Nashville Scene 12-15-22

CITY LIMITS

Street View: Vanderbilt University

Continues to Expand Its Campus .............. 7

The prominent university grows every year — and that’s affecting housing, parking, diversity and more in its neighborhoods

BY LENA MAZEL

Electric Avenue 8

Tennessee is a leading electric vehicle producer. But is it getting any easier to own EVs?

BY COLE VILLENA

Pith in the Wind 8

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog Neighbors Enter Eighth Year of Second Avenue Property Dispute .......................... 9 Problems started when the Lees’ new neighbor took down a chain-link fence

BY ELI MOTYCKA

10COVER STORY

Year in Music 2022

Prismatic Perspectives 11 Catching up with Sierra Ferrell about extensive touring, establishing yourself as a new artist and much more

BY BRITTNEY M c KENNA

The Year in Country 12

Tracking 12 months of triumphs, shameful behavior and profound losses

BY BRITTNEY M c KENNA

2022 Local Music Timeline 12

Rock Around the Calendar! 14

A year to remember in local rock featured releases from Jack White, The Black Keys, Soccer Mommy, Ariel Bui and many, many more

BY DARYL SANDERS

Top Local Albums Critics’ Poll ................ 16

From Namir Blade and Six One Trïbe to Amanda Shires and Twen, here are our favorite local LPs of the year

Those We Lost 22

Remembering Loretta Lynn, Deborah McCrary, Ann Tiley, Dr. Paul T. Kwami and other Nashville musical figures

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

CRITICS’ PICKS

wellRED, Friendship Commanders, The Ornaments, Kelsey Waldon, Kindling Arts presents Very Special Holiday Special, Ziona Riley, Nashville Rep Presents Elf the Musical and more

FOOD AND DRINK

Family Style Tutti da Gio in Hermitage is a true Sicilian dream BY

ERICA CICCARONE

HUTSON HUNTER

BY LANCE

CONZETT, AMANDA HAGGARD, P.J. KINZER, BRITTNEY M c KENNA, D. PATRICK RODGERS, DARYL SANDERS, KAHWIT TELA, STEPHEN TRAGESER AND CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

The Year in Hip-Hop 18

From crews like BlackCity, Six One Trïbe, and Third Eye & Co. to Mike Floss, R.A.P. Ferreira and beyond, great rap releases are in abundance

BY LANCE CONZETT

The Year in Ven-News 18

Major changes marked 2022, including the end of Exit/In and Mercy Lounge as we’ve known them

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

A Nashville Black Music Roundtable 20

Talking with Rashad tha Poet, Erica Hayes Schultz, Jason Eskridge and Shannon Sanders about the state of Nashville jazz, blues, R&B, soul and more in 2022

BY RON WYNN

A Fairy-Tale Year 22

Talking with Tennessee Composer Laureate Michael Kurek

BY JOHN PITCHER

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

BIDEN

STRONG JOBS REPORT SHOWS THAT PRESIDENT BIDEN’S PLAN IS WORKING

With the holidays upon us, many people are no doubt thinking about the economy, thanks to the cost of everything from gifts to their electric bill. But according to the November jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, things are looking up for working families across the country.

Since President Biden took office, 10.5 million jobs have been created — 750,000 of them manufacturing jobs, according to the White House. The administration also shared that the “national average gas price has fallen by roughly 50 cents in the past 30 days — and now stands at $3.32 per gallon.” Here in our area, we’ve seen it

The

, “America’s jobs engine kept churning in November, the Labor Department reported Friday, a show of continued demand for workers despite the Federal Reserve’s push to curb inflation

added that “the unemployment rate was steady at 3.7 percent, while wages have risen 5.1 percent over the year, more than expected.” Reuters reported that nonfarm payrolls increased by 263,000 jobs in November. “Data for October was revised higher to show payrolls rising 284,000 instead of 261,000 as previously reported,” noted Reuters.

“The U.S. economy added 263,000 jobs in November, defying aggressive action from the Federal Reserve to cool the economy and bring down decades-high inflation,” noted CNN in a similar report this month. “The unemployment rate held steady at 3.7%, according to the Labor Department.”

“U.S. employers hired more workers than expected in November and increased wages, shrugging off mounting worries of a recession, but that will probably not stop the Federal Reserve from slowing the pace of its interest rate hikes starting this month,” reported Reuters, adding that “there were 10.3 million job openings at the end of October, with 1.7 openings for every unemployed person, many of them in the leisure and hospitality as well as healthcare and social assistance industries.”

Despite positive reports, we all recognize that it is going to take time for our nation to get past the once-debilitating global pandemic and firmly back on its feet. But we have shown great resilience, and things are indeed improving — albeit not as quickly as we might like. And when it comes to the labor market, things are happening in the corporate world that are not the norm — protocols that have more to do with “COVID just in case” measures than with the work of President Biden’s administration.

For example, technology job cuts have been higher of late — but, says Reuters, “economists say these companies are right-sizing after over-hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic.” And CNN reports that companies are “pipelining talent” — meaning “companies post jobs to develop a pool of candidates.” According to Laura Mazzullo, founder of East Side Staffing in New York: “Candidates don’t know that’s what’s happening, so they’re being pipelined, when actually they think they’re applying for an active job. And this is where we’re seeing a bit of a disconnect.”

But the upside, according to Recruitment.com, is that corporations plan to fill these jobs at a later date with those already in the pipeline — based on their company’s future needs.

Jim McCoy, vice president of solutions for ManpowerGroup, says that “most of those [who’ve lost tech jobs] appear to be getting reabsorbed into the labor market.” He adds, “Most companies are digital at this point, and if not, they’re investing in automation, they’re investing in their web presence, they’re investing in business performance tools, and so they need [information technology] workers.”

The numbers we’ve seen from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and from the White House prove encouraging. President Biden’s economic plan is working. The statistics show that under Biden’s leadership we’ve created millions of new jobs and hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, the unemployment rate is holding steady, and wages have risen 5.1 percent over the year. In the new year and beyond, I believe we’ll see even greater improvements.

Bill Freeman

Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus and the Nashville Post

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In memory of Jim Ridley, editor 2009-2016

PRESIDENT

TO EXPAND

CAMPUS

BY LENA MAZEL

Street View is a monthly column in which we’ll take a close look at developmentrelated issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.

Vanderbilt University’s 330acre campus grows every year. The university has a new tower, a West End Transformation Project, and new offices, dorms and parking lots. The school also owns a number of buildings that host local businesses. And according to Metro Nashville Planning Department data, the university has acquired 58 properties since 2002.

Despite its expansion, Vanderbilt faces many of the same issues as the rest of the city: housing availability, transportation and increased cost of living for its students. The school has also approached these issues in significant ways.

Through the 20th century, Vanderbilt had an often tense relationship with its neighbors. In 1965, the university bought 501 parcels of real estate through eminent domain.

The university razed more houses in “urban renewal” areas between the 1960s and 1990s despite vocal opposition from advocates like Fannie Mae Dees, who protested with “large hand-painted signs on her porch and a coffin in her yard,” according to J. Hunter Moore’s account in the historic guidebook I’ll Take You There. Overall, urban renewal disproportionately impacted non-white residents. Moore points out that “while many Black neighborhoods were completely bulldozed during the urban renewal years, the fact that [Hillsboro-West End] was a predominantly white neighborhood likely helped to curtail demolition efforts.”

These days, Vanderbilt’s approach to community engagement has evolved. Scott Troxel, president of neighborhood group Belmont-Hillsboro Neighbors, remembers a “bruised” relationship between the university and its neighbors when he moved to the area in the 1980s. But he says Vanderbilt worked to gain back community trust.

“They’ve done a good job about being proactive, and coming to the neighborhood about things that they were doing, or wanted to do,” says Troxel. “Trying to repair that

relationship so that we would see them as partners.”

A representative from Vanderbilt University responded to the Scene’s community impact questions by pointing to a number of initiatives, including the school’s investment in Centennial Park conservancy, green infrastructure projects like Vandy’s partnership with a solar farm in Bell Buckle, Tenn., and their new graduate housing The Broadview. University reps say The Broadview “will include a Turnip Truck and 8th and Roast, both local businesses that will add much needed amenities for the entirety of Midtown” and will “enable 616 graduate and professional students to live adjacent to campus, thereby reducing or eliminating their commutes, reducing traffic on roads and alleviating pressure on Nashville housing stock.” Last year, NewsChannel 5 reported that graduate students have raised questions about The Broadview’s affordability; the university responded that its apartments are below market rates.

While initiatives designed to ease housing and traffic pressure can cause positive change, they can’t always keep up with growth. “During council’s recent debate over eliminating parking minimums — which Vanderbilt supported as an institution, and whose support I appreciated — the impact of Vanderbilt and VUMC’s professors, students and staff parking throughout the surrounding neighborhoods came up time and again,” says District 17 Metro Councilmember Colby Sledge.

“I’m sure Vanderbilt intuitively understands that everything they do has a ripple effect around their physical footprint,” Sledge continues. “But I don’t feel like I’ve had an open dialogue with them for several years regarding both the size of those impacts and the ways we can work toward better solutions.”

At-Large Councilmember Burkley Allen echoes the parking concerns while noting that Vanderbilt has “been on the forefront of pushing multimodal transportation, encouraging their employees to ride the bus, and making their campus more pedestrian and bike friendly.” Allen says that while Vanderbilt has been “supportive of residential parking,” some employees are “unwilling to pay the relatively high cost of [university] parking when there’s free parking in the neighborhood, in their eyes.”

Sledge says inefficient land use is an issue — especially, for instance, when it comes to the parking lot adjacent to Vanderbilt’s printing facility in Wedgewood-Houston.

“They pile broken office equipment and furniture onto surface parking lots that are surrounded by new private housing devel-

opments,” says Sledge. “They’re sitting on extremely valuable land for our city’s housing needs — and that impacts Vanderbilt’s own staff, who are increasingly being priced out of the areas closest to their jobs. I’d much rather see Vanderbilt and [Vanderbilt University Medical Center] staff live in housing on that parking lot, instead of using it as a park-and-ride they commute to, because they can’t afford to live closer to their Vanderbilt and VUMC jobs.”

Increased housing prices have made it difficult for staff and graduate students to live close to campus. “The area is highly sought-after because it’s a great location, and that tends to limit to a certain socioeconomic strata,” says Allen. “Stratosphere, I should say. Which is definitely detrimental to diversity.”

Troxel also notes the decreasing diversity in the area. “When I first moved into Belmont-Hillsboro, it was one of the most racially diverse neighborhoods in the country,” he says. “Belmont-Hillsboro Neighbors prided themselves on really working towards keeping that diversity.”

Troxel says “economic and redevelopment forces” beyond just Vanderbilt have reduced diversity, which has impacted the neighborhood association’s role. “There’s a concern that we shift from being progressive to being NIMBY,” he says. “So much money has been invested into BelmontHillsboro by individuals on their own properties. The easiest path is for people to say, ‘We’ve got to protect what we’ve invested.’ Even if that means leaving the progressive ideas and values that existed in the past.”

Sledge believes that as a large property stakeholder, Vanderbilt should pay property taxes or have a PILOT agreement with the Metro government similar to the Music City Center’s.

“We heavily rely on property taxes for our annual operating budget, so when that land does not produce any revenue for the city, we as Nashville residents pay for it,” says Sledge. “Through a lack of transit improvements, less affordable housing and fewer parks and public spaces for all of us to enjoy.”

Either way, the university expansion seems inevitable. Allen has seen the boundary between Vanderbilt and the surrounding neighborhoods move every year.

“It was nice when there was a bright-red line down 31st/Blakemore and we sort of went, ‘They stopped there, and we know they’re not coming,’ ” she says. “Now there’s no obvious stopping point. So I think that makes it all the more important to keep the cards on the table as much as we can.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

ELECTRIC AVENUE

BY COLE VILLENA

The state of Tennessee has attracted more than $10 billion in investment to produce electric vehicles and EV components in the past two years alone.

In April 2021, General Motors and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution announced $2.3 billion to create a new electric vehicle battery near the former’s existing plant in Spring Hill. In September of that year, Ford unveiled Blue Oval City, which will produce electric F-150 pickup trucks and electric vehicle batteries at a sprawling “megasite” campus outside Memphis. And last month, LG Chem, an affiliate of LG Energy Solution, announced a $3.2 billion investment for a cathode manufacturing plant that will support electric vehicle battery production in Clarksville. A little more than a week later, LG Energy Solution announced an additional $275 million toward its Spring Hill facility.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee has called these investments “record-breaking” job creators and said they will position Tennessee at the forefront of electric vehicle manufacturing. That industry is expected to grow further after President Joe Biden in September set a goal for 50 percent of all vehicles made in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. Even so, there’s still a long road ahead for widespread EV adoption in Tennessee. They account for fewer than 1 percent of all registered vehicles on the road in Tennessee, according to vehicle registration data from the state.

Amid that backdrop, Tennessee

Department of Transportation commissioner Butch Eley proposed a tax change that would make it slightly more expensive to own an EV.

Since non-hybrid EVs don’t fill up at the pump, drivers are essentially exempt from paying Tennessee’s gas tax, which often supports road infrastructure projects. To make up for that lost revenue, they pay a flat $100 annual EV registration fee. In November, Eley asked legislators to raise the annual EV registration fee from $100 to $300.

“Adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) will decrease the need for gas, while at the same time the need for revenue will be increasing,” TDOT spokesperson Beth Emmons tells the Scene via email. “This creates a challenge for our ability to build. Commissioner Eley has said those that use the roads should pay for them. Everyone should pay their share.”

The department arrived at the $300 number using the average mileage driven by a Tennessean driver annually (reported at 15,287 miles by the Federal Highway Administration) and the “arithmetic average of miles per gallon using model years 2000 through 2021” for cars, which they calculated at 22.4 miles per gallon for the “average” car. Using that math, they found that the average Tennessean pays $311 in federal and state gas taxes annually.

Ainsley Kelso, a spokesperson for Knoxville-based nonprofit Drive Electric TN, says cost is already a major factor discouraging EV adoption in Tennessee.

A Tennessee-built 2023 Nissan LEAF S has a suggested retail price of $20,540

after federal EV rebates, making it a relatively inexpensive electric vehicle. A gas-powered 2023 Nissan Versa S, however, costs just $15,580. Kelso notes that there are also far fewer used EVs on the market.

“If Tennessean hands are building these batteries, building these vehicles, they should have access to the technology,” Kelso says. “Are we making it accessible to people in Tennessee, or are we creating a barrier for Tennesseans to be able to purchase and drive these vehicles themselves?”

Drive Electric TN published its own data using a four-car sample of common gas-powered vehicles and determined that the average driver might pay as little as $113 in gas taxes annually. Kelso says the organization was grateful to see TDOT address the need for fee adjustments proactively, but had concerns about equity issues raised by the proposed changes.

“If you look at the average household income in the state, buying a brand-new electric vehicle is not in most Tennesseans’ budget,” Kelso says. “We want people to be interested in it, and we love the idea of it, but there are issues within the industry, and there are things that have to happen to make them more accessible.”

Metro Councilmember Freddie O’Connell, who has driven an electric vehicle since 2012, says raising the EV fee was a “weird” step in the wrong direction.

“It basically says, ‘We don’t want people driving electric vehicles,’ ” O’Connell says. “I think we ought to be moving the gas tax in the other direction, because that further incentivizes moving in the direction you want to move on the emissions basis.”

O’Connell, who announced his campaign for the Nashville mayor’s office in the spring, says governments should take steps to encourage electric vehicles within their borders.

“Here in Nashville, we have a green parking permit program that lets you have access to downtown parking spots if you have an electric vehicle for the reasonable price of $10 a year,” O’Connell says. “That’s because we’d love to see more people preferring to be in low-emission vehicles.”

TDOT spokesperson Emmons says Tennessee has a plan to increase the number of EV charging stations on the road, another major hurdle to adoption. The state received $88 million in federal funds toward a public-private partnership with EV charging vendors to create a network of charging stations every 50 miles along Tennessee’s interstates by the end of 2023.

“We have to make charging more accessible in public in general and make it more visible,” Kelso says. “Until people can see it with their own eyes out in public, they’re not going to believe it’s there.”

Will all these electric vehicle production facilities actually lead to more Tennesseans driving the cars? Kelso said she isn’t sure, but EV advocates are optimistic.

“If their mom or their brother or their cousin works on these vehicles, and they get to know them a little bit better, that actually might convince them that the vehicles are good vehicles and that they are safe vehicles,” Kelso says. “I think it’s going to have some effect on it. Because how could it not?”

The Titans fired general manager Jon Robinson after Dec. 4’s loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, a rare midseason shakeup in the front office. Before the season started, Robinson traded away AJ Brown, now the Eagles’ star receiver and one of the top offensive playmakers in the league. The Titans took another loss on Sunday to the Jacksonville Jaguars. … The Metro Council heard public comment on the city’s adoption of automatic license plate readers from dozens of Nashvillians at the Dec. 6 meeting, including Metro Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake, District Attorney Glenn Funk and Jill

the Community Oversight Board. Councilmembers voted 22-13 to move forward with a six-month LPR pilot despite major concerns about privacy and unresolved questions about whether license plate data would be accessible to state or federal agencies.

U.S. Reps. Mark Green and John Rose — who, following gerrymandering, now represent Nashville in the House of Representatives — voted against the Respect for Marriage Act. The legislation includes federal protections for same-sex marriage and passed the House overwhelmingly. Republican Andy Ogles of Maury County will join Rose and Green as Nashville’s third U.S. rep when he is sworn in this January.

Emily House, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, is stepping down this month after almost two years in the role. The resignation came as a surprise to education insiders and resulted in a specially called THEC meeting to discuss House’s successor. … Contributor Betsy Phillips reports on how Black cemeteries are often willfully overlooked when rural land gets developed — a near-complete erasure of families and their history.

“We may not know the names of the individuals in this cemetery, but we know who they were,” writes Phillips. “People, and their descendants, who had their lives stolen from them by slavery, and now they’ve got their deaths stolen by development.”

NASHVILLESCENE.COM/PITHINTHEWIND

Tennessee is a leading electric vehicle producer. But is it getting any easier to own EVs?

Fitcheard of

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND EV CHARGING STATIONS OUTSIDE NISSAN STADIUM

PHOTO: CAMERON FAULKNER/TENNESSEE TITANS

JON ROBINSON

NEIGHBORS ENTER EIGHTH YEAR OF SECOND AVENUE PROPERTY

DISPUTE

passing and $150,000 in damages. His contractors had damaged the chain-link fence between the parcels and tried to put a wrought-iron replacement in its place. Lee replaced that with his own fenceline, which, Dukes alleged, crossed the property line and inhibited construction.

Paul Housch represented the Lees and got them a settlement that, according to Housch, would have avoided a litigation nightmare — if they’d accepted it. “I had them a great settlement and they refused to take it,” he tells the Scene by phone. Bennie and Arnita thought the deal wasn’t fair and decided to represent themselves at trial.

Problems

started when the Lees’ new neighbor took down a chain-link fence

BY ELI MOTYCKA

Bennie and Arnita Lee have a new yard sign coming up — their third in the past year. They want to keep drivers on Second Avenue South updated about an eight-year propertyline dispute involving their single-family lot (1059 Second Ave. S.) and that of their neighbor, Glen Dukes (1061 Second Ave. S.).

A two-foot discrepancy has cost the Lees and Dukes hours of hearings, court dates and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. The Lees are among the last remaining Black families on the block, at the center of one of the city’s historically African American neighborhoods that was redlined and segregated in the 1950s. The Robert Lillard House, recently named to the Nashville Nine list of endangered historic buildings, is across the street at 1026.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bennie Lee tells the Scene. “I want to have something to leave behind for my family, my kids.” Arnita and Bennie bought the house 20 years ago. Now both in their late 70s, Bennie and Arnita live there with their 11-year-old great-grandson.

A chain-link fence used to be the boundary between the two properties. Lee and his former neighbor quibbled a little but respected the line. Dukes bought the property in 2014 for $30,000 from Jackie Cox, an elderly across-the-street neighbor who passed away a few months ago. Before she died, Cox confided in Arnita that she’d “given it away.” Today, the lot itself is worth at least 10 times that. Dukes cleared the site, demolishing a small yellow house where a longtime tenant lived, and started moving plans for a new build. He needed a zoning variance and got a survey to clarify his boundaries — 30 feet of road frontage for Dukes, 43 feet for the Lees.

“We have always had 45 feet,” Arnita tells the Scene; she often picks up Bennie’s advocacy when he needs to rest or has trouble with his hearing aids. “We bought 45 feet, and we paid taxes on 45 feet. At some point, that changed.” She produces a printed screenshot where it appears the Lees’ property details changed in early 2016, shifting their acreage from 0.15 to 0.13 per a mapping correction. The Scene asked multiple sources, including a former zoning administrator, about editing parcel boundaries and could not determine the origin of this correction.

Dukes sued the Lees in 2016 for tres-

Since Dukes first sued, they’ve spent more than $80,000 on five different lawyers. In 2019, Dukes won at trial and won again on appeal, saddling the Lees with more attorney fees and damages.

Bennie’s wordy homemade billboard that went up in 2021 attempted to consolidate the entire saga into a few sentences. It disappeared sometime this year. Arnita says the neighbor, Dukes’ renter and business partner, admitted to stealing it. A successor is up now and gets straight to the point: “FRAUD,” in big red letters, followed by, “HELL NO WE WON’T GO/STANDING MY GROUND.” The fraud refers to the Lees’ property line changing. Arnita hopes the message gets through to hopeful buyers who contact her nearly every day asking if they’re selling. She also thinks both pronouns should be plural, but didn’t get the edit to Bennie in time.

“Everyday someone asks me if we want to sell,” says Arnita, arms crossed on the sidewalk. “I tell them, there’s a sign in the yard. And it’s not a ‘for sale’ sign.”

The third sign targets Anne Martin, who sits on Tennessee’s Chancery Court. Martin is enforcing the court ruling against the Lees that sticks them with $22,000 in damages. The new sign ends with a frustrated, “EXPLAIN!!!”

Dukes doesn’t have a publicly listed phone number or contact information — just evidence of a law license, a picture in the 1985 Montgomery Bell Academy yearbook and a $3,833 PPP loan from March 2021 via Cumberland Advisory Group, the entity that officially bought the property of which Dukes is the sole proprietor. Its business address is a shuttered one-story office on Eighth Avenue.

The Lees’ other neighbors sold their single-story white house in November. The property had been in the Green family for more than 70 years. That purchase consolidated a four-parcel holding for “1055 Second Ave Partners, LLC,” registered to 429 Chestnut St., Suite 200 — the Wedgewood-Houston offices of real estate power player AJ Capital. The other three parcels on the block sold in March for $915,000 — a $515,000 profit for transplant restaurateur Steve Kovach, who bought all three over an 18-month stretch in 2017 and 2018. A loopy purchaser’s signature on the deed looks a lot like “Eliot Silverman,” AJ Capital’s Nashville-based vice president of acquisitions. The Lees feel stuck in a game of monopoly. Zoning, capital and legal expertise determine winners and losers.

“We’re broke now, and ain’t nothing changed,” says Arnita. “We haven’t bothered anybody. He just wants our land.” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

SIERRA FERRELL PHOTOGRAPHED BY DANIEL MEIGS AT EASTSIDE BOWL

Prismatic Perspectives

BY BRITTNEY M c KENNA

While her breakout debut album Long Time Coming was released in 2021, the year 2022 has been a big one for Music City singersongwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sierra Ferrell. She toured relentlessly in support of the LP, including stops at FreshGrass, Bonnaroo and the Newport Folk Festival. In September, Ferrell took home the coveted Emerging Artist of the Year trophy at the Americana Music Association’s Honors and Awards — a win that celebrates her one-of-a-kind fusion of bluegrass, old-time, traditional country, jazz, blues and more. She was also tapped to cover Dolly Parton’s beloved classic “Coat of Many Colors” as part of Parton’s much-lauded induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

And she’s not stopping anytime soon: Coming up, Ferrell will host her New Year’s Eve Circus Spectacular, a special event at Brooklyn Bowl slated to feature her music, a set from brooding North Carolina folkies Resonant Rogues, circus-themed activities and lots of audience interaction. On a November afternoon, Ferrell took a break from writing a song with Melody Walker to chat with the Scene about staying healthy while touring, writing on the road and how it felt to take home that Americana trophy.

We’re looking back on 2022 with this issue, and you had quite a year yourself. What moments from this year feel especially meaningful to you? It’s been really amazing, and a wonderful journey — to get to dial in, to get used to touring a lot with my full band. I’ve gotten to teeter between being a leader but also being a friend and understanding. And I feel like I’ve grown a lot by getting to tour with other musicians, some of whom I’ve always looked up to, and by playing festivals with a lot of bands and musicians. I think that’s really wonderful, that I get to be a part of it with them as well. Tell me more about your time on the road. How did touring so intensely live up to or challenge your expectations? I feel like I have dialed in more to my limitations — like what I can do and what I can’t. So that was kind of nice, to get used to what my limits are and learning where to set boundaries and when to say no. You know, we’re just humans. We’re just people. We can’t work too much or we’ll do a lot of damage. This has been a really big growing phase for me, and next year is going to be a lot better. The tour is going to be more spaced out. And I think we’re going to be a lot more comfortable as a band because we’re going to be on a bus, so that’s going to be nice. Sounds like a great upgrade. It’s been good to see more conversations about the relationship between touring and artists’ physical and mental health in recent years. It seems like COVID, in part, shifted some perspectives on how much time on the road is too much. I have a wonderful team that’s helped me. All the stuff that I have, I’ve had to work to get. A lot of artists are like that,

you know — they come from nothing. And then, therefore, they have to be a workhorse and work really hard to get the money to just keep progressing their career. It’s kind of scary, because there’s a fine line of, like, “Well, I still need to create music, and I still need to create stuff that people can connect with.” And that’s another beautiful thing about music, is that music could be anything to anyone. Someone can listen to a song and think that it means this or that, and someone thinks that it’s another way. And that is the beauty of music. And I definitely think that, touring this hard, I’m gonna get some good songs out of it.

Some artists struggle to find the time or energy to write on the road. Do you write much on the road, or have a practice you keep at home? It’s a little bit of all those things as I go. Melody Walker, for instance, she came over here today and she’s like, “Hey, let’s write a song.” And I’m like, “OK.” We just wrapped it up and we think it’s kind of nice. And I’ve already been thinking about a video for it and stuff. But this is also the period where I am processing stuff, because I’m home now. On the road, it can be a little too much. There’s a lot you have to do to keep a routine, or you start to slowly lose your mind. But I definitely get inspiration from touring and lots of other ways. Shifting gears, I was really excited to hear you won Emerging Artist of Year at this year’s Americana Awards. What did it mean to you to be embraced by the community in that way? I feel like it’s all worth it regardless, but that definitely was like a nice hug. It felt nice to be seen for something with music. We’re all on our own musical journeys and all have our own style and ways, and it’s good to just be a part of it and have people see it.

You recently contributed a cover of Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” as part of her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. How did it feel to be part of such a monumental moment? Gary Paczosa messaged me about it. I thought it was just amazing that I get to be involved with anything Dolly. As we all know, she is a freaking national treasure.

Long Time Coming was one of my favorite records from last year. Now that you’ve spent so much time touring the music and listeners have had a chance to dig in and digest it, has your perspective on the album changed? I’ve been touring Long Time

Coming for a minute so I’ve been calling it “Long Time Going” recently, just for fun. [Laughs] I have some songs on the back burner that I’ve been working on that I’m excited to reveal and let people see and hear. And I’m always looking for the next thing for me, because I gotta keep myself occupied and entertained. I have to keep it exciting, so that I can portray the excitement in the music and in the songs to people — so then they can believe it.

What are some things that you’re able to do that help you keep that excitement going, or help you tap back into it if you’re feeling disconnected? Recently, I’ve been really leaning on the fiddle a lot more. And I’ve been learning a lot of oldtime fiddle songs, old country songs. A lot of the old country songs have such a lonesome feeling, and it’s easy for me to tap into that. But I also feel like we create our own lives and realities, in a lot of ways. So if you’re surrounded by sad news, I feel like you’re more prone to being sad. So I’ve been trying to be more uplifting about songs and to keep it more light. Because if you put out a song and people like it, you better get used to being OK with touring that song a million times.

You’re stuck with it. You’re stuck with it! So, you’ve got to make sure that your aim is true and that you like playing it.

To your point about woodshedding some old-time and traditional country songs, your music is wonderfully difficult to describe in terms of genre, as a lot of great music is. Do you have a sense of how so many varying musical traditions made their way into what you make? I feel like a lot of my music taste just comes from life experiences, and from when I used to be a pretty transient person. And I’m not “older,” by any means, but in my younger days I was pretty transient and I was going to lots of different places. I would hear a lot of street performers and their music. I feel like as human beings, we have certain styles and certain ways of songs that just stick with us and gravitate towards us. Like, we might be able to connect, maybe, to past lives or DNA memory and whatnot [through music]. That’s another beautiful thing about music, is everyone has such different taste. And it keeps it exciting.

You’re rereleasing the record on vinyl in the new year, and selling it only at independent record shops. This week, Nashville is losing Exit/In as we’ve known

it — another independent supporter of the music community. What role do spaces like indie record stores and venues play in what you do? I think it’s super important to be supporting those small businesses and small, independent anything, because, as in 2020, a lot of people just can’t keep up with the finances. Nashville’s real estate is going out of control. Now more than ever, we need people to band together and stand up to the big corporate monsters. With vinyl in particular — in general, it’s been a struggle for any artists starting out, especially because I feel like the [corporate] industry is producing massive amounts of vinyl. Smaller artists who are just starting out are having a hard time, and that’s where most independent artists really get their money, from vinyl. The fact that, I don’t know, Adele and Taylor Swift are, like, trillionaires — they don’t really need to lean on vinyl. Someone like me, that’s where a lot of my money comes from. I’ve been struggling to even keep it in inventory.

It’s been frustrating to watch what started as a vinyl resurgence driven by independent musicians get co-opted by the corporate machine. Like right now, you can go out and buy the new Taylor Swift vinyl in a bunch of different colors — which is cool for fans, of course — but takes up so much bandwidth at pressing plants. I feel like the industry just needs to get their own vinyl presses, you know? Build your own presses for vinyl. I’m not saying that nobody deserves an Adele or Taylor Swift record, because a great way to listen to music is on vinyl. But it’s like, come on, four different colors? I can only do one at a time right now. I’m lucky to get my vinyl six months later.

You have what sounds like one hell of a New Year’s Eve party planned. What can you share about what you have in store for the night? I’m so excited for New Year’s. My record is going to be there and my songs are going to be there, but there’s going to be so much more. I don’t want to give away too much, but there’s gonna be some freak-show stuff going on. We’re gonna get the audience involved, and I’m really excited. I’m just honestly excited to do something else, like have a different show to present besides just music. Especially on New Year’s, there’s so much, “Hey, let’s go listen to music.” But this is, “Hey, let’s go listen to music and see this crazy circus.” ■

Catching up with Sierra Ferrell about extensive touring, establishing yourself as a new artist and much more

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The Year in Country

BY BRITTNEY M c KENNA

Maybe it’s the relative bounceback from COVID, but 2022 felt like several years crammed into one. That especially holds true in the world of country music, whose many milestones and losses, record-breaking releases and groundbreaking artists, public feuds and difficult dialogues reach far beyond the 800odd words of this recap.

It was a banner year for flagship country artists, as a murderers’ row of the genre’s best released new records. In March, Maren Morris dropped her Humble Quest, a return to her country roots following 2019’s pop-inflected Girl, and her best release yet. Miranda Lambert followed 2021’s collaborative The Marfa Tapes with Palomino, a playful and assured collection of road songs boasting some of her finest songwriting. Luke Combs further cemented his superstar status with his third album, Growin’ Up. And Kane Brown made an album, Different Man, that shows the full breadth of his artistic abilities.

One of 2022’s biggest success stories is Zach Bryan, a former member of the U.S. Navy who quickly found viral musical success in the late 2010s while still on active duty. In 2021, the Navy honorably discharged Bryan so he could pursue his musical talents, which landed him a deal with Warner Records. This year’s American Heartbreak, an ambitious triple album with

influences including Jason Isbell and Bon Iver, broke streaming records upon its debut and has two platinum singles in “Heading South” and “Something in the Orange.”

Elsewhere, other up-and-comers got well-deserved attention. Outstanding family group Chapel Hart wowed audiences on America’s Got Talent, making it to the final round and placing fifth overall. In September, the group mad e its Grand Ole Opry debut. Lainey Wilson, whose sound lands somewhere between Miranda Lambert and Stevie Nicks, had a massive year as well, releasing her second major label studio album Bell Bottom Country to great critical and commercial success. Madeline Edwards — whose take on country incorporates soul, rock and jazz — wowed with her debut album Crashlanded, which thematically addresses feeling like an outsider and is one of the year’s best albums, country or otherwise.

Though diverse acts are starting to find their places in country music — shout-out to organizations like Black Opry, which has hosted heaps of showcases all around the country this year — there are still plenty of artists and gatekeepers trying their damnedest to keep those places small. The year began with a surprise Grand Ole Opry appearance from Morgan Wallen, despite his half-assed attempt at redemption following using the N-word a year earlier. This year’s CMA Awards (where Wallen was no longer barred from being nominated, but didn’t take home a trophy) featured one nonwhite nominee, Breland, as a featured guest on Dierks Bentley’s track “Beers on Me,” up for Musical Event of the Year.

Jason Aldean’s wife Brittany, an influencer and hair extension hawker, made blatantly transphobic comments on Instagram, with Cassadee Pope and Maren Morris coming to the defense of the LGBTQ community and subsequently drawing

SEPT.

SEPT. 30

Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock opens at Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

OCT. 4

Loretta Lynn dies

OCT. 10 Anita Kerr dies

OCT. 14

Jason Isbell’s eight-night Ryman residency begins

OCT. 21

Robyn Hitchcock releases Shufflemania!

OCT. 26

Hayley Williams and Brian O’Connor’s Fruits Hair Lab opens

NOV. 4

Six One Trïbe releases Trïbe Over Everything

NOV. 15

Ticketmaster puts millions of Taylor Swift fans through hell with botched on-sale

NOV. 18

Caitlin Rose releases Cazimi NOV. 19-23

DEC. 6

Diarrhea Planet, JEFF the Brotherhood, Lilly Hiatt headline final shows at Exit/In under longtime management

Peter Cooper dies

Tracking 12 months of triumphs, shameful behavior and profound losses

BRELAND ZACH BRYAN

Supported in part by

Organized by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Judy and Joe Barker

Hospitality Sponsor Platinum Sponsor Spanish Translation Sponsor

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criticism from right-wingers. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, whose copywriters could stand to buy a thesaurus, dubbed Morris a “lunatic country music person.” Morris flipped the script and sold T-shirts bearing the awkwardly phrased moniker, raising more than $100,000 for trans causes.

Unfortunately, 2022 was also marked by significant losses in the country community. Willie Nelson’s sister and longtime pianist Bobbie Nelson died at 91 in early March. Luke Bell, a favorite of Nashvillians long after he’d moved away, passed in late August, at the heartbreaking age of 32. Alabama’s Jeff Cook died following complications from Parkinson’s disease in November.

And while there is no hierarchy to loss, country music did bid tearful farewells to three legends in 2022: Naomi Judd, Loretta Lynn and Patrick Haggerty. Judd’s death was especially surprising, as the 76-year-old icon took her own life the day before her beloved duo with daughter Wynonna was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Tributes to Judd poured in, including an amended conclusion to local journalist Hunter Kelly’s excellent Apple Music Radio series Neon Songbook Radio, which outlines the duo’s history and impact. Lynn’s passing at age 90 in October followed years of health complications, with her legacy including the groundbreaking songs “Fist City” and “The Pill.” Haggerty is no doubt the lesser known of the trio, but his 1973 self-titled album as Lavender Country, considered by many to be the first queer country album, has seen long-awaited and well-deserved acclaim in recent years. His second and final release, Blackberry Rose, came in February.

And if you’ll indulge my dipping into the first-person, I first heard news of Peter Cooper’s passing while writing this recap’s first draft. Though he was far more than a journalist — check out his songwriting — Cooper’s writing on country music inspired legions of music writers in Nashville and beyond. I first encountered his work after moving to Nashville in 2007 and proudly count myself among those for whom Cooper was a model of a heightened kind of excellence, one that transcended technical skill to incorporate passion, kindness and inclusivity.

Following Cooper’s death, one of his quotes featured in Dave Paulson’s Tennessean obituary made the rounds on social media: “You need a good bullshit detector, you shouldn’t rant, and you shouldn’t cheerlead. But objectivity is dispassionate. And we’re in the passion business. We’re trying to make people feel something different than what they felt before they read our words.”

It’s fantastic advice for a journalist, but it’s just as useful for those — artists, executives, gatekeepers, critics, fans — for whom country is not just music but a community. As we navigate what is looking to be another contentious year, let’s let our passion guide us and keep our bullshit detectors primed and ready. The community will be better for it. ■

Rock Around the Calendar!

A year to remember in local rock featured releases from Jack White, The Black Keys, Soccer Mommy, Ariel Bui and many, many more

BY DARYL SANDERS

It’s been a banner year for rock records from Nashville. Is it the greatest year for rock in the city’s history? Maybe, depending on how you define “greatest.”

It may not boast the explosive impact of 1956, when Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Johnny Carroll and The Rock ’n’ Roll Trio cut seminal sides in the city, or the commercial success of 1960, when half of Billboard’s year-end Top 10 singles were rock recordings from Nashville. It may not have the cultural impact of 1966, when Bob Dylan came to Nashville and forever altered the face of rock music. Or the dramatic local ramifications of 1985, when Jason and the Scorchers released their major label debut Lost and Found. But in terms of both quality and quantity, 2022 has been unprecedented.

The year began with a historically important reissue in January featuring Charlie McCoy & The Escorts, Screamin’, Shoutin’, Beggin’, Pleadin’ — The Rock ‘n’ Soul Recordings 1961-69. The collection’s 29 tracks featuring Nashville’s hottest ’60s rock band, more than half of which are previously unreleased on CD, are essential listening for anyone interested in Nashville rock history.

In February, Dashboard Confessional, whose leader Chris Carraba has lived in the Nashville area since 2014, released its ninth studio album and first in four years, All The Truth That I Can Tell. Emo legend Carraba reunited with producer James Paul Weiser for the quasi-concept album about hitting middle age.

Things heated up in April with a trio of releases from some rock veterans. Jack White released his first solo album in four years, Fear of the Dawn, a funky, bombastic, blues-rock-derived collection that went to No. 1 on both Billboard’s Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums charts and reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200. In addition, De Piratas, fronted by Jonathan Bright and featuring former Scorchers Warner Hodges and Jeff Johnson, dropped its debut F.U., a potent and catchy blend of hard rock and power pop. Also, Government Cheese released Love, an infectious collection of pop rock that may well be their best album in more than three decades of making records.

Two noteworthy albums were released on May 13. After a detour into the Delta blues on their previous album, The Black Keys returned with Dropout Boogie, an irresistible, distortion-drenched set that reached No. 8 on the Billboard 200 and No. 2 on the Top Rock and Top Alternative album charts. That same day, supergroup The Chefs — Dan Baird (Georgia Satellites), Stan Lynch (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) and Joe Blanton (Royal Court of China) — released

their second album Sing For Your Supper, featuring a dozen tracks of high-grade retro rock that wouldn’t sound out of place in the early ’70s.

June featured three more notable albums. Soccer Mommy released Sometimes, Forever, the impressive psychedelicinfluenced follow-up to their 2020 breakout Color Theory. Sonic trailblazer Adrian Belew dropped his 25th solo album, Elevator, a mind-boggling record straddling the familiar and the unknown on which he wrote, arranged, played and sang every note. Also in June, Total Wife (Luca Kupper and Ash Richter) released A Blip, an artful, wall-of-sound collision of melody, noise and rhythms.

There were two rock releases worth noting in July. Jack White dropped his second album of the year, Entering Heaven Alive — a more mellow offering than his earlier release, but equally impressive. Like its predecessor, the album was No. 1 on the Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums charts and reached No. 9 on the Billboard 200. Also, indie rockers Twen released their second album, One Stop Shop, and on it, vocalist Jane Fitzsimmons and multi-instrumentalist Ian Jones serve up 10 tracks of intelligent, funky, eclectic pop rock.

August featured three albums of note. Marcus King released his best album to date, the incendiary Young Blood, which was produced by Dan Auerbach at his Easy Eye Sound Studios. With her punk-influenced band Queens of Noise “on pause,” RobinAugust released a stunning solo debut, Avocado Head. A concept album about a breakup, musically it goes well beyond her work with the Queens and should put her on the radar of major label A&R execs. Also, an important retrospective finally went into wide circulation in August: Tommy Womack’s 30 Years Shot to Hell: An Anthology — 42 tracks that are a testament not only to his staying power but his brilliance as a

songwriter and recording artist.

There were two significant releases in September by a pair of Nashville rock veterans. Warner Hodges released Boots Up: The Best of the Warner E. Hodges Band So Far, a two-disc collection that includes a dozen hard-rocking selections from his four solo albums, plus six unreleased tracks featuring his hot U.K.-based band. Also, Southern rock legend Jimmy Hall returned with Ready Now, his first album in more than a decade. Produced by Joe Bonamassa, the record reminds us that Hall is still one of rock’s most soulful vocalists and harmonica players.

We close out our tour of 2022 rock releases with a trio of impressive records from October. Indie-rock quartet Crave

On released their fifth album Slow Pulsing Rainbow, which features stripped-down, slightly off-kilter and extremely satisfying folkish rock. In addition, Ariel Bui dropped Real & Fantasy, a garage-rock tour de force produced by Andrija Tokic and powered by Bui’s insightful, melodic songwriting. Also, Robyn Hitchcock returned with his first record in five years, the brilliant Shufflemania! — a truly magical album, one of the best of his stellar career. ■

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ALBUMS CRITICS’ POLL

From Namir Blade and Six One Trïbe to Amanda Shires and Twen, here are our favorite local LPs of the year

BY LANCE CONZETT, AMANDA HAGGARD, P.J. KINZER, BRITTNEY M c KENNA, D. PATRICK RODGERS, DARYL SANDERS, KAHWIT TELA, STEPHEN TRAGESER AND CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

Using a highly scientific formula (read: spreadsheet) concocted back in 2010, the Scene has once again tabulated ballots from our ace music writers to compile our list of the 10 best local albums of the year. With another fine crop of releases, many excellent albums landed just outside the Top 10, including Rich Ruth’s I Survived, It’s Over, Total Wife’s A Blip, Peachy’s Everything Is Fine, Jessie Baylin’s Jersey Girl, Ariel Bui’s Real & Fantasy and Waxed’s Give Up. Without further ado, the Top 10:

10.

TSU ARISTOCRAT OF BANDS, THE URBAN HYMNAL (SELF-RELEASED)

Since its inception in 1946, Tennessee State University’s Aristocrat of Bands has blessed Tennessee and the world with its musical talents. In 1955, the ensemble was the first HBCU marching band to perform on national TV, and in 1961, it was the first to perform at a presidential inauguration. The excellence has never diminished, but this year the group took on a new challenge with its first studio album, The Urban Hymnal. The LP masterfully blends traditional gospel music, soulful R&B and the sheer excitement of a world-class marching band, captured in astonishing fidelity. Features on the record range from acclaimed gospel musicians such as Sir the Baptist (who produced) and Jekalyn Carr to TSU staff and faculty such as President Glenda Glover and band director Reginald McDonald. The tremendous effort has also landed the group another historic first among HBCU marching bands — a Grammy nomination, in the Best Roots Gospel Album category.

KAHWIT TELA

9.

SOCCER MOMMY, SOMETIMES, FOREVER (LOMA VISTA)

Each song on Soccer Mommy’s Sometimes, Forever sounds a bit like an incantation: Singer-songwriter Sophie Allison pulls at threads of darkness, but somehow seems to conjure glimmers of hope in tough moments. Produced by Daniel Lopatin, the

album sounds spacey and experimental, a mix of semi-dissonant grunge tunes and perfectly sad pop songs. A favorite track on the album, “Still,” looks at the feelings around wanting to end your own life. Allison sings: “I need someone who can relate / ’Cause I lost myself to a dream I had / And I’d never give it all away / But I miss feelin’ like a person.” There’s still a small bit of desire to remain here. It may seem odd to find hope in the melancholy, but this kind of album is the kind of company I love when I’m feeling miserable. AMANDA HAGGARD

8.

ERIN RAE, LIGHTEN UP (GOOD MEMORY/THIRTY TIGERS)

Folk singer and songwriter Erin Rae has long been an active figure in Nashville’s music scene, collaborating with loads of other top-shelf performers and issuing a number of strong releases, including 2018’s excellent Putting on Airs. But with this year’s Lighten Up — recorded at producer Jonathan Wilson’s studio in Topanga Canyon — Rae truly gets to showcase her range. From the boogying “True Love’s Face” to the standout Kevin Morby collab “Can’t See Stars” and the gentle, string-adorned “Cosmic Sigh,” it’s a diverse but cohesive lineup of tunes from an artist who continues to grow. Rae has a gorgeous, confident voice, and it shines on Lighten Up more than ever before. D. PATRICK RODGERS

7.

SIX ONE TRÏBE, TRÏBE OVER EVERYTHING (SIX ONE TRÏBE PRODUCTIONS)

On Trïbe Over Everything, the longgestating debut LP by sprawling hip-hop collective Six One Trïbe, more than 20 rappers and singers make their mark on a record that’s defined by its diversity. Not just diversity in the voices you hear — which are plentiful — but in the sounds, which weave through modern trap (“Wholotta”), early Aughts Chicago (“Live in the Moment”), Hypnotize Minds-inspired cuts (“Is You Shittin’ Me??”) and beyond. The magic of Trïbe Over Everything is in its cohesion. Around every corner is a surprise, and we can’t wait for the Trïbe to keep flipping it on us. And we won’t have to wait long — they’re just getting started. LANCE CONZETT

6. CAITLIN ROSE, CAZIMI (MISSING PIECE)

If Caitlin Rose stopped making records after 2013’s The Stand-In, she’d still be remembered as one of the best songwriters of the decade in a

town full of greats. Taking time to figure out how to follow it up on her terms and in her own time — partly enforced by the pandemic shutting everything down just after Rose, co-producer Jordan Lehning and the William Tyler Band finished recording her new LP Cazimi — was the best possible approach. It’s a rich, funny, often candid and occasionally heartbreaking record that sounds familiar and bracingly new all at once, with tinges of country and New Wave combined in a way that might make Rockpile jealous. STEPHEN

5.

TRAGESER

ROBYN HITCHCOCK, SHUFFLEMANIA! (TINY GHOST)

Robyn Hitchcock broke out of a yearslong songwriting slump with a brilliant record, Shufflemania! The album’s material artfully blurs the boundaries between the seen and the unseen and is populated by a colorful cast of characters, including the imp of change, the feathered serpent god, a Scorpio private eye, a noir novelist with two graves, a murdered Greek philosopher, an English lord and fish swimming in the grass. Coproduced with Hitchcock’s partner Emma Swift and recorded remotely during the height of the pandemic, the album features long-distance contributions from a number of Hitchcock’s celebrated musical friends, including Johnny Marr, Brendan Benson, Davey Lane, former Soft Boys bandmate Kimberley Rew and Sean Ono Lennon. DARYL SANDERS

4.

AMANDA SHIRES, TAKE IT LIKE A MAN (ATO)

An album doesn’t have to hit you like a ton of bricks to be good; what makes the difference is when an artist is making the work they need to make. Amanda Shires’ Take It Like a Man is indeed an intense record, in which the poet, fiddler and songsmith examines working through a period of conflict in her marriage. It’s compassionate and nuanced — by turns smoldering, brooding and soulful — but it also doesn’t give an inch to the idea that the topic has to be addressed on someone else’s terms. Shires’ records have never sounded timid, but she spoke in interviews about how previous bad experiences in the studio had convinced her that her time as a musician was over. Thankfully for us, and seemingly for her as well, collaborator and producer Lawrence Rothman encouraged her to try again. STEPHEN TRAGESER

3.

NEGRO JUSTICE, CHOSEN FAMILY (SIX ONE TRÏBE PRODUCTIONS)

If Music City hip-hop is to ever fully unveil its talent to the outside world, it will not be due to the machinations of the music industry, but rather in spite of them. Negro Justice might be the best example of that, as he offered Chosen Family to the world in March. He and his community of Tennessean rap luminaries came together to put out one

of the best stacks of tracks this town has to offer. On this release via his Six One Trïbe Collective brotherhood — a fully DIY effort — the MC covers a broad spectrum of sounds rooted in Southern flavor and touching on jazz and soul, brimming with brilliant wordplay. P.J. KINZER

2.

TWEN, ONE STOP SHOP (SELFRELEASED)

The pandemic blunted momentum for many bands, but not Twen. In 2019, the pop-rockers’ debut LP Awestruck came out on noted NYC indie Frenchkiss, but didn’t seem to have a massive impact outside Boston, where the band formed, and Nashville, their home since 2017. Evidently, this motivated singer Jane Fitzsimmons and guitarist-producer Ian Jones to level up for round two. If Awestruck‘s definitive versions of Twen’s first batch of songs hinted at the group’s potential, One Stop Shop — written and finessed during lockdown — realizes it. The duo’s optimistic, streamlined spin on Britpop and pre-Nirvana alt-rock doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but takes it on a joyride through our dystopian present. Engineered in-house by Jones, the tones on One Stop Shop are pristine, the hooks enormous and relentless. The maturing band remains a secret too well kept, but that shouldn’t be the case much longer.

CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

GROUP)

Of his many talents, Namir Blade’s ability to build worlds through song is one of his most striking. On 2020’s Aphelion’s Traveling Circus, the masterful MC and producer immersed listeners in a futuristic sideshow of sorts, one with ample room to showcase not just Blade’s storytelling but also his well-honed technical skills as a rapper and studio wizard. Metropolis is Blade’s finest work yet, borrowing its title from the 2001 anime, which itself draws from a 1949 manga inspired by a 1927 experimental German film. It’s those complex, sometimes surprising layers of touchpoints that make Blade’s projects such rewarding listens — as elements of, say, Blade Runner or Akira brush up against Afrofuturist philosophy and cyberpunk aesthetics. And if decoding allusion isn’t your thing, Metropolis is bursting with hooks and killer flows too, with features including Gee Slab, Jamiah Hudson and Jordan Webb. BRITTNEY McKENNA

1.NAMIR BLADE, METROPOLIS (MELLO MUSIC

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YEAR

The Year in Hip-Hop

BY LANCE CONZETT

Back in May, we introduced Scene readers to three crews making moves in Nashville’s hip-hop renaissance: BlackCity, Six One Trïbe, and Third Eye & Co. The MCs, producers and performers in those groups have thrived in 2022 — but they were only the tip of an iceberg of diverse talent running through every neighborhood in Nashville.

It’s hard to imagine having a better 2022 than Six One Trïbe, who locked down three spots on this year’s Top Local Albums Critics’ Poll with Namir Blade’s Metropolis, Negro Justice’s Chosen Family and the squad’s own debut LP Trïbe Over Everything. But even beyond those records, the Trïbe has been nonstop all year. Two EPs — Riø Tokyo’s Three Days in Edo and Gee Slab’s The First Afterthought — show the diversity that characterizes what Trïbe does best, sharpening their rhymes against cold beats to create something that wouldn’t have existed in a vacuum.

But by far our most surprising Trïbe discovery was AndréWolfe, whose sideways Young Thug flow turns heads on Trïbe Over Everything tracks like “Carbon Copy” and “Grow Again.” On his own debut Feng Shui, AndréWolfe chops it up with collaborator CamFerg, pulling the energy back a bit but driving hard within his own lane.

In the BlackCity camp, members of the group have kept their heads down at the Compound, dropping a handful of singles across the year. The BlackSon’s “My First Song,” Brian Brown’s “Early Bird,” Josephfiend and Alo*’s “Praying for Good

Days” and Reaux Marquez’s “Crowd Control” all show the exciting directions that these three artists are moving in. It doesn’t hurt that they’ve been co-signed by the Titans, who have dropped tracks by the whole crew in hype videos this year.

And then there’s Third Eye, whose Vibes showcases at The Dive Motel showed just how versatile the scene is, counting folks like Quez Cantrell, Raemi and MiaReona among the talent that took the pool party by storm. As much of a rager as those parties were, Ron Obasi’s WHYSOSIRIUS? is practically the polar opposite — a quiet, reflective mixtape that demonstrates Obasi’s considerable talents as a rap philosopher. On “555,” which features producer Jack Vinoy, he raps the closest thing to a mission statement I’ve heard: “I never said I was the realest / But I am a realist.”

Outside the orbit of these three groups,

rappers from across Music City have been popping off all year long.

On Contraband, Mike Floss makes his most direct political statement to date, throwing down against locally headquartered private prison corporation CoreCivic and police violence that disproportionately targets young Black men on songs like “Fighting” and “Together.” But it’s “Giant” that’s the high-water mark, weaving arguments for community political action with an impassioned speech by fellow Black Nashville Assembly organizer Jamel Campbell-Gooch, advocating for funding communities and not police.

Speaking of Floss, there’s something about Chattanooga-born rapper Qualls that calls to mind Floss’ early For the Rebels mixtapes (and it’s not just Floss’ feature on “Ghost”). Qualls’ Until We Meet Again is constantly breaking apart and rebuilding

R.A.P. Ferreira’s only been in Nashville for a few years, but on “ark doors” he raps, “Totems and omens / Barking directions to Bolton’s,” so I think he’s got a feel for the place. His third album under the R.A.P. moniker, 5 to the Eye With Stars, is an expansive exercise in linguistic gymnastics. You can hear the Lil Wayne influence in him, letting streams of consciousness unfold on the track without going full Aesop Rock. It’s heady but rewarding.

And that’s just the beginning. Abk Gatez and Luh Stain, both part of the LacMan Records set, have been two of the most prolific street rappers in the city, dropping five records between the two of them this year alone. Gatez’s Authentic is earnest and sensitive, flexing range against the hard-edged subwoofer-shredding rap on Airplane Mode The late, great kidDEAD’s posthumous The Man Who Lived Forever is a crown on the head of Nashville’s backpack-rap community. And Virghost’s Summer in September IV? That record just goes

Not since the days of Young Buck in his prime has it been this good to be a rap fan in Nashville. Whether you’re an old head or just tapping in now, throw on any one of these records and play it loud. ■

The Year in Ven-News

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

For most of 2022, live entertainment ran at full tilt in Nashville, and going to shows felt a lot more like it did before the infernal pandemic (which still lingers). However, much of the big news in the realm of music venues was unsettling.

In February, the owners of East Side record shop The Groove, which also hosts shows and other events, ended their bid to buy the building they operate from; they’re still going strong, for now. In May, the Mercy Lounge venue complex shuttered after the business owners and their new landlords couldn’t agree on a lease; the Mercy crew is looking for another spot to set up shop, while the venues are slated to reopen under new management as Cannery Hall next year. In October, plans were made public for an apartment development that will likely displace venerable indie venue 3rd and Lindsley. And in November, the longtime oper-

ators of historic club Exit/In confirmed that a phenomenal run of shows leading up to Thanksgiving would be the last under their management, and they would end their campaign to buy the property. A representative for property owner AJ Capital confirmed that the venue is set to reopen as Exit/In sometime in 2023.

There’s no reason as of yet to say that the incoming staff at these spots won’t try their hardest to maintain the venues’ key roles in local music. But the previous operators seemingly acted with musicians’ and fans’ best interests in mind, leaving the impression that the power to make the decisions ends up going to whoever has the most money.

Plans stalled for a development that would have likely forced out long-running dive bar Springwater, but other big projects continued apace. Word came that the former Music City Roots facility planned for Madison would pivot to a new venue project under the name Timberhawk Hall. Details emerged for a Wedgewood-Houston development proposed by AJ Capital that would include a 4,500-capacity venue. Permits were issued for work on part of the downtown Nashville Yards development that includes a 4,000-cap venue to be operated by ticketing and touring firm AEG, a major multinational player that’s still smaller than its main competitor Live Nation. The city council in nearby Murfreesboro approved a partnership plan with Colorado firm Notes Live for a project including a 4,500-cap outdoor venue called The Sunset Music Colosseum on the Stones River. A Shania Twain show, the first concert announced for Nashville SC’s home turf Geodis Park, is set for June.

Meanwhile, we saw East Nashville’s The East Room celebrate its 10th anniversary in grand style, as well as jam-packed calendars at places like the Nashville Jazz Workshop, Eastside Bowl, Vinyl Tap and The Blue Room at Third Man Records. A major project is also underway to revive the historic Club Baron on Jefferson Street.

The Metro Council approved funding for a study to determine what’s needed to protect the independent venues that have been so important to cultivating the city’s music culture for decades. If finding solutions takes too long, we run the risk of extinguishing the creative spirit that powers the best aspects of our culture.

From crews like BlackCity, Six One Trïbe, and Third Eye & Co. to Mike Floss, R.A.P. Ferreira and beyond, great rap releases are in abundance

his identity as an artist, cycling through distinctly different vibes in the front half of the record before settling into cool, comfortable, jazz-flecked beats in the back half — a confident exhale.

Major changes marked 2022, including the end of Exit/In and Mercy Lounge as we’ve known them

MIKE FLOSS

YEAR MUSIC IN

A Nashville Black Music Roundtable

Talking with Rashad tha Poet, Erica Hayes Schultz, Jason Eskridge and Shannon Sanders about the state of Nashville jazz, blues, R&B, soul and more in 2022

BY RON WYNN

Nashville’s music scenes took enormous hits in 2020 and 2021 from the shutdowns forced by the pandemic. It’s no surprise that Nashville fans and players across the spectrum of jazz and blues reacted to a return to familiar levels of musical activity like a conquered city greets a liberating army. Among many reasons to celebrate: the Nashville Jazz Workshop settling into its new headquarters on Buchanan Street, Rudy’s Jazz Room expanding its calendar, and the return of an in-person Jefferson Street Jazz and Blues Festival. Experimental and experiential arts nonprofit FMRL also resumed its programming at various venues, frequently featuring cutting-edge jazz musicians.

Nashvillians garnered national notice: Composer and saxophonist Jeff Coffin earned a Grammy nomination for Between Dreaming and Joy, as did the TSU Aristocrat of Bands for its landmark release The Urban Hymnal. Top talents in jazz and blues picked Nashville for celebrating important milestones or making new history. Such greats as Buddy Guy, Robben Ford, George Benson, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Dionne Warwick all performed or recorded here this year, while Memphis blues-rock champion Eric Gales celebrated the release of his excellent Crown at City Winery, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd debuted the documentary accompanying the 25th anniversary edition of his modern classic Trouble Is… at the Belcourt. No city boasts two museums dedicated to honoring the massive cultural influence of Black music that are quite like Nashville’s Jefferson Street Sound Museum and the National Museum of African American Music.

We’ve reached out to some key figures across Nashville’s contemporary Black music scenes, and they’ve kindly offered their perspectives on what 2022 did and did not provide. Our august lineup includes music-industry polymath and former local Recording Academy chapter head Shannon Sanders; ace spoken-word performer Rashad Rayford, aka Rashad tha Poet; superb DJ Erica Hayes Schultz, who highlights an array of Black music on her WXNA show Soul of the City; and Jason Eskridge, masterful performer and host of the long-running soul and R&B performance series Sunday Night Soul.

What do you consider the most critical or pressing issues facing contemporary Black musicians in Nashville?

Rashad tha Poet: Infrastructure. We don’t

have access to many of the necessary resources.

Erica Hayes Schultz: Lack of venues to play that fully support Black musicians. Some venues want to “add extra security,” especially for hip-hop events, or are just not as welcoming to Black artists or promoters UNLESS they have a tie to white artists. Also, many venues are run by older people who think that the Nashville audience wouldn’t come to a Black event, based on the past. Those owners are not really on the pulse of what’s going on in the city and in the media where these artists are growing.

Jason Eskridge: I think at this point the music industry as a whole is still figuring out how to consistently function post-pandemic. Across the board, artists, promoters and venues are struggling to adjust to lower turnout numbers, etc. I think those struggles are even more prevalent in the Black music scene in Nashville, which in my experience has always had difficulty generating successful numbers.

Shannon Sanders: One of the most critical or pressing issues facing contemporary Black musicians in Nashville is literally a contemporary problem. The modern music industry is very algorithm-driven. Because Nashville is not considered to be a major urban market, our community of Black creators struggle to gain the numbers the industry is paying attention to as an indicator of traction and audience size/interaction. Atlanta, for instance, is a city of 4 to 5 million people and predominantly Black. Although Nashville is arguably the most talented city per capita on earth, it is much easier to build a data portfolio in larger urban markets.

How would you assess or evaluate the current situation as regards to opportunities for contemporary Black musicians?

RTP: It’s better than it was 10 years ago, but it still feels like an uphill battle. This city is ripe with ready-to-launch talent. Why folks aren’t going higher is beyond me.

EHS: I believe opportunities are growing. For example, I am aware of more events with Black musicians, which I promote on Soul of the City and the WXNA Concert Calendar, than there were when I first started the show in 2016. However, as more events are growing and more artists are being accepted in venues, I’m hearing artists/ promoters/managers speak on the need for Black-run venues as a launching pad.

JE: I think there are plenty of opportunities for Black musicians as sidemen and studio musicians. However, Black artists are still fighting an uphill battle as it pertains to being included, supported and celebrated in the Nashville music scene as a whole. This void is one of the primary reasons I started Sunday Night Soul, to create a platform and a point of meeting for Nashville’s soul artists and its soul music fans.

SS: Honestly, there is more opportunity than ever. There are many more places to record and perform than anytime in the city’s history. And social media allows an artist to circumvent the proverbial industry gatekeepers of the past.

Do you feel there is consistent or adequate coverage of contemporary Black music and musicians?

RTP: I think the coverage has gotten exponentially better. I think people who are making moves are definitely getting more press.

EHS: In the Nashville Scene and smaller radio stations in Nashville, yes. But there is so much music out there that mainstream media doesn’t know about. On streaming sites, social media and YouTube, there is a growing cadre of artists. They’re all really good, but there’s so many that you almost can’t keep up. But to be honest, some of those artists need to grow their team and get their talent out there. Some artists are content with the YouTube streams, and they have received success with that. But they need to combine online success with mainstream success, and they need the right group of people to do that.

JE: From my point of view, there can always be more coverage. But I also understand that coverage is primarily dictated by the consumer and the subject matter that they want to hear or read about. It’s a supply-and-demand relationship. It is my hope that as Nashville becomes more and more diverse, the demand created by that diversity will result in a supply of more thorough [coverage].

SS: No. But the reason an artist would need “coverage” is to gain attention from fans and would-be fans. Again, the internet creates many more opportunities to garner attention. There are several podcasts and blogs that are as impactful, if not more so, than many other traditional media outlets.

Do you feel there is interaction among the various contemporary Black music scenes, whether they are R&B/soul, hip-hop or spoken word?

RTP: I think the scenes are blending more. I’d love to see it on a more consistent basis, but that goes back to lack of infrastructure and available places for folks to receive high-quality entertainment.

EHS: Yes. But it’s connecting the right groups of people together. There are small events throughout the city that combine all kinds of scenes, but they are only promoted within the neighborhoods. Nashville has grown with so many Black people moving here that events need to expand their promotion. The audience is there. They just have to know about the event.

JE: I feel like there is a good amount of collaboration, camaraderie and support between the Black musicians in Nashville, both within the same genre and across genres.

SS: Our creative ecosystem is more collaborative than I’ve ever seen it. Genre lines have become more and more blurred. Everyone is doing whatever they can to be different, to stand out. Collaboration is the greatest way to break the cycle of creating the same thing over and over again.

Who are some talented contemporary Black musicians you feel deserve notice and attention?

EHS: Jamiah Hudson, Kyshona Armstong, Lauren McClinton, Saaneah, VibeOut., The BlackSon, Reaux Marquez.

JE: Kenny Dewitt, Sarina-Joi Crowe, Rashad tha Poet, Jovan Quallo, Roz Malone, Jannelle Means, Larysa Jaye. These are just a few, but there are hundreds of Black artists, instrumentalists and vocalists I could name that make the Black music scene in Nashville the amazingly rich and fertile movement that it is.

What would improve circumstances in Nashville for contemporary Black musicians?

RTP: More access to TV, and less roadblocks from Nashville (the brand). There seems to be an imaginary line that Black artists aren’t “allowed” to cross. There is too much talent in these scenes to not have more nationally known artists from here.

EHS: On a big scale, well-run, Black-owned venues. I’m from Atlanta, and Black-owned venues helped that scene grow tremendously, and the same can happen here. On a smaller scale, connecting promoters and artists with all media outlets to promote their events. That means radio stations with local Black shows or that promote local Black music need to heavily reach into those neighborhoods. Print media needs to do the same. Not just in North Nashville, but Antioch, West Nashville, Madison, etc. Go to where people of color live and shop. Talk with folks at festivals and events. Get to know people. Connecting the traditional media with the social media is a win-win.

JE: As always, I would like to see more intentionality when it comes to displaying and celebrating the diversity that exists within the Nashville music scene, specifically the Black music scene. I’d like to see more Blacks in the songwriting rooms. More Blacks on selection committees for local festivals and events. More Blacks in positions of power as they relate to the decision-making that shapes the landscape of the Nashville music scene. I applaud men like Butch Spyridon and the rest of the folks at the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp for the consistent work they’ve done to make sure the “Music” in Music City continues to grow in scope and diversity.

SS: I’d love to see our contemporary Black creators continue to push the envelope. I’d love for them to grab the bull by the horns, become the architects of their destinies! ■

RASHAD THA POET

JASON ESKRIDGE

ERICA HAYES SCHULTZ SHANNON SANDERS

YEAR MUSIC IN

A FairyTale Year

Talking with Tennessee Composer Laureate

Michael Kurek

BY JOHN PITCHER

The poet W.H. Auden once remarked that “the way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.” Nashville composer Michael Kurek believes the same rule applies when listening to his new Symphony No. 2 “Tales From the Realm of Faerie.”

“As you might expect from a large-scale work, there’s a lot going on in my Second Symphony,” Kurek tells the Scene. “But I don’t think listeners should concern themselves with technical details. They simply need to lose themselves in the sensuousness of the music, the way a reader is swept up in the narrative of a Tolkien fantasy.”

Classical music lovers will have plenty of time to surrender to Kurek’s enchanting melodies. In October, the European Recording Orchestra released a new album on the Navona label featuring Kurek’s Second Symphony. The work is conducted by longtime Vanderbilt University professor Robin Fountain. Also on the album, the Vanderbilt Chorale under the direction of Tucker Biddlecombe performs the composer’s newly completed Missa Brevis

For Kurek, a Nashville native, the new album caps a memorable year in classical music that began with Gov. Bill Lee signing legislation naming him Composer Laureate of the State of Tennessee. Kurek is only the second musician in Tennessee history to hold this post. David Van Vactor, a former Knoxville Symphony conductor who once taught Kurek, became the state’s inaugural Composer Laureate in 1975.

Those We Lost

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

Looking back each year, I never fail to be gobsmacked by the immense array of people who make up the collection of vibrant scenes we call “Nashville music.” One of the most potent reminders comes when remembering those who have died.

Some were stars revered by country fans the world over, like Loretta Lynn and Naomi Judd — or WSM DJ Ralph Emery, a different kind of star, who introduced thousands upon thousands of country songs and musicians to the world. Others were better known by their peers, but pianist Hargus “Pig” Robbins played on fundamental country classics by Patsy Cline, Charley Pride and George Jones (as well as Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and Ween’s 12 Golden Country Greats), while Anita Kerr’s harmony vocal group provided a key ingredient for the Nashville Sound. It’s entirely possible that you know songwriters Jimbeau Hinson and Dallas Frazier by name; it’s almost a given that you’ve heard their work, including Hinson’s co-write “Fancy Free” and Frazier’s “Elvira.”

Dr. Paul T. Kwami shepherded the Fisk Jubilee Singers into

Over the years, his works have been performed by major ensembles in 43 countries, and the success of his performances has not gone unnoticed. He has received awards and recognitions from BMI, the American Symphony Orchestra League, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many others.

Honors aside, Kurek seems most proud of his commercial success, an accomplishment seldom associated with contemporary classical music. His 2017 album The Sea Knows debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart. Remarkably, music from the album enjoyed more than 330,000 streams on Spotify. Kurek fans, by the way, weren’t streaming three-minute songs, but rather 20-minute-plus classical works.

The popularity of Kurek’s music no doubt stems from its accessibility. An unabashed neo-Romantic, Kurek writes the sort of traditional, melodic and tonal music associated with such 20th-century symphonists as Sibelius, Prokofiev, Vaughan Williams and Rachmaninoff. Indeed, if Kurek manages to create another two or three large-scale symphonies, one could easily imagine him assuming the mantle of an American Vaughan Williams.

Kurek’s Symphony No. 2 certainly exhibits a broad, Vaughan Williams-like range of emotions, from passion and exuberance to tranquility and melancholy. In his program notes for the symphony, Kurek again encourages his listeners to lose themselves in the music, “as would a child hearing fairy tales being read aloud.” It’s not difficult to follow his advice. As the composer writes, his symphony is generously decorated with “swashbuckling fanfares, love themes and pointillist fairy dust.” One couldn’t hope for a more cinematic piece.

Vanderbilt University’s

Kurek

the new millennium and fostered a better understanding of the immense significance of their work. Engineer and producer Bil VornDick helped a rising generation of artists like Alison Krauss and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones — inspired by roots traditions but far from bound by them — find the sounds upon which they’ve built generational fan bases. Singer, songwriter and painter Ann Tiley put in phenomenal work to nurture the music community around her — the kind of effort that makes music scenes possible — while creating a special kind of historical record of our ever-changing city. And stalwart longtime music journalist Peter Cooper, a talented songwriter and performer in his own right, died unexpectedly earlier this month after sustaining a head injury. Cooper, who worked for The Tennessean before moving on to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, was acclaimed as both a reporter and a musician, having earned a Grammy nomination for Best Children’s Album in 2012. It was a shocking and tremendous loss.

Many of those who are gone were known for musical prowess displayed outside the country world — though they sometimes played country as well — such as pianist Beegie Adair, who cultivated Nashville’s jazz scene for decades. Or Walter Riley King, who played sax with B.B. King for more than three decades. Or Deborah McCrary, who along with her siblings in The McCrary Sisters charted a new path for the vocal group tradition. Or guitarist Scotty Wray, who played with Miranda Lambert from the very beginning of her career. Joe Chambers, who spearheaded the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum to honor the work of touring and studio musicians, also passed away this year. ■

“I hope my symphony awakens some sensibility, some enchantment, that’s been sleeping inside of us since childhood. Put another way, I hope this symphony strikes a chord.” ■

The honor recognizes Kurek’s significant contribution to classical music in the Volunteer State, most notably the 14 years he served as chair of the composition department at

Blair School of Music.

left Vanderbilt in 2020 to devote all of his energy to composing, an endeavor that has brought him international acclaim.

Remembering Loretta Lynn, Deborah McCrary, Ann Tiley, Dr. Paul T. Kwami and other Nashville musical figures

MICHAEL KUREK

DR. PAUL T. KWAMI

LORETTA LYNN

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CRITICS’ PICKS

WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF THINGS TO DO

THURSDAY / 12.15

COMEDY [BUTT OF A JOKE]

WELLRED

Many of us are familiar with the pleasure and pain of being a liberal in the South. Or as comedian Trae Crowder puts it: “What do you want me to tell you? A lot of us suck. But have you tried banana pudding?” Better known to many as “The Liberal Redneck,” Crowder is an internet sensation who’s created the hilarious sketch show wellRED with his comedy partners Corey Ryan Forrester and Drew Morgan. Each of the men performs a tight 15, poking fun at both the far left and the far right in a (perhaps exaggerated) Southern drawl. The troupe has a long internet trail — and you can catch them on Fox and Comedy Central — but their live show is not to be missed.

Dec. 15-17 at Zanies, 2025 Eighth Ave S.

TOBY LOWENFELS

FRIDAY / 12.16

MUSIC [HIGH

FRIENDSHIP COMMANDERS

Since 2016, Friendship Commanders — the power duo of singer-guitarist Buick Audra and drummer Jerry Roe — have been a pillar of consistency in local punk and heavy music circles, delivering scorchedearth rippers and sludge-doom dirges laden with real-life stories and progressive sentiments. This week they’ll be celebrating the arrival of their fifth and latest record, Release the Rest, which collects five songs from three different pandemicera recording sessions — including the fuzzed-out standout “Stonechild” — onto one 45-RPM 12-inch. Locals Howling Giant and Thetan support, along with Generation of Vipers, who’ll be making the trip from Knoxville. 8 p.m. at Drkmttr, 1111 Dickerson Pike CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

MUSIC

[CLASSIC EMOTIONS] SMOKEY ROBINSON

Bob Dylan, a pretty good songwriter himself, famously name-checked fellow 1960s star Smokey Robinson in a 1965 interview that found Dylan also paying tribute to the songwriting skills of Allen Ginsberg and Charlie Rich. Robinson and his group The Miracles were among the Motown label’s early stars, and Robinson’s songs signify the ’60s as richly as anything by Dylan, The Beatles and Ginsberg

himself. Aside from the now-canonical hits — “I Second That Emotion,” “The Tracks of My Tears” and the great “The Tears of a Clown” among them — Robinson made superb music after he left The Miracles to go solo. (Without Smokey, The Miracles cut 1975’s loopy concept album City of Angels, a classic of camp R&B.) Robinson’s 1975 album A Quiet Storm introduced a new concept to soul music, and he did some of his finest — and most mature — work in the ’70s and ’80s. Without seeming overly pleased by his own cleverness, Robinson has written songs that sound worked out to their exact point of perfection, and his vocal style is both imperturbable and brimming with emotion. At 82, he’s still going strong. He reportedly has a couple of new albums in the can, and he’s working on a biopic about his life. 8 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. EDD HURT

MUSIC

[OLDEN TIMES AND ANCIENT RHYMES] THE ORNAMENTS

Broad cultural touchstones have gotten harder to come by over the years, but Charles Schulz & Co.’s 1965 animated anticommercialist holiday special A Charlie Brown Christmas still resonates with a wide range of people after more than half a century. The story captures the complicated spirit of the holiday season in a slyly sophisticated fashion that kids and adults relate to. The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s jazz score for the show is also a prime example

SMOKEY ROBINSON

FRIDAY, DEC. 16

The Ryman

of effortless cool, and thanks to The Ornaments, catching it performed live by an expert crew has been a Nashville tradition since 2005. Pianist Jen Gunderman, bassist James “Hags” Haggerty and percussionist Martin Lynds have historically played small rooms that sold out quickly, but their move over to the roomier Eastside Bowl means you’ve got a better chance to get in on the action. Friday through Tuesday, they’ve got multiple shows per day at the combination music venue, bowling alley, restaurant and lounge just off Briley Parkway — check the Eastside Bowl website for times and availability. Dec. 16-20 at Eastside Bowl, 1508 Gallatin Pike S. STEPHEN TRAGESER

MUSIC [STRING THEORY]

LOCKELAND STRINGS

Have you ever wondered what your favorite local artist might sound like with a talented string quartet playing alongside them? Lockeland Strings, a community arts organization, provides just that in monthly showcase format; if your favorite isn’t on this month’s list, just wait around a bit. These shows began as small house gatherings, but quickly outgrew that model — the December showcase is at Third Man Records. In this iteration, violinist Laura Epling has composed a special mix of new contemporary classical pieces for some of the most lovely local folks. Singer-songwriter Kyshona will lend her powerhouse voice to the mix, along with

COMMAND]

FRIENDSHIP COMMANDERS

PHOTO: ANNA HAAS

PHOTO: CRAIG HUNTER ROSS

a bevy of up-and-coming and established musicians: Madi Diaz, Charles Johnson, Jordie Lane + Clare Reynolds, Volunteer Department, SistaStrings, Lydia Luce, Old Sea Brigade and Andrew Combs will all make appearances. As a bonus, each Lockeland Strings show partners with a nonprofit and passes the proceeds along to them. This time the show benefits the Iranian American Women Foundation. 8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. AMANDA HAGGARD

MUSIC [ROCKING&ROLLING]

SOUND&SHAPE

Longtime local rock heroes Sound&Shape have spent the past decade refining their blend of prog rock’s grandiosity, pop music’s catchiness and punk and metal music’s aggressive drive. Their 2022 release Disaster Medicine is a worthy 10th entry to their catalog, featuring thick guitars and no-nonsense riffage paired with poignant lyricism. The Scene gave the album a Writers’ Choice for Best Alternative Rock Album in this year’s Best of Nashville issue, and music editor Stephen Trageser highlighted “How the Light Gets In” as a standout. The track is a musical look at how to keep moving forward even in the face of overwhelming darkness, and it’s elevated by a signature vocal performance from singer-guitarist Ryan Caudle and a lush string arrangement to become an anthemic, satisfying album closer. Imagine the emotional catharsis of the final refrain of “Hey Jude” — including a healthy dose of “nah nah nahs” — cranked up to 10 by a group of seasoned Music City players. Nashville rockers Echo Pilot, who released a nine-track album in June, and The Dangerous Method open. 8 p.m. at The East Room, 2412 Gallatin Ave. COLE VILLENA

MUSIC [NO REGULAR BAND]

KELSEY WALDON

Kelsey Waldon returns to Nashville for her last show of the year at The Basement East, where she’ll wrap up her tour in support of this summer’s No Regular Dog. Don’t just come for the one-two punch of Waldon’s lyrics — as a bandleader, she prioritizes chemistry and dynamism. Maybe that’s why her fans have been calling her current touring lineup “the Hot Band” in a nod to Emmylou Harris’ players. Now that the band has stretched itself out on the road, this one promises to be a barn-burner. 7 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. RACHEL CHOLST

MUSIC [HIP DONELSON]

ELECTRIC IMPROV ENSEMBLE

For many folks, the word “improv” may suggest jazz or free music, but the players in the Electric Improv Ensemble spread their wings in a more psychedelic rock and blues vein (though there are certainly jazz elements in the mix).

Guitarist Jack Kingsley draws inspiration from some of the heaviest six-string heroes: You’ll hear hints of Roy Buchanan, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour or Carlos Santana at various times, and he uses his Stratocaster’s tremolo arm (aka “whammy bar”) to great effect. You’ve likely seen drummer Pino Squillace before — he’s a formidable presence whether behind the kit or on

percussion, and he’s a longtime fixture on Nashville’s music scene. Caleb Hutson holds down the bottom on bass, though he can throw down on guitar too, as I learned after stumbling upon an Instagram reel of Hutson and Kingsley swapping roles for a tune. And as with Squillace, keyboardist Joe Bidewell may well be a familiar face. His tastefulness and ability to navigate a wide variety of styles keep him booked with a seemingly countless number of acts around town. They play a wide-ranging freeform set every other Friday night at Donelson institution Phat Bites, and it’s a perfect, free (though donations are appreciated) way to kick off the weekend. 9 p.m. to midnight every other Friday at Phat Bites, 2730 Lebanon

Pike JACK SILVERMAN

SATURDAY / 12.17

[HOLIDAY

THEATER

KINDLING ARTS PRESENTS VERY SPECIAL HOLIDAY SPECIAL

Remember those fabulous Christmasthemed variety shows of the 1950s and ’60s? Well, the folks at Kindling Arts sure do, and this Saturday, they’re honoring those quirky yet heartwarming specials with a one-night-only cabaret fundraiser that is sure to get you into the holiday spirit.

Kindling’s Very Special Holiday Special promises an evening of songs, stories and seasonal fun — all wrapped up with a bit of a twist and Kindling’s signature style.

Blake Holliday hosts, playing “an all-toofamiliar iconic actress in the middle of her own fantastical meltdown.” And audiences can also look forward to seeing Nashville theater favorites Brooke Gronemeyer, Will Henke, Kara McLeland, Tony Nappo and Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva, along with comedian Emma Supica, burlesque artist

Risky Sour and puppeteer/storyteller

Madeleine Hicks. Best of all, the proceeds go to support Kindling Arts’ mission of supporting local artists and developing innovative new works. 8 p.m. at American Legion Post 82, 3204 Gallatin Pike

AMY STUMPFL

MUSIC

[CABARET TIME] BROKEN CHAMPION

I’ve always loved the idea of rock cabaret — a performance that dives into the history of rock as a language understood by sophisticates with a taste for the off-kilter. In other words, getting campy with rock can be more fun than reworking standard blues licks or covering Fleetwood Mac. What singer and songwriter Meredith DiMenna does onstage with her band Broken Champion evokes figures like Cass Elliot, Judy Henske and Dusty Springfield. In fact, DiMenna & Co. caught my ear at a recent Nashville show when they played two songs associated with Henske, including one from her great 1969 album with Jerry Yester, Farewell Aldebaran. DiMenna and guitarist Emil Halas formed Broken Champion in 2017 after moving to town a year earlier. Their 2020 single “Get Lost,” which was produced by Widespread Panic bassist Dave Schools, represents their style well, and DiMenna says they plan to record in 2023. What’s striking about Broken Champion is their ability to sound exactly like a 1970s rock group — they have the drive of, say, Big Brother and the Holding Company, but they also fold in techniques used by early New Wave bands. DiMenna is an engagingly theatrical frontperson, and the band’s original material is as well-turned as the covers. 7 p.m. at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, 102 E. Palestine Ave. EDD HURT

MUSIC [BOY BAND]

NO-NO BOY

The Frist has hosted several performances to coincide with its massive exhibit of Asian textiles, Weaving Splendor, but none seems quite as electrifying as Saturday’s presentation. No-No Boy is an immersive multimedia showcase for songwriter and Nashville native Julian Saporiti, who uses archival research and fieldwork to inform a production of original folk songs, projected images and stories from his family’s history in the Vietnam War. It’s a fascinating cross-disciplinary performance that will, Saporiti hopes, “allow audience members to sit with complication as music and visuals open doorways to difficult histories.” Plan to come early to view the exhibition in advance — this is an ideal opportunity to see how art can intersect with everyday life. 2-4 p.m. at the Frist Art Museum, 919 Broadway LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

MUSIC [IN WITH THE PIN CROWD]

MUSIC CITY SOUL CLUB PRESENTS

SOUL GALORE

The most prominent overlap of pinball and mod culture might still be The Who’s Tommy, but Music City Soul Club could be coming for The Pinball Wizard’s crown. Marco C and DJ Wes Rob have been running a monthly happening at No Quarter called Soul Galore. The duo keeps the turntables rotating on a crate digger’s goldmine of Northern soul, skinhead reggae, Motown deep cuts and other U.K. dance club hits of the ’60s and ’70s. Every pint at the bar comes with a round of pinball, so even the socially awkward can occupy themselves. With mid-December’s prime fishtail parka weather, there’s no excuse to miss out. 8 p.m. at No Quarter, 922 Main St. P.J. KINZER

NOSTALGIA WITH A TWIST]

MUSIC

[MIX AND MASH] GIRL TALK

Like the Blackberry cellphone or “Vote For Pedro” T-shirts, nothing says early Aughts quite like the musical “mashup” — when an artist combines songs (often from disparate genres) to form something novel and, occasionally, sublime. Since 2006’s Night Ripper, Girl Talk (the stage name of Gregg Gillis) has proven himself the greatest at this craft, seamlessly blending 50 years of popular music into rap-driven, dance-party mixes. Using software on his laptop, Gillis transforms his source material into something different; so far, his project has avoided copyright infringement crackdowns. He argues that, according to the FAIR USE Act, layering The Notorious B.I.G.’s rapping of “Juicy” on top of a pitch-shifted chorus of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” or juxtaposing Busta Rhymes’ flow from “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check” against the outro of The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” yields an original work (not to mention neural calisthenics within the listener). Regardless of the music’s legality or its effect on the listener’s neurology, a Girl Talk live show is an absolute party — a Billboard Hot 100 bacchanal — often replete with a light show, toilet paper guns and confetti cannons. 8 p.m. at Marathon Music Works, 1402 Clinton St. WILLIAM HOOKER

SUNDAY / 12.18

JOSEPH WOOTEN

Master keyboardist Joseph Wooten will be holding a dual celebration this week

as he marks the holiday season and his 61st birthday on Dec. 15. He’s been at the forefront for decades of two seminal groups. The family band The Wooten Brothers are a dynamic ensemble that consistently delivers stunning performances in any number of genres, from funk to soul and

jazz to rock. Its personnel includes siblings Victor Wooten on bass guitar and vocals, Roy Wooten as percussionist and vocalist, and powerful soloist Regi Wooten on guitar and vocals. Their show never sounds predictable, even after being together more than four decades. Meanwhile Joseph

Wooten’s other gig has been providing the keyboard interludes, foundation and support for the Steve Miller Band since 1993. This show will highlight both Joseph Wooten’s prowess as a keyboardist and vocalist, and the always magnificent interaction and performances that the Wooten Brothers present as a group. 7 p.m. at the Hutton Hotel, 1808 West End Ave. RON WYNN

MONDAY / 12.19

MUSIC [I-5 HIGH FIVE]

ZIONA RILEY

Nashville-via-Bloomington, Ind., songsmith Ziona Riley just touched down in Nashville, back from her first-ever West Coast tour — a notch in the belt of any Midwestern, Southern or East Coast artist. It was a run that took her from San Diego all the way to Vancouver and included gigs with, among others, the lo-fi folk legend Bill Callahan. This gig closes the book on a busy year for Riley as she builds toward her forthcoming second full-length collection of vivid, beguiling, idiosyncratic songcraft following 2019’s Not Too Precious, slated for 2023 release. Also on the bill: Cal Folger Day, out of Baltimore. 6 p.m. at Vinyl Tap, 2038 Greenwood Ave. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

MUSIC [ABOUT TODAY]

BARTEES STRANGE

Bartees Strange is genre-agnostic. The artist’s two critically acclaimed albums give listeners a wide range of hip-hop and rock sounds. Strange grew up in one of the few Black families living in Mustang, Okla., bouncing from opera camp to football practice. He currently lives in D.C., where he spent 10 years as a spokesman for the FCC before turning to music. His live set is known for its reimagined National

MUSIC [KEYBOARD WIZARD]

GIRL TALK

JOSEPH WOOTEN

covers, nonstop energy and eclectic blend of musical influences. After opening for the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, it’s his time to shine as a headliner, and shine he will. 7:30 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. TOBY LOWENFELS

TUESDAY / 12.20

[A BELL RINGS]

FILM

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

This year marks the 75th anniversary of It’s a Wonderful Life, which hits differently every time you watch it. What a treat to experience this classic on the big screen in all its black-and-white glory. Roger Ebert wrote in 1999: “What is remarkable about It’s a Wonderful Life is how well it holds up over the years; it’s one of those ageless movies, like Casablanca or The Third Man, that improves with age. Some movies, even good ones, should only be seen once. … Other movies can be viewed an indefinite number of times.” Obviously, this one belongs in the latter category. Marvel could never. Fathom Events will present special screenings of the Frank Capra classic on Dec. 18 and 21, but for our money, there’s no better space to see it than in the Belcourt’s 1925 Hall. The Hillsboro Village arthouse will present multiple screenings of It’s a Wonderful Life every day from Dec. 20 to Christmas Day. Visit belcourt.org for showtimes and tickets. Dec. 20-25 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. TOBY LOWENFELS

WEDNESDAY / 12.21

THEATER

the adventures of Buddy, a human raised by Santa’s elves, who travels to New York City in search of his biological father. The musical adaptation features music by Matthew Sklar and lyrics by Chad Beguelin (the Tony-nominated team that brought us The Prom and The Wedding Singer). MicahShane Brewer directs a terrific cast, with Brian Charles Rooney making his Nashville Rep debut as Buddy. Audiences also can expect to see plenty of familiar faces — including Meggan Utech as Jovie, James Crawford as Walter Hobbs and Bakari King as Santa Claus, plus Katie Bruno, Scott Rice, Garris Wimmer and more. Dec. 21-Jan. 1 at TPAC’s Polk Theater, 505 Deaderick St. AMY STUMPFL

MUSIC [KEEP IT SIMPLE, SANTA] THE SPACESHIP OF THE IMAGINATION PRESENTS: A SIMPLE (SYNTHFUL) CHRISTMAS

[THE BEST WAY TO

CHEER] NASHVILLE REP PRESENTS ELF THE MUSICAL

Change is never easy, especially at the holidays. But I’m rather excited to see Nashville Repertory Theatre unwrapping a new holiday show this season with Elf the Musical. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve always loved the Rep’s charming production of A Christmas Story, which ran for 10 consecutive years (2009-2018), and was most recently revived in 2021. But there’s something special about ringing in the holidays with a big, fun family musical, and Elf certainly fits that bill. Based on the hit 2003 film, Elf the Musical follows

For more than a decade, the merry band of Music City synth nuts and singersturned-actors (and actors-turned-singers) calling themselves The Spaceship of the Imagination has been making spirits bright at the darkest time of year with an annual Christmas pageant. Each year, they find a new way to approach the wildly complex cultural phenomenon of the holiday season — a time that’s meant to be about joy and goodwill but also brings anxiety and crass commercialization, in which we also tie in the superhero origin story of the New Testament with a whole range of ancient rituals for celebrating the solstice. The crew of the Spaceship does it with style, humor and heart, as well as a veritable symphony of synthesizers and tons of phenomenal guest performers. The lineup for this year’s production, billed as A Simple (Synthful) Christmas, includes new guests Nicki Bluhm, Erin Rae, Jon Latham, Brian Wright and Sally Jaye, among many more, as well as recurring cast MVPs The Gambler (whom you’ll know from The Protomen) and Carey Kotsionis. 8 p.m. at Analog at the Hutton Hotel, 1808 West End Ave. STEPHEN TRAGESER

SPREAD CHRISTMAS

BARTEES STRANGE

PHOTO: LUKE PIOTROWSKI

BY ERICA CICCARONE

Tutti da Gio sits behind a gas station and next to billiard hall Shooter’s Lounge on the last stretch of Old Hickory Boulevard in Hermitage before it dead-ends near Percy Priest Lake. It’s a small storefront with no indoor seating, but you’re welcome to pull up a chair at one of several patio tables to dine.

The menu includes handmade gnocchi, pasta fresh from the in-house extruder, pesto that blooms with flavor, paper-thin prosciutto and thin-crust pizzas baked in a brick oven. The portions are big and served very hot, and earned Tutti da Gio a Best New Italian writer’s choice in the Scene’s recent

Best of Nashville issue.

“I’m not a fancy chef,” says chef and owner Giovanna Orsino. “You’re not gonna never have from me a plate with just four ravioli and some flowers. … I want that you sit down and you eat and you say, ‘Oh my gosh, I eat so good and so much!’ ”

Orsino’s story mixes elements of the classic immigrant’s tale with romantic tropes. But it doesn’t begin in some steamy kitchen in Sicily. It starts, of all places, in New Jersey.

Orsino’s father Salvatore got to the United States by ship as a military man. His own father died in World War II, leaving him to care for his mother and two little sisters. Italy was so poor, Orsino says, and everyone dreamed about America. When Salvatore’s ship docked in New York, he went AWOL, cozying up in Patterson, N.J., to start his new life.

He wasn’t there long before he was found

and deported. Eventually, he made his way back to New Jersey with his new wife, Antonina, and Giovanna was born in the Garden State. But if you’re imagining the red-andwhite checkered tablecloths of a Brooklyn pizzeria, think again. Salvatore moved his family to Galveston, Texas, where he bought a shrimp boat that he christened Miss Giovanna. A picture hangs in the restaurant of Salvatore standing on the deck of the boat, his daughter’s name emblazoned in navy-blue, and Giovanna herself — a toddler — screwing up her face at the camera.

“But that doesn’t really work so good for him,” Orsino says. Friends encouraged Salvatore to invest in a restaurant, the menu of which hangs on the wall at Tutti. It was called Mama Franca’s Flying Pizza. After school, little Giovanna would go to the restaurant, where she’d play with her Barbies and watch cartoons. Salvatore’s dreams were unfurling before him. A healthy family. A successful business. Opportunity.

But Salvatore died from a heart attack when Giovanna was 9 years old. Her mother could not read or write, much less run a res-

taurant. She sold everything and moved the family back to Milazzo, a tiny peninsula on the north coast of Sicily.

“My heart stops here,” Orsino says. “This is where my life was the happy life. I was happy with my father with the restaurant. I loved that life. So when he passed away, I promised myself, I say, ‘One day, I come back, and I’m gonna open again this place.’ ”

In Sicily, Orsino married, had three kids and divorced. She worked for years in a Catholic church, cooking for the resident priests, and in local restaurant kitchens preparing frutti di mare for the locals and tourists alike. Two jobs, three kids — all the while, her own dream festered. Somewhere along the line, she converted to Mormonism, which put her in touch with Sicilians in Salt Lake City. One worked at a restaurant that needed chefs. When her youngest child Vincenzo turned 18, Orsino’s time had finally come.

She quickly became the top chef of the Sicilia Mia restaurant group in Salt Lake City. Soon she brought Vincenzo over to work there as the pizza maker. She had plenty to celebrate, so why do it alone? Orsino was

GNOCCHI AL PESTO

CHEF AND OWNER GIOVANNA ORSINO

PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS

on the apps. “You can see me, like, chatting with like five or six men in the same moment,” she says, laughing. “I had so much fun. So much fun.”

Among her suitors was one Nashville man who was different from the rest. Jared Cluff didn’t tell Orsino that she was beautiful. He didn’t beg to see her. Instead, he offered her friendship.

“I was friend-zoned,” Cluff jokes now. From Nashville, he helped Orsino navigate finding an apartment, getting her electricity turned on and setting up her life in Utah. Then came a marriage proposal — from another man. Cluff knew the window of opportunity was closing, and he planned a trip to Salt Lake for Orsino’s birthday. They got engaged in Nashville months later, just after the pandemic started. It was her first time in Tennessee.

The grand opening of Tutti da Gio was in May, and the couple has stayed busy. While Orsino is cooking in the kitchen, Cluff greets customers at the door. He’s good with faces and names — he remembers what you ordered the week before and recommends something new to try. And he introduces customers to the kitchen staff, including Vincenzo, who operates the large brick oven.

“I made it a point to introduce the new customers to everyone,” he says. “It was important because if she wants it to feel like family, they need to know everybody. [Customers] need to feel like they just walked in and they were important too.”

Orsino has some rules. She won’t compromise on ingredients — they’ll only use the best. But she wants people all along the economic spectrum to be able to enjoy her food. It’s a tall order today, when, as Cluff says, the restaurant’s cost of lettuce has doubled because of inflation.

But Tutti da Gio is only the beginning. They have a food truck sitting in their driveway, and as much as Orsino loves the Hermitage location, she sees this as a launching point.

“I’m still dreaming, because I still need to have my restaurant — the real restaurant,” she says, like the one her father owned when she was a little girl. A place where families can sit down together, the kids kicking each other under the table, the waiters bantering with the guests. A place as expansive as a child’s dreams.

“It’s gonna happen, it’s not going to happen — I don’t know. But this is the start of a little step for me.”

CONTINENTAL SHIFT

A groundbreaking exhibition at Fisk shows the importance of crosscontinental communication

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

In December 1961, the exhibition Art From Africa of Our Time opened at the Harmon Foundation in New York. Earlier that same year, the Freedom Riders began protesting segregation across the American South, and the Museum of Modern Art exhibited its first work of contemporary African art. That convergence is more than coincidence. The liberation of several African countries from colonial rule occurred throughout the early midcentury, and travel between the U.S. and African nations began to open up. Africa — its artists and thinkers — were able to influence America in ways that would have been impossible just years earlier. The impact of that influence is massive, and is the first thing you notice when viewing African Modernism in America, another landmark exhibition, which is on view through February at Fisk University Galleries.

Among the exhibit’s first highlights is Nigerian artist Afi Ekong’s oil-on-canvas painting “Olumo Rock,” from 1960. At first glance it appears to be an abstract assemblage of color, but Ekong, who also went by Constance, named the work after a famed mountain in Nigeria that provided protection to residents during the 19th-century Yoruba civil wars. The painting, at roughly 10 by 30 inches, is a jewel, and almost appears multifaceted — expressive brushstrokes of orange, purple, green, red and blue are outlined in black, swirling with the energy of a van Gogh sky. Just as informative as the title card is a note that the painting was recently conserved. To help ready the work for exhibition, Fisk received funding from multiple institutions, and students from across the campus — art students and math students alike — were able to assist in the painting’s conservation.

Just a few feet down from the Ekong canvas is a pair of works from two more Nigerian artists — a carved chess set from Justus Dojumo Akeredolu and an oil-oncanvas painting by Akinola Lasekan. The painting, called “Ogedengbe of Ilesha,” was also conserved for this exhibit with help from Bank of America, and portrays a hero of the same 19th-century Yoruba wars that informed Ekong’s piece. In this work, Lasekan has realistically depicted a battlefield populated with marching warriors, musicians midsong and vast, atmospheric space. The artist’s background was mainly in commercial illustration — he wasn’t formally trained in Nigeria, but instead earned certificates in international correspondence courses. That academic aptitude serves the history painting well — its composition is complex but harmonious, and elements bor-

rowed from Lasekan’s career as a political cartoonist blend seamlessly, like the lines of smoke that rise from the rifles, and the expressive faces of the musicians.

Akeredolu’s chess set may seem a strange companion piece to the massive history painting, but its placement just underneath highlights the metaphor of war as a kind of game. It’s also a fascinating piece of craftsmanship — the king pieces’ eyes peer out over a face covering that seems almost translucent, and each of the pawn figures are young boys seated in different postures.

Ibrahim El-Salahi is one of the only artists to have multiple works in the exhibition. That inclusion honors his importance — the Sudan-born, U.K.-based El-Salahi was the first African artist to have a career retrospective at the Tate Modern in London, and he currently has an exhibition of works on paper hanging at The Drawing Center in New York. The artist’s father was a Muslim cleric, and as a result El-Salahi was deeply familiar with both the Quran and esoteric Sufi philosophy. So while he studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in the 1950s and also lived in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil, undercurrents of Arabic iconography are evident in the two African Modernism paintings.

His 1965 painting “Vision of the Tomb” is a 36-by-36-inch abstract masterwork that incorporates El-Salahi’s signature calligraphic flourishes with totemic stacks of color that seem to disappear into mist. The painting also has an exceptional provenance — it was painted while the artist was living in New York as a Rockefeller fellow, and in 1967 MoMA curator Dorothy Miller recommended that David Rockefeller purchase it for the Chase Manhattan collection.

Another painting with a notable provenance is the massive “Kumasi Market,” painted in 1962 by African American artist John Biggers. The 34-by-60-inch work was once owned by Maya Angelou, who purchased it directly from the artist. Biggers is one of the few African American artists known to have traveled to Africa by the early independence era — “Kumasi Market” was based on the artist’s travels to West Africa in 1957, the same year Ghana gained its independence from Britain. During his

travels, Biggers made extensive sketches, and collaged them together to create the panoramic scene of a bustling marketplace.

The details are compelling — you can tell that a storyteller like Angelou would find a lot to be interested in. The calm center of the painting shows a woman quietly balancing a pencil-thin scale in her hand. There are other vignettes, like a bird ruffling its feathers on a rooftop, a woman struggling to squeeze through the crowd, another woman tying a shawl. According to text from scholar Alvia J. Wardlaw, “Angelou cherished the painting, which remained a source of personal inspiration for her. She once recalled to me how the woman [holding the scale] in the painting greeted her with an eternal calm when she returned home from her frequent travels,

providing a moment of spiritual renewal.”

This exhibition was years in the making, and is extensive enough to require multiple visits. There are two floors of work, a timeline that unfolds along the wall of a staircase, woodcuts, collages, ceramics, ephemera and plenty of photographs that add contextual importance — including some that document African artists during trips to Fisk.

In one document from 1962, Aaron Douglas — founder of Fisk’s art department and a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance — wrote, “There is a tremendous interest in African life in America today, and art is an excellent vehicle for keeping this interest alive and going.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

AFRICAN MODERNISM IN AMERICA THROUGH FEB. 11 AT FISK UNIVERSITY GALLERIES

“VISION OF THE TOMB,” 1965. IBRAHIM EL-SALAHI (SUDANESE, B.1930) OIL ON CANVAS, 36 X 36 INCHES, COLLECTION OF THE AFRICA CENTER, NEW YORK, 2008.2.1 PHOTOGRAPH BY JERRY L. THOMPSON © IBRAHIM EL-SALAHI ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, ARS, NY 2022 COURTESY VIGO GALLERY AND AMERICAN FEDERATION OF ARTS

“KUMASI MARKET,” 1962. JOHN BIGGERS (AMERICAN, 1924-2000) OIL AND ACRYLIC ON MASONITE BOARD, 34 X 60 INCHES COLLECTION OF WILLIAM O. PERKINS, III © 2022 JOHN T. BIGGERS ESTATE / LICENSED BY VAGA AT ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / ESTATE REPRESENTED BY MICHAEL ROSENFELD GALLERY. COURTESY SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES AND AMERICAN FEDERATION OF ARTS

Julie Otsuka’s perspective-bending novel should be our call to action

BY YURINA YOSHIKAWA

From the first page, Julie Otsuka’s third novel, The Swimmers, teaches readers how to read this book.

We start with a simple, omniscient description of the pool — “located deep underground” — but the narrator quickly shifts to the firstperson plural perspective, with the use of “we” and “us” to represent a group of amateur swimmers who frequent this particular pool. It isn’t often that novels dare speak for an entire group, but Otsuka is familiar with this move. Her 2011 novel, The Buddha in the Attic, took a similar approach to speak on behalf of Japanese “picture brides,” young women who immigrated from Japan to the U.S. in the early 1900s to marry Japanese American men they knew only through photographs. That novel garnered her the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and I expect The Swimmers to do just as well, or better.

BY JULIE OTSUKA KNOPF,

The Swimmers is a novel told in five sections, and the first two inhabit the collective consciousness of the same group of amateur swimmers. Starting with the third section, the perspective shifts to a close third-person point of view following one swimmer, then to a second-person narrative (“you”) from an institution, and last but not least, second-person again from the daughter of one of the swimmers. This sounds more complicated than it actually reads on the page. Otsuka’s gorgeous prose takes readers through each of these important stories sentence by sentence, like a gentle coach swimming in a pool alongside you.

Otsuka’s choice to feature swimmers (as opposed to other amateur hobbyists like musicians in a community orchestra or teammates of a group sport) works perfectly in a literary setting because of the combination of intimacy and privacy a pool offers. Swimmers must be vulnerable enough to let strangers see them in swimsuits, but once they get in their lane and start doing whatever stroke they’re comfortable with, they get to be in their own worlds.

The pool in The Swimmers is not your typical pool at the Y (no children allowed), and it’s not a high-end pool on the rooftop of some skyscraper. This underground pool is for serious swimmers, used by professional athletes during certain hours of the day, but the people we meet in the novel are the amateur adults, varying in age, gender, occupations, personalities, wants and needs.

Here’s what the swimmers sound like: “If too much time is spent up above, we become uncharacteristically curt with our colleagues, we slip up on our programs, we are

rude to waiters.” When a crack is found at the bottom of the pool, it catalyzes anxiety, paranoia, devastation, but also compassion on a collective level: “Perhaps the crack has been there all along, just waiting to make itself known to us.” “Several of us worry that the crack might somehow be our own fault.” “We are kinder now, more yielding. … Because we are all equals now in the face of our common end.”

For a slim book, The Swimmers is a heavy read that left me in a kind of existential daze, but one I don’t regret having.

In late June of this year, a Wisconsin school board rejected Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine — her award-winning 2002 debut novel about a Japanese-American family sent to a World War II internment camp, loosely based on the experience of Otsuka’s own family.

School board members claimed that adding this book to the curriculum would create an “unbalanced” account of what happened, and they would need to pair the book with a perspective from the U.S. government. One of the many outraged parents quipped back that “the other side is racism.”

Though The Swimmers was published before this incident, the novel feels prescient in that it reads like Otsuka’s attempt to get through to readers, like the members of the Wisconsin school board, who have been wired to fear anything labeled “diverse” or “non-white.” The Swimmers is the cleverest kind of bait-and-switch: We begin with a group of swimmers defined not by race but a shared hobby. By the time we hone in on one particular swimmer, we are invested enough that we can’t help but continue.

Otsuka responded to the school board incident to express her disappointment in true writerly fashion, pointing out that reading stories from diverse writers is a “radical act of empathy” and that we can learn “to be more compassionate human beings — by reading about people who are different from us.”

In this light, the choice of the collective “we” in The Swimmers feels like an important act of resistance in a time of political divisiveness and looming book bans by school boards across the country. As an avid reader, writing teacher and mother of two Tennessee-born Japanese Americans who now share a history with generations of Japanese Americans who came before them, I hope that more people will turn to Otsuka’s work as an exercise in radical empathy.

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

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

THE 2022 ROCK ’N’ ROLL POLL

The local music scene on the local music scene

COMPILED BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

For our annual Rock ’n’ Roll Poll, we once again asked a select group of Nashville’s finest rockers, rollers, rappers, bookers and more to share their take on local music.

WHAT LOCAL ARTIST/BAND RULED NASHVILLE IN 2022?

Snooper —ALE DELGADO, TYLER GLASER, MERIT GENTILE, RYAN “DOMO” DONOHO, RYAN SWEENEY, MIKE SHEPHERD, MIKE MANNIX, JESSE G, COLEY HINSON, MEGAN LOVELESS, SARA NELSON, EMILY YOUNG, LUKE SCHNEIDER

$avvy —BLAIR TRAMEL, CONNOR CUMMINS, MICHAEL EADES, MIKE FLOSS, AUSTIN “AYYWILLÉ” WILLÉ

Ayy Willé continues to evolve the sound of Nashville hip-hop in a positive way. —RASHAD THA POET RAYFORD

Twen —JARED CORDER, TAYLOR COLE, SPENCER CULLUM, MICHAEL EADES, TRISTEN, WAXED

Rich Ruth —CAM SARRETT, JOSH HALPER, CAROLINE BOWMAN, JESSICA BREANNE

Lou Turner —KYLE HAMLETT, JESSICA BREANNE, LONEY JOHN HUTCHINS

Allison Russell —

MAESTRO

Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway —LARISSA MAESTRO, EVAN P. DONOHUE

Erin Rae — CAROLINE BOWMAN, TRISTEN

Sean Thompson — MICHAEL EADES, JESSICA BREANNE

Soccer Mommy —ASHER HORTON, MARQUIS MUNSON

Sierra Ferrell —BRETT ROSENBERG, JEFF MELTESEN

Negro Justice —NATHAN CONRAD, MICHAEL EADES

Namir Blade —CORDUROY CLEMENS, VIRGHOST

Ariel Bui —ELLEN ANGELICO

GAYLE —WES DAVENPORT

Heaven Honey —OLIVER HOPKINS

DJ Afrosheen —ERICA SCHULTZ

Caroline Spence —TRISTEN

The Weird Sisters —TODD SHERWOOD

Tim Gent —CORDUROY CLEMENS

Charlotte Sands, Joy Oladokun —TYLER MARTINEZ

Bre Kennedy, The Foxies, The Criticals —TAYLOR COLE

Soot, Thirdface, Jdoughblay, Ronin Black, Brian Brown —WAXED

Waxed —ELENA FRANKLIN

Sapna —CHET WEISE

Proteins of Magic —EVE MARET

Courtney Marie Andrews —SPENCER CULLUM

Katie Cole had killer solo singles and then toured with the Smashing Pumpkins. —RYAN CAUDLE

Rich Ruth put out an amazing record with an even more profound live show. Daisha McBride, Andrew Golden and Lindsey Lomis have also grown immensely. —ALANNA ROYALE

In Place (JayVe Montgomery, Randy Hunt, John Westberry, Scott Mattingly). From

shows at Springwater and Betty’s to their set at Big Ears, these gents make some whole-grain music, as nourishing as fresh fruits and vegetables. —STEVE POULTON

WHAT LOCAL ARTIST/BAND IS GOING TO RULE IN 2023?

Caitlin Rose —ELLEN ANGELICO, MIKE SHEPHERD, RYAN CAUDLE

Spencer Cullum —JESSICA BREANNE, ASHER HORTON, MIKE MANNIX

Snooper —ROBERT ELLIS ORRALL, JENNA MITCHELL, EVAN P. DONOHUE

Ophelia —BLAIR TRAMEL, CONNOR CUMMINS

Total Wife —WAXED, CAROLINE BOWMAN, CAM SARRETT

Ziona Riley —CAROLINE BOWMAN, JOSH HALPER, BRETT ROSENBERG

Peter One —LUKE SCHNEIDER, CAROLINE BOWMAN

Chuck Indigo —MIKE FLOSS, KADEEM PHILLIPS

Venus and the Flytraps —MEGAN LOVELESS, MICHAEL EADES

Six One Trïbe —CORDUROY CLEMENS, EVAN P. DONOHUE

Soot —WAXED, JOSH HALPER

Waxed —JESSE RHEW, RYAN SWEENEY

Ron Obasi —MICHAEL EADES, RASHAD THA POET RAYFORD

Heaven Honey —MICHAEL EADES, OLIVER HOPKINS

R.E.N. —MERIT GENTILE

Raemi —KADEEM PHILLIPS

Kyshona Armstrong, Annie Williams —JESSICA BREANNE

The Squad —JUSTIN CAUSEY-BULLOCK

Sunny War —TIM EASTON

Impediment —LONEY JOHN HUTCHINS

My Wall —CHET WEISE

Bleary —SPENCER CULLUM

Country Westerns are locked and loaded.

The new stuff is gonna knock all the socks.

—SARA NELSON

Jess Nolan —ALANNA ROYALE

Jamiah Hudson —ERICA SCHULTZ

Luh Stain —CORDUROY CLEMENS

Flesh Eater —JESSE G

Virginity Club —NATHAN CONRAD

The Sewing Club —JARED CORDER

Sassyopathic —RYAN “DOMO” DONOHO

Jaime Wyatt —EVAN P. DONOHUE

Crave On —KYLE HAMLETT

Alanna Royale —CAROLINE BOWMAN

Amm Skellars —OLIVER HOPKINS

Sugar Sk*-*lls, New Man, KMQ, Zook — so many more. Oh, and I’m confident a blast

from the past will excite folks in 2023.

—MICHAEL EADES

Tim Gent, Daisha McBride —RASHAD THA POET RAYFORD

The BlackSon —AUSTIN “AYYWILLÉ” WILLÉ

Sam Hoffman —ASHER HORTON

Molly Martin, Hannah Cole, Jive Talk, Bridey Costello —TAYLOR COLE

Teddy at Night —TYLER MARTINEZ

Tripleplay Squeek —VIRGHOST

McKinley James —TODD SHERWOOD

Emily Nenni —JEFF MELTESEN

Margo Price —MARQUIS MUNSON

Stephen Sanchez —WES DAVENPORT

Rafa —EVE MARET

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE DISCOVERY THIS YEAR, MUSICAL OR NOT?

Thump —BLAIR TRAMEL, CONNOR CUMMINS

Passion Fruit Boys —SPENCER CULLUM

Bats (Jess Awh & Co.) —ROSS COLLIER

Tom Bukovac’s YouTube channel —ELENA FRANKLIN

Noga Erez —LARISSA MAESTRO

D. Sauls —NATHAN CONRAD

Phuong Tam’s compilation of Vietnamese rock ’n’ roll, Magical Nights: Saigon Surf, Twist & Soul (1964-1966) —ARIEL BUI

I found the value and necessity in alone time for the first time in my life. Thanks, therapy! —ALANNA ROYALE

Boundaries in the workplace! —JENNA MITCHELL

The Multivox String & Brass keyboard and Knoxville’s Hologram Electronics’ Microcosm pedal. Desayuno chapin and shrimp ceviche at El Quetzal. —STEVE POULTON

SideKicks Cafe in Madison —EMILY YOUNG

Girl Dudes (c/o Boodudes Francheiseing [sic] LLC) —JESSE RHEW

Jake Wesley Rogers, girlhouse —TAYLOR COLE

Switching from reposado to anejo —MIKE FLOSS Severance; Lisa Marchiano’s Motherhood; Hot Poppy’s farmers market delivery service. —TRISTEN

David DeVaul’s soulful vibes are contagious. —ERICA SCHULTZ

Tutti da Gio —RYAN SWEENEY

What’s the 411? With Sharon Kay on WFSK; the introduction of sauerkraut —OLIVER HOPKINS Paul Cherry —JUSTIN CAUSEY-BULLOCK

EVAN P. DONOHUE, ARIEL BUI, LARISSA

SNOOPER

CAITLIN ROSE

PHOTO: LAURA E. PARTAIN

RNBW Collective’s queer songwriter nights, Tuesdays at Lipstick Lounge —MERIT GENTILE

Robbie Lynn Hunsinger —MIKE MANNIX

Andie Billheimer’s Jazz Quartet —JOSH HALPER *repeat repeat, Pepper Said —CORDUROY CLEMENS The Equity Alliance, Stager Microphones —EVAN P. DONOHUE

Andrija Tokic and Little Jack Lawrence told me about Guitorgans and now I’m obsessed. —ELLEN ANGELICO

Meg Elsier —BRETT ROSENBERG, TODD SHERWOOD Springwater’s Writers at the Water, Wednesdays at 5 p.m. —JEFF MELTESEN, LONEY JOHN HUTCHINS

Andi Marie’s hilarious Appalachian pawpaw videos. Put that girl on SNL! —JESSICA BREANNE Living in Madison. I can’t walk to a coffee shop or brewery, but we have wild turkeys and deer and stuff. —CELIA GREGORY

The Skydeck at Assembly Food Hall. Looking forward to a live-band hip-hop show there. —AUSTIN “AYYWILLÉ” WILLÉ

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE STORY IN MUSIC — LOCAL OR NOT — IN 2022?

The return of Be Your Own Pet —CAROLINE BOWMAN, ALE DELGADO, ROBERT ELLIS ORRALL

Caitlin Rose’s return —SPENCER CULLUM, ELLEN ANGELICO, JOSH HALPER, EMILY YOUNG

Taylor Swift fans livid at Ticketmaster; U.S. Department of Justice investigates parent company Live Nation —JESSE G, JESSE RHEW, JENNA MITCHELL, TYLER MARTINEZ

Grammy nomination for TSU Aristocrat of Bands’ The Urban Hymnal —WES DAVENPORT, JUSTIN CAUSEY-BULLOCK, MARQUIS MUNSON

Larissa Maestro is the first AAPI person to win Americana’s Instrumentalist of the Year. —ARIEL BUI

Grammy nominations for Molly Tuttle —LARISSA MAESTRO

The Six One Trïbe story is dope to see and be a part of. —CORDUROY CLEMENS

Bobby Gonz’s story has been inspirational; his album has a verse from Common and AyyWillé on sax. —AUSTIN “AYYWILLÉ” WILLÉ

Dorian Electra bringing litter boxes to their show at Exit/In to cater to their furry fans. —MERIT GENTILE

Three 6 Mafia partnering with the Titans. —CAM SARRETT

Tim Gent landing records on Issa Rae’s Rap Sh!t —Mike Floss

Madi Diaz opening for Harry Styles —JARED CORDER

The East Room 10-Year Anniversary —TAYLOR COLE

The blossoming of Third Man’s Blue Room; an onslaught of coverage from No Country for New Nashville, Nashville Indie, Nashville Show To-Go and more —MICHAEL EADES

Jimmy Fallon crashed Grateful Dead tribute The Stolen Faces’ second set. It was out-of-control and so joyful. —CELIA GREGORY Jack White speaking out against fascism; Darrin Bradbury’s “retirement” —TIM EASTON Artists holding Spotify accountable for their pathetic pay rates. The technology is not problematic — we all stream. Musicians are simply appalled by what they are paid by Spotify while their executives, shareholders and employees enjoy lavish salaries and opulent lifestyles. —LUKE SCHNEIDER

WHAT’S ONE THING YOU HOPE WE LEAVE BEHIND IN

2022?

Independent music venues closing, especially when real estate developers, venture capitalists and/or corporations are involved — LARISSA MAESTRO, EMILY YOUNG, ARIEL BUI, SPENCER CULLUM, MARQUIS MUNSON, RASHAD THA POET RAYFORD, JUSTIN CAUSEY-BULLOCK, RYAN SWEENEY, ROBERT ELLIS ORRALL, TYLER MARTINEZ, JENNA MITCHELL, JEFF MELTESEN, WES DAVENPORT, JESSE RHEW, WAXED

The current Metro Council —MIKE FLOSS Embracing pessimism. Change is hard — and unfortunate at times — but Nashville’s future is bright! —MICHAEL EADES

Merch splits with venues; the same lineup at every music festival —ALANNA ROYALE

Touring that kills bands financially, mentally, physically —JARED CORDER Every version of missed opportunity due to COVID-19 —CELIA GREGORY

Swifties’ conspiracy theories that Taylor Swift is doing a surprise Grimey’s in-store. Thanks for buying her album at the shop, though! —TYLER GLASER

Show bills with exclusively cis white men. Also, Swifties’ conspiracy theories that Taylor Swift is doing a surprise Grimey’s in-store. (I’m Swifties.) —MERIT GENTILE

Rapping over the song at shows —CORDUROY CLEMENS

Artists in Nashville holding onto their music —KADEEM PHILLIPS

Can we make Bill Lee leave? —EVE MARET

People fetishizing The Band and bands that sound like Imagine Dragons —COLEY HINSON Post-pandemic depression —AUSTIN “AYYWILLÉ” WILLÉ

Relentless self-promoters —ASHER HORTON Festivals. Stop. I have a rant I’m happy to unload on anyone who asks. —SARA NELSON

The whole keeping-up-with-the-Joneses vibe that kinda hums around our social scene at times. Feels like it should be focused on the art, not the gains. —OLIVER HOPKINS

Thoughtless embracement of the streaming services that do not serve the creators of the music they sell? Selfish and fearbased behaviors that perpetuate systemic mistreatment of any people, animals and this planet? Probably be the same answer next year. —STEVE POULTON

Spotify. Everyone should switch to Tidal immediately. Better sound quality and better pay for artists. —LUKE SCHNEIDER

More cross-promotion, more collaboration, more genuine support —JUSTIN CAUSEY-BULLOCK

More music executives taking a developmental approach in Nashville

—KADEEM PHILLIPS

The continued, crawling growth of great alternative music spaces on Charlotte Avenue. Random Sample has been curating great electronic shows, and Chris Davis’ FMRL has been booking deep-cut bills at the Global Education Center, and I want more, more, more! —ROSS COLLIER

Continued embrace of live ambient and experimental music —LUKE SCHNEIDER

More collaboration across genres. I love seeing Tim Gent and Joy Oladokun collab, and Daisha McBride performing with Allison Russell at the Ryman. —MARQUIS MUNSON

KIDS! Show me what the 15-year-olds are making. —ELLEN ANGELICO

Minimum-wage pay and collective bargaining —TRISTEN

Big touring bands’ shows having a local opener —ELENA FRANKLIN

Can we revive Next Big Nashville already? —MICHAEL EADES

Gritty rap shows —MIKE FLOSS Bands playing faster regardless of genre; more experimentation —BLAIR TRAMEL, CONNOR CUMMINS

More adaptations of older pieces of music and art —OLIVER HOPKINS

Parker James playing vibraphone on more people’s records —JOSH HALPER Bands embracing The Heavy Riff and turning up —WAXED

More jam bands —COLEY HINSON

More dancing at shows. Nashville has the worst rep for standing still. —TAYLOR COLE

WHO IN NASHVILLE DESERVES MORE COVERAGE THAN THEY GOT IN 2022?

BeHoward —VIRGHOST, MICHAEL EADES

Kyshona —LARISSA MAESTRO, ERICA SCHULTZ

Love Montage —LUKE SCHNEIDER, MICHAEL EADES

Bryan Cates —TYLER GLASER, JARED CORDER

Shoes Off Nashville showcasing local AAPI musicians —ARIEL BUI

Christina Spinei —CHET WEISE

Gabe Lee —ELLEN ANGELICO

Cybelle Elena, Yanira Vissepo —JESSICA BREANNE

Ophelia —BLAIR TRAMEL, CONNOR CUMMINS

Volunteer Department —JOSH HALPER

R.E.N. —MERIT GENTILE

Black Venus —RYAN SWEENEY

KYSHONA

Sam Hoffman, Thayer Sarrano, Tan —CAROLINE BOWMAN

Bazookatooth, Mount Worcester, Hew G., Emily Nenni —ALANNA ROYALE

Peace Police, Thomas Luminoso, Zook, FMRL shows —KYLE HAMLETT

Black Opry —JENNA MITCHELL

Keunarene’s debut album Don’t Wait Until I Die —MEGAN LOVELESS

Corook —WES DAVENPORT

Sunny War —MARQUIS MUNSON

Basic Printer —ROSS COLLIER

Safari Room —JESSE G

R.A.P. Ferreira —NATHAN CONRAD

Soot; Country Death; Kathryn Edwards and every other promoter keeping the underground and DIY alive —WAXED

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE LOCAL RECORD OF

2022?

Rich Ruth, I Survived, It’s Over —ALANNA ROYALE, MIKE MANNIX, SPENCER CULLUM, WAXED, CAM SARRETT, ASHER HORTON, EVAN P. DONOHUE, OLIVER HOPKINS, MERIT GENTILE

Twen, One Stop Shop. This record is everything my ears are searching for at the moment, and DIY from the production to the marketing. —TAYLOR COLE

Twen, One Stop Shop —MERIT GENTILE, WAXED, JARED CORDER, TRISTEN, CELIA GREGORY, MICHAEL EADES, CAROLINE BOWMAN

Soot, Talons of Empathy —MERIT GENTILE, WAXED Waxed, Give Up —ELENA FRANKLIN

Rashad tha Poet, S-Wrap and The Varsity, The Other Side, Too —RASHAD THA POET RAYFORD, ERICA SCHULTZ

Jo Schornikow, Altar —ELLEN ANGELICO, ARIEL BUI

Ariel Bui, Real & Fantasy —TIM EASTON, SARA NELSON Caitlin Rose, Cazimi —JEFF MELTESEN, JESSICA BREANNE, MIKE SHEPHERD, TRISTEN

Erin Rae, Lighten Up —SPENCER CULLUM, BRETT ROSENBERG, ALE DELGADO, EMILY YOUNG, TRISTEN

Negro Justice, Chosen Family —CORDUROY CLEMENS, MICHAEL EADES, MARQUIS MUNSON

More DIY venues, nontraditional spaces, house shows; focus on local ownership —SPENCER CULLUM, MEGAN LOVELESS, ASHER HORTON, EMILY YOUNG, JESSE RHEW, NATHAN CONRAD, SARA NELSON

More policies to protect and support independent musicians, artists and venues. —ARIEL BUI

Music-related business owners being offered fair chances to purchase their buildings/property —CAM SARRETT

People walking the walk of supporting local music instead of just talking the talk —TYLER MARTINEZ

More artists hiring women and nonbinary folks to produce their music and/ or embracing the title of “producer” themselves —LARISSA MAESTRO

More African American-produced events like Nashfeels —ERICA SCHULTZ

More infrastructure for hip-hop, R&B and soul —RASHAD THA POET RAYFORD, VIRGHOST

Every hip-hop and R&B artist in town deserves more notice. —TYLER MARTINEZ

Whoever finds a means of reducing the number of and providing real services to this city’s homeless. Music is going to Music, but everybody needs a home. —STEVE POULTON

Joseph Allred —MIKE MANNIX

Chuck Indigo —KADEEM PHILLIPS

Proteins of Magic —EVE MARET

Lawndry, Crave On, Sundaes, Gardening Not Architecture — many, many more —MICHAEL EADES

Paul Thacker —JEFF MELTESEN

Dominic Billett —SPENCER CULLUM

Petty —CORDUROY CLEMENS

Threk Michaels —LONEY JOHN HUTCHINS

The Varsity (Mike and Kyle Hicks, Adrian Taylor). Cats are amazing producers. — RASHAD THA POET RAYFORD

2’Live Bre —AUSTIN “AYYWILLÉ” WILLÉ

The Medium, For Horses —MICHAEL EADES, CAROLINE BOWMAN

Namir Blade, Metropolis —VIRGHOST, MICHAEL EADES, LARISSA MAESTRO

Joe Kenkel, Naturale —JOSH HALPER, STEVE POULTON

Crave On, Slow Pulsing Rainbow —ROSS COLLIER, STEVE POULTON

Soccer Mommy, Sometimes, Forever —NATHAN CONRAD, WES DAVENPORT

The Kernal, Listen to the Blood —LUKE SCHNEIDER, CAROLINE BOWMAN

Lou Turner, Microcosmos —MIKE MANNIX, EVE MARET, JESSICA BREANNE

Total Wife, A Blip —BLAIR TRAMEL, CONNOR CUMMINS, MICHAEL EADES

Bats, Blue Cabinet —MEGAN LOVELESS

Personal Trainer, Reflex —TYLER MARTINEZ

TheyNeedWeez, Definitely Different —VIRGHOST

Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears, Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears —JESSE RHEW

Sapna’s Sapna is riffage from the Milky Way’s Bermuda Triangle. —CHET WEISE

WHAT’S ONE THING YOU HOPE TO SEE IN NASHVILLE MUSIC IN 2023?

Madi Diaz, History of a Feeling —JARED CORDER

*repeat repeat’s Everyone Stop —CELIA GREGORY

Coley Hinson, Channel Surfing; Ornament, Rock Solid —JESSICA BREANNE

Rock Solid by Ornament, a band too good (and well-dressed) for Nashville! —COLEY HINSON

Jim Skinner, The Blues Is a Bitch —STEVE POULTON Charlotte Sands, Love and Other Lies —JENNA MITCHELL

Forget Cassettes, Salt (reissue) —MICHAEL EADES

Part Time Filth, Tony Can’t Surf —RYAN SWEENEY

Safari Room, Complex House Plants —JESSE G Raemi, Partly Cloudy —KADEEM PHILLIPS

Six One Trïbe, Trïbe Over Everything —CORDUROY CLEMENS

Courtney Marie Andrews, Loose Future —CAROLINE BOWMAN

Peace Police, 2022 —KYLE HAMLETT

Charlie Whitten, Castles and Fireworks —TODD SHERWOOD

The Mattoid, Great Lovers —LONEY JOHN HUTCHINS

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE LOCAL SONG OF 2022?

Caitlin Rose, “Modern Dancing” —TYLER GLASER, TODD SHERWOOD, EVAN P. DONOHUE

Caitlin Rose, “Nobody’s Sweetheart” —ARIEL BUI, CAROLINE BOWMAN

Reaux Marquez, “Crowd Control” —JUSTIN CAUSEY-BULLOCK, AUSTIN “AYYWILLÉ” WILLÉ, CORDUROY CLEMENS

Negro Justice, “No Throwaways” —NATHAN CONRAD, MICHAEL EADES

Negro Justice, “Spiritual Pressure”; Weston, “18 Wheeler” —CORDUROY CLEMENS

Peachy, “Waiting” —MIKE SHEPHERD, MICHAEL EADES

Twen’s “HaHaHome.” The band’s psychedelic Brit-rock influences shine through in the sexiest way, and I blare this one. —CELIA GREGORY

Twen, “HaHaHome” —ELENA FRANKLIN, JARED CORDER

Twen, “One Stop Shop” —MARQUIS MUNSON, MICHAEL EADES

S-Wrap, Rashad tha Poet and The Varsity, “New Day” —RASHAD THA POET RAYFORD

Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears, “New Trailway Boogie” —MIKE MANNIX

Peace Police, “Chinese New Year”; Lou Turner, “What Might We Find There” —KYLE HAMLETT

Lou Turner, “Empty Tame and Ugly” —EVE MARET

Angela Autumn, “Old Time Lovers” —TIM EASTON

Gatlin, “Masterclass” —TYLER MARTINEZ Carmen, “Faded”; BeHoward, “WTS” —VIRGHOST

Moto Bandit, “You Too” —BLAIR TRAMEL, CONNOR CUMMINS

Qualls feat. Mike Floss, “Ghost” —KADEEM PHILLIPS

Lindsey Lomis, “Call Me When You Get Home” —ALANNA ROYALE

The one those birds in the tree outside my bedroom window wake me with every morning. I think it’s called “Congratulations, You’re Still Here”? —STEVE POULTON

Teddy and the Rough Riders, “Livin in the Woods” —ASHER HORTON

R.E.N., “Run From Me” —MERIT GENTILE Erin Rae, “Mind/Heart”; Molly Martin, “I Like Losers”—ALE DELGADO

Kyshona, “Out Loud”; Z’Cano and Laura Epling, “Treading Water” —LARISSA MAESTRO Erin Rae, “Lighten Up and Try” —BRETT ROSENBERG

Devon Gilfillian, “Brown Sugar Queen” —JENNA MITCHELL

Mike Floss, “Never Ran” —ERICA SCHULTZ $avvy, “Down to Earth”; Volunteer Department, “Swell”; Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears, “Saturday Drive” —CAROLINE BOWMAN

Passion Fruit Boys, “Sex Swing” —EMILY YOUNG

The Wldlfe, “Psycho (When I Wake Up)” —WES DAVENPORT

LO aka Lauren McClinton, “Make Up” —ELLEN ANGELICO

Dillon Watson, “Love Me Do” —RYAN “DOMO” DONOHO

Ornament, “Who’s to Say?” —COLEY HINSON

WHAT’S THE BEST PERFORMANCE YOU SAW THIS YEAR?

Final week of shows at Exit/In under current management, including Lilly Hiatt, JEFF the Brotherhood, Diarrhea Planet, more —COLEY HINSON, ALE DELGADO, EVAN P. DONOHUE, EMILY YOUNG, JENNA MITCHELL, ROBERT ELLIS ORRALL, SARA NELSON, JESSE RHEW, CELIA GREGORY, MIKE SHEPHERD

Mudhoney at Gifford’s Bacon —CHET WEISE, COLEY HINSON

Nnamdï at Drkmttr —MIKE SHEPHERD, OLIVER HOPKINS

Kendrick Lamar at Bridgestone —RASHAD

THAPOET RAYFORD, MARQUIS MUNSON

Beck, acoustic, at The Basement East —COLEY HINSON, CELIA GREGORY, TAYLOR COLE

Stereolab at Marathon Music Works —NATHAN CONRAD, ASHER HORTON

Mac Gayden at 3rd and Lindsley —RYAN “DOMO” DONOHO

Cody Belew at Lipstick Lounge —ELLEN ANGELICO Mitski at the Ryman —ARIEL BUI

Pulled From the Sky 3 — improvisational evening hosted by Caleb Breaux — re-lit the flame of my ear-candles! —ROSS COLLIER

The BlackSon and Ron Obasi at Analog —AUSTIN “AYYWILLÉ” WILLÉ

Lucy’s Record Shop’s 30th anniversary show at Drkmttr was as bonkers as it was heartwarming. —MICHAEL EADES Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub at Third Man —JEFF MELTESEN

Teddy and the Rough Riders opening at the Ryman for Orville Peck; Helado Negro at The Basement East —Loney John Hutchins Smart Objects at The Basement —JESSE G Alanna Royale at Exit/In —ERICA SCHULTZ Alvvays and Slow Pulp at Marathon Music Works —JARED CORDER

The Deslondes at The 5 Spot —TODD SHERWOOD Nosferatu scored by Eve Maret, Dream Chambers and Belly Full of Stars at the Belcourt; W.I.T.C.H. at the Blue Room; Bully at Mercy Lounge —EVAN P. DONOHUE

RESPONDENTS:

Ellen Angelico: musician at large; whippersnapper, Fanny’s House of Music; That’s-CommissionerAngelico-to-You, Metro Arts

Caroline Bowman: staffer at Vinyl Tap and TT Mgmt; podcast and radio host; graphic designer; your No. 1 fan

Jessica Breanne: songwriter; musician; Belcourt staffer

Ariel Bui: singer-songwriter; activist; owner and music educator, Melodia Studio

Ryan Caudle: songwriter, singer and guitarist, Sound&Shape

Justin Causey-Bullock: artist manager; footwear designer; hip-hop journalist

Corduroy Clemens: musician and producer, Six One Trïbe

Taylor Cole: musician, Tayls; talent buyer, The East Room

Ross Collier: audio engineer; Omnichord enthusiast; self-purported (Styrofoam) Wino

Nathan Conrad: rapper, Spoken Nerd; contributor, Ghettoblaster

Jared Corder: producer, Polychrome Ranch; performer, *repeat repeat

Spencer Cullum: musician, Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection and many more Wes Davenport: curator, No Country for New Nashville; founder, PØPSQUAD

Ale Delgado: front row, center

Ryan “Domo” Donoho: entertainer; songwriter; record producer; percussionist

Evan P. Donohue: artist; live sound engineer

Michael Eades: curator, YK Records and We Own This Town

Tim Easton: musician; songwriter

Mike Floss: musician; activist

Elena Franklin: lead singer, Reality Something

Jesse G: musician, Basic Printer

Merit Gentile: musician; staffer, Grimey’s and Fanny’s House of Music; receptionist, Fruits Hair Lab

Tyler Glaser: events coordinator and used vinyl buyer, Grimey’s

Celia Gregory: morning host and over-sharer, 91.1 WNXP

Josh Halper: guitarist; songwriter; producer; gallivanter; choogler; purveyor of skronk

Kyle Hamlett: songwriter; musician

Coley Hinson: musician, Coley and the Young GoHards

Oliver Hopkins: musician, Volunteer Department

Asher Horton: musician, Rainsticks, Twen and Sun Seeker

nashvillescene.com

SistaStrings in the round with Brandi Carlile at City Winery. Everything they played was absolute perfection, and their mom was in the audience heckling them. —LARISSA MAESTRO Ginger Root at Eastside Bowl —BLAIR TRAMEL, CONNOR CUMMINS

Diatom Deli at Drkmttr —LUKE SCHNEIDER Chuck Indigo, Quez Cantrell and Negro Justice at The Cobra —CORDUROY CLEMENS

Total Wife on Record Store Day at Vinyl Tap —SPENCER CULLUM

Anne Malin residency at Vinyl Tap —KYLE HAMLETT

In Place at Big Ears; Kyle Hamlett Duo with Chris Davis DJing at Vinyl Tap; Ziona Riley Trio w/Warren Byrom and Cecilia Wright at Sun Dog Studios; Robbie Lynn Hunsinger/Matt Glassmeyer duo at Betty’s; That Ross Collier Sound Fest in Dragon Park; every time Kim Rueger plays as Belly Full of Stars —STEVE POULTON EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

Loney John Hutchins: producer and label dude, Cleft Recordings and Appalachia Record Co.

Megan Loveless: co-founder, To-Go Records and Nashville Show To-Go Menu; marketing, Third Man Records; talent buyer, The Blue Room

Larissa Maestro: composer; band member, Allison Russell and My So-Called Band

Mike Mannix: founder, Centripetal Force Records; host, Psych Out! on WXNA

Eve Maret: composer, producer, synthesist

Tyler Martinez: owner-operator, Housequake Productions

Jeff Meltesen: marketing, The Caverns; country star every Friday the 13th, D. Striker

Jenna Mitchell: operations manager, Exit/In and Bona Fide Live

Marquis Munson: evening host, 91.1 WNXP

Sara Nelson: owner, Duke’s

Robert Ellis Orrall: BOB the Fatherhood, Infinity Cat Recordings

Kadeem Phillips: CEO, Power Entertainment and Powerhouse Management

Steve Poulton: Altered Statesman; Taurus

Rashad tha Poet Rayford: artist; speaker; actor Jesse Rhew: dictator for life, RudeTech Guitar Effects

Brett Rosenberg: musician, Quichenight

Alanna Royale: performer; songwriter; leopardprint enthusiast

Cam Sarrett: sales and distribution, Third Man Records; drums, Snooper

Luke Schneider: multi-instrumentalist; Third Man Records artist; founder, Forestdale Incense

Erica Schultz: host, Soul of the City and Mode. Radio on WXNA; supporter and lover of all Nashville music, especially within the Black community

Mike Shepherd: bass and vocals, Tower Defense; Nashville rock lifer

Todd Sherwood: co-owner, The 5 Spot

Ryan Sweeney: (almost) all the things at Sweet Time Booking and Records; pizza man; dad

Blair Tramel and Connor Cummins: musicians, Snooper; curators, Electric Outlet

Tristen: musician; songwriter

Virghost: creator, Villematic Hip-Hop showcase; hip-hop artist

Waxed: local thrash goons

Chet Weise: author; guitarist, Kings of the F-King Sea and MAANTA RAAY; editor, Third Man Books

Austin “AyyWillé” Willé: educator and musician

Emily Young: DJ, events and engagement manager, 91.1 WNXP

FRAME AS IT EVER WAS

Taking

a deep dive on the technical aspects of James Cameron’s Avatar: The

Way of Water

BY JASON SHAWHAN

Ilove 3D, and superseding all other feelings about Avatar: The Way of Water is the fact that I want this film to be successful enough that they start making 3D TVs again. There are too many fascinating and provocative works of 3D art for both means and message to simply be unavailable except on an extremely limited number of monitors whose ranks decrease just a little bit with every day that passes.

There are few people who love 3D more than director James Cameron, and it’s his passion for the form that in 2009 helped cement the digital changeover in mainstream exhibition with the first Avatar. It’s because of the promise of that film that so many of the theaters still in business during the neverending pandemic have at least one or two 3D-capable screens, though they’re rarely doing anything with them. Even the biggest Marvel and Disney releases will only devote one screen to the 3D incarnations of their latest releases, more often than not only for the first week and only one or two shows a day. This is due to Hollywood obstinately not paying attention to what Cameron told them the first time around about how to use 3D (don’t do shitty conversions, don’t gouge the customers, shepherd the form until it’s widespread and strong), and that is not a lesson lost on anyone who delights in the stereoscopic experience.

Cameron’s devotion to 3D (and his exceptional 3D conversions of Titanic and Terminator 2) is a tremendous plus in his favor, as are producing Strange Days and the Soderbergh Solaris and his peerless gift for

THE NEXT ACTION HERO

Leonor Will Never Die is a tribute to outlandish Filipino action movies

BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

Coming out of the Philippines, Leonor Will Never Die is a mind-scrambling rebel yell from Martika Ramirez Escobar, a filmmaker who wants audiences to know that there are women overseas who love kickass action movies too.

The Leonor of this movie (played by Sheila Francisco) is also a woman filmmaker, an absent-minded old lady who used to write action

narrative structure. These pluses are offset by some other choices; his insistence on digitally scrubbing the grain from his films shot on celluloid is continually troubling — the current HD master of Aliens, available on Blu-ray and currently screenable on DCP in theaters the world over, is unwatchable, a waxy nightmare that does grave disservice to one of the truly great action-horror films of all time. It stands to reason that a new film from him would in some way embody this complex proportion, and after viewing Avatar: The Way of Water in his preferred format (3D Dolby Vision, presented in a 48-frames-per-second high frame rate that uses doubled frames for non-action sequences), I’m once again processing the work from a director who is his own dialectical exercise.

High frame rate is one of those things that has been dabbled in here and there (namely, in recent films from Ang Lee and Peter Jackson), and there still hasn’t been a definitive explanation for what exactly it brings to the table — other than making the most special of digital effects seem “more real.” (That is, with the same kind of movement as objects and individuals who actually existed and were photographed rather than being rendered.) High frame rate does that thing The Matrix did, where it makes The Fake feel just as real as The Real while also making The Real feel as fake as The Fake. HFR is a whole thing that you

movies in her younger days. Now living with her lecturing son (Bong Cabrera), she gets back in the groove when she sees a newspaper ad calling out for screenplay entries. She goes back to her stash and pulls out an unfinished work: The Return of the Kwago, about a chiseled working man (Rocky Salumbides) who goes on a Super Saiyan-style rampage whenever the town’s evil mayor and his goons go after him and his people.

Just when Leonor’s creative juices start flowing again, an accident sends her into a coma, which also somehow transports her into the movie, where she becomes an unlikely ally for her hero. To say things get crazier and zanier from there would be an understatement — the movie comes out of the gate ready to get nuts. Even before Leonor steps into this actionpacked dreamworld, she and the rest of her family communicate with her dead son (Anthony Falcon), who wanders through this thing as a translucent, chain-smoking apparition.

eventually get used to while watching a film, and it can lead to some truly transcendent moments. (There’s a shootout in Lee’s 2019 film Gemini Man in which a fusillade of bullets becomes a living Giacometti sculpture, and it’s utterly breathtaking, and despite the many problems with the first Hobbit film, it allows Gollum to feel so tactile and real that it’s as if some form of magick or alchemy was involved.)

But the problem is that this hybrid approach to HFR means the brain is constantly being shocked back and forth between the two modes of experience. The ways we perceive traditional 24 fps cinema versus any of the higher frame rates (and here I’m specifically talking about 30 to 60 frames per second, because the really high frame rates, like Lee’s 120 fps Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, don’t even feel like movies, but rather live experiences being watched through the proscenium arch of “reality”) are two very different mental processes. Simply put, as enthralling as the visual pleasures of this film are, it’s impossible for my curmudgeonly old-man eyes to fully engage with what’s happening, because things keep alternating between two very different modes of seeing.

The Way of Water is a better film than its 2009 progenitor, mainly because it expands its focus and perspective. We’re still working in almost exclusively refined archetypes, but Cameron (and co-writers

Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa) are in sequel/ dynasty mode, conscious of narrative and thematic shifts coming later on. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a problem with this because it has to keep fitting everything it’s doing into this grand, overarching continuum, whereas Cameron et al. are growing their continuum organically from the seeds they have planted and tended. Short version: It’s like the Dune books.

In no way was I expecting that one of the pleasures of this film would be sullen teen Sigourney Weaver. As the adopted enigma Kiri, Weaver uses the motion-capture photography process to create something new — though she appears as her character Grace from the first film in both flashback and mycelial-apparition forms, it’s in this weird subversion of Hollywood’s current obsession with de-aging technology that she is able to make this new character live and breathe. And honestly, who hasn’t gone through their tumultuous teens and not felt like they were carrying Sigourney Weaversized drama while also getting seriously filled with rage at whalers?

Is it a problem that as a viewer I relate more to the technical side of things with this film? I enjoyed The Way of Water enough that I’m planning on seeing it again in 4DX (which apparently is not a high-frame-rate presentation, which intrigues me greatly. … I want that 3D majesty in a consistently 24 fps 3D presentation). That already elevates this sequel above its predecessor, which I saw once in an IMAX 3D setup that my addled brain recalls as being on actual 70 mm film, and then never felt the need to revisit. Perhaps the hybrid HFR presentation is a literal incarnation of time passing me by? But I’ll tell you, I could watch hours of the countless aquatic creatures lurking in the seas of Pandora. The giant, almost Acanti-like catfish whales around whom major third-act developments revolve. The jellyfish trees, carrying life throughout this wild world. The butterfly anemones that grant breath underwater, diaphanous winglungs just chilling in the current. The teenytiny squidminnows, glowing in the darkness, shining a way forward, a way through to something new.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

in a beyond-surreal finale.

Leonor is an odd one — the sort of meta clusterfuck that can only come from someone who grew up on both Filipino action films and Charlie Kaufman movies. Inspired by the absurd phenomenon of Filipino movie stars who eventually ran for office, Escobar creates a chaotic cinematic blend of real life (which is usually insane anyway) and the movies, blurring things to the point that events go off the rails

I’ll say this: Leonor Will Never Die will definitely make you want to check out the old-school Filipino action movies Escobar painstakingly re-creates with Kwago. The moviewithin-the movie — which is shown in a 4:3 aspect ratio (and this isn’t even an A24 release!) — is an amusingly campy throwback, full of cheesy performances, quick-cutting fight scenes and a histrionic synth score from someone who must’ve binged a bunch of Tangerine Dream movie scores before making it. (It probably goes without saying that this movie is more entertaining than what’s happening in the actual movie.)

To those who know how batshit-crazy Filipino action movies usually are, Leonor Will Never Die will seem like a darling, properly nutty tribute to the genre. To the rest of you, good luck.

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

Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/ studentcrosswords.

this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon FAUSTINO TORRES. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after DECEMBER 22, 2022 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 JANUARY 23, 2023

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.

resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon FAUSTINO TORRES. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after DECEMBER 22, 2022, 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 JANUARY 23, 2023

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.

M

ville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on JANUARY 30, 2023

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

Joseph P. Day, Clerk

M De Jesus, Deputy Clerk

Date: December 2 2022

Gary W. Temple Attorney for Plaintiff

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Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 22D 1165

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Non-Resident Notice

Fourth Circuit Docket No. 22D722

TERESA DIANE HENDERSON

SEAN LAMAR HENDERSON

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon SEAN LAMAR HENDERSON. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after DECEMBER 29, 2022, 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 JANUARY 30, 2023

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.

Date: December 2, 2022

NSC 12/ 8 12 15 12/ 22, 12/ 29/22

SERBANDA AJXOLLIP GONZALEZ vs. GUSTAVO LINARES

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon GUSTAVO LINARES. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after DECEMBER 22, 2022 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 JANUARY 23, 2023

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

Joseph P. Day, Clerk M De Jesus Deputy Clerk Date: November 22, 2022

Gary W. Temple Attorney for Plaintiff

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vs.

Joseph P. Day Clerk

M De Jesus Deputy Clerk

Gary W. Temple Attorney for Plaintiff

Joseph P. Day, Clerk

De Jesus Deputy Clerk

Matt Maniatis Attorney for Plaintiff

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