Nashville Scene 10-6-22

THE PREDATORS WIN BACK

Spine-Tingling

Next week, hundreds of authors will gather in downtown Nashville for the 34th annual Southern Festival of Books

CITY LIMITS

Heidi Campbell Tries to Make Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District Purple 6

The Nashville Democrat has gone on offense, trying to turn her race against Republican Andy Ogles into a coin toss

BY ELI MOTYCKA

Constitutional Amendment Breakdown 6

From right-to-work to the gubernatorial line of succession, here’s a look at the amendments appearing on the Nov. 8 ballot

BY CONNOR DARYANI

Can the Predators Win Back Their Disillusioned Fan Base? 7

The team’s roster looks better than it did a few months ago, thanks to some savvy offseason moves

BY ADAM VINGAN

Pith in the Wind 7

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog Roll Models 8

Meet the fierce youngsters of Nashville Junior Roller Derby

BY LENA MAZEL

11COVER STORY

Spine-Tingling

Next week, hundreds of authors will gather in downtown Nashville for the 34th annual Southern Festival of Books

Bringing People Into the Room 12 Francesca T. Royster’s Black Country Music challenges boundaries

BY MARIA BROWNING AND CHAPTER16.ORG

When Home Is a Place You’ve Fled ....... 12

Casey Parks examines her own life through a mysterious figure from the past

BY EMILY CHOATE AND CHAPTER16.ORG

A Tender, Honest Narrative .................... 14

Tara Stringfellow’s debut novel Memphis weaves a family’s complex stories

BY SARA BETH WEST AND CHAPTER16.ORG

The Spirit of ’76 ...................................... 14 Andrew Maraniss tells the story of a pioneering women’s basketball team

BY SEAN KINCH AND CHAPTER16.ORG Southbound ............................................. 16

Imani Perry explores the South’s centrality to the American story

BY KIM GREEN AND CHAPTER16.ORG

Reckoning as an Act of Love ................. 16

Emily Bingham exposes the tortuous white supremacist history behind a familiar song

BY PETER KURYLA AND CHAPTER16.ORG

The Bucket List........................................ 18

In Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s The Evening Hero, a retired doctor confronts his long-buried past

BY SEAN KINCH AND CHAPTER16.ORG

When It All Falls Down ............................ 18

Toya Wolfe’s debut novel depicts girlhood friendship in a doomed housing project

BY JACQUELINE ZEISLOFT AND CHAPTER16.ORG

Shadowlands 20

Patrick Radden Keefe’s Rogues draws back the curtain on secret worlds

BY KIM GREEN AND CHAPTER16.ORG

The Right to Decide 20

Take My Hand considers a terrible injustice fueled by prejudice and good intentions

BY SARA BETH WEST AND CHAPTER16.ORG

23CRITICS’ PICKS

Father John Misty, Nashville Ballet Presents Cinderella, 2’Live Bre, The Lipstick Lounge’s 20th Anniversary Block Party, Smashing Pumpkins and Jane’s Addiction and more

33

FOOD AND DRINK

A Budding Empire

Entrepreneur Mike Solomon is building his cannabis business from the dirt to the dinner table

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

37

MUSIC

Cold Pizza on the Steps of the Parthenon 37

Jonathan Richman returns to Nashville

BY SEAN L. MALONEY

Cloud Control: D Tour Lays Out a New Path for Independent Touring Artists ................... 38

Talking with Exit/In’s Chris Cobb, a co-founder of the nationwide independent venue network

BY D’LLISHA DAVIS

The Spin ................................................... 40

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Chris Hillman, Rosie Flores and more at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

BY EDD HURT

FILM

Primal Stream 82 ................................... 42

A sardonic crime mystery, demons and Dixie Carter, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

’Dam It All ................................................ 43

Amsterdam is a star-studded, dazzling, convoluted mess

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

CROSSWORD

ON THE COVER: Illustration by Nossi College of Art student Abby Stout (Stout Illustrations)

Because Nashville is so much more than honky-tonks and bachelorettes...

PET OF THE WEEK!

HI FRIENDS! MY NAME IS LIL BUG!

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Seriously, my most favorite thing in the whole world is cuddling! I also like dogs and other cats, so I would fit purrfectly in ANY new home! It’s true. I’m the most friendliest kitten! If I sound like I could be your special guy, reach out to NHA so we may meet!

Call 615.352.1010 or visit nashvillehumane.org Located at 213 Oceola Ave., Nashville, TN 37209 Adopt. Bark. Meow. Microchip. Neuter. Spay.

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In memory of Jim Ridley, editor 2009-2016

HEIDI CAMPBELL TRIES TO MAKE TENNESSEE’S 5TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT PURPLE

BY ELI MOTYCKA

When the state leg islature redrew Tennessee’s U.S. congressional dis tricts early this year, Nashville got cracked. It looked like a safe gamble for the state’s Re publican supermajority: Lawmakers split the city’s longtime Democratic seat into three — redrawing the lines of the 5th, 6th and 7th districts — and diluting the electoral power of the city’s left-leaning constituency.

Nashville’s historic seat, Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, now bears very little resemblance to its former self. It combines slices of Davidson, Wilson and Williamson counties, as well as Marshall, Lewis and Maury to the south. Along with packing and stacking, cracking is Gerrymandering 101 — all ways to draw boundaries that em phasize or dilute partisan voting power. The state’s efforts turned Nashville’s safe Demo cratic district, held for two decades by nowretiring Democrat Jim Cooper, into parts of three districts with double-digit margins for Republicans.

Things have changed in nine months. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, leaked in May and decided in June, gutted protections for reproductive rights and precipitated chaos in an already dysfunctional health care system. Republicans have targeted the FBI, the IRS and, more recently, Social Se

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BREAKDOWN

From right-to-work to the gubernatorial line of succession, here’s a look at the amendments appearing on the Nov. 8 ballot

BY CONNOR DARYANI

Tennesseans will have the opportunity to vote on four amendments to the state constitution in the coming midterm election. The amend ments have already passed through the state legislature, so a vote from the public will be their final test. Ranging from language clarifications to codifica tion of controversial so-called right-to-work laws, here’s what’s coming up on the ballot.

Early voting in Davidson County will take place from Oct. 19 until Nov. 3, with Election Day landing on Nov. 8. Find more information — including a list of earlyvoting locations — via nashville.gov.

curity, for budget cuts. On the national level, remaining party planks have been largely replaced by a string of absurd stunts and talking points increasingly divorced from reality — from panics about rainbow fen tanyl to targeting transgender health care to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis luring immigrants onto a plane bound for Martha’s Vineyard.

President Joe Biden has become slightly less unpopular, notching a few term-defining accomplishments with the Inflation Reduc tion Act and student loan forgiveness. Armed with clear material for campaign offense and defense, Democrats are finally learn ing how to message to a demographic that is disproportionately older and female — the ideal context for a moderate candidate to win moderate voters in a suburban district.

Against this backdrop, Tennessee’s new 5th Congressional District has become a little bit competitive. Instead of climbing a mountain, the Democratic candidate, state Sen. Heidi Campbell, may just be climb ing a hill as she faces off against far-right Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles. Or a slightly smaller mountain. Estimating voting numbers for a brand-new district requires even more conjecture than usual, and every county in the redrawn district went to Trump in 2020 by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, with the ex ception of Davidson. But a few interesting developments — namely Ogles’ dogmatic views on abortion — have cleared a narrow

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 1

With backing from Gov. Bill Lee, the first amendment on the ballot aims to codify Tennessee’s right-to-work law. One of 27 states with such laws, Tennessee has been right-to-work since the 1940s. But critics say “right-to-work” is a misnomer, and labor advocacy groups such as AFL-CIO have taken to referring to it as a “right to work for less.”

In states with right-to-work laws, unions have far less bargaining and advocacy power, leaving employers with more control over the workforce. This is because it allows workers to opt out of unions and their dues, even if they benefit from union-negotiated contracts.

Advocates for the amendment say right-to-work makes Tennessee more attractive to employers, and that codifying the law in the state constitution will make its future reversal far more difficult should those opposed to right-to-work ever win control of the state legislature. Right-to-work laws have also come under fire nation wide, and should they ever be overturned at a national level, advocates for the law say its addition to the state constitution would give Tennessee more power to fight the change.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 2

Article 3, Section 12 of the state constitution cur

path for the Oak Hill Democrat who identifies as a Williamson County soc cer mom.

“It’s been inspiring to have a lot of Repub licans and independents come on board this campaign,” Campbell tells the Scene. “They are aware their freedoms are being taken away by the far-right faction controlling their party. The precedence of Social Secu rity has surprised me — my opponent wants to eliminate Social Security. It was the top is sue in our poll. And many feel like Dobbs was a bridge too far.”

Since Ogles won the Republican primary in August, Campbell has been on offense. He won with 21,000 votes — 37 percent of the total share. It was enough to edge out major opponents Beth Harwell and Kurt Winstead, but not quite an anointment. An ideological outgrowth of Republicans’ right flank, Ogles made a career bouncing between various think-tank and campaign posts in GOPlibertarian world before his Maury County election in 2019. He comfortably fights in the right’s culture war, relying on platitudes about “separation of powers” and “account ability and transparency” while saving more detailed campaign positions for immigration, guns and abortion.

Ogles does not support access to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. In December, Ogles briefly made national news for his Christmas card, which featured the mayor

rently states that in the case of the governor’s death, resignation or removal from office, the powers of the governor’s office are delegated to the speaker of the state Senate, followed by the speaker of the House. This amendment essentially adds clarifications on what exactly this process should look like. It also makes it clear that while fulfilling the governor’s duties, the speaker can retain their seat in legislature but cannot vote as a member of legislature.

Additionally, the amendment says that while filling in as governor, the speaker would still receive a speaker’s salary, not a governor’s salary. The amendment would also temporarily exempt the speaker from a law that prohibits representatives from holding more than one state office while they are performing the duties of governor.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 3

Article 1, Section 33 of the state constitution cur rently prohibits slavery unless someone has been con victed of a crime, in which case they can be submitted to involuntary servitude as punishment. Amendment 3 would remove the so-called “punishment clause” from the constitution, prohibiting slavery outright. A stipula tion has also been added that states, “Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the

and his wife, along with two adolescent chil dren, toting assault rifles. In recent weeks, Ogles added “Take Back TN-05 Republican Nominee Fund 2022” to a growing list of political action committees based in other states to help fund his campaign. Over the summer, a complaint filed with the FEC detailed a “pattern of malfeasance” related to the campaign’s bookkeeping, overseen by campaign treasurer and Nashville conserva tive mega donor Lee Beaman.

The Ogles campaign did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. Polling commissioned by the Campbell campaign and shared with the Scene gives her a slim edge — though the firm that con ducted it, Frederick Polls, has histori cally overestimated margins in favor of Democrats. The survey keys in on “middle partisans,” about half of the poll’s 1,622 re spondents, who indicated that they had not yet made up their minds. Poll questions focus on abortion and inflation and emphasize Ogles’ loyalty to Trump, attempting to cast every Republican position as an example of government overreach.

Campbell hits the same points in the same way in a recent Tennessean op-ed, focusing her messaging on abortion access and Ogles’ contempt for basic and popular federal pro grams like Medicare and Social Security. She frames Ogles as a threat to democracy and “personal” and “basic” freedoms, words that have increasingly filtered into Demo cratic Party rhetoric after years of the left losing the battle over patriotism. She also takes the chance to shame Ogles for refusing repeated invitations by Campbell to partici pate in a live debate ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8.

The 5th Congressional District will be a testing ground for Democrats hoping to hold a slim margin in the House. Word out of D.C. is that party leaders are “cautiously optimis tic” about midterms. In Nashville, the race is a reminder that state and federal politics are deeply connected, and that democracy is a set of rules that can always be revised.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

inmate has been duly convicted of a crime,” a change that prisoner advocates and activist groups have shown support for.

The current language mirrors that of the U.S. Con stitution’s 13th Amendment. That language has come under a lot of fire over the years, especially following the release of Ava DuVernay’s 13th in 2016, a docu mentary that details the ways in which corporations use the language in this amendment to take advantage of prisoners for free labor. CoreCivic, one of the biggest private prison companies in the country, is based out of Nashville and runs four of the 14 state prisons in Tennessee. There are currently 20 states in the U.S. with various forms of the “punishment clause” in their state constitutions, and in November Tennessee will join four other states in voting to change this.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 4

Article 9, Section 1 of the state constitution cur rently prohibits ministers and priests of any denomina tion from holding a seat in the state legislature. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the provision unconstitutional in 1978, so this rule has not actually been enforced since then. Amendment 4 would officially remove this prohibition from the state constitution.

The Nashville Democrat has gone on offense, trying to turn her race against Republican Andy Ogles into a coin toss

HEIDI CAMPBELL

ELECTION

CAN THE PREDATORS WIN BACK THEIR DISILLUSIONED FAN BASE?

BY ADAM VINGAN

When we last saw the Predators, they were getting crushed.

Their first-round playoff series against the eventual Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche in May was never close. The 21-9 score differential after four games was proof enough of that.

A couple of months earlier, dry-witted Calgary Flames coach Darryl Sutter expressed regret for whichever wild-card team drew the Avalanche, saying it would be “a waste of eight days.” But the Predators proved Sutter wrong. They wasted only seven.

If ever there were a time for the Nashville Predators to change direction, this was it. Their loss to the Avalanche marked the first time they were swept out of the playoffs. Their last series win was four years ago. Instead, the rebuild-averse Predators doubled down. Coach John Hynes — who, to his credit, has done more with less

throughout his tenure — received a new two-year contract. General manager David Poile retained the full support of ownership. Past Luke Kunin, no notable players were shipped out of town.

As the 2022-23 NHL season begins, the Predators’ roster looks better than it did a few months ago, thanks to some savvy offseason moves. Skepticism remains, however, about how far they can go, and understandably so.

Poile was deliberate in addressing his team’s needs during the summer. To help on defense, he brought in Ryan McDonagh from Tampa Bay. In 12 seasons with the Lightning and Rangers, McDonagh has never missed the playoffs, winning the Stanley Cup twice in three trips to the final. His 185 career postseason games are second most among active skaters. As he has gotten older, the 33-year-old McDonagh has settled into a shutdown role, which is how the

Predators intend to use him — likely on a pair with Mattias Ekholm.

The Predators also needed an experienced scorer to play in the top six. Center Ryan Johansen spent much of last season lugging around unproductive wingers Kunin, now in San Jose, and Eeli Tolvanen on the Predators’ second line.

For that reason, free-agent signing Nino Niederreiter is a definite upgrade. The 30-year-old power forward scored 24 goals for the Carolina Hurricanes last season, as many as Kunin and Tolvanen combined. Niederreiter’s prowess around the net and on the forecheck will be valued by Hynes.

“I was pumped,” Predators forward Matt Duchene recently said about the acquisitions of McDonagh and Niederreiter. “I said last year even, ‘[McDonagh] might be the hardest guy to play against in the league.’… [Niederreiter] has been an unbelievable player his whole career — just a great two-way guy, heavy, hard to play against, physical and can score. The big thing is they fit in with the kind of team we are. They make plays, but they play hard. I think they’re a perfect fit for us.”

McDonagh and Niederreiter should make a positive impact, but the Predators’ success largely depends on certain core players being able to replicate their career-best performances from last season.

Winger Filip Forsberg got paid after scoring 42 goals, signing an eight-year, $68 million deal in July. Was Forsberg’s longawaited breakthrough a sign of things to come or a money-driven one-off?

Duchene also crossed the 40-goal threshold for the first time and will be counted on to do so again. No one expects captain Roman Josi to have another 96-point season. After all, it had been three decades since a defenseman put up that many. Still, Josi shoulders more responsibility than any player on the team, with the possible exception of goaltender Juuse Saros.

When Saros hurt his ankle in late April, an injury that kept him out of the playoffs, the Predators’ season was effectively over. Although Saros said that his league-leading 67 starts did not contribute to his injury, he seemed to fade down the stretch. Saros undoubtedly gives the Predators the best chance to win, but there is risk in relying too heavily on him.

Locally, faith in the Predators has fallen sharply since reaching its zenith in 2017, when the team made a surprise appearance in the Stanley Cup Final. In a front-office confidence poll conducted by the Athletic in August, the Predators ranked 25th out of 32 teams, down from No. 1 five years ago.

To restore that confidence, there must be some sign of progress. At a minimum, the Predators need to win a playoff round, and even that might not be enough to convince a disillusioned fan base.

A group of players has only so many chances to win the big one. It can be argued that this group has been given more chances than it deserves.

Nevertheless, the Predators persist, hoping this is the year they finally get it right.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Three proposed Tennessee charter schools backed by the American Classical Academy network have withdrawn their applications. The retreat follows contentious school board meetings that have questioned the manage ment and governance of the network, which is affiliated with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan. … Harpeth Hall, a private all-girls school in Green Hills, adopted a revised “gender philosophy” that reiterates the institution’s presence as a school for girls but “acknowledges the developmental journey” of students questioning their gender. The statement comes in response to students who have come out as nonbinary and trans in recent years. The school initially released a gender philosophy in early August, drawing the ire of Fox News and prompting multiple petitions from parents, alums and donors on all sides of the issue. … Music City PrEP Clinic opened in East Nash ville, with a focus on sexual health care. The or ganization focuses on providing accessible care to encourage the uptake of PrEP, the antiviral medication that can reduce the risk of HIV infec tion by up to 92 percent if taken regularly. … Six women say they were fired from their jobs at EventWorks, the largest event rental provider in the Southeast, via text in September. Along with local labor center Workers’ Dignity, the workers have launched a campaign to get their jobs back with additional benefits. … A Metro commit tee convened for the first time in three years to hear the findings of a study on Nashville’s use of tax-increment financing, a tool used by the city government to facilitate lending and bor rowing for private developers. The study reported that TIF district property, mostly concentrated in downtown neighborhoods like the Gulch and Germantown, increased more than 1,200 percent in value, over the past two decades compared to 360 percent increases across the county. The city is planning to use TIF carve-outs to subsidize commercial development on the East Bank Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Adrienne Battle shared plans to help the district reduce student absenteeism. Almost a third of students missed at least 10 percent of school days last year. … Provoked by the far-right mediasphere, Gov. Bill Lee has joined state legislators calling for an investiga tion into Vanderbilt University Medical Center for providing gender-related medical care for transgender minors. … A Davidson County judge ruled last week that the city can’t fully implement proposed regulations of downtown entertainment vehicles. A few months ago, Metro named new specifications for the tourismindustrial complex, like enclosing vehicles and obtaining liquor liability insurance. … The United Methodist Church is engaged in a complicated divorce, writes contributor Betsy Phillips, rooted in politics and hung up on money. … Hundreds gathered in downtown Nashville Saturday for the “Stand Up and Support the People of Iran” rally, speaking up against the death of Mahsa Amini and others killed in the ongoing protests in Iran. See contributor Ray Di Pietro’s photos at our site.

PHOTO:

CASEY GOWER

FILIP FORSBERG

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

ROLL MODELS

Meet the fierce youngsters of Nashville Junior Roller Derby

BY LENA MAZEL

NASHVILLE JUNIOR ROLLER DERBY CLINIC AND SCRIMMAGE

Youth roller derby is an intricate operation. Played on an oval track, it involves two teams of five skaters, seven refs and — in Nashville Junior Roller Derby’s case — a dedicated corps of parents.

Founded in 2010, Nashville Junior Roller Derby is the youth affiliate team of Nashville Roller Derby, Nashville’s adult league. (Previously known as the Nashville Rollergirls, NRD updated its name in 2019 to include all gender identities.) The Junior Roller Derby is open to players of any gender ages 8 to 17, and there are currently 25 players on the team.

“The first skill that we teach to brand-new skaters is how to fall safely,” says Lea Davis, NJRD’s executive director, who the team calls Queen Mother. Davis calls the games “controlled chaos.”

“Each team fields five skaters, and that includes one ‘jammer,’ who is the pointscoring player, and four blockers,” Davis explains. “The goal is for your team’s jammer to pass the other team’s blockers. And your jammer gets a point for each pair of hips they pass. And this happens in a twominute period called a ‘jam.’ ”

In real time, games are a blur of limbs and skates. For Brigid Davis, a player whose moniker is Queen B, “Feeling the adrenaline and wind in my face when I’m on the track doesn’t compare to anything else.”

For Nashville’s roller derby teams, this thrill is hard-won. Over the past two years, NJRD practiced in outdoor hockey rinks, parking lots and nature trails. They played in hot weather, with no coach, and through a pandemic that cut their number of team members in half.

Both Nashville Junior Roller Derby and Nashville Roller Derby previously practiced at The Fairgrounds Nashville — but the building they practiced in was demolished in 2019 to make way for Nashville SC’s Geodis Park and a new expo center. Executive director Davis says despite the team being

previously assured that community groups could return to their practice spaces, the fairgrounds facilities were soon booked with “events that were paying much more in rent than we could afford to.”

Then the pandemic stopped practices for a year. When the team contacted the fairgrounds a year later, they didn’t receive a response.

Undeterred, Davis and other volunteers spent a year visiting as many locations as they could while temporarily practicing at an outdoor hockey rink in Bellevue. Eventually, both the youth and adult teams contacted Vice Mayor Jim Shulman for advice.

“He was wonderful, and committed to helping us find a new location,” says Davis. Shulman helped secure a partnership between the junior team and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Roller derby requires a space with no poles, a large footprint, and floor suitable for skating: after some searching, NJRD found this at Cohn School in West Nashville. They had their first practice at the school in early September.

“I think it really was a test of the team,” Davis says. “I feel like we’ve really come through it together. And so, on the one hand, on paper it may seem like the pandemic weakened our team, but I think actually in the long run, it’s strengthened it. Because it’s only due to the love of the sport and the love of the teammates that the team pulled through, honestly.”

A player who goes by Cosmic Hazard says her favorite memory of NJRD is from a time when the team still lacked a practice space. “I love our trail skates,” she says. “When we used to not have a home turf, we would go on trail skates and we’d just skate through the forest and we’d talk.”

Hazard joined the team after skating for the Fort Walton Beach Junior Bombers in Florida. At NJRD, she felt immediately accepted. “When I first joined this team, I was overwhelmed with the love and how

much I fit in,” she says. “I feel like in a lot of sports, you have to look a certain way; you have to be a certain way. But in roller derby, you can be any way you want to.”

Queen B agrees. “In roller derby, everybody is important and special,” she says. “There’s no ‘derby body’ — big and small, tall and short, everybody can exceed amazingly in derby. If you’re loud or if you’re quiet, if you’re gay or if you’re straight, and for us since we’re a coed team, however you identify on the gender

spectrum, we’ll welcome you with open arms. Whenever I think of derby, I just think of love, acceptance and pride.”

In her time with the team, Davis has seen plenty of lives transformed by the sport. “They know what it feels like to get hit and to fall and to get right back up again,” she says. “And I think that those lessons carry over onto their life off of the track.”

For information on scrimmages, team membership and more, visit nashvillejrd.com.

Spine-Tingling

Next week, hundreds of authors will gather in downtown Nashville for the 34th annual Southern Festival of Books

We’ve all learned by now that digital engagement is no match for the sensation you get when you’re in a room with others, experiencing something together. It’s the buzz of seeing a late-night repertory screening of a film; the deep satisfaction of witnessing a local actor nail a monologue; the giddy lightheadedness of hearing the starting chords of your favorite song — all in the company of other people who are experiencing the same thrills.

For the first time since 2019, Humanities Tennessee — our state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities — will host the Southern Festival of Books live and in person Oct. 14 through 16. A dizzying roster of authors and events is sure to make your spine tingle. This year’s festivities are particularly apt, as they follow a recent uptick in outrage from vocal parents throughout the South who have objected to certain books being taught in schools — books like Maus by Art Spiegelman, which was removed from McMinn County curriculum, and Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, which was removed from Williamson County cur riculum. Just last month, the Nashville Public Library celebrated its annual Banned Books Week, an initiative that since 1982 has sought to “highlight the value of free and open access to information” and “express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.”

SOUTHERN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS OCT. 14-16 AT WAR MEMORIAL PLAZA AND THE NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY SOFESTOFBOOKS.ORG

For three days in downtown Nashville, bibliophiles will once again roam the stalls of booksellers and literary organizations at War Memorial Plaza, congregate in the lobby of the Nashville Public Library downtown, watch live music and performances and anxiously wait in line to meet our literary crushes. And, of course, there will be authors! Patrick Radden Keefe, Imani Perry, Jami Attenberg, Tara M. Stringfellow, Peng Shepherd, Margo Price, Becca Andrews … there’s something for everyone.

In this issue, you’ll find coverage of 10 of the most compelling books being represented at this year’s South ern Festival of Books, supplied by our friends at Chapter 16. But this is just a drop in the literary bucket! You can check out the full schedule of events at sofestofbooks.org.

We’ll see you at the fest. — ERICA CICCARONE

BRINGING PEOPLE INTO THE ROOM

Francesca T. Royster’s Black Country Music challenges boundaries

BY MARIA BROWNING

Francesca Royster opens Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions with a recollection of attending a Chicago country music and barbecue festival in 2014. At one point her heart “gave a lurch” when she recognized the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” which, she writes, “reminded me of all the reasons I felt wary as a Black woman entering this country music space.”

And yet Royster was no stranger to country music. She spent much of her childhood in 1970s Nashville, where “country music was part of the grammar of living.” Black Country Music delves deeply into the tensions, pleasures and contradictions that Royster, as a Black queer woman, finds in country music as a genre and a cultural signifier. She’ll appear in conversation with Marissa R. Moss, author of Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be, Sunday at the Southern Festival of Books. Royster answered questions via email.

You write about country music having roots in minstrelsy. Does that legacy still shape ideas about the music for both Black and white audiences?

WHEN HOME IS A PLACE YOU’VE FLED

Casey Parks examines her own life through a mysterious gure from the past

BY EMILY CHOATE

Home from college on Easter Sunday 2002, journalist Casey Parks first found the courage to come out as gay to her rural Louisiana family, unleashing a torrent of panicked judgment from her mother. With one blast of tough-minded reason, her grandmother intervened. Later, she pulled Parks aside to share a childhood memory that had never left her: “I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man.”

This unexpected revelation would prove pivotal to Parks’ future, motivating a search that haunted her and helped to shape her for more than a decade. Parks chronicles these events in her compelling debut, Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery Describing Roy Hudgins as a kind, eccentric young man who wrote and played country songs for all the children of their poor neighborhood — a place known locally as Hell Street — Parks’ grandmother lamented losing track of Roy since those early times. “It’s eaten at me all these years,” she tells Parks. “Am I going to die without finding out?” Eventually, years later, she

BLACK COUNTRY MUSIC: LISTENING FOR REVOLUTIONS BY FRANCESCA T. ROYSTER UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS 248 PAGES, $24.95

APPEARING IN CONVERSATION WITH MARISSA R. MOSS 2 P.M. SUNDAY, OCT. 16, IN THE NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY’S THIRD FLOOR PROGRAM ROOM

Yes, I really think it does still shape Black and white audiences. For starters, minstrelsy’s history has been utilized to erase real Black lives and histories and, ultimately, to minimize the roles of Black people as creative and innovative artists.

There’s also a way minstrelsy fed into ideas of “authenticity” and Black sound that

limits the ways Black music is marketed and even the ways Black audiences hear themselves.

And finally, the psychic violence of minstrel blackface, as it has been utilized by early country music, may indeed feed the suspicion Black listeners might have of country music and the assumption that country music is racist and only for white (racist) people.

You note the contrast between the experiences of Mickey Guyton and Rissi Palmer, who speak about struggling for a voice within the music industry, and DeLila Black, who’s an independent artist doing her music her way solely through fan support. Do you think both approaches are important? Yes, I think it’s important to have folks who are working around the edges, as well as the mainstream. Folks like Mickey and Rissi are demanding that Black folks are seen and heard and are holding the industry responsible for addressing racism when it comes our way.

But we also need artists who have no allegiance to the genre or traditions of country per se, who are challenging its boundaries more directly and pushing the edges of things. There’s radical work that can be done outside of the mainstream, in part because energy doesn’t have to be spent getting mainstream labels or radio stations’ ears or translating messages so that they won’t offend. I think all of these tactics are so important for changing the future of country music and audiences.

The chapter “How to Be an Outlaw” looks back at Beyoncé’s November 2016 appearance at the CMA Awards with The Chicks, which got a mixed response, especially coming at such a tense political moment. Given that our politics have only grown more fraught since then, how do you see the audience for country music evolving? Sappy though it may sound, I do think that music and music makers have the power of bring-

As Parks searches for the truth behind this elusive figure from the past, she confronts myriad thorny questions that become inextricably linked with her own path through life. At every step, looking into Roy’s life exposes tangled threads of family memory, smalltown mythos and daunting personal transformations.

Was there truth, for example, behind a claim that Roy’s mother had kidnapped him from abusive biological parents? Had he really sold some of his original country songs to famous Nashville musical acts? How did Roy feel about his own gender identity? His isolation within the community? Was it even fair to discuss his life in contemporary terms of transgender experience, or was doing so a result of Parks’ own projections? Was it ethical to read the pile of journals Roy had left behind?

All the challenging, potentially unanswerable questions about Roy’s story run parallel with Parks’ determination to become a good reporter. After leaving home for Portland, Ore., Parks begins her career as a bureau writer for The Oregonian. Parks writes candidly about her learning curve as a fledgling journalist, including her awkwardness and inexperience during numerous trips to Delhi, La., as she interviews people who knew Roy.

ing people into the room in a way that other forms of communication can’t. I definitely think music is capable of inspiring us to think and feel deeply and to connect to one another across gulfs.

I hear that ability in Our Native Daughters, Rhiannon Giddens’ work with Silk Road Theater, or some of the efforts of Brandi Carlisle and Jason Isbell. And it can help us dream of new futures (like the music of Valerie June and DeLila Black).

While I don’t know if I have a clear view of the country music audience broadly, I see these artists shaping and encouraging positive forms of community and connection that are bringing together many different groups.

There are so many disparate threads woven through in this book — race, queerness, pop culture and your personal story, as well as diverse artists and musical genres. Can you share some thoughts on how you approached the writing? I wanted to offer up an analysis that got at the feeling of being a country music fan, and really to demonstrate the ways country music is a part of my life and the ways I see the world as a Black queer woman who lives in an urban space and can be part of my own queer worldmaking — making the world I want.

I wanted to also offer up a kind of writing that’s vulnerable and that attempts to tell hard stories truthfully — something I admire in the best country music. And finally, because music is so much a part of my life, and the way I approach my family, I wanted to weave in all these threads to demonstrate the broader way that music exists and functions for listeners, linked to all of these histories and aspects of everyday life.

To read an extended version of this interview — and more local book coverage — please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

to their pastor during service that Parks is gay. The pastor asks the church to pray that God will “save her and take her,” meaning that she should die immediately to be saved from sin. Her mother joins in with this prayer, worsening their fraught relationship.

Often, the other figures of Parks’ life recede from view, leaving Parks and her mother to battle out their complicated dynamic in an emotional foreground strewn with landmines. Even when the two women aren’t speaking, her mother’s legacy of trauma and her long-term struggle with pain pills complicate Parks’ ability to reconnect to her origins. For years, traveling home means confronting Roy’s painful history, rather than her own.

Diary of a Misfit provides an insightful entry in a tradition of memoirs by Southerners reckoning with a sense of dislocation. With each research trip home, Parks dives deeper into the conflict she’s felt between needing to leave home in order to survive and longing to return, though she may not be welcome. Parks argues that even a happy life lived within this conflict is “marked by the kind of yearning that can never be quelled as long as home is a place you’ve fled.”

would echo her own words as she describes the powerful ways that learning of Roy’s story had influenced her granddaughter’s life: “It was like it burned a hole in you.”

Those interviews yield poignant, heartrending details about Roy’s experiences in Delhi, including conflict with a church over his refusal to wear dresses or grow his crew cut long. For Parks, learning those details stirs up her own early memories of the Pentecostal church. With great sensitivity, Parks recounts the belonging she’d once found within her church community, a contrast to frequent chaos at home. But that belonging is shattered when her mother reveals

Parks pours all her journalistic skill into Diary of a Misfit, shoring up legend with research and context while acknowledging the limited facts available after the passing of decades. But what makes Diary so moving is Parks’ artful handling of her own vulnerability within these events. The result is an absorbing, compassionately rendered page-turner that lingers in the mind.

To read an extended version of this review — and more local book coverage — please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

NARRATIVE

BY SARA BETH WEST

There are readers who claim that every great novel must have a map in the front. To them, the map represents the imaginative world built by the author, one full of complexities and depth and a setting so fully realized as to require its own geography. While a map might do all these things, I tend to favor a different introduction to a book’s world: a family tree. Tara M. Stringfellow’s debut novel Memphis opens with the North family tree, simply but beautifully designed.

These names, each with their birth, marriage and death dates, are spread before the reader like a map. We can’t know where this family is going to take us, but we know there will be complexity and depth. A family tree contains multitudes.

But what of the setting? Readers of Memphis will find no shortage there, either. The story opens with Miriam North and her daughters Joan and Mya arriving at the family home in Memphis, where Miriam’s sister August still lives. They have fled Miriam’s husband, escaping the violence

THE SPIRIT OF ’76

Andrew Maraniss tells the story of a pioneering women’s basketball team

BY SEAN KINCH

The title of Andrew Maraniss’ latest book, Inaugural Ballers, with its fine balance of formal language and street argot, neatly captures the book’s two predominant narrative threads. Subtitled The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team, the book describes the challenges faced by the trailblazing 1976 team to gain support and recognition in a sports landscape that overlooked the achievements of female athletes. While the men’s Olympic team traveled in comfort and enjoyed continual media coverage, the women practiced in obscure gyms and battled the perception, often exacerbated by newspaper columnists, that playing basketball made them “mannish.”

Maraniss knows the sport of basketball in its historical scope and gritty details. With the eye of an opposing coach, he offers succinct breakdowns of players’ strengths and weaknesses, and he recounts critical games like a seasoned reporter. His story takes you inside team practices, through the grueling qualification process — a path made more difficult by the team’s eighth-place finish in the 1975 World Championships — and onto the court for each game of the Olympics. When the team slips up, Maraniss explains why; when they succeed, he captures the rapturous quality of “perfect basketball.”

shade of plum trees. … A long driveway traversed the length of the yard, cut in half by a folding wooden barn gate. But what made the house breathe, what gave the house its lungs, was its front porch.

Wide stone steps led to a front porch covered in heavy green ivy and honeysuckle and morning glory. … It was the finishing touch to a Southern symphony all conducted on a quarter-acre plot.

Description is Stringfellow’s great gift. Whether she’s describing the house or the city of Memphis, each scene is grounded in its setting. Greater still is the way Stringfellow describes people, especially women.

Upon first seeing her Auntie August, Joan describes her as “the taller, more regal version of Mama” before adding:

cated story, but their roles as mothers and sisters unify them. Despite the harm he causes, Derek stays because August hopes to ward off the trouble intent on finding him. When that fails, she tries to explain, “Motherhood is an anchor. It has devoured me entire. I did the best I could.” And while Miriam voices her misgivings about Joan’s focus on art, she does so out of a sense of protection. She pushes Joan, arguing:

You can draw. Lord knows, you can draw. But if a man up and leaves you … or you up and leave him, how will you survive? Selling sketches in the streets? Name me one successful artist with a dark face. With breasts. Name one Black woman famous artist. Go on. I’ll wait.

BY TARA M. STRINGFELLOW THE DIAL PRESS

APPEARING

he has inflicted on her for years. The book, which alternates between voices and time periods, opens in 1995 with 10-year-old Joan stating simply: “The house looked living.” A beat later, she elaborates:

The low house was a cat napping in the

She seemed to go on forever, seemed to be the height of the door itself. She had hips, the kind Grecian sculptors would spend months chiseling, big and bold and wide. Her skin was dark, noticeably darker, darker than mine even, and I felt a welt of pride. … I knew that the aunt I could barely remember was, in and of herself, a small, delicious miracle.

This moment of joyous recognition is marred, however, by the entrance of August’s son Derek. If this were a map, this moment would be marked, “Here Be Dragons,” as Joan’s terrified response makes clear. Less clear is the exact nature of the harm Derek caused, a story that is revealed in pieces as the narrative passes between these women and the different time periods they represent.

Each woman tells her uniquely compli-

well suited to comment on the cultural significance of the 1976 women’s team. Women began playing organized basketball in the 1890s at Smith College, and in the pre-World War II era the sport was popular among women in certain regions. But by the 1950s, as Maraniss points out, “conservative social mores reinforced traditional gender roles”; as a result, “women’s basketball took another blow.”

Maraniss tracks the resurgence of women’s basketball in the 1960s and ’70s alongside other sea changes in America, particularly the civil rights movement and second-wave feminism. At every step, women had to battle entrenched sexism and the complacency of athletic departments accustomed to treating women as second-class citizens. “When [coach] Billie Moore’s team arrived in Montreal in the summer of 1976, they hadn’t just overcome a series of opponents on the basketball court to reach the game’s summit,” Maraniss writes, “they had climbed a mountain composed of nearly a century’s worth of misogyny and obstruction.”

Stringfellow repeatedly returns to these tensions, the push-pull between mother and child that proves the countless ways we both comfort and fail our children, asking the question: Is love enough?

Where motherhood complicates the question, the answer is found in sisterhood — Miriam and August, Joan and Mya, the women in August’s beauty shop, the women who show up for each other time and again. A family tree is a map, a network of interconnected landscapes, equal parts clearly marked streets and unexplored territory. But a family tree has its limitations. It cannot show you these unnamed relationships, the ones that hold a person and make her. For that, you need art: giant canvases like the ones Joan paints, or tender and honest narratives like Tara M. Stringfellow’s Memphis

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

college vanguard. In the ensuing decades, “A girl in Tennessee wouldn’t go to UT Martin anymore,” as Pat Head had done; “she’d go to an SEC school like Vanderbilt or the University of Tennessee,” writes Maraniss, a ’92 Vanderbilt grad and longtime Nashville resident. “Gone were the bake sales and car washes; in came full scholarships and chartered planes.”

The ’76 Olympic team faced issues regarding race and sexuality that reflected the country’s burgeoning consciousness. Their conflicts also indicated how much work was left to be done. “For Black women growing up in the South during this period,” Maraniss observes, “broader social changes played out in the particularities of their daily lives and careers.” Black players such as Lusia Harris and Carolyn Bush and assistant coach Bessie Stockard made signal contributions to the team. Still, the perception lingered that racism, perhaps even a Black quota, factored into there being only four Black players on the Olympic roster.

Having already written books for young adult readers on Perry Wallace, the Vanderbilt player who broke the color barrier in the Southeastern Conference (Strong Inside), and on the first men’s Olympic basketball team (Games of Deception), Maraniss is

An interesting pattern emerges as Maraniss pieces together the players and coaches who made up the team. They came largely from small towns and regional colleges, not the major conferences that ruled men’s sports. The stars of women’s hoops came from schools like Immaculata College (which won three national titles while playing in skirts), Wayland Baptist and Delta State. One of the team’s feistiest players, Pat Head, grew up in Ashland City, Tenn., 25 miles from Nashville. Later known by her married name, Pat Summitt coached at the University of Tennessee for 38 years, becoming the all-time winningest collegiate coach and leading the Lady Vols to eight national championships.

One measure of the team’s legacy is that, on the heels of its success, big colleges quickly commandeered talent and attention away from the small-

Every woman on the team had long contended with the stereotype that girls who played basketball “must be gay.” Ann Meyers, who became “the first woman to receive a full athletic scholarship at UCLA,” was accused of being gay at a time when she didn’t understand the term. “In burdening a young basketball player with their homophobic presumptions, Meyers’ classmates and their parents were thrusting her squarely into the middle of a hackneyed conversation,” Maraniss writes.

Coach Moore told the team that their performance in the Olympic Games “will change women’s basketball for the next 25 years.” Moore’s bold prediction turned out to be an understatement: Her “inaugural ballers” started a revolution whose aftershocks continue to reverberate today.

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

Tara Stringfellow’s debut novel Memphis weaves a family’s complex stories

MEMPHIS

SOUTHBOUND

Imani Perry explores the South’s centrality to the American story

BY KIM GREEN

Imani Perry’s seventh book, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, begins with a dance. The introduction whirls from describing the steps of a French quadrille to recounting a brawl at a New Orleans ball celebrating the Louisiana Purchase. From there, it moves on to African dances on Congo Square, Dred Scott, John Smith, the Jim Crow era and the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, 2021.

By the end of the section, Perry makes it clear where this dizzying intellectual ramble is leading: The quadrille is a metaphor. “When it comes to the choreography, most folks are lost,” Perry writes. “They think they know the South’s moves. They believe the region is out of step, off rhythm, lagging behind, stumbling. It is a convenient misunderstanding.” By beginning her story with the imagery of dance, Perry is asking readers to refocus their eyes and see the whole moving picture: how aspiration and exploitation, commerce and cruelty, and race, poverty and power have circled each other since 1492, or 1619, or 1776 (whatever national birthdate you choose) from sea to shining sea.

Perry is, in other words, urging us to rethink the impulse to regard the South as a retrograde backwater, outside the flow of

RECKONING AS AN ACT OF LOVE

Emily Bingham exposes the tortuous white supremacist history behind a familiar song

BY PETER KURYLA

My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song, Emily Bingham’s thoughtful, self-aware, intensely moral history of the Stephen Foster ballad, covers a spectacular amount of ground — from the origins of the song before the Civil War up to the present day.

The song, composed in 1853, is probably best known today as the Kentucky state anthem, ritually sung on Kentucky Derby day or at University of Kentucky basketball and football games. The overwhelmingly white patrons who stand and reverently sing the tune at those events likely know little about the song, neither how it is embedded in a larger history of whiteness nor the sundry attempts to reinscribe or reinvent its meaning across time. A meticulous researcher, Bingham convincingly corrects this problem of widespread and willful ignorance — which she admits having shared at one time — while accounting for why and when such mass forgetting happened.

Engrossing twists and turns come with every chapter of the book. How did Stephen Foster, a Pittsburgh native who scarcely visited Kentucky, become its “bard”? The song’s regular use in minstrel shows

American history. “This country was made with the shame of slavery, poverty and White supremacy blazoned across it as a badge of dishonor,” she writes. “To sustain a heroic self-concept, it has inevitably been deemed necessary to distance ‘America’ from the embarrassment over this truth. And so the South, the seat of race in the United States, was turned on, out, and into this country’s gully.”

To Perry, blaming the South for the na-

accounts for some of it. Though the song was initially inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Foster ultimately “depoliticized” the lyrics in successive rewrites so that middle-class white women buying sheet music might find it appealing. Unmoored from serious controversy and performed in minstrel shows, the song could cater to both Northern and Southern sensibilities, some with sympathy for the victims of slavery and most in defense of slavery as a presumably benign institution. All such shows appealed to the white taste for racist caricature, whatever the position, whomever the showrunners.

How did Kentucky, a Union state, eventually embrace Confederate plantation mythology? Foster’s song played a role. In a fin de siècle mood of sectional reconciliation between North and South, the song became accompaniment for articles of faith promoted by the Lost Cause cult, including “heritage” organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Bingham plucks some fascinating threads from those years. The Rowan/Frost family in Bardstown, Ky., capitalized on the nostalgic mood, embroidering almost entirely from whole cloth a legend that Stephen Foster had penned “My Old Kentucky Home” at their Federal Hill estate.

The Bardstown story grew more complicated and preposterous, the chicanery and hucksterism piling higher and deeper until Federal Hill ultimately became a Kentucky state park and tourist destination.

At every turn, efforts to establish the facts became casualties of needful white myths. Bingham deftly traces lines of descent from state-sponsored campaigns to enshrine Federal Hill as the Old Kentucky Home to the Kentucky Derby, where racist Old South fantasies became a marketing program and Foster’s song emerged as an invented tradition in the 1930s.

At the broad middle of the 20th century, ignited in

tion’s sins represents a failure to understand the region’s centrality to America’s origin story and identity. With this book, she hopes to correct that misunderstanding. That said, South to America is difficult to categorize.

Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, has packed many aspects of herself into this ambitious book. As a scholarly work, it ranges as widely as her own fascinations, from legal history and politics to hip-hop and the blues, poetry and literature, art, food and the natural world. As a travelogue of the Southern states inspired by Albert Murray’s South to a Very Old Place, it’s personal and particular: “I passed over many famous places and lingered in unusual ones,” she explains.

The memoir aspect adds layers of complexity, thanks to the emotional power of memory and the contradictions we allow for when we belong to a place. Perry, an Alabaman in exile, confesses her biases: She’s inclined to defend her home region and even, in some ways, to romanticize it — or so she claims. I don’t see much romanticizing in these pages. Her commentary on the violence, greed and racism that have undermined America’s stated founding principles since the nation’s birth is unsparing and deeply insightful. But her descriptions of nature — the fragrance of Mississippi’s Piney Woods, the lacework of Spanish moss — do betray a native’s love of Southern landscapes. And as the daughter of civil rights activists, Perry has an insider’s view of the movement and its veterans, whose stories populate her pages. If there’s anything romantic in Perry’s remembrances, it’s her reverence for the generations of defiant

souls who resisted violence and disenfranchisement in ways both public and personal — through organizing, marching, writing, making art and simply continuing to live, laugh and find hope amid the constant heartbreak. Still, venerating them doesn’t strike me as a romantic impulse so much as a profoundly human one: “I love my people without apology,” Perry writes.

Perry’s genealogical research and reflections on family are the story’s beating heart. The chapter on Nashville zooms in on her grandmother, Neida Garner Perry, who was sent from Alabama to Nashville to live with an aunt and attended the storied Pearl High. Her grandparents worked as a cook and a janitor at Vanderbilt but “remained outside of Vanderbilt’s gates”; whereas Pearl High, which Perry describes as “a superior segregated school built against the odds” that funneled Black scholars to Fisk and Tennessee State, was “a place of their own.”

Perry’s elegiac final essay considers George Floyd’s death and the national eruption of grief and rage in its aftermath, then veers to Houston, Texas, where Floyd grew up. Her conclusion masterfully weaves together a story of the city and ends with a reflection about how transforming deep truth-telling into art and action can banish poisonous mythos and broaden our sense of responsibility to each other. “After all, from the bottom, from the depths, from the fields, from the ashes,” she writes, “hope just keeps on rising and radiating off sweatglowing skin in Southern heat.”

To read an extended version of this review — and more local book coverage — please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

postwar Pax Americana proselytizing, especially in the reconstruction of a defeated Japan.

In the civil rights era, segregationists used Foster’s words to encourage massive resistance to integration, policing “racial integrity” against purported communist influences. Eventually, a debate arose over whether Foster’s use of a racist slur in the lyrics should be changed. Those for the change signaled a bland commitment to racial progress at the time, while those against stood for the “tradition.” The complexities only continue closer to the present. In sections of the book on the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation’s uses of the song for Japanese consumers and a state campaign to lure a Toyota factory to the Bluegrass State, Bingham unearths startling and disturbing turns of the historical wheel.

The tremendous range of My Old Kentucky Home might threaten to spin out of control were it not for the clear moral center drawing it all together. Here the stories of attempts by Black people to find some use for Foster’s song across time lend the book needed intricacy. Black singers, performers, composers and thinkers at times reimagined the tune in response to ever-evolving white needs for the comfort of racial stereotypes, making space for it as a means of survival against the threat implied by those needs. Among the more moving attempts at symbolic reversal like this came from Joseph Cotter, whose rewrite of the lyrics celebrated Black progress rather than white fantasy.

no small degree by obsessive promotion from retired pharmaceutical magnate J.K. Lilly, “My Old Kentucky Home” became part of a white American national fantasy, celebrated in Hollywood films, spread abroad with troops during World War II, and forming part of

Stories like these aid Bingham’s suggestion that, after untangling this history, when it comes to what should be done with Foster’s song, “the time has come for Black voices to be heard and for white people to be guided by them.” After all, she concludes, “reckoning is an act of love.”

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

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THE BUCKET LIST

In Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s The Evening Hero , a retired doctor confronts his long-buried past

BY SEAN KINCH

When Horse’s Breath General Hospital suddenly closes, Dr. Yungman Kwak doesn’t know what to do next. Yungman, the protagonist of Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s The Evening Hero, has been the only obstetrics specialist in his region of northern Minnesota for decades, and he’s ill-equipped to occupy his newfound leisure. He doesn’t golf or fish, doesn’t have religion or hobbies, prefers staying home over travel. His best friend Ken, another veteran M.D. from Horse’s Breath, encourages Yungman to create a “bucket list” — everything he wants to experience before he dies. Less romantically, Yungman’s son Einstein urges him to work in “Retailicine” (“retail plus medicine”), perhaps in a “Mall-Based Retail Outlet” or “M-BRO.”

Further troubling his mind, Yungman feels that his wife Young-ae is becoming estranged. She is impatient at home and spends her free days volunteering at a church in the Twin Cities, odd behavior for a woman previously uninterested in religion. After a tense Thanksgiving with Einstein’s family and a brief, humiliating time doing laser hair removal, Yungman senses that major change is imminent. Still, he’s surprised when Young-ae announces her own

WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN

Toya Wolfe’s debut novel depicts girlhood friendship in a doomed housing project

BY JACQUELINE ZEISLOFT

Toya Wolfe pens a tribute to the public housing project where she grew up in her outstanding debut, Last Summer on State Street. Through the eyes of 12-year-old Fe Fe, we bear witness to the realities of Chicago’s infamous Robert Taylor Homes in this heartfelt comingof-age novel.

Completed in the 1960s, the Robert Taylor Homes consisted of 28 identical high-rise buildings that stretched two miles through Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. The buildings were meant to provide affordable housing to the mostly Black communities on the city’s South Side. Ultimately considered a public housing failure due to underfunding, racist policies and policing, and the perpetuation of crime, the Robert Taylor Homes were demolished by the Chicago Housing Authority, with the last of the buildings coming down in 2007.

Wolfe’s novel opens in the summer of 1999. School is out, and the Robert Taylor Homes are being picked off one by one, as Fe Fe and her neighbors watch the wrecking ball destroy adjacent buildings.

THE EVENING HERO BY MARIE MYUNG-OK LEE SIMON & SCHUSTER

PAGES, $28.99

APPEARING 1:30 P.M. FRIDAY, OCT. 14, IN THE NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY CONFERENCE ROOM 1B

one-item bucket list: She wants to go home, to a place called Water Project Village, in North Korea.

Lee’s novel shuttles between the Kwaks’ tumultuous past in Korea and their relatively peaceful decades in Minnesota. The dual narrative reveals that the stability they enjoy in the U.S., a period Yungman describes as “odd in its calmness,” is the product of sacrifice and betrayal. When readers learn about the losses he endures before immigrating, we understand why, even in times of prosperity, “he was always preparing for the next disaster.”

For the novel’s first 100 pages, Yungman’s name, which translates as “evening hero,” sounds ironic. A caring doctor who advocates for his patients, he endeavors elsewhere to be unobtrusive, preferring to remain silent when he experiences prejudice, as when fellow doctors pronounce his name “Quack.” Yungman believes that their livelihood in America “depended on his being agreeable, never making anyone mad.”

Frugal and dutiful, he lives defensively, trying to protect his modest home from the upheavals that haunt all human history.

In the Korean episodes of Yungman’s youth, he learns firsthand how geopolitical forces can destroy a family. His small village — where Young-ae also grows up, though in more comfortable quarters — endures Japanese occupation and the heavy hand of the American military, all before the

Korean War breaks out in 1950, forcing everyone in his community south to Pusan. His mother works desperately and creatively to keep her family together, but the lines separating allies from enemies keep changing. They return to Water Project Village only to find that “the war had ripped up the fabric of their old life.” The beginning of the war separates his father from them. Eighteen years later, when Yungman immigrates to America, he goes alone.

These Korea-set scenes show Yungman not as acquiescent and passive, but as scheming and adaptable. Facing privation, he learns to scavenge and barter. From American soldiers, he picks up a smattering of English; when he finds work at the military base as a “houseboy,” he acquires enough English to impress the masters at a local school. Step by step, Yungman raises

himself from shivering on dirt floors in a tin shack to attending a prestigious preparatory school, all part of the plan his father laid out for him to become a doctor.

Lee structures The Evening Hero around dramatic scenes when her characters face impossible dilemmas that have neverending ramifications. Yungman guards his home so tenaciously because he is keenly aware of what he paid to achieve it. Retirement offers too many quiet moments when voices from his conscience, which he has successfully compartmentalized, demand attention. In this “age of abrupt endings,” when his losses include “his ability to sleep through the night, his job, his ability to urinate without thinking about it,” Yungman reckons with his regrets. Could he have been a better father? Could he have been a better brother?

Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, Lee keeps the pace brisk and the tone remarkably light. A number of set pieces, including the Kwaks attending parties hosted by other Korean Minnesotans, are played for broad comedy, welcome relief from the pall of darkness cast by the Korean War and its aftermath. Lee spices the text with details of Korean culture — food, language, attitudes — that offer insight into the national character, traits that persist long after immigration.

The Evening Hero is partially a study in systemic injustice — racial bigotry and the inequities of American health care — but it’s equally a story of triumph. Yungman may not appear heroic if you saw him at home, a 5-foot-4 retired doctor mowing his lawn in rolled-up slacks and undershirt. But as the poignant ending demonstrates, he has a heart strong enough to carry any burden.

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee

“This is how my block turned into a ghost town,” Fe Fe remembers. She wonders about life after the projects, waiting in hopes that her family will receive a CHA relocation voucher and dreading the possibility of being cast out with no support.

Fe Fe is a smart, plucky narrator with a kind soul and street smarts — it’s impossible not to root for her. She and her friends Precious and Stacia spend the summer running around their building “in this tight formation, snapping through the block in neon colors like a school of tropical fish.” Fe Fe invites Tonya — a mysterious, quiet new neighbor whose building is one of the first to be demolished — into their little crew. Together, they all play double Dutch, crush on boys and buy candy. Typical tween activities.

Life doesn’t stay peachy for long. Tensions arise between the girls as uncontrollable forces like police brutality, sexual abuse, addiction and gang violence alter their lives, their families and their friendships forever. By the end of the book, the group mostly disbands. Fe Fe uses double Dutch references to animate their breakdown: “That summer, one by one,

LAST SUMMER ON STATE STREET BY TOYA WOLFE WILLIAM MORROW 224 PAGES, $27.99

APPEARING 1 P.M. FRIDAY, OCT. 14, IN THE NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY CONFERENCE ROOM 1A

Fe knows this racially motivated, deeply embedded marginalization all too well: “Maybe the worst part about growing up in public housing is that people think your body is public too. That even before you are born, your Black body already belongs to the owners of the land.”

they dropped out of sight as if we were in a game of All in Together.”

Wolfe builds suspense through her use of backward-glancing commentary peppered throughout the narrative. When Fe Fe meets Tonya’s mother Rochelle, who is addicted to crack, a future version of Fe Fe offers perspective: “I couldn’t imagine how miserable Tonya’s life had to be with Rochelle for a mother. I’d find out though.” This use of foreshadowing truly engrossed me. Throughout Last Summer, I found myself tripping over sentences in anguish and anticipation for what was coming next for the girls. This device often made me ask where the story was going and how much we’d get to know. Who is the Fe Fe speaking to the reader in these moments of reflection, and what happens to her, Tonya, Precious and Stacia?

The harsh realities of life in the projects deny Fe Fe and her friends the innocence of childhood. We see this in the way the encroaching demolition robs them of a sense of security and a feeling of home. Fe

What makes Fe Fe such a remarkable narrator is her self-awareness and resilience as she acquires more knowledge about her current reality. She hears from a gang leader that the homes are coming down because “white people wanted to be closer to their jobs.” Her favorite teacher says to her class, “If you want to be in a position where the government can’t uproot your life so easily, get an education and you’ll have more control over your situation.” As she learns about systems of oppression and starts to define her own path, she begins taking back power in spite of dire circumstances.

Last Summer on State Street certainly includes moments of joy. A deep sense of community within the Robert Taylor Homes reverberates throughout Fe Fe’s narration. Her friends and family build her up and help her grow, challenging the culturally held assumption that life in any housing project is stunting or hopeless.

Wolfe’s incisive novel is a gift to the Chicago literary canon. She’s the guardian of the legacy of the Robert Taylor Homes, remembering what is physically gone through these characters who reflect the complexities of life in public housing.

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

“

Appalachian

BOOKS

Forever Young is a memoir of Bo Roberts who has served the Volunteer State and its people in journalism, government, and higher education, and who brought the world to Knoxville for the 1982 World’s Fair. This is an important and valuable piece of Tennessee history, a primer on effective lead ership, and the interesting, inside story of a man who has lived a remarkable life.”

Andrew Maraniss, New York Times-bestselling author of Strong Inside, Games of Deception, Singled Out, and Inaugural Ballers

daVid armand

JOhnathOn scOtt Barrett cathryn hankla

Patrick Radden Keefe’s Rogues draws back the curtain on secret worlds

BY KIM GREEN

In the preface to Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks, Patrick Radden Keefe’s collection of spellbinding New Yorker features, Keefe explains that he’s become a specialist in “the writearound” — articles whose subjects refuse to grant interviews. “It takes a lot of creative reporting to produce a vivid portrait of someone without ever getting to speak to them,” he writes, “but these pieces are often more revealing than the scripted encounters you end up with when the politician or the CEO actually cooperates.”

Keefe then relates an unsettling phone call that would seem to back his claim to vivid portraiture. It was from an attorney representing the family of Joaquín Guzmán, the infamous drug lord known as “El Chapo.” The New Yorker had recently published Keefe’s story “The Hunt for El Chapo” (included in this compilation), and Guzmán wanted Keefe to ghostwrite his memoir. Keefe demurred. But it illustrated for him “the uncanny intimacy that a reporter can feel with a subject he has never met.”

For a reporter at Keefe’s level of journalistic tradecraft, that uncanny intimacy spins into uncanny accuracy — and page-turning prose. “The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth,” historian Simon

THE RIGHT TO DECIDE

BY SARA BETH WEST

Most people trust the legal system to stand for truth and justice, even knowing it is flawed and that it will, at times, fail. But what do you call it when the victims prevail, but justice remains out of reach? What happens when you complicate the narrative, when the concepts of guilt and innocence are blurred and dilated, expanding culpability to include those with good intentions and those who stood silent in witness to a crime?

Memphis native Dolen Perkins-Valdez has spent some time with these questions, and the result is her third novel, Take My Hand. This diamond-bright historical novel opens in 2016, but the heart of the story takes place through the narrator recounting her experience as a nurse in Montgomery, Ala., in 1973.

Take My Hand gives voice to Dr. Civil Townsend, a Black physician at the end of her career who can’t be at peace until she shares the story of Erica and India, sisters who were unlikely patients of the familyplanning clinic where Civil worked as a nurse.

On her first visit to the girls’ home, Civil is tasked with giving them birth control injections, a common

Each chapter of Rogues draws back a curtain to reveal shadowlands. Here’s how Keefe begins a feature titled “Crime Family”: “Astrid Holleeder has arresting eyes that are swimming-pool blue, but that’s all I can reveal about her appearance, because she is in hiding, an exile in her own city, which is Amsterdam.” On the surface, this is a cloak-and-dagger tale of a Dutch gangster whose sister, Astrid, risks her life to testify against him. But Keefe’s reporting never lingers at surface level; this story cracks open the conflicted loyalties of siblings raised in a family of criminals. “I still love him, in spite of everything,” Astrid says of the brother who she fears may murder her in retribution.

rogues or devils, but Keefe’s richly detailed reporting renders them as conquering heroes besieged by demons: Clarke, a driven true believer so devoted to her calling that her cases take over her life; and Bourdain, so astonished by his own late-in-life success that he chases it into workaholism, leaving little time for sustained relationships.

AND CROOKS

BY PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE DOUBLEDAY 368 PAGES, $30

APPEARING 3 P.M. SATURDAY, OCT. 15, AT WAR MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM

Schama told Publishers Weekly in a 2014 interview, “but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.” The people and places that Keefe describes do come alive on the page, to the reader’s great pleasure, but only their subjects know whether the portraits are true to life. Evidence in favor: Guzmán read about himself and felt seen.

Many of these pieces are crime stories. Some zoom in on the incentives and choices that transform an ordinary person into a criminal. In “The Empire of Edge,” a trader and a doctor conspire to commit insider trading, while a billionaire hedgefund manager gets away with most of the loot. Others dig even deeper into the mechanisms of impunity that protect the powerful and the crooked. “Buried Secrets” is about the West African republic of Guinea, one of the poorest and most corrupt nations on earth, and an Israeli mining magnate’s campaign to exploit the country’s vast, untapped mineral wealth — allegedly, through bribery.

Not all of Keefe’s subjects are malefactors. One chapter stars Judy Clarke, the eminent defense attorney who represents notorious defendants like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. And the final chapter, “Journeyman,” is a tender portrait of celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain published a year before his suicide. Clarke and Bourdain are not

Despite the book’s title, tying these stories together as true-crime tales feels too tidy for a journalist of Keefe’s depth. In the first episode of his 2020 podcast, Wind of Change, which explores whether a late-Cold War rock anthem was really a CIA covert op, Keefe says, “If there’s one connective thread that runs through a lot of my stories, it’s secrets. Secret worlds. Uncovering things I’m not supposed to know.”

That sounds right. In “Buried Secrets,” he describes the founder of an international risk-assessment firm as a person who “excelled at parachuting into foreign countries and figuring out what ‘makes them tick.’ ” And of Bourdain, he writes, “Parachuted into any far-flung corner of the planet, Bourdain ferrets out the restaurant, known only to discerning locals, where the grilled sardines or the pisco sours are divine.”

Keefe is fascinated by such savvy operators. He too excels at shining a beam into the murky inner workings of the world and the human psyche. It’s a superpower that produces riveting and revealing tales that, as Keefe writes in the preface, may help us better fathom our own inner workings — “the slipperiness of situational ethics, the choices we make as we move through the world, and the stories we tell ourselves and others about those choices.”

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

practice, especially for younger patients who might have trouble with a daily pill. She believes in the clinic’s mission and is determined to facilitate choice for women in her community. But at 11 and 13, Erica and India are terribly young, a fact that troubles Civil even before she sees the depth of their poverty and long before the white clinic director facilitates surgical sterilization for both girls. Outraged, Civil fights on their behalf, working with a talented young lawyer who ultimately takes their case all the way to federal court.

Inspired by true events in 1970s Alabama, the book shines a light on a painful part of U.S. history. Substantial research into the original case, Relf v. Weinberger, provides a solid foundation for the narrative, but when Perkins-Valdez couldn’t find a firsthand account from any of the nurses who worked at the real clinic during that time, she created one in Civil Townsend. These nurses are the witnesses who never testified, and Take My Hand considers whether their silence makes them complicit.

Raised in upper-middle-class Centennial Hill, Civil is the daughter of a doctor and an artist. Her experience as a Black woman in the South could not be called easy, but she acknowledges the vast sea between her experience and that of Erica and India. Immediately sympathetic to their plight, she wants to help, and with her relative wealth and connections, she can. But Perkins-Valdez skillfully unsettles the easy definitions of “help,” asking readers to question the notion of good intentions.

Townsend’s intentions are good, but they could still do harm; the same is true of the clinic director, who believes she is doing the right thing even as she steals the sisters’ future choices and their sense of control over their own bodies. The novel takes on is-

TAKE MY HAND BY DOLEN PERKINS-VALDEZ BERKLEY 368 PAGES, $27

APPEARING 3:30 P.M. FRIDAY, OCT. 14, IN THE NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY AUDITORIUM

sues of racial inequity and harmful bias, addressing class and gender and even abortion, but it always comes back to what has been stolen from these girls and so many others like them.

As she sits in the courtroom, listening to the alarming statistics regarding the practice of coerced or forced sterilization, Civil thinks, “How dare they? Our bodies belonged to us. Poor, disabled, it didn’t matter. These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with them. It was as if they were just taking our bodies from us, as if we didn’t even belong to ourselves.” It was a theft, a crime that has been replicated in countless ways over the years, and this novel serves as testimony.

Returning to Montgomery years later, Civil knows justice remains a slippery thing. She visits Lou Feldman, the lawyer on the case, and he agrees, noting, “Back then I thought justice was a moral right.”

“And now?” Civil asks.

“I still believe in right and wrong or else I wouldn’t still be practicing law after all these years,” he replies. “It’s just that now I know justice is as complicated as everything else in life.”

Take My Hand walks bravely through those complications on the thin line between despair and hope. In the end, though, the voice we hear is that of Civil Townsend — a Black woman who has made unconventional choices throughout her life, insisting on the viability and necessity of those choices. Where India and Erica had their choices stripped from them, Civil leans in and insists, her life a representation of a true and complicated hope.

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

Take My Hand considers a terrible injustice fueled by prejudice and good intentions

by

flynt

session

Friday, October 14 / 1 p.m.

Nashville Public Library Commons Room 615 Church Street signing

Following session

SFB Author Signing Tent books for sale

Parnassus tent Center of Festival Plaza

ANNUAL

CRITICS’ PICKS

THURSDAY

ART [ANCESTOR SPIRIT] ELISHEBA ISRAEL MROZIK: AN-SISTERS

Elisheba Israel Mrozik may be best known as the owner of One Drop Ink Tattoo Parlor and Gallery, or for the colorful murals she helped create in North Nashville with groups like Creative Girls Rock. But Mrozik is also hard at work as a studio artist, and her solo show An-Sisters — exhibiting at NKA Gallery through Nov. 5 — will finally give us a look at what’s been percolating. At a studio visit last year, Mrozik showed me sculptural pieces crafted with organic materials like wax, plant matter and lace that were helping her think through the experiences of her ancestors. In another series, she was working with African textiles like kente cloth; in still other works, she was imagining futuristic landscapes and figures. An-Sisters aims to reclaim visual identity at the intersection of womanhood and the African diaspora, challenging “not only the ‘white gaze’ but the interior gaze of [Mrozik’s] own community.” I’m expecting something otherworldly that is just grounded enough in our reality to keep us tethered to earth. Through Nov. 5 at NKA Gallery, 915 Buchanan St. ERICA CICCARONE

[20TH CENTURY MAN]

MUSIC

FATHER JOHN MISTY

Listening to the stylizations that constitute Father John Misty’s new album Chloë and the Next 20th Century inspires me to revive my special award for songwriting, The Dory Previn Memorial Award for Songwriting, which honors songwriters who mix prolixity with pretentiousness. Yeah, you might say that all art is intrinsically pretentious, but Previn albums like 1971’s Mythical Kings and Iguanas and the mind-boggling Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign, from 1972, are post-Broadway, semi-folk rock

albums that are full of some of the wordiest songs imaginable. Anyway, Misty — the former Fleet Foxes drummer and classic post-Christian artist born Josh Tillman — comes across like, say, Harry Nilsson and Van Dyke Parks throughout Chloë. As some critics have pointed out, Misty’s latest music does evoke 1960s film scores, but Misty’s vocabulary is derived from the work of the aforementioned Nilsson, Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach and Scott Walker. Like Previn, Misty is a social critic, which means the closing track, “The Next 20th Century,” contains one of the record’s most Previnesque couplets: “Now who will watch the chorus line stretching from Reno to Rome / Listen, Cherry, I know you love me but say

you love me before you go.” Misty makes his pastiches work on Chloë, and “The Next 20th Century” and “Buddy’s Rendezvous” sport musical structures that are pretty complex and very accomplished. Opening is pop singer Suzi Waterhouse, who released her debut album, I Can’t Let Go, this year. 7:30 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. EDD HURT

DANCE [SO THIS IS LOVE]

NASHVILLE BALLET PRESENTS CINDERELLA

Nashville Ballet opens its 2022-23 season this weekend with a true fan favorite — artistic director Paul Vasterling’s dazzling Cinderella. First presented in 2011 (and most recently seen in 2016), this lovely production offers a fresh take on the familiar fairy tale, giving us a heroine who is strong, selfassured and ready to take charge of her own destiny. The Nashville Symphony will be on hand to perform Sergei Prokofiev’s beautiful score, and audiences can look forward to stunning 18th-century period costumes — and even an onstage carriage. There’s also a delightful youth cast, with students ages 5 to 7 taking to the stage as bumblebees, snow angels and other whimsical characters. Packed with humor, romance and just a bit of magic, Vasterling’s Cinderella is sure to charm both young and old. Oct. 6-9 at TPAC’s Polk Theater, 505 Deaderick St. AMY STUMPFL

ART [YIPPIE-YO YIPPIE-YEAH]

BOUNDLESS: THE MANIFESTATION OF SELF EXPRESSION

Grooves From the Deep and the Great Space Math of George Clinton opened at Cëcret by Cë Gallery back in July, and it’s still a

highlight of the 2022 art calendar even as we head into the fall gallery season. The display of multimedia paintings by the musical pioneer and founder of ParliamentFunkadelic felt like a natural extension of the funky and fantastical world Clinton and his cohorts have created from their decades-spanning musical projects. And viewers who can’t get enough of the funk can grab a second helping at Boundless: The Manifestation of Self Expression at the National Museum of African American Music. The exhibition includes 33 of Clinton’s alien landscapes, speculative spacecraft and Atomic Dog paintings. The show’s a great fit for the museum, which claims many of Clinton’s artifacts in its permanent collection — along with the Funkadelic flag that’s displayed in the lobby. Through Nov. 30 at the National Museum of African American Music, 510 Broadway JOE NOLAN

MUSIC [IN LIVING COLOR]

CAROLINE ROSE W/T Ō TH

Every now and then, I’ll convince myself that a musician — especially a really talented one who’s played a lot of shows here — lives in Nashville when they definitely do not. It’s only natural that I’ve had to stop myself from writing “Nashville’s Caroline Rose” a few times over the years. The New England songsmith and bandleader’s first LP I Will Not Be Afraid was a solid Americana singer-songwriter-type effort, but she didn’t feel like that style and its sepia-toned connotations really allowed her to share the multitudes she contains. Her 2018 LP LONER was a prismatic explosion of inventive, danceable New Wave-kissed

FATHER JOHN MISTY

PHOTO: KARYN PHOTOGRAPHY

garage-punk, shot through with wry humor and deft poignancy. The week that the pandemic started shutting things down across the U.S. in March 2020, she followed it up with Superstar, a post-disco popschooled album on which Rose explores the experience of taking risks to realize your potential, or as she wrote, “It’s a story about losing yourself but also finding the brazen self-confidence to follow a dream.” She and her kickass band return to Nashville on Thursday, joined by Tōth, the solo project of Alex Toth from genre-busting outfit Rubblebucket. 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. STEPHEN TRAGESER

[BLOW THE HOUSE DOWN]

MUSIC

REMI WOLF

Whether she’s “hatin-atin-atin like Cruella De Vil” on “Front Tooth” or “doing on-and-off Pilates like a middle-aged soccer mommy” on “Anthony Kiedis,” Remi Wolf takes us on a bizarrely weird and wonderful journey throughout her 2021 album Juno. Propelled into commercial success by the virality of songs like “Quiet on Set” and “Sexy Villain,” Wolf has yet to show any signs of sacrificing her weirdness for the limelight. In an interview with NPR, Wolf cited Nirvana, Erykah Badu and even “kind of as a joke” Limp Bizkit as some of her biggest influences, and it shows in her genre-defying melting-pot of an album. If Wolf’s live show manages to capture even a fraction of the fun she displays in her fantastic catalog of music videos, her Nashville stop on the Gwingle Gwongle Tour is bound to be an eccentric experience. 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N CONNOR DARYANI

[SCARY GOOD SHOW]

THEATER

STREET THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS MONSTERSONGS

An immersive mash-up of rock music, graphic novels and live theater that invites audiences to look into the minds of familiar but often misunderstood monstrous creatures? I’d expect nothing less from Street Theatre Company. This stalwart crew is back in action this week, and ready to usher in the Halloween season with its much-anticipated production of Monstersongs. First released as a combination graphic novel and rock album back in 2017, Monstersongs features a clever

book, music and lyrics by Rob Rokicki (composer of The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical), and was developed in conjunction with award-winning illustrator David O’Neill. In fact, the show actually includes projections from the graphic novel, highlighting traditional baddies such as the mummy, a troll, a ghost and even Medusa. It’s directed by Sawyer Wallace with musical direction by Randy Craft, and the cast includes Delaney Amatrudo, Carli Hardon, Alex Hillaker, Blake Holliday, Ang Madaline-Johnson, David Ridley and Mike Sallee Jr. Oct. 6-15 at the Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Ave. AMY STUMPFL

[OUT OF THE COCOON]

MUSIC

2’LIVE BRE

Among all the other things it does, creative expression is frequently a way for artists to interpret what’s going on around them and their reaction to it. Earlier this year, Nashville-raised Breion Dixon, better known as nimble rapper 2’Live Bre, told the Nashville Scene and Nashville Post’s KateLynn White that the journals he kept as a teenager helped him process his parents’ divorce. His determination to build himself up as a professional MC and actor has led to an impressive career, including several albums and EPs and a stint on the

Netflix competition show Rhythm + Flow But he still suffered from depression, something he sees lots of peers and others in his community struggling with privately. His experiences with therapy led him to focus on openly encouraging mental health care; becoming a father has inspired him to work with kids through a nonprofit he founded called Butterfly Nation, which teams up youth with mentors who help them explore making music. Thursday’s show at Analog is a celebration of recent releases like his singles “Pray 2 God” and “Young Black Everything” and his 2021 EP Butterfly Effect, as well as a fundraiser for Butterfly Nation’s summer programs. 7 p.m. at Analog at Hutton Hotel, 1808 West End Ave. STEPHEN TRAGESER

FRIDAY / 10.07

MUSIC

[SO SHUT UP, AND PLAY THAT GUITAR] LUCERO W/L.A. EDWARDS

It’s hard to pin down Lucero to just one musical space — in both the physical and artistic senses. With a quarter-century of recording and touring under its belt, the West Tennessee/Arkansas unit has spent time on the stages of the Springwater, Mercy Lounge and recently performing

“Kiss the Bottle” with Jawbreaker’s Blake Schwarzenbach at Brooklyn Bowl. Their sound has fed off the members’ skate-rock roots, re-created a solid E Street Band simulation, borrowed heavily from the soul of Memphis and finally arrived at the noir, cinematic album When You Found Me in 2021. A full year since their last headlining slot at the Ryman, the band is returning to John Lewis Way — and bringing along California songwriter L.A. Edwards. 8 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way

P.J. KINZER

FILM

[BASH IT RIGHT THE FUCK IN!] THE SHINING

For as long as I can remember, The Shining — Stanley Kubrick’s iconic, icy 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 bestselling novel — has always struck me as more odd than scary. First off, who the hell would hire an alcoholic writer (in this case, Jack Nicholson’s doomed Jack Torrance) to take care of a big-ass resort hotel during the winter? Was this a thing hotels used to do back in the day? I know that an empty hotel, with its long, barren corridors, is an ideal location for creepy things (spooky twin girls, guys getting blown by dudes in bear suits, etc.) to start popping off. I just felt the premise was a bit flimsy. Nevertheless, if you want to check out the film where Jack Nicholson was at his most Jack Nicholson-y, and co-star Shelley Duvall was so emotionally terrorized by Kubrick that she quit acting and started making all-star fairy tales for Showtime, it’s playing at Full Moon Cineplex this weekend. 7 p.m. Oct. 7 and 9 p.m. Oct. 8 at Full Moon Cineplex, 3455 Lebanon Pike CRAIG D. LINDSEY

[BUY BLACK]

SHOPPING

NASHVILLE BLACK MARKET FIRST FRIDAY MARKET

Racism has tormented people of color for centuries. But it’s getting easier for people to support Black businesses in Nashville — Nashville Black Market is a monthly event hosted at the Nashville Farmers’ Market, and the perfect way to support Black businesses. More than 40 vendors — offering everything from soap to baked goods to books — rent booths and participate. It’s a communitywide block party, complete with dancing, DJs and lots of positive vibes. Visit

LUCERO

CAROLINE ROSE

OPENING NIGHT

1618

COCKTAIL SUPPER at 5pm at RUBY SUNSHINE HOSTED BY CHABAD OF NASHVILLE WEDNESDAY • OCTOBER 12th BELCOURT THEATRE at 7pm

JEWS OF THE WILD WEST

HOSTED BY WEST END SYNAGOGUE THURSDAY • OCTOBER 13th-15th VIRTUAL SCREENING

GREENER PASTURES

HOSTED BY ARGENT TRUST COMPANY SATURDAY • OCTOBER 15th AMC BELLEVUE 12 at 7pm

THE MAN IN THE BASEMENT

HOSTED BY VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PROGRAM IN JEWISH STUDIES, NOW GEN NASHVILLE & NEXT DOR, THE TEMPLE, CONGREGATION OHABAI SHOLOM WEDNESDAY • OCTOBER 19th BELCOURT THEATRE at 7pm

THE LEVYS OF MONTICELLO FREE TO JCC SENIOR MEMBERS HOSTED BY CONGREGATION SHERITH ISRAEL THURSDAY • OCTOBER 20th GORDON JCC at 12pm

AMERICAN BIRTHRIGHT

HOSTED BY COMMUNITY RELATIONS COMMITTEE, JEWISH FEDERATION AND JEWISH FOUNDATION OF NASHVILLE AND MIDDLE TENNESSEE

THURSDAY • OCTOBER 20th-22nd VIRTUAL SCREENING BETRAYED

HOSTED BY TENNESSEE HOLOCAUST COMMISSION TUESDAY • OCTOBER 25th-27th VIRTUAL SCREENING

SONG SEARCHER

HOSTED BY VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY’S HOLOCAUST LECTURE SERIES WEDNESDAY • OCTOBER 26th BELCOURT THEATRE at 7pm

PERSIAN LESSONS

THURSDAY • OCTOBER 27th-29th VIRTUAL SCREENING

iMORDECAI

HOSTED BY B’NAI B’RITH SOCIAL CLUB

SATURDAY • OCTOBER 29th AMC BELLEVUE 12 at 7pm

SHEPHERD:

THE STORY OF A JEWISH DOG

FAMILY SCREENING

SUNDAY • OCTOBER 30th GORDON JCC at 9:30am

THE UNITED STATES OF ELIE TAHARI

MONDAY MATINEE HOSTED BY WOMEN OF THE W.E.L.L., THE TEMPLE, CONGREGATION OHABAI SHOLOM MONDAY • OCTOBER 31st GORDON JCC at 12pm

NEIGHBORS

HOSTED BY THE GORDON JCC

TUESDAY • NOVEMBER 1st-3rd VIRTUAL SCREENING

MARCH ‘68

HOSTED BY NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN, NASHVILLE SECTION

WEDNESDAY • NOVEMBER 2nd-4th VIRTUAL SCREENING

CLOSING NIGHT

LOVE & MAZEL TOV HOSTED BY NASHVILLE HADASSAH

THURSDAY • NOVEMBER 3rd BELCOURT THEATRE at 7pm

For trailers, tickets, and special events visit NASHVILLEJFF.ORG

A Program of the Gordon Jewish Community Center Supported by Jewish Federation of Nashville & Middle Tennessee

thenashvilleblackmarket.com for more details. 6-10 p.m. at the Nashville Farmers’ Market, 900 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. KATELYNN WHITE

MUSIC

[TO KEEP US BOTH HONEST AND TRUE] YOU GOT GOLD — A CELEBRATION OF JOHN PRINE

The infernal pandemic robbed fans, friends and family of songwriter’s songwriter and singular human John Prine, as well as an opportunity to mourn him together. The You Got Gold event series to honor his memory, organized last year by Prine’s family and his independent label Oh Boy Records, was postponed due to the Delta variant. But finally, there will be six days of picking and singing at venues all over town. Ticket sales benefit the new nonprofit Hello in There Foundation, whose mission — to “identify and collaborate with individuals and communities to offer support for people who are marginalized, discriminated against or, for any reason, are otherwise forgotten” — is very much in tune with the man himself. Tribute concerts are set for each night: Friday and Tuesday at City Winery, Saturday at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater, Sunday and Monday (and Monday would’ve been Prine’s 76th birthday) at the Ryman and Wednesday at The Basement East. Lineups haven’t been announced, but given the jaw-dropping array of stellar musicians Prine was a peer of or made to feel like a peer, anything you check out is going to be great; that includes Monday’s picking parties at Brown’s Diner and the Gibson Garage. On Tuesday, the Belcourt will screen “Big Old Goofy World,” an hourlong documentary released in 2021 to mark the 40th anniversary of Oh Boy, and throughout the week, there will be tastings of a special bourbon released by The Bard Distillery in Prine’s honor. He was an ardent fan of the meatloaf at Arnold’s Country Kitchen, so the restaurant will serve it all week long; he also loved a cheeseburger, and the White Castle on Broadway hosts a happy hour on Monday (with his favorite vodka-and-ginger-ale cocktails available) and a fan lunch on Wednesday. Many ticketed events sold out when the series was announced in 2021, but livestream options are available for some; check out yougotgold.johnprine.com for the full schedule of events and special offers as well as ticketing details. Oct. 7-12 at various venues STEPHEN TRAGESER

ART [VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS]

VIRGINIA OVERTON: SAVED

Nashville native Virginia Overton makes site-specific work that utilizes reclaimed plywood, refrigerator parts and farm utensils — but her work commands attention from institutions far from her Middle Tennessee farmland home. She has work in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and earlier this year she had an exhibition at Goldsmiths CCA in London, installed a permanent sitespecific installation at LaGuardia Airport in New York, and was included in the 59th Venice Biennale. To learn more about the artist, her practice and this show, arrange another visit from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 22 — the Frist will host a conversation between Overton and the director of the Yale Center for British Art Courtney J. Martin. Oct. 7-Dec. 31 at the Frist Art Museum, 919 Broadway LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

SATURDAY / 10.08

MUSIC

[IF IT ALL GOES SOUTH]

SAMMY RAE & THE FRIENDS

Brooklyn’s Sammy Rae & The Friends are an accessible and inclusive pop outfit with funk and jazz overtones. Singer-keyboardist Sammy Rae possesses Puckish stage presence and honeyed vocals, with a penchant for retro jazz crooning. Ostensibly, The Friends are a sevenpiece whose melodies are driven by two saxophonists and anchored by its guitarist’s funk rhythms — but “Friends” could just as likely be a reference to the band’s spirit of camaraderie. Considering that three of its members — including Sammy Rae — cut their teeth playing in musical acts for young children, it’s not surprising these late-20-somethings have fun onstage with each other and their audience. One tip: It’s tradition that Sammy Rae borrows an audience member’s denim jacket during “Denim Jacket,” the group’s funky shuffle about clothing-as-emotional-support. Loan her yours, friend! Opening is North Carolina’s The Collection. 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N. WILLIAM HOOKER

MUSIC [OLD FRIENDS]

CRAVE ON ALBUM RELEASE

Like their friends and associates in Nashville bands like Styrofoam Winos, Crave On’s work is marked by an eclectic approach — a little folk here, a

UPCOMING EVENTS

there, a little old-school electronic music over that-a-way — and a unique perspective on trying to find joy and human connection in a society that rewards conformity. Friday, they’ll release Slow Pulsing Rainbow, a follow-up to their excellent 2019 LP Ace on the Outspeaker Pulsing songs like “Charming the Matador” and “Parched Lips” have a little bit wider of a sonic palette than the Ace tunes; while singer-guitarist Patrick Orr’s distinctive vocal delivery is still a key thread in the tapestry, there’s more of a focus on keyboard contributions and Kate Richi’s string parts. Though they’re new, the songs from the forthcoming LP feel a lot like old friends. Saturday, the band celebrates the release at Drkmttr with help from the aforementioned Winos — that’s Joe Kenkel, Lou Turner and Trevor Nikrant, who have all released stellar solo records in the past year. Also joining is top-notch guitarist Dillon Watson, who’s been playing out a bunch in 2022 with his own gently rocking tunes like “Love Me Do” (an original, not a Beatles cover). 8 p.m. at Drkmttr, 1111 Dickerson Pike STEPHEN TRAGESER

[STAYING POWER]

COMMUNITY

THE LIPSTICK LOUNGE’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY BLOCK PARTY

Nashville is lucky to have a lesbian bar like The Lipstick Lounge, which provides a safe place for its patrons to drink, socialize and sing karaoke — especially because there aren’t many bars like it left in the nation. Owners Christa Suppan and Jonda Valentine had to fight to keep it open following the tornado and during the pandemic. In doing so, they maintained a much-needed haven in a state that isn’t particularly welcoming to its LGBTQ residents on the legislative level. As if that weren’t reason enough to stop by and celebrate, The Lipstick Lounge is turning 20. To honor its anniversary, the bar will host an afternoon block party, with the festivities kicking off at noon with a drag brunch (first come, first served). At 2 p.m., the rest of the festivities will begin, including live music, a high-heel race, a pet parade and a Hollywood Squares-style game session. It’s sure to be electric. 2 p.m. at The Lipstick Lounge, 1400 Woodland St. KELSEY BEYELER

MUSIC

SUNDAY / 10.09

[ALEX IS ON FIRE]

ALEX G

The cover art might look like an airbrushed state-fair T-shirt, but there’s no irony to God Save the Animals, the latest from chameleonic Philly songsmith Alex G (last name: Giannascoli). The album presents a beguiling and fascinating game of spot-the-influence, hitting on earlyAughts indie-psych à la Grizzly Bear, plus Failure-style space rock, Adrian Belew-like pastoral prog, acid pop along the lines of San Diego’s Pinback, and even downtempo confessionals like Soundcloud rap’s fallen star Juice Wrld. That’s just what my ears hear — go, and draw your own conclusions. Massachusetts-residing songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Barrie opens. 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

MUSIC [CLAP ALONG IF YOU FEEL]

THICK W/SKATING POLLY & PEACHY

Since ’90s slacker culture is so celebrated among youths today, you’d think there would be more albums that really speak to those of us who lived through it the first time around. But Happy Now, the latest 12-inch slab from Brooklyn threesome THICK, is both buzzy and buoyant enough to appeal to the leftover rockers of Gen X as much as the youngblood underground of Gen Z. The trio’s punchy lo-fi hooks took them from their parents’ garage to the roster of Epitaph Records. THICK’s Nashville gig also features Oklahoma stepsister act Skating Polly and one of my absolute favorite local bands, Peachy, fresh off the release of their new 12-track album Everything Is Fine. 8 p.m. at The End, 2219 Elliston Place P.J. KINZER

MONDAY / 10.10

MUSIC [WANNA GO FOR A RIDE?]

SMASHING PUMPKINS & JANE’S ADDICTION

Name a more iconic duo: Smashing Pumpkins and spooky season. By now we all know that Billy Corgan’s a weirdo, but also that Siamese Dream — which turns 30 next year — is immortal. And while one’s mileage may vary about the rest of the catalog, the

THICK

SMASHING PUMPKINS

live show, especially the stadium version, isn’t going to leave you hanging. For fans of the Chicagoans’ magnum opus Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Corgan & Co.’s sets so far this tour have represented the ’95 double disc well. Three-fourths of L.A. grunge-era gods Jane’s Addiction support with their timeless anthems to kleptomania (“Been Caught Stealing”) and sadly, heroin girls (“Jane Says”) — but hopefully some more triumphant moments too (“Mountain Song,” and so on). 8 p.m. at Bridgestone Arena, 501 Broadway CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

TUESDAY / 10.11

MUSIC [A SHAMEFUL, SHAMEFUL DAY] SHAME W/VIAGRA BOYS

In 2018, then-teenage English fivepiece Shame stormed the rock world with Songs of Praise, a steadfast rejection of modern-day ennui with Gang of Four, Nirvana and U2 in its DNA — and a David Yow-and-Iggy Pop-inspired wildman named Charlie Steen as its mouthpiece. Shame’s anything-goes live show was hyped from the moment they landed on American soil, and though COVID hurt their momentum, the band passed the second-album test with 2021’s Drunk Tank Pink Drunk Tank’s biggest crime is one it can’t help — that a band only gets to debut once. If its fiveplus-minute motorik-punk pillars “Snow Day” and “Station Wagon” didn’t provide enough intrigue to inspire you to catch Shame at their first Nashville gig in more than four years, Swedish garage-punk titans Viagra Boys acting as opener should do it. 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

WEDNESDAY

MUSIC [BLUE ROOM EXPLOSION] JON SPENCER & THE HITMAKERS W/ COUNTRY WESTERNS

As the king of the pre-Y2K bluespunk scene, Jon Spencer was already an underground icon with his Blues Explosion, as well as with his bellicose noise-rockers Pussy Galore and an infinite number of short-lived other projects. The wild frontman’s newest trio, featuring husbandand-wife duo Sam Comes and Janet Weiss of

Portland, Ore.’s Quasi, engages electronic noise with R&B and punk influences. Jon Spencer & The HITmakers’ first record, Spencer Gets Lit, is one of the strongest releases in Spencer’s enormous catalog, showcasing why the 57-year-old frontman is still a vibrant force of rock ’n’ roll. The crunchy, jangly tones of Country Westerns will set up the night, while we all await the power trio’s new full-length to be released.

8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. P.J. KINZER

ROBBIE LYNN HUNSINGER W/TIM KAISER

There’s a fascinating, complex and constantly evolving relationship between artistic expression and the tools used to make it. Two fantastically creative artists who blur the lines between instrument makers, composers, software engineers and multimedia performance artists invite you to explore that relationship in depth on Wednesday. Nashville’s own Robbie Lynn Hunsinger will give her first local performance since the beginning of the pandemic, featuring new audiovisual pieces that she’ll be touring this fall. Components include synth drones, live loops of wind instruments and fiddles, field recordings and vocals, mixed and manipulated in real time in software she’s specially written, which will in turn control visuals generated by video synthesizers. She’ll be joined by Duluth, Minn.’s Tim Kaiser, who you may have seen at several iterations of the local hardware-hacking celebration Circuit Benders’ Ball. He takes electroacoustic instrument design to places that some folks might be content just to dream about, in which lights, sounds and physical interactions with — and between — his bespoke, highly tactile creations result in a mesmerizing, shape-shifting ocean of sound. 7:30 p.m. at the Centennial Black Box Theater, 211 27th Ave. N. STEPHEN TRAGESER

MUSIC [SPIRITUAL MACHINES]

WOLF

A BUDDING EMPIRE

Entrepreneur Mike Solomon is building his cannabis business from the dirt to the dinner table

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

Alocal chef once told me, “Anybody who is growing mi crogreens for restaurants is either already growing weed or getting ready to grow it as soon as it’s legal.” Whether or not that’s true, there is no doubt that entrepreneurs all over are plan ning and developing infrastructure in advance of potential widespread legalization of cannabis.

Mike Solomon is a McMinnville, Tenn., na tive and a University of Tennessee graduate who moved to Southern California, where he became a licensed medical cannabis grower under a state caregiver program. The pro gram allowed medicinal marijuana card holders to assign their cards to a specific grower to cultivate plants for them. With a stable of 30 patients, Solomon was allowed to grow 360 plants, and he learned how to grow high-grade cannabis in his indoor op erations.

Surprisingly, Tennessee was somewhat ahead of the curve when the Department of Agriculture established the state’s Indus trial Hemp Agricultural Pilot Program in 2015, three years before the national Farm Bill finally differentiated hemp from mari juana. Both products come from the canna bis plant, but the difference is THC content. Hemp can contain all the same terpenes and cannabinoids as marijuana, but can legally have no more than 0.3 percent THC — the psychoactive compound that is traditionally associated with the intoxicating effects of marijuana.

Solomon saw this as an opportunity to move home and become a big fish in a small pond. The Tennessee cannabis market was still nascent and relatively disorganized when he started Tri-Star Medical & Craft Cannabis (no affiliation with the TriStar Health hospital group) to grow and process high-quality cannabis into a line of tinctures, edibles, lotions and other products.

Some companies prefer to use the terms “hemp” and “CBD” to describe their prod ucts, but Solomon is avoiding that to break the stigma behind cannabis. “They’re all cannabis,” he explains. “It’s legal to extract THC from the plant as long as it doesn’t exceed the limit. Think of it like coffee. De pending on how you process the bean, coffee can be caffeinated or decaf, but it’s all still coffee. Marijuana is like caffeinated, and hemp is decaf.”

In his large facility in Antioch, Solomon grows what he calls Craft Cannabis and ex tracts CBD and THC from the plants. Unlike many producers, Tri-Star uses a solventless process to extract the compounds, elimi nating chemicals you probably don’t want in your final product. (“We call it ‘fresh-

BUDS

BREWS

PHOTO:

squeezed’ cannabis,” Solomon jokes.) With the active compounds isolated, Tri-Star adds them at legal levels to their line of products.

The next level of Solomon’s verti cally integrated cannabis operation is his chain of retail shops under the Holistic Connection brand. He’s already opened more than a dozen stores across the state, offering con sumer sales of the products that TriStar creates along with flower and dab-bar experiences. There, “bud tenders” lead customers through a sampling of different products while explaining the differences between sativa-derived, indica-derived and hybrid strains.

“I wanted to create an Amsterdam coffee shop vibe,” says Solomon. “I say the dab bar is like a cannabis wine tasting.”

Even as he looks to expand The Holistic Connection via franchis ing, Solomon plans to maintain an end-to-end chain of custody of all the products sold from his Tri-Star facility. He’s also eyeing a delivery service for his cannabis collection to eliminate the need for customers to even get off their couch.

In August, Solomon created yet another layer to his empire with the opening of Germantown’s Buds & Brews, a restaurant revolving around cannabis experiences in various forms. “I wanted to make a legal, safe space for customers to enjoy hemp-derived products,”

sumption. “We like to ‘shaman’ you through the process,” says Solomon.

The second Buds & Brews experience is beverage-based, with a selection of THCinfused fruit juices and mocktails garnished with cannabis leaves — in case you weren’t aware what you’re partaking in. To ensure that legal levels of THC are regulated, all food and drink products containing the compounds are produced, inspected and packaged off site, so the juices come in Capri Sun-like bags, and the sauces that accompany the food are packaged in those adorable tiny condiment bottles like hotel ketchup and mustard that come with room service.

The food offered at Buds & Brews is traditional pub-grub fare, including share able appetizers with punny names like Nugged Out Nachos, a 420 Pretzel and Dude, Where’s My Wings? Sandwiches and wraps are pretty traditional — there’s a burger, a club sandwich and a grilled or fried chicken sandwich. Wake and Bake Tacos are a fan fa vorite, and an old-school pepperoni pizza is intentionally designed as a throwback to the slices served on Fridays at the high school cafeteria. Naturally, the menu also offers a simple bowl of Lucky Charms.

he explains. “If we can have a Margaritaville restaurant and country-music-star bars, why can’t we have a cannabis-themed restaurant?”

Located at the corner of Third Avenue North and Mon roe Street, Buds & Brews has quickly begun to attract curious tourists and locals. The restau rant is 21-and-up, and IDs are checked at the host stand before entry. All servers are ABCcertified — an important detail since that includes training on how to determine the level of impairment among customers, although that has traditionally centered on serving alcohol. Since the experience at Buds & Brews is so novel to most visi tors, servers take guests through the various options offered. For $50 an hour, you can order the “vapor tap” experience, sort of a private dab bar at your table. After talking guests through a menu of vape options and the expected effects from each strain, servers bring a personal vaporizer to the table, preloaded with a cartridge of Delta-8 THC. To maintain hygiene, each vapor izer comes with the equivalent of a wine glass inverted over the top to capture the smoke, which patrons can “sip” at their leisure. Servers remove the device be tween puffs to help manage con

A couple of salads are also available, with the option of adding fried, grilled or Nash ville hot chicken, and desserts are predict ably decadent, ranging from brownies to a skillet chocolate chip cookie with vanilla ice cream — and, of course, Pot Tarts. Is former Urban Grub chef Sam McGee going to win a James Beard Award for the food at Buds & Brews? Probably not, but it is pretty solid fare, a step above everyday fast-casual. Food sales definitely outstrip cannabis sales at Buds & Brews, so it is an important com ponent of the business.

The cannabis component of the culinary offering at Buds & Brews is in the form of a host of Craft Cannabis-infused sauces that are available for $7 for a 2-ounce bottle with a “buy four get one free” offer. Every item on the food menu comes with suggested sauce pairings: buffalo, barbecue, ranch or bleu cheese for the wings; mayo, ketchup or mustard for the burger; Cajun butter or honey mustard for the grilled cheese; and dark chocolate or honey for the churros. Each sauce bottle contains 5 milligrams of cannabis-derived products, well below the 25-milligram legal limit. By combining sauces and determining how much to add to the food, diners basically determine their own dosage, and the sauces are objectively delicious accouterments. Guests are wel come to take their leftover sauces home, and the packaging is definitely designed for fu ture widespread retail sales through various outlets that Solomon is considering.

Solomon is already looking for potential new locations for future Buds & Brews even as his Tri-Star Medical and Holistic Connections businesses grow at a remark able rate. “When I came back to Tennes see, I saw the huge untapped landscape of the local hemp market,” he says. “I left the marijuana heaven of California for the hemp of Tennessee.”

Considering the results Solomon has already achieved and the potential growth that still exists depending on future legisla tive developments, it sure seems like he made the right choice.

PHOTOS:

COLD PIZZA ON THE STEPS OF THE PARTHENON

Jonathan Richman returns to Nashville

BY SEAN L. MALONEY

Editor’s note: Longtime Scene contributor Sean L. Maloney has written for us about Jonathan Richman and his onetime band The Modern Lovers on many occasions. He is also the author of the volume in Blooms bury Press’ 33 1/3 series on Richman & Co.’s “never meant to be an album” The Modern Lovers.

Tuesday night, Jonathan Rich man returns to Nashville, this time stopping in at Third Man Records. Richman, whose career has stretched across five decades and about as many continents, has been creating some of his most thought ful and playful work in recent years —

prismatic AM pop from the most minimal of elements. While often lauded for the demos he recorded with John Cale and Kim Fowley as a young man, Richman has been creating uniquely dynamic rock ’n’ roll for 50 years, his art engaging a deeper and more joyful sense of humanity with every release.

His latest EP Cold Pizza & Other Hot Stuff, released in March via Cleveland’s great Blue Arrow Records, highlights the loose and lively feel that permeates his live performances with longtime drummer Tommy Larkins as he contemplates the un pretentious nature of next-day pizza and the joy people get from loving Dolly Parton. His most recent full-length, December’s Want to Visit My Inner House?, finds Richman working again with tamboura player Nicole Montalbano as well as one of his earliest collaborators, keyboardist Jerry Harrison (who joined Talking Heads after his tenure in The Modern Lovers), to create a master work of observational mysticism. It is the most deeply Jonathan of his work, an amal gamation of everything wonderful about his catalog to date — and a great starting point for people intimidated by an expansive and often byzantine discography.

Richman does not grant interviews in a typical manner. He asks that an interview be in writing, with his replies printed as presented. It’s more like a collaborative art project than a typical presser, hence the atypical format. Below, find Richman’s words in bold and my words in plain type.

Thank you for saying how our shows are one of Nashville’s favorite soirees! Nashville has become one of our favorites on the circuit too! We’re glad if people are enjoying the shows as much as we are.

Your newest EP Cold Pizza & Other Hot Stuff contains two of the most factual 100 percent true songs I have heard in years, the aforementioned “Cold Pizza” and “Every body Loves Dolly.” The latter should prob ably be Nashville’s anthem.

Yes! Both songs are true! Cold pizza is what it is and everybody does love Dolly!

It’s been a tough few years with lots of challenges from every direction. How do you find joy and love when, as you sang on your 2021 album Want to Visit My Inner House?, “the world gives you a pinch”?

Yes! Hasn’t it been a tough few years? So …

How do I find joy and love? I don’t try! They are just there, as is the grim and horrifying.

It’s been said that every creative interac tion has something to teach us. Inner House found you working with Jerry Harrison for the first time in a long time. What did you learn while collaborating?

Ah … you brought up Jerry! Playing and making up songs with Jerry has been one of the great joys of my life in these past four years (see, he was on the album before this last one, too). I love the chance to come with a song idea and bring it to our recording sessions and then learn what he will do with it. We actually have more in common musi cally now than we had then and I have a better

attitude toward other musicians’ input now than I did then. (Which isn’t saying much.) His keyboards and the tamboura go well together, too. Did you notice? So me and Jerry have been much closer lately than ever before.

Who will be with you?

Why, my drummer Tommy, as always.

Will the tambourist Nicole Montalbano, who plays that instrument on some of your most recent albums, be there onstage?

Not this tour. She did come on the recent tour we did in June from Montreal to Philadelphia.

What’s next?

Tour of California in December. Tour of the South, Northeast and Midwest in February & March of 2023.

Do you play different songs in different parts of the country?

Good question! I don’t use a set-list, so we don’t know what we’re going to do until we do it. But, I suppose I am more likely to sing songs in Span ish in South Texas and Southern California and in New Mexico and Arizona; and, up in Canada in Montreal, I’ll do lots of the show in French, but … I sort of intentionally don’t do songs I think people might expect to hear at any given location because I’m just like that. But … in Boston, where I’m from, I often sing lots of “local” songs. I get sentimental that way depending on the night. But, mainly, I never know what’s going to happen and don’t want to find out until it does.

See you at Third Man October 11th!

Jonathan

Dear Sean, Thanks for the thoughtful questions.

PHOTO: DRIELY S.

CLOUD CONTROL: D TOUR LAYS OUT A NEW PATH FOR INDEPENDENT TOURING ARTISTS

BY D’LLISHA DAVIS

Cloud Control is a collaboration between the Nashville Scene and music news, events and promotions platform 2 L’s on a Cloud.

If you have lived in Nashville longer than 10 years, you’ve taken note of the many changes to the landscape of the live music scene. Independent music venues have been crucial to helping independent musicians, promoters and more develop and thrive, maintaining our reputation as Music City, USA. Some, like the Station Inn and Springwater, have been in place for decades, while others like The Cobra and The East Room are newer. They vary in size from intimate spaces like The 5 Spot and The End to capacious rooms like 3rd and Lindsley and The Wash at Eastside Bowl.

At the best of times, having a career as an independent artist and running an independent venue are both extremely difficult ventures. The span of months and months when the pandemic kept venues closed and made touring impossible put a spotlight on a variety of systemic issues that make these businesses so challenging. In Nashville, more and more musicians are speaking up about the strains of trying to stay afloat amid rising real estate prices and other issues; some have even left town. Meanwhile, some venues have closed. One of the most recent: The expansive Mercy Lounge complex shut down in May after the business owners and the property owner couldn’t agree on new lease terms; a new suite of venues called Cannery Hall will open on the site next year.

One of the many pressures in this business comes from major corporate players in international concert promotion like Live Nation and AEG. Over the past 10 to 12 years, they have increased their activity in and involvement with the small and midsize venues that are vital to music scenes everywhere. In March, a coalition of independent concert promoters and venue managers launched D Tour, a nationwide network that offers an indie alternative for artists trying to tour nationally. Chris Cobb, proprietor of historic Nashville venue Exit/ In, owner of concert promotions company Bona Fide Live and a co-founder of D Tour, explains that the group’s biggest asset is its collective knowledge of local markets for concerts. If you want expert advice on how to book a show in a city you’ve never played before and have everyone involved walk away happy, who better to ask than the people who have been there for a long time?

“Through D Tour, we’ve created a decentralized yet formalized network that will put artists in better touring scenarios and

create better fan experiences,” Cobb tells the Scene. “D Tour leverages the collective strength of the independents, allowing us to all do what we do respectively very well, but do it together. This is new and so needed as we reimagine what touring can and should look like — and navigate higher costs and an extremely disrupted consumer base.”

In the past, local venue operators and promoters focused on running their own businesses. The innovation of D Tour is connecting those hyperlocal stores of knowledge to one another, providing a resource for booking shows across the country. In mid-September, D Tour announced a significant expansion of its affiliate network. The group now boasts 30 concert promotion firms, festival producers and venues, including historic spaces like Minneapolis’ First Avenue and Washington, D.C.’s 9:30 Club.

Cobb has been deeply involved in Nashville music for more than two decades, learning some hard firsthand lessons about putting on shows in his early days. “I’m talking losing 90-plus percent of all the money I had to my name,” he says. “Ultimately though, as close as it got, the finances would always work out, and I’d experience an incredible live performance that would recharge me to keep going. Live music is in my soul.”

By 2004, he was working full time at Exit/In, and a few years later, he joined Josh Billue in running the operation; Cobb and Billue also co-founded Marathon Music Works. Following an amicable split with Billue in 2019, Cobb and his wife Telisha Cobb became Exit/In’s proprietors. As the pandemic took hold in 2020, Cobb became a charter member of the National Independent Venue Association, the national trade group that lobbied successfully for federal funds to save indie venues, and co-founded its local analog Music Venue Alliance Nashville. Last year, the property home to Exit/In was purchased by real estate developer AJ Capital Partners; though the firm has applied for some historic protections for the site, the future of the business remains unclear, and Exit/In is currently not booking shows after Thanksgiving.

“I honestly don’t really know where this city is heading, where Exit/In is heading, or where I’m heading at the moment,” Cobb says. “I’ve been fortunate to serve under and with incredible people and leaders through NIVA and have and continue to learn so much from that group of people. As unstable as this city often feels to me, there are great people here doing great work every day. I’ve tried to stay in alignment with my values and work towards a better Nashville for all of us who call it home.”

Talking with Exit/In’s Chris Cobb, a co-founder of the nationwide independent venue network

MUSIC

FOLLOW THE ORGANIZATION AT D-TOUR.LIVE FOR UPDATES

OCTOBER

THE SPIN

WAY OUT WEST

BY EDD HURT

The crowd at the CMA Theater at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Friday night skewed toward middle-aged, and I felt the vibe of the 1970s — down-home yet hip, and way into country-rock — the minute I walked in. Just opened at the CMHoF is Western Edge, an exhibit that covers Los Angeles country-rock in the 1960s and ’70s, with the story extending to the post-New Wave days of The Blasters and Dwight Yoakam in the ’80s. At the CMA Theater, a group of storied musicians made connections between Nashville and Hollywood, telling one part of the story the exhibit lays out. The show, nearly three hours with intermission, made a case for country-rock as a hybrid of folk, country and pop influences.

The house band was superb, with drummer Steve Duncan and bassist Mark Fain playing alongside guitarist and mandolin player John Jorgenson and steel guitarist JayDee Maness. Appropriately enough for

You Go” as a folk-rock number, with drums and British Invasion-style guitar.

The son of one of the founding members of The Byrds — arguably the most important California country-rock group — Kai Clark sang in tribute to the late Gene Clark, who wrote many of The Byrds’ hits and went on to a long solo career. Next up were members of another group of legendary country-rockers, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. With harmonica player Jimmie Fadden (who is also the band’s longtime drummer) joining guitarist Jeff Hanna and multi-instrumentalist John McEuen, they played Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles,” a song they turned into a hit in 1971.

If the show had a star, it was Chris Hillman The Los Angeles native made his bones in the California bluegrass scene as a member of The Scottsville Squirrel Barkers and The Hillmen, and he switched from mandolin to bass in The Byrds. His bass playing in The Byrds is both futuristic and grounded in the basics, and he would have a major place in music history for that alone. Hillman has had a long, fruitful career as leader of The Desert Rose Band and an essential associate of Gram Parsons. Hillman and Parsons are the dominant voices on The Flying Burrito Brothers’ landmark 1969

a genre that includes a slew of bluegrass musicians who went over to rock, the show began with a tribute to pioneering bluegrass band The Kentucky Colonels. This was performed by siblings Sara Watkins and Sean Watkins, who play with Americana band Nickel Creek and on their own as Watkins Family Hour. They joined Jorgenson to play a version of The Kentucky Colonels’ 1963 tune “If You’re Ever Gonna Love Me.”

Master of ceremonies Randy Lewis, who wrote about music for the Los Angeles Times for four decades, offered up his insights throughout the evening. Meanwhile, the music also told the story. Country-rock got more like rock in the mid-’60s. You could hear the transition when Rodney Dillard, of the legendary bluegrass band The Dillards — he was onstage with the California-born bluegrass giant Herb Pedersen — sang folk singer Eric Andersen’s “Close the Door Lightly When

album The Gilded Palace of Sin Hillman sang the Gilded Palace song “Sin City” and one of the songs he wrote for The Byrds, “Time Between.” Following him was Buffalo Springfield and Poco founder Richie Furay, whose songs sounded as much like power pop as they did like country. As the night came to a close, there was more pop, with the Watkinses singing Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Teach Your Children.” New Wave country-rocker Rosie Flores essayed the Eagles’ “Already Gone,” while Vince Gill and Memphis-born singer Wendy Moten nailed J.D. Souther’s “Faithless Love.”

The show only scratched the surface of the music covered in the exhibit — it could have gone for another 10 hours. In particular, Jorgenson played a lot of fine guitar, and the performances came across as living music, even given the time between now and then.

EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

OCTOBER

BRING THE FAMILY: ALL-STAR JAM

PHOTO: TERRY WYATT, GETTY IMAGES FOR COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

Oct 7

Franklin Art Scene

Oct 7

Reese Witherspoon: Busy Betty

Oct 7 - 15

The Rocky Horror Show (Full Musical)

Oct 8

Spotlight Series: Latin Fire

Oct 12 - Nov 3

Nashville Jewish Film Festival

Oct 14 - 16

Southern Festival of Books

Oct 15

Kreate Hub Grand Opening

Oct 20 - 22

Artclectic

DURING

NASHVILLE,

MIDDLE TENNESSEE.

Oct 20 - 22

Vanessa Williams with the Nashville Symphony

Oct 21 - 30

The Cake

Oct 22

Firefly Artisan Fair

Oct 22

Jazzmania

Oct 22 Nick Swardson

Oct 22 - 23

Musicians Corner Fall Market

Now - Oct 29

Collective Imagination: Art Right Now

Now - Oct 30

Click, Clack, Boo: A Tricky Treat

Now - Oct 31

Cheekwood Harvest

Now - Nov 30

Indulgent: Works by Tyler Shields

Now - Dec 31

Elise Kendrick: Salon Noir

Now - Jan 15

Painting the Smokies

Cheekwood Estate & Gardens / Caitlin HarrisMusicians CornerHumanities Tennessee / David Duplessis of Tennessee Photographs

EL DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS OCTOBER 29–30

MUSICIANS CORNER FALL MARKET

Featured Artist: Michelle Reeves

Please stop acting like it is. I’m not saying you have to retreat from the exterior world, because there are ways to navigate it safely and with maximum care for the people around you. So do that, OK? There is enough wrongheaded terror in the air as it is, there’s no reason to make it worse. Just take some time and chill out — entertainment options are plentiful, despite what the shortsighted monsters at Warner Bros. Discovery have been up to, vanishing entire works of art from existence to take tax write-offs. Be strong, be safe, and above all, be smart.

Below are our latest recommendations of what to stream. Look back at past issues of the Scene for more.

CONFESS, FLETCH FOR RENT VIA AMAZON PRIME, APPLE TV+ AND MORE

With the exception of Foul Play, I don’t have too much allegiance to the film work of Chevy Chase, so I don’t particularly view the previous pair of Chase-starring Fletch films as any kind of sacred text. (Notable exception: the scintillating Stephanie Mills/ Harold Faltermeyer collaboration “Bit by Bit,” which is one of the great synth-pop movie theme songs of the ’80s.) I do love a good mystery with a smart and lived-in vibe (see also: the messy but way underrated 1987 Whoopi Goldberg joint Burglar), and with Jon Hamm stepping into the titular role of Gregory McDonald’s sardonic investigator, Confess, Fletch becomes exactly the kind of comfort viewing that anybody jonesing for the forthcoming Glass

Onion: A Knives Out Mystery would do well to check out.

Director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) crafts exactly the right vibe for the proceedings, and the cast is superb. It’s not just Hamm nailing the exact right tack for the character, but also Lorenza Izzo and Marcia Gay Harden periodically taking over things as a pair of stepmotherand-daughter Italian aristocrats, or Barb Quicksilver herself Annie Mumolo as a stoner hanger-on who finds several different planes of existence for her character. This is the kind of movie you want to hang out with and sip on hibiscus wine while you make ornate and experimental pasta dishes. Let’s hope Paramount/Miramax beefing the release plan doesn’t preclude us getting several more of these films, because Hamm is perfect for this role. Confess, Fletch has finished its very limited local theatrical run, and the only way to watch the film currently is to rent it for $20 via a streaming service.

WHEN I CONSUME YOU FOR RENT VIA AMAZON PRIME, APPLE TV+ AND MORE

I don’t often dwell on the time I spent in the long, long ago programming for a local film festival, but I always keep track of what the directors whose work I shepherded are getting up to. Part of it is professional responsibility to see interesting and provocative work, and some degree of it is pride — the legacy of that time invested in new voices has yielded untold dividends. Case in point: Perry Blackshear. His 2015 film They Look Like People (currently streaming on Shudder, Tubi and Hoopla) is a stone masterpiece that won Best Feature at that year’s Nashville Film Festival (as well as Best Actor for MacLeod Andrews, who pops up here along with several other Blackshear alumni).

The director is back with a relentless careen through the limits of the human psyche called When I Consume You. It has demons, both metaphorical and literal, and an exceptional pair of lead performances from Evan Dumouchel and Libby Ewing as siblings facing a threat that transcends the

concrete lives they’ve been living, forcing family ties to suddenly suspend a whole new abstract world. I don’t want to give too much away; this one has a superb narrative shift that you really ought to experience for yourself. Just know when you see the name Perry Blackshear, you’re in good hands.

THE KILLING OF RANDY WEBSTER VIA YOUTUBE

Note: There are two different versions of this on YouTube. The longer one includes the commercials as broadcast during the film’s second airing in 1982, and that’s the one I went with. It is a very culturally rich experience, but it does feature a couple of surprise sex predators lurking like jumpscares. That, however, is the unvarnished truth of our TV history.

Based on a true story about a Texas police department’s habit of deploying “throwdown” guns to retroactively justify the use of deadly force, this is a surprisingly effective made-for-TV movie that stars Hal Holbrook and Dixie Carter. (They met while making this, and married in 1983.) It also features Sean Penn, Anthony Edwards, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barry Corbin and Anne Ramsey. The character of Randy is a fuck-up kid (played by Gary McCleery) who gives off weird vibes and who ends up shot to death by the Houston police after they claim he stole a van and pulled a gun on the cops. The structure draws heavily on the Rashomon style of the same event told from multiple perspectives as the Webster family talks to different witnesses to the event, and it’s amazing that a film this focused on eschewing the blind acceptance of authority narratives could have been aired on a major network without causing a furor. As it is, this is essential viewing for anyone looking for made-for-TV films that deliver something special, as well as anyone interested in amazing moments in actressing. Dixie Carter is magnificent in this film, working with outfits and gestures and making a hell of a motion picture debut. Not to be missed.

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

As is its wont, Hollywood has seen fit to give one of its most troubling directors yet another go at it.

After decades of allegations of abuse and downright tyran nical on-set behavior, decorated director David O. Russell is back with Amster dam. Set primarily in 1933, the impossibly star-studded screw ball mystery is inspired lightly by the true story of a planned fascist coup to remove FDR from the White House. The cast is led by Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie as two soldiers and a nurse who meet during World War I and form an impassioned friendship. As the film jumps back and forth from their time in postwar Amsterdam to their experiences stateside 15 years later, we see a cavalcade of stars and ceaseless cameos: Chris Rock! Robert De Niro! Zoe Saldaña! Michael Shan non and Mike Myers as a pair of bird-watch ing spies! Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy as two blue-blooded freaks! Even Taylor Swift for a moment!

With jaw-dropping production design, a decent murder-mystery setup and a barrage of great one-liners in its first act, Amster dam for a moment feels like proof that these A-listers know something we don’t — that perhaps Russell’s alleged screaming and groping and manhandling is simply the price you pay for genius. But for a movie with a half a dozen or so of the biggest movie stars on the planet, Amsterdam often doesn’t seem to know what to do with them.

Previous Russell collaborator Bale — bru tally committed here, as always — is Burt Berendsen, an ailment-afflicted doctor who makes prosthetics and pills and potions for his fellow war-maimed veterans. Washing ton’s Harold Woodsman is his lawyer best friend, and Robbie’s Valerie Voze is the mys terious socialite-turned-battlefield-nurseturned-outsider-artist who rounds out their triad. When Berendsen and Woodsman’s

former commanding officer ends up dead under mysterious off-screen circumstances, the pals are brought in to sort all this out.

From there, things get overstuffed, overwrought and convoluted. The stakes from the outset are life-and-death, sure, but suddenly and without warning Amsterdam becomes a film about global domination with very unclear parameters. As De Niro’s Gen. Gil Dillenbeck puts it broadly, “Somebody’s trying to do something dark and treacherous.” And until a bottleneck of action late in the film’s third act, we don’t really get much information as to who’s doing what and for what purpose. Until that, it’s charming flirtation and laugh lines, intermittent gruesome violence, Bale doing a Herculean amount of heavy lifting, a subplot involving endangered birds and everyone looking great in their periodcorrect costumes. There’s also a very brief moment in which the always lovely Andrea Riseborough, as Berendsen’s wife, seems to display a Cronenbergian psychosexual obsession with her husband’s scars. This is never revisited.

Russell has done some great worldbuilding here — as has his crew, in a more literal sense — but he overindulges in that world. Perhaps there’s no one in the alleg edly megalomaniacal auteur’s sphere who’s willing to tell him no. This is a director who, after all, is reported to have kicked an extra, brought both Amy Adams and Sally Field to tears, and headbutted George Clooney. Who the hell wants to tell that kind of guy he’s got third-act problems? Ultimately, Amster dam’s conclusion has to explain itself with flashbacks, voiceover and dialogue in which a couple of characters literally explain what’s happening — not to mention a truly random pair of fantasy sequences.

If you’ve got an appetite for big-budget, auteur-directed period pieces set a century ago and featuring scads of movie stars, hold off for Damien Chazelle’s Babylon at Christ mas or Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon next year.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Mitts

Short-term employment

Edible part of a nut

With 68-Across, co-creator of the British parody band the Rutles

Land next to the Land of Nod

Super-super

This puzzle’s solution

Schnozzola

Actress Mireille ___ of “Good Omens”

Cheats on

What comes after love

Terminate from an agency, in spy lingo

___-foot (volume measure)

Claptrap

Strip lights

Juicers use them

Opera character whose first name is Floria

Device that turns plastic into paper?

Front or back

Didn’t quite make it home, say

The 2 in 1/2, e.g.

Groove on

Relationship with a statistics teacher?

Blading need

Relinquished

Biz bigwig, in brief

___-deucey (backgammon variety)

Check, with “in”

Date for a party

Aid in some problemsolving

Author of “The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me,” 1985

Head-to-toe garment

“Figure it out!”

or how to arrive at this puzzle’s solution, using the answers to italicized clues

Part of R.B.G.

One branch of Islam

See 12-Across

Storm cloud?

Go (for)

Not G-rated, say DOWN

What may be filled with ink … or oink

M.L.B. team that plays at Chase Field, in brief

Vintage appliance?

Like some love letters and candles

Jumbo jet?

Phrase with a hand raise

Fellow

Bibliophile’s recommenda-tions

Current phenomenon

High school model, maybe

“That’s right”

Novice, informally

Symbols used for tagging

Corn spot

Someone might order cannabis by this

Managed

Widely

region

don’t

Gulf land:

59 N.Y.C. neighborhood bounded by the Bowery to the east

Help line?

Special treatment, for short

“Listen here!”

of the

“khaki” and “pajama”

puzzle

a

about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

for young solvers: nytimes.com/

a

a r k e t p

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INJURY AUTO ACCIDENTS

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LEGAL

Non-Resident Notice

Third Circuit Docket No. 22D415

ESMERALDA GONZALEZ ZAMORA

vs. ALFREDO SILVA MENDEZ

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ALFREDO SILVA MEN DEZ. It is ordered that said Defen dant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after OCTOBER 6, same being the date of the last publi

cation of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on NOVEMBER 7, 2022.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: September 7, 2022

Matt Maniatis Attorney for Plaintiff

NSC 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, 10/06/22

Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 21D1243

QUAMESIA J. HARVEY vs. ROMAINE DONVON GARDNER

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ROMAINE DONVON GARDNER. It is ordered that said De fendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after OCTOBER 6, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court lo cated at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on NOVEMBER 7, 2022.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk

L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk

Date: September 2, 2022

Richard Hedgepath Attorney for Plaintiff

NSC 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, 10/06/22

Non-Resident Notice

Third Circuit

Docket No. 22D479

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon DAVID JAMES WATSON.

It is ordered that said Defendant en ter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after OCTOBER 6, same be ing the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Met ropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on NOVEMBER 7, 2022.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: September 2, 2022

Robyn L. Ryan Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, 10/06/22

Non-Resident Notice

Third Circuit Docket No. 18D391

SHARDEA ANGELIC HAMBLIN vs. RUSSELL LENOX HAMBLIN

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the de fendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon RUSSELL LENOX HAMBLIN. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after OCTOBER 6, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Met ropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on NOVEMBER 7, 2022.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4)

weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: September 8, 2022

Shardea Hamblin Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, 10/06/22

Non-Resident Notice

Third Circuit Docket No. 22A60

DONALD RICHARD DOWDELL, et al. vs. SARA RAE QUEEN DOWDELL

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the de fendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon SARA RAE QUEEN DOWDELL. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after OCTOBER 13, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Met ropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on NOVEMBER 14, 2022.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Joseph P. Day, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk

Date: September 16, 2022

Laura Tek Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/22, 9/29, 10/06, 10/13/22

Non-Resident Notice

Third Circuit Docket No. 22D653

JOSUE JOEL CASTANEDA CUYUCH vs. CELFA ROSAS CAZAREZ

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the de fendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary

process of law cannot be served upon CELFA ROSAS CAZAREZ. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after OCTOBER 13, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Met ropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on NOVEMBER 14, 2022.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Joseph P. Day, Clerk

L Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: September 16, 2022

Matt Maniatis Attorney for Plaintiff

NSC 9/22, 9/29, 10/06, 10/13/22

Non-Resident Notice

Third Circuit Docket No. 22D971

ADOLFO LEON ISAZA

vs. MARINA LINDA ISAZA

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon MARINA LINDA ISAZA. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after OCTOBER 13, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Met ropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on NOVEMBER 14, 2022.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Joseph P. Day, Clerk

L Chappell, Deputy Clerk

Date: September 16, 2022

Nathaniel Colburn Attorney for Plaintiff

NSC 9/22, 9/29, 10/06, 10/13/22

LEGAL NOTICE

Howard C. Gentry, Jr., Criminal Court Clerk

It is my privilege as your elected Criminal Court Clerk to notify all citi zens of Davidson County, that rela tive to grand jury proceedings, it is the duty of your grand jurors to inves tigate any public offense which they know or have reason to believe has been committed and which is triable or indictable in Davidson County. In addition to cases presented to the grand jury by your District Attorney, any citizen may petition the foreper son (foreman) of the grand jury for permission to testify concerning any offense in Davidson County. This is subject to provisions set forth in Ten nessee Code Annotated 40-12-105.

Pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotat ed 40-12- 104 and 40-12-105, the application to testify by any citizen must be accompanied by a sworn af fidavit stating the facts or summariz ing the proof which forms the basis of allegations contained in that ap plication. Your grand jury foreperson is Parker Toler. His address is 222 Second Avenue North, Washington Square Building, Suite 510, Nash ville, Tennessee 37201. The grand jury will meet at 8:00 A.M. on Mon days, Tuesdays and Fridays for three (3) months. Submission of an affida vit which the applicant knows to be false in material regard shall be pun ishable as perjury. Any citizen testify ing before the grand jury as to any material fact known to that citizen to be false shall be punishable as perjury. For a request for accommo dation, please contact 862- 4260. NSC 10/6/22

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Senior IT Quality Assurance Analyst (Multiple positions. GEODIS Logis tics, LLC, Brentwood, TN): Reqs Bach (US/frgn equiv) in IT, CS, or rel; 6 yrs exp in IT QA; able to create test plans, test cases, & doc test results; able to perform front-end testing & back-end testing using database queries; exp w/ defect reporting & tracking; able to perform code change risk analysis; able to perform Functional Testing, Integration Test ing, Regression Testing, & coordinate User Acceptance Testing; knowledge of leading ind tech w/ strong knowl edge of IT governance,project plan ning, & the tech usage/alternatives. Qualified applicants mail resume to Sharon Barrow, GEODIS Logistics, LLC, 7101 Executive Center Drive, Suite 333, Brentwood, TN 37027 Ref #: SENIO029407

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