still play now when I was 26. So I had a very long apprenticeship.” History doesn’t necessarily agree with that assertion, as the Soft Boys broke out with incendiary psychedelic riff-rock in 1976, when Hitchcock was 23. With Hitchcock working out his kinetic dark humor, they went against the grain of the burgeoning safety pin, spiked hair, and skinny tie set. The Soft Boys’ two studio albums, A Can of Bees and Underwater Moonlight, are cherished classics these days, as is the wonderful, hard-to-find acoustic live LP, Live At The

Portland Arms, which is worth hunting down not only for the screamingly funny spoken interlude of “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,” but also for the a capella take of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” and the Soft Boys’ own “Human Music,” one of Hitchcock’s best early tunes. Breaking up in 1980 (but with several partial reunions in the coming decades), Hitchcock soldiered on with Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians and other collaborations already noted, along with purely solo stuff, for what so far has been a dizzying 35-ish total releases, and that’s not counting live albums and greatest hits collections. Casual listeners looking for an introduction to his work would do well to pick up Chronology (The Very Best of Robyn Hitchcock) from 2011, which, like most collections for artists of such repute, is nourishing for what it contains and infuriating for what it leaves out. Listeners hankering for a deeper dive into his catalog may prefer the indispensable I Often Dream of Trains, Fegmania!, Queen Elvis, Spooked, and any of about 15 others. Songs of note include the swinging “Give It To The Soft Boys,” “Veins of the Queen,” and the hilarious “Uncorrected Personality Traits.” And what about personal favorites? “ ‘N.Y. Doll,’ ‘Sometimes A Blonde,’ ‘I Don’t Remember Guildford’ — they’re all sad songs, which is my favorite kind” he says. “I like ‘Madonna of the Wasps,’ it has a good Scottish-type melody. ‘Insanely Jealous’ and ‘Kingdom of Love’ are my two faves from the Soft Boys era — young and intense. My new record is old and intense. ‘The Cheese Alarm’ is probably the most ‘Robyn Hitchcock’ of my songs; it’s fun, although not my favorite.” The concert film Storefront Hitchcock, directed by Jonathan Demme, is also worth noting. (Hitchcock has appeared in small roles in a number of Demme films.) If there is a thread unspooling through all this work, it’s been toward the madcap elements being tamped down a bit over time, and the introspection deepening and darkening like the wood on a good table. There is an excellent documentary on Hitchcock called Sex, Food, Death … and Insects, an original production by the Sundance Channel (now SundanceTV) in which the interviewer probed Robyn’s dura mater for some revealing insights, such as this one: “Life is always a shock to me. I’m always taken by surprise. Most of my songs, if they’re about anything, are about the shock of existence. People say, ‘Wow, Hitchcock writes about food, sex, and death, with a side order of fish and insects,’ like I’m all about being insanely whimsical. Like, ‘Here comes Hitchcock, the old food, sex, and death man. Never mind him!’ I don’t always know what I’m on about. If anything, I’m about ‘write the song first and ask questions later.’ Dark and funny definitely fit well together. Why not sing it?” And this one: “At heart, I’m a frightened, angry person. There’s a hot core, and then on top I have this sort of whimsical, academic detachment, sprinkled with rock & roll mannerisms I’ve picked up over the years. But deep down, I’m screaming, and I think that’s why I’ve kept going.” →

September 26

3 DOORS DOWN

with Pop Evil and Red Sun Rising

September 27

YUSUF / CAT STEVENS

October 3

GAVIN DEGRAW & ANDY GRAMMER with Wrabel

October 5 CONCERT FOR CUMBERLAND HEIGHTS

JOHN HIATT TRIO

with Rodney Crowell, Richard Thompson and Nate Bargatze

October 14

LOCAL NATIVES

October 17

ELVIS COSTELLO DETOUR With Larkin Poe and Special Guests The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

October 22

TRAILER PARK BOYS

November 6 AN INTIMATE SOLO PERFORMANCE

CONOR OBERST with Mark Kozelek

December 4

THE BRIAN SETZER ORCHESTRA

13th Annual Christmas Rocks! Tour

December 18 & 19

RUFUS & MARTHA WAINWRIGHT’S CHRISTMAS SHOW with Emmylou Harris and more

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

When asked to follow up on that, Hitchcock says, “When that documentary was being made, I had started a long-overdue course of therapy. And I was starting to discover myself, shine a flashlight around the damp cave of my interior. Many more sessions later I think I understand where that feeling came from. Both my father and his father fought in World Wars. My grandpa Jack was in the Battle of the Somme, and although not physically wounded, was never the same after he returned. His son, my father, Raymond, joined the army at 17 and was wounded in the leg at 22, and he couldn’t bend his right knee ever again. Trauma is now believed to be passed through in DNA. Raymond inherited Jack’s feelings, added his own battlefield horror, and passed the parcel down to me. I have long woken my partners up with my yelling at night, I’m sorry to say. In my dreams I am fighting something off — threatening to kill it if it gets any closer. I still don’t know what it is, but at least I think I know where it’s from.” As a wanderer who “likes living somewhere I’m not from” and being the Dylan fan that he is, it seems inevitable he eventually would come to Nashville to record. So in 2004, he found himself at Woodland Studios. “It was my first visit to East Nashville, my first exposure to what was becoming this nascent groover’s paradise,” Hitchcock recalls. He asked Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings to drop by and maybe lend a helping hand on a few tunes. As it turned out, all he had was a few tunes, but they were drawn into doing an entire album. The songs fell from the sky and were recorded before they hit the ground. Dark and foreboding, that became Spooked, and in a nod to his muse, it includes a cover of Lucky Wilbury’s “Trying to Get to Heaven.” He also recorded a new version of “Television.” Hitchcock had long been a semipermanent resident of America, living for a while in Washington, D.C., with his girlfriend at the time. He also has a house in London and has long considered the Isle of Wight to be a sentimental getaway going back to his boyhood. (He saw Hendrix’s and Jim Morrison’s last gigs ever at the big festivals there, as well as Dylan’s return to form with The Band.) He still gets back there around once a year. Now with Emma Swift, the two made a tentative long visit to East Nashville in late 2014, and made the big move in August 2015. Since moving on up to the East Side, it’s been good for both of them. “What’s struck me about Nashville is, firstly, how many musicians are here,” Hitchcock says. “It says welcome to Music City at the airport, and they’re not kidding. It’s exactly that. This is where you find them. You go into The 5 Spot and see the people that you’re playing with the next day. I really like that community. I like the layout of East Nashville, too. I don’t drive so I like walking between here and Shelby Park, and I like the fact that 5 Points is a groover’s strip — you know, like, it’s like your version of Camden Lot or Queen Street in Toronto — and ours here isn’t a strip, it’s just where they all converge. So you’ve got The 5 Spot, the 3 Crow, Bongo Java, but it’s all essentially walking distance. I can’t buy a pair of socks or anything, but there

are the vintage stores, there’s Fanny’s, they buy instruments because they look good as well as the way they sound, a very visual music store. There’s the wine merchant, you can just walk down the road and within 15, 20 minutes, it’s all there. London is so scattered. There are masses of everything in London, but it’s all over the place, and it’s very expensive. I had a great pub I used to go to, but it was about 10 miles from my house so you’d spend about 60 quid in taxis getting there and back. So for me, I like the walking distance in East Nashville. There are also loads of venues in town.”

Back in the studio, taking a break while Brendan works up a rough mix, Hitchcock muses on his longevity. “I don’t go away,” he says cheerfully. “I do what I do, and so far, nothing has deflected me.” At this point, chances are nothing ever will. “Love is a Drag” — the new 7” single from Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift — will be released Oct. 3 on Tiny Ghost Records. It was recorded & produced by Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub.

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

The Dead Deads in the music parlour at Urban Cowboy B&B Wardrobe provided by Local Honey Styling by Holly Fox Art Direction by Mandy Wolf

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

THE DEAD DEADS Alive — and killin’ it! story by Andrew Leahey photography by John Partipilo

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

omewhere between Boston and Asbury Park, Angie Lese is resting in the backseat of a Chevy Express van, her drums tucked into the 5-by-8 trailer that houses most of The Dead Dead’s gear, her mind focused on the fact that in approximately one month, she will quit her day job. Lese has been a meteorologist for more than a dozen years, chasing her career — along with the weather — from West Lafayette, Ind., to Louisville to Nashville. As far as government jobs go, it’s a killer gig. Steady hours. Good pay. One year after transferring to the Nashville office of the National Weather Service, however, she held a jam session in her East Nashville basement, bringing together a group of female musicians who, like herself, had grown up with the heavy-hitting sounds of hard rock. One of those players, Leticia Wolf, was already a Nashville staple, with years of local shows and a catalog of left-of-center pop songs under her belt. Wolf brought along two buddies — sister Mandy Wolf, back in the Volunteer State after logging time in LA as a production manager, and Mavis Turner, former bassist for the band Prim! — while Lese convinced her new roommate, guitarist Erica Sellers, to throw on some pajamas, grab her Les Paul Jr., and join everyone in the basement. The evening was a success, with the girls cooking up a handful of original tunes rather than focusing on covers. Another jam session was scheduled, except this time they called it a rehearsal. The Dead Deads had officially formed. “Right now, I’m still a scientist for the government,” Lese says nearly three years later, talking over the hum of Interstate 95 as the band heads to another show. “I have a few weeks left of that job, and then I switch to this new career full-time. It’s surreal. I love the weather, but I love the band, too. And the band is where I need to be.” All five members of The Dead Deads have found themselves in similar positions. Turner, the former IT project manager of a sewing company, turned in her resignation in January. Leticia Wolf closed her hair salon. Sellers gave up her gig at the United Record Pressing plant. Everyone is simply too busy these days to accommodate much more than touring, rehearsing, and the various demands of a rock & roll band whose fall schedule includes another tour with Bush — yes, that Bush, fronted by Gavin Rossdale and still adored by legions of Generation X females — and a string of headlining shows in support of The Dead Deads’ new album, For Your Obliteration. Day jobs aren’t the only thing The Dead Deads are leaving behind. Over the past two years, they’ve all become increasingly known by their stage names, a move that downplays the girls’ past projects and, instead, remakes them as musicians who were born to play in The Dead Deads. (Call it the Joey Ramone phenomenon.) To her fans, Leticia is known as Meta Dead. Likewise, keyboardist Mandy

is Hella Dead. Rounding out the group of pseudonyms are Billy Dead (Lese), Betty Dead (Sellers), and Daisy Dead (Turner), with all five bandmates adhering to a loose dress code comprised of ripped clothes, wild hair, and, most importantly, a black X drawn over each eye in liquid eyeliner. The X’s are a holdover from the group’s first gig together — a Halloween show at the Exit/In, where they billed themselves as the Dead Milkmaids and played a set of Dead Milkmen covers — and they’ve become as important to The Dead Deads’ appearance as, say, Paul Stanley’s star makeup. “It’s similar to the whole idea behind KISS,” raves ET Brown, a SESAC manager and heavy metal frontman whose own band, Dark Hound, shared gigs with The Dead Deads during their rise up the Nashville ladder. “They each have an alter ego — their own character that they play. It almost turns the band into a gang, but it also highlights their individual personas. It’s like the girls are superheroes, and you can pick your favorite one.” This summer, during the band’s first tour with Bush, it’s been easy to spot The Dead

a fiery, focused band. Take away the eyeliner, the pseudonyms, and the engagement with their fans, and you’re left with the group’s main attraction — the music. Released in late August and produced by Helmet’s frontman, Page Hamilton, For Your Obliteration fires twin barrels of heavy metal thunder and pop candy — it’s a blast of melodic, metallic, muscular rock. The songs are thick — stocked with gang vocals, arena-rock choruses, grungy guitar tones (“I use a lot of Boss effects pedals … because of the ’90s,” Betty Dead says with a laugh), super-sized hooks, prog-worthy tempo changes, and the pissed-off punch of punk — and they’re delivered with a wink of an eye and a bang of the head. Conducting the crazy train is frontwoman Meta Dead, who coos her melodies one minute and snarls them the next. All in all, it’s pretty irresistible stuff. “The Dead Deads are unapologetically themselves,” says Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, who took the girls on their first national tour in late 2014, “and that’s a rare thing in our current state of music, where if you don’t look and sound like the ‘last big thing,’ no one will look at you. They embrace the idea that rock stardom was born by outcasts and innovators, not by people chasing radio and scared to accentuate what makes them stand out.” Hamilton, a proud outcast himself, first met the Wolf sisters on the ShipRocked cruise in January 2016. Helmet and The Dead Deads were two of the dozen or so acts booked to play the weeklong trip, and the bands crossed paths on the high seas, somewhere between Miami and Mexico, when a radio program asked Meta and Hella Dead to conduct an on-air interview with Hamilton. The girls won him over. “The interview was really funny, which I appreciated,” Hamilton remembers. “I could tell they were smart. One of the questions was something like, ‘When a band loves you and they try to imitate what you do and they’re terrible, how does that make you feel?’ Which is hilarious! And common! When I got home, they started sending me iPhone demos of their songs. I prefer rough recordings like that. A lot of people spend time doing really slick demos, and those are just all sizzle and no steak. But these songs they were sending were good. The parts were right. Everyone was playing exactly what was needed, and Tish was clearly a great singer and lyricist. It made sense to work together.” Days before kicking off a spring tour as P.O.D.’s opening act, The Dead Deads flew to Hollywood, where they met up with Hamilton at NRG Recording Studios. There, in a Moroccan-themed room, the girls knocked out the first half of For Your Obliteration, their follow-up to 2014’s Rainbeau. Hamilton played the role of producer, big brother, and devil’s advocate, pushing Betty Dead to explore the full range of her guitar playing — “I tend to be more mathematical with my guitar parts,” she says, “and he helped me get out of my comfort zone and become a bit more crazy” — and

The Dead Deads are unapologetically themselves, and that’s a rare thing in our current state of music ...

— Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale

Deads’ fans out in the audience. Many of them have started painting X’s over their eyes, too. Meta Dead even uploaded an instructional video to YouTube in 2014, showing everyone how to apply a proper crisscrossed pattern of eyeliner. Meanwhile, Daisy Dead has begun doling out personalized “Dead names” to the group’s biggest supporters. Their fan base — an international, rabidly supportive group known as The Dead Corps — now includes more than 400 Twitter users who’ve received their own Dead handles, including Mastodon Dead (Billy Dead’s stepmom). “We keep track of the names in a database and try to learn them, so when we see a fan at a show, we can call them by their Dead name,” Daisy says. “The only time I’ve seen them perform without the X’s over their eyes was two nights before we opened The Basement East for the first time,” record store owner and club operator Mike Grimes says. “We were just about to open the doors to this brand new place, and we said, ‘Wait, no one has ever played here! We don’t know how it will sound. We need to get a band in here so we can tune the room. We need a band to christen it.’ The Dead Deads were our guinea pigs. They were the very first band to play this stage, and they did it in their street clothes without any makeup, and it still sounded fucking great.” Grimes’ comments help illustrate a larger point: The Dead Deads are, first and foremost,

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

convincing Billy Dead to straighten out the barreling, 5/4 groove in one of the album’s most complex songs, “Vending Machine Gun.” Two or three months later, Hamilton flew to Tennessee for the second part of the recording process. This time, everyone headed to Java Jive in Joelton, where the album’s final six songs were tracked. “A different girl would drive me to the studio every day, and it was cool to hear what each person was listening to,” Hamilton says. “Every band I work with, I encourage them to listen to absolutely everything. The Dead Deads were completely open to that. They listen to a wide variety of music. I think it makes them much stronger, both as writers and players.” It’s easy to hear that variety on For Your Obliteration, whose 11 songs range from the 1950s goth-pop balladry of “Murder Ballad” — cowritten with Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson, the only outsider to receive a credit on the tracklist — to the alterna-pop angst of “Sympathy Sex,” which might’ve found a home on MTV’s 120 Minutes in 1994. Along the way, the girls make room for sci-fi lyrics, R-rated double entendres (“Get wet and watch

the show” goes a line in “Acid Rain”), empowerment anthems, and death metal growls, often within the same song. “Honeysuckle Sam” kicks off like a long-lost Bangles single, all sunshine and soft-hued pop hooks, before careening into pop-punk territory, while “True Love” ropes a quarter-century’s worth of influences into its four minutes, drawing a line between the Shirelles, shoegaze, and Sabbath. Meta Dead knows it’s a lot to take. “The X’s throw people off,” she admits, more amused than upset. “They think we’re zombies or something. They think we’re a goth band. But we’re just a rock band. Everybody in the band has extremely different musical backgrounds, so when we’re writing songs in a room together, we can try every idea. Every style. Either it rocks or it doesn’t.” Back in early 2014, when The Dead Deads kicked off their first year of heavy touring, Meta felt the need to shield her bandmates from the harsh realities of a town that doesn’t always reward its oddball musicians. The Dead Deads offered something different — a glorious tangle of fishnets and fretwork, mascara and melody, Gibson solos and Godflesh inspi-

ration. Here she was, about to unleash another band on the Nashville scene, knowing fully well that The Dead Deads might be too much for Music City to handle. “It’s OK if people don’t like it,” she’d tell the rest of the group. “This stuff is pretty out there.” By the fourth show, though, Meta changed her tune. People did like The Dead Deads. In fact, they loved them. And now, with a record in the can and more amphitheater shows on the horizon, the girls aren’t making any concessions. They’re Nashville’s own rock & roll super-heroines, and they’ve come to obliterate you. Long live The Dead Deads!

The Dead Deads’ For Your Obliteration is available at The Groove, Atomic!, and Grimey’s New & Preloved Music., and as a download at thedeaddeads.com They play The War Memorial Auditorium Sept. 22 in support of Chevelle.

The sisterhood of The Dead Deads: Daisy, Meta, Betty, Hella, and Billy Dead

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

The toast of Inglehood: Cowboy Keith Thompson puts the music before the money on his record labelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s releases.

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Cowboy Keith THOMPSON Inglehood impresario

ig, bold, and brassy Southern soul music is jumping out of the speakers in the office/studio/spare bedroom of “Cowboy” Keith Thompson’s Rosebank neighborhood home. He stops the playback and clicks on another track, filling the room with a Hammond B3-driven mambo beat that would have completed the ambiance of the quintessential 1950s swingin’ bachelor’s pad. Next he switches to a sultry, jazz-blues version of the Doors classic “Light my Fire.” Thompson continues to work his way through samples from the eight albums he’s produced and released on his East Side label, Inglehood Records. Meanwhile, down the hallway in the living room, local photographer/bass player Jared Manzo is with legendary Nashville harmonica player and session man Charlie McCoy, shooting the cover for Inglehood’s next release. Cowboy Keith’s son, Cash, steps into the office to report on the Pokémons he captured in his most recent walk around the neighborhood. It’s just another Sunday morning in Cowboy Keith’s Inglehood Studios. “I’ve produced records with BR5-49, Cameo, and the Crush Boys,” Thompson says. “I’ve traveled all over the world running sound for artists, and the only thing that really makes me go, ‘Yes! This is great!’ is the stuff we started doing two years ago.” The stuff that Thompson is referring to is the mix of soul, blues, jumpin’ jive, jazz, and more that he has recorded, mixed, and released, all from his small, mid-century home in East Nashville. A fixture of Nashville’s local music scene for almost 20 years, Thompson’s Inglehood Records is providing an outlet for heartfelt passion projects from some of the East Side’s hardest working musicians. Born in Camden, N.J., and growing up in nearby Maple Shade, Thompson found his way to the great American cowboy myth through an unusual path — from a song about French marine conservationist and explorer Jacques Cousteau’s renowned ship the RV Calypso. “When I was little, my sister had a John Denver record that had the song ‘Calypso’ on it,” Thompson says. “It had that real high, soaring singing on the chorus, almost like yodeling, and I thought it was really cool. I asked my dad who else did this kind of music, and he handed me ‘Cool Water’ by the Sons of the Pioneers. I thought it was amazing, and that got me into cowboy music.” →

story by Randy Fox

photograph by John Partipilo

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Thompson’s love of western warblers eventually led him to rockabilly and then on to traditional country music. Moving to Philadelphia when he was 18 in 1988, he became a fixture in Philly’s local rockabilly and retro-country scene, performing, organizing hillbilly-themed revues at local clubs, DJing events, hosting a local radio show, and eventually his own Sunday morning TV show, Cowboy Keith’s Cartoon Corral. “We were on the air on Sundays at 7 a.m.,” Thompson says. “We lasted one month before being canceled. The kids hated us. They wrote in saying we sucked and they wanted the GoBots back. So that was the end of that!” Although Thompson began his musical career as a performer, and still performs occasionally, his experiences soon directed his attention toward another aspect of the music business. “I got into running sound at clubs and gradually realized that I should put the guitar down and push buttons and move sliders instead,” he says. “I began to focus more on sound engineering and production. I worked both in the studio and at concerts, but I really loved the live sound best because of the immediacy of it. When the audience thinks it sounds great, you know it right then, that’s the greatest feeling.” Working as a live sound engineer, Thompson toured with such acts as El Vez, Delta 72, Rocket from the Crypt, and Go to Blazes, in addition to running sound at several local Philadelphia venues. It was a 1997 Lucinda Williams show in Philly that pushed his career south to the Music City. “Kenny Vaughn and Duane Jarvis were working with Lucinda at the time,” Thompson says. “They told me I needed to come to Nashville and work for Lucinda full-time. I moved, but it didn’t work out. She cancelled the tour. I worked at the Ryman for a while and engineered a few live shows. I had worked with BR5-49 when they played in Philly, and things were really taking off for them. In 1998, they got a sponsorship deal

with Jack Daniel’s and I came onboard with them full-time. They’re my family. That’s how I became entrenched in Nashville and decided that this was home.” Thompson continued to work with BR549 through the group’s breakup in 2006 and has returned to his position behind the sound board for several reunion shows. He also produced the group’s 2004 album, Tangled in the Pines, even though he had given up on studio work for the most part at that point in his career. “I abandoned studio work when I moved to Nashville,” he says. “It had gotten to a point where I hated the subjective nature of studio recording. Too many people can tear your work apart after you put your heart and soul into it. Some people would say, what about the money? But I didn’t care about that; if you put the money before music then you’re just a factory, and where’s the joy in that?” Over the past 10 years, Thompson has built a reputation as a first-class sound man, working regularly with former Chicago lead man Peter Cetera, actress and singer Lynda Carter, and The Original Blues Brothers Band, which he also manages. It was through his association with The Blues Brothers Band that a new door opened in his career. “Tommy McDonnell, who sings with The Original Blues Brothers Band, mentioned to me that he’d never recorded a record,” Thompson says. “I told him to come to Nashville, and we’d do it. In January 2014, we cut it in Joe Pisapia’s studio. I wasn’t even thinking about recording at my house yet. Laura Mayo came in to sing a duet with Tommy as just a placeholder until we could figure who we really wanted, but she blew us away. I thought the band was so good, and we had so much fun, why not do a record with Laura, too?” For that first record, Thompson recruited local players James “Hags” Haggerty on bass, Martin Lynds on drums, Micah Hulscher on piano and organ, Joe McMahon on guitar, and Randy Leago on saxophone. As the

prospect of more records beckoned, the idea of forming an East Side version of such legendary house bands as the Stax Rhythm Section, the Muscle Shoals Mudders, or the Music City Four proved appealing. “It just went from there,” Thompson says. “I started calling them the Inglehood Rhythm Section, and then Randy Leago asked me if he could call the horn section he formed the Inglehood Horns. There was just some sort of magic in those five guys, and I wanted to keep it going.” Over the last 19 months, the assembled musicians along with several special guests have cut eight more albums. The process has been a natural one as each project seemed to flow into the next. “The whole thing mushroomed,” Haggerty says. “We’d do one record and someone would be on the session, and it was like, why don’t we do a record with them? One just followed the other. There’s definitely a ’60s jazz-soul aesthetic running through it because Cowboy’s making the kind of music that he’s really passionate about.” Although Thompson was used to mixing and editing recordings at home, primarily as an extension of his road work, using his house as a recording studio was a new experience. It’s a feat he’s accomplished through the skills he’s acquired from years of live recording in varied venues. “It’s fantastic what Cowboy is able to do with sound,” Lynds says. “He’s really, really good, and he knows what different instruments are supposed to sound like. He can just stick his head in the middle of the drums, listen and is able to put the mic in just the right spot. The equipment he’s using is pretty bare bones, but his talent is what makes it sound so good. Joe Pisapia has a great studio, but he hears these records and says, ‘How’s he doing that?’ It’s just Cowboy’s house, but he’s figured out how to capture the right sound.” In addition to keeping the technical aspects low maintenance, Thompson also serves as the consummate host, bringing a CO N T I NUED ON PAGE 117

The Shoppes on Fatherland between 10th and 11th East Nashville herbookshop.com September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Josh FARROW For the love of Brittney

n a crisp November day in Chicago eight years ago, Josh Farrow packed up everything he owned, stuffed it into a backpack, picked up his guitar case, and bought a one-way ticket to Nashville. But the singer-songwriter didn’t come to Tennessee to chase music. “I was broke,” says the 29-year-old, whose dark, curly hair hovers just above his shoulders while he sits back relaxed on the couch in his Riverside Village home, Paul Simon’s Graceland humming quietly on the stereo. “I didn’t really move here to play music. I moved here because I met a girl. I was chasing her.” Years later, music would enable the songwriter to share the stage with celebrated artists like Leon Russell, Butch Walker, and Shawn Colvin. Music would also provide him an opportunity to perform high up in the hills of Wilkesboro, N.C., at MerleFest and feel the sea breeze while playing the main stage of Hangout Festival on the beaches of Gulf Shores, Ala. In 2014, his music found an even wider reach when his song “Before You Leave” was featured on the television series Nashville. But according to Farrow, all of that was just a “happy accident.” In 2008, his eyes weren’t set on playing main stages with prolific artists or getting airplay on television dramas. Instead, they were set on a peppy brunette from White House, Tenn., named Brittney. “We met on Cinco de Mayo,” Brittney, now Farrow’s wife, recalls. “I went to Daytona with some friends ... and we were just trying to find some cute boys and there was no one. Then he walked by, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, he is so cute, I need to talk to him.’ ” With the help of a drink or two, she broke the ice and the two hit it off. But there was a problem: Farrow and his traveling companion would be heading back to Illinois the next day. Of course, for every problem, there’s a solution. “We got them so drunk that they couldn’t drive back the next day, but I cried to him that night because I knew I was never going to see him again,” Brittney says. “But the next day I got a text from him, and ever since then it was constant communication. We would talk on the phone every day for hours.” →

story by Collin Czarnecki photograph by John Partipilo

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Josh Farrow greets a brand new day outside 3 Crow Bar. Although he found his niche in Music City, it was love, not music, that brought him here.

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Their long-distance love bloomed through phone calls lasting well into the night and multiple eight-hour trips up and down Interstate 65 to see each other. Farrow knew he had to be with her, and that was that. “I flew here with a guitar and my clothes and just moved in with her and figured it out,” he says. “That’s all I had. I didn’t have anything else. No money, no car, no job. It was crazy.” As far as what was next for Farrow once he arrived in Music City, he only knew one thing

was certain. “I knew that I didn’t want a job,” he says with a laugh. “But I didn’t ever think that I would move to Nashville to become a full-time musician. I just didn’t have it in my mind.” Living in Murfreesboro while Brittney finished up school at Middle Tennessee State University, the couple kept finding themselves drawn to East Nashville. They would head to the East Side for shows at The 5 Spot and drinks at 3 Crow. For the Farrows, the neighborhood’s spirit of collaboration, creativity, and community were magnetic.

Melissa E. Crim

m. ed.

licensed professional counselor

East NASHVILLE

Family medicine

Find healing. Past, Present, Future. melissa.crim@comcast.net

• All Ages Welcome • primAry heAlth cAre • Urgent cAre • WAlk-in AvAilAbility monday-thursday 8-7 Friday 8-5 saturday & sunday 9-12

615.482.2746

katie Fell, chhc, AADp

Certified Holistic Health Coach

www.eastnashvillefamilymed.com

www.katiefell.com • eatwelltn@gmail.com

615.469.5555

615.720.7651 call or email for your

FREE 30 minutE nutRition bREakthRough sEssion

rozmond lewis, mD

mimi gerber, Fnp

meg rowland boyls, Fnp elizabeth morse, Fnp

Meg Rowland Boyls, FNP Now accepting new Primary Care patients call the office to set up your appointment

music city healing arts Thai Yoga Massage • Acupressure • Reflexology

(615)243-6068 www.musiccityhealingarts.com

East NashvillE Family mEdiciNE located in: eastside station • 801 Woodland street, nashville, tn 37206 48

EastNashvillianJrAdJan16.indd 1

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

12/16/15 10:37:12 PM

After Brittney graduated, the two found a three-bedroom rental off Gallatin Avenue on Mansfield Street. “It was awesome,” Farrow says. “We had a great time on Mansfield. Allen Thompson, Patrick Sweany, guys from Apache Relay all lived on the same street. There were a whole bunch of artists on that block. Even though I had a bullet hole in my wall, nobody wanted to leave.” Not long after the couple settled into their new home, Farrow started picking up shifts at Five Points Pizza, which is where he can still be found on just about any given night throughout the week. He’s the guy behind the bar, slinging prosciutto and basil slices, pouring Czann’s Blondes while wearing an Alkaline Trio or The Lawrence Arms T-shirt — an ode to the punk music he grew up on. His debut album, Trouble Walks With Me, is the epitome of that evolution. It’s the culmination of four years’ worth of work meticulously poured into 10 tracks. When an artist puts four years of work into an album it becomes a journey — one you catch a glimpse of in Farrow’s eyes when he talks about the record. “It kind of all came from very dark, Southern gothic imagery and religious undertones that all stem from figuring out what I’m doing, and not being comfortable with everything that’s going on in the world,” Farrow says. “It’s realizing how hard this is, and feeling like I’m not good enough.” The dark and at times haunting sound of the album was born in producer Dexter Green’s basement studio in Inglewood. Green’s impressive production work includes recordings by Derek Hoke, Elizabeth Cook, and Collective Soul, among others. Despite the complexities of recording an album independently over the course of four years, the relationship between Green and Farrow began on a simple note. “It was all about pizza,” Green says and laughs. “My buddy Patrick Keeler from The Raconteurs and I would go down to get a slice at Five Points, and I just always liked (Farrow’s) vibe. He came over initially, and we put together a little 45 with ‘Worryin’ Kind’ and ‘Devil Don’t You Fool Me,’ and that’s where it all really started.” Not only did Green and Farrow hit it off from the beginning, but the two also became neighbors, which made impromptu writing and recording sessions convenient — and abundant. “He lived on Rosebank and Solon, and I bought the house a few doors down,” Farrow says. “Depending on what time of day it was, I would walk over there with either coffee or whiskey in a cup and go record.” It didn’t matter what day of the week it was or what hour of the night; whenever one of them got an idea, Farrow would stroll down the street and get together with Green and write. The sound and the journey were beginning to take shape. “We just started writing together and sort of pieced together the record doing it that way,” Green says. “We probably composed it over nine months. It was cool because we were able to explore a new direction for him.”

At the time, it was still the early stages of developing a sound for Trouble Walks With Me, which was an exercise that also allowed Farrow to develop his sound. Two years into the writing and recording process, both Green and Farrow looked south for inspiration and began drawing influences from the sounds of New Orleans — specifically the music of Allen Toussaint. Toussaint’s work inspired Farrow to ditch the electric guitar on some of the album’s tracks and hone in on keys and vocals instead. The end result can immediately be felt on the album’s opening track, “I’ll Be Your Fool.” Poppy keys accompanied by a grooving bass line and snug drumbeat chug their way throughout the track without so much as a hint of guitar to hold the song’s hand. “Electric guitar is a funny thing. I’m way into vocals, and a lot of people tend to insert guitar because that’s what you’re supposed to do. But electric guitar can really compete with the vocals if you’re not careful,” Green says. Tossing out the guitar on some of the tracks didn’t come without certain challenges, however. “We went through a lot of issues of making the keys sound right, because if we weren’t going to have any guitar in those songs then the keys had to sound right,” Farrow says. As it turns out, the right sound came with help from The McCrary Sisters and an organ player from Memphis named Ralph Lofton, who blended their own soulful flavors into the album. These were the last ingredients Farrow says he needed to create the sound he was seeking. “After we brought The McCrary Sisters in, it really changed the vibe of some of the songs to become the gospel-ly, New Orleans sound we were looking for, and what pieced it all together was finding Ralph Lofton,” Farrow says. “He’s just a badass organ player from Memphis. He was exactly what we needed.” Once Lofton laid down his Hammond B3 organ, and The McCrary Sisters showered background vocals on tracks like “I’ll Be Your Fool” and “Wash Me In The Well,” the album’s sound tightened up, Green says. “I like to let the song tell me what to do and some of those songs needed The McCrary Sisters,” he explains. “And Ralph Lofton, he’s the glue, man.” After four years, everything finally seemed to stick while wrapping up those last two tracks. But for Farrow, the hard work of getting those tracks into people’s ears is only just beginning. With an album release date set for Oct. 28, Farrow has been busy being a oneman band when it comes to marketing his new record. From the album’s art direction, to his website design, to flyers hanging around town promoting his shows at The Basement East and The 5 Spot, Farrow has funded and created every detail of his music and work independently. He’s put in long hours both in the studio and behind a computer screen — and damn near wore holes in his shoes working behind the bar at Five Points Pizza — to make it all happen. “Every little skill that you need to have in the music industry, I’ve had to figure it out

all while writing an album and working fulltime,” he says. But the work is starting to pay off. Farrow was tapped for a performance at Lightning 100’s Live on The Green. He also has interviews lined up, radio airplay on Lighting 100, and a pair of singles ready to be released. In addition, he was a finalist in the folk category for The John Lennon Songwriting Contest. It’s been a quite a journey since Farrow showed up in Nashville eight years ago with nothing except a backpack and a guitar, and

he seems to be poised on the brink of a new one. “I think that Josh’s music has that cinematic tone,” Green says. “To sit back and hear that album come to fruition was a real joy. I think he’s onto something.” Trouble Walks With Me will be released Oct. 28 on Southern Drag Records; available everywhere digitally, as well Grimey’s New & Preloved Music and The Groove

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Tim Easton’s music defies easy categorization, a by-product of the rockin’ troubadour’s outside-the-box approach.

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Tim EASTON Sticks a fork in Americana

im Easton is in a natural conversation with the world. He’s a critical success, dubbed a songwriter’s songwriter with a literary bent, having grown into himself the old-fashioned way — through living. His songs wring out the everyday, and might be about love, a child, a three-day bender, a shining star. Many of them speak to awakenings of self. Today, Easton lives in East Nashville, by way of Akron, Tokyo, London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Alaska, Joshua Tree, and other stopovers in between. He’s well-known and unknown, and at 50 years, he seems to have found the sweet spot — the convergence. He is set to release an album on Last Chance Records in September, American Fork, and has recently completed his own definitive songbook “100 Songs,” while practicing as a burgeoning visual artist, creating custom vinyl covers for a select number of his records. He’s a family man with a wife and daughter, and two dogs. But there is an odd undercurrent in which you’ll find the joker and the thief, his counter to the idyll. Easton can be restless — it’s how he’s found the home inside himself. He walks and talks and has a revolution on his mind, which in fact, often belies a comfortable nature found in his music. “I play for people to get out of apathy, [to remove themselves from it] through art and music,” he says from his home, where he is preparing to leave for Alaska to play Salmonfest. “I feel like Nashville is way into avoiding people’s politics. It’s not discussed. We had Steve Earle there for a while. He and Woody Guthrie are pretty big inspirations in my life, as far as activism goes. “I wanted to bring politics — actually, not politics, but apathy — into the songs [on American Fork], and reveal how you can avoid it. I wish that more people in this town would give their opinions on how they feel about this country, and what direction it’s headed in. I love The Clash. They never hid it … and the reason I’m into Latin American writers is because they don’t hide it. Music and art. Politics.” Ah, the Latin American writers. Spiritual translators of the seen and the unseen, and critics of tangible oppression. Easton, who was a poetry major at Ohio State University, is heavy into novelist Roberto Bolaño. It’s no stretch to understand why Rolling Stone said “Easton’s songs are doubly blessed — with memorable musical nuances and a novelist’s sense → of humanity.”

story by Warren Denney photograph by John Partipilo

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

In other words, you’re getting twice the bang for your buck when you drop the needle on any one of Easton’s 11 records. “I wanted to stick a fork in that Americana thing,” Easton says. “Change the direction. I love messing with people’s expectations with songwriting. Unfortunately, Americana is just a little bit tepid. We all love Levon Helm, but for God’s sake, you’ve got to break some new ground. You’ve got to challenge yourself. I’ve got nothing to lose. The music business gave me a shot. So today, I get to travel and make the kind of records I want to make. I don’t have to really answer to anybody except my family.” To Easton, American Fork speaks to decision and challenge by shining a light on everyday living. The power of just feeling blood coursing through the body can set one on a path to discovery. As Dylan sang, “Use your hands and legs, it won’t ruin you.” Often, awakening to the reality of living can move one toward a greater understanding. “It’s pretty obvious to me the country is headed for some kind of forked path,” Easton says. “And the term ‘American Fork,’ I’ve had that in my notes for a long time, and passing through the town in Utah — some of the darker things that happened in that town are in the book Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. And, I thought it was a funny pun. It’s very close to ‘American Folk’ or ‘American Fuck’ or the fork in a river. I’m way into fishing — I go to the Alaska festival for work and play.” He’s constantly worked to shape a career outside the box, though the business demands ready identification. There are those who want to see your papers. Through his own doggedness, Easton avoids much of it, but ultimately makes an uneasy peace laboring beneath the Americana thumbprint. Today, he remains a relatively free man. “When I made my first two albums in Nashville with Brad Jones and Robin Eaton at Alex the Great back in 1997 and1998, the Americana Music Association did not exist,” he says. “They labeled it ‘alt-country’

back then, which was far worse a description than ‘Americana,’ in my book. The next album I made, with New West on board, was with three members of Wilco backing me up — a band that successfully ditched all marketing labels. “I’m older now, so I don’t care what people call my music, and I get it that the music business has to have categories in order to market the music. Though I can only imagine most of today’s 20-something songwriters feel uncomfortable being marketed as such. It’s a box that will need to be broken out of, because all great artists change and morph into something new as they progress through time. I will hand it to the AMA’s for getting behind artists that are now changing the face of country music and Music Row, and Nashville itself. I’m very happy to be living in Nashville during this amazing change-up.” Changing the face of country music may be a reach, but Easton’s self-awareness is built around his own personal revolution. There may be a movement afoot, but when you dig into the scene, there’s still a heavy vibe of uniformity — even in alternative circles. Revolution has to take place in the mind before it can take place in the body, in the sound. In the lyric. Social and political issues seldom rise to the top. “We’re obviously headed for a period where it’s being talked about more,” Easton says. “I love Hurray for the Riff Raff. They’re post-Katrina, out of the musical and artistic scene that came from there [New Orleans]. And they’re out of here now. I love them musically. To hear them speaking their mind on oppression and equality. I love it. “I don’t expect — you know — people like Lucinda Williams. She doesn’t have to do it. She says it in her poetry. She says it in her lyrics. It’s a responsibility I’m really glad is coming back. “And a little bit of sex is important, too,” he adds. “That is the reality of our lives. … You don’t have to agree with everyone’s opinions, but it’s nice to know that someone has a backbone, and I like the idea of being inside

the other camp. I like to place myself deep within the camp of the perceived ‘other side.’ They’re not enemies, they’re just people that think differently than I do. I like to be there and be myself there and try to bring everyone closer together.” Easton’s music bears a chameleon-like quality. It is literate, but it can veer toward pop when desired, or it can get dirty inside three chords and a garage. The separation comes through how easily Easton’s vocals and relaxed, natural arrangements get under the listener’s skin and into the mind. A revolution may begin slowly. On American Fork, produced by Patrick Damphier at Club Roar, with one track recorded by Gabe Masterson at East Side Manor, he covers the broad spectrum easily and delivers a personal record whose strength is found in the lyric and an understanding of everyday life. “The fact is, ‘it takes a village’ is so true with me and the musicians on this record,” Easton says. “Many of them are East Nashvillians. They are the real heroes to me. I sense a lot of Dylan on the vibe of the album and that’s because I sang and played it with the band. I’m so fortunate to live in a place where you can have these kind of players around. I think about just how amazing it is in the neighborhood.” That primary studio band consisted of Jon Radford on drums and percussion, Michael Rinne on electric and upright bass, and Robbie Crowell on keys and saxophone. Beginning in 1988, Easton earned his bones bouncing around Europe for many years troubadour-style, busking in the London Underground, playing the streets from Paris to Prague, practically homeless much of the time. “It took a while to get there,” he says. “[Sometimes] I feel like I’m a very slow learner. I left Ohio and got a job as a bus boy in London. I was busking in the Tube. I was playing covers — Stones, Hank Williams, … some contemporary. I hadn’t really written many songs. I began to feel like I could do this. I had to go over there and live for a while, CO N T I NUED ON PAGE 117

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Andrew

LEAHEY

Burning bright to the wax

ndrew Leahey & the Homestead make heartland rock as straight up as a shot of whiskey; no “with pop leanings,” or “with country touches,” or any other such hybrid foolishness. Their sound calls to mind a power chord version of Tom Petty, or an electrified and revved-up Steve Earle, which are very good sounds. Ask Leahey himself what box to put him in (for the benefit of any rube who needs a stupid box), and he’ll say “rock & roll.” That works, too. Bass, drums, two guitars, and a keyboard. How can you beat it? Armed with a Les Paul, strawberry locks down to his shoulders, a scruffy reddish beard, and an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude toward the sound he both salutes and creates, Leahey has just dropped his third record, Skyline in Central Time. It’s been a long time coming, considering how he and his band have been burning up and down Interstate 40 for a decade now. But one occasionally needs to step back and appreciate the bigger picture, in that Leahey’s also just plain glad to be alive and well. (More about that later.) Produced by drummer, Wilco cofounder, Grammy winner and allaround good guy Ken Coomer, Skyline in Central Time brims with big hooks, cool guitars, stacked harmony vocals, and (oh, OK) a little bit of pop or country leaning here and there. The vocals are great, which is no surprise if you know Leahey’s history. He didn’t actually start out singing rock & roll. He was a choral singer with the Juilliard Choral. Yes, that Juilliard. Born and raised in Richmond, Va., Leahey doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t sing. “I’d always sung around the house,” he recalls, sitting in his sun-filled house in Germantown, while one cat nuzzles and marks the visitor, and another perches suspiciously halfway up the staircase. “I don’t think I realized that it was not something that everyone could do.” Between his parents and his older brother, his musical education → began early.

story by Tommy Womack photograph by John Partipilo

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Feeling the spirit: Andrew Leahey is uplifted by the power of rock & roll at the Bicentennial Capitol Mall.

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll help you even if your house is 615-830-1313

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

MOVERS

“My parents loved soundtracks of oldies songs,” he says, “like the Good Morning, Vietnam soundtrack and the American Graffiti soundtrack, Stand by Me, The Big Chill. They’re great albums, but they only offer a glancing view into those catalogs. So my older brother was the one who chased down more stuff. I got into hair metal when I was a kid because that’s what he was into, like in the late ’80s. I did like a lot of classical music growing up, too, and that was a result of my mom being in that world. She was a classically trained vocalist. “I’d gone to a private school for years, and then switched into public school for eighth grade. I remember talking to the guidance counselor. He was putting me into Honors English, geography, whatever you’re supposed to take, and Mom said, ‘You have to put him in the choir!’ I said, ‘No, Mom! That’s gonna be social suicide,’ and at that age it was, you know, because middle school kids are just cruel. But after one week of singing in that choir, I didn’t care if it was suicide — it was great!” The experience set off a chain reaction. “I guess I realized that I could pursue it and make it bigger,” he says, “I’d already been playing guitar, so I just put it all together and started writing songs that year, when I was 12 years old. Crappy songs, but songs nevertheless.” Leahey began playing bars and clubs in his teen years, and his voice kept developing. “One thing about the hair metal thing — and I think part of the reason I was really into it — is that it’s such an ostentatious genre,” he says. “Everything about it is overblown. A lot of those vocals, given the grandness of them and the whole vibrato usage, it was really not too far afield from classical music. I think parts of it dovetailed with what I was learning in choir and private voice lessons. I think that was why I gravitated toward that.” As the years went by, though, Leahey’s career trajectory wasn’t exclusively performing. He also developed and cultivated a passion for music journalism, and that pursuit is actually what brought him to the big city and the Juilliard Choral. “I graduated college and moved up to New York to work at a magazine, and my roommate was a fundraiser at Juilliard. That was his job, and he had a good voice. He’d done choir in college, and he told me that they ( Juilliard) were always looking for male singers. Every choir’s low on guys, and they needed these people to join the Juilliard Choral. It wasn’t like a class that met after work twice a week, it was a choir that was 90 percent Juilliard kids and 10 percent community members, who were usually the guys balancing out the guy-to-girl ratio. So I joined that in early 2006. I was with them about a year and a half until I moved out of New York in 2007.” While there was a rush to be gained in hearing his voice in all its power in union with so many others, there were aspects to it that were so unlike rock & roll, and that bothered Leahey. “It felt unnatural to me, to be that loud when you sing, but to iron out all the cool kinks in your voice and sand off all the rough edges,” he says. “It’s what makes a good classical vocalist because you’re a member of this larger thing, but it does a disservice to you as a solo performer. I realized I like to sing things a little differently every night, depending on the room, the crowd, and

how I felt. In classical music, you have to sing the piece exactly the same way night after night. Ultimately, I felt like, if I could be in that choir and sing in those incredible rooms and still not want to dedicate my life to it, then it’s just not for me!” A more permanent factor of his life was the result of Leahey’s New York experience, and her name is Emily. “We met at the CMJ festival in New York City in 2005,” Leahey says. “I had been living there maybe two weeks, I was interning at Spin magazine, and we were a sponsor of CMJ that year. Emily was the program director of her college radio station, the University of Arizona, and they had flown her there to cover it. She was one year younger than me, was still in college, and we just crossed paths, kept in touch, and eventually started long-distance dating.” Now, remember the “glad to be alive and well” part? Here we go. Newlyweds in 2007, Andrew and Emily moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., so he could take a job writing for allmusic.com. “I started getting migraines after we moved there,” he remembers, “and at the time I thought it was maybe an allergy thing, because I’d never lived there before.” He got the migraines once every week or two, and they increased in severity. Doctors were baffled. It carried on for years, long after the couple relocated to Nashville. “And then, in 2013, I came back from a big tour — all year long I’d been touring, I’d racked up like 100 gigs by July. You know when you get like a tone in your ear, like a buzz? That happened when I got home, and I thought it would just go away like it normally does, but it didn’t. A couple of weeks later it was still happening, and other things happened, too — this weird congested feeling in my ear, like I had cotton in it. And there was a balance problem associated with it; I’d clip my shoulder on walls as I was walking by. Something was just off!” It took a while to get his problem correctly diagnosed. “I think August of ’13 was when we got an MRI, and the doctor said, ‘You have this brain tumor called an acoustic neuroma. It grows on your hearing nerve and can cause balance problems, and facial paralysis because of how close the hearing nerves are to the nerves that control facial muscles. So they said I could have about six months in which to schedule the operation — that nothing would further deteriorate within that period. So we were playing Americana fest in September of 2013. I just couldn’t turn off that business part of my brain and didn’t want to let too many people know that I was going to take a big break. I wanted to ring the bell as loudly as I could, and hopefully it would keep resonating while I was getting better.” Having rung the bell sufficiently, Leahey underwent surgery for removal of the tumor in November 2013. And there was good news. “It was a benign tumor, thankfully,” he says, “and now I go back every year for a checkup. At first, it was every month, then every three months, six months — now it’s every year to get a hearing test, an MRI, and get everything checked out. I lost a little bit of hearing in that ear; it’s at about 70 percent. And I don’t drink coffee anymore, I don’t drink alcohol, and that really helps with the migraines.” He said this while drinking green tea

and eating something called tiger nuts, which are supposedly nutritious but taste too much like ’shrooms to enjoy them as is with no psychoactive reward in the offing. The impact of the health ordeal informs much of Skyline in Central Time. “The Good Life” tells the true story of his and Emily’s meeting through to the present day, and her caring for him during his infirmity and recovery: Hey love, you’re something we’re waiting for You’re something worth building toward On the album’s quietest song, the pensive “When the Hinges Give,” Leahey considers a devil-may-care nihilism he could have gone for in the days before it was known the tumor was benign: So if we burn to the wax, we’ll make the most of the heat, While the devil counts the minutes like it’s New Year’s Eve And when the hinges give, we’ll be a bottle down, Singing one last song for those we keep around “It’s just me playing acoustically.” Leahey explains, “That’s one live take, and we overdubbed harmonies and violin.” He goes on to say how the lyrics could also be an expression of a young couple making every moment count. “That song in particular is about the 2½-month period between the diagnosis and the operation, when Emily and I had to figure out how to be present and enjoy what could’ve been our last weeks together,” he explains. Obviously, it wasn’t their last weeks. And Leahey doesn’t want to dwell on the dark side as a regular matter of course. “I believe that if you focus on something bad too much you can unconsciously put the wheels in motion to get the bad thing to become reality,” he says. “So that song is about that. If we burn to the wax, let’s make the most of the heat, so if the candle is burning down, that still means there’s light and warmth, and you can freak out about what’s going to happen when that flame is gone or you can enjoy it while it’s still there.” The flame that is Andrew Leahey & the Homestead is burning bright and giving off plenty of heat. Signed and aligned with Thirty Tigers, the record dropped on Aug. 12. At their release party gig at The Basement, the air conditioning went out. “The air was thicker than Henry Rollins’ neck,” Leahey says. The band will be on the road for much of the fall, including several weeks on the road with Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. They’ll burn to the wax and enjoy the heartland heat, Leahey rocking a Les Paul through a Vox AC30 and singing with the unforced joy of a man who loves to rock and also is just plain glad to be alive and well. Andrew Leahey & the Homestead will be performing at The Basement as part of AmericanaFest. Sept. 24 | 10 p.m For more info visit americanamusic.org

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Mark ROBINSON From Hoosier hotshot to Nashville cat

ark Robinson has been playing guitar professionally for over 40 years, but one of his greatest musical heroes is an artist known for everything except the guitar. “I’m a Johnny Otis freak,” Robinson says. “He was one of the coolest people ever. I’ve read everything about him, and I got to meet him while I was teaching at Indiana University. He was donating all of his papers, sermons, and tapes of his radio shows to the university and came to the university to give a concert.” “Most people only know him from the song ‘Willie and the Hand Jive,’ ” Robinson continues, “but his career was just so broad and so outrageous. He was the son of Greek immigrants and grew up in a black neighborhood where he fell in love with African-American culture and music. He started as a big band guy and married an African-American woman way before it was legal in most states. He was a producer, talent scout, and a radio and TV show host, a preacher in an African-American church, and a civil rights activist. I’d love to write a book about him some day. “When I met him, I tried to talk to him about his career, but he really wanted to know more about the college and more about the music program at the school. He was a great musician, but he really didn’t care about the spotlight.” That is an apt description of Robinson himself. In the last four decades, he’s backed hundreds of artists from world-renowned figures to total unknowns. He’s produced and engineered countless sessions, cowritten songs, built his own studios, taught audio and video production courses, and more. All the while his focus has been on the music rather than grabbing the spotlight for himself. When he speaks of his two solo albums, Quit Your Job - Play Guitar (2010) and Have Axe - Will Groove (2013), he puts the focus on the musicians he collaborated with rather than tout his own accomplishments. Talking with Robinson, his calm, steady confidence mixed with just a touch of Hoosier humbleness is evident. Bloomington, Ind., might seem to be the dead center of white-bread Middle America. As Robinson recalls, it was actually a glorious place for a music-obsessed kid. Home to Indiana University and the Jacobs School of Music (one of the top music conservatories in the U.S.), Bloomington has a → rich and diverse musical community.

story by Randy Fox

photograph by John Partipilo

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

The Ringmaster: Mark Robinson in front of a few of his guitars at his studio, Guidoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s South.

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

“When I was growing up in the ’70s, there was a whole lot of cool music going on constantly,” Robinson says. “The clubs would bring in blues artists from Chicago, and there were a lot of free, outdoor shows at the university. I saw Richie Havens, Goose Creek Symphony, Ray Charles, and B.B. King. I was really lucky because I lived two blocks off campus. I could walk to campus and hear opera, the symphony, or a jazz band for free every week.” Growing up in a cosmopolitan musical atmosphere would be a heady experience for any music fan; in Robinson’s case, it was instrumental in directing him toward a career in music. “There was never anything else that I wanted to do,” he says. “I was really serious about becoming a musician from the time I was 15. I played as much as I could every day, and with anybody and everybody that I could play with. My high school band teacher gave me a key to a practice room and let me keep my amp in there so I could practice every day. He figured it was the only way to keep me in school.” Robinson was playing his first professional gigs at the age of 15, and went on tour for the first time at 17, backing homegrown Hoosier pop and country star Bobby Helms. “He had three really big hits — ‘Fraulein,’ ‘My Special Angel,’ and ‘Jingle Bell Rock,’ ” Robinson says. “We would play them three times a night, every night, at county fairs all over the Midwest. They were horrible gigs, but I didn’t know that at the time and loved it.” Robinson attended IU, earning a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications while continuing to play music. After college, he took a number of jobs before ending up in a touring Top 40 cover band, grinding out Loverboy covers through a string of one-nighters. When his wife, Sue Havlish, got a job offer in Chicago, he didn’t think twice about packing up and heading north for the Windy City. Securing a position with a recording studio, Robinson spent his days engineering recording sessions and his nights learning the ropes firsthand from many of the best blues pickers in Chicago. “I got to play with most of the then-living classic blues players,” Robinson says. “I was in the house band at Buddy Guy’s club for maybe eight months. I played with Koko Taylor, Lonnie Brooks, Sunnyland Slim, and Jimmy Johnson. After a few years, I began to understand how to play to the audience like they did, which was very different from the way you play to a rock & roll crowd. The showmanship of the blues was off the scale. There were a lot of lessons to be learned, and I certainly wasn’t doing it for the money. I played a gig with Koko Taylor from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. with just very short breaks. I ended up at the end of the night with 35 bucks. I’d spent more on parking and beer than I got paid, and that was at a time when Koko was one of the top-selling blues artists.” By the late ’80s, Robinson and his wife had returned to Bloomington. Securing a master’s degree in telecommunications, Robinson taught audio and video production classes and managed the university’s TV and audio studios. In between his day job responsibilities, Robinson formed the band The Kookamongas that became a staple of the Bloomington roots music scene. He also built a home studio and produced 60

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

several albums for local artists. After 17 years in Bloomington, Robinson’s wife accepted a job offer from Vanderbilt University Press, and the couple packed their bags and headed south for the Music City. “I had no idea what I was going to do at first,” Robinson says. “I thought I’d have to get a job right away, but Sue said, ‘Why don’t you just play guitar for a while and see what happens?’ I knew a little bit about Nashville. I’d been here a few times, but I didn’t know many people here. I was really lucky because right away I met a couple of people who sat me down and talked to me about the local scene. Dave Pomeroy was one. We had lunch, and he talked me through how things work in Nashville. I was really surprised by how open the music community is here. People don’t hold on to gigs like they do in other towns. If someone gets a road gig, they’re happy to pass their local gigs on to others.” Robinson quickly found that the best way to gain entry to Nashville’s community of musicians was to have some chops and the willingness to give back to others the same type of opportunities that are given to you. “I was doing everything,” Robinson says, “recording demos for people, teaching guitar, playing gigs — pretty much anything to make a buck playing guitar. I connected with a lot of cool people, most of whom I still work with in one way or another. I didn’t think I would set up a home studio because it seemed like everyone I talked to had one, but people I played with would say they needed a place to make demos, so pretty soon we were fired up here.” The “here” that Robison is referring to is the studio he’s assembled in the basement of his Madison home. It’s a far cry from a precisely built, sound-balanced recording studio. Other than a modest size recording console and an ample collection of guitars, microphones, and other professional gear, the room itself looks more like the practice space of a classic ’60s high school garage band. With knotty pine paneling and comfortable, well-worn furniture, you can almost imagine a quartet of long-haired malcontents bashing out Yardbirds covers while a crewcut-topped, disgruntled father shouts “Turn that noise down!” While its appearance may not match some people’s conception of what a professional recording studio should look like, according to Robinson, the secret is not in a carefully constructed room. “For me, producing is about capturing a performance correctly,” he says. “Sure I may use EQs and other devices if I need to make it sound better. I’m not opposed to that, but capturing the sound of a great player up front, that’s what’s important. “A lot of the people I work with are older musicians who have years of experience as performers,” Robinson continues. “When David Olney comes in here, he performs like he’s playing for 20,000 people. He just lets it go, and all I have to do is make sure I don’t miss it. There’s one song where I was recording him with a pop filter over the microphone, but he moved it because he couldn’t see the lyrics. There were a lot of pops in the song, and I spent hours going through the recording, removing every one because his performance was balls to the wall and I didn’t want to lose it.”

In addition to producing Olney’s When the Deal Goes Down, Robinson has recorded Mark Huff, Tiffany Huggins Grant, Ray Cashman, and many other local musicians. Although he stepped away from academia when he initially moved to Nashville, he’s found his way back to the classroom in recent years. “It started with teaching guitar lessons not long after I first moved to Nashville,” Robinson says. “Then I taught music theory part time at the Art Institute of Tennessee and then production classes. Starting this fall, I’ll be teaching a few audio production courses at both the Art Institute and Belmont. “I keep on top of my game by working with students and learning from them while I’m also teaching them. I’m passing something on that they might not get from someone younger who knows more about the technical side, but not the artistic side. Someone who is really a tech head doesn’t come from the point of view I come from. I’m much more excited about the song or the singer than I am about the technology.” Robinson’s immersion in the Nashville music scene also led him to center stage as a performer and recording artist, a move he previously never considered. “I had never been a frontman or singer,” Robinson says. “It had never been a goal for me. When I moved to Nashville, I started writing songs with all these great songwriters and I had some cool songs nobody else was going to sing or record, so I put a record together.” Robinson’s two albums brought him back to the straight-ahead electric blues sound he learned in the musical trenches of Chicago. While he’s proud of both records, he’s also interested in moving beyond electric blues for future projects — exploring a larger musical palette. It’s a desire that has arisen from his own wide, musical tastes as well as the vast Nashville talent pool available to him. He’ll be tapping both his tastes and Nashville talents for the “Mark Robinson Showband & Rhythm Revue” shows at The 5 Spot. Backed by a first-class band, he’ll be playing his own material and spotlighting performances by other Nashville musicians every Thursday night through the month of September. “Working with the showband idea has been a way to pull all these people I’ve worked with together,” Robinson says. “It’s like what Johnny Otis did. He was the ringmaster. With the showband, I can do my bit and then bring on other people and give them a chance to shine. All the way from jazz-oriented musicians to bluegrass players, we can pull them all into the show. The great thing about Nashville is you can always get the most amazing people to play. All it takes is a phone call, and if I don’t have their phone number, I know somebody that does.” The Mark Robinson Showband and Rhythm Revue with special guests The 5 Spot every Thursday through Sept. 29 6-8 p.m., $5

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

PaShun Music Branch

Putting the spotlight on Hip-Hop in Music City

nside the studio, heads bob like fishing boats loosely tied up to a dock while arms and torsos slowly sway side to side as if they were in the fingertips of a placid maestro. The rhythm and the movements within the 102-year-old building are contagious. Above the seven weaving figures, hazy sunlight squeezes its way through a small stained-glass window. Country legends like Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris undoubtedly felt that same sunlight filter in when they recorded here years ago. But today the sounds emanating from the historic House of David studio on Music Row is about as far away from country as you can get — because today, this is the House of Hip-Hop. “Turn that energy up, Wes!” Tay Savage shouts out from the other side of the glass, which separates the control room from the main tracking room. “Ahh, he ain’t hype enough!” Leaning back on a couch, Jean-Lucc Duquette casually tucks his long hair back behind his ear and glances up at Savage to state his rebuttal. “Wes ain’t like that though. He says something cool, and then lets it melt,” Duquette tells Savage. Savage processes the beat for a few more seconds as it bumps through the control room’s speakers. “OK, that don’t sound bad,” Savage says. On the other side of the glass, Wes “George” Hood lays down smooth rhymes → into the mic. Duquette is right, they do melt.

story by Collin Czarnecki photography by John Partipilo

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

L-R: Jean-Lucc Duquette (artist/ producer)and Wes Hood (A&R, manager), partners in rhyme and time.

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

All seven of the Hip-Hop artists in the studio are independent, but collectively they’re known as PaShun Music Branch, aka PMB. Duquette says it’s the first time PMB has been in a studio as a group, and they’re making the most of the precious time. The camp came prepared with two beat-filled desktop computers, allowing PMB to hammer out five tracks before the sun goes down. “It’s been about four hours of good shit,” Duquette says of the recording session. “We’ve just been bouncin’ out beats.” Dreadlocked and tatted up, Hood, along with his chilled-out vibe, emerges from the studio. When asked about what it’s like to record a Hip-Hop album on historic Music Row, not to mention in the same renowned studio as famous musicians and songwriters like Neil Young and Tom Jones, Hood’s sentiments are, well, blunt. “How do we feel?” Hood reiterates. “We just smoked a blunt. That’s how we feel.” Hood, 31, is the oldest of the East Nashville-based Hip-Hop collective whose youngest member is 20. PMB is comprised of eight independent Hip-Hop artists: Sean Stannard; Brett “DJ BBooney” Boone; Steven “King Chief Purp Blunt” Lyons; Austin Wise; Thomas Brame Jr. (Phresh Kyd); Hood; Savage; and Duquette. Along with being an artists and repertoire (A&R) man for digital distribution company Record Union and bringing together PMB’s Hip-Hop artists, Hood also acts as a father figure of sorts for PMB. “I go hard on these guys about putting projects out,” Hood says. “When I was 20, I didn’t have nobody with the power to get my music heard. Every other day I say, ‘Y’all need to be fuckin’ recording.’ ” Hood glances around the room and eyes a few of his fellow artists. “I wish some of ’em would have their records out sooner,” he says. “Come on, man, don’t put anybody on blast right now,” Duquette adds. “I think everybody probably brought their best today.” A few of the artists nod their heads in agreement, except for Savage. “No, no, no, no, no,” Savage says. “I would’ve preferred Sean do that ‘Half Full’ song, dude. That’s a hit, dude. That hook, man, that’s cash fuckin’ money, man.” Disagreements are what keep things fresh for PMB. They seem to know that they have to challenge each other in order to bring out the best in one another. “We stay independent, but as a collective, you know what I’m sayin’?” Hood says. “Because at the end of the day, we’re nobodies so we got to approach it like that.” Phresh Kyd is a prime example of what it takes to build a brand in the underground Hip-Hop world. Along with dropping his digital LP 10 Minutes to Rap earlier this year, Kyd has hooked up with U.K.-based Glacia Clothing in an effort to reach a global audience. “On top of that, he does all his own videos, graphic designs, everything,” Duquette says. Kyd’s relationship with PMB began when he met Duquette and Hood during a radio show at Tennessee State University. “Wes 64

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

L-R: Sean Stannard (freestyle artist), Thomas “Phresh Kyd” Brame, Jr. (writer/producer), and Brett “DJ BBooney” Boone (DJ).

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

L-R: Austin Wise (freestyle), Steven “King Chief” Lyons (producer/artist), and Tay Savage (artist)

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

and Jean-Lucc showed up at the radio station at TSU, and they were the ones who told me that if I’m serious about this, then come join us,” Kyd says. “So here I am.” From there, Kyd’s 10 Minutes to Rap was digitally released on Spotify and iTunes earlier this year and promoted under the PMB and Record Union umbrella. Kyd took a unique approach to recording 10 Minutes to Rap by listening to three different beats for 10 minutes each and giving himself only 10 minutes to write to each beat. “We put it out digitally and people are eatin’ it up,” Hood says. In many ways, the artists view HipHop and brand building as a full-time job. Stannard, a freestyle artist, is taking his work seriously. When he found out the group would be recording on Music Row, he made a bold move to make sure he didn’t miss the session. “I quit my job yesterday morning just to do this,” Stannard says, scratching his big, burly beard. “I just walked the hell out of there and came to do music.” Sitting next to Stannard on the other end of the couch in the studio’s basement, Lyons doesn’t bat an eye at Stannard’s decision. “You gotta make this your job, you gotta make this your career,” Lyons says. “Do you want to pursue a 9-to-5 or do you want to pursue your passion?” PMB newcomer Austin Wise came onboard with the crew to soak up knowledge from the other artists. “I just wanted to learn so much,” Wise says. “I’m the newest guy at PMB, and I came in for one goal and that was to learn as much as I possibly could. I just said, ‘Yo, be around the best artists in the city.’ I saw Phresh doing his stuff, Sean doing his stuff and I said, ‘That’s where I want to go, that’s where I want to be.’ ” Whether they’ve been a part of PMB since the group’s inception or are brand new to the group, Hood has taken all of them under his wing. “I’m going to help you promote because at the end of the day we’re both working for the same goal,” Hood says. A father of four, Hood grew up on the East Side on South 10th Street near Shelby Avenue. He started listening to Hip-Hop at an early age, drawing inspiration from lyricists like Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest, and Organized Noise. As a student at East Nashville Magnet School, he was the kid freestyling during his lunch hour. Hood’s been listening to Hip-Hop long enough to know that the sound is constantly evolving and that dope dealer glorification will only get artists so far, he says. “There’s only so many ways you can rap about drugs,” Hoods says. “So the big thing I preach to the guys is that it’s up to you to listen to your heart and bring good music. We might smoke a little weed, but let’s talk about life, let’s talk about our story, let’s be 100 percent real and draw from 100 percent real-life situations.” Hood and Duquette began seeking out like-minded artists when PMB was born about three years ago. The collective started off creating indie showcases, which proCO N T IN U E D O N PA G E 1 1 8

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

3rd POWER

Creating ‘emotional translation devices’ story by Jack Silverman photograph by John Partipilo

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Amped up: Jamie Scott in his workshop at 3rd Power.

o say Jamie Scott is passionate about his work would be a major understatement. Get him started talking about the equipment he creates with his boutique guitar amplifier company, 3rd Power, and he gets downright evangelical, exuding a mix of infectious enthusiasm and unwavering belief in the uniqueness of his product. To hear him tell it, he is not making electronic equipment so much as providing the ultimate conduit between the hearts of musicians and the ears of their listeners. “What we make are emotional translation devices for musicians,” Scott says. “If we were an acoustic guitar maker, we would want that intimate relationship with guitar — contour body, vibration, inspiration — right? But I just happen to be fascinated with amplifiers, so I’m trying to create that environment electronically. And it’s in the [speaker] cabinet, the way they resonate, the way they tell the truth.” Scott is preaching the amplification gospel from 3rd Power’s laboratory, a second-floor loft space with an open, industrial feel in the old Nashville Bindery building on Jewel Street, just a stone’s throw → from the Douglas Avenue railroad crossing by Ellington Parkway. September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Mental Case keeps growing, one custom case at a time In 1985, when Jimmy Frech started building road cases for music equipment, he well understood the kind of beating that instruments, amps, and other gear could take on a rock tour. He’d spent several years as the lead singer and lead guitarist for The Velcros, a hard-rock band from Syracuse, N.Y., and had done his fair share of time on the road. In fact, in 1984, just a year before he started his company, Mental Case, Frech and his band did 53 dates as the opening act for Van Halen. “We were picked out of like 500 demo tapes, or something crazy,” Frech recalls. “An unsigned band playing the club scene in upstate New York. And we got a lucky break. … They picked us for some reason. “Probably because I didn’t have blond hair,” he adds, laughing. While The Velcros were touring with Van Halen, Frech saw an unfulfilled need in the music business. “I was out on the road, and I noticed back in the ’80s, Anvil road cases was pretty much it. It was just a square box. No one was doing anything really cool. There was nothing custom.” Frech’s response was to focus exclusively on custom cases, built to the exact specifications of each client. “If you order from a production case company,” Frech says, “a custom case can take four to six weeks. We can turn it around sometimes in 24 hours if you need it.” Before long, Mental Case was thriving. In 1999, Frech moved the operation to Myrtle Beach, S.C. But as time went on, he noticed that more and more of cases had the same destination. “We were shipping to Nashville three times a week,” Frech says. “It got crazy. We were making all-night red-eye runs to Nashville on a hot order.” So in 2013, he moved the bulk of his operation to the old Nashville Bindery building on Jewel Street in East Nashville, which most recently was home to the art studio/performance space Open Lot. Mental Case products have been on the road with many of the biggest rock and country acts, among them Paul McCartney, Aerosmith, Journey, Jack White, Kenny Chesney, Amy Grant, Nine Inch Nails, The Cult, Rascal Flatts, Jason Bonham, Old Crow Medicine Show, Garth Brooks, and Jason Isbell. And let’s not forget Cheap Trick — Mental Case makes all of guitarist Rick Nielsen’s signature checkerboard cases. Though the music industry is Mental Case’s bread and butter, Frech and his team — led by operations manager Matt Koontz — also make cases for Duke Energy, the U.S. Olympic soccer team, pharmaceutical companies, municipalities, and police and fire departments. “We probably do close to a thousand custom cases a year out of this shop,” Frech says. “Our numbers have quadrupled since we moved to Nashville. We’ve completely outgrown this shop already. We’re looking at actually purchasing a building here in Nashville in the near future. We are turning down as much work as we’re doing.” Frech still splits his time between Myrtle Beach and Nashville, but he plans to move here when his wife, Donna, retires. “I lived in Greenwich Village for a while in the ’70s and early ’80s, and East Nashville has got that vibe,” he says. As for the key to his success, he says it’s no mystery: “You have to have a great product at reasonable price, with incredible customer service, and you’ll do fine. It’s all about customer service.” — Jack Silverman 70

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Scott points at a computer screen, where he is designing a template for the chassis of his latest creation, the Citizen Gain 100 CSR, a mighty amplifier that combines the crunchy distortion of classic British amps with the big clean sounds of the most powerful American amps. He uses terms such as “capacitance,” “triangulate,” “crosstalk,” “fully shielded,” and “phase issues” to explain the various nuances involved in maximizing sonic clarity while avoiding potential electronic interference. He says that when he gets an amp design dialed in just right, not only can he hear it, he can “feel it, even smell it.” Scott’s explanation of his company’s name takes on a somewhat spiritual tone — which, when you are talking about harnessing electricity, a force that can’t be seen yet is clearly real, makes a certain amount of sense. “3rd Power is that exchange of energy, and if it’s done right, we can amplify,” Scott says. And there’s another significant element to the 3rd Power moniker: When Scott started the company seven years ago, he turned heads by creating triangular speaker cabinets. In fact, Lenny Kravitz based his stage set in 2012 around Scott’s speaker cabinets. Watch videos of Kravitz from that period and you can see two large pyramids onstage, each pyramid created using nine triangular 3rd Power cabinets. (Nine … that’s three squared, in case you’re keeping score at home.) “Lenny’s light rig, the set, everything was triangle-themed based on what they could do with the triangle shape,” Scott says. “Pyramids.” The reason for the triangular cabinets? “No parallel walls,” Scott says. “It makes it sound more dimensional. Three sides, triangles, three-dimensional. They are amplifiers and they are powerful.” Thus the name, 3rd Power. For practical reasons — transport, packing, and stacking among them — 3rd Power speaker cabinets are now rectangular. But if you’re thinking Scott abandoned the triangle philosophy, think again: “In our current speaker line,” he says, “triangle chambers are embedded inside the rectangle.” Though 3rd Power has been around for a relatively short time, rock & roll has been in Scott’s blood since he was a toddler. His mother was what he describes as “a hippie costume designer” who made stage clothes for bands. One of his most vivid memories from childhood took place in 1969 at the Seattle Pop Festival, when he was just 3 years old. “I was sitting on the edge of the stage during Bo Diddley’s set,” he recalls. “I was within five feet of Bo, dangling my cute little feet off the edge of the stage. And I just looked up and watched him, and he looked down and pointed at me, and it was really pretty incredible.”As a teenager, after a few years devoted to playing football at his father’s urging — “I was miserable,” he says — Scott turned all his energy toward the guitar. In the late ’80s, things really took off when he and some friends formed a band called Vain. “We were signed to Island,” he says. “It was very California hard rock, and this was late ’80s. ... We came out of that Mötley Crüe, Van Halen thing.” Eventually, Scott’s guitar chops became so formidable that in the mid-’90s, he was asked to audition for Ozzy Osbourne’s band. “I didn’t get the gig, or maybe we’d be having a different interview,” he says, grinning. But the audition led to a moment of clarity. “I’m 27, sitting there at the audition, playing ‘Crazy Train’ with the band, hair down to my waist, leather pants, Les Paul down to here [points to his knees], just going for it, and it hit me at that moment: I am not this person on the inside,” he recalls. “So I spun off from that, cut my hair, and started playing kind of an alt-country, Americana thing. And I land the residency at the Paradise Lounge in San Francisco, playing every Monday for two years.” Before long, he landed a gig with a band signed to Geffen Records, Big Blue Hearts. His tenure in that band included a tour opening for Joe Walsh. So what leads a talented musician to swap his rock star ambitions for the amplifier business? “Somewhere along my evolution as a human being, this quit being about me,” Scott says. “I think it was probably getting married and having children. The fire in me to be a famous musician, it’s still in my core. But now, I feel like I can touch the music world in a far broader scope, if I make the tools that allow every musician to touch their band and their audience.” It was the birth of Scott’s amp business that brought him, his wife, CO N T I N U ED ON PAGE 119

Locally Handcrafted

Almond Toffee, Gourmet Caramels & Southern Pecan Pralines

1108 Woodland St., Ste. A at the Idea Hatchery

(615) 295-4137

walkercreektoffee.com /WalkerCreekConfections

@walker_creek

OCTOBER 28 SPONSORS

DAYOFTHEDEADNASHVILLE.COM September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

As his career began to crystalize in the wake of Alabama Shakes’ enormous success with Boys and Girls, Andrija Tokic realized it was time to seek out larger facilities. He’s pictured here in “A” room of the studio’s latest incarnation.

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Andrija TOKIC

Gimme shelter

couple miles northeast of where Interstate 24 circles off onto Spring Street, lies a small, salmon-colored house known around the world as The Bomb Shelter. It’s one of Nashville’s most equipped analog studios, packed with a glut of vintage instruments, tape machines, and enough effects units to make anything sound like anything. At the helm of it all is producer/owner Andrija Tokic, who — since his move to Nashville in 2004 — has acquired a worldwide clientele looking to vitalize their sound with his raw, signature approach to producing music in a comfortable, creative environment. Inside, the studio is true to its name. With boarded up windows, stone and cedar walls, warm-colored rugs, and well-loved outboard gear, it feels like a bunker created to protect its inhabitants from the nonmusical, outside world. The lighting is dim and the aesthetic is cabin-like, creating a sense of bucolic serenity throughout. “We’ve got a great scenery, but that doesn’t change how emotionally draining projects can be,” Tokic says. “Making a record here is the equivalent of going on an extremely long road trip where you’re driving straight to your destination. There are small corridors and people in each other’s faces, and one part of my job is keeping people in the right headspace.” Inside The Shelter, Tokic is known for his conviviality and his speed on the board. Outside, he’s arguably best known for his production work on 2012’s biggest rock breakout album: Alabama Shakes’ Boys and Girls. “While that was going on, I never thought of it being commercially successful in the major radio sense, just because that’s never where my head’s at,” Tokic says. “I was like, ‘I’m going to do everything I can and ask everyone I know to help push this as far as possible, because it’s a small band, and it deserves to be in every household,’ but I thought it would be more like a subculture hit.” →

story by Luke Levenson photograph by John Partipilo

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Tokic points out the album won him some extra clout in “different parts of the industry” and a busier schedule, but that was never part of his agenda while producing it. He’d already been doing well enough to put his solo production work above his contract work, which was his main source of income when he first moved to Music City. “I worked my way pretty far into that whole mainstream scene in different studios, and it just wasn’t right for me,” he recalls. “I was used to bands writing their own songs, producers playing instruments, and engineers being producers and producers being engineers. Coming into this big Nashville scene where sometimes the band has never heard the singer and someone has decided that union players are playing certain parts, I just wasn’t into that. It’s an amazing thing, but it’s not where I came from.” Where 33-year-old Tokic came from is Takoma Park, Md. — a suburb of Washington, D.C., which was a hub for America’s incipient punk movement during the ’80s and ’90s. Raised by his mother, a middle school music teacher, and his father, a carpenter and home renovator, his early years were filled with all kinds of music. At age 5, his mother signed him up for guitar lessons with a “rock & roll teacher,” so that he’d be drawn to music in its modernity. The plan worked out in a sense — he decided he was going to pursue music, but as soon as he started hanging out with his musician neighbors in their basement studio, he put down the guitar in favor of the 4-track. “When I got into recording, I found it far more interesting than playing an instrument,” Tokic says. “Throwing mics up and recording was just a lot of fun. At that age I was too young to have many people to play music with, so I could either play it by myself or layer tracks on a 4-track and play along to it. I’d rather do that than scales.” In fourth grade, his neighbors sold him his first 4-track, and by age 13, he was interning at Avalon Studios in Bethesda, Md. It was there he first laid hands on the MCI JH-636 console that now resides in The Shelter’s A Room and the JH-24 2-inch tape machine in the B Room, both of which he acquired in 2006 when Avalon switched to an all-digital format. Over the next few years, he divided his time between school and tracking local rock, HipHop, and jazz musicians at the studio until finally, at age 17, he started working at Avalon full-time as the assistant to the chief engineer. Tokic had everything he needed to graduate from high school except hours, and the last two years of his education were a narrow curriculum of pottery and music classes, after which he’d leave and work at the studio for the rest of the day. “I was pretty deep into it at that point,” Tokic says. “I just had too much going on to pull the plug.” Instead of going to college, he became the operations manager at Avalon. Under his leadership, it doubled in size and took in more and more clients. One of those clients was a jazz band whose leader encouraged

Tokic to check out studio work opportunities in Nashville, where the pickings were large for ambitious producers looking for new challenges. At 21, he bolted to Nashville with a computer, a small console, a tape machine, some microphones, and some guitars, and he immediately started working out of his house on the East Side when he wasn’t reluctantly shaking hands and turning knobs on Music Row. Three years into the game, East Nashville band The Outlaw Lovers came to his house to cut their first album — a 10-song record on indie label Spat! Records. It was the first official release out of Tokic’s house (under The Bomb Shelter name), and it led to more work via the Lovers’ drummer and background singer, Dillon Napier, who was involved in other local bands. Tokic’s basement was dubbed The Bomb Shelter because it was underground and stacked with equipment. “We went over to his house, and he had his basement rocking with that big MCI board and tape machine,” Napier recalls during a phone interview while on tour with Margo Price. “We knew immediately we could do it there and wouldn’t have to go to a big studio. Andrija has this positive energy that sets him apart from other producers. Plus, he’s the quickest on the board, which really counts when you’re on the clock. Anything that might go wrong with the tape machine, he can fix it within moments.” Napier helped spread Tokic’s reputation across town, bringing in acts like Caitlin Rose, Buffalo Clover (Price’s first band), and Fly Golden Eagle. “I didn’t really need to advertise,” Tokic says. “When you put a lot of work and care into the quality of a product, and into giving your client a good time, then they’ll tell someone who tells someone.” Word spread as far as Athens, Ala., where the burgeoning Alabama Shakes were just getting their feet on the ground with some original songs. They called Tokic in early 2011 to set up some time in his home studio. “The album was recorded extremely fast,” Tokic says. “It was really just two sessions to do the record with a huge space between them, and it was done like a year before it came out. It was released on Bandcamp for free, and then suddenly there was all this attention on it, so they took it down and rereleased it officially.” That same year (2012), Tokic set up shop in the studio’s current location. Not wanting to record in his home anymore, he moved his immense collection of equipment to a new, all-hours commercial facility in order to expand The Shelter’s horizons with a dedicated space. Since then, it’s attracted clients of every status and caliber, from Luke Bell and Hurray for the Riff Raff to Josephine Foster and East Nashville’s own Los Colognes. All the while, Tokic has continuously expanded his collection of gear: a vintage Orban Spring Reverb and an EMT plate reverb — a piano-sized plywood chamber he keeps under a red curtain in the Studio CO N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 1 9

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Cosmic Thug RECORDS Throwback to the future

ustin Collins explains the philosophy of Cosmic Thug Records by recalling an incident from his years of coproducing recordings with his musical collaborator, Adam Landry. “There’s a guitar solo by Ian Saint Pé on a Diamond Rugs record [Adam and I] produced,” Collins says. “Ian came in late, and the song was already tracked. We had one open track left for his solo. He played his first take, and we all loved it. It had a great reckless, in-a-hurry, not over-thinking-it quality, but he thought he had to redo it. We had the rest of the band listen to it and everyone else agreed that was it. They kept it and now it’s everyone’s favorite solo on the record.” For over a decade, Collins and Landry have been producing critically acclaimed recordings out of the small but productive Playground Sound studio. Capturing the raw feel of music being made in the moment is the hallmark of their style and central focus of their working philosophy. It’s an aesthetic approach the producing partners bring to their recently launched boutique label, Cosmic Thug Records. “I’ve known Adam for 11 years, and we’ve been making music together that entire time,” Collins says. “We met when I was making a record. He was recommended to me to come in and play guitar. We hit it off and became really tight. “He was building a studio at his house at the time. I think the first record he recorded there was one of mine. Adam was still trying to figure out the studio. He had acquired a tape machine, but he hadn’t fired it up yet, so we were still working with Pro Tools. Now it’s all analog. We haven’t touched a computer in I think 10 years.” That rejection of modern digital recording techniques isn’t an arbitrary decision based on hipster-ish ideals or musical snobbery. It’s a means to an end, a way to force musicians to put forth their best effort in the studio, as well as valuing the “feel” of music over the quest for so-called perfection. “We keep it simple by not having the options to layer and add stuff; fix things or redo things,” Collins says. “When we absolutely have to edit something, we usually record it again. We use a 1-inch 8-track tape machine, and we limit ourselves to just those eight tracks. It pushes people to be more in the moment. You have to make a decision right then. If you don’t like that take, you record over it and the first one is gone. It forces us to capture that raw aspect and bring out the best. When there are only eight tracks, it’s got to be good. We think all ideas are best when they’re first conceived, and it’s usually the purest expression of an idea. There are exceptions, and there are other valid ways of making records, but that’s how we operate.” →

story by Randy Fox

photograph by John Partipilo 76

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

The Cosmic Thugs L-R: Adam Landry and Justin Collins in the control room of Playground Sound studio.

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

“We keep it simple by not having the options to layer and add stuff; fix things or redo things,” Collins says. “When we absolutely have to edit something, we usually record it again. We use a 1-inch 8-track tape machine, and we limit ourselves to just those eight tracks. It pushes people to be more in the moment. You have to make a decision right then. If you don’t like that take, you record over it and the first one is gone. It forces us to capture that raw aspect and bring out the best. When there are only eight tracks, it’s got to be good. We think all ideas are best when they’re first conceived, and it’s usually the purest expression of an idea. There are exceptions, and there are other valid ways of making records, but that’s how we operate.” Their production style may seem antiquated by modern standards. Modern digital recording technology allows for scores of separate recording tracks that are eventually mixed down to the final record, but Collins’ and Landry’s work has garnered fans and resulted in highly lauded albums from many artists, including Diamonds Rugs, Sally Ford and the Sound Outside, T. Hardy Morris, Shelly Colvin, and most notably, Deer Tick’s 2011 breakthrough record, Divine Providence. Even though Collins and Landry explain their methods up front to the artists they work with, it doesn’t mean the full scope of their method is immediately understood. “People don’t always understand what they’re getting into with us,” Collins says. “Some people know what to expect because we were recommended to them by someone who has worked with us before, but others come to us because they like what they heard on another record we produced. We explain the process, but it doesn’t sink in until they experience it. Working with only eight tracks is the thing that really blows people’s minds. They’re like, ‘What? I can’t add three more vocal tracks?’ Or they ask us to do a second take and then find out they can’t change their mind and go back to the first take because it’s been recorded over. It can be weird at first, but once they get used to the idea, they think it’s great, and it’s always worked out in our favor, knock on wood.” After the success of Cosmic Thug productions (the name originated in an offhand comment by Collins’ ex-girlfriend), the team took another step forward in giving their sound a distinct identity. In late 2015, they partnered with California-to-East Nashville transplant Marchelle Brandanini to launch Cosmic Thug Records. The trio of musical partners began by rereleasing their existing albums under the new label, including Collins’ solo EP Home, Boy, Landry’s solo album El Scorpion, and two releases from Brandanini’s band, Pony Boy (The Devil in Me and Blue Gold). Schooly Dreams, a new album from Collins’ band, Justin and the Cosmics, soon joined these. “Adam and I have always talked about starting our own label because we’re really proud of our aesthetic,” Collins says. “It’s kind of a boutique sound, but the label is not exclusive to our productions. We want the primary focus to be on music we produce, but we also wanted to release songs from artists that kinda work the same way we do. We really believe in that sound concept, and we wanted to bring more attention to it.”

To achieve their goal, the trio decided to produce small, limited-edition runs of “split 45s,” old-fashioned vinyl singles that spotlight a different artist on each side. “They’re just fun,” Collins says. “It’s fun to buy a record of an artist you like and then get the bonus of having the B-side be someone you’ve never heard before. We try to pair them up in a way that if you like the artist on one side, you’ll probably like the artist on the other side, too.” Released in December 2015, the first Cosmic Thug two-band platter was a Christmas single from Justin and the Cosmics and Pony Boy. They

followed it with a single from Happiness and Vincent Van Gold; the former is a side-project band featuring members of Deer Tick and the latter is a trio comprised of Landry and Deer Tick’s Robbie Crowell and Dennis Ryan. Their third release featured songwriter and ex-Delta Spirit lead singer Matthew Logan Vasquez and indie popster David Vandervelde. “For some of the singles we have to deal with other labels,” Collins says. ‘We have to work through certain legalities, but because we’re such a small operation, other labels are generally CO N T I NUED ON PAGE 120

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Tommy

WOMACK ‘One of Nashville’s oracles’

ommy Womack writes about odd ducks, square pegs, and losers — losers who are smart as fuck, have your number, and aren’t afraid to look you squarely in the eye while they’re sizing you up. It’s not that Womack is fearless, but more that he can’t help himself. And that’s why Namaste, Womack’s recently released album, works so well. After a lifetime of smart-pop, post-punk, Westerburgian snark ’n’ snarl with a big undertow of Big Star melodicism and Ray Davies detail and odd characters, the Kentucky-cum-Nashville alternative force settles into his knowing without flinching. Of course, a lot happened on the way to this unblinking look at adulthood from the world’s oldest 15-year-old boy. Years of drug use. Government Cheese. Aging parents. Tourette’s. bis-quits. Local fame. Rehab. Almost/not quite. Cheese Chronicles: The True Story of a Rock & Roll Band You’ve Never Heard Of — and the gay Civil War novel Lavender Boys and Elsie. Daddy. Songs cut by Jimmy Buffett, Todd Snider, Jason Ringenberg, Dan Baird, Dave Olney, Scott Kempner, Hard Working Americans. Especially the string of solo albums, straddling genres, notions, and various life moments: Positively Na Na, Stubborn, Circus Town, Washington D.C., There I Said It!, and Now What!. The file cards of a life lived on the margins of the indie rock scene. Classic. Basic. Until … the late night four-way stop in Sonora, Ky., in June last year that wasn’t a four-way stop. Womack got T-boned by a semi in his Nissan Sentra after a gig. Suddenly, the miles, the music, the misadventures, and stories were almost done. “As bad as that wreck was, it could’ve been worse,” the songwriterguitarist marvels. “Nobody was in the passenger seat. They would’ve been crushed. I think about that — I’ve driven thousands of miles in so many states of mind, and was always safe. Then this. … “At the ER, they did a draw, and that was a relief,” he continues, with a nod to his now four-year stretch of sobriety. “To know that was going to come up clean.” If this seems like the George Bailey moment in the ever cynical Womack’s life, it isn’t. Traumatic, yes. Epiphany, no. A GoFundMe helped defray all the costs and expenses one never considers. And → there was the matter of “the benefit.”

story by Holly Gleason photograph by John Partipilo

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, recording artist, author, columnist, and radio host: Tommy Womack is truly a Renaissance man.

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

usic City Roots, the local-driven public broadcasting Americana/ roots music variety show, gave its Sept. 30, 2015, night to serve as a benefit for Womack. On the bill were a quartet of ’80s indie roots rock stalwarts: Webb Wilder & the Beatnecks, Jason & the Scorchers, Will Kimbrough (of Will & the Bushmen), and Dan Baird (leader of the Georgia Satellites). As Womack says of the lineup, “I owned ALL of their records in 1986! I’d stand in front of the stereo because the headphone chord wasn’t long enough to reach the couch and just listen to all those albums at full blast over and over. Those bands were everything I was listening to up in Kentucky, and, you know, at that age, music is everything to you.” He pauses, making sure his adoration is understood. Over the years, crisscrossing America’s crummy indie rock bars with Government Cheese, he would come in contact with various members of those acts. They’d have a few words sharing a bill, or passing a night off when one was playing. It is the comrade commerce of existing below the major touring acts — and it is both intimate and, ultimately, not something you count on beyond the collective reality of people with common work. Womack, with the stringy blond hair and the geeky eyeglasses, looks like that kid who never quite fit. Knowing his place in the herd, he made people laugh — and he kept to himself. Suddenly, with this show being played for him by so many acts he’d loved, he had to reckon with the fact that maybe they cared about him. “It hit me that night,” he admits, still a bit awestruck. “I started out as a fan, and I never ceased being one. But here are idols of mine — playing for me, saying such nice things about me. It was like I got to go to my own funeral.” His voice drifts off for a moment, still back in that moment. “I was still on crutches. I could stand, but (it had only been a few months) they brought me out onstage. It was just moments after, I was aware what was going on — but it didn’t seem quite real. Except it was. If I’d sold 20,000 records last time out, or I was getting $2,500, $3,000 a gig, if I’d had all that success, it’d be exactly the same thing. “The idea they did that for me?” Suddenly it hit the former kid who’d been funny to make inroads with his peers that, like Sally Field, “they really like me.” Beyond sobering, it offered up a buoyancy he maybe didn’t even know was possible. From that, Namaste emerged. Not the obvious “I got sober, I got saved” song cycle one might expect from these sorts of moments — the fatal purview of romance “It’s All Been Over Before,” the churning lurch of “I Almost Died,” the dead rock star homage “Darling Let Your Freak Flag Fly” — it’s grown up ’80s college radio fare with a twinkle in its eye. Well, except for the sardonic “Steve Allen” cocktail jazz under the spoken word, big boom skewering rearview looker “Nashville.” “No matter how much you appreciate things, what’s more boring than another musician in recovery?” Womack offers with a laugh. “I’m not that great at this stuff. I’ve not called my sponsor in three weeks. I’ve not been to a meeting in a while, but I’m doing the big thing:

don’t drink! And I’m doing that really well.” “He’s one of Nashville’s oracles,” says producer Brad Jones, who’s also helmed acclaimed albums for Hayes Carll, Chuck Prophet, and Matthew Sweet. “He’s got his radio show (on WXNA), his column (in The East Nashvillian), and his songs. He’s the right kind of social critic: no one’s gonna follow the one who’s always negative, but he finds the ones with the most urgency. He’s wise and true and elemental — and he’s not saying one thing he doesn’t mean.” That includes the inevitable realities folded into “Comb-Over Blues,” the witchy Santanaesque “Hot Flash Woman,” the bucolic Tom Petty quitters’ reality shrug “End of the Line,” and the slow ramble “When Country Singers Were Ugly.” Weighing the realm of the just past prime, he twists the tourniquet with a wink and a nudge. “When people laugh at Tommy’s songs, it’s almost always uneasy laughter,” says Will Kimbrough, Daddy partner and fellow solo artist. “Even sophisticated music fans laugh because they’re uneasy, because he sings about real things in a way everybody can relate to. It’s still different, kind of Randy Newman — and that’s what makes it so hard to dodge.” In some ways, Kimbrough and Womack are the Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe of Nashville’s turn of the century alt music scene: accomplished players, sardonic writers, soldiers of the forms. Not quite purists, yet absolutely maintaining a standard of execution that suggests mastery of craft. “I’ve been a songwriter for 30 years, played (guitar) for 40 years — and if you do something long enough, you get pretty good at it,” Womack says, trying to shudder off the praise. “Technically, I told Brad, ‘I want everything to be fully great: no throw away lines, let’s make everything sound polished — and I want my vocals to be appealing.’ “To comedians, laughter means love,” Womack continues, addressing the comedic thread that runs through his ruminations. “I know enough to know it’s bullshit to seek love that way; but you know, the first time you get a laugh, you’re hooked. It’s primal now. It’s who I am.” “Tommy’d had that accident, and he sat around all summer with his leg up in a cast, thinking about the songs and what they wanted,” Jones says of the process. “He was so nimble (in the studio) none of these vocals are overdubbed vocals. It all happened instantly.” The producer likens Namaste to mid-period Dylan (“when he got straight, there was this rebirth”), noting the impact of a sobriety that seems more solid than ever. Jones says, “This is like the original Tommy before the overlay of all the drugs, the rock & roll got him. He’s so crystalline and clear — and he knows he’s wiser than he’s ever been. He recognizes the power of wisdom and appreciates it.” There’s also the notion of appreciating a reality you’d eschewed or failed to recognize. For Kimbrough, who’s known him three decades, it’s basic human truth. “Tommy recognized with the car wreck and the response of people around him, how people really loved him. But more importantly, he let himself be loved.”

Suddenly even the mundane or cliché warms to Womack’s gifts. But somehow, the guy with the slight tick who talks about going “to football games, and walking around alone,” manages to deliver those things without being cloying. Jones recognizes Womack’s ability to walk that line. “Rock & roll people, if they’re gonna say a sappy sentiment, they’re gonna find a cool way to do it. Like ‘Beautiful Morning,’ it’s one of the most heartfelt songs. I love the way he says, ‘The sky’s like a faucet/ Turned on all the way.’ He’s finding a hard plumbing way to do it.” With collaborations with Kimbrough and Lisa Oliver-Gray currently being recorded, another book in the works, and enough dreams to fuel a few more records, Womack may — as Jones suggested — be on the verge of transcending. Not that anything needs to change, so much as his appreciation of life has shifted into a new gear — and that allows Womack to embrace where he is, from appreciating his talents for what they’re worth to enjoying making music with myriad different friends/people/cohorts. “I’ve flamed out several times,” Womack concedes. “But I always reignited. I don’t know that I grew up, as I’m still 25. When I’m looking in the mirror, I can tell I’m a grownup — but I think all the years I spent (drinking and getting high) helps with writing songs about being 50 years old: I still have a perspective of a 20-year-old, because that’s where my mind was when I started.” He smiles. It’s an honest look, one that says, “I can’t write it off, and I won’t write it down.” For someone who’s battled depression, become his parents’ caretaker while having his infant son on his hip, lived inside his record collection, and managed to somehow make music work without becoming a star, he’s not bitter about any of it. “I’ve never been screwed over in the music business,” he says flatly. “No one made me get drunk and get up onstage; nobody ever made me get high onstage or make the decisions I did. That was all me. But it muted the voices in my head that told me I was unworthy; those voices are terrible and put barriers in front of you. “But,” he says, pivoting back to the Music City Roots benefit last September, “you go back (to The Factory in Franklin), and there were idols of mine, playing for me, saying nice things — and it’s the greatest thing, the greatest feeling. “Every so often, I go out on the town and I’m reminded of that, reminded I know a lot of people. Seeing them, and feeling the community — and sensing I have something to offer, that keeps me in it, because, just being in Nashville is the big-time. This is the big league; it’s not Bowling Green or Chattanooga. Being here, making music, having friends — to me, that’s what all of this is about.” Tommy Womack’s latest release, Namaste, is available at Grimey’s New & Preloved Music and on iTunes. Find out more at Tommy’s goings on at: tommywomack.com

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Purple is the color of funk: Todd Austin, aka Toddzilla, relaxinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; with his axe before the party gets started.

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Todd AUSTIN

Toddzilla conquers the world!

he text came from the editor with the contact information for a Todd Austin. “Another one for the music issue,” the text read. “He’s around today, give him a call — killer story.” A few hours later, Toddzilla, the Minister of Funk himself, walks into a restaurant in 5 Points. For over two decades, Todd Austin’s been a ubiquitous presence in Nashville’s local music scene, first as the lead guitarist of the hard rock band Ravenheart, then as the axe-wielding funkmeister of the rock and funk combo The Jones, and then ringleader and mastermind of the glorious explosion of kitsch culture madness known as JonesWorld. Offstage, he’s also maintained a steady presence as the official “Electric Guitar Dude” at Corner Music in 12 South. Whether he’s dressed in his sharp-cut purple zoot suit or just ordinary street clothes, there’s no mistaking the mile-high, super-charged mullet and roaring personality of Toddzilla. One might expect an epic and legendary tale to accompany Toddzilla’s ground-shaking image, but when he sits down at the table, orders a beer, and begins the interview, Todd Austin’s story is very mortal. “In 2010, I had an especially bad divorce, truly horrible,” he says. “It was so bad that at the end of it, my attorney refused to take any money. Two years later, partially due to the stress of going through the divorce and partially due to genetics, I had a heart attack. I was only 45, but when the cardiologist came in with the results of the angiogram, his face was as white as a sheet. I had 90 percent blockage in one artery and 100 percent blockage in another. He said, ‘We’ve got to do surgery now, or you’re not going to be here in a day or so.’ ” Four years after the shock of confronting his own mortality, Austin’s life has been transformed. He’s continued to stage JonesWorld events, formed the power trio FunkHammer, and is playing guitar in the successful Prince tribute band Purple Masquerade — while maintaining his steady presence as the go-to electric guitar expert at Corner Music. “The bad news was I went through all that shit, but the good news is I’ve probably done more great living and experienced more amazing things in life in the last four years than I did in the whole 45 before that,” Austin says. “I’ve bashed my head against the monolith of trying to play original, noncountry music in Nashville for over 20 years. My faith was tested for a long time, and I had some really hard years, but it really is like the sky’s opened up to me.” Like many musicians, Austin’s love of music began at an early age. A native of Greensboro, N.C., he was born into a creative family — one of his sisters is an accomplished opera singer, while another sister was a state champion flutist. His siblings were attracted to more classical forms of music, but a rowdier sound spoke to him. “I went to a school that was 50 percent white and 50 percent black,” he says. “All my black friends listened to P-Funk, Prince, Cameo, and Morris Day and The Time, and all my white friends listened to Van Halen and AC/ DC. I always loved funk music, but I never played it. At the time, I was totally focused on being the rocker.” After graduation, Austin spent a frustrating year at North Carolina State, struggling to find a career that held his interest. Transferring to Middle Tennessee State University, he enrolled in the school’s recording industry management program. In addition to earning his degree, → he also married while at MTSU.

story by Randy Fox

photograph by John Partipilo September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

“I graduated in 1988, and I never intended to stay in Nashville, but my wife, Tara, got a job with Warner/Chappel right out of college, so we stayed,” he explains. “We were playing music together, but she had the day job with the career path, and I concentrated on the rock & roll thing.”That “thing” was the hard rock band Ravenheart. With Austin as the guitarist and main songwriter and his wife as the lead singer, they tumbled into the small, but vital Nashville rock scene of the early ’90s. Trying to make a name for themselves, they struggled through the rough and rugged terrain of being rock & rollers in the pre-“It City” era of Music City. “For those of us that were here in the rock scene in the late ’80s through the ’90s, it was like battling a mudslide on a mountain,” Austin says. “For every step up, there would be two steps back. I had a lawyer one time who said if he had a rock band in Nashville, he’d call it ‘The Nashville Stigma,’ because there ain’t nothin’ bigger than that.”Although Austin encountered one obstacle after another on the rock & roll road, he soon found a perfect day job. “Our bass player had an aquarium maintenance business, and I was working for him,” he says. “One of our clients was Corner Music. One day I was there working on the fish tank, and I told Larry Garris (owner of Corner Music) if you ever need a guitar guy, give me a call because sucking fish poop is not my life’s dream. A couple of months later, he hired me, and I’ve been there for 20 years. It’s been an amazing gig. It’s one of the epicenters for the music industry in Nashville because all the pros come through there. Networking is a part of the job every day, but even more important, people get to know you as a person. I’ve been able to earn a lot of people’s respect, and that’s been priceless.” Shortly after joining the staff at Corner Music, the expiration date on Ravenheart ran out when the band lost its drummer and bass player. It turned to out to be a good opportunity to explore a different musical direction, and Austin looked to the past for inspiration. “When I was 14, I saw the great funk rock band Mother’s Finest, and they absolutely blew my doors off,” he recalls. “I wanted to go in that

direction, take a turn to the funk. We chose the name ‘The Jones’ because we wanted something so simple it was stupid.” Simplicity also applied to the band’s lineup — guitar, bass, drums, and Austin’s wife as the lead singer. Their look became bigger, brasher, more complex, adopting the cartoonish retro flair of funk outfits like Morris Day and The Time. With all the elements in place, the group began building a Nashville following for outrageous and flashy stage shows built on solid foundation of rhythm and funk, especially at the Outer Limit nightclub on Nolensville Road. “Everyone in The Jones was going to have a ‘Jones’ name,” he says. “But Randy Woods, the bass player, started calling me Toddzilla and it just stuck. I started introducing myself by that name and even added it to my business cards at Corner Music. Between that and the hair, people don’t forget me.” Although The Jones may have started as a lean, mean funk machine, it didn’t stay that way for long. The transformation into the massive funk revue JonesWorld began when they sponsored a multiband funk extravaganza at the Outer Limit. “We called it ‘The Jones presents JonesWorld,’ Austin says. “We transformed the room and had all kinds of crazy decorations hanging from the ceiling and added extra musicians to our lineup, just for that show. It was so much fun we decided to do it again, and then again, then we decided to keep doing it. More and more people started joining us, and the band transformed into a musical co-op of sorts. If you were a friend and we knew you could play, it was the more the merrier.” With the addition of extra musicians, a horn section, a regular troop of dancers known as the Glitterchix, outrageous costumes, and various onstage characters, JonesWorld has grown into a mixed-race Music City revue of 30-plus members that invokes comparisons to ParliamentFunkadelic or Prince and the Revolution at their wildest. But while Austin was overseeing the creation of an extended funk family, his marriage was on rocky ground. “My wife was doing well in her professional

career and our lives began to arc away from each other,” he says. “We just went in different directions. We were together for a long time, and it was so great for so long, that when it did go bad, it went really bad. Five days after our divorce, she left for LA and has been there ever since, but I decided to stay in Nashville. After years of saying I had to get way from here, I said no, this is home and I’m gonna stay. “I had always written songs for Tara to sing because she was a better singer than I was, but when she left, I took two steps to my left and became the front man of the band. It didn’t take long for me to realize that’s where I should have been all along. I’m not a great singer, but I sing from my heart.” Although Austin’s heart had found a new life emotionally, physically it almost ended his life in 2012. After quadruple bypass surgery, he found that recovery was the greatest challenge he had faced. “It took me almost a year to recuperate,” he says. “I tell people all the time, heart surgery ain’t for sissies. I had a 10-pound weight limit, but luckily my favorite guitar weighed 9.6 pounds. So I sat on the couch and wrote songs. I would have friends come over, and we’d write songs together. Some of them sounded like JonesWorld but some didn’t. So in the spirit of Nashville, where everyone is in four or five bands, I started another band. Austin’s new project, FunkHammer, was a focused variation of the funk rock JonesWorld. With bass player Golden Hunt, drummer Phillip Kelly, and backup vocalists Brook Kelly and Rudrani Devi, they released the album Lawdhamercy!, and continue to play gigs in Nashville. “I’m really proud of our record,” Austin says. “It’s the first time I ever wrote songs specifically for me to sing. When I started FunkHammer, I was in my mid-40s, but I finally feel like I’m coming into my own as an artist.” In addition to that feeling of self-actualization, the years of hard work, building relationships with other musicians, and constantly seeking to express himself differently from others CO N T I NUED ON PAGE 120

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

The Dualtone brain trust (L-R): Lori Kampa, Paul Roper, and Scott Robinson at the labelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s headquarters in East Nashville.

DUALTONE The little label that could story by Holly Gleason photograph by John Partipilo

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

ver lunch at Marche recently, Dualtone founder Scott Robinson discusses the decision to get off Music Row and find a place that matched the ethos of the upstart label with backto-back No. 1 debuts on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart — both in six figures. “There was an existing artist community in East Nashville,” he says. “From the economics and the community sense to the idea that the music should be what drives what you do with it, this just felt like the place.” When The Lumineers and “Ho Hey” started topping the charts, the upstart label that defied convention was still occupying the floor above Pizzereal. The No. 1 Alternative, Triple A, Hot AC, and AC single in America came out of a few rooms, five people, and a little band who wasn’t afraid of big hooks and lots of touring. The idea, though, that goliath success could be repeated seemed folly. Never mind that the little label that could won two Grammy awards in 2004 with recordings by June Carter Cash — Best Contemporary Folk Album (Wildwood Flower) and Best Country Vocal Performance (“Keep On The Sunny Side”), the latter beating Martina McBride, who performed on camera, in a total upset. → September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

“The whole label had flown out there for it,” marvels VP of Radio Lori Kampa. “There they were in their tuxes, and John Carter (Cash) going up to accept for his mother. Martina had just sung, so nobody saw it coming.” “Nobody saw it coming” is Dualtone’s strength. When Robinson and Dan Herrington founded their little upstart after a “life in the majors,” they wanted to do microfocus on smaller yields that bore greater overall returns. Hard country singer David Ball — known in part from his tenure with Walter Hyatt’s near legendary Uncle Walt’s Band — had a second wave of success with the single, “Private Malone.” Dualtone monetized, proved their ethos could hunt — and never looked back. Even on their own success. Despite acclaimed and award-winning albums from Jim Lauderdale and Ralph Stanley, Cowboy Jack Clement, Radney Foster, Robert Earl Keen, Brett Dennen, BR5-49, Matraca Berg, Robinella, Hayseed Dixie, and Bobby Bare, produced by Bobby Bare Jr., plus reissues (Merle Haggard, Townes Van Zandt), tributes (Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash), and compilations (No Depression magazine), they opted not to corner the Americana market, but seek vaster plains. Beyond The Lumineers, who are headed to their second platinum album in a day when nobody sells albums, those plains include Langhorne Slim, Shakey Graves, Oh Pep!, Ivan & Alyosha, Delta Spirit, Noah Gundersen, Wild Child, Leagues (Nashville’s Thad Cockrell, Tyler Burkum, and Jeremy Lutito), and the recently signed Chuck Berry. As president Paul Roper affirms, “Being able to pursue art for art’s sake,

and let the commercial rewards come as they will, is a whole other way of doing business. We are trying to build careers. It’s not lightning in a bottle, but going record to record. … It’s a culture of sustainability we’re trying to create, and have a longer-range vision.” “That’s part of why we wanted to be in East Nashville,” Robinson explains. “It brings a culture, a lifestyle, a way of being where you’re outside the mainstream. There are no boundaries here — and the landscape is very entrepreneurial, very rich with ideas. It’s about exploring and being open to what can be instead of ‘this is what we do’ or ‘this is how we do it.’ “Americana and roots music will always be a pillar of our foundation, but I grew up on Triple A and Paul did, too. We wanted the label to be a place where we could say, ‘Oh, you wanna be a folk singer,’ or ‘a pop band,’ or ‘a rock band,’ or ‘a country artist,’ and feel free to commit to that.” Laughing a bit, then leaning conspiratorially closer, Robinson’s eyes twinkle, “And being here lets us do what we do without having the magnifying glass on us. We’re on the edge of the Middle Tennessee music business for those things we need, but not really.” Unorthodox and scrappy pretty much sums up the little label that could. Almost unmarked, save for the olive drab square sign with a bear on it — and a small engraved bar on the building — Dualtone’s world headquarters is a single story, rambling brick box that contains a small staff that makes things happen. And for those who remember the days back on Music Row, back when the ping-pong table was kept in the attic without ventilation and the

men stripped to the waste for brutal matches, the notion they’ve made it is measured by the fact that there are now two bathrooms. As Kampa says, laughing, “Scott actually likes to say we’re ‘corporate,’ because we now have a men’s and a woman’s bathroom.” Joking aside, it’s a ragtag team united by passion and a love of music that makes it happen. For Paul Roper, who’d graduated from the University of the South in Sewanee and ended up working with country demistar/songwriter Radney Foster, being a label president wasn’t on the list of aspirations when he was helping the Del Rio-raised singer figure out life after the majors. “I did, you know, work on his website, figured out logistics, some stuff with his catalogue,” the dark-haired, bright-eyed Roper recalls. And then, as sometimes happens, Foster’s need for outside help went away. But unlike many artists, the guy known for “Just Call Me Lonesome” and Foster & Lloyd’s “Crazy Over You” recognized the 20-something had talent. “He basically helped me get this internship (at Dualtone) where he was signed,” Roper marvels. “And I haven’t had any other job in my entire life.” Kampa’s experience is similar. Having graduated from the University of Wisconsin, she was working for Ricky Skaggs, running point in the office and doing whatever needed to be done for a family business that includes a label, managing the career of Skaggs and The Whites, and the nuts and bolts that comes with artist careers. “I loved them,” she says. “Ricky and his family were just the nicest people … and so great to work for, whether it was setting up interviews CO N T I NUED ON PAGE 121

Making the Homes in

East Nashville More Energy Efficient

Leakage 30% AirReduction BOSCOBEl StrEEt

Cars 3.4 Electric Powered

If you are ready to get your home more energy efficient, reduce your electric bill, improve your indoor air quality or make your corner of the planet a little more “green”, then give E3 Innovate a call. One of our home performance analysts will come to your house and perform an energy assessment to see where you can benefit from energy improvements. Give us a call today and take advantage of up to $1,000 in incentives from TVA and tax credits.

FROM REDUCTION

FatHErl and StrEEt

35% Energy Reduction BOSCOBEl StrEEt

876 - 5479 • E3innovate.com • Visit us on Facebook Spray FOam

CrawlSpaCE

EnErgy audItS

HOmE pErFOrmanCE

HOmE CErtIFICatIOn

InSulatEd

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Cameron

HENRY

King of the grooves

“I

n a lot of ways, records are not practical,” declares Cameron Henry, the lathe operator at Welcome to 1979 studios. “They’re heavy and bulky, they take up a lot of physical space, they’re easily damaged, and they’re not portable.” It seems like a surprising statement from a 33-yearold that devotes most of his working hours to the very format he disparages, but there’s more to the story. “All the formats that came after vinyl tried to fix those issues,” he continues. “There’s been this false quest for perfectness. When CDs were introduced, one of the big selling points was that there was zero degradation to a CD, which wasn’t really true. If you scratch a CD there’s a good chance it won’t play at all. You can almost destroy a record and you can still hear at least some of the music on it. It may be crackly or skip, but you can still get recognizable sound out of it, and vinyl records have seen the birth and death of almost every format designed to replace them.” Not only have phonograph records survived, they have returned with a vengeance. While sales of CDs and digital downloads continue to decline, the market for vinyl records has boomed, with demand continuing to grow each year. Audiophiles on both sides of the analog/digital line argue incessantly about the advantages of one format over the other, but records have an undeniable coolness that has never been successfully duplicated. For Henry, the appeal is in the inherent imperfection and humanness of records. “A digital file or CD can be perfectly duplicated endlessly,” he says. “With records, only so many can be made from a pair of metal stampers. To make more means starting over and doing it again, and it’s never exactly the same. A new lacquer master has to be cut, and new stampers have to be made. It’s different every time. Even if the same person cuts the master there’s going to be a slight difference.” Henry has mastered the ability to keep those differences to a minimum and infuse the creation of new records with life specific to the medium. In just three years, he has cut the masters for over 3,000 records, all on equipment over 40 years old using skills that were a dying art just a few short years ago. →

story by Randy Fox

photograph by John Partipilo 92

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Cameron Henry next to the 1970 Neumann VMS 70 lathe he uses to cut grooves into master lacquers in the vinyl mastering room at Welcome To 1979.

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

A bulky, 80-pound steel turntable is slowly and constantly rotating behind Henry in the cutting room of Welcome to 1979. Decorated in the finest 1970s retro chic, the room is dominated by the tool of his trade: a massive 1973 Neumann VMS 70 cutting lathe that fills almost half the space. The lights, dials, and display meters surrounding the turntable resemble a control console from NASA’s Apollo-era Mission Control. But with Henry at the controls, Houston, we won’t be having any problems. The path that led to his mastery of this art grew out of frustration and necessity. A native of Toledo, Ohio, Henry’s interest in music began early. “I started as a musician and began dabbling in recording right out of high school,” he says. “There were a lot of bands in Toledo, but there was no money to be made. If I stayed there, recording would always be a hobby, so I decided to move to Nashville to try and flip my hobby into my real job.” Henry moved to Nashville in 2006 and settled on the East Side, just as the local music scene was kicking into high gear. He found plenty of bands eager to record. “I went to a lot of shows at The 5 Spot and got to know a lot of people,” he says. “I was buying equipment, and I ended up having a little analog studio in my house. About this time, Welcome to 1979 opened. I started coming here and recording and then mixing and overdubbing at home.” Welcome to 1979, opened in 2008 by recording engineer Chris Mara, focuses on the revival of classic analog recording techniques from the decade that has been declared the “Golden Age of Recording.” Housed in a former record pressing plant in West Nashville, the studio was a perfect home for Henry’s skills and sensibilities. Although he was mastering the art of recording music, bringing music to vinyl remained a mystical process. “I didn’t know anything about how records were made,” he says. “As far as I knew, you plugged a flash drive into the side of a record press and they just shot out of it like hot pizzas. One of the main reasons I got into the production side was that the artists I was working with started putting out their music on vinyl. We would get test pressings, and it would sound lackluster compared to the master source. The first time that happened, I talked to the guy that cut the record. I thought there might be something I could have done differently. He kind of patted me on the head and said, ‘That’s just how vinyl is, don’t worry about it.’ It really pissed me off. Then it happened again, and it happened to other people that I knew. I didn’t know anything about how records were made, but I started feeling I can do better than these guys.” As Henry learned about the process of converting magnetic tape or digital files into the grooves of a record, his annoyance proved justified. The first step in creating a record is vinyl mastering or “cutting a lacquer.” Using a diamond-tipped cutting lathe, grooves are cut directly onto a 14-inch aluminum disc coated with a thin layer of lacquer. It’s an exacting process requiring the lathe operator to vary groove width, depth, and placement based on

the dynamics of the source recording. One lacquer is cut for each side of the record, and they are so delicate that playing a lacquer even once degrades the quality of the sound. Sometimes a duplicate, 12-inch lacquer reference disc that can be played is also cut using the same settings. With the lacquer master finished, it is used to mold a metal stamper that is a negative image of the disc with ridges instead of grooves. This process destroys the original lacquer master. The stampers are then inserted into a hydraulic press to produce LPs and 45s. While quality control is important throughout the process, the skill of the lacquer cutter means the difference between a great sounding record and a mediocre one. “Everything else will be screwed up if the lacquer master isn’t cut properly,” Henry explains. “A lot of audio equipment is meant to manipulate sound, to change it into whatever you want, but a cutting lathe is the opposite. You don’t tell it what to do; it tells you what you can do. There are all these factors like how much current the machine is drawing, how deep the groove is being cut, and more that affects the way the record will sound.” At the same time Henry was learning about the process of creating records, Chris Mara was searching for a cutting lathe for Welcome to 1979. With the massive increase in record production, the tightest bottleneck in the process has been the important first step of lacquer mastering. Henry estimates there are fewer than 50 professional cutting lathes in operation around the world, supplying the masters to manufacture every record pressed. Since new cutting lathes have not been manufactured for over three decades, finding a quality, working lathe was challenging, and locating a skilled, experienced operator was practically impossible. “Anyone that knew how to run one was either retired or was doing it elsewhere and didn’t want to relocate,” Henry says. “There is no literature on how to do it properly. It’s totally a mentorship art that was passed down. After Chris bought the lathe, I told him when he found someone to operate it to let me know so I could hang out and learn about it. His said he couldn’t find anyone and why don’t I just give it a shot. I didn’t even have to think twice.” Although Henry began his learning process through trial and error, he soon located a mentor. “I tracked down a mastering engineer named Hank Williams — his real name, believe it or not,” he says. “He had run the lathe at Woodland Studios and been a king at it, but he hadn’t touched one for 20 years. The first time he came over here, he said, ‘I don’t know if I remember how this works.’ Then he started it up and fell right back into it.” Working with Williams, Henry began to sharpen his cutting skills, listening to the results, and correcting mistakes. It took three months of practice before he felt ready to offer his services to the public. “We put it on the website and the next day a major label called us,” Henry says.

“They had a problem with the masters on a pretty big record by a major artist. I recut it, and they pulled the old job and used mine instead. They said they had it done in LA because they had no idea we were cutting masters. They asked how long I had been here, and I said, ‘Oh, seven years.’ I didn’t want to tell them it was my first professional job cutting.” Since launching their vinyl mastering service in 2013, Welcome to 1979 has built a reputation among audiophiles for top-notch mastering work. Henry currently spends five days a week cutting lacquer masters and devotes his weekends to freelance work as a recording engineer and producer. For him, the care he takes as a producer applies equally to the masters he cuts. “For every record I cut, I, in effect, join the band,” he says. “I pretend like it’s my music. I try to understand it both in terms of the frequency response and on an emotional level. What is really important in this music? If something needs to be modified or changed, how can I do that where it doesn’t affect the feeling of the music? “Some things just can’t be cut into a record without some type of mechanical playback problem. There have to be adjustments made. If you have low frequencies that are extreme in the stereo separation, like a bass doing a crazy ping-pong effect between the right and left channels, it can actually launch the needle right out of the groove. Some people’s response to that problem is to just take it out of the stereo mix and move it to the center. It prevents the needle from skipping, but will compromise the overall fidelity of the record. I pride myself on reshaping the sound in such a way so it will still have the same energy, but will track better.” Even more challenging are sessions where artists choose to record direct to disc. Artists perform their music live in the studio with tape rolling, but at the same time, Henry is in the cutting room, capturing the performance directly on a lacquer master. “We’re one of maybe three companies in the world that have direct-to-disc capabilities that are open to the public,” he says. “We’ve done about a dozen albums direct to disc, including a session last year with Pete Townshend. It’s really the best sounding of all recording mediums, but the cutting is like a performance in itself. I’m hunched over the microscope, watching the grooves and playing the recording wave so to speak.” While Henry takes great pride in the work he’s doing, the idea that each lacquer he cuts is a temporary, ephemeral piece that is destroyed by the duplication process simply makes his work more special. “There is like a sad romanticism to the process,” he says, “but I kind of love that idea. It’s a little like street art. It’s not intended to last. It has its moment, gets photographed, and then gets painted over. Vinyl mastering is kind of a niche boutique skill that has become a full-time job for me, and I love it. I get to listen to a lot of music, but it’s even better to go in a store and see one I cut as the favorite record of the week.”

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Sarah

POTENZA Finding her own ‘voice’

n the title track of Sarah Potenza’s new album, Monster, she sings, “I am a monster; I am not like you.” Reading that, it might seem like a cry of self-loathing, but backed by a screaming electric guitar and belted out by Potenza’s powerhouse punch of a voice, those nine words are a shattering declaration of confidence, self-awareness, and stern reality. Irony is part of that mix too, especially when you realize Potenza found those words of self-expression while appearing in the decidedly unreal world of the glitz factory talent show, The Voice. “Most of the girls on the show were 18 years old or younger and a size 2,” Potenza says. “Wardrobe was a huge room full of all the clothes you would ever want to wear, but they had maybe a half a rack of stuff in XL, and I wear a XXL, so there was nothing for me. I had to change in front of this one girl who was so young that when I told her she looked like Cindy Crawford she said, ‘Who’s that?’ Later on, though, she came to my hotel room and was crying. She said, ‘You don’t know what it’s like for me. I know the only reason I’m here is because of what I look like, and you’re here because you can sing.’ Physically, I felt like I was a monster, but all of a sudden, sitting next to her, it hit me. I am a monster, but in a totally different way from the way I had felt most of my life. Because I know I can sing my ass off, I’m confident about who I am, and I don’t give a shit about which side of my face is the good side. “That gave me the idea for the song,” she continues. “But the idea seemed like something very abstract, and I didn’t know how I could express it properly. I was excited, but also super intimidated about writing it. But I got it done, it became the title track, and it’s very special to me. It was something very personal about me and my identity, and I was able to put it into words.” That desire to express herself as a singer and songwriter has been a goal that Potenza has been chasing throughout her career. It’s a journey that began long before her personal road wound through hard nights, open mics, and the surreal world of reality television. And one that began with another epiphany over 15 years ago. Although Potenza can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a singer, throughout her high school years and into college, the Rhode Island native’s focus was on formal voice training and musical theater. She saw herself as an interpreter and a performer of other people’s stories, but that all changed in a moment of musical clarity. →

story by Randy Fox

photograph by John Partipilo

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

Sarah Potenza used her appearance on NBCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Voice to jump-start her career with a new album. Her husband, guitarist, and collaborator, Ian Crossman, photobombs nearby.

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

J eep Accessories Headquarters

L et Hunters L ift and CustomizeYour Truc k America’s Favorite Tonneau

a Trifect

ChooseBlackor Stainless Steel

Secu rely clamp s on toth etruck bed. NO drillingand

NEW! Aries 4” Oval Nerf Bars

NOdamage.

Helpssav e gas!

BED LINERS FROM $139.00 NEW ARIES SLIM LINE STEP BARS

OR BED MATS Aries Bull Bar—Polished Stainless.

WE SELL AND INSTALL TRAILER HITCHES

975 Main Street •615- 227-6584 9/16

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

“I was working at Applebee’s, and I won a $50 gift certificate to Best Buy,” Potenza recalls. “I was looking for something to buy, and I saw this DVD, and the woman on the cover looked like a younger version of my mom. It was Lucinda Williams, who I didn’t even know about at the time. I bought it on a whim, and when I watched it, I was stunned. I just sat there thinking, ‘I’m not supposed to go on stage and be somebody else. I’m supposed to tell my story!’ ” Although Potenza had discovered her career destination, negotiating the path to get her there proved to be a challenge. Within two years she was living in Chicago, belting out covers of “Piece of My Heart” for tourists as a Janis Joplin impersonator at Chicago’s House of Blues and taking stabs at songwriting on the side. That’s when she reconnected with an old friend from junior high, guitarist and her eventual husband, Ian Crossman. “First day I was in Chicago, Sarah asked me to come see her band and tell her what I thought,” Crossman says. “I told her to fire everybody.” Although Potenza had set out to discover the path to expressing herself, she had ended up in the blues-rock equivalent of musical theater. Crossman brought valuable advice through his experiences as a musician with a background in country, blues, and the punk and indie rock scene. Working together, the pair formed the band Sarah and the Tall Boys and immersed themselves in Chicago’s lively retro-alt-country scene, recording three albums with songs primarily written by Potenza and Crossman. Although they achieved a measure of success, they also found themselves stranded in the DIY Americana trailer park. A change was clearly in order. “In 2008, we took a one-year wedding anniversary road trip to Nashville and Memphis,” Potenza says. “I loved Nashville and never forgot the vibe. By 2012, I wanted to come down here to do a country throwback thing, but when we arrived, we immediately got schooled. We played The 5 Spot and everyone was like, ‘So what?’ Everyone here is just so good, what I really needed to do was be me.” As with her earlier musical epiphany, knowing the destination didn’t mean she had the roadmap

to get there. While both Potenza and Crossman struggled with musical cartography, forces were at work that would transform everything for the couple. On a whim, Potenza auditioned for the TV show The Voice before leaving Chicago and then again at Nashville auditions in February of 2014. Although she initially was turned down both times, in April of that year, The Voice called her. The producers had spotted a video online of her performance on Music City Roots and liked her look and attitude. A private audition in Memphis and an offer to join the show for its eighth season quickly followed. “When I got the offer, Ian and I immediately had the debate: Should I do this?” Potenza says. “The idea of appearing on TV seemed so unhip, and at first I was like, ‘Uhhhhh.’ ” As the couple discussed the proposal, both were realistic about the chances of Potenza winning, but they began to see the show as an opportunity to gain national exposure and finance a solo record made on their own terms. After signing on, it quickly became apparent that Potenza was undeniably the square peg in the round hole of Reality TV. “When I first joined the show,” she says, “I said I was from East Nashville and that I sang Americana. They said both of those weren’t real things and I needed to pick a genre that’s on the list. I was like, ‘Oh, no!’ ” What followed was a wild, seven-month ride through the altered reality of national television (as chronicled in Holly Gleason’s cover story in the May-June 2015 issue of The East Nashvillian). When her journey on the show ended in April of 2015 with Potenza’s elimination during the final “Live Playoff ” episodes, she found herself with a fan base eager to support her plans for her first solo album. “It was unbelievable,” Potenza says. “Ian put the Kickstarter online right when I went onstage during the finale of The Voice. That night alone we raised $6,000 of our $25,000 goal. We ended up with almost $42,000.” While still maintaining an independent attitude and DIY approach to her music, starting with that amount of money totally changed the playing field. “It was really exciting for us to have

the money and means to hire Joe McMahan to make this record because I love his work, and he’s my dream producer,” Potenza says. “We had the money to hire the musicians we really wanted, to hire a particular photographer, and make a music video. We made our first record in the basement of some dude’s house for $15 an hour. He had eight dogs and it smelled really bad. We were used to that. So we always wondered what would happen if you had the money to really make a go of it, and I guess we’re going to find out.” There’s a punk brilliance and undeniable coolness to the fact that Potenza was able to enter the dark catacombs of the Pop Music Dragon and escape with loot, but more importantly, and ironically, her experience on The Voice provided the final markers on the road to find her voice. “Going into it my whole thing was to hang on as long as I could, have the Kickstarter ready, and make the money to make the record,” Potenza says. “That’s exactly what happened, and it changed everything, but not just in terms of money. Being on TV pushed me to the limit and had me out there doing stuff that was out of my comfort zone. It was do or die in front of 20 million people. They would mic me up and ask about all kinds of personal shit. I had to make a choice to present myself as who I thought people would like or just be myself. So I just started letting it fly.” Staying true to herself in a world of artificiality and glamour, the experience opened a door to her earlier showbiz aspirations of stage lights and booming voices. The worlds of Liza Minnelli and Lucinda Williams do not have to be mutually exclusive, not when they are fused by a sassy and determined woman with a voice as big as Broadway and as gritty as a gravel road. “The thing that was hard to learn was that my voice is really big and sometimes that eclipses my songwriting in the Americana world,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Whoa, that’s flashy! We don’t do flashy here.’ I love how Americana has fused so many genres, but I wish it could be more inclusive of the flashiness that James Brown and Tina Turner brought to their music. Being on The Voice drove that home for me. Here are my big white glasses. CO N T I NUED ON PAGE 122

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

Tye Bellar, Seth West, and Tom Senter (L-R) Well-equipped and ready for take off at Cornelia Fort Airpark.

100

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

FINANCIER Slow-brewed synthwave takes flight

angria, swords, and synthesizers — sounds like a lethal combination or, at the very least, the potential for some feel-good music to be made at the expense of a severed limb or two. But for three East Nashville musicians, the combination was the catalyst for forming ambient trio Financier. “He had some sweet swords at his house when I first met him, and he totally let me cut a branch out of a tree with one of them,” Financier’s Tom Senter says, recalling the band’s first meeting with its newest member, Tye Bellar. Senter and Financier front man Seth West have known each other for 20 years and recorded music together as Financier for the better part of the last decade. But it wasn’t until they met fellow synthesizer player Bellar two years ago that the band starting taking their sound out of the studio. “It was just a studio thing with me and Tom,” West says. “We didn’t know how to take it and make it a band. But that’s where Tye comes into play.” It was also where the swords and sangria came into play. “We showed up to his house with a pitcher of sangria and it was just → that and swords and just immediate bonding,” West says.

story by Collin Czarnecki photograph by John Partipilo

September September | | October October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

101

There’s one pretty significant difference separating Financier’s atmospheric, synthwave sound from the music of many EDM acts: Their sound is created by actual musicians, not DJs with their MacBook Pros. “It’s not an EDM band,” Bellar says. “There’s a difference. We’re an actual electronic band where people play electronic music live and in real time instead of just hitting a button, so there’s a lot of trial and error in that kind of thing and actually making it all work.” At times euphoric, and at times a bit trippy, Financier’s sound sprinkles in an array of

elements, which collectively give the band an airy, yet melodic sound while keeping a pop sensibility beneath its surface. That sound caught the ear of WXNA’s Austin Alexander, who gave the band its first radio airplay on his Sound, Mind, & Proxy show in July. The guys got hooked up with the show through fellow electronic artists Sugar Sk*-*lls after recording a split 7-inch together, West says. As Financier goes through a rebirth phase with the addition of Bellar on keys and synth, the radio play on WXNA confirmed the trio is heading in the right direction with its sound.

Harpeth Hall

INSPIRATION for GIRLS WHO

DREAM BIG & GO FAR ADMISSION PREVIEW DAY Sunday, November 6 2:00 p.m. www.harpethhall.org FOR GIRLS AND YOUNG WOMEN IN GRADES 5-12 Financial Aid Available 3801 Hobbs Road • Nashville, TN 37215 • 615-297-9543

102

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Visit our website to

learn more and apply

“Austin Alexander is an amazing taste maker,” West says. “He plays music from all over the world. To be on that show was really kind of validation in a way. It’s inspiring and lets us know we’re on the right track.” After West and Senter teamed up with Bellar two years ago, Financier spent six months focusing on recording the split 7-inch Incantations, with Sugar Sk*-*lls for Michael Davis’ Transmission Control label. “We mixed that 7-inch I don’t know how many times,” West says. “We ended up at each other’s throats at 3 Crow one time drawing waveforms on napkins just going, ‘What is the fucking problem here? Why can’t we get this thing right?’ ” The record led to the airplay on WXNA and a show at music venue and art collective Queen Ave. Bellar says the process from writing to radio was reminiscent of Motown days. “Back in the ’60s people would print their music on 45s and immediately take them to the radio station and play them and then basically do an entire tour of playing those songs,” he says. “So WXNA was very reminiscent of that. We made an album, played it on the radio, and then played a show.” Financier’s evolution has all happened in East Nashville. Not only do all three members live on the East Side, they’re practically neighbors, living within a mile and a half of each other off Rosebank Avenue near the Cornelia Fork Airpark. Financier say they’re fortunate to live in a community like East Nashville that embraces relationships centered on creativity, collaboration, and connectedness. “We’ve all lived here for so long now that we’re starting to develop all these great relationships,” Bellar says. Senter stumbled into East Nashville more than a decade ago after moving from Louisiana. The neighborhood’s cheap rent (at the time) kept him here. “If it hadn’t of been for a real crappy house in East Nashville, I could’ve never moved here,” he says. “There were like eight of us in there and rent was $125 per person. It was on Porter and Carter. It was huge, but it was terrible.” “There was a tree growing inside one of the rooms,” West adds. Given the changes in the neighborhood, all three musicians say the days of cheap living on the East Side seem like a lifetime ago. “I mean they valet at Rosepepper now,” West says. “That’s the biggest example I can think of, of how much it’s changed.” “East Nashville sucked in the ’90s, though,” Bellar adds. “I mean you had Edgefield and Dino’s and that’s it — and Joe’s Diner, which is what Rosepepper is now.” “I do miss Dee’s Q, though, that place was so good,” Senter says. He pauses for a few seconds, then adds, “I just realized I could’ve made that up and used that to do a ‘Deez Nuts’ joke and I missed it. Next time, I’ll squeeze one in somehow. I do miss Dee’s a lot, though.” Despite the wave of new tall skinnies and mixed-use developments during the last few years, West remains optimistic about the East Side, its future, and its future residents. “Changes are inevitable,” he says. “There are a lot of things in East Nashville that people don’t

want to see, but at the same time, it would be very hypocritical of me to say that these ‘new Nashville’ people are ruining everything. I came here 11 years ago with a positive attitude and wanting to contribute something, so hopefully there will be people thinking that same way now.” All three members of Financier have had different journeys to East Nashville. Both Senter and West started calling the East Side home about 11 years ago after hopping around from band to band together throughout the years. East Nashville not only brought them back together, but it also gave birth to what Financier is today. “I went to college in Georgia, and after I graduated I moved to Nashville and joined (Senter’s) band here,” West says. “We did that for a while, but it kind of imploded. And he and I had the most common interests and similar place in life where we could continue playing music.” A rare native Nashvillian, Bellar has had the most experience out of the group when it comes to the city’s music scene. After recording school, he worked on Music Row and was a studio engineer intern at Woodland Studios. “I’ve worked on just about everything including Jeff Foxworthy records and just terrible country stuff; day in and day out,” Bellar says. “Everybody would leave at the end of the day, and I’d just sit and replace drums and tune vocals for the rest of the night in true Nashville country style.” In the prelude to their fateful sangria, swords, and synthesizers encounter, Senter, West, and Bellar ended up crossing paths at a studio Bellar was running at the time in Marathon Village. “We mostly did Hip-Hop and rap and almost all the Dirty South stuff that came out in the early 2000s in that studio, and that’s how I first met these guys,” Bellars says. “We remixed one of their songs, and they wanted to hear it, and we realized that they only lived less than half a mile down the road in East Nashville.” After two years of playing and recording together, and now in their late 30s and early 40s, the seasoned musicians still continue to refine their sound. “We’ve really gotten to know each other during these two years and learn each other’s styles,” West says. “It’s almost like when you’re a teenager and you’re discovering all this music at the same time that really resonates with you. We’ve almost had a rebirth in that way.” That rebirth has included West ditching the synthesizer, leaving that up to Bellar and Senter. Now he focuses on laying down guitar, vocals, and beats. To West, it means the band’s sound, as well as their outlook, have matured. “I got so burnt out making music that I didn’t like for other people, but I had to get through all of that because now, musically, I’m in a place I want to be in,” he says. Despite their full-time jobs, all three are well aware that it can be a slow process to get everything sounding the way they want it to sound, especially with the intricacies behind producing electronic music. “There’s no timetable on this, which is kind of liberating in a way,” West says. “Some people

like to go home and watch TV after work, but I would rather do something more productive. That’s how we all feel. I’d rather create something than enjoy something that someone else has created. I mean, I can hardly get through a movie without thinking, ‘Shit, I should be doing something on my own right now.’ It’s a restless need to make something.” That restlessness is showing signs of momentum. It’s not the “drop everything and play” type of momentum, though — it’s slow-brewed. The trio is focusing on making the best music they can make — no matter

how long that may take. “To be honest, we just had our first legit show together when we played Queen Ave,” West says. “It took us a long time to figure out what kind of band we wanted to be and we didn’t want to rush it and put out something that was half-baked and not representational of what we wanted to do. So this is really the beginning. We’re just really getting going.” Financier will be performing Oct. 1 at Brikolaj in The Arcade as part of the art crawl.

When your toaster turns into a pyro. I’m your agent for that. You’re finally on your own and real life takes over. What do you do? Start by getting car insurance from someone that gets you—your own State Farm agent. Then get renters insurance for just a dollar or two more a month.* Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. CALL ME TODAY. ®

Mike J Maclean, Agent 3922 Gallatin Pike Nashville, TN 37216 Bus: 615-891-1241 mike@agentmm.com

*Estimated cost per month for $10,000 in renters insurance coverage with purchase of auto insurance from State Farm. State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, State Farm General Insurance Company, Bloomington, IL State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, State Farm Indemnity Company, Bloomington, IL 1001201.1

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

103

104

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

EAST SIDE CALENDAR EMMA ALFORD CALENDAR EDITOR

S E P T E M B E R | O C T O B E R 2016

FOR UP-TO -DATE INFORMATION ON EVENTS, AS WELL AS LINKS, PLEASE VISIT US AT: THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

UPCOMING FARM FRESH

East Nashville Farmers Market

3:30-7 p.m. Wednesdays through October, Shelby Park

Take a detour from your usual trek to Kroger and stop by the East Nashville Farmers Market. They offer the “cream of the crop” in locally grown organic and fresh foods. Peruse the local cheeses, milk, breads, herbs, fruits, vegetables, jams and jellies. A few merchants even sell handmade goods, such as soaps, candles, pottery, and jewelry. Go out and meet the farmers who make your food. They also accept SNAP (food stamp) benefits. Grocery shopping has never been this fun — or homegrown.

CINEMA AT SHELBY

Shelby Park Picture Show

5:30 p.m. (movie start times vary), Old Timer’s Baseball Complex (Shelby Park)

Wednesday, Sept. 14 Guardians of the Galaxy Wednesday, Sept. 28 The Princess Bride Wednesday, Oct. 5 Hook Wednesday, Oct. 12 Raiders of the Lost Ark With summer winding down, what better

way to spend it than outdoors? The Shelby Park Picture Show series is back with more dates, more vendors, and of course, more movies. We took some polls to find the best flicks for this year’s lineup and the people have spoken. We can promise crowd favorites and family-friendly films on the big LED screen. Food trucks and local vendors will provide concessions. Don’t forget about the full beer garden for you of-age folks. What makes this year’s series even better? Each movie night will contribute to SANDLOTT Sports and a different nonprofit each show. Shop at the EN farmers market earlier in the day and you can get $2 discount on movie concessions with your receipt. The gate opens at 4:30 with a happy hour lasting until 6 p.m., but movie start times will vary, so please check the website for screening times. shelbyparkpictureshow.com

YES YOU EAST C.A.N. East C.A.N. Pet Adoption Events

Sept. 22, 28, Nov. 6, Locations vary

The folks at East C.A.N. have their paws full with adoption events. Check out the different pooch stops below. Swing by one if you’re looking for your next fur-ever friend, or if you just feel like giving out some free chin scratches. Historic Edgefield Craft Show and Flea Market

8 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 10 Edgefield Baptist Church Spirit Animal Party 8 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 22 Studio 615 Shelby Park Picture Show 7-9 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 28 Old Timer’s Baseball Field Adoption Event at Talbots 3-6 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 6 The Streets of Indian Lake, Hendersonville

ROCKIN’ FOR A CAUSE Holly Street Rocks!

6-10 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 17 The Pavilion East

Benefitting local families with children at Holly Street Daycare who are going through tough financial hardship (cancer, job loss, death, etc.), proceeds enable the children to remain in a safe, supportive, and familiar environment during these times. The $50 ticket includes 4 hours of: Wine and Beer Tastings from Midtown Wine and Spirits; Food by Alexander’s Catering; Silent Auction Featuring Donations From Over 100 Local Businesses; Live Auction with Artwork, Trips, Hotel Stays, Concert Tickets And Much More! 1006 Fatherland St. #105

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

105

EAST SIDE CALENDAR

GOOD FIBE(RS)

East Side Fiber Festival

Saturday, Sept. 17, Isaac Litton Alumni Center Knitters, stitchers, sewers, weavers — fiber feelers near and far, the East Side Fiber Fest has returned. Meg Anderson of Nutmeg is growing the event into a larger space for its return this year, moving things to the Isaac Litton Alumni Center. This fest will weave together farms and artisans with a love for all things fiber. You can expect a craft fair vibe with live fiber-art demonstrations. This fiber free-for-all is open to the public and family friendly. 4500 Gallatin Pike

WORD TO YOUR GOLFER

Southern Word Golf Classic Scramble

8 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 17, Historic Shelby Golf Course

Get your goofiest outfit on and grab your golf gear. This all-ages, all skill levels golf scramble supports the folks of Southern Word, an organization that helps youth build literacy skills through workshops, school residencies, open mics, and shows. The morning will kick off with catering from Alexander’s Catering and end with a slam poetry BBQ at Drifter’s. Sign up for the scramble for $50, which includes breakfast, greens fees, and a cart. If you just want the BBQ and words, lunch will cost you $10. Proceeds benefit the work of Southern Word. See you on the green. 2021 Fatherland St.

SUPPORT AMQUI

Celebrate Amqui Gala

5:30-11:30 p.m., Saturday Sept. 17

Want to support the railroad station Johnny Cash loved so much he saved it? This fundraising and awards reception and dinner will have live and silent auctions celebrating their “Community” and “Musical Heritage” honorees. Lorianne Crook will be returning this year as the hostess with the mostess. Contact the center for more information and to purchase tickets. 303 Madison St.

✳

✳ 106

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

ARGH, MATEYS!

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Saturday, Sept. 17, Monday, Sept. 19 various locations

Batten down the hatches, swashbucklers, Talk Like a Pirate Day is sailing this way. East Nashville’s own pirates Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers will be celebrating their favorite holiday with performances across the city. Captain Tom Mason will lead his crew with seafaring serenades about life on the high seas as a pirate. Walk the plank! Saturday, Sept. 17: 10 a.m. Goodlettsville Branch, Nashville Public Library 1 p.m. Adams Memorial Library, Woodbury 3:30 Thompson Lane Branch, Nashville Public Library 8 p.m. Harp and Fiddle Monday, Sept. 19: 10:30 a.m. Old Hickory Branch, Nashville Public Library 6:30 p.m. Hermitage Branch, Nashville Public Library Check the group’s Facebook page for updates on other locations these pirates will be dropping their anchor.

GOD BLESS AMERICANA Americana Music Association Festival and Conference

Sept. 20-25, citywide

It’s time for the Americana Music Festival and Conference again. The festival spans five days with educational sessions by the light of day and musicians taking the stage in various venues citywide by dark of night. The conference portion features panels, seminars, and lectures with top music biz professionals. Tons of musicians will perform throughout the weeklong event, including several big name acts (we were excited to hear John Prine will make an appearance). You can drop some bills for a wristband that gets you into all events, or purchase individual tickets to showcases for $20-25. If you want to attend the conference portion, you’ll need to register online. The Basement East, The Family Wash, and The 5 Spot will all be hosting shows as part of the festival if you’re looking to stay on this side of the river.

•

EAST SIDE CALENDAR

LET YOUR SPIRIT ANIMAL ROAR Spirit Animal Party

8 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 22, Studio 615

Release your inner spirit animal for this one. Purr, roar, or growl your way over to Studio 615 for the third annual Spirit Animal Party. Spirit animal-inspired costumes encouraged. Best of all, this party’s giving all proceeds to East C.A.N., so you’ll be cutting loose for a good cause. 272 Broadmoor Dr.

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Nashville Neighborhoods Celebration

10 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 24, Scarritt Bennett Campus

OK, so most of us obviously think that East Nashville is the place to be, but it’s time for us all to branch out again for the annual Nashville Neighborhoods Celebration. The Neighborhoods Resource Center is hosting a soiree to celebrate all areas of our fair city. There will be a few ways to show your turf ’s chops, including a chili cook-off and the Battle of the Neighborhood Bands. There will also be a neighborhood showcase, allowing different hoods to present what they have accomplished for their neck of the woods over the last year. Check out the information bazaar, eats from local vendors, and make a stop in the kid’s zone to keep those tots entertained. They’ll even have “The Neighbor Games” — no worries, no human sacrifice involved. See what makes all of Nashville great. 1008 19th Ave. S

YOUR GUILTY PLEASURES

THE RECLAMATION

6 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 29, Track One

Fashion, food, art, AND throwback tunes. Guilty Pleasures may be serving up classics from the 80’s, but don’t worry, the evening’s designers will be sourcing inspiration from this century. The Reclamation is a co-benefit for Goodwill Industries of Middle Tennessee and Nashville Fashion Alliance. A dozen of Nashville’s fashion designers have stitched up accessories and garments repurposed from Goodwill finds. Local artists will have their work on display and some of the city’s best chefs will whip up a dinner sourced from regional vendors. Grab your tickets in advance and indulge that guilty pleasure. 1211 4th Ave. S.

PICKIN’ ON OVER

Amqui Station Pickin’ Party

6 p.m., Friday, Sept. 30, Historic Amqui Station

Pickers and grinners, head down Gallatin for Historic Amqui Station’s Pickin’ Party. Bluegrass grinners, roots pickers, Americana players are all invited to jam on the station’s lawn. Three bands will perform on the station’s stage. Funds raised will go toward education programs and operations at the historic railroad station. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the gate, and half price for pickers. 303 Madison St.

now leasing 1 & 2 bedroom apartments in east nashville

www.stacksonmain.com

A LITTLE PLACE WE CAN GET TOGETHER All For Paul: A Memorial Benefit Hosted by Fred Schneider of The B-52s

3-9 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 1, The Basement East

The Basement East is turning into a Love Shack this October for a fundraiser for the family of the late Paul Gordon, former B-52. Fred Schneider, front man of The B-52s, is hosting the event. You can expect DJ sets from Schneider and acoustic shows from many of Gordon’s friends here in Nashville. Supporters will get the chance to check out several singer-songwriters, including NBC’s The Voice Season 8 contestants Meghan Linsey and Sarah Potenza, country-certified platinum recording artist Lila McCann, and Tyler Davis. They will also have a rock star themed silent and online auction. Funds raised through All For Paul will be distributed to the Gordon family through the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, a nonprofit investment trust that provides financial assistance to professional musicians in time of need. Hurry up and bring your jukebox money. 917 Woodland St.

GO, GO GEOLOGY WITH MR. BOND

Wild World of Science Fall Camps

Oct 3-7, Eastwood Christian Church

This camp from East Nashville’s own Bill Nye of sorts will explore geology for kiddos ages 5 to 12. Kids will pan for gold, see the way pollution works, dig for dinos, and fashion their own T-Rex tooth. The hands-on experience will present the natural world in a more interesting way than staring at those September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

107

EAST SIDE CALENDAR science textbooks. Check Mr. Bond and the Science Guys’ website to register and learn more about the camps. 1601 Eastland Ave.

CHANGE THOSE DIAPERS

Smile, Mommy! Diaper Service’s Warehouse Sale

9 a.m.-12 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 15-16, behind Spot’s Pet Supply

Diaper doers Smile, Mommy! are having a warehouse sale for all the mamas and papas out there. According to Smile, Mommy! HQ, it’s their biggest sale yet. They’ll be slinging cloth diapers of all shapes and sizes, diaper covers, wet bags, cloth wipes, onesies, and more. Shake what your mama gave you on over to this sale, located at the back of Spot’s Pet Supply. 1013 Gallatin Ave.

URBAN GREEN WITH GAMES AND GOOD BREWS Hops & Hoopla

Sunday, Oct. 23, Blackstone Brewing Company

Support Nashville’s sustainability education nonprofit Urban Green Lab with local brews and games at Blackstone Brewing. Help break in their new taproom with a healthy helping of hops and yard games. Keep your ears open for more details on this fundraising event. 2312 Clifton Ave.

108

MAS TEQUILA POR FAVOR

TRICK OR TREAT

6-9 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 28, The Pavilion East

4-6 p.m., Monday, Oct. 31, Historic Amqui Station

Day of the Dead Festival

The spirit of tequila is alive and well in East Nashville. Pavilion East is hosting another Dia de Los Muertos celebration. You can expect good tunes, bites from Local Taco, painted faces, piñata busting, salsa dancing, and most importantly, tequila. A ticket gets you 15 samples of tequila and free range of the salsa bar. Ticket proceeds will benefit Fannie Battle Day Home for Children, so cheers to the cause. Ándale! 1006 Fatherland St.

HOPS GALORE

6th Annual Nashville Beer Fest

3-8 p.m., Saturday, Oct.22, Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum

We are sad to see it go, but they haven’t gone too far. This year’s festival has moved from East Park, and now it will take place at the Musicians Hall of Fame. The move means festival patrons have all access to the interactive Grammy Museum Gallery inside the museum. On-site at this year’s annual festival there will be over 100 craft beers, spirits, and wine from national and regional purveyors. Eats, games, contests, and giveaways will keep you fed and entertained. Tickets have sold out every year, so early bird gets the worm on this one. Tickets are on sale for $55, which will get you unlimited tastings and a souvenir sample glass. They also offer discounted $20 tickets to all designated drivers. 401 Gay St.

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Trick or Treat at the Booseum!

No thrills for this one: Amqui is hosting a safe (not scary) Halloween party for children 10 and under. They’ll have creepy treats and tricky crafts. Sport your best costumes and bring the little ones out for this familyfriendly event. 303 Madison St.

•

UPCOMING

ART EXHIBITS DON’T FORGET TO STUMBLE ON East Side Art Stumble

6-10 p.m., second Saturday of every month, multiple East Nashville galleries

We don’t art crawl on the East Side, we art stumble. Every month, local galleries and studios will open their doors after hours to showcase some of the fabulous work they have gracing their walls. You can expect to see a diverse, eclectic mix of art, affording the opportunity to meet local artists and support their work. Local retail stores are stumbling in as well, with some businesses participating in a “happy hour” from 5-7 p.m., offering

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

109

EAST SIDE CALENDAR

discounted prices on their merchandise to fellow stumblers. Be sure to check out the happy hour deals in The Idea Hatchery.

Red Arrow Art Gallery

Distraction Theater Company “The Shape of Things” by Neil LaBute

Gallery Luperca

* Temporarily moved to Fond Object 1313 McGavock Pike

Wine & Design

5:30-8:30 p.m., monthly event, date TBD

Dana Oldfather “SUGAR”

Donna Woodley’s “What’s In A Name?” Opening reception 7-10 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 10 Sept. 10- Oct. 8

Betsy Stirratt “Twilight Zone”

•

Shawn Hall, solo show

SHELBY PARK

Performances run Sept. 16-Oct. 1

Sept. 10- Oct. 2

Oct. 8- Nov. 16

Nov. 12- Dec. 4

Wine & Design

5:30-8:30 p.m., monthly event, date TBD

✳

EVENTS & CLASSES “So Long Summer” Hike

5-6 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 21 All ages, registration required

Pumpkin Party!

1-3 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 22 All ages, registration required

RECURRING ANSWER ME THIS Trivia Time!

8 p.m., each week, 3 Crow Bar, Edley’s East, Drifter’s, Edgefield, Lipstick Lounge

East Siders, if you’re one of the sharper tools in the shed (or not, it’s no matter to us), stop by one of the East Side locales to test your wits at trivia. They play a few rounds, with different categories for each question. There might even be some prizes for top scoring teams, but remember: Nobody likes a sore loser. Monday at Drifter’s Tuesday at Edley’s BBQ East, Edgefield Sports Bar and Grill, and Lipstick Lounge, (7:30 p.m.) Thursday at 3 Crow Bar

SING US A SONG

M.A.S.S. (Mutual Admiration Society of Songwriters)

7-10 p.m., every other Sunday, Mad Donna’s

Join Mad Donna’s for their night dedicated to all you songwriters out there (which is most of Nashville, right?). The first half of the night is dedicated to a singer/songwriter set, with an open mic at the end of the night. Check out the sweet drink specials, too. 1313 Woodland St.

EAST ROOM HAS JOKES

Spiffy Squirrel Sundays

6 p.m., Sundays, The East Room

The East Room is making a name for itself in Nashville’s comedy scene in part through Spiffy Squirrel Sundays, started up by The East Room head honcho Ben Jones through NashvilleStandUp.com. Hosted by local comedian Chad Riden, the shows bring in an array of national and local funny guys and gals, and it’s quickly become one of the best places in town for up-and-coming comics to flex their funny bones. If you’re looking for a laugh, check it out. Five bucks gets you in the door. They usually have some music planned for post-laughs, so stick around to see the bands. 2412 Gallatin Ave.

• 110

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

111

EAST SIDE CALENDAR

BRING IT TO THE TABLE

Community Hour at Lockeland Table

4-6 p.m., Monday through Friday, Lockeland Table

Sundays at DancEast: 2-3 p.m., 7-12 yrs.; 3-4 p.m., teen/adult Mondays at Eastwood Christian Church: 5-6 p.m., all ages

Lockeland Table is cooking up family-friendly afternoons to help you break out of the house or away from that desk for a couple of hours. Throughout the week, they host a community happy hour that includes a special snack and drink menu, as well as a menu just for the kiddies. A portion of all proceeds benefits Lockeland Design Center PTO, so you can feel good about giving back to your neighborhood while schmoozing with your fellow East Nashvillians. 1520 Woodland St., 615.228.4864

You’re never too young — or too old — to kick out the Gaelic jams with some Irish Step dancing. No experience, or partner, required. Just you, some enthusiasm, and a heart of gold will have you dancing in the clover before you can say “leprechaun.” DancEast 805 Woodland St. Suite 315 Eastwood Christian Church Fellowship Hall 1601 Eastland Ave. 615.300.4388

SHAKE A LEG

TELL ME A STORY

Keep On Movin’

10 p.m. until close, Mondays, The 5 Spot

For those looking to hit the dance floor on Monday nights, The 5 Spot’s “Keep on Movin’” dance party is the place to be. This shindig keeps it real with old-school soul, funk, and R&B. Don’t worry, you won’t hear Ke$ha — although you might see her — and you can leave your Apple Bottom jeans at home. If you have two left feet, then snag a seat at the bar. They have two-for-one drink specials, so you can use the money you save on a cover to fill your cup. 1006 Forrest Ave., 615.650.9333

•

112

RINC, Y’ALL

Scott-Ellis School of Irish Dance

East Side Storytellin’

7 p.m., the first and third Tuesdays, The Post

Looking for something to get your creative juices flowing? They’ve partnered with WAMB radio to present an all-out affair with book readings, musical performances, and author/ musician interviews in just one evening. Look for this event twice each month. If you want some adult beverages, feel free to BYOB. Check the website to see who the guests of honor will be for each performance. The event is free, but you may want to reserve a spot by calling East Side Story ahead of time. 1701 Fatherland St. Suite A. 615.915.1808 (East Side Story).

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

DRAG B-I-N-G-O WAS HER NAME-O Drag Bingo

8-11 p.m., Tuesdays, Mad Donna’s

Drop by Mad Donna’s Loft for the rotating cast of Drag Bingo-callin’ queens. Each week, they’ll have prizes for the first to get to B-I-N-G-O, plus drink specials. They’re calling your name — and possibly your number/letter combo. 1313 Woodland St.

NO LAUGH TRACK NEEDED

Ultimate Comedy Show by Corporate Juggernaut

8:30 p.m., Tuesdays, The East Room

Local jokesters have taken up residency in The East Room for Corporate Juggernaut, a weekly series of open-mic comedy shows put on by Gary Fletcher, Jane Borden, and Brandon Jazz. Brad Edwards is your host and his backing band is The Grey Grays. You can always expect to see fresh material and new talent. Doors and sign-up are at 8 p.m. Get out and help support Nashville’s growing comedy scene. 2412 Gallatin Ave.

FEEL THE BLUES

Blues Power Happy Hour

5-7 p.m. Wednesdays, The Pub at The Basement East

Beast Pub has a serious case of the blues on Wednesdays. Every week they’ll have local

EAST SIDE CALENDAR

musician Patrick Sweany in the DJ booth. When Sweany is on the road, they’ll have guest DJs bringing you some deep cuts. And what better way to cure the blues than drink specials from Mississippi’s Cathead Vodka and East Tennessee’s Yee Haw Brewing? Beat the Blues at The Beast. 917 Woodland Ave.

FLYING STAND-UP Flying with Jaybird

7:30 p.m., third Wednesday of every month, Mad Donna’s

Another evening of stand-up takes off the third Wednesday of every month, hosted by local comedian Mary Jay Berger. You can expect to see a fresh lineup each month full of local and national funny dudes and dudettes. Laughs with just a $5 price tag. 1313 Woodland Ave.

ART IS FOR EVERYONE

WALK, EAT, REPEAT

HONESTLY, OFFICER ...

1:30 p.m., Thursdays 11 a.m., Fridays and Saturdays 5 Points

11 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Thursdays, Beyond the Edge

Walk Eat Nashville

What better way to indulge in the plethora of East Nashville eateries than a walking tour through the tastiest stops? Walk Eat Nashville tours stroll through East Nashville, kicking off in 5 Points, with six tasting stops over three hours. You will walk about 1.5 miles, so you’ll burn some of those calories you’re consuming in the process. This tour offers the chance to interact with the people and places crafting Nashville’s culinary scene. You even get a little history lesson along the way, learning about landmarks and lore on the Eastside. Sign up for your tour online. Corner of 11th and Woodland Streets

PALAVER RECORDS POWWOW

John Cannon Fine Art classes

Palaver Thursday Showcase

If you’ve been filling in coloring-book pages for years, but you’re too intimidated to put actual paint to canvas, it might be time to give it a try. Local artist John Cannon teaches intimate art classes at The Idea Hatchery, and the small class size keeps the sessions low-pressure and allows for some one-on-one instruction. If you’re feeling like you could be the next Matisse with a little guidance, sign yourself up. 1108C Woodland St., 615-496-1259

Looking to hear some fresh new tunes without paying a pretty penny to do it? Head over to fooBAR on Thursday nights — East Nastybased record label Palaver Records hosts a weekly showcase to promote both local and traveling acts. It gives them a chance to scout performers, bands an opportunity to promote themselves, and music lovers a cheap show to catch during the week (only $5 at the door). You can see an array of different genres from week to week, and the beer always flows easy at foo Too with $3 Yazoo drafts. 2511 Gallatin Road

6-8 p.m., Wednesdays, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-4 p.m., Saturdays, The Idea Hatchery

9 p.m., Thursdays, fooBAR Too

East Nashville Crime Prevention Meeting

Join your neighbors to talk about crime stats, trends, and various other issues with East Precinct commander David Imhof and head of investigation Lt. Greg Blair. If you are new to the East Side, get up to speed on criminal activity in the area. If you are a recent victim of crime, they want to hear your story. 112 S. 11th St., 615.226.3343

ROCKIN’ AT THE SPOT Tim Carroll’s Friday Night Happy Hour

6-8:30, Fridays, 5 Spot

Your local watering hole has rocker Tim Carroll’s band playing their way through happy hour every Friday. It’s a great Spot to grab a beer and hear some tunes to kick off the weekend — drinks are discounted and the music is free. 1006 Forrest Ave., 615.650.9333

CAN’T FORCE A DANCE PARTY Queer Dance Party

9 p.m.-3 a.m., third Friday of every month, The 5 Spot

On any given month, the QDP is a mixed bag of fashionably clad attendees (some in the occasional costume) dancing till they can’t dance no mo’ at The 5 Spot, which was

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

113

EAST SIDE CALENDAR

coincidentally named the second-best place to dance in Nashville. Help pack out the cozy club, shake a leg, slurp down some of the drink specials, and let your true colors show. 1006 Forrest Ave.

•

THERE’S A FIRST TIME CALL IT DIVINE SONGWRITING

Divine Art Café’s Songwriter’s Round in the Fireplace and Brunch

Every Saturday gather round the fire with the toffee gurus at Divine Art Café. The Café serves up their brunch, smoothies, coffee, AND toffee for the afternoon while East Nashville songwriter David Llewellyn hosts special musical guests each week. Take your brunch will a side of music. 604 Gallatin Ave. St. 109.

11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturdays, Divine Art Café

SAY YES TO IMPROV Yes and Improv

7 p.m., second Saturday of every month, Mad Donna’s

The crew of Yes and Improv are sticking to their guns about true improv. They go into each performance blindly, only knowing what stage their supposed to show up on. Their set consists of short form games that last 4-5 minutes, which are fueled entirely by audience suggestions. We think that opens the door to some pretty hilarious possibilities. Show up early for a good seat and throw back some of those 2-4-1’s. 1313 Woodland St.

POETS WHO KNOW IT Poetry in the Brew

5:30 p.m. Second Saturday of every month, Portland Brew

Wordsmiths out there: East Nashville’s own open mic poetry night goes down at Portland Brew once a month. A poet is featured every month, with a chance to promote their work and read for 15 minutes — all the other poets get five minutes live. Arrive early because this poetry powwow fills up fast and there is limited seating. Sign-up for the open mic begins at 5:30, with reading starting at 6 p.m. 1921 Eastland Ave.

NEIGHBORHOOD MEETINGS & EVENTS MONTESSORI EAST ADMISSIONS TOUR

4 p.m., Sept. 13 and Oct. 11 Admissions tour for parents. 12 months through 6 th grade. 801 Porter Road monteastnash.com

114

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

EAST SIDE CALENDAR

LOCKELAND SPRINGS NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

6:30 p.m., second Monday of each month Quarterly meetings are held at Mad Donna’s Locations vary, visit lockelandsprings.com for more information.

SHELBY HILLS NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

6:30 p.m., third Monday of every odd numbered month, Shelby Community Center 401 S. 20th St. shelbyhills.org

MAXWELL HEIGHTS NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

6 p.m., second Monday of every month Metro Police East Precinct 936 E. Trinity Lane

EASTWOOD NEIGHBORS

6:30 p.m., second Tuesday of every month, Eastwood Christian Church 1601 Eastland Ave., Odd Month Happy Hour: Sept. 8, 5:30 p.m. @ Eastland Cafe eastwoodneighbors.org

GREENWOOD NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

6 p.m., second Tuesday of every month, House on the Hill 909 Manila St. greenwoodneighbors.org

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIAITON

6 p.m., third Thursday of every month Kipp Academy 123 Douglas Ave.

EAST NASHVILLE CAUCUS

6 p.m., quarterly meetings on Wednesday July 6, Oct. 5 Metro Police East Precinct The East Nashville Caucus provides a public

forum for East Nashville community leaders, representatives, council members, and neighbors. 936 E. Trinity Lane

CHAMBER EAST

8:15-9:30 a.m., first Wednesday of every month, location changes monthly The Chamber East meets every month for a networking coffee to discuss community updates and how to grow and improve the East Nashville area. nashvillechamber.com/calendar

EAST HILL NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION 6:30 p.m., second Wednesday of every month Metro Police Precinct East 936 E. Trinity Lane

CLEVELAND PARK NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

6:30 p.m., second Thursday of every month, Cleveland Park Community Center 610 N. Sixth St. facebook.com/groups/ClevelandPark

INGLEWOOD NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

7 p.m., first Thursday of every month, Isaac Litton Alumni Center 4500 Gallatin Road inglewoodrna.org

MCFERRIN NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

6:30 p.m., first Thursday of every month, McFerrin Park Community Center 301 Berry St.

collaboration with neighborhood associations and city government. Check the association’s website to learn about the organization and where meetings will be held each month. eastnashville.org

DICKERSON ROAD MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION 4 p.m., last Thursday of every month, Metro Police East Precinct 936 E. Trinity Lane dickersonroadmerchants.com

MOMS Club of East Nashville

10 a.m., first Friday of every month, location varies by group MOMS (Moms Offering Moms Support) Club is an international organization of mothers with four branches in the East Nashville area. It provides a support network for mothers to connect with other EN mothers. The meetings are open to all mothers in the designated area. Meetings host speakers, cover regular business items of the organization including upcoming service initiatives and activities, and also allow women to discuss the ins and outs, ups and downs of being a mother. Check their website for the MOMS group in your area. momsclubeast.blogspot.com

ﬁn. • Would you like to have something included in our East Side Calendar? Please let us know — we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at calendar@theeastnashvillian.com For club listings and other events visit our Do615-powered calender online at theastnashvillian.com

ROSEBANK NEIGHBORS

6:30 p.m., third Thursday of every month, Memorial Lutheran Church 1211 Riverside Drive

HENMA

6-8 p.m., second Tuesday of every month, location varies HENMA is a cooperative formed among East Nashville business owners to promote September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

115

116

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Cowboy Keith Thompson CONTINUED FROM 45

homey and casual feel to every session. “We get there in the morning and he’s got coffee and kolache from Yeast Nashville,” Haggerty says. “Everyone looks forward to catching up with each other. We’re laughing and having a good time, then everybody sits down and we just do it. It’s really cool music, and we all just want to make it great.” The combination of experienced, topnotch musicians, a tight focus on the music, and a welcoming atmosphere has made the Inglehood sessions a special and fulfilling experience that is reflected in the music. “The first record was cut in two days,” Thompson says. “We spent another two days overdubbing vocals and boom! We were done. Now we’re cutting a record in one day. Charlie McCoy cut his whole record in six hours. I mix and tweak things as I go. It’s fun to watch and exciting to be able to make records this way. I definitely steer the ship but I try not to put constraints on people. I let people stretch out and do their thing. The reason they’re here is because they’re the right musician for the job. I foot the bill for everything. No one does it for free, everyone gets paid. The artist gets a hundred copies to start and they don’t pay for anything. I’m making fives of dollars, but it’s a lot of fun.”

Beyond the pure joy of recording great music with great musicians, Thompson also sees Inglehood as a way to shine the spotlight on the neighborhood that welcomed him almost 20 years ago. “I just want people to be aware of the quality of musicians that live in this neighborhood,” Thompson says. “There is a 10-piece horn section on Charlie McCoy’s record and all of them live within three blocks of me. The core of this community and what made East Nashville a cool neighborhood are these musicians and people like them. Many of them have lived here 20 years or more. They are the foundation and fabric of East Nashville, and I just want people to hear what we’re doing. “People ask me how East Nashville has changed, and for me, it hasn’t. I’m still seeing my friends and making music with them. I made this neighborhood my home. This is where I got married (and divorced). It’s where I’m raising my kid. It’s become home and it’s important to me. The neighborhood’s success has changed a lot of the landscape, but I see things like Moe Sweeny hanging on to his place in 5 Points (The Performing Artist Co-Op aka the ‘Purple Building’) and I see The 5 Spot returning to its roots with

great residency shows early in the evening and it shows the old guard is still here and we still contribute.” For Thompson, that sense of community, of working with neighbors to build something bigger, better, different, or unique is the true heart of East Nashville-ness and something that he’s tried to manifest in each Inglehood Records release. “What made East Nashville great is that everybody is welcome,” he says. “Everybody can come, but you need to bring something to the party, don’t just come and graze on the food and beer that other people brought. For me Inglehood Records is about showing the integrity, talent, and history of the music that is born out of East Nashville, from when the A-list Music Row people lived here until now. People rallied together and made something great, and we can still do that.”

in practical application, like registering voters at the street level. It’s his comfort zone. He ultimately landed here because he feels like this is where he is meant to be, and like many of the artists today who operate outside the Nashville mainstream, Easton finds himself facing the machine — once again. He has looked for common ground and come to terms with it. “The Bluebird gave me a gig where I’ve curated about four shows a year, and super proud of all that,” he says. “Of course, it was left-of-center, and some of the tourists might not have liked it all and had different ideas. But there have been some great nights of [showcasing the] songwriting. “And I’ve been there, and some of the [Music Row] Nashville songwriters have totally blown me away with their professionalism and attention to detail. You know, I bet there was a time when Hank walked into a room and Fred Rose or Roy Acuff said, ‘I don’t know, Hank — that might be over the line. I don’t know if we can talk about that.’ Now we’re going through some change again. I look at the songwriters who are doing it for me now — Darrin Bradbury, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Robert Ellis, Erin Rae — it’s an amazing time.” And Easton intends to shake the tree for years to come. He remembers the day he dis-

covered himself. “I wrote some poems and got good marks in school, so my brother, who loved Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt, told me if you write poetry and play guitar, you can write songs,” he says. “I remember the moment. I remember where I was standing. I wrote my first song that day. I’m pretty sure it was a John Lennon ripoff. There was a political, teenaged angst to it. Lennon will do that to you. World-changing thoughts from Lennon. He’s the original punk rocker for me.” Easton contemplates the future of music, and the landscape in which so many young artists and songwriters labor. And in true activist fashion, he wants to believe, and gives his charge. “Don’t create for the gatekeeper,” he says. “Do your thing regardless and let the gatekeepers come to you. The music business more or less shut its doors on me. Let’s just say it tolerates me, but I never let that stop me from writing songs or making albums. I’m already working on the next one, and thinking about the one after that.”

Inglehood Records will release Charlie McCoy’s album of Henry Mancini songs concurrently with our 2016 Music Issue street date. The album will be available on iTunes Friday, Sept. 16 For more info visit: inglehoodrecords.squarespace.com

Tim Easton CONTINUED FROM 53

hitchhiking all around. I couldn’t hitchhike around the states at that time, so I went over to Europe where it was accepted. “I was on the Charles Bridge in Prague after the Berlin Wall came down, and that’s when I felt I had written some songs that were worth committing to tape. I made my first recordings over there in Prague with a Polish guy. He had a 4-track in his apartment. I recorded a couple of my songs and definitely did some Doc Watson. He’s been there all my life — and I was using that American template. John Prine. Kristofferson. The greats. It’s great to be on the planet at the same time as those guys, to inform our thing. “And walking the planet has been a big part of my creativity,” he continues. “I went over there to exercise the writing muscle and the performing muscle. Life was really good and easy at the time. I didn’t fret too much about where I was staying. I was doing the Bohemian couch-surfing time of my life. Sometimes I slept in the park. Sometimes I slept in penthouses.” After cutting his first solo U.S. album, Special 20, in 1997, he got his real break and signed a record deal with New West Records. His The Truth About Us led to a national tour with John Hiatt and Cowboy Junkies. Along the way, Easton has tried to make activism a part of his life, whether through his music or

Tim Easton’s latest release, American Fork, is available now on Last Chance Records. lastchancerecords.com He plays The 5 Spot at midnight, Sept. 21, as part of AmericanaFest.

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

117

PaShun Music Branch CONTINUED FROM 67

vided a free platform for producers, HipHop artists, and freestyling performers at places like The Building in 5 Points, Eighth and Wedgewood, Two Boots pizza shop, and Island Vibes in Antioch. “We’re not the first to do this, but East Nashville right now has some of the top heavy hitters in Hip-Hop,” Hood says. “L

118

Roy da Boy been rappin’ since the early 2000s and people are finally starting to recognize. It’s starting to really come to life, especially in East Nashville right now.” Still, it’s been difficult for Hip-Hop artists like the PMB crew to emerge from underneath the singer/songwriter heap that often clutters Music City. “There’s more to Music

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

City than rap,” Hood says. “It’s not country city, it’s Music City, and I just want to bring more light to more music. You can’t be Music City and only be recognized for just country. It’s all music.” But Hood doesn’t simply want to shine a light on Nashville’s Hip-Hop community — he wants it to become a center of gravity for the genre. He wants to see it grow here, thrive here, and be rooted here. He wants to see Nashville’s music scene transform as much as its rapidly growing skyline. “A lot of rappers will start to make it here and they leave for Atlanta,” Hood says. “Atlanta is overly saturated. If every Hip-Hop artist thinks, ‘I’ve got to move to Atlanta’ — well, you’re goin’ there along with 400 other people thinkin’ the same thing.” One of the biggest challenges for the group has been finding a venue to showcase their work along with the work of other local Hip-Hop artists. While their goal is to keep the music in Nashville, oftentimes PMB travels to Smyrna and even as far as Atlanta for showcases. The group’s next show takes place at the Hip-Hop event A3C Music Festival & Conference in Atlanta, which runs from Oct. 5-9. A3C, which stands for All 3 Coasts, will include more than 75 shows and events featuring more than 1,500 performing artists. Still, the challenges of bringing Hip-Hop to the forefront in Nashville push PMB to work harder, Kyd says. “I feel like as an underground artist you need to be told ‘no’ because if you’re not an underground artist who’s being told ‘no,’ then you don’t know your limits,” he says. “We’re not in it for the money, we’re not in it for the recognition, we’re in it for the passion.” Passion is the essence of PMB, and Hood hopes he can help the group’s younger artists funnel that passion into a clear direction. “I want to take something that people consider underground that live by it and swear by,” he says. “Rapping is what they do, so that passion should be brought to the forefront.” “Our whole thing is to bring attention to Hip-Hop. People move here and say, ‘I ain’t never seen a show going on anywhere around here.’ It’s hard to get that out to the right audience. But that’s what we tryin’ to do. We went to South by Southwest and wore shirts that said, ‘Nashville Has Hip-Hop’ and people are like ‘Where? Where is it?’ So we want to bring attention to that.” As the sun sets, its light filters through the stained-glass windows of House of David while the group gathers in the parking lot and talks about the tracks they laid down in the historic Music Row studio where country legends also recorded. “Don’t get it twisted, we respect what they’ve done, for sure,” Hood says. “But we the change that we want to see. We goin’ to be puttin’ the spotlight on this.”

3rd Power CONTINUED FROM 71

mimosas

. C O N S N A

NOW SERVING

Andrija Tokic

DAILY

CONTINUED FROM 75

A’s live room; vintage Neve modules; a UA 175 (one of Universal Audio’s rarest, most sought after, and beefiest analog compressors); a ’30s-era Hammond organ, as well as Wurlitzers, Leslies, and a Farfisa; a Baldwin grand piano and a Steinway upright; heaps of old basses, drums, and amps including a ’59 Danelectro Challenger; and plenty of vintage guitars hanging on the walls. He finished constructing the second studio, which is detached from and behind the main building, in late 2014, so that multiple projects could be going on at once. His “partners in crime,” John Estes and Ed DuQuesne (hoping to fill the role played by Billy Bennett — who recently had to bow out due to personal reasons) and Ben Trimble (of ATO Records’ Fly Golden Eagle), keep The Shelter buzzing while Tokic is away on business, which is now pretty frequent. “The majority of the projects coming to me are from out of the country,” Tokic says. “You attract similar things with your work, so people who like the sound we have here will fly me out to have it on their records.

2 for 1

portable American combo amplifiers (meaning the amplifier and speaker are in the same cabinet) from the 1950s and ’60s. The Wooly Coats amps have become an immediate hit, and can be frequently spotted in East Nashville music venues being played by the likes of Jim Oblon and Derek Hoke. You may have also spotted them at Eastside Music Supply, the exclusive Nashville dealer for the amp line. The rest of the 3rd Power line, meanwhile, can be found on stages and in studios all over the country. Unlike most amplifier companies, 3rd Power’s website doesn’t list the stars who use the amps — “I want everybody who goes to the website to feel like they are discovering 3rd Power for themselves,” Scott says. But the list of acts using 3rd Power amps is impressive; Besides Kravitz, it includes The Who, Little Big Town, Kenny Chesney, Dierks Bentley, Joe Walsh, Steve Miller, Anderson East, Mona, The Wild Feathers, and Jason Isbell, to name just a few. “We have legends, and really cool, younger bands,” Scott says. “Some of my favorite people to work with are the younger musicians. ... They listen to old records, and that’s how they’re connected with very cool, old-sounding amps. And to make amps that really plug all of that mojo together, it’s flipping them out.”

Nikki, and their two sons — Noah Caden, 14, and Lucas Jagger, 10 — to Nashville. (Yes, Lucas got his middle name from Mick Jagger, at his dad’s request.) Scott sent a prototype to a Nashville musician who was so intrigued by the product that he urged Scott to relocate to Nashville, and even paid for his move, found the Scotts a house in Franklin, and helped start the company. (The Scotts currently live in Brentwood.) 3rd Power’s first amp was the HD100, a high-gain amp (meaning lots of distortion for harder rock sounds). It was part of what Scott called the HLH (Health, Love, Happiness) series. Soon, he was working on amps with names like American Dream, British Dream, and Dream Weaver, which focused on cleaner sounds. For several years he ran the company out of his home. But one day, Jimmy Frech, who runs the custom road case company Mental Case (see sidebar), came by Scott’s house/ shop for a visit. “Jimmy had one of my amps, so he came by,” Scott recalls, “and the dogs are barking, and my house is just taken over by the amp company. After hanging out a bit, Jimmy goes, ‘We’ve got to get you out of here. We’ve got to get you in this new place I’m building.’ So he built this loft in his shop.” Recently, 3rd Power began a new line, called Wooly Coats, based on lighter, more

We’re trying to smake the people, the music, the projects, and the industry better. Wherever I am, I pour my heart and soul into records because this is all about being able to share art with one another. I just want to put as much positivity out into the world as possible.” Sharing art and giving his clients the best possible recording experience is top priority for Tokic. He spent a large amount of the summer in Canada working with various bands and expanding his network of tape-loving artists and producers. When it comes to the future of The Bomb Shelter, he’s more grateful than ambitious. “Man, I’ll just let it run its course,” he says. “It isn’t the final incarnation. It’s a cool thing, and it’ll stick around for a minute, but we’ll always be working on something else along with it. I appreciate studios where you can feel that things are continuously evolving, those studios where you can feel the blood, sweat, and tears in the walls and floors. Those are the kinds of studios that speak to me, and I think they speak to a lot of artists, too.”

BRUNCH TUESDAY-SUNDAY ‘TIL 3pm 1313 Woodland St 615.226.1617

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

119

Cosmic Thug Records CONTINUED FROM 79

cool with licensing the tracks to us since it’s free promotion for the artist. We’ve pressed less than 350 of each one and you can buy them directly from the artists, online at the Cosmic Thug website, or in local record stores. We package all the mail orders ourselves and always include fun stuff like a Cosmic Thug Records Fan Club card or other cool items.”

Next up for the label is a twin blast from Pony Boy and Australian-bred East Nashville sadcore songbird Emma Swift. Also on tap is a Cosmic Thug showcase on Sunday, Sept. 25, at The 5 Spot. The show will feature performances by several Cosmic Thug artists, including Justin and the Cosmics, Adam Landry, Pony Boy, Emma Swift, and a special appearance by

Robyn Hitchcock. “Our goal is to do three or four singles a year and see where it goes,” Collins says. “We’re just trying to nurture it and let it grow at this point. We’re not setting out any big-time dreams or goals. We’ll see what happens. It’s like everything else we do, the vibe and the feel is everything. We try to do more with less. That’s our protocol.” Cosmic Thug Records will host a party Sunday, Sept. 25, at The 5 Spot featuring performances by Robyn Hitchcock, Justin Collins, Pony Boy, Emma Swift, and T Hardy Morris.

Todd Austin CONTINUED FROM 87

have resulted in unexpected payoffs. “Over the years, I’ve became known as the ‘white funk guy,’ he says. “For someone from North Carolina who loved funk to be identified that way in Nashville is a real honor. Because of my so-called credentials, I got asked to join a really great Prince tribute band called Purple Masquerade as the only white guy in the band. We got it all together, got our wheels on the ground, played one gig, and two weeks later Prince died. His death was devastating to me. He was a hero of mine and a huge influence, but now everyone wants to hear us play. We just played a gig in Daytona Beach for 4,000 people, and we’ve got shows booked in Canada and Mexico.” “I never thought I’d be in three bands, but it’s a testament to the landscape of Nashville that you can do that, and make it work,” he continues. “Now I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Very few people can make a living off original music now, but I get to play my own stuff and go out and be a rock star, playing stuff I love for big audiences.” It may sound like an unusual formula for success, but it’s a uniquely Nashville equation that produced results time and again. “I meet people all the time and they say, ‘I came here to play music,’ and I think, ‘OK, be ready to hang out for a while because that’s the key.’ You’ve got to hang with it, meet people, and when your time comes, swing for the lights. The longer you can hang in there, the better shot you have at something finally opening up. I went through the darkest period of my life, but suddenly it’s all opening up for me. To be able to have made a life here, play music here, and have people say, ‘Are you talking about Toddzilla?’ — that’s priceless.” To hear more, visit Toddzilla’s Funkhammer page at: reverbnation.com/toddzillasfunkhammer

120

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

Dualtone CONTINUED FROM 91

and doing publicity or pulling together stuff for a record release.” After a few years, however, Kampa wanted more than the world of bluegrass, but wasn’t quite sure what. Like Roper, she laughs recalling, “I didn’t want to be a promotion person. I wasn’t even sure what all it took. But I found myself in a meeting with Scott who was asking me if anyone had talked to me about the drug policy? And I’m like, ‘Um, okay. ’ And he says, ‘You have to be on a certain amount of drugs to work here,’ and just started laughing.” Evoking Jack Clements’ philosophy — “it’s a fun business; if you’re not having fun, you’re not doing your job right” — Dualtone built a model where you worked hard, but nobody took it so serious they lost their love for music — or the game. And in that, they’ve been able to dig in and outperform the majors. When The Lumineers started evoking a low level hum — less than a buzz, but something A&R types were picking up on — Roper refused to back away. He recalls, “The living room concert was racking up views, people were figuring it out — and it took a long time to get the deal done. They were playing Atlanta and we drove down to see them, and there was a guy from Atlantic Records talking to them before the show. But we just kept showing up.” And in the end, they prevailed. Independently minded themselves, the band with the rapidly ramping clicks, views, and downloads aligned with the little label over the pizza shop. “Ho Hey” was obviously something important, only no one knew just how important. A meeting with Country Music Television’s now SVP of Music Strategy Leslie Fram, a radio programming veteran from Atlanta’s 99X and Manhattan’s WRXP, proved sobering. As Kampa recalls, “Leslie listened, then she leaned across her desk, and asked Scott, ‘It’s a hit. Are you going to be able to deliver this?’ ” Roper nods. He remembers, too. The pressure was on, and that meeting became the gauntlet. There are plenty of songs, they realized, that can have a good run on momentum, but never realize their full potential. Dualtone, who’d quarterbacked The Civil Wars’ promotion drive for “Barton Hollow,” left no stone unturned. Beyond placing the song in Silver Linings Playbook, The X-Files, and Guitar Hero Live, they reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped a number of the magazine’s song charts, including Alternative, Hot Rock, Adult Alternative, Adult Pop, and Adult Contemporary — all for multiple weeks; plus landed at No. 2 on the Pop Songs chart. “Ho Hey” also went to No. 49 on the Country Songs chart without even trying. “When they won Independent Label of the Year,” The Lumineers’ lead singer, Wesley Schultz, says on the phone from Ireland, clearly savoring what he’s about to say, “they had like four employees. It was awesome.” Lifers may well be the reason Dualtone can run on such a short staff. They bring in specialists for “just what we need,” including a campaign

that earned the folk-driven DIY trio not just a Best New Artist and Best Americana Album nomination at the Grammys, but also a coveted performance slot. Just as importantly, The Lumineers, who’d signed a one-off deal, returned for Cleopatra. The follow-up album sold in excess of 100,000 copies its first week and debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s

Top 200 Albums chart. If it was unthinkable the first time, the approaching gold second album suggests Dualtone knows how to make things happen without compromising an indie act’s ethos. But this isn’t the story of a small label, and a big act. For Dualtone, it’s about the roster — and the growth of artists. It’s about relationships, and

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

121

Dualtone

success based on what an artist dreams and where the act starts. For Guy Clark, who recorded four albums for the label, it meant seeing the legendary Texas songwriter finally win his first ever Grammy in 2013 for Best Folk Album for My Favorite Picture of You. After all those nominations, an all-star tribute album winning a Grammy, Clark finally had a Grammy of his own. For Shovels & Rope, the energetic roots rock duo that recorded three albums for the label, it

was going into the Americana Music Awards nominated for Emerging Artist, Duo or Group and Best Song for “Birmingham.” The nominations alone, given how competitive Americana has become, were terrific for the South Carolinabased act; only the pair walked with a pair: Emerging Artist and Song. “There was a party at this house they rented outside town, because they’d had a lot of family and friends come in,” Kampa recalls. “It was a very big deal for them — and us — and it’s all in

the documentary, The Ballad of Shovels and Rope.” “You look at the acts that come in and win two,” Roper continues. “You’re talking Mumford & Sons, The Avett Brothers, Jason Isbell. They all end up going on to great things — and there was our act that we believed in.” Believing. It sounds like a cliché. Yet Dualtone works from that premise. For Robinson, that belief extends to the staff. “We’re seven, eight people and some interns — in a 5,000-squarefoot building,” he says. “We try to utilize the best possible resources all over the globe, to get the right people for the job. “It’s tempting to romanticize all this, but really it’s the people who make it work. My whole team lives in East Nashville, so being here keeps them near their friends and families — and that’s a good thing.” Roper laughs thinking about it all. But in the end, he realizes the esprit de East Nashville permeates everything about Dualtone in a very good way. “Some things we changed — we lost our laundry and the shower when we moved, but sometimes we still have happy hour out in the parking lot. “But more importantly, we can all walk to lunch together, we can walk to work — or ride our bikes. There’s a real community vibe to everything over here, and that’s everything we’ve tried to build with this label. Every act we’ve got, there’s a sense of connection — and many of them share that with each other. “To us, to have that, to watch our bands grow, that’s what Dualtone set out to be and do. And it’s why being in East Nashville is just the right place for us to be.”

Sarah Potenza CONTINUED FROM 99

Here are my crazy clothes. I want to go on stage and give people the whole package and their money’s worth.” By embracing the “monster” within, Potenza has found the sweet spot between being both an artist and performer. It’s been a long road, and although the original quest has been fulfilled, the real journey is just beginning. “I’ve finally found my own voice,” she says. “This is the record that I was trying to make for years. I was finally able to say it in my own words and in my own way. This is the first time I’ve written with the idea of telling stories of my life and experiences straight from my heart and not trying to make them something more or less than what they are. Being a weirdo, being an other-than, having something about you that makes you feel like you don’t fit in, something that makes you feel like a monster is really the most powerful and best part of you, and it’s the thing that people will really love you for.” Sarah Potenza’s latest album Monster is now available on iTunes. She will perform at The 5 Spot Sept.22 at 11 p.m. as part of AmericanaFest, and at The Family Wash Sept. 25 at 2 p.m. for “Sunday School — A Tribute to the Women of Gospel Music.”

122

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

123

marketplace

124

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

marketplace When I say “good,” you say “neighbor.” Bobby Berry, Agent 703 Main Street Nashville, TN 37206 Bus: 615-271-2996 www.bobbyaberry.com P097314.1

Now that's teamwork. CALL FOR A QUOTE 24/7

State Farm Home Office, Bloomington, IL

New Location:

NOW on MAIN STREET Proud to help build great new businesses in our community “You’ve Seen Us Around” powellarchitects.com 615.320.5000

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

125

marketplace

Jupiter

126

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

marketplace

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

127

East of NORMAL TOMMY WOMACK

Leopards, old dogs, and Telecasters

o say my father and I had our moments of contention would be like calling Hitler a rascal. It doesn’t go far enough. Dad was a preacher. On Sunday mornings, he was the funniest, knee-slapping, socially outgoing guy you ever saw. Then he came home, loosened his tie, sat back in his recliner, and barely said a word for the next six days. It was actually better in the house when he wasn’t talking, because that meant he wasn’t yelling. On his birthday, when I was 12 or 13 years old, Dad was in his usual state in the living room, watching a football game on TV, pushed back in the recliner with his interlocked fingers behind his head. I was a little old to be cute but when you’re the baby in the family, you push it. For some reason, we had cupcakes in the house. I found a birthday cake candle and stuck it in a cupcake, lit it with a kitchen match and went into the living room, carrying it in two hands, approaching within 4 feet of Dad while standing just to the side of the television. (You didn’t get between the TV and Dad if the house was on fire.) I don’t remember if I started singing “Happy Birthday” or if I just heard it in my mind. He turned his head from the television to me for a second, maybe two, and then he turned his gaze back at the TV. My next memory is the candle snuffing out in the kitchen wastebasket, a little string of smoke rising up from its resting place among the coffee grounds and egg shells. That one moment made me. And by the age of 16, I’d been yelled at and frozen out by this potted plant of a father for too long and too often. I was angry and depressed that we weren’t the Brady Bunch, weren’t the Waltons, weren’t much of a family at all. One night I was 16 and screaming my head off — a suicidal gesture in that home — and I don’t even remember what it was about. I was in my bedroom, and I threw a chair at my closet door, putting a wellsized hole in the door and not doing the chair any favors either. That got Dad out of the recliner. He came down the hall to my room and said one thing: “Shut it up.” For the first time in my life, I stood up to him. Fists clenched, I hissed, “Why don’t you just try and stop me?” He brusquely retorted, “Son, I’ll take you on even if it puts me in the grave.” (He had a bad heart.) I didn’t hit him. I could have kicked his butt eight ways to Sunday, but I could see the headlines: “Young Healthy Teenager Whips Heart Patient’s Ass.” That wouldn’t have reflected well on me. Years went by with Dad and me doing a dance of détente. And my depression problems got worse instead of better. Girls had a lot to do with it. Christmas college break my junior year was as low as I had ever gotten. I’d been dumped (again) and it had pushed me over the edge for the last time. I pretty much decided that, if this was life, then fuck it — I want out! I’d drive around my hometown endlessly, come home, slouch through the front door and back to my room, put on records and just stand there, in front of the turntable, listening to records. For hours. The night before Christmas Eve, my parents came to my room. I was scaring them, and they didn’t know what to do. I told them this. “Mom, Dad, I’m really sorry, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I really don’t want to live anymore. If this is what life is, I don’t want to go through any more of it.” There was silence. And then Dad spoke. Not Mom, Dad. He put his

arm on my shoulder. (Which had never happened before.) “Son,” he said, “would you mind seeing a psychiatrist if we can find one?” “Uh … sure,” I think I said. They left the room for a little while, I flipped over the Elvis album on the turntable to play the other side, and here came Dad back into my room. He put his hand on my shoulder again, and said, “Son, you know we love you, and we’re here for you; whatever we need to do to help you, we’ll do it.” “Thanks,” I said, thinking, “Who are you and what have you done with Dad? One day soon after, I was on the side of my bed, playing some morose dirge on my guitar with a harmonica holder around my neck, which was a routine thing, trying to be Bob Dylan. Dad came in and said, “Son, I found something you might could use.” Then he sat down on my bed a paper shopping bag from Don’s House of Music. He pulled out five harmonicas, all in different keys. Harmonicas aren’t cheap, and here was the potted plant buying me five. Winter became spring became summer, and the affirmations kept coming. I would hose out the garbage can. Dad would say, “Son, that can hasn’t looked that good in years!” I’d mow the yard and he’d say, “Son, that’s a really good mowin’ job you done there.” They say a leopard can’t change its spots; but here I was, watching it happen. I had a super cheap Kalamazoo electric guitar. The action was awful. I couldn’t play leads on it. One day I came home from Don’s, and sat down in the living room. Dad and Mom were both sitting there watching television. Where you been, son? “I was just down at Don’s. You know the guitar intro to ‘Time is on My Side’?” (Of course they didn’t.) “Well, the electric guitar I have isn’t good enough for me to be able to play it well; but I was just down at Don’s, playing a Telecaster off the rack and played it perfectly. Oh well.” That’s all I said. And then I went back to my room. I wasn’t hinting. I know it sounds like that, but we didn’t have that kind of money. That guitar was just a dream. I thought, maybe I’ll be able to get one someday. I was sitting on my bed reading a Creem magazine, and Dad came in and sat down at the foot of my bed. We small-talked a little bit, which at one point of my life would have been unthinkable. Then he said, “Son, you like that guitar at Don’s?” “Yes,” I said, “I do.” And he said, “What if you had that guitar?” I don’t remember my response. I might not have had one. The next day, Dad took me to Don’s and asked me to pick up the guitar I wanted. I went straight to the wall where hung the cream-colored Telecaster I’d played the day before. We took it up front, and Dad wrote a check for the whole amount. Dad never made more than $200 a week as a preacher, ever, and here he was writing a check for $450 plus tax. I don’t know where or how he got the money, but there he was, writing a check for the full amount. If you ever come to hear me play and spy a beat up cream-colored Telecaster on stage, that’s the guitar, the Telecaster I’ve been playing for 33 years. I once said, ‘Dad, there’s no way to thank you, except to play the heck out of this guitar.’ And I have, from New York to LA to Italy to Texas to dozens of recording studios. And like I’ve alluded to, leopards can change their spots, old dogs can learn new tricks, and I can play the heck out of “Time is on My Side.”

Tommy Womack is a Nashville singer-songwriter, musician, and freelance writer. His new album, NAMASTE, was released on May 20. Keep up with his antics on Facebook and at tommywomack.com. 128

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016

FROM THE RAMONES TO GEORGE JONES.

IT ALL SOUNDS GOOD TO US. September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

129

PARTING SHOT

SISTERHOOD OF THE DEAD DEADS Urban Cowboy BnB August 2016 Photograph by John Partipilo 130

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016 2016

September | October 2016 THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM

131

132

THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM September | October 2016