Nashville Scene 10-8-20

OCTOBER 8–14, 2020 I VOLUME 39 I NUMBER 36 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

CITY LIMITS: HOW THE PANDEMIC HAS AFFECTED VICTIMS OF CHILD SEXUAL ASSAULT PAGE 7

FOOD & DRINK: WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT LOCAL FOOD SECURITY PAGE 20

Marquita Bradshaw, Bill Hagerty, Middle Tennessee’s conservative strongholds, COVID-19’s impact on the election and more

VOTE SIGN BY PAUL COLLINS

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NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

CONTENTS

OCTOBER 8, 2020

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How the Pandemic Has Affected Victims of Child Sexual Assault ..............................7

What to Know About Local Food Security

CITY LIMITS

According to Nashville nonprofit Our Kids, the fallout of COVID-19 is making it easier for abusers to harm children

BY NATASHA SENJANOVIC

Taking a Look at the Democrat Hoping to Unseat Glen Casada ..................................8 Elizabeth Madeira is challenging the embattled former speaker in Williamson County’s conservative State House District 63

BY STEVE CAVENDISH

FOOD AND DRINK

The Nashville Food Project’s Jennifer Justus on what it takes to help those in need in our community

BY JENNIFER JUSTUS

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BOOKS

I Too Sing America With Negotiations, Destiny O. Birdsong offers poems for survival

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BY ERICA CICCARONE

COVID-19 and the Ballot Box ................. 10

ART

COVER STORY

How the pandemic complicates efforts by poll workers, voting advocates

BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

A Black Single Mom Seeks to Make History, Fill Alexander’s U.S. Senate Seat ............. 11 Underemployed and bankrupt, Marquita Bradshaw wants to give working people a voice

BY AMY ESKIND

The Trump Card ....................................... 12

24 The Many Worlds of Jairo Prado A retrospective of the Colombian-born, Nashville-based artist transcends time and place

BY MEGAN SELING

The View From the Suburbs ................... 12

Into This House We’re Born .................... 28

Donald Trump is all but certain to win Tennessee, but Democrats could be gaining ground in Republican strongholds

Jeremy Ivey looks to the future on Waiting Out the Storm

BY STEVEN HALE

The Spin ................................................... 30

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Marsh House Reopens With New Chef and New Entrance Book Club: Local Bakers on What You Should Be Reading

ON THE COVER:

Back in July, artist Paul Collins embarked on a mission to create a unique hand-painted yard sign every single day until the presidential election. The aptly named 100 Days project is Collins’ attempt to raise awareness about the election through uniquely designed, freely given art. The signs are nonpartisan — each one simply says “Vote” — and will continue to be distributed in yards and posted on fences and railings throughout Nashville and Middle Tennessee until Nov. 3. View his work at paulpaul.com.

MUSIC

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

BY J.R. LIND

Pervis Payne’s Legal Team Asks Bill Lee to ‘Fix What Is Broken’ in Death Penalty Case

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Gearing Up: MIDI of Angels .................... 27

Tennessee’s redistricting system is among the country’s least complicated — and therefore the least restricted

Daisha McBride, Margo Price, Many More to Play Musicians for Marquita

BY SARA LEE BURD

Bill Hagerty’s Senate run reflects how Tennessee Republicans have embraced Trumpstyle politics

On the Matter of Hypothetical Congressional Redistricting ................... 14

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB:

Jen Gavin’s Paradise MIDI devices can control just about anything — with style

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Devon Gilfillian’s There’s an Election Going On at 3rd and Lindsley

BY LORIE LIEBIG

32 FILM

Primal Stream 26

CRITICS’ PICKS Livestream a reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, tune in to Group Text live at Grimey’s, stream TPAC Salon series’ Dance Like Your Zoom Camera Is Off, build your own streaming Stanley Kubrick film festival, dig into The Infinite Playbook, check out the virtual MICE expo and more

Delicious gay drama, a stirring cephalopod and more, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

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NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

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10/5/20 6:06 PM

PET OF THE WEEK!

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HUD.GOV

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson

Investment Property For Sale

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Or request by phone by contacting the Realty Specialist After receipt of the bid kit, address questions to: Karen Davis Rabb - Karen.d.davisrabb@hud.gov Multifamily Property Disposition Division, (817) 978-5604 Note: This advertisement is placed by HUD & does not constitute the legal notice of foreclosure sale.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

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TRUMP’S COVID-19 DIAGNOSIS AND ITS IMPACT ON THE NOVEMBER ELECTION In the early morning hours of Oct. 2, President Donald Trump tweeted that he and First Lady Melania Trump had both tested positive for COVID-19. Though many were taken aback by the president’s announcement, medical experts called it unsurprising, since in recent weeks Trump’s health and the health of his staff were put at risk due to holding mass gatherings, some indoors, without masks.

Though I certainly hope the president and First Lady see a full recovery, this very serious situation was avoidable.

In an interview with MSNBC, Dr. Vin Gupta — a lung specialist at the University of Washington — noted that the 74-yearold president is at serious risk for a bad outcome due to his age and weight, since this virus is known to have a more adverse effect on older and obese adults. Under these circumstances, Gupta questions whether or not the president will be “humble enough to acknowledge that perhaps the way he’s been behaving and messaging has been wrong.” After all, from the onset of COVID-19, the president has downplayed the seriousness of the disease as well as the effectiveness of wearing masks. Admittedly, he was relying heavily on regular testing and social distancing as a precaution, but during the recent debate he stated he wears a mask only “when needed.”

Michael Ben-Aderet is an infectious disease physician and associate director of hospital epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. An Oct. 3 USA Today report quoting Ben-Aderet says that “frequent testing isn’t enough,” and that the “White House should be ‘setting an example’ through ‘good infectious control policy.’ ” In not doing so, the virus caught up with the president’s political adviser Hope Hicks, who tested positive on Oct. 1 — one day prior to President Trump’s announcement.

Other supporters, including Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who both spent time near the president in recent weeks — have also tested positive, as have many others.

With the election a mere 26 days away, the two-week quarantine will certainly impact the president’s campaign plans, as well as his campaign staff’s expected outcome of those plans. The scheduled rallies that so appeal to his voters are now off the table, at least for the next two weeks. The New York Times reported that “even senior aides to Mr. Trump said the president would face a harsh judgment

from voters for throwing the country into greater uncertainty after one of the most trying years in American history.” Many voters feel disgusted and misled when recalling how dismissive the president was concerning the virus and how he continued to hold rallies during the pandemic.

Republican consultant Rob Stutzman even told the Times, “It’s hard to imagine this doesn’t end his hopes of re-election.”

The president’s health could impact the appointment of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court. The opportunity for Democrats to slow down the Republicans’ speedy confirmation process may have just increased. Many have already been pushing Senate Democrats to fight the nomination.

As of press time, confirmation hearings are still on schedule for Oct. 12. But with quarantine situations growing daily in number for members of Congress who have been diagnosed with the virus, the rushed confirmation process has certainly been thrown into limbo. We know that President Trump wanted to have Barrett in position on the Supreme Court prior to Election Day on Nov. 3.

I cannot recall a campaign during which the incumbent was incapacitated and unavailable for campaign rallies in the final weeks prior to an election. That said, Trump’s diagnosis could amplify his intent to contest the election. In September, the president said he felt there was no way mail-in ballots could be counted accurately — an assertion made though he votes by mail in his state of official residence, Florida.

A year of unusual campaigning has just gotten stranger. The president’s campaign staffers are working to implement Zoom events and broadcast via other digital outlets. The campaign’s website shows events are “in the process of being turned into virtual seminars.” The idea of having virtual presidential debates on Oct. 15 and Oct. 22 is also in the works but not yet finalized. A virtual debate will likely diminish the audience size too, as plenty of Americans still don’t have access to highspeed internet.

It’s going to be interesting to see what the next few weeks hold. In the meantime, let’s learn from the president’s mistakes and wear our masks as we keep each other safe.

Editor-in-Chief D. Patrick Rodgers Senior Editor Dana Kopp Franklin Associate Editor Alejandro Ramirez Arts Editor Laura Hutson Hunter Culture Editor Erica Ciccarone Music and Listings Editor Stephen Trageser Contributing Editors Jack Silverman, Abby White Staff Writers Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Geoffrey Himes, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Chris Parton, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Andrea Williams, Cy Winstanley, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Art Director Elizabeth Jones Photographers Eric England, Daniel Meigs Graphic Designers Mary Louise Meadors, Tracey Starck Production Coordinator Christie Passarello Events and Marketing Director Olivia Moye Promotions Coordinator Caroline Poole Publisher Mike Smith Senior Advertising Solutions Managers Maggie Bond, Debbie Deboer, Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Stevan Steinhart, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Advertising Solutions Manager William Shutes Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Aya Robinson, Price Waltman Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis For advertising information please contact: Mike Smith, msmith@nashvillescene.com or 615-844-9238 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

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NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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10/5/20 6:32 PM

VE LO

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sio

T C E P S RE

The Acceptance Pledge I pledge acceptance of myself.

I pledge to celebrate my perfect imperfection, To listen so that I may understand, To speak out for what is right, To follow with curiosity and lead with integrity.

I pledge acceptance of others.

I pledge to celebrate our shared humanity, To respect the dignity of every individual, To be generous, compassionate, and kind, To be accountable to each other.

Everyone has something to learn, Everyone has something to teach, Everyone is someone.

We are celebrating Kindness and Compassion When we take a pledge we are holding ourselves accountable. When we make it public, we let others keep us accountable and we inspire them to join us. In pledging acceptance, we are declaring that we want to live in a kinder, more just world, and that we will take an active role in creating it.

Take the pledge at acceptancepledge.com and help us grow the movement by sharing on your social media with #EveryoneIsSomeone #IPledgeAcceptance. nashvillescene.com | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

5

Explore Rina Banerjee’s imagination, in which the social constructs of identity are removed in favor of a more open and inclusive experience for all. Her evocative collection of sculptures, installations and paintings invites you to contemplate the complexity and beauty of a world undergoing constant fragmentation and renewal.

THROUGH JANUARY 10

Downtown Nashville, 919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203 FristArtMuseum.org #TheFrist #FristBanerjee

Required advance tickets are available at FristArtMuseum.org/tickets

Co-organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and the San José Museum of Art, California

Platinum sponsor

Silver supporter

The Sandra Schatten Foundation

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Supported in part by NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World is made possible in part by major grants from the William Penn Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Exelon Foundation and PECO, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Supported in part by

Hospitality sponsor

Education and community engagement supporter

Rina Banerjee (b. 1963). More like turkey no turtle she scattered her verbal (detail), 2015. Ink, acrylic, 23-karat gold, copper on paper, 14 x 10 in. Courtesy of Diana Nelson and John Atwater. © Rina Banerjee. Image courtesy of Rina Banerjee Archives

10/5/20 2:38 PM

CITY LIMITS

HOW THE PANDEMIC HAS AFFECTED VICTIMS OF CHILD SEXUAL ASSAULT According to Nashville nonprofit Our Kids, the fallout of COVID-19 is making it easier for abusers to harm children

BY NATASHA SENJANOVIC

I

This story is part of the series Surging in Silence: Domestic and Sexual Violence in the Pandemic and was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

t’s still too early to know what damage the pandemic is doing to the most vulnerable victims of sexual abuse. That’s why, says social worker Lisa Milam, it’s especially important to know that if a child tells you they’ve been assaulted, believe them.

Milam has spent nearly three decades with Our Kids, a Nashville-based free clinic and counseling center for sexually abused children and their families that is part of Nashville General, the city’s safety-net hospital. The no-nonsense social worker says that despite the many gray areas surrounding child sexual abuse — one of the most underreported crimes — one thing is virtually black-and-white.

“By far, the number one indicator that a child has been a victim of sexual abuse,” says Milam, “is a child’s statement that it has occurred.”

Signs that a child has been the victim of abuse include age-inappropriate sexualized behavior; a sudden, uncharacteristic fear of adults; and unexplained anxiety.

Our Kids serves children ages 17 and younger in roughly half the state. In a normal year — a year without shelter-inplace orders and fears of a deadly virus — nearly 1,000 patients come through Our Kids’ doors, referred by police, the

Department of Children’s Services or a health care provider. Executive director Sue Fort White says the group was on course to reach the same number again when the pandemic hit. Instead, in the fiscal year that ended in June, the nonprofit clinic saw 770 patients over 12 months. Consistently, less than 10 percent of patients get forensic rape exams, as most children arrive weeks or months after the last assault.

But White knows they’re a fraction of the victims out there.

“We’re just amazed that we see as many children as we do,” White says. “Because the child so often is afraid to tell, or very confused because it’s somebody that they know and love. [Someone who tells the child], ‘This is our secret. If you ever tell anybody, I’ll go away forever.’ ” More than half of reported victims are under the age of 7, and 80 percent are female. And in more than 90 percent of cases, the offender is an immediate relative or close family friend. Our Kids data shows biological fathers, stepfathers and mothers’ boyfriends make up nearly one-third of reported abusers. That’s one reason why it can take families time to get help, even when they immediately believe the child.

The upheaval is tremendous, says White.

“Can you imagine that your father can never be alone with [you]? Then there’s DCS coming into the picture, and it gets thick really, really quick.”

In the COVID era, offenders are likely spending more time with victims because of social distancing, working from home or unemployment. That’s important to note, says Milam, because for child sex abusers,

like substance abusers, “increases in stress really decrease ability to resist urges or manage behaviors.” Offenders previously able to control themselves may not be able to do so now, under heightened emotional and economic strains.

That said, if they’re spending more time at home, so too are non-offending caregivers. Milam and her colleagues have noted more sexual assaults being stopped by a parent “walking into a room, or another child alerting them immediately of an event that was occurring in the house.”

“Hopefully,” Milam says, “years of public education and prevention work have allowed some people to intervene when something happens, sort of quite literally in front of them.”

Our Kids doesn’t have data on the uptick in “interruptions,” says White. Yet. She describes the 13-member nonprofit as “obsessively evidence-based.” They track most of their data, sharing it with colleagues and partners nationwide, including Indian Health Service. Our Kids holds regular medical and psychosocial peer reviews, and staff members have published two research papers — including a 2016 survey of 1,500 female patients that found genital injury in only 7 percent of child sex abuse cases.

White says this type of data is crucial to understanding the particularly insidious nature of the crime, which isn’t just about power, as it so often is with adult rape. It is about sexual gratification: “The perpetrator does not want to harm the child, because they don’t want to lose access,” White says.

That’s another reason it is so hard to detect.

White is glad, though, about the strides that have been made in helping victims since she first started raising awareness about domestic violence. In the early 1980s, she says, “Legislators, the police and the ministers thought it was none of our business what happened behind closed doors.”

Today, anyone working with children in Tennessee, as in many states, is a mandatory reporter — meaning if they suspect any child abuse, they must report it to police or DCS. That has led to school personnel becoming the leading identifiers of sexually abused children, a fact that advocates of

“BY FAR, THE NUMBER ONE INDICATOR THAT A CHILD HAS BEEN A VICTIM OF SEXUAL ABUSE IS A CHILD’S STATEMENT THAT IT HAS OCCURRED.” — Lisa Milam reopening schools often point to, since Nashville educators haven’t seen most students in person since March.

DeMonica Coverson oversees social workers at Metro Nashville Public Schools, where she also teaches educators to identify abused children. She knows it’s much harder to recognize trauma via a computer screen, but she says she has fully supported all stages of her district’s “strategic and meticulous” reopening plans.

The former DCS supervisor also praises the “out-of-the-box, great critical thinking” of children who have been able to seek help in the pandemic. That includes one girl who used the pretext of needing tech support to go to her Nashville middle school and report her abuser to staff, who notified authorities.

Another heightened risk in the pandemic is online predation — adults and older children luring kids into sexual situations via social media (predominantly Instagram and Snapchat). Milam says compared to the same period last year, this spring Our Kids saw three times as many patients who met their abusers online. Still, that was only about 3 percent of all cases.

There’s no escaping the fact that very few perpetrators are strangers, or the fact that most children won’t know how to reach out for help — or even that they should. This is a crime that hinges on silence, shame and guilt. And that’s why White and Milam are adamant that children never be told no one can ever touch them. They say that confuses young children who need help using the bathroom, and it can be dangerous when a child is bleeding and needs a rape exam.

Most importantly, however, few if any children can stop an adult or older child intent on hurting them. If they’re made to believe they can, they will “own the assault,” Milam says. They’ll think they’re the ones who allowed it to happen, and that they’re going to get in trouble for it.

“I wish I could tell you that someday we’ll prevent all sexual abuse, but that’s not going to happen,” says Milam. “Being safe isn’t about not getting hurt. Being safe is about having a place to go and get help.

What you can do is create environments or relationships with kids where they know it’s not their fault. And it’s always OK to go tell a trusted adult and get help.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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10/5/20 6:34 PM

CITY LIMITS

TAKING A LOOK AT THE DEMOCRAT HOPING TO UNSEAT GLEN CASADA Elizabeth Madeira is challenging

the embattled former speaker in Williamson County’s conservative State House District 63

I

n Williamson County politics, Glen Casada looms large.

He’s not just a member of the state House of Representatives — a post he’s held for the better part of two decades. He also rode a Republican wave in the 2010s to supermajority status, and eventually rose to the speaker’s chair.

And Casada’s not just a conservative.

He’s among the party’s most combative figures, freely injecting some of the right’s biggest fever dreams into Tennessee politics with ease. He sued Barack Obama shortly after the president took the oath of office in 2009, claiming Obama was born in Kenya and, even if he wasn’t, he abandoned his citizenship by spending time in Indonesia as a kid. Casada also called for Syrian refugees in Tennessee to be rounded up and returned to ICE officials because he saw them as a terror threat.

And even when he was forced by his own caucus to abandon the speaker’s gavel in 2019, Casada refused to abandon his seat.

It didn’t matter that his chief of staff had been caught soliciting sex from an intern and a lobbyist in explicit texts, or that he had hired a political operative for a no-show job on the House payroll. Casada just waited until the fury died down and announced his intention to run again early this year. Most voters never batted an eye.

So what type of district keeps returning such a polarizing figure to office year after year? Tennessee’s House District 63 runs from Brentwood south to the Maury County line, and from the east side of Franklin to Arrington. It’s one of the most affluent and fastest-growing areas in the state, and it’s full of voters with a certain profile: largely white, evangelical, upper-middle-class, college-educated, and many of them with a single issue on their minds when they enter the voting booth.

In short, they look a lot like Casada’s opponent, Elizabeth Madeira.

“I grew up in a conservative, evangelical home,” Madeira tells the Scene as a neighbor’s cat wanders over and plops down next to her. “A lot of times those things go

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

BY STEVE CAVENDISH

ELIZABETH MADEIRA together. I probably, even at some point, considered myself a one-issue voter on prolife issues.”

Madeira graduated from Belmont, fell in love and married a church music director.

They started a family. She taught Spanish at Battle Ground Academy. In an alternate universe, there might be a version of Madeira that continued to fit the Republican profile typical in Williamson County — political inertia can be strong, and often it takes a catalyst to shift someone’s beliefs. For her, the catalyst came on Dec. 14, 2012, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., with a Bushmaster rifle and killed 26 people, including 20 students.

“I was a teacher and a new mom with a 6-month-old,” Madeira says. “And when it happened, of course — like everybody — I was devastated and sad and then also terrified. It just seemed really scary that something like that could happen where I taught, or in my kid’s school, or in our community. And watching the fallout of that and seeing ... I thought for sure after that event there would be national or statewide common-sense gun legislation. Like universal background checks, to me, is something that seems common-sense. But it seemed like so many representatives — even the ones that I had voted for, a lot of Republicans — [blocked] any kind of common-sense reform because they were paying more attention to special interests and the NRA, instead of keeping our community safe. My first thought really was, ‘But that doesn’t really seem pro-life,’ right? So then I just started paying a lot more attention and realized that my values, my Christian values of loving your neighbor as yourself and taking care of the least of these, aligned more with the Democratic party. And I think by the time Donald Trump was nominated in 2016, that really cemented that for me, because I felt

like he represented so much of the opposite of what I had learned to value as a Christian.”

When listening to Madeira channel a lot of her politics through her faith, it becomes easy to see just how skewed the perceptions of party and religious affiliation have become. Because Republicans — particularly Tennessee Republicans — often express policy objectives through a Judeo-Christian lens, it’s easy to internalize a caricature of Democrats as being secular.

But for Madeira, affordable health care and Medicaid expansion have their roots in her religious beliefs, and supporting public education has a personal, moral dimension.

It’s hard to label a Sunday school teacher as just another godless liberal.

“I think that a lot of times, especially in the South, the Republican Party wants to paint Democrats as people that are not people of faith and are not Christians, but that’s not true,” she says. “It is, in part, my Christian faith that guides me to support the least among us. And that supports loving your neighbor as yourself. That’s what guides me in a lot of my policy-making, just making sure that people are taken care of in their communities.”

That jibes with what Madeira calls a need for “greater transparency and integrity” in the state legislature — a not-so-subtle allusion to Casada. In July, the former speaker was sanctioned by the Registry of Election Finance after an audit found problems with more than $125,000 in funds from both his campaign and personal political action committee accounts. The registry fined Casada $10,500, which he paid out of his PAC. The move is apparently legal, but it had Madeira shaking her head at the ethics of it all.

“Well, I think it shows how embedded he is in the system of politics and how much special-interest money he has and just points out how much he’s a career politician,” she says. Her campaign has raised

more than $125,000, almost entirely from individuals. Casada still has more than $300,000 in his campaign account, amassed over a few cycles with minimal opposition and maximum influence. His CAS-PAC reported almost $175,000 cash on hand even after paying the registry fine.

After not acknowledging Madeira or Brad Fiscus, an independent who is also running, Casada began dipping into that war chest with a Facebook ad buy beginning in October. The ad claimed, “My radical Democrat opponents continue to launch attacks against me based on complete lies.” A concurrent mailer from the state GOP calls Madeira a socialist with no explanation.

It’s been an odd few months, with COVID-19 limiting candidates’ ability to do much retail campaigning. Since declaring her candidacy in April, Madeira’s outreach has been a mix of phone banks, virtual events and YouTube ads featuring her husband and three young kids. And while she and Williamson County Democrats braced for a bigger attack in the weeks before the election, she has been running online ads reminding voters of Casada’s misdeeds.

“I think there’s a lot of people that maybe were aware last year and have forgotten — I mean, we’ve had a thousand news cycles since then,” she says, referencing the news overload that many seem to be feeling in the middle of the pandemic. “There’s no need to spin anything. All we have to do is present people with the facts that happened, and for them to see what he did, and to see that there’s somebody who would not talk like that in text messages, or who would not tolerate that kind of inappropriate behavior from their staff.”

Will that be enough to reach the very Republican voters in District 63 and make the race competitive? Madeira thinks so. After all, she used to be one of them.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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10/5/20 5:33 PM

TWENTY YEARS OF BRINGING ENTERTAINING, THOUGHT-PROVOKING & EDUCATIONAL FILMS TO THE NASHVILLE COMMUNITY. OPENING NIGHT WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBIT

Tuesday, October 13 at 7pm Hosted by Vanderbilt Holocaust Lecture Series Special Guest: Professor Ann Neely, Vanderbilt University

DISPATCHES FROM QUARANTINE Thursday, October 22 at 12pm Hosted by Jewish Family Services Special Guest: Noam Dromi, Producer/Writer

SHARED LEGACIES: THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN JEWISH CIVIL RIGHTS ALLIANCE

Wednesday, October 14 at 7pm Hosted by West End Synagogue Special Guest: Stephen Edwards, Writer/Producer

Thursday, October 22 at 7pm Hosted by Jewish Federation CRC & NCJW, Nashville Section Special Guests: Tamar Manasseh and Brad Rothschild, Producer

Thursday, October 29 at 7pm Hosted by The Temple Ohabai Sholom, Jewish Federation CRC, and Nashville Jewish Social Justice Roundtable Special Guests: Hedy Weinberg, Kwame Lillard, Sherry Frank with Dr. Shari Lynn Rogers and Lisa Weitzman, Producers

CRESCENDO

CARL LAEMMLE

THE CROSSING

SYNDROME K

Thursday, October 15 at 7pm Hosted by Nashville Hadassah Special Guest: Michael Ochs, Musician

AULCIE

Saturday, October 17 at 7pm Special Guests: Nancy Spielberg, Producer and Dani Menkin, Director

YOO HOO, MRS. GOLDBERG Audience Choice Hosted by B’nai B’rith Lodge #46 Monday, October 19 at 7pm

THE RABBI GOES WEST

Tuesday, October 20 at 7pm Hosted by Congregation Micah Special Guest: Rabbi Chaim Bruk

THEY AIN’T READY FOR ME

Saturday, October 24 at 7pm Hosted by B’nai B’rith Social Unit Special Guest: Professor Iggy Cortez, Vanderbilt School of Film

MRS. G

Monday, October 26 at 12pm Hosted by The Temple Ohabai Sholom, W.E.L.L. Special Guest: Amanda Schwartz, Personal Shopper for Nordstrom

THE PASSENGERS

Tuesday, October 27 at 7pm Hosted by Program in Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Special Guest: Ryan S. Porush, Director/Producer

Sunday, November 1 at 10am Hosted by Sherith Israel & Tennessee Holocaust Commission Special Guest: Rabbi Saul Strosberg, Congregation Sherith Israel

PICTURE OF HIS LIFE

Monday, November 2 at 7pm Hosted by Congregation Beit Tefilah Special Guest: Dani Menkin, Director

WINTER JOURNEY

Wednesday, November 4 at 7pm Special Guest: Martin Goldsmith, Writer and Voices

CLOSING NIGHT NOWHERE IN AFRICA

Director’s Choice Hosted by the Gordon JCC Thursday, November 5 at 7pm

VIRTUAL FESTIVAL AT NASHVILLEJFF.ORG PLEASE NOTE: Films are available for 48 hours after their beginning date & time. For trailers, showtimes, tickets, sponsorships and film descriptions please visit nashvillejff.org. The NJFF is a program of8 – OCTOBER the Gordon JCC. | OCTOBER 14, 2020 | NASHVILLE nashvillescene.com SCENE 9

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VOTE THE SCENE’S ELECTION PREVIEW

MARQUITA BRADSHAW, BILL HAGERTY, MIDDLE TENNESSEE’S CONSERVATIVE STRONGHOLDS, COVID-19’S IMPACT ON THE ELECTION AND MORE “This is the most important election of our lifetime.”

That’s a sentiment we’ve all seen shared — well, for the past several election cycles. In the case of the November 2020 election, it may very well be true. At the top of the ballot, of course, we have former Vice President Joe Biden squaring off against one of the most disastrous and dangerous incumbent presidents in the history of our nation. Our state’s 11 electoral college votes went to Donald Trump in 2016 — he defeated Hillary Clinton by 26 points in Tennessee — and he’ll almost certainly secure them once again this year. Then again, it’s 2020, and as we’ve already seen, all bets are off in this wretched, cursed year.

In this issue, we’re taking a look at Marquita Bradshaw, the Democratic underdog who’s making history as the first Black woman to win a major party’s nomination in a Tennessee U.S. Senate race. We’re also exploring how her opponent, Bill Hagerty, has slid comfortably into Trumpism — a move we’ve seen from plenty of Tennessee Republicans over the past four years. Also in these

COVID-19 AND THE BALLOT BOX How the pandemic complicates efforts by poll workers, voting advocates

BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

I

n the August primaries, Dawn Harrington voted for the first time in a decade, ending a long, tedious effort to reclaim her right to vote after a criminal conviction in another state.

“I cried,” Harrington recalls. “It was surreal. I kept feeling like they were going to revoke my right to vote.”

Harrington is the executive director of Free Hearts, a group that advocates for incarcerated people, including for their voting rights. Her personal experience regaining the vote only made her more committed to the cause ahead of the November election and beyond.

“I cried, and I felt proud, and I also felt a renewed fire. We’re not free until all of us are free. It was short-lived. It was an amazing moment, but it was like, ‘We have a lot of work to do.’ ” They’ve already done some of that work.

Harrington and Free Hearts joined other organizations in seeking to loosen restrictions on voting specifically in response to COVID-19, and have been successful in some efforts. Thanks to lawsuits initiated by Free Hearts and others, far more Tennesseans are eligible for absentee ballots during the pandemic, among other loosened re-

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strictions. Late last month, the organization established a fund along with former Titan Jurrell Casey and other current and former NFL players to help pay off Tennesseans’ outstanding court costs in order to regain their voting rights.

“Having to fight so hard to get it back, it makes it that much more valuable when you see how it could be stripped away from you,” Harrington says. “Our vote is our voice.”

Unlike Harrington, George Dunn has spent much of the past decade — and indeed, several decades more — around voting precincts. The 81-year-old first became a poll worker some 40 years ago and has worked countless elections since, largely as the precinct officer in charge of other workers.

This election, like he has many elections before, he’ll work the Bordeaux library for early voting in October before moving to a voting precinct on Centennial Boulevard for Election Day. Like other older poll workers, Dunn considered sitting out the elections in August and November due to concerns about contracting COVID-19 at his advanced age. But he decided to work one more year of elections because he wanted to see through one more presidential race.

“Ever since I was able to vote, I have voted,” Dunn says. “I thought that was a privilege for me.”

He has a message for younger voters: “Don’t lose the privilege. … I see so many young people telling me, ‘My one vote doesn’t count,’ and we know for a fact that one vote can make a difference.”

Many younger people like those for whom Dunn had his message will be joining the ranks of poll workers this year. The approxi-

pages is a look at how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected, and continues to affect, this election season, along with how congressional redistricting could theoretically affect the state. We also dispatch intrepid staff reporter Steven Hale to the suburbs surrounding Nashville to see just how things are looking in Middle Tennessee’s Republican strongholds. Elsewhere in this issue, we profile Democrat Elizabeth Madeira, who’s challenging embattled former state House Speaker Glen Casada in historically conservative Williamson County.

Early voting for the Nov. 3 election runs Oct. 14-29 at 13 locations throughout Nashville: Belle Meade City Hall, the Bellevue library, the Bordeaux library, Casa Azafrán, the Edmondson Pike library, Friendship Baptist Church, Delmas Long Community Center, the Green Hills library, the Hermitage library, Howard Office Building, the Madison library, Margaret Maddox Family YMCA and the library’s Southeast Branch. Have a look at this week’s issue, and then make a plan to get to the polls. D. PATRICK RODGERS

mately 2,200 people who typically work elections for the Davidson County Election Commission have an average age of 66, and more than a third opted not to work during the pandemic, which has hit older people especially hard.

In order to fill the gap, state and local election officials, the Nashville Predators and other organizations made a concerted effort to recruit younger poll workers. According to the election commission, the effort was successful, with more than 2,800 people applying to work the election in the past two months alone — more than half of them between the ages of 20 and 40. To date, the election commission has received nearly three times as many poll-worker applications as it does in a typical presidential election year.

Younger faces behind the front desk won’t be the only change for voters. Because of COVID-19, poll workers will be outfitted in protective gear, and voters will be required to wear masks and keep their distance. And the court order expanding the number of people eligible to vote absentee has already had a dramatic effect. During the previous two presidential primaries, absentee ballots made up just 1 percent of the votes in Davidson County. This year, they made up 27 percent. Between a significant rise in absentee voting and an emphasis on early voting, which begins Oct. 14, some hope that the risk of transmitting COVID-19 on Election Day can be minimized.

Lisa Quigley, longtime chief of staff to Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, says she hopes as few as 20 percent of ballots will be cast on Election Day, compared to around 50 percent in some recent elections. Cooper’s

TO DATE, THE ELECTION COMMISSION HAS RECEIVED NEARLY THREE TIMES AS MANY POLL-WORKER APPLICATIONS AS IT DOES IN A TYPICAL PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR. –––––––––– office has set up a wide-ranging collaboration with local artists, businesses and nonprofits to educate voters about voting during the pandemic and encourage early voting.

“In general, the problem in Tennessee has been access to the ballot,” Quigley says.

“And what has happened in the last few months is a vast opening up of that access to our ballot.”

But neither Quigley nor Harrington is laboring under the delusion that Republicans in the state legislature will make any of these changes permanent after the pandemic.

“We’re going to keep fighting,” Harrington says. “We’re going to continue until we find a way because we all should have the right to vote.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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A BLACK SINGLE MOM SEEKS TO MAKE HISTORY, FILL ALEXANDER’S U.S. SENATE SEAT Underemployed and bankrupt, Marquita Bradshaw wants to give working people a voice

BY AMY ESKIND

PHOTO: MATT MASTERS

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n 1946, well before Marquita Bradshaw was born, the U.S. Army disposed of leaking mustard-gas bombs and other hazardous materials at Dunn Field, a 60-acre open storage and waste burial area at the Memphis Defense Depot. The pollutants would later sicken the community into which Bradshaw was born. She observed her parents organizing legions of their poor Black neighbors to fight back — many in the neighborhood succumbed to cancer, including her grandmother.

The snowball effect of growing up near the depot, which was designated a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency, gave her life a much different trajectory from that of Republican Bill Hagerty, her U.S. Senate race opponent. He studied at Vanderbilt, earned a law degree, became a White House Fellow, had a career in private equity in Silicon Valley, served as Tennessee’s economic development commissioner, became the U.S. ambassador to Japan and was appointed to the White House Recovery Task Force. Bradshaw, on the other hand, is a single mother and University of Memphis graduate who has ongoing reproductive health issues that she believes stem from toxin exposure. A related surgery covered by an 80/20 health insurance plan was crushing. She was still paying off student loans and had to pay bills for her college-age son’s health care. Then she lost her job as a union organizer at the AFL-CIO, and her next job, taking care of a special-needs adult, paid one-third as much. She filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy.

“Right now, I am currently in bankruptcy — and I’m running for U.S. Senate,” says Bradshaw, as if it makes all the sense in the world. Maybe it does. Many of the political themes of 2020 — income inequality, health disparities, racial injustice — are her areas of expertise.

“It takes a working woman, a working man to understand working people’s issues,” says Bradshaw. “Right now the U.S. Senate, they represent the ultra-rich. And so the policies actually are directed for the ultra-rich. They were able to save Wall Street three times in 48 hours, and we’ll never know the price tag. But when it came to working people, you can barely get a stimulus together because they don’t know how people experience the pandemic, or working-people issues.”

Bradshaw is an unusual Senate candidate to be sure, and the Republican-dominated political landscape in the state doesn’t work in her favor. But she earned bona fides for her stunning Democratic primary win in

MARQUITA BRADSHAW August with no headquarters and $22,000 in funds. What she has is sheer grassroots shrewdness. She has said, “The way a single mom spends $1 is not the same way a rich man spends $1.”

A year ago, Bradshaw formed a volunteer network of 55 campaign staff members across the state by tapping people she already knew through union work and decades of organizing. “I know people that have organized around every social justice issue there is,” she says, noting that she’s worked on police accountability, human rights issues, trade policy and tax reform in Tennessee, and spent decades volunteering as an environmental activist.

That type of organizing requires sharing stories, making connections and turning other people into organizers to reach a common goal. Now, she says, the goal is to “make sure that working people have a voice in the U.S. Senate.”

Bradshaw figured that her primary challengers — including attorney and U.S. Army veteran James Mackler, who had campaigned for Senate before — would attract big money. She wouldn’t be able to out-raise her opponents, but she could outsmart them. She figured other campaigns would spend their money to buy ads around the early voting period and Election Day, so she reached voters much earlier. “By the time their campaign started really rolling out, spending their money for commercials and different things like that, we had already established a network of volunteers to get out the vote.”

As the Democratic nominee, Bradshaw has $700,000 in the bank, according to her campaign. To date, the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hasn’t sent funds. “They can come along whenever they get ready,” she says.

Meanwhile, Hagerty spent nearly $10 million before his own primary election and has the full support of monied Republicans at the state and national levels for the general election. He’s also got Trump’s backing. But Bradshaw is undeterred. As she heads into the homestretch, she’s hired a paid campaign manager — Ken Taylor, a Karl Dean and Phil Bredesen campaign veteran — and she’s hiring paid staff. But, she says: “Money can only do so much. You have to organize. And you have to utilize religion and politics in order to win. This is not new in politics, what I’m doing. It’s just people have gotten away from it at a U.S. Senate level.”

Her plan: Visit all 95 counties and hold socially distanced live events, as well as virtual events. Ask questions. Listen. Enlist hundreds of volunteers and give them goals and metrics. Encourage people to bring their families, friends and co-workers on board.

Enlist kids to do text banking and phone banking from the couch. “This is a principle of organizing,” she says. “We just don’t move one vote, we move whole families.”

Bradshaw taps into frustrations, even in rural areas where support might seem unlikely. She says people are feeling “forced to go to work and provide for their family at a job that actually pollutes their community at the same time.” They live in counties “where there aren’t any real jobs, or real industries.” She hears about towns where the main industry is health care, and “that’s slowly fading out because state representatives are sending money back for health care” — a reference to the decision not to expand Medicaid in the state.

People are upset about crumbling roads, poor infrastructure, lack of child care and a weak education system. While environmental stewardship and regulation is not a

common battle cry in this state’s politics, Bradshaw says when you ask people about it, they passionately want to enjoy their water and their land, and they want industry that doesn’t pollute.

“It is unfortunate that people have been left out and marginalized,” she says. “And people are tired of it.”

Bradshaw breaks the mold for recent campaigns in the state, and not just because she’s the first Black woman to win a major party’s nomination in a U.S. Senate race. Former Gov. Bredesen, the 2018 Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat, challenged Republicans from the middle.

Mackler was doing the same in his primary campaign this year. Neither gained enough traction. Bradshaw is further left, and favors Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, universal background checks and a $15 federal minimum wage. That platform may be attractive to today’s Democratic voter — Bernie Sanders was a strong second behind Joe Biden in the state’s presidential Democratic primary in March, and that was before the pandemic upended the political climate. (Sanders has endorsed Bradshaw’s campaign, as have a number of left-leaning musicians, performers and various celebrities.) Bradshaw is hoping her progressive bent could attract disaffected voters who haven’t been moved by moderates. Perhaps it can awaken the other half of the state’s eligible voters — those who typically sit out. Maybe even some conservatives.

“If you look at some of the things that some Social Democrats want to see,” Bradshaw says, “it’s that they want their neighbors to be taken care of in a pandemic, to make sure everyone has health care. And when you say it like that to Republicans, they want the same thing too.”

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THE TRUMP CARD

Hagerty entered the primary race and faced off against Vanderbilt trauma surgeon Manny Sethi. Both campaigns emphasized their eagerness to execute Trump’s vision more than their own political stances. While both men enjoyed impressive careers, says Hunt, “We never heard anything about these résumés. It was all about showing as little daylight between themselves and President Trump.”

Hagerty, now the Republican nominee and overwhelming favorite to win against Democratic nominee Marquita Bradshaw, is maintaining Trumpian talking points, denouncing the “Democrats’ socialist agenda” at the very top of his campaign website’s issues pages. That same page, which summarizes Hagerty’s stances on 23 national topics, invokes Trump’s name 22 times.

Hunt says Hagerty is following the “Blackburn playbook,” noting that she similarly latched onto Trump and his rhetoric for her own successful 2018 Senate bid.

Of course, Hagerty could wind up in an interesting position if he wins the Senate seat but Trump loses reelection — indeed, many Republicans across the state may have to figure out how to redefine themselves in such a scenario. Hunt also notes it could lead to big questions for Tennessee Democrats, who have been on the ropes as a political party for years.

“If Trump should lose, I expect there’s going to be a lot of searching among both Tennessee Republicans for what are they to do and believe next in Trump’s absence, and also among Tennessee Democrats about what comes next for them, if anything.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Bill Hagerty’s Senate run reflects how Tennessee Republicans have embraced Trump-style politics

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

A

little more than four years ago, skeptical pundits were puzzling over how establishment Republicans, especially moderates and conservative Christians, would grapple with the nomination of Donald Trump — an egocentric billionaire whose campaign centered on his vulgar, blustering persona and extreme views on immigration.

Since then, the party has more or less coalesced around Trump, and the U.S. House and Senate have been in near-lockstep with the president in terms of voting records.

Tennessee Republicans from the local to the national level have become eager acolytes of Trumpian politics. There’s Nashville AtLarge Metro Councilmember Steve Glover, Tennessee state House Republican Majority Leader William Lamberth and U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, just to name a few.

In some cases, as with Blackburn, these candidates were already well-known far-right figures — but Bill Hagerty’s Senate campaign shows that flying the Trump flag is a key to success, at least in the GOP primaries.

Hagerty’s history would indicate he’s more in line with establishment or even

BILL HAGERTY moderate Republicans than Trump. He was part of Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign team and served as Gov. Bill Haslam’s economic and community development commissioner starting in 2011. In the 2016 presidential race, he supported Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio before backing Trump, who would later tap Hagerty to be ambassador to Japan. When Sen. Lamar Alexander announced he would not seek

re-election, it was the president who announced that Hagerty would run — and the ambassador’s campaign was quick to boost his Trump bona fides.

“I think we are waiting to see who Bill Hagerty is and what he currently stands for,” says Keel Hunt, a columnist for The Tennessean and USA Today whose latest book Crossing the Aisle recounts bipartisanship in 1990s Tennessee politics.

THE VIEW FROM THE SUBURBS

BY STEVEN HALE

T

he yard sign planted in front of Tom Rouse’s home in Hendersonville makes his views on the upcoming presidential election relatively clear, even as it doesn’t contain a candidate’s name: “Any Functioning Adult 2020.”

It’s enough to grab your attention if you’re driving by, and Rouse is happy to talk about it.

“The sign sort of started out as a joke, but surprisingly multiple neighbors come by and say ‘I like your sign,’ ” Rouse says from behind a mask.

Rouse is a middle-aged white man, and like many of us, he’s working from home these days. To the left of the beautiful home’s front stoop is a small koi pond.

Some of the fish shimmering beneath the surface are 16 years old, Rouse says — they’ve been swimming in circles since George W. Bush was seeking reelection.

As you could probably figure from the sign, Rouse is not a supporter of the president. That puts him in the minority on these leafy streets, in a suburban county where Donald Trump received 70 percent of the vote in 2016. But Rouse is fed up.

Rouse is not a “good Democrat,” he says. He didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, although his wife did.

He voted third party, for a libertarian. But he says he doesn’t understand the widespread support for a man like Trump, who speaks in distortions and fabrications that are enthusiastically accepted by his fans. Rouse speaks regretfully of the last election.

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PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

Donald Trump is all but certain to win Tennessee, but Democrats could be gaining ground in Republican strongholds “I think Mr. Biden will be better represented here in Tennessee than Mrs. Clinton was,” he says. “She was the most qualified candidate in quite some time to [run for] the office, but we as a country didn’t take advantage of that.”

Rouse says he voted for Joe Biden in the Democratic primary and will vote for him again in November.

“I want an adult in the White House again, rather than an 8-year-old,” he says.

Four years ago, he says, the streets of his neighborhood were lined with Trump signs. But on this morning, signs related to the city’s mayoral and aldermanic races are far more common. During a meandering drive through the Sumner County neighborhood, I spotted as many deer as Trump signs. That could mean something, or not much at all. Yard signs might not change any minds, and as the old saw goes, they don’t vote. But the people who put them up will.

With his trademark subtlety, Trump has made his focus on suburban voters clear. He’s traded dog whistles for bullhorns as he seeks to stir up fear about “low income housing” invading well-off neighborhoods and violence from the cities spreading to otherwise quiet streets. But these are key areas for Democrats too. Trump is a virtual lock to win Tennessee again, but if Democrats gain ground in suburban counties here, it could be an indicator of their chances in more competitive states where those votes could be pivotal.

It’s also a major focus for Democrats working on races further down the ballot.

Katharine Heriges, a Nashville-based Democratic operative who works with state and local candidates, says legislative races are good indicators of how things are trending in federal races. Whereas 10 or 15 years ago, it might have been common for a voter to support a Democrat in a state legislative race and a Republican for president, state and local races have become much more partisan in this polarized era. For operatives like Heriges, that means districts where Democrats have gained ground in statewide and national elections are good places to direct time and resources in state legislative races. For anxious presidential-election watchers, it means that the districts where state Democrats are feeling increasingly optimistic are places where Biden could also narrow the gap.

The 2018 midterms were particularly useful in this way — a record-setting turnout made it nearly comparable to a presidential cycle. In state House races in areas like West Knoxville and Smyrna, Democratic candidates came within around 1,000 votes or less of unseating Republican incumbents. This year, most of the districts state Democrats are targeting as potentially flippable are in similar areas.

“Almost all of the districts on Democrats’ radar this year are suburban districts,” Heriges says. “They are areas that are either on the edge of urban counties — Davidson, Shelby, Hamilton and Knox all have very competitive districts — or they are in the counties immediately outside of an urban area, like Rutherford County.”

There are other areas where a Democratic victory

seems like more of a long shot, but where Democratic challengers are nevertheless running strong campaigns. In Franklin’s House District 63, where Elizabeth Madeira is challenging disgraced-but-not-displaced Republican Rep. Glen Casada — who was forced to step down as Speaker of the House in 2019 amid scandal — Madeira raised more than $50,000 in the second quarter of this year.

“These districts that Democrats are seeing as potentially flippable were drawn by Republicans to be Republican districts,” Heriges says. “That is something that cannot be ignored. In 2012 when they redrew the map, they drew them to be Republican strongholds. So the fact that they are now within the Democrats’ sight means that there has been either major demographic shift in who lives there, or major ideological shift of who was already there and who has become disappointed and disillusioned with the Republican Party.”

Republican political operatives and the Tennessee Republican Party did not respond to inquiries related to this story.

No one is predicting Tennessee’s deep-red shade to turn purple, of course. Take a drive through any residential street in any of the counties surrounding Nashville and you’ll see the literal signs of Trump’s support.

The McDavitts, an older couple living in Brentwood, have two Trump signs in their front yard. Upon encountering a reporter in her driveway, Linda McDavitt eagerly extends an invitation into her living room. She speaks lightheartedly about ribbing her neighbors for their own yard signs, and she is utterly unwavering in her support for Trump.

“For me, everyone’s entitled to their opinions,” McDavitt says. “It’s like we have ice cream, 59 or 79 flavors. I feel like each one is entitled to how they feel.

But I cannot understand how anybody could vote for Joe Biden.”

She’s voting for Trump, she says, “Because of his accomplishments and what he’s done. He’s closed the

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border, or tried to close the border. He’s built the wall.

And I think he loves America. In his heart, he’s trying to do what’s right for America.”

The Washington Post reported last week that the administration has installed more than 341 miles of border fencing so far and is racing to put up more in time for a planned celebration of the 400-mile mark.

In any case, McDavitt — a retired educator who says she loved John F. Kennedy as a young woman but has voted Republican now for decades — is unmoved by those Republicans who have declared Trump beyond the pale. She does say that the first presidential de-

ON THE MATTER OF HYPOTHETICAL CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING Tennessee’s redistricting system is among the country’s least complicated — and therefore the least restricted

BY J.R. LIND

T

here have been so many seminal and earth-shattering events in 2020. But one of them was predestined 233 years ago, when the Founding Fathers laid this out in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution: “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

As billboards and endless radio and television ads have drilled into our collective brain, the decennial census is extraordinarily important for a lot of material reasons — namely that billions of federal dollars are distributed based on numbers for things like schools and roads and a cavalcade of other programs. Of course, James Madison et al. didn’t necessarily intend that to be the case. They just wanted a count so the states could be represented correctly in the House. That, ultimately, is the raison d’être for the census.

Notice, too, the original wording is vague on exactly how the lines for congressional districts are drawn, leaving it to future congresses to “by Law direct.” In their infinite wisdom, they left the decision to the states themselves, and with de minimis guidance from the subsequent United States Supreme Court decisions, state legislatures have come up with a smorgasbord of redistricting systems.

Tennessee’s, for better or worse, is among the least complicated — and therefore the least restricted. The General Assembly is the decider. There’s no blue-ribbon panel, and with Republicans holding a super-duper majority, there’s no real need for or attempt at bipartisanship. The GOP held the reins and the pens following the 2010 count, and it was a fairly rancor-free process, though a few incumbent Republicans were drawn together in state legislative districts.

Given that population estimates show

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bate — during which Trump refused to denounce white supremacist groups and would not pledge to accept the results of the election if he loses — was “horrible,” referencing the two candidates talking over one another too much.

Asked about the recent blockbuster story from The New York Times — which revealed, among other things, that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — she says she didn’t see it and asks if it’s true. Told that all indications are that it is indeed true, she says it ultimately doesn’t bother her.

“Personally, I didn’t see the story, and I don’t know how true it is,” McDavitt says. “But as long as it was legitimate deductions and it was within the law, I don’t have a problem with whether he paid taxes or not.”

Our conversation took place the day before President Trump announced via Twitter that he and the First Lady had tested positive for COVID-19.

Just around the corner from the McDavitts, in another yard, a large Biden-Harris 2020 sign — roughly 3-by-5 feet — faces a main road. At the door, a man answers but quickly goes to get his wife. When she emerges, Sarena Bonora says it was her idea to put up

the sign. She’s a longtime Democrat, and asked about the issues that are most important to her this election, she basically lists everything. She says Biden signs outnumber Trump signs around here, but she assumes the majority of her neighbors will vote for the president.

The sign in her yard now wasn’t her first.

“The main reason for that big sign is because our smaller signs were getting stolen,” she says. “In this neighborhood, people were stealing Biden signs. That one’s harder to steal, and I feel like it’s a little bit more in-their-face, and I wanted to send a message.”

Tennessee is going to maintain its nine U.S. House seats, and that the distribution is roughly the same as it was a decade ago, one might expect the map to look essentially the same — with two safe Democratic seats centered on Nashville and Memphis and the rest of the state sliced into seven rockribbed Republican districts.

As they are drawn, Tennessee’s congressional districts, incredibly, make a lot of sense. They lack the oddball anomalies — one-block-wide land bridges snaking through territory deemed safe by this or that party or little islets tied by a string to a broader district — that have drawn court challenges elsewhere. East Tennessee’s 3rd District, represented by Republican Chuck Fleischmann, is the “weirdest”: Roane and McMinn counties are connected by a narrow strip, and the rest of the district loops down to the Georgia border, U-turning to take in Hamilton County, leaving Chattanooga and its clutch of Democrats outnumbered overwhelmingly by East Tennessee Republicans who’ve been with the GOP for 150 years.

When Republicans finally fully flipped Southern states in the ’90s and 2000s, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Democrats about the Republican majority vengefully wielding the redistricting pen that had been denied them since Reconstruction. (There was, apparently, no sense of irony from Democrats that a big reason they stayed in power so long in the South was because they got to draw the districts.)

Certainly, in many of Tennessee’s neighbors, that fear proved true. But looking at Tennessee’s historical district maps, the current one makes more sense than the past few that were drawn by Democrats. The post-2000 map featured a 4th District that stretched from the Memphis suburbs up Interstate 40, splitting like a Y just west of Nashville, with one arm diving into Williamson County and the other up toward the Kentucky border — lumping together Republicans from the suburbs of the state’s two biggest cities and military voters in Clarksville. After the 1990 census, Cleveland was a near-exclave of the Knoxville-centered 2nd District, with the 3rd District receiving a similarly sized exclave just north of the Bradley County seat.

The point of this rehashing is that it’s possible to be too clever by half in an effort to consolidate power. Tennessee Republicans don’t need to draw funky lines because they have such a structural advantage anyway.

After all, just two years ago, the most popular Tennessee Democratic politician in decades lost a U.S. Senate race by 11 points.

By all accounts, Republicans are going to maintain huge majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly after November, despite sunshiny predictions from Demo-

cratic operatives that some suburban seats are in play. (For more on that see our story on p. 12.) Not even the happiest Democratic warrior — the one with the lyrics to “Happy Days Are Here Again” tattooed on their arm and a donkey named “Truman” — sees the party flipping 24 House seats and winning 12 of the 16 Senate races.

But with a 7-2 Congressional majority, is there an incentive for Tennessee Republicans to gerrymander their way into a bigger advantage? Sure. In 2018, Republicans lost seven seats in California, halving the GOP’s representation from the Golden State. As formerly reliable Republican areas of California go blue, the party is looking to pick up seats elsewhere — and deeply conservative Tennessee is one place it could do so.

There are nightmare scenarios. It’s virtually impossible for the Republicans to get a full nine-seat sweep, particularly because Memphis is densely populated and overwhelmingly Democratic. But there are maps that reduce the Democratic advantage in the Bluff City by splitting Shelby County three ways, though the 9th District would still be more than three-quarters Democratic. Worse for Democrats is the prospect that Republicans divide most of Middle and West Tennessee into five roughly drawn isosceles triangles with their apexes joining in Davidson County, splitting the other leftleaning blue blob in the red sea that is the Volunteer State and leaving Nashville’s voters demographically overwhelmed by their exurban Republican neighbors. That would also destroy the so-called Jackson District, a Nashville-based House seat that’s existed since, well, Andrew Jackson. In two critical cases in its 2019 session, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that districts drawn for partisan advantage cannot be challenged in the courts, essentially giving legislatures free rein.

So certainly the temptation — and permission — exists for legislative Republicans to do what they will with the congressional map, but they’d be wise to pay heed that they aren’t engaging in the sort of inverse of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” That is, they mustn’t assume that what is true now will hold five years in the future. Take, for example, Rutherford County. Murfreesboro’s population is surging, as is that of the in-between-burbs of Smyrna and La Vergne. Rutherford gave Donald Trump 60 percent of its vote in 2016, roughly reflecting the state number.

Population estimates show that Murfreesboro has grown 36 percent since the 2010 census, and the county at-large by 26 percent. Rutherford is currently the state’s fifth-largest county, and demographers predict it will be the third-largest before 2050.

In large part because of the Fort Campbell Army installation, Montgomery County has the state’s lowest median age, but Rutherford isn’t much older. Job growth is strong and the cost of living is lower than in Nashville, so it’s easy to see why MTSU graduates are increasingly deciding to stay in the Bucket City — and why other young people are moving there.

So let’s say legislative Republicans engage in the nightmare 8-1 scenario, centering one of their districts on Murfreesboro, considering its strong current Republican tilt. But then the district gets younger and more liberal rapidly, throwing the district into play. And let’s say the same thing happens in Clarksville. Suddenly there are two competitive districts where there were once none. Leaving well enough alone would have, in this hypothetical, maintained a 7-2 advantage for the GOP, but now there’s a chance it could go 6-3. As the great political philosopher DJ Khaled would say, “Congratulations, you played yourself.”

Advocates for redistricting reform say the hyperpartisan process driven by politicians only furthers ideological divide, that lumping like-minded voters together in gerrymandered wiggleworms pushes candidates further left or right. Further, state legislatures are unlikely to give up this power, perhaps the most consequential way statelevel politicians can shape national policy.

Rep. Jim Cooper — the longtime Nashville Democrat and certainly a man with a personal and political interest in not seeing Nashville sliced up like a chess pie — is one of Congress’ biggest advocates for change.

After one of his first major primary challenges in years from the more progressive Keeda Haynes, Cooper is unopposed in the general. He regularly introduces a bill that would require states to set up bipartisan redistricting commissions, charged with drawing districts that tie together contiguous communities and taking public comment before finalizing the maps. For what it’s worth, polling and statistics site FiveThirtyEight developed an algorithm to maximize compact districts, and such a map would produce seven reliable Republican seats, a Memphiscentered blue seat and a new 5th District encompassing the northwest half of Davidson County and reaching up to Clarksville — which the site says would have 76 percent chance of returning a Republican. Another map from the site tries to remain true to county boundaries and produces a 7-2 map with the 5th District’s Democratic advantage at 80 percent (the current district has an 88 percent advantage for the Dems).

Cooper’s bill never makes it out of subcommittee.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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— Kris Kristofferson From the exhibit Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s.

Explore the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s major exhibit Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s, open now, and find out more about Hall of Fame member Kris Kristofferson.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

CRITICS’ PICKS W E E K L Y

R O U N D U P

O F

T H I N G S

T O

D O

OMARI BOOKER’S NEED A HUG OPENS SATURDAY, OCT. 10

[OLD BLUE EYES]

MUSIC

[WHERE’S WALDON?]

TUNE IN TO GROUP TEXT LIVE AT GRIMEY’S

In last week’s Scene, I reviewed a livestreamed set from Kelsey Waldon at City Winery. Sharp, catchy, funny and real, it was the best new straight-up country thing I’ve heard in a while. It’s not hard to tell why the late, legendary John Prine released the Western Kentucky native and Belmont alum’s third LP, White Noise / White Lines, on his Oh Boy label last year. On Friday, you can see Waldon play solo as part of a virtual writers’ round with Erin Rae, Michaela Anne and Caroline Spence, filmed

social media feeds are often inundated with videos of police brutality, which can cause real psychological stress to people who experience racism daily. All of this has been on the mind of local artist Omari Booker as he’s limited his in-person interaction with the world and watched national events unfold. His new body of work will be displayed in Need a Hug, a solo exhibition CHARLIE ZAILLIAN on view Saturday at The Black Box Gallery in The Local Distro. The work seeks to [BLACK ABUNDANCE] SEE OMARI BOOKER’S NEED A HUG AT humanize Black people by contrasting the violence and brutality inflicted on Black THE BLACK BOX GALLERY bodies with depictions of joy, love and Author and cultural critic Kiese Laymon’s family. Booker paints with a rich, phenomenal book Heavy: An American earth-toned palette that infuses his Memoir describes what he and subjects with warmth. He says his childhood friend call EDITOR’S NOTE: AS A in a press release that Need a “Black abundance” — joy RESPONSE TO THE ONGOING Hug “speaks to the love that is that’s rooted in authentic COVID-19 PANDEMIC, WE’VE CHANGED THE FOCUS OF THE needed to sustain a revolution Black culture and language.

CRITICS’ PICKS SECTION TO and rebuild the community It’s confidence despite the INCLUDE ACTIVITIES YOU CAN when the battles are over.” experience of oppression, PARTAKE IN WHILE YOU’RE AT It’s a future worth fighting delight despite trauma. But HOME. for. The opening reception art that makes its way into will follow social distancing the mainstream does not always protocols; reserve your free ticket reflect Black abundance. Meanwhile,

at Grimey’s and billed as Group Text — a name presumably referencing how the four friends and peers have been keeping in touch and encouraging each other through this year of no shows. Support your local record store and local songwriter scene by buying a ticket via Rae’s site, erinrae.veeps.com.

8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 9, via erinrae.veeps.com

via Eventbrite. Opening 5-10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10; through Nov. 21 at The Black Box Gallery in The Local Distro, 614 Garfield St. ERICA CICCARONE

DANCE

“Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.” With these words, Toni Morrison announced her presence to the world as a singular author. Published in 1970, The Bluest Eye foretold the makings of a literary giant, and Morrison went on to achieve the highest honors in the land — the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her death last year plunged the nation into mourning, and Cornell University — Morrison’s alma mater — has launched a yearlong celebration of her life and work. Marking the 50th anniversary of The Bluest Eye, the program kicks off Thursday, Oct. 8, with a live virtual reading of that book. It will begin at 11 a.m., and will feature author Ta-Nehisi Coates, poet laureate Joy Harjo and novelist Tayari Jones, along with other Cornell alumni and faculty members. It’s the perfect way to celebrate the author’s work and reflect on her legacy. Details and registration can be found at ecornell.com/ keynotes. ERICA CICCARONE

“SISTERS,” OMARI BOOKER

LIVESTREAM A READING OF TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE

ART

BOOKS

The Black Box Gallery

[DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY]

STREAM TPAC SALON SERIES’ DANCE LIKE YOUR ZOOM CAMERA IS OFF

While it’s still a relatively new genre, salsa enjoys a rich history that stretches beyond its emergence in 1960s New York.

It has strong roots in Afro-Cuban music, though there are plenty of other elements mixed in (as the name implies), including jazz and other Latin music traditions. With Hispanic Heritage Month winding down in mid-October, TPAC’s Salon series will offer viewers a chance to explore and learn about salsa music — and even teach some dance moves in the process. The Tennessee Latin American Chamber of Commerce is presenting the event, and its president, Victor Berrios, will host an evening of education and music called Dance Like Your Zoom Camera Is Off. He’ll be joined by local bandleader Giovanni Rodriguez

nashvillescene.com | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CRITICS’ PICKS

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in front of the Black Lives Matter mural on Fulton Street. Not to be confused with the 1950s courtroom drama, this piece features compelling stories of racial profiling and injustice from the 2012 book 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today, along with new material about the killing of Breonna Taylor. Lisa Arrindell, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Billy Eugene Jones and Wendell Pierce all deliver stirring performances, but it’s the haunting music from violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain and a quartet of New York Philharmonic musicians that really sets this show apart. Originally presented in September in partnership with The New Press, the reading is available through Nov. 3 via the Billie’s YouTube channel.

AMY STUMPFL

FILM

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[I’VE GOT TO GET AWAY]

If you want to get away from it all (and man, there’s a lot to get away from), consider something other than a firepit and a campsite that’s just a few feet away from a stranger’s tent. Near Ashland City, there are two different places for you to enjoy open skies, quirky shelter, offbeat art, photo ops and lots of elbow room. Creature Camp is the brainchild of artists Brett Douglas Hunter and Rebecca Blevins. Hunter is known for his oversized, brightly colored cement and papier-mâché sculptures, and Blevins is an accomplished ceramist. Gabi and Jacob VanHorn are a sign-painter and artist, respectively, and the couple behind Rancho de Barnes. Each art farm has its own amenities — Rancho de Barnes, for example, has on-site animals such as goats and chickens. (You can purchase the latter’s eggs.) And you’ll sleep in a school bus with a van welded to the top. At Creature Camp, snuggle inside a 1963 Shasta camper. Each camping locale has its own outdoor shower, space heater and fire pit. The creatures aren’t indestructible, Hunter cautions, so while kids like them, they aren’t intended as playground equipment. A bunch of the pieces did survive Bonnaroo 2019, though, so they can likely handle anything 2020 throws at them. Find details on both Creature Camp and Rancho de Barnes via hipcamp.com. MARGARET LITTMAN THEATER

Shop online at parnassusbooks.net

VACATION

of the Music City Latin Orchestra and 12 Manos. Nashville salsero David Faustino Sandoval will also join to teach some fancy footwork. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13, via tpac.org. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

[YOU CAN’T FIGHT IN HERE, THIS IS THE WAR ROOM!]

BUILD YOUR OWN STREAMING STANLEY KUBRICK FILM FESTIVAL

Drive-ins all over Middle Tennessee are in full spooky-season swing, with spots like the Stardust in Watertown and the relatively newly launched Belcourt Drive-In showing classic horror and Halloween-themed flicks throughout the month. For those still looking to take a cinematic journey without leaving the couch, we’re going to keep right on with our build-your-own-

D. PATRICK RODGERS

COMMUNITY

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streaming-film-fest Critics’ Picks series.

For this, the 24th installment, let’s look to the catalog of an auteur who influenced the horror idiom just as much as he did sci-fi — and romantic thrillers, and war films, and noir, and … you get the picture.

Over the course of a half-century, Stanley Kubrick made 13 feature films along with a handful of documentary shorts, and every one of them has something truly unique and inspired to offer — to the point, in fact, that leaving any of them out feels criminal.

Kick off your at-home fest with one of the director’s early-career efforts: Choose from war films Fear and Desire (free to stream on Amazon Prime Video) and Paths of Glory ($4 on Prime, iTunes and YouTube), or noir films Killer’s Kiss (free with ads on Plex and Pluto TV) and The Killing (free on Prime). Kubrick’s 1960 historical epic Spartacus ($4 on iTunes and YouTube) is essential, of course, as is 1964’s Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb ($4 on Prime, iTunes and YouTube). Some might argue that the latter — a gobsmackingly ahead-of-its time satirical black comedy — is where Kubrick turned the corner from great to iconic, as evidenced by his next two films: 1968’s truly perfect 2001: A Space Odyssey (now on HBO Max) and 1971’s A Clockwork Orange ($4 on iTunes). Sure, if you’ve opted to watch all of the aforementioned titles, then you’re closing in on something like 20 hours of Kubrick at this point. But no survey of the filmmaker’s work would be complete without a rewatch of 1980’s brilliantly executed and exquisitely acted The Shining ($4 on iTunes and Prime), which you may have seen mentioned in this space last week. At this point, you might as well bring your binge-watch home with Kubrick’s final two films: 1987’s Full Metal Jacket ($4 on Vudu and iTunes) and 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut ($3 on iTunes and YouTube), the latter of which was released after the filmmaker’s death. Kick back and take a deep dive into one of American cinema’s most rich and robust filmographies — you’ve earned it.

[PLAY ON, PLAYER]

DIG INTO THE INFINITE PLAYBOOK

During the inaugural conversation of Vanderbilt’s Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice, artist Hank Willis Thomas told the virtual audience that he was

[TAKING IT TO THE STREET]

CHECK OUT BILLIE HOLIDAY THEATRE’S PRODUCTION OF 12 ANGRY MEN … AND WOMEN

Situated in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn since 1972, the Billie Holiday Theatre — affectionately known as the Billie — has long been a driving force in the world of Black theater.

So it’s no surprise that this award-winning company would step up with a powerful, site-specific reading of 12 Angry Men … and Women: The Weight of the Wait, staged

FULL METAL JACKET

NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CRITICS’ PICKS

THEATER

LAURA HUTSON HUNTER [LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER]

STREAM MA-YI THEATER’S ‘SOPHOCLES IN STATEN ISLAND’

One of the few bright spots within this strange season has been the imaginative response of resourceful theater makers and arts organizations. For example, New York’s Ma-Yi Theater Company recently launched Ma-Yi Studios, a digital streaming platform designed to keep audiences engaged while live performances are shut down. They’re currently presenting “Sophocles in Staten Island,” a charming short film created

by Ma-Yi favorite Ron Domingo while he was quarantined at home in Staten Island.

Domingo — a respected veteran of stage and screen — pressed his own family into service, delivering an entertaining exercise in intergenerational wisdom and creativity.

In the film, Domingo plays an earnest but over-the-top homeschool dad who decides to stage an adaptation of Oedipus Rex and Antigone so that his daughter can impress the college board. Of course, dear old Dad begins to look an awful lot like the uncomprehending Oedipus, and his family soon rebels — but not before reallife daughter Autumn can offer her own decidedly modern take on the ancient Greek tragedies. Visit ma-yistudios.com to watch the 30-minute film, which is free to stream.

AMY STUMPFL

[LOUD GUITARS SAVE LIVES]

LISTEN TO PATRICK FERGUSON’S CRASH & RIDE PODCAST

Patrick Ferguson is a capital-L Lifer.

The Athens, Ga., drummer has kept time for The Psychedelic Furs, the late Vic Chesnutt and members of Athens’ hometown heroes R.E.M., all while staying loyal to Five-Eight, the bar-band par excellence he joined in 1992. At 50, Ferguson recently spent a year as though he was 25, playing dives and sleeping on floors as drummer/tour manager for a young, highenergy Japanese band called Pinky Doodle Poodle. As fun as jamming econo on the road can be, it easily takes its toll if one isn’t careful. Ferguson knows this, and Crash & Ride, the podcast about musicians and mental health he’s hosted since early 2019, explores it. A true Southern gentleman and a natural at interviewing, he offers a safe space for subjects (a wide range of local and national, obscure and semi-well-known musicians) to open up about dark moments and close brushes with death, guiding the conversation in a way that is cathartic and therapeutic for all (listener included), and never, ever feels exploitative. You can’t go wrong with any of C&R’s 70-plus episodes, but Ryley Walker (Episode 19) and David Pajo (Episode 65) — two gifted players whose struggles have been relatively public — go deep. Ferguson belongs on NPR, or should be raking in the big bucks as a therapist. Excellent, necessary stuff.

Check it out at crashandridepodcast.com.

CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

BOOKS

grateful to be living during this time. I was so delighted by that unexpectedly positive shift in perspective that I immediately wrote it down, and I’ve been reading it to myself whenever I’m feeling especially bummed out by the pandemic, Trump, racist cops and Fox News. If you’re anything like me, you could benefit from a positive spin on contemporary living, and I recommend dipping a toe into Thomas’ artist-driven project For Freedoms. The goal of the initiative is to model and increase civic joy, discourse and direct action through posting art, hosting virtual town halls, convening a cypher in your neighborhood or among your friends, and more. It’s a refreshing take on community activism that builds on inclusivity, and the tools to develop it are all accessible online for free.

Visit forfreedoms.org to read The Infinite Playbook (available for free as a Google document) for tips and inspiration, and sign up for a list of ways to help the cause.

PODCAST

MA-YI THEATER’S ‘SOPHOCLES IN STATEN ISLAND’

[COMIC TIMING]

CHECK OUT THE VIRTUAL MICE EXPO

The Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo is usually just one weekend long and, y’know, in Cambridge, Mass., which normally prevents Tennesseans from casually dropping in to shop the marketplace or check out panels. But because of the pandemic, the expo is going virtual this year and spreading out its list of events to create the Month of MICE! The four weeks of programming include panels on graphic memoir, politics in comics and ways to secure funding for projects, with an array of workshops covering everything from character creation and cover design to hand-lettering and digital art tools. Many events are kid-friendly, too. The Month of MICE runs through Oct. 25, and the schedule and more information can be found at micexpo.org. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

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FOOD AND DRINK

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT LOCAL FOOD SECURITY The Nashville Food Project’s Jennifer Justus on what it takes to help those in need in our community

BY JENNIFER JUSTUS

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farms, restaurants and markets.

All this to say, food-security work can be convoluted, slow, frustrating and timeconsuming. On the other hand, it can also be collaborative, community-driven and productive when folks work together, share resources, consider the smartest and most effective routes for food, and truly listen to the needs of the community rather than making assumptions.

At a time when the pandemic has made many people less food secure — and with more people wanting to get involved to help — we’ve collected a few insights from folks on the ground. Below are three things to know about local food security.

THE STATS AND STAKES.

Food insecurity is a state of being without reliable access to a sufficient amount of affordable, nutritious food. According to data collected by NPR from a USDA report, more than 35 million Americans experienced food insecurity in 2019.

Estimates by researchers at Northwestern University indicate that that number has more than doubled as a result of the pandemic — nearly one in four households — and tripled among households with children. Black and Hispanic Americans are especially and disproportionately affected.

FIFTYFORWARD’S MEAL DELIVERY

KEEP IT LOCAL BY GETTING TO KNOW THE LANDSCAPE. THERE ARE LOTS OF WAYS TO PLUG IN — FROM WELL-ESTABLISHED TO NEWER INITIATIVES.

Many local organizations have been working to alleviate hunger for years prepandemic — Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, Martha O’Bryan Center, St. Luke’s Community House, Community Care Fellowship, The Nashville Food Project and more. Additional community organizations also have pivoted to address food insecurity in their programming for the first time.

One recent example: Legacy Mission Village, an organization started by refugees for refugees, previously focused on education for families. After the pandemic came along, Legacy Mission Village heard an immediate need for food and shifted their efforts.

Meanwhile, organizations that pair food access with additional services have stepped up their work around food security due to the increased need. “Since the pandemic, we’ve kicked it up a notch,” says Sharie Loik Goodman with FiftyForward, an organization that provides programming for Nashvillians 50 and older. “We’ve found people popping up that had never gone through this.”

At Second Harvest, director of community engagement Courtney Blaise says the food bank shared about 600,000 pounds a week pre-pandemic. Now it’s more than 1 million pounds a week.

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

A

couple of weeks ago on the Hip Donelson Facebook page, a group member posted a photo of a box of vegetables that had mysteriously materialized on his doorstep. Was this some kind of early reverse-Halloween treat? A trick? Where did it come from, he wondered. Is it safe?

Should he eat it?

About 70 comments later, the group deduced it was probably OK to eat. A couple of commenters explained that the boxes, labeled with a USDA sticker, were probably like the ones being distributed at nearby schools. This box must have been leftover, because there tended to be excess — and maybe some were even thrown away.

The USDA Farmers to Families program claims to distribute millions of this type of miscellaneous food box. Ivanka Trump mentioned them in her RNC speech. The program, which is slated to ultimately spend $4 billion, pays food distributors to box up produce, dairy and meat, and ship to agencies that hand them out. Just last week, Politico reported that the boxes, paid for with taxpayer money, are now being sent out with a letter from President Trump taking credit for the effort — an election-season move called “egregious” by one Ohio food bank director.

The boxes have likely kept some folks who needed them fed. But they also show how food can move in convoluted ways.

The vegetables in Donelson, for example, had been shipped from Forestwood Farm Inc., a produce-delivery company out of Alabama — despite the fact that we have farms all around us here in Tennessee. Is it the smartest use of funds to have vegetables criss-crossing state lines, losing freshness, with the assumption they will fill needs but then potentially go to waste?

Even during the pandemic, we live in a country of abundance — according to the USDA, 30 to 40 percent of food goes to waste. The breakdown often happens in logistics and access, compounded by factors like transportation, housing and systemic racism. As we’ve seen time and again in all sorts of industries since March, this pandemic did not break our food system, but it exposed how badly it was already broken.

I work at The Nashville Food Project, and we too have received USDA produce boxes. We did not apply for them, and we were not the intended recipient. They came to us as a last stop before the landfill — excess that had been passed along. We gratefully accepted them and chopped the produce to use in some of the roughly 4,000 scratch-made meals that leave our kitchen each week. It’s the type of thing we do every day: pulling together food we grow on a production farm along with about 2,000 pounds of donated food we recover each week from various sources — grocers,

As schools also work in creative ways to provide crucial meals to students, additional organizations fill the gaps with after-school programming around meals. Those include Turnip Green Creative Reuse, Nations Ministry for refugee families and Preston Taylor Ministries, which serves teens.

The national organization World Central Kitchen also has a local presence here, at least through the end of the year. WCK’s Chefs for America received

recent Tennessee Community CARES funding to resume its programming — paying restaurants to make meals for the community. WCK has partnered with the Mesa Komal Commercial Kitchen at Conexión Américas to pay immigrant chefs for meals that will be shared through Conexión Américas’ networks.

“We are able to use their in-house program,” says World Central Kitchen’s Nashville project lead Whitney Pastorek.

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A women’s column featuring a rotating cast of contributors

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PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

(Across from Centennial Park)

GIDEON’S ARMY’S FREE STORE “And also use their networks to find people who need the food.”

Free stores have also been popping up.

While The Store (a free store from Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley) existed pre-pandemic, Gideon’s Army also opened a free store recently. Families can leave with a family-sized meal from The Nashville Food Project. Drkmttr runs The Nashville Free Store as well as a free community fridge, while Nashville Community Fridge has a location at North Nashville’s Elephant Gallery.

BEST PRACTICES INVOLVE LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY FIRST — NOT ASSUMING THE TYPE OF NEED. When Legacy Mission Village shifted its programming to address food insecurity, organizers were listening to the needs of their community — and then they took it a step further. They recognized that some of the foods for refugee families weren’t being consumed because they didn’t make sense culturally. They asked meal partners to consider this in their planning.

They also forged a partnership with the farmers of The Nashville Food Project’s Growing Together program. Burmese farmers accepted emergency funding to grow and share vegetables within their own community — a group also hit hard by COVID-19.

“We need to actually listen,” says Grace Biggs, director of food access at The Nashville Food Project, “and trust in putting resources into the hands of people being impacted.”

Biggs says The Nashville Food Project’s approach is to align with poverty-disrupting work — food as a benefit that comes alongside a job training program or afterschool program. “It’s always the case with food that it points to a lot of deeper issues. It requires a collaborative sustained solution that’s more than just getting food.”

Blaise, Goodman and Pastorek all mention the need for community collaboration too.

Goodman works with a variety of groups to provide for her clients — pantry goods from Second Harvest and The Store like easy-toopen chili or oatmeal as well as prepared meals from The Nashville Food Project.

“It’s a personable thing,” says Goodman.

“When you’re eldery you can’t eat just any food given to you. Sometimes we’ve gone in and they would have groceries but couldn’t fix them. They can’t stand at the stove and cook rice or pour the hot water out.”

These organizations also have been focusing on how to destigmatize the need for help — especially at a time when folks might be facing food shortages for the first time.

“I don’t see it as charity,” Goodman says.

“This is your community.”

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BOOKS

I TOO SING AMERICA

With Negotiations, Destiny O. Birdsong offers poems for survival

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

BY ERICA CICCARONE

D

estiny O. Birdsong wrote her first poem in seventh grade. It was inspired by an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, in which the superhero recites a line that Birdsong later learned came from a poem by William Blake. Though she admits that NEGOTIATIONS the poem “was

BY DESTINY O. BIRDSONG terrible,” crossing TIN HOUSE pop culture with $16.95, 152 PAGES classic literature AVAILABLE OCT. 13 is a theme still BIRDSONG WILL DISCUSS present in her HER BOOK AT 1:30 P.M. exceptional debut SATURDAY, OCT. 10, AT poetry collection THE VIRTUAL SOUTHERN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS, AND AT Negotiations, 6 P.M. WEDNESDAY, which is available OCT. 14, VIA PARNASSUS Oct. 13 from Tin BOOKS’ FACEBOOK LIVE House. The poems contain references and allusions to Langston Hughes and Bernie Mac, Toni Morrison and Cardi B, Ocean Vuong and Stevie Wonder. While Negotiations is peppered with scorching rebukes of American culture and politics, it is undeniably enchanted by American art and literature.

A native of Louisiana and proud Fiskite, Birdsong (who is a contributor to the Scene) earned her MFA and Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University — at the same time.

It was in the MFA program that she first read Natasha Trethewey, A. Van Jordan and Tracy K. Smith, Black American poets who have influenced her alongside Shakespeare and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

I don’t believe that artists necessarily have a responsibility to speak to the moment — but Negotiations does, with startling results. Birdsong touches on 2017’s Women’s March, that same year’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and the ill-fated gorilla Harambe, whom some Americans wrote in on the ballot for 2016’s presidential election. She’s also wary of the performative “#Resistance” that sprung up across social media since Trump’s election.

She’s not coy about revealing the collected

trauma inflicted on the American people by the current administration, but she places it in the context of white supremacy that’s rooted in the nation’s founding — and she knows there aren’t any easy answers.

Birdsong opens the collection with the title poem, and these words: My pussy is not made of microfiber.

I can’t put it on my head to conduct business, or plan insurrections. It’s not big enough to hide in, dear reader. It’s not bulletproof.

It can be offered to neo-Nazis as a lure for conversion therapy. That didn’t work for Sally Hemings. I know it can’t work for me.

Other Birdsong poems are about sexual assault — they’re dark and complicated, and their titles begin the same way, with the words “My rapist,” as in “My rapist taught me the proper way to cook bacon.” The intimacy there is jarring — but so is partner rape, and she writes about the complex aftermath unapologetically and with courage.

The 34 poems in the volume are extremely readable, so much so that it’s tempting to rush through them. Don’t.

Take your time. Ease into these poems.

They’re worth it.

The Scene talked to Birdsong about Negotiations, writing through political turmoil, and who she’s loving when she writes.

The poems in the book reflect such a range of emotions and a range of tones.

There’s unapologetic rage. There’s scorching rebuke. There’s lust, sorrow, memory and nostalgia, and there’s also comedy. Yes. I think that it has to do with many of the poems commenting on specific cultural moments that have happened in these past few terrible years, right? What was it like writing these poems during the Trump presidency,

when the worst parts of our country’s character have been more visible than they’ve been in decades? You know, for me, I think that there’s so many ways to be useful. I think that marches are useful. I think that legislation is useful. I think that acts of civil disobedience are useful. And I think writing is useful. …

Of course, I feel like I’m perhaps more susceptible to that kind of inner sea change that happens when I hear something or when I read something, but I still think that we all have the capacity for that. I think that, if we didn’t, the Bible would not have been the first book printed. Even when we think about religious texts and how there’s this clamoring for reading and understanding them, right? That we all have this connection to the written word or just words from other people, even if you don’t necessarily have access to the word on the page. That communication is so vital and so valuable, and it’s how we understand each other, and it’s how we understand ourselves, and it’s how we understand our deities, whatever they may be. I do believe that, and so for me, that’s my role.

I’m never going to run for president, but I will write a poem. When I’m sitting down to write, I feel a certain sense of responsibility, like, “This is how I hope to make the world a better place.” That was a source of comfort while writing this book during that time.

Because, really, I thought the book started in 2009, but it really started maybe around 2015. I think the oldest one in there is from late 2015. I was writing trying to understand my own trauma, like my own assault and what happened. And then the election comes, and I’ve been writing about living in a country run by an accused rapist. So I’m trying to understand that, and I’m trying to understand why white people are losing their minds and going to rallies with torches and chanting “blood and soil.” I’m like, “Is this the Middle Ages?” I’m trying to make sense of that, but also understanding that on the other side of the page is someone like

me who is also trying to make sense of it. So, maybe my grappling with making meaning out of this time, maybe that narrative is also useful to someone else.

That is the reason I write Poetry with a big P. But I also just think on a micro level, it just makes me feel useful.

Do you have a reader in mind when you’re writing? Yeah, oh gosh. … My friend Tafisha Edwards once repeated to me a question that a Black woman poet had posed to the workshop [she attended]. … “Who are you loving when you write?” I am unequivocally loving Black women of all types, all socioeconomic backgrounds, all iterations of womanhood, all of that. I’m loving Black women. But I also, many years ago, watched an episode of Oprah, and she was interviewing Vera Wang, the dressmaker. Vera Wang is talking about her journey and all of the stuff that comes into how she became a fashion designer. It cuts to Oprah, and Oprah is talking about how a Vera Wang dress feels. She says something to the effect of, “You know what, it feels like the dress was made especially for you.”

And, I was like, “That’s awesome — that’s how I want to write poems.” I want to write the kind of poem that when you step into it, it doesn’t matter what your particular metaphorical body type is, but the poem fits. So I really think of my ideal reader that way. I think, first and foremost, I’m always writing about the experience of being a Black woman, and my hope is that other Black women can relate to that experience. But if the dress fits, the dress fits. If it fits you, it fits you.

When the pandemic came to the U.S., as a journalist and as a devout James Baldwin follower, I was just like, “What is the role of art in this?” I’ve grown jaded in that respect. Our legislators need to step up and do this. Artists can’t save everything, you know? Yeah, right, artists can’t pass a stimulus bill.

Exactly. But I think Negotiations definitely makes an argument that art can do a lot even if you feel like it can’t. Yeah, exactly, I agree. It’s interesting because, last night, I had to turn in a letter that will go to some of my special first-readers, people who get free copies of the book.

In that letter, I say that poetry isn’t magic. But I think what it does is make survival possible. There’s an Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet, which is about love, how love isn’t everything. It’s not food. It’s not shelter. It can’t save a sinking ship. It can’t set a fractured bone.

But every day, somewhere in the world, somebody is making friends with death just because they don’t have love.

For me, I feel that way about poetry and about literature. It can’t do any of those things, but when I have felt my most hopeless, I can turn to a book and it gives me something that pushes me to survive. Survival is the first step. If I can survive, yeah, then I can figure out how to do all those other things. I can figure out how to eat. I can figure out where to get food. I can figure out how to get shelter. I can figure out how to get health care. I can figure it out. But if I don’t have that hope that gets me out of bed in the morning, then none of that other stuff is possible.

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PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

ART

THE MANY WORLDS OF JAIRO PRADO

A retrospective of the Colombian-born, Nashvillebased artist transcends time and place

BY SARA LEE BURD

J

airo Prado truly encountered snow for the first time when he arrived in Nashville from Bogotá, Colombia. He had seen it on a Colombian mountaintop, but he’d never been fully immersed in the frosty fluff.

His memory of it is BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: one of a true artist: THE ART OF JAIRO PRADO “You see this white THROUGH NOV. 1 AT thing,” he tells the MONTHAVEN ARTS AND CULTURAL CENTER, 1017 Scene. “But when ANTEBELLUM CIRCLE, you start really lookHENDERSONVILLE ing, you see this purple, then blue, then gold. It’s so beautiful to see how the white snow reflects true colors.”

Prado’s vision for color — as well as his multicultural perspective, keen observation and synthesis of the ordinary and the spiritual — encapsulates what he accomplishes with his art. The retrospective of his work that’s currently on view at the Monthaven Arts and Cultural Center in Hendersonville, Between Two Worlds: The Art of Jairo Prado, speaks to the artist’s biography as well as his artistic mission: Being an immigrant from Colombia and a celebrated artist in Nashville influences how he thinks and creates.

Prado studied art-making and art history at The National University of Colombia and the Bogotá Museum of Contemporary Art, but his education was not all formal — he followed his curiosity and explored European-style art in cathedrals and pre-

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Columbian artifacts at museums and archaeological sites. He traveled from the Atlantic to the Pacific — to the Andes, to the Amazon — soaking in Colombia’s landscapes and diverse cultures.

In museums, he fell in love with the vibrant colors and expressive brushstrokes of modern artists such as Colombian painter Alejandro Obregón. The sacred symbols, history of techniques and mountainous vistas have all found their way into his work.

When Prado moved to Nashville in the 1980s, he acclimated to a city of 550,000 people instead of the 4 million he was accustomed to in Bogotá. He says he felt “like a fish out of water.” He had moved to Nashville to be with his aunt and sister, but he didn’t speak English, and the city was noticeably segregated.

“There may be some discrimination in Bogotá,” he recalls, “but it wasn’t like what I saw here. There, we are all races, all colors — we are all humans.” Prado moved back to Colombia for a brief period because of this discomfort. “One of my struggles was that being here I felt like I was losing my freedom,” he says. “I felt mute and deaf.”

When he realized he was also lost in Bogotá, he returned to Nashville with a plan.

“I needed to get a job,” he explains, “but it must be connected to my dream so I will be able to handle the situation.”

Back in Nashville, he studied at Watkins College of Art — then the Watkins Institute — and worked there for 17 years. He developed community, got married and made art. Determined to build a life here, he invested himself in creating, exploring and dreaming.

“One thing that I learned about American people is that they mean well,” he says. “I found along the way many people who saw my potential.”

Prado’s fluency in various disciplines is shown in his painting “Journey to Macondo,” which references Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. The painting’s title refers to Macondo, the land Márquez modeled after Colombia. The ensemble of mountains, a typical hat and plants is familiar to a Colombian audience. Prado says the recurring image of butterflies in his art signifies spiri-

tual travelers. For anyone who has read Solitude, the yellow wings evoke the fantastical butterflies that followed the ill-fated Mauricio Babilonia. Prado follows Márquez’s lead, using the insects to hint at the beauty of life as well as its existential pain.

Having lived in Colombia during a civil war that began in 1964 and only recently ended, Prado has a perspective that was shaped by a fear of violence in a land that he loved. The coexistence of celebration and foreboding in Colombia appears in Prado’s “Guacarí,” in which the artist creates tension between the underlying turmoil in Colombia and the joyful experience of the participants. The colorful palette, folkloric attire and smiling faces in the painting capture a lighthearted spirit — but if you look closely, you see silhouettes of men with guns in the background.

In the 1980s, Prado concentrated on the agony of the human condition, making what he calls “grotesque” works filled with suffering. But in recent years, his perspective has shifted.

“I think there is more to life than what we see,” he explains. “I allow the spirit to speak.

Even when there is suffering, the pain is never going to go away, but if we have mutual hope we can keep moving up.”

The acrylic-on-canvas painting “Everything Under the Sun” asserts this positive transformation with both prismatic colors and the upturned gaze of the central figure.

Prado’s positive perspective has influenced the visual culture of Nashville. Of the several public art projects he’s completed, the most notable is a multicolored mosaic mural at Casa Azafrán that shines as a bridge between communities. That project had personal meaning for him as an expatriate — it’s literally the entry point for a building that serves as a cultural, educational hub and is filled with nine nonprofits that support immigrants with financial, health care and legal services.

He says the experience of creating the mosaic was memorable. “We had over 350 people, and they were dedicating their time to this,” Prado says. “We had people from different communities coming together — Native American, Black, white, Asian, Latin people from all countries.”

He valued the civic collaboration even more because it was a stark contrast to his early experience in Nashville.

“I have to say that it’s not that people were not accepting before,” he reflects. “It’s that they did not know how to respond. There was a lack of information about what was going on outside the area then. Now there is more awareness of more cultures.”

The cultural sea change that Nashville has undergone since Prado’s initial arrival is reflected in the exhibition title. But being between worlds can also apply to the transition Prado has made from creating art based on his external experiences to connecting to a higher spiritual force.

“I used to want to paint the destruction,” he says. But now? “I want to illustrate how we are going to overcome what is happening. We need to focus on fighting with the spirit — we are spiritual warriors.”

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THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME® AND MUSEUM PRESENTS

LIVE ON YouTube

OCTOBER 28 | 8:00 pm

ct

Alison Brown | Kane Brown | Carlene Carter | Rodney Crowell Emmylou Harris | Miranda Lambert | Ashley McBryde | Reba McEntire Tim McGraw | Keb’ Mo’ | Brad Paisley | Ricky Skaggs | Marty Stuart Dan Tyminski | The War and Treaty | Lucinda Williams

Hosted by Marty Stuart. Audio Supervisor, Dave Cobb.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

MUSIC

GEARING UP: MIDI OF ANGELS

Jen Gavin’s Paradise MIDI devices can control just about anything — with style

Editor’s note: In our occasional series we call Gearing Up, we profile some of the people around town who make, repair or sell the instruments and other equipment that musicians use.

J

en Gavin’s face lights up as she recalls the time she got to disassemble and reassemble an entire 737 jet engine by herself. She spent a week at General Electric in Boston, covered head to toe in grease from pulling the mechaniCHECK OUT PARADISE MIDI cal guts from the AT PARADISEMIDI.COM AND FOLLOW ON INSTAGRAM AT 6,500-pound beast @PARADISEMIDI that hung over her head.

“It was so cool,” she tells the Scene while standing outside her East Nashville workshop. “I really thought I was gonna make jet engines forever.”

Being an engineer was Gavin’s dream since childhood — she even mentioned it, she says, in her elementary school yearbook. She earned a master’s in mechanical engineering (specializing in fluid dynamics and aero-propulsion) from Florida State University and completed a three-month internship at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. After three years in GE’s Edison Engineering Development Program, she accepted a position at the company as a probabilistic design engineer. Which means, as she explains, “I created mathematical models of things like jet engines or wind turbines to predict when parts would fail or need to be replaced.”

But her lifelong passion for problemsolving didn’t fully click until a serendipitous collaboration with her friend Neil Fridd of the Nashville electro-pop band Terror Pigeon. Fridd, who works in lighting design, wanted to bring an exciting visual element to Terror Pigeon’s live show. After some

brainstorming, Gavin used her talents to build a bright-orange acrylic box fitted with a control board that converts digital multiplex (aka “DMX”) lighting signals into a direction, a speed or a rate of increase. That signal is sent to an internal gear train and stepper motor, which are connected to the platform the projector is mounted upon.

In layman’s terms?

“Basically, when [Fridd] is playing his live show, you can send signals that sync with the music,” says Gavin. “So the projector is spinning around and doing a wild laser light show perfectly in time with the music.”

“I ended up going on tour with [Terror Pigeon] because I was like, ‘Well, I want to do troubleshooting as we go,’ ” she continues. “Then one thing led to another. I ended up doing several tours, actually singing in the band. It was so much fun. Since leaving school and going to work at this job that I thought I was gonna love, it never felt right.

When I started doing this I was like, ‘Oh, this is it! This is what I want to do.’ ” Fridd’s next request was a MIDI controller — that’s musical instrument digital interface, a protocol for sending electronic control signals for music gear. He needed a device to control the lights on tour with the Harry Potter-themed “wizard-rock” band Harry and the Potters.

“It was the most complicated project I’d ever programmed, but I loved it,” Gavin says with a laugh. “It’s like 80-something components and the buttons are RGB, so they can do rainbow displays while you’re playing.”

The wooden controller is huge — the size of a small coffee table — and it’s covered in dozens of sliders and buttons (some candycolored, some with programmable RGB colors via the LEDs inside). It’s eye-catching, and Fridd was asked about it constantly while on the road with the Massachusettsbased Potters. “He’d send me texts, like,

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

BY MEGAN SELING

‘Another person asked about this controller,’ ” Gavin says. “ ‘Everyone loves this thing!’ ” Sure, if you want a basic MIDI controller, you could hit up Amazon or Guitar Center and grab some mass-produced something or other for around $100. But a controller from Paradise MIDI, the company Gavin launched, is a functional piece of art.

Gavin builds each one by hand using an industrial laser cutter, a computer-controlled machining tool called a CNC machine (which she also built herself) and a fully customizable rainbow of materials. The cases are built either of wood finished with your choice of stain, or of translucent, matte or fluorescent sheets of colored acrylic that can be etched with your own logo or artwork. You’ve got your choice of buttons — specifically Sanwa brand buttons, which Gavin describes as “top-of-the-line Japanese arcade buttons.” Her most popular model is the Paradise 08K, which features eight buttons and four knobs and starts at $175.

They may look like some kind of Playskool toy — appropriately, Gavin has also turned a Playskool microwave into a MIDI

controller — but like any basic MIDI controller you’d buy elsewhere, they’re all compatible with popular programs like Ableton or Logic. Gavin says she engineers Paradise MIDI’s controllers to be intuitive and easy to use for beginners and seasoned pros alike. Performers from all around the U.S. and Canada, and even from as far away as Germany, have bought her controllers to be used to play electronic instruments, run lighting rigs, and even to set off a bubble maker. Fans of Nashville’s pop-psych band Tayls might recognize that last one, a special commission for frontman Taylor Cole.

“MIDI is so universal — you can apply it to so many things,” she says. “A while ago, right before COVID-19, [Cole] gave me his guitar. And I drilled a bunch of holes in it and installed a bunch of buttons in the face of the guitar, and had them wired up to control his bubble machines.”

“I love solving problems,” she adds. “I love it when someone has an exciting, out-ofthe-box idea. I love being, like, ‘Yes! I can do that! I can make it happen for you!’ ” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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PHOTO: ALYSSE GAFKJEN

MUSIC

WAITING OUT THE STORM OUT FRIDAY VIA ANTIRECORDS

INTO THIS HOUSE WE’RE BORN Jeremy Ivey looks to the future on Waiting Out the Storm

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

J

eremy Ivey isn’t one to let the grass grow beneath him. In September 2019, the veteran singer, songwriter and producer released The Dream and the Dreamer, his first solo album. The country-infused, rockkissed songs on that critically lauded LP — a product of many years of writing, recording and touring — were already written when much-loved, wide-ranging independent label ANTI- Records expressed interest in signing Ivey in September 2018.

“Once I’d signed the record deal, I took the money they gave me and immediately put it into [booking] the studio,” Ivey recalls, speaking with the Scene by phone. “I’d never been in an actual recording studio to do my own thing. I had never really written for an album for myself before, because I didn’t think anybody had any interest.”

But no sooner had the ink dried than he began work on a new batch of songs. They make up his new LP Waiting Out the Storm,

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out Friday. Ivey made the album alongside wife and closest collaborator Margo Price. Not long after the sessions for her own recent album That’s How Rumors Get Started, which she co-produced with Sturgill Simpson, Price produced Waiting Out the Storm and sang backing vocals on several of its tracks. The pair and Ivey’s band The Extraterrestrials recorded the album over the course of three days in February 2019 at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios.

Waiting Out the Storm opens with “Tomorrow People,” a jangly, psychedelic number with vocals reminiscent of Lou Reed. The track considers how future generations will live in the wake of the turmoil we’ve been living through in recent years. Among other pointed questions about mental health and climate change, Ivey asks: “Hey tomorrow people, do you still blame the shit you do on different-colored people who are not just like you?”

“I was in this antique bookstore and I saw this sci-fi book called Tomorrow People,” says Ivey. “I didn’t open it up to see what it was about. I thought, ‘Oh, this is a song — it’s a letter to the future.’ I went home and got a notebook and wrote it out. Margo helped me with a couple of lines — she had the ‘virtual sex’ line, and ‘Have you found a pill that works?’ I like that it has a point and a message but isn’t in your face. It’s heartfelt, too.

If you could talk to your great-grandkids, how would you apologize to them about

the stains you left both on the earth and on people’s psyches?”

Though Ivey wrote the material two years ago, the nine songs that follow “Tomorrow People” are similarly prescient, deconstructing the ills of the day — among them racism, xenophobia and the growing wealth gap — with a critic’s precision and a poet’s compassion. The album doesn’t take sides, though, as Ivey sees the hatred fueled by growing political division as one of the most destructive forces currently at work in American society.

“I may get a little shit for that sentiment, but I’m really heartbroken for how America is now,” he says. “I know it was that way when I was a kid, but it wasn’t this strong. There were people who saw the good in what the other side was doing. … It’s so toxic now. I have nothing against anyone because of their political beliefs.

Everyone goes through their own individual thing. I just don’t want people to be hateful to one another.”

A standout moment on Waiting Out the Storm is “Hands Down in Your Pockets,” a four-minute journey through the ravages of income inequality and “headless headlines.” It’s delivered in a rapid-fire style that evokes spoken-word poetry and the midAughts solo work of T Bone Burnett. Ivey, Price and the band got creative in the studio to build a soundscape that fit the freewheeling nature of the lyric.

“I wrote the verses for that all at once,” Ivey says. “I liked it because it was weird and abstract but still pointed. … When we were in the studio, I said to [Extraterrestrials guitarist Alex Munoz], ‘I want to hear you get pissed off.’ He has that really wild guitar sound, which I love. And we didn’t have an organ, so I put my harmonica through a Leslie speaker.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for the music community as a whole but particularly harrowing for Ivey, who contracted the virus in the spring and was seriously ill for several months. He explains that the experience made him come face to face with his own mortality in a way he never had before, and that doing so has forever changed his outlook on life.

“It’s cliché, but it made me enjoy and appreciate little things in my life that I may have overlooked,” he says. “Being that close to what I consider death — I’m the type of person who thinks about my mortality quite a bit, but when you have to face it, it’s different.”

Ivey remains busy as ever. He says that he and Price both have full LPs’ worth of new material ready to go, and hope to find ways to record the new music safely with their bands in the coming months. For the foreseeable future, Ivey says, he plans to release a new album each year “until people don’t give a shit anymore.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

THE SPIN

TOO MANY OF YOU CRYING

BY LORIE LIEBIG

“T

hat’s what we’re here to do — spread love and education,” Devon Gilfillian told viewers Thursday night as he kicked off There’s an Election Going On. The rising soul champion, whose debut full-length Black Hole Rainbow dropped in January, served as the host and main performer for the show, a prerecorded collection of performances that streamed just once. The event served three purposes simultaneously: to encourage voting in the upcoming presidential election, to raise funds for the voting rights advocacy nonprofit Equity Alliance and to celebrate one of recorded music’s absolute masterpieces, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. With his full band in tow, Gilfillian took to the stage at 3rd and Lindsley for a socially distanced performance of Gaye’s 1971 album in full. After the show, Gilfillian announced that he’s recorded his own version of the album, set for release Oct. 22 with proceeds pledged to the Equity Alliance. The record is a perfect fit for Gilfillian’s smooth and soulful voice, and it points toward ways to navigate the social and political chaos we’re experiencing today. What’s Going On artfully examines the cultural issues that America was facing at

the time, through the eyes of a Vietnam War vet returning home. Gaye addresses the war, racial tensions, social inequality, substance abuse and the destruction of our environment in a way that’s passionate, compassionate and affecting without coming across as preachy. When Gilfillian sat down with his guitar to learn the songs, he had a realization that stuck with him.

“In that moment, I figured out that [Gaye] only wanted people to have a conversation about what was happening at that time,” Gilfillian said during the stream. “Almost 50 years ago that record came out. Right now in 2020, we need so badly to have a conversation just between people in this country — Democrat, Republican, independent, whoever you are. We all need to look at what’s happening, at other people and the struggles they’re going through, and make our voices heard.”

The themes of racial inequality and political divisiveness weaved within each song on What’s Going On take on an important new meaning today.

“We’re here to play and pay tribute to Marvin Gaye,” Gilfillian continued, “not only because of the beautiful message he was giving, but because I want that message to spread now, in 2020, when we need it more than ever.”

Throughout the evening, Gilfillian welcomed an array of special guests to join him onstage. Joy Oladokun added stunning harmonies to “Flyin’ High (in the Friendly Sky),” country-trap king Breland showed off his killer falsetto on “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),” and Kyshona Armstrong’s powerhouse voice

ONLY LOVE CAN CONQUER HATE: DEVON GILFILLIAN shone on every note of “God Is Love.”

Although Gaye’s iconic album was the thread that sewed the entire set together, many local artists also joined in through taped appearances from elsewhere. The Lone Bellow, Katie Pruitt and Drew Holcomb were among the first-rate songsmiths across a wide stylistic range who played tunes from their own catalogs that matched the theme of the evening — calling for the freedoms promised in the Constitution to be extended to everyone. Jason Isbell gave a solo rendition of the grooving “White Man’s World” from his 2017 album The Nashville Sound, which puts a spotlight on white privilege and social inequality in America. Power-pop revitalizer Aaron Lee Tasjan revisited his stinging “I Love America Better Than You.” Southern rocker Marcus King shared a poignant new song called “Breathless,” which tackles the uncertainty

and loneliness that have become a daily reality during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The show came to a close with a rousing performance from Gilfillian and soulschooled Americana greats The War and Treaty, fresh off the release of their new LP Hearts Town. Together, they took on the record’s titular centerpiece “What’s Going On,” a song that shows profound empathy in its portrayal of painful confusion.

Our country feels anything but stable right now. Things that have felt fundamental to our culture and society — good and bad — now feel like they could change at any second. Gilfillian & Co.’s 90-minute set served as a reminder of how great art can simultaneously address the moment in which it was created and have an impact that lasts long after that time passes.

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FILM shoulders that their posture has been a giveaway for regret and the passage of time — you are totally going to respond to this film. The same goes for observing how a man speaks of and relates to an animal, and how that tells you what it’s like being in a relationship with him. And if you dig the magical weirdness of our cephalopod friends in the ocean, My Octopus Teacher has a lot to offer on that front as well. There’s some circle-of-life territory herein, so it’s not for the most delicate of sensibilities, and anthropomorphism is thankfully kept to a minimum.

But you get a feeling for this octopus and her travails, and it’s very difficult not to get swept up in the amount of living this feisty mollusk does in a year.

TENET IN THEATERS OF ALL SORTS

THE BOYS IN THE BAND

PRIMAL STREAM 26

Delicious gay drama, a stirring cephalopod and more, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

S

upport film festivals — all of them that you can. Also, please vote, because things are just getting stranger and more chaotic out here, and I don’t even know what to tell you. If you’re reading this, hopefully it’s because you need something visual that’s not too abysmal — and we’ve got weeks and weeks of that for you to peruse. But for this week, I’m aiming to cover a lot of ground. I hope this helps in your process for navigating this Mad Libs of a world we’re currently in.

THE BOYS IN THE BAND ON NETFLIX First as an off-Broadway phenomenon in 1968 thanks to the graces of the late Natalie Wood, and then as a 1970 William Friedkin film, playwright Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band is one of those texts that is both famous and infamous for what it does and where it goes. Its 2018 Broadway bow and 2020 film remake (both directed by theatrical legend Joe Mantello) serve as a reaction to that seminal text and to the society it takes place in. Before Stonewall; before the HIV/AIDS pandemic; before Obergefell v.

Hodges. This is one of those glorious ’60s pieces of theater in which archetypes and trauma flow like wine, and did somebody say wine? Yes, please. The emotions are big, and so is the import. It’s a gathering of

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gay friends (and one ambiguous question mark), and the issues are gay. The big hook for this new production/film (which features the same cast) is that all the performers are openly gay as well — something simply impossible in the 1968/1970 go-round. Michael (Jim Parsons, who is fun at first but then yields Kevin Spacey-face as his character gets drunker and meaner) has opened his gorgeous split-level apartment to the group — and Robin de Jesús (from Camp), Matt Bomer, Michael Benjamin Washington and Charlie Carver make the most impactful impressions. A special shout-out to Zachary Quinto as Harold for Going There with his performance, somehow true to the era yet anticipating decades-away meme culture.

This show was never for everybody, but it’s refreshing for Netflix to commit to presenting a gay story this conscious of both the past and the present. So much drama, and it’s all delicious.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, SCOOBY-DOO! ON DVD AND VIDEO ON DEMAND Remember earlier in the pandemic when the would-be theatrical release of Scoob! got shifted to video on demand? There was some degree of conflicted chatter from the world (about Hanna-Barbera cinematicuniverse-building, the unfortunate presence of Mark Wahlberg and the unnecessary recasting of all of the primary voice cast) that got swept aside because it was at that time when we were “all in this together.” Well, in keeping with Warner’s direct-to-DVD animated Scooby-Doo films, we’ve got a spooky Halloween adventure with the usual voiceover cast (including Matthew Lillard as Shaggy and Kate Micucci as Velma), and it’s a delight. It certainly bests Scoob! How can you not love a film in which Mystery Incorporated becomes friends with Elvira

and has to battle a Batman villain as well as an army of floating pumpkins determined to transform all of Crystal Cove into an unstoppable vegetable force? Also, there’s about half an hour where we’ve got an unofficial Mad Max: Fury Road remake with Bill Nye as an internet-based real-time GPS/on-board sysop. It’s a brisk 80 minutes — paced very well, spooky but not too scary for the little ones, and the secret of Elvira’s hair? Totally revealed.

MY OCTOPUS TEACHER ON NETFLIX Beautiful in imagery and concept if a little perfunctory in structure, My Octopus Teacher is one of those documentaries that scratches a lot of different itches. If you dig undersea photography, it’s an exquisite journey into the South African coastal seas and the many different biomes that occur in those parts of the ocean. If you like narratives in which dads learn how to relate to their children through seemingly unrelated circumstances — and you can tell by their

Short prelude: I still don’t feel comfortable going to indoor theaters. Your mileage may vary. I don’t want exhibitors to go out of business, nor do I want anyone to die because of the absolutely understandable need for the transcendent social experience of seeing a movie with other folks. But I’m still at the place where I’m sticking to drive-ins for non-streaming options, and thankfully Tenet is showing at several of those. I’ve seen it twice now (both times at Centerville’s Pink Cadillac Drive-In on Highway 100), and the second viewing helped a lot. It wasn’t just knowing the narrative map either, because much of the unintelligible dialogue that has rightfully been getting a lot of digital ink seemed completely comprehensible the second time around. John David Washington is charming and direct as the Protagonist (hopefully Neal Stephenson was amused), Robert Pattinson shines as a Brundlefly of David Bowie and Christopher Hitchens, and Elizabeth Debicki takes a tortured stereotype of a role and turns it into something with gravitas and iconic force. The action is refreshingly physical, and the central tenet (ha!) of the screenplay, involving multiple vectors of existence, is a lot of fun. Other than that last action sequence and the tired trope of defining a woman’s state of being by her nonentity children, the big misstep is Kenneth Branagh trying to play a Russian oligarch version of Balem Abrasax from Jupiter Ascending and missing by miles. But it’s fun, and it may be the last blockbuster we’re getting for a while, so see it with a particle physicist or art punk whom you love.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

MY OCTOPUS TEACHER

NASHVILLE SCENE | OCTOBER 8 – OCTOBER 14, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CROSSWORD EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ ACROSS 1

Cracked a bit

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Gadget shaped like its first letter

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Minor dust-up

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Pixar film that premiered in Mexico

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Conference group

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Keepeth

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Fried Hanukkah treat

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Not bamboozled by

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Watch brand featured in James Bond films

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“Do or die” time

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The one over here

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Parapsychology research subj.

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Apollo command module, for one

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Thunder, but not Lightning

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One doing menial work

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100%

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One adorns the Statue of Liberty

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Rama and Krishna, e.g.

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Home of Whitman College

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“See ya!”

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What chickenpox can cause

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Before time

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“Butt out!,” briefly

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Theater : usher :: restaurant : ___

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Fruity loaf with a moist texture

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Berry from Brazil

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Zoom

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H&R Block worker, for short

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Org. in “Die Hard”

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Core of an alkaline battery

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U, V or W, on the periodic table

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Exaggerate for effect

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Made like a shark?

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One seeking change

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Unfinished story?

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The ones over there

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Facial feature missing from many emojis

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Big ___, nickname for slugger David Ortiz

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Sonic the Hedgehog creator

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Bank security option?

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Got even with

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Photographer Goldin

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Recover … or what 17-, 25-, 38- and 51-Across do?

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Group of voters

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Devices that work by comparing air pressures

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French 101 verb

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Mineralogical eponym

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Natural sunburn soother

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Key used to get out, not in

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Meh

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Some answers on history exams

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Colleague of Ginsburg and Roberts

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Gaming novice, slangily

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Finish, with “up”

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Not quite right?

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Get unionized?

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Work with needles

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Former pro wrestling star ___ Bigelow

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Glen

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Scraped (out)

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Keeps posted, in a way

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Accessory clipped to a dress shirt

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FLAVIO ROBERTO ROCA In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon FLAVIO ROBERTO ROCA. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after October 8, 2020 same being the date of the last publication 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

Vs. AARON MARSHALL MARTIN In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon AARON MARSHALL MARTIN. It is ordered that said Defendant enter His appearance herein with thirty (30) days after October 15, 2020 same being the date of the last publication 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 16, 2020. 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

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In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon AARON MARSHALL MARTIN. It is ordered that said Defendant enter His appearance herein with thirty (30) days after October 15, 2020 same being the date of the last publication 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 16, 2020. 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.

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In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon FLAVIO ROBERTO ROCA. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after October 8, 2020 same being the date of the last publication 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 9, 2020. 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.

AARON MARSHALL MARTIN

SANTIAGO BRONCHALES In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon SANTIAGO BRONCHALES. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after October 8, 2020 same being the date of the last publication 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 9, 2020. 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 11, 2020 H. Julianne Lackey Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/17, 9/24, 10/1, 10/8/20

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facebook/Luckybamboonash | B.Y.O.B. No Corking Fee! | ORDER ONLINE: luckybamboochinabistro.com 5855 Charlotte Pike | 760-5930 | 1/2 Mile West of White Bridge Rd. (“Up The Ramp on Left”)

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