Nashville Scene 12-9-21 by FW Publishing

CITY LIMITS: WHAT ‘LIVING RIGHTEOUSLY’ MEANS AT DAVE RAMSEY’S COMPANY PAGE 6

DECEMBER 9–15, 2021 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 44 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

MUSIC: RECORD STORES AND LABELS COPE WITH BOTTLENECKS IN THE VINYL SUPPLY CHAIN PAGE 51

From gubernatorial screw-ups to homegrown insurrectionists and MAGA madness, here’s our 32nd annual list of blunders and bloopers

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CONTENTS

DECEMBER 9, 2021

What ‘Living Righteously’ Means at Dave Ramsey’s Company....................................6

A Soft Place to Fall

CITY LIMITS

Former employees describe a gossipy culture of paranoia and suspicion where women are subject to special scrutiny and rebuke BY STEVEN HALE

Pith in the Wind .........................................7

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

BOOKS

Allison Moorer’s new memoir describes life with her profoundly autistic child BY TINA CHAMBERS AND CHAPTER 16

MUSIC

Paradise Revisited .................................. 50

Boner Awards 2021

BY EDD HURT

COVER STORY

From gubernatorial screw-ups to homegrown insurrectionists and MAGA madness, here’s our 32nd annual list of blunders and bloopers

A new set of 1970s demos from Loney Hutchins sheds light on a neglected master of country music Indie record stores and labels cope with bottlenecks in the vinyl supply chain BY BRONTE LEBO

To Make a House a Home ...................... 52 The Black Opry Revue fosters vital connections for Black country musicians

Brittney Spencer w/Camille Parker, Parnassus Holiday Special, Paul Cauthen, Get Behind the Mule, Chess of the Wind, Celebrating Nashville Symphony’s 75 Years of Harmony, Conexión Américas Holiday Bazar, Chameleon Street, Nashville’s Nutcracker and more

The Spin ................................................... 52

FOOD AND DRINK Golf & Whiskey

BY LORIE LIEBIG

The Scene’s live-review column checks out 91.One WNXP’s birthday party at Exit/In

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy makes relatable emotions startlingly new

The End of the World as We Know It ..... 55 Adam McKay’s apocalyptic burlesque is more sanctimonious than savage

Something Borrowed

57 58

GIFT GUIDE

ON THE COVER:

Illustration by Molly Brooks

Let Me Roll It to You ............................... 54

BY JASON SHAWHAN

33 48

The Belcourt Stocks December Schedule With Holiday Classics

FILM

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

BY POOJA SHAH

Xiao Bao Comes to The Dive

54 BY NADINE SMITH

On planning my big, fat, Indian wedding — and reckoning with my mother’s hopes and dreams

Tennessee’s Kids Should Be Taught the Truth About Our History

BY P.J. KINZER

Talking whiskey with local Americana hero Drew Holcomb — who’s serious about his brown liquor

VODKA YONIC

Advocates for Workers and Immigrants Rally for Better Workplace Protections

Vinyl Analysis .......................................... 51

BY THE COMMITTEE OF BELLYACHERS

CRITICS’ PICKS

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB:

Some Explaining to Do ........................... 54 Being the Ricardos somehow works

BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD MARKETPLACE

THEATER

Nashville Children’s Theatre Celebrates Its 90th Anniversary Talking with Bob Roberts about the lasting impact of the city’s oldest performing arts institution BY AMY STUMPFL

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She’s a friendly, smart, high-energy 2-yearold Shepard/hound mix. She would love to be a new member of an active family with another dog to play with! Her foster family reports she is extremely smart and learns with positive reinforcement quickly. She would be a great “project dog” for agility or any active sport. She LOVES belly rubs, being petted, and being spoiled with treats and lots of love!” MAYOR COOPER AND BRISTOL MOTOR SPORTS AIM TO GET IT DONE AT THE NASHVILLE FAIRGROUNDS SPEEDWAY It’s been more than 37 years since a NASCAR Cup race crossed the finish line at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. The track and surrounding grounds have been in disrepair. But in March, Mayor John Cooper announced a letter of intent with Bristol Motor Speedway that began paving the way for NASCAR events to return to the fairgrounds. Last month, Cooper agreed in principle to a BMS plan that includes total renovation of the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. BMS tried to strike a deal with the previous two administrations to bring NASCAR back to Nashville, but with Cooper as mayor, BMS may now be closer to the finish line. To be finalized, the plan has to be reviewed by a third party, which can attest to the validity of its financial framework. And while the current Metro Charter allows for racing to continue on the property, any demolition there requires approval by 27 Metro Councilmembers. Back in March, the mayor said the city would invest $50 million in revenue bonds to upgrade the speedway and grounds; now his administration thinks an expanded vision for the property warrants up to $75 million in city-backed financing. The Tennessean recently reported that renovations at the property would be “financed by 30-year revenue bonds issued by the Metro Sports Authority, to be paid through various revenue streams. These revenue streams include everything from rent payments to sponsorship agreements and event revenue.” Also, the Tennessee General Assembly approved legislation this year that allows some ticket revenues to be used for facility improvements. But the BMS proposal is racing ahead under a yellow flag. Residents around the fairgrounds are concerned about noise levels, and Metro Councilmember Colby Sledge has said the proposal does not have the same transparency that preceded the deal regarding the nearby Major League Soccer stadium. The BMS proposal addresses the noise concern with a 20-foot wall designed to reduce noise levels around 50 percent. The Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway has a storied history, with races at the location dating back to 1904, and racing being integrated into the annual state fair there in 1915. The track was paved in 1957, and NASCAR began holding races there the next

year. From that time on, we as a city had an unwritten obligation to maintain the track. We created it, therefore we are committed to maintaining it. There have been many proposals that would eliminate the traditional uses of our fairgrounds, but in the past Nashvillians have opposed closing and repurposing the property. Now we have not only a new soccer program and venue, but also the opportunity to see Nashville as a NASCAR city once again. Granted, the BMS plan will require the approval of the Nashville Fair Commissioners Board and the Metro Council, but as Mayor Cooper said, the partnership with Bristol Motor Speedway “creates an economically viable future for our historic track, spurs hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity, and completes the last unrenovated part of the Nashville Fairgrounds at no cost to the Metro General Fund.” The Tennessean cites analysis by Tourism Economics that says bringing NASCAR series events back could add roughly $100 million to Nashville’s bottom line from annual visitor spending. Further, we have drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr. saying they’ll race at least once a year on our track if the deal closes. It’s not difficult to see why tourists and locals would be attracted to the races, should everything pan out. From all outward indications, the mayor and BMS are working to create a venue and environment that Nashville can be proud of, and that will — pardon the pun — drive our economy to a more powerful place. I applaud Mayor Cooper and Bristol Motor Sports for not giving up on the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. I appreciate their efforts in working through the concerns of residents while bringing such an iconic landmark back to life. As a city of racing fans, we started this track, and it’s up to us to make it something we can be proud of for years to come.

Bill Freeman Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and Home Page Media Group in Williamson County.

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

©2021, Nashville Scene. 210 12th Ave. S., Ste. 100, Nashville, TN 37203. Phone: 615-244-7989. The Nashville Scene is published weekly by FW Publishing LLC. The publication is free, one per reader. Removal of more than one paper from any distribution point constitutes theft, and violators are subject to prosecution. Back issues are available at our office. Email: All email addresses consist of the employee’s first initial and last name (no space between) followed by @nashvillescene.com; to reach contributing writers, email editor@nashvillescene.com. Editorial Policy: The Nashville Scene covers news, art and entertainment. In our pages appear divergent views from across the community. Those views do not necessarily represent those of the publishers. Subscriptions: Subscriptions are available at $150 per year for 52 issues. Subscriptions will be posted every Thursday and delivered by third-class mail in usually five to seven days. Please note: Due to the nature of third-class mail and postal regulations, any issue(s) could be delayed by as much as two or three weeks. There will be no refunds issued. Please allow four to six weeks for processing new subscriptions and address changes. Send your check or Visa/MC/AmEx number with expiration date to the above address.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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nashvillescene.com | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

CITY LIMITS

WHAT ‘LIVING RIGHTEOUSLY’ MEANS AT DAVE RAMSEY’S COMPANY

Former employees describe a gossipy culture of paranoia and suspicion where women are subject to special scrutiny and rebuke

n 2019, Ramsey Solutions held its Christmas party at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. An enthusiastic email sent to staff of the company, which is run by evangelical cash-chat radio host Dave Ramsey, informed them on logistics and included a few warnings. “We’ll have alcohol at the party (which is awesome but requires us to be wise and mature),” wrote chief marketing officer Jen Sievertsen in the email, a copy of which was obtained by the Scene. “Most of us have a hotel room there (another huge blessing).” She went on: “And just one more time…. whether it’s 5 pm or 11:30 pm or 2:30 am…. don’t have an individual in your hotel room that’s not your spouse or your family member….it may be 100% innocent YET the appearance is less than that. Even your serious boyfriend/girlfriend/fiance/ or just ‘really great long time platonic friend of the opposite sex’ needs to NOT be in your hotel room. Period. If they need a ride home, put them in an Uber, but don’t let them sleep off that extra drink in your hotel room because it doesn’t look good. And you don’t need people questioning your integrity because righteous living is living righteously and not giving people a reason to question that.” One former Ramsey Solutions employee — a woman who left the company this year — says staffers were told that board members would be in the lobby to make sure no one was leaving with someone other than a spouse.

PHOTO: ALEXANDER WILLIS

BY STEVEN HALE

The company’s definition of “righteous living” — and how it’s enforced — is at the center of an ongoing lawsuit brought in 2020 by Caitlin O’Connor, who was fired when she got pregnant and thus revealed that she’d had sex outside of marriage. The company says it has fired eight other people in the past five years for extramarital sex. In another lawsuit, brought earlier this year, Julie Anne Stamps alleges she was fired after coming out publicly as a lesbian. The women’s suits sit — awkwardly at best — next to reports about the company’s handling of author and media personality Chris Hogan’s extramarital affairs. The Hogan controversy and the O’Connor suit have raised questions and brought forth new allegations about how the culture at Ramsey Solutions affects women. O’Connor’s lawyers have argued that the company’s policy about sex outside of marriage is effectively harsher on women for the obvious reason that they will be exposed if they become pregnant. Former Ramsey employees who spoke to the Scene — two women and a man who spoke under the condition of anonymity for fear of attracting the ire of a man whose orbit they’ve tried to leave — describe a gossipy culture of paranoia and suspicion in which everything from women’s clothing to which co-workers they spend time with is subject to scrutiny and rebuke. “This is another attempt by the plaintiff to litigate her case in the court of public opinion because legally, it has no merit, as is evidenced by the court already having

dismissed all religious discrimination claims,” the company says in a statement to the Scene, declining to respond specifically to statements from former employees, none of whom were O’Connor. “The plaintiff is desperately trying to keep her case alive and smear Ramsey Solutions in the process by making statements and allegations that are not accurate. The truth is that the plaintiff was terminated for engaging in premarital sex, which she knew was a violation of the company’s core values. In the past 5 years, 8 other people have been terminated for the same thing, and most of them were men.” But one newly surfaced allegation, revealed during a recent on-the-record case management conference between attorneys in the O’Connor case — a court recording of which was obtained by the Scene — raises questions about how the company handles alleged sexual misconduct. During the conference, one of O’Connor’s attorneys said that a male employee came to Ramsey confessing that he’d had an affair and saying that the woman involved was alleging “parts of it” were nonconsensual. The attorney said Ramsey emailed the company’s Human Resources Committee, telling them that “this poor guy” was being accused and “this woman’s crazy.” Other emails from Ramsey, cited in court filings by the company’s attorneys, show him taking what would be known in evangelical circles as a “love the sinner, hate the sin” approach to O’Connor’s firing. While agreeing with the HRC’s decision that she should be fired — while pregnant — for having sex outside of marriage, he told them to “love her” and offer “lots of grace, care for the child, money, counseling, pastor support.” But the culture at his company, as described by former employees, sounds more like a strict, sexist youth group where judgmental gossip is prevalent and women are viewed with suspicion as potential objects of temptation to the men at the office. A man who recently left Ramsey Solutions tells the Scene that women were “held to a modesty standard” while men were not. He recalls hearing on more than one occasion about women’s-only meetings, in which the women were told not to dress in ways that would be provocative to the men (whose attire was apparently not a concern). One of the women who spoke to the Scene, a former employee who left the company in 2019, shares the explanation she received for the company’s policies about so-called righteous living. “Someone I knew there that worked in PR said … God won’t bless the company if there’s sin in the company, so that’s why they follow the righteous living thing so God will bless the company and business,” she says. “Basically like God’s like a genie. Joke’s on them, because there was a lot of people living with people or having premarital [sex] — whatever they consider bad sins while people get drunk at the Christmas party.” The same woman says she was once called in to talk to her boss because another staffer had reported seeing her walking out to the parking lot and leaving for lunch with a married male co-worker. Both ended up

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS having to defend the platonic nature of their relationship to their managers. The woman says she was told not to walk to and from the parking lot alone with male co-workers. The other woman who spoke to the Scene says she and her now-husband got married far sooner than they’d planned because their living situations changed and she worried about losing her job if they moved in together. Later, after they eloped, she feared people at work would assume it was a shotgun wedding. “I had some friends who worked there who were like, ‘Oh girl, you better not get pregnant super fast — they’re gonna think you got pregnant before you got married,’ ” she says. Ultimately, the woman left the company earlier this year because of “the toxicity of Ramsey.” She says the company’s namesake goes beyond the mere toughloving financial adviser he plays on the radio to more of a bullying leader. His handling of COVID-19 in 2020 was “appalling,” she says, and only added to the urgent feeling that she needed to leave. “Dave just seemed to become more and more unhinged as the year went on, and I just, like, morally could not stand by that and be like, ‘Yes, I support this man and his behavior and the way he speaks to people and his attitude,’ ” she says. “It no longer fell in line with what I would consider a Christian organization, and I’m a Christian.

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG: The under-construction new West Side high school that had heretofore carried the interim, geographically incongruous name of “new Hillwood High School” — despite being in Bellevue, some 12 miles from Hillwood — will be James Lawson High School following a unanimous vote from the Metro school board. There was considerable momentum from the community to name it Bellevue High School after the former school that closed in 1980, but ultimately the board chose to honor Lawson, the civil rights leader who served as mentor to activists during the Nashville Movement and was expelled from Vanderbilt’s School of Divinity for his activities. Lawson, now 93, pastored a church in Los Angeles for 25 years. He has remained active in social justice movements since his retirement. … Speaking of education, contributor Betsy Phillips thinks Williamson County’s Moms for Liberty aren’t taking it very seriously. The group, which has made headlines for various pandemic- and curriculum-based reasons in recent months, filed a complaint under the state’s new anti-critical-race-theory law about the widely used Wit & Wisdom language arts curriculum. The state denied the request, not because it is without merit, but because the Moms didn’t file correctly. Phillips wonders what the Moms are so worried about anyway. “So these Williamson County Moms for Liberty are white moms whose kids go to majority-white schools that have the size and shape they do because of

“THE WAY THAT DAVE AND THE LEADERSHIP CARRY THEMSELVES AND REPRESENT THE ORGANIZATION IS IN NO WAY BIBLICAL, AT LEAST THE BIBLE THAT I KNOW AND READ AND LOVE.” I have been the majority of my life — gosh, 20-something years. The way that Dave and the leadership carry themselves and represent the organization is in no way biblical, at least the Bible that I know and read and love. The longer I was there the more uncomfortable I got, and the more there was just a stirring of, ‘This is not where you’re supposed to be, this is toxic, get out.’ ” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

white people fleeing integrated public schools,” she writes. “Haha — no wonder they don’t want their kids learning about the civil rights movement. It’s not that the kids are going to feel bad about themselves. It’s that they might start to have questions about their parents and their parents’ motivations. This should go without saying, but apparently people don’t know this? Some white people also fight for equality and are and have been integral to the liberation movements of all Americans. White kids were among the sit-in protesters here in Nashville. White kids were on the Freedom Rides. White people have participated in BLM protests. It’s not as though when your white kid learns the story of Ruby Bridges that they’re going to inevitably identify with the crowds of angry white racists — unless you’ve taught them that they’re on the side of the angry white racists.” … In the wake of an October memo from the Department of Homeland Security that halted ICE workplace raids — which have historically resulted in mass arrests and deportations — local advocacy groups rallied this week to support more protections for undocumented immigrant workers. The action occurred days before the deadline for agencies like ICE and border control to submit new policy guidelines. According to the memo, one of the DHS goals is to target exploitative employers and provide protections to immigrant workers who could report labor violations. The rally included speakers from workers’ and immigrants’ rights groups like Workers’ Dignity, API Middle Tennessee, Elmahaba Center and Never Again Tennessee. … Read the latest On First Reading — our new series of Metro Council recaps written by a local-government expert who prefers the handle @startleseasily. NASHVILLESCENE.COM/PITHINTHEWIND EMAIL: PITH@NASHVILLESCENE.COM TWEET: @PITHINTHEWIND

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From gubernatorial screw-ups to homegrown insurrectionists and MAGA madness, here’s our 32nd annual list of blunders and bloopers BY THE COMMITTEE OF BELLYACHERS Now in its 32nd year, the Scene’s annual Boner Awards issue long ago transcended the gaffes of its namesake, scandal-ensconced former Nashville Mayor Bill Boner. Indeed, the Boners have taken on a life of their own — as much as we love our city, it never disappoints in the Blooper, Blunder and Bonehead departments. From bungled COVID-19 management at the state level to embarrassing behavior by Lower Broadway honky-tonk owners and slur-slinging country stars, Music City gave us plenty to work with this year. State and local politicians, media figures, landlords, transpotainment proprietors, blowhard pastors, the MyPillow guy — they all make appearances in the pages of this issue. Read on for a list of this year’s biggest goofs and screw-ups, compiled by the Scene’s editorial staff. See also: our petty-crime roundup, in which we highlight some of the ding-dongs and dopes arrested for Boner-worthy behavior in 2021.

HatJRKS

Eighth Avenue milliner Gigi Gaskins, owner of HatWRKS, could have just kept selling hats. This is a hat town. Selling hats in Nashville is as easy as selling crystals in Sedona. Because of our city’s long history of cattle ranching, every tourist must have a cowboy hat! Selling hats is like printing money, baby. The last thing you’d want to do in such a noncontroversial, apolitical business is take a controversial, political stance and do so in the most idiotic way possible, right? Not our Gigi! After months of flying various MAGA tripe from her stores walls, Gaskins upped the ante, posting on Instagram a picture of a woman wearing a sticker that said “Not Vaccinated” — sort of an adhesive “I’m With Stupid” Tshirt. That’s dumb, but it’s not patently offensive. It’s not like it said “Not Vaccinated” on a gold Star of David, similar to the ones Nazis made Jewish

people wear during the Holocaust. Oh, except yes, that’s exactly what it was. At first, Gaskins defended herself, saying the outrage directed at her should instead be directed at a not-yet-implemented-or-seriously-proposed government plan to segregate the unvaccinated. Or something. Gaskins can see the tyranny coming, ladies and gentlemen, and she’s just a cap-selling Cassandra trying to gear us up for it. The backlash was swift and universal. Typically, that’s the kind of thing a person like Gigi would be proud of — and she probably was until it started to hit her where it hurts. A little independent hatmaker by the name of Stetson said they’d stop distributing their wares through HatWRKs. Nearly everyone else in the industry followed, forcing Gaskins to do what those of her ilk loathe doing: apologize.

Crap Berger

Well, it’s been an interesting couple of years for Grace Chapel pastor Steve Berger. He attended the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and told his social media followers that the violence was not perpetrated by Trump supporters, but Antifa. He recanted that lie, but stepped down as the lead pastor at Grace Chapel, Gov. Bill Lee’s home church. Berger and his family left the church this year after his wife stood up in the middle of a service and accused the church board of labeling the pastor as a “Christian extremist.” The Bergers will begin their new lives running a nonprofit that seeks to influence elected officials with Christian doctrine. A Boner Award to our once and future theocrats.

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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Pillow Talk

pandemic then. Physical evidence pointed to the state legislators being grown adults — they were wearing suits, and some had gray hair, after all. But the glee with which our representatives tore down the clear barriers that separated their desks on the House floor of the Capitol building could only have been that of a misbehaved preteen aggressively celebrating the last day of school.

Mike Lindell (aka the MyPillow guy) has made the rounds as a talking head on the conspiratorial right-wing circuit for some time now. But while he has enjoyed the company of Trump and similar ghouls, he may have overestimated his access to the GOP as a whole. When he showed up to the Republican Governors Association’s conference here in Nashville in May, he was promptly thrown out. Lindell maintained that he was invited, but at any rate he was shown the door shortly after arriving at the JW Marriott. One RGA member told outlets that the bedding magnate tried to crash an event at Gov. Bill Lee’s house. The scorned MyPillow guy left town almost immediately, possibly planning some spiteful and incompetent bid at office to get his own seat at the table. We suggest he sleep on it.

Niceley Done

Getting indicted by the feds on campaign finance charges is often enough to secure yourself a Boner, but various related events make state Sen. Brian Kelsey’s legal troubles even more worthy of inclusion here. First, Kelsey — a Shelby County Republican — blamed the indictment on the wrath of Democratic President Joe Biden (who, without a doubt, has no idea who Kelsey is), even though the investigation into Kelsey’s campaign spending was largely conducted by officials in the Trump administration. Additionally, though Kelsey vehemently proclaimed his innocence, one of his colleagues, fellow Republican Frank Niceley, took to the Senate floor not to agree that his co-worker was innocent, but to say that violating the law in question is not even that big of a deal and shouldn’t be illegal. Thanks for the support, Frank.

It’s not always clear that Gov. Bill Lee is up to the challenge of being the executive of an entire state. And it’s not always clear that he understands exactly how governing works. What’s worse, now it’s not even clear he knows how elections work, or who gets to vote for him. To wit: One of Gov. HVAC’s bright ideas to goose the viral-loaded economy was to pay people to visit here. And not just a few people. Ten-thousand people! With his “Tennessee on Me” program, the governor offered $250 airplane vouchers to out-ofstaters flying into Tennessee’s four largest airports if they booked a two-night stay. Now, $250,000 is no small potatoes, but it’s something a heating-and-cooling magnate could fund himself. “Tennessee on Me,” he said in the commercials. It was, of course, not on him. It’s on the taxpayers, who are actually paying for this. This managed to unite members of both parties in complaint. Republicans were mad because it only helped the big cities, what with their liberals. Democrats were mad because the program came on the heels of, among other things, the governor axing unemployment benefits. In short, Lee ticked off everyone and bribed the only people involved who can’t actually vote for him. And we footed the bill.

Fluff Job

Gov. Bill Lee ran for office in part by touting his involvement with the prison ministry Men of Valor and pledging to support criminal justice reforms. Instead he has signed off on four executions (so far) and overseen very little reform. He’s also signed laws that created harsher penalties and will contribute to mass incarceration. But this award isn’t for him. He’s just a weak-willed politician unable or uninterested in bringing about real change. That’s not news. This Boner Award is for NewsChannel 5 and their reporter Kyle Horan, who laundered Lee’s self-serving rhetoric about his passion for reform into a news story, achieving more than the governor’s press team ever could on their own. We expect politicians to, er, pump up their own achievements. No need to do it for them.

Missed Shot

It was bad enough that the Tennessee Department of Health fired its top vaccine official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, in an apparent attempt to assuage anti-vax elements of the Republican base. That was dumb, especially as Tennessee’s vaccination rates were lag-

ILLUSTRATION: MOLLY BROOKS

Fly Me to the Boondoggle

The Guy Who Came in From the Cold

The Insurrectionists Next Door

The Jan. 6 insurrection was a bigger threat to democracy than the average Boner, and while we won’t understate the seriousness or danger of the coup attempt, we can’t overlook the level of idiocy present in the mob — especially with so many Tennessee connections. You all know Eric Munchel (aka Zip Tie Guy), who rocked a blue outline of Tennessee on his tactical gear (which also featured an American flag emblazoned with a Punisher logo). He was revealed to be a recently fired employee of Kid Rock’s Nashville honky-tonk, which is perfectly fitting. A slew of folks with Tennessee connections were arrested, including a few who outed themselves on social media as storming the Capitol — and a guy named Christopher Cunningham, who during an unrelated incident inexplicably told a Metro police officer that he entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. Imagine attacking democracy and going to jail for Donald Trump, of all people. Of course, we can’t overlook the spinelessness of Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty. Eager to boost Trumpy talking points, the two legislators were planning to vote against ratifying the election results. But when the, shall we say, Q d’Etat ended (ultimately leaving five people dead), Tennessee’s two senators changed their votes — though their rhetoric hasn’t changed much since then. Gov. Bill Lee’s pastor Steve Berger was there as well (more on him on p. 8) and later made myriad nonsensical claims about the riots. He eventually apologized for the falsehoods, and announced he was leaving the church. What’s more, a little piece of the Jan. 6 riots landed in the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in October with the extremely misnomered Truth About Cancer convention — an assembly of medical fraudsters, conspiracy theorists and … Eric Trump. Tyler and Charlene Bolinger of Sumner County organized the event, months after the couple helped put together the Stop the Steal rally in D.C. Rolling Stone asked the resort’s managing company for a response, and those requests went unanswered.

ging. What elevates this bit of bungling to another level, though, is the way the state allowed Fiscus to run media circles around them for nearly a week afterward. She’d been on CNN before the state or the department managed unconvincing responses to what was by then a national controversy. If you’re gonna shoot your shot, so to speak, maybe think about how you plan to explain

it afterward. For putting politics over public health, and sucking at it, we honor the health department’s leadership here.

A Clear Divide

Thousands of Tennesseans have died from COVID-19 since May of this year, despite Republican Tennessee lawmakers ceremoniously declaring victory over the

Firebrand Republican Rep. Bruce Griffey is leaving the legislature next year, and it might have something to do with office politics. Though he shares the Trumpy, anti-immigrant leanings of many of his colleagues, something about the way Griffey conducts business really pisses them off, leaving him mostly empty-handed after three years in the state House. Earlier this year, he tried to use a procedural trick to bring one of his many failed bills back to life, and that royally irked House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a fellow Republican. Sexton yanked Griffey from his committees and (allegedly) turned off his elevator key card. It didn’t take long before Griffey had sheepishly apologized and was back on his committees (and the elevator).

Textbook Case

Remember Laurie Cardoza-Moore? It’s OK if you don’t, given the fact that the average human brain can only reserve so much for the various 15-minutes-of-lame nutjobs who hog column inches every now and then. But as a quick refresher, she first rose to our attention in her (ultimately futile) attempt to stop construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro, because, she said, it was going to be used to train terrorists. She estimates — using sound scientific principles, no doubt — that fully 30 percent of Muslims are, in fact, terrorists, and she was worried the mosque in Murfreesboro would be a mustering center, given that Muslims are still fighting the Crusades and that Nashville, with its Sunday School publishing and hymnody industries, is seen as “the capital of the Crusaders.” Obviously, this is a person with a firm grip on history, because we all remember when Saladin marched his army to the Baptist Sunday School Board headquarters. Anyway, the enlightened crackpots of the state legislature confirmed Cardoza-Moore’s appointment to the State Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission, because … um, well no one actually said

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board member to vote against a mask mandate, citing “no data to support any of this right now” — despite a rise in Delta-driven COVID-19 cases and CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations to require masks.

Masking for Trouble

Shortly after 3 p.m on May 13, the Metro Board of Health — after reviewing some newly released CDC guidance — announced that the county’s mask mandate would remain in place. Two hours later, the Metro Board of Health — after actually rereading some newly released CDC guidance — announced that, in fact, what they meant was the total opposite and that the mask mandate would disappear like so many baristas’ dreams of country music stardom at 5 a.m. Of course, what went unsaid in the whiplashing statements was this: People who were wearing masks before kept wearing them, vaccinated or not, and the people who weren’t still weren’t. But thanks for the head-scratcher.

Half Life

ILLUSTRATION: MOLLY BROOKS

Back in March, Mayor John Cooper set a citywide goal of getting 50 percent of Nashville residents vaccinated against COVID-19 by May, using the hashtag #50by5 to boost his campaign on social media. Seeing as how, in the mayor’s words, “Nashville was the first of the 10 largest cities in the Southeast to vaccinate 25 percent of residents,” it seemed an attainable goal. But then May came and went. And then June. And July. Finally, on Aug. 20, the Metro Public Health Department announced that 50 percent of Davidson County residents were fully vaccinated against the virus. But this Boner Award doesn’t go to Cooper, per se. Rather, it goes to the Nashvillians who dragged their feet on protecting themselves and others against COVID, not because there was a lack of vaccine availability or supply (there wasn’t!), but because … well, who the hell knows why.

Tour de Farce

Lowered Expectations

On March 11, Gov. Bill Lee tweeted a video and a thread of photos from Lower Broadway in Nashville, encouraging tourists to make Nashville their next travel destination. OK, sure. The problem? He did it not only during a global pandemic, but while maskless in a city that had a mask mandate still in effect, at a time when Davidson County’s new COVID-19 case average was roughly 150 a day. Lee’s photos clearly show the state’s top leader inches away from Lower Broad business owners and patrons, without a mask, shaking hands — all before, according to a spokesperson, the governor had received his COVID-19 vaccination. Naturally, experts and residents were disappointed to see Lee setting such a poor example for his constituents during such a crucial time. Surprised? Hardly. Next time, governor, maybe just stay home.

why. But the good news is her term doesn’t coincide with a review of the history or civics textbooks. Yay?

Boner Backtrack

In February, when news broke that Tennessee State University President Glenda Glover would be joining the corporate board of private prison behemoth CoreCivic, the public response was utterly predictable! People were mad because CoreCivic prof-

its from mass incarceration, including the disproportionate imprisonment of Black people, and Glover is the president of a historically Black university. She quickly announced that she had decided against taking the position, but this one still gets an award.

Bush League

Around this time last year — just after the cutoff for our 2020 Boner Awards — District 6 school board representative Fran Bush

was advocating to bring kids back to inperson learning and, in the process, picking fights with teachers on Facebook. Returning kids safely to school was indeed a conversation that needed to be had, but navigating the decision and weighing pros and cons didn’t have to include social media posts targeting the former president of Nashville’s teachers union. Then, right before kids returned to in-person learning for the 202122 school year, Bush was the only MNPS

When Mayor John Cooper’s administration lobbied for money to fund construction equipment and cameras for parks where homeless camps are located, Metro decided to defer on the request. Metro councilmembers cited concerns about the equipment being used to displace campers and cameras being used to surveil them. In response, the administration then invited councilmembers to tour the camps themselves — and Cooper and his staff really should have seen the backlash coming by a mile. It heightened accusations about displacement and surveillance, and mostly seemed voyeuristic and tasteless. One councilmember even called it “nutso.” As far as the Scene knows, only three councilmembers attended any of the tours. Supporters of the bill tried to control the spin — both about the purpose of the equipment and the fallout from the tour invites — and while the bill’s fate hasn’t been decided as of this writing, Cooper still came off as an out-of-touch rich guy.

Down to Brass Tax

In April, Mayor John Cooper took to a local morning show to make a bold promise: Nashvillians would soon see “the largest property tax rate reduction ever.” Close observers of city government were

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flabbergasted. The mayor was referring to the regular, every-four-years property reassessment. State law prohibits cities from making more money based on a reassessment, so rates go down when property values go up, leaving taxpayers owing, on average, exactly the same total amount. “Nonsense,” Cooper rival Bob Mendes said about the declaration.

The Thin Blue Boner

ILLUSTRATION: MOLLY BROOKS

Maybe it was bad timing, or maybe it was something more calculated, but the Metro Nashville Police Department decided to drop a tone-deaf copumentary about Chief John Drake back in the spring in the wake of scrutiny about police shootings, concerns about how the police had handled an earlier warning about the Christmas Day bomber, and questions about how its public relations office chooses to release and withhold information. In the video, Drake says he wants people to see that “police officers are good people” — but issues with accountability and transparency don’t help that argument much.

Cherry Choppin’ Daddy

“We are the cherry trees,” then-Councilmember John Cooper said, absurdly, in 2019 as he launched his successful bid for mayor. He was comparing Nashville’s residents to some trees removed from the riverfront downtown to accommodate the NFL Draft. It’s hard to imagine a scenario that would make that statement sound more ridiculous, but Cooper obliged us and facilitated one. Earlier this year, now-Mayor Cooper signed off on the removal of 17 or so trees — including, yes, some cherry trees — from the park area around Nissan Stadium, a stone’s throw from the sacred site of the fallen 2019 trees. This time, the tree trimming was for the benefit of a car race. Cooper declined to offer any existential declarations about the meaning of their removal.

Who Will Speak for the Trees?

The Adventure Science Center wanted an arboretum. The Adventure Science Center doesn’t have a lot of space. The Adventure Science Center also happens to sit next to (or maybe on?) the site of the Bass Street community, the first major Reconstructionera Black neighborhood in the city. We’re just now unearthing what all is at the Bass Street site, and archaeologists have already found plenty. But there could be plenty more. Maybe over here by the museum, where they want to put the arboretum. Maybe we should do a full archaeological survey before we plow it up and drop in a bunch of hardwoods. Or maybe, we just do what the museum did and plant the trees before the archaeologists can get their hands dirty. I’m sure it’ll be OK.

Good 4 Nothin’

When 4 Good Government filed yet another petition to overturn the city’s now 2-year-old increase in property taxes, they found willing partners in the Republicans on the county election commission. You see, instead of making Jim Roberts’ group defend the petition in court, the GOP members voted to hire outside lawyers and have the commission take up the cause. The result? Instead of Roberts & Co., we the taxpayers are now stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills to defend a blatantly

Fire in the Hole!

At the Fourth of July fireworks celebration downtown — Biggest in the Nation! — several police officers were stuck in the Bridge Building during the display while trying to make sure the building was empty of trespassers. A police helicopter was also not clear of the scene. As it turns out, according to the Metro Nashville Police Department, a Bridge Building employee and three companions were inside the building, and eight SWAT officers were dispatched to clear the structure. A representative from the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp made it clear that the display began when “the fire marshal gave the go-ahead” — but there was clearly some sort of breakdown in communication, forcing the officers to shelter in place for the duration of the massive show. Nice work all around, folks!

unconstitutional proposed change to the Metro Charter. A big fat Boner Award to DCEC chair Jim DeLanis and his two yes men for setting giant piles of money on fire in the name of serving taxpayers.

Donkey-Tonk Blues

This Boner requires little explanation. In an interview with the Scene in February, boneheaded honky-tonk owner Steve Smith — of Tootsies and Kid Rock’s Big Ass Boner Factory, among other establishments — called Mayor John Cooper “Hitler John Cooper,” urging a reporter to quote him, because of the mayor’s support for COVIDrelated restrictions. When someone else on the call — a call that included Kid Rock and Kid Rock’s dad, who is apparently known as Daddy Kid Rock — encouraged him to “retract the Hitler,” Smith insisted: “I’m not gonna retract ‘John Cooper’s Hitler.’ I’m not retracting that.”

Bob’s Your Uncle

Kid Rock — the rap-rock performer, Nashville transplant and Kid Rock’s Big

Ass Honky Tonk & Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse proprietor born Bob Ritchie in middle-class Michigan — probably deserves some sort of Mega Boner Award at this point, as much as he’s shown up in the pages of this annual issue. What earned him his trophy this time? Using a homophobic slur. Twice. As reported by TMZ, Rock used the epithet onstage at FishLipz Bar & Grill in Smithville, Tenn., back in June. Then, a few days later on Twitter, he doubled down with a non-apology that reads as follows: “If Kid Rock using the word faggot offends you, good chance you are one. Either way, I know he has a lot of love for his gay friends and I will have a talk with him. Have a nice day. -Bob Ritchie.” Cool, man. Good one. Totally normal way for a 50-year-old guy to speak.

Opening a Can of Boners

By the end of January, rising country star Morgan Wallen — the goober who blew his first chance to play SNL in 2020 but got a mulligan — had a chart-topping hit with his new record Dangerous: The Double Album. On Feb. 2, TMZ published footage

from Wallen’s neighbor’s security camera in which the singer uses the N-word while whooping it up in the street after a night out. The sheepish apology was swift, and there were immediate consequences, such as his label Big Loud Records temporarily suspending his contract. Months later, the debacle continues and there are abundant Boner honorees in the mess. Among them are the folks who bought billboards protesting Wallen’s disqualification from various awards ceremonies. Throw one to radio personality Bobby Bones, who suggested that people need to “move on” from the incident. (He later backpedaled.) Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan and Tyler Hubbard can share a Boner for giving Wallen a big public welcome-back moment onstage at Bridgestone Arena. There are some less Boner-tastic aspects of the saga: Rolling Stone reported there was scant evidence that Wallen actually donated the $500,000 he’d promised the Black Music Action Coalition that he would give to Black-led charities and anti-racist organizations. Big Loud, which appeared to have slow-walked a response to the magazine, gave a statement after the article was published about how contributions were made on the singer’s behalf. Despite the hullabaloo, or perhaps because of it, Dangerous remains one of the year’s biggest sellers. People with power seem hell-bent on helping Wallen avoid any action that could encourage real change in our culture, rather than helping him do it.

Jason Lives

Country star Jason Aldean is no stranger to the Boner arena; he dressed up as Lil Wayne for Halloween in 2015, in blackface. This year, Aldean has joined the chorus of outrage over COVID precautions, taking shots aimed at masking and a state mandate that children get a COVID vaccine in order to attend school — although that’s happening in California … next year … provided it’s upheld by that state’s Supreme Court. However, Aldean’s promise to “never apologize for [his] beliefs” didn’t stop him from participating in events where proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test was required, such as an invite-only concert taping at his Lower Broadway bar in October and a November performance at Marathon Music Works. There’s at least some evidence that he’s aware of the life-saving and freedomproviding power of contemporary medicine when it’s practiced on a global scale.

Family Style

We’ll toss a bonus Boner to Jason Aldean’s wife Brittany for posting photos of the couple’s kids in “Hidin’ From Biden” anti-vax T-shirts. She also teamed up with Aldean’s sister Kasi Wicks on a limited run of “patriotic” apparel bearing such stirring slogans as “This Is Our Fucking Country.” On that particular design, the stars and bars cover the “uck” — y’know, for propriety’s sake.

Get a Load of This Tritt

Speaking of country stars, the thing Travis Tritt has done this year that’s attracted the most attention is blocking Twitter users who disagree with his stance that concert venues shouldn’t require patrons to show proof of vaccination against COVID or a negative test. Freedom-fighter Tritt had a solo tour booked for the fall that he ultimately canceled. Most of the venues

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had enacted COVID protocols, and in a statement, that’s where he put the blame: “Any show I have booked that discriminates against concertgoers by requiring proof of vaccination, a COVID test, or a mask is being canceled immediately. … This is a sacrifice that I’m willing to make to stand up for the freedoms that generations of Americans have enjoyed for their entire lifetimes.” In a subsequent interview with the singer, Billboard’s Taylor Mims pointed out that advance sales for those shows appeared soft, to which Tritt replied that “in no way, shape, form, or fashion do ticket sales play into this decision.” In other news, there’s some great oceanfront property in New Mexico selling cheap right now.

AJ Capital Partners, a development firm whose portfolio includes The Graduate boutique hotel chain, has done a swift and thorough job of turning itself into a villain in Music City. The company bought the property home to legendary independent venue Exit/In after an equivalent offer from club proprietors and music-scene vets Chris and Telisha Cobb was passed over. When the property went under contract in April, the Cobbs responded by launching a GoFundMe that would raise money to sweeten a potential offer to the soon-to-be new owner. AJ’s first public communication about the project (which, we note with a grumble, came at 6 p.m. on a Friday) included an opportunity for “hardworking folks” to be reimbursed for their contributions to the Cobbs’ campaign. Months after the sale closed in July, AJ made good on its promise to file for historic protections on the site. But for the developer to act as if Nashvillians should take its goodwill for granted — whether that’s toward the property itself or the culture that the venue is a vital part of — suggests that either they’re naive or they think we are. AJ also took a rake to the face via the poor handling of its relationship with Wedgewood-Houston. Discussions with neighborhood organization South Nashville Action Partners didn’t go its way, so the firm announced its intention to stop seeking input from the group. This raised the ire of Metro Councilmember Colby Sledge, who responded by withdrawing AJ’s rezoning applications for a major project involving the historic Merritt Mansion. AJ returned to SNAP with their tails between their legs. The icing on the Boner is that founder and CEO Ben Weprin got on a Zoom to apologize to the community for his group’s behavior, and did so from … a private jet.

ILLUSTRATION: MOLLY BROOKS

Capital Follies

Hot Tub Crime Machine

It’s hard to pick just one thing to honor out of the Boner parade that is Lower Broadway’s fleet of so-called transpotainment vehicles, but this ranks pretty high: In September, the city filed a lawsuit alleging that the infamous Music City Party Tub was not a registered business in the state, did not have a business license and did not have a public pool permit. But we’re giving this award to Metro itself for this little tidbit: The lawsuit revealed that the city had allowed the mobile party tub to operate for a year anyway! Boi-oi-oing.

Miscommunications Strategy

It’s not clear how many people at the Mosaic Apartments were told one Friday afternoon that they had three days to leave home, but enough of them were upset about the news that they organized and rallied to stay in place. Many said they only received a phone call telling them they had to vacate the premises, while others said they had spoken to a manager or staffer who offered some kind of compensation; still others said their concerns were dismissed because they were immigrants. There wasn’t much in writing to inform residents of what was going on, either. The media quickly took notice (including the Scene), and more stories about neglect and unsafe living conditions came to light. Meanwhile, management’s

explanations for what was happening were shared only in small batches, occasionally with small changes to the narrative. Eventually, Mosaic’s out-of-state owner Rob Bond attended a public forum with residents. While his lawyers offered more information about who was being relocated and why (they said it was only people in apartments hit by flood damage), residents were still unsatisfied with both the recent situation and ongoing problems. And they let Bond know directly, publicly shaming him and his management. Bond eventually stormed off in a huff. He could run away from Nashville, but

tenants had to stick around — and there’s no denying that Mosaic tenants deserved much better than the treatment they’d been receiving for years.

Busting the Boner Budget

Dave Ramsey may urge his listeners to avoid debt, but he owes us one for keeping this item relatively short — if Boners were dollar bills, you could say this guy makes it rain. The right-wing evangelical macho money guy — through his company flacks — sent an absolutely unhinged statement to Religion News Service reporter

Bob Smietana when Smietana reached out for comment about a story that exposed, among other things, some double standards with regards to Ramsey Solutions’ enforcement of a company moral code. Later, after a former Ramsey employee sued because she was fired for having sex and getting pregnant outside of marriage, Inc. Magazine rescinded its 2020 designation of Ramsey Solutions as a “Best Workplace” honoree. Doesn’t sound like one to us either.

Some of the News That’s Fit to Print

We here at Boner Central don’t like to

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kick The Tennessean and its staff when they’re down: Their owners at Gannett seem to be doing a fine job of that all on their own. After first commoditizing their production process in central hubs and then moving the printing operation to Knoxville, Gannett has made the paper’s deadlines so early that nothing newsworthy after 5 p.m. gets into the morning paper. But even by these low standards, Oct. 17’s issue was a doozy. In preparation for the big U.S.-Panama World Cup qualifier — which saw a pair of Nashville SC players captain their respective national teams — The Tennessean ran a feature at the bottom of the Sunday sports section. The only problem? The game was played on Oct. 10. A Boner to the folks who thought making the print edition completely irrelevant was a good long-term business strategy.

Reel Talk

A couple months back, longtime local reporter Phil Williams — who has done some very strong work over the years with NewsChannel 5 — tweeted that Instagram’s Reels “overwhelmingly emphasize a stereotypical White female body image — and, as far as I can tell, there’s no way to turn it

off.” He included a screenshot of the offending Reels (which did indeed appear to feature several attractive young white women). Thing is, Instagram tends to suggest the kinds of videos that you’re already watching. That’s the whole deal with algorithms. After a few helpful Twitter users brought this to Williams’ attention, he deleted his tweet. This one isn’t the biggest Boner in the bunch, but it’s certainly a prime example of an unforced error. Whoops!

Victim Naming

Jason Steen has long been a combative local presence online, trolling journalists, politicians and others on Twitter. That is, when his website wasn’t profiting off of mugshot-shaming and bail bondsmen advertising. After he got into a Twitter spat with some local activists about a police shooting — Steen would insult them both online and in his podcast — a local comedian decided to call him out for that incident and others. Josh Black posted a video attacking the sleazy practices of Steen’s Scoop: Nashville website, saying Steen profited off the incarceration of Black and working-class people. Black also took a swipe at the then-recent

news that Steen wasn’t paying employees of his Scoop: Clarksville operation. (The video came out before Steen was arrested for not paying a moving company.) Black fanned the flames by superimposing a Confederate flag over Steen’s photo — a cheap shot for sure — but Steen’s response is the Boner-winning entry here. Steen said that in response to Black’s video, his site would resume the controversial practice of naming victims in Scoop: Nashville’s reporting — a cowardly move that would have seen Steen dragging victims of crime and domestic abuse into his beef with the comedian. Steen later deleted the Tweet, while Josh Black’s star simply rose higher.

Gender Offender

Most years we try to keep all of our Boner Awards within Nashville city limits, but we’re willing to take a trip down Rutherford County way if the Boner is big enough. Back in September, the Murfreesboro Police Department locked down area schools due to rumors of an active shooter — rumors that were sparked after someone reported hearing gunshots followed by a scream. Well, thankfully, those rumors were proven

untrue. As it turns out, an expectant father “fired celebratory rounds from a handgun into the air and the expectant mother screamed out of excitement of the news of a baby boy,” according to the MNP. Dad was cited with unlawful discharging of a firearm. As far as gender-reveals-gone-wrong are concerned, there have been worse ones, but this one is certainly bad enough to earn these unnamed ’Boro residents a big old Boner Award.

Just Park It Anywhere

Anybody who has ever been stuck in traffic on Interstate 24 (which is to say, everyone who has ever driven on Interstate 24) has seen some weird things. Maybe not as weird as what commuters near the interstate’s interchange with I-840 saw on Oct. 1, when a hot air balloon plopped down on the shoulder of the eastbound lanes right during morning rush hour. Don’t worry — Capt. Jack Wheeler, owner of Smoky Mtn Air Hot Air Ballooning, insisted there was nothing wrong. He was just low on fuel and the wind wasn’t with him, so his best option was to set ’er down right there. EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

From beer thievery to alleged Taco Bell arson, here are some Nashville boneheads arrested this year for Boner-worthy behavior BY J.R. LIND

ometimes it’s not exactly clear to whom a particular Boner Award should be given. Take, for example, an incident at Nissan Stadium in mid-July. Metro police arrested a man for theft after spotting him loading 29 beers from a cooler at the stadium into a black trash bag and a box. He dropped the brews when stadium security gave chase (there’s your Boner!), and when police asked why he stole the beer (um, because beer is great?) he said, “Because the door was open.” Basically the 2021 version of Edmund Hillary climbing Mt. Everest because it is there. The man was charged with burglary — though given the price of stadium beer, he’s lucky it wasn’t grand larceny, am I right?! Anyway, this little tale raises the question: Who takes this Boner? The Titans for not locking the stadium? The man, for the act itself? Surely not. His only bonehead moment was dropping the cans. The police for arresting him instead of cheering him as a liberator? Sometimes, of course, the Boner is a little more cutand-dried. A few days before our sudsy hero pulled his heist, Nashville firefighters put down a raging blaze at a Nolensville Road Taco Bell. (With all the great, genuine Mexican options on Nolensville, perhaps this Boner should go to the people who keep that Taco Bell in business, but I digress.) A review of security footage showed (presumably bored) employees locking the doors to the restaurant and then chasing one another with fireworks before disappearing into the men’s room for God knows what reason. Then they come back, place something into a trash can and head outside to record the results of this

experiment with their cellphone cameras. Heretofore, this is mostly just a stupid prank, but what vaults it into Bonerdom is this: The trash fire got out of control, and when the employees tried to rush back inside to extinguish the blaze, they realized they had locked themselves out. Yes, authorities charged them with aggravated arson. Sometimes Boners go in a different direction that you expect. To wit, here’s a Tide Pod Boner. Surely you’re thinking, “Oh no, the teens with their TikToks and their complicated haircuts are up to it again.” Or maybe you’re thinking a certain twice-impeached former president and election loser is encouraging his cultists to try a new COVID treatment. Instead, this Boner goes to a 23-yearold man who allegedly stole 10 bags of Tide Pods from the Gallatin Avenue Kroger while driving his uncle’s car. Contacted by police, the uncle gave up his nephew, who at least probably smelled nice. Speaking of the wrong car, did you hear about the Broadway celebrant who had a little too much to drink and decided to just hop into cars on the thoroughfare? It was all fun and games until he hopped into an MNPD patrol car. Whoops! At least the officers didn’t have to perp-walk the guy too far. There’s a saying in politics, bad decision-making and other Boner-inducing activities that any person confronted with troublesome charges should always admit what they can’t deny and deny what they can’t admit. This is why anyone pulled over for a DUI tends to say they had “two or three beers.” Usually. Some folks, like one 27-year-old Nashville man, decide instead to stretch the truth to the moon. Pulled over for driving left of center, the man said, yes, he’d taken one shot while

working. The breathalyzer told a different story when it popped him at 0.223. A shot of what, bud? Rocket fuel? At least that guy was an actual employee, unlike a 52-year-old man who snuck through a window at Kid Rock’s Big Ass Disease Vector and Puke Palace and milled around the back of the house pretending to be an employee. Once he’d fooled his “co-workers,” he went into the club itself, took more than $80 in orders from bar patrons, then turned around and spent that money on drinks for himself. The guy could have just filled out an application, you know. Like the 22-year-old who went into a Brick Church Pike business looking for work and filled out an application — but instead of leaving and waiting anxiously by the phone for a callback, he instead (allegedly) stole $300 in cash from the business’s office — plus a credit card, which he proceeded to use at a nearby pawn shop. The police had no trouble tracking him down, since he put his actual home address and phone number on the application. And that, dear reader, is how you don’t get a job. And here’s how not to act when you lose a job: Don’t mess up the batter room. Moments after being told he was free to pursue other opportunities, a 23-year-old employee — well, former employee — of Wonton Food charged into the batter room. Which is a room … with batter in it, I guess? Anyway, he yanked the main valve, sending batter all over the batter room, making the room for the making of batter look more like a room made of batter. Obviously no more batter could be used in the manufacture of batter-based foods that day, so the shop shut down. The man fled, but was eventually arrested and charged with aggravated vandalism. ■

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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nashvillescene.com | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

SYMPHONY BALL CELEBRATES 75 YEARS OF HARMONY

On Sale Friday 12/10 TITUSS BURGESS IN

MUSIC CITY

RONNIE MILSAP

with the Nashville Symphony

THE DOO WOP PROJECT

with the Nashville Symphony February 19

Christmas

with the Nashville Symphony March 11

THIS WEEKEND

December 11

SERIES PARTNER

December 16 to 19

THE MUSIC OF JOHN WILLIAMS: 90TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

May 1

DVOŘÁK & MOZART

coming soon BRIAN MCKNIGHT January 17*

FULL ORCHESTRA REUNITED

Presented without the Nashville Symphony

December 20

SERIES PARTNER

TCHAIKOVSKY'S ‘PATHÉTIQUE’

January 7 to 9

January 20 to 22

BALLET FOLKLÓRICO DE MÉXICO January 23*

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE ORCHESTRA WORLD TOUR January 28

DISCO FEVER: GET DOWN TONIGHT February 3 to 5 SERIES PARTNER

January 13 to 15

SERIES PARTNER

January 15 at 11 AM

*Presented without the Nashville Symphony.

EXPLORE OUR CONCERT CALENDAR AND BUY TICKETS 18

NashvilleSymphony.org/Tickets | 615.687.6400

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

WITH SUPPORT FROM

CRITICS’ PICKS

LAURYN PEACOCK ALBUM RELEASE FEAT. WHOA DAKOTA & SOPHIE AND THE BROKEN THINGS

There’s a line at the end of “On This Ground,” a song near the middle of Lauryn Peacock’s new LP I Know a Place, that sums up an important truth about her work: “The drama of existence is art.” Across her folk- and rock-schooled catalog, Peacock has fine-tuned her ability to communicate complex experiences and emotional states in ways that words alone can’t quite convey. Peacock doesn’t break these things down into expressions as simple as, say, the threechord opuses of 1960s psych-rockers The Troggs, but her literate lyricism draws you in as if by magic. The album is Peacock’s third new release this year, following her full-length Theology and two-track Quarantine Love EP. Like the previous two, I Know a Place features other outstanding Nashville musicians like drummer Megan Coleman and bassist Jack Lawrence. She’ll celebrate the release Thursday night at The

MUSIC

[TRY ANYTHING ONCE]

East Room with help from Whoa Dakota, aka outstanding songsmith Jessica Ott (bringing out a full band in service of some new country-leaning songs), and rocking country outfit Sophie and the Broken Things, who’ll give you a preview of their debut album Delusions of Grandeur ahead of its release in February. 7 p.m. at The East Room, 2412 Gallatin Ave. STEPHEN TRAGESER [CLASH OF TITANS]

RED BULL SOUNDCLASH: BREN JOY VS. JAKE WESLEY ROGERS

The Red Bull SoundClash puts two different artists on two stages and has them compete for ears at the same live venue. This Nashville edition is a friendly matchup between Warner Records labelmates Bren Joy and Jake Wesley Rogers at Marathon Music Works. Joy has been putting out solid R&B for a few years now, collaborating with rising star Pink Sweat$ and opening for Megan Thee Stallion. The release of his Twenties EP earlier this year showed off his range as a singer, and his new single, the laid-back “Friends” with Kiana Ledé, revives some early-2000s R&B vocals and

T O

D O

PHOTO: MONICA MURRAY

T H I N G S

LAURYN PEACOCK matches it with jammy pop instrumentals. Rogers, meanwhile, has been making big moves in the pop world, with none other than Sir Elton John predicting stardom for the platform-rocking singer, saying he’s “carrying the torch for having fun.” Rogers, once a contestant on America’s Got Talent, dropped his EP Pluto earlier this year, and has recently performed singles “Middle of Love” and “Weddings and Funerals” on the talk-show circuit. 8 p.m. at Marathon Music Works, 1402 Clinton St. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ [DAMN RIGHT]

BRITTNEY SPENCER W/CAMILLE PARKER

Based on the year Brittney Spencer has had, you’ll want to cherish this opportunity to see the Baltimore-raised, Nashvilleresiding expert singer-songwriter in a small club while you can. The talent and skills she’s been honing since she was a child got a major signal boost in fall 2020 when Amanda Shires and Maren Morris retweeted Spencer’s excellent cover of The Highwomen’s “Crowded Table.” Among many other achievements in the year

since, Spencer had writing sessions with Morris, Shires and Jason Isbell; opened for Isbell one night of his Ryman residency; sang with The Highwomen on a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Highway Unicorn” for the 10th anniversary companion to Born This Way; performed for NPR’s World Cafe, at AmericanaFest and at the CMA Awards; and launched her own national club tour. Spencer’s single “Sober and Skinny” and her 2020 EP Compassion have been earning attention for her incredibly expressive singing voice and her powerfully nuanced storytelling skill. She’s bringing them all to her adopted hometown Thursday with support from two other rising greats you’ll want to know better. Get there on time for North Carolina-born Camille Parker, who’s gaining steam with her excellent recent single “The Flame.” 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. STEPHEN TRAGESER BOOKS

BREN JOY

THURSDAY / 12.09

O F

MUSIC

R O U N D U P

PHOTO: LAMONT ROBERSON

W E E K L Y

[GIFT OF LIT]

PARNASSUS HOLIDAY SPECIAL

There’s really no better gift than a book. You can go highbrow and get something rare or with a cool provenance, but even just

nashvillescene.com | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CRITICS’ PICKS

GREAT MUSIC • GREAT FOOD • GOOD FRIENDS • SINCE 1991

THIS WEEK THU

12/9

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12/10

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12/11

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12/13 TUE

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THE PIANO MEN

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THE MUSIC OF ELTON JOHN & BILLY JOEL

12/16

PAT MCLAUGHLIN BAND

FRI

WITH SPENCER KANE & OLIVIA GRASSO

BARNHILL, SHELLY FAIRCHILD & GREG BIECK

JONELL MOSSER & FRIENDS BACKSTAGE NASHVILLE!

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DAYTIME HIT SONGWRITERS SHOW

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RUBIKS GROOVE CHRISTMAS SHOW ANNIE & THE BIG BAND CHRISTMAS FAB A BEATLES CHRISTMAS

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JEREMY LISTER

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BETH HART SOLD OUT! THE TIME JUMPERS

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GUILTY PLEASURES : NEW YEAR’S EVE

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JEREMY LISTER JAZZY CHRISTMAS

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COMING SOON 12-26 JIMMY HALL & THE PRISONERS OF LOVE 12-28 THE PETTY JUNKIES 12-30 12 AGAINST NATURE ‘A STEELY DAN EXPERIENCE: NYE EVE! 12-31 GUILTY PLEASURES NEW YEAR’S EVE 1-6 WALKING MAN : THE MUSIC OF JAMES TAYLOR

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1971 JEFFREY STEELE BAND ROD: A TRIBUTE TO ROD STEWART BARRACUDA: AMERICA’S HEART TRIBUTE W/ CHILD’S ANTHEM: THE MUSIC OF TOTO 1-15 THE CLEVERYS (TWO SHOWS) 1-16 OLIVER WOOD

1-22 WORLD TURNING: FLEETWOOD MAC TRIBUTE 1-26 COLLIN RAYE AND THE RIFF RAFF (A SALUTE TO CLASSIC ROCK) 1-27 CHARLES WESLEY GODWIN 2-10 MCBRIDE & THE RIDE 2-12 LOS COLOGNES 2-24 CLINT PARK

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LAURA HUTSON HUNTER [HER BLOOD WAS RED]

CHICANO BATMAN

All it took was the first track of Chicano Batman’s 2010 self-titled debut album to get me hooked. The L.A.-based four-piece rock outfit has released a steady stream of music that has helped me simultaneously process the times we’re living in and relax to some really great tunes. I’ve found that their songs — which are rooted in psychedelic rock but showcase a variety of styles ranging from Tropicália to R&B — are equally enjoyable through close listening and as background music that sets a chill mood. The songs consider politics and justice alongside love and joy — topics that lend themselves well to artistic interpretation — but they do so in unique and fascinating ways. Thursday night, Chicano Batman will likely play their latest set of singles — “Dark Star” and “Pastel Sunrise,” released earlier this year — along with material from last year’s album Invisible People, but with more than a decade of releases under their belt, they’ll have plenty to choose from. Required preshow reading includes Scene contributor Brittney McKenna’s 2017 interview with frontman Bardo Martinez about the band’s Freedom Is Free. And if you’re going to the show, don’t expect the musicians to walk onstage in their vintage suits — a

costume concept they’ve since grown out of. Also playing is Los Retros, the Latin American pop-rock project of Mauri Tapia. 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N. KELSEY BEYELER

FRIDAY / 12.10 MUSIC

3RDANDLINDSLEY.COM

getting a bundle of comforting paperbacks or personal favorites is a thoughtful gesture. Plus, they’re so easy to wrap. Imagine telling your gift’s recipient that the book they’ve just opened was recommended for them personally by author, bookshop owner and recent Scene cover girl Ann Patchett. That’s a shoo-in for best gift of the season. For $5 you can attend the in-store Parnassus Holiday Special, where Patchett will be joined by store manager Andy Brennan, adult fiction and nonfiction buyer Lindsay Lynch and children’s manager Rae Ann Parker. They’ll give personalized recommendations for everyone on your list. And if you want to pre-game, check out the Parnassus Books Holiday Catalog 2021, which is available online and gives lots of choices among signed copies, cookbooks, children’s books and more. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike

MUSIC

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[OUT IN THE COUNTRY]

PAUL CAUTHEN

Back in 2019, alt-country singer Paul Cauthen gave his opinion about the state of modern country to Westword writer Kyle Harris. “People are baby-birding vomit that works,” he said. Dissing the commercial ambitions of country musicians is almost as old as country itself, and I guess the complaints are justified. I like Cauthen’s music, which operates in a mode I call Expressionist Waylon — Cauthen sings in a comic voice that is part Texas and part, say, Alan Vega or Scott Walker. In other words, he’s a kind of outsider musician who uses soul, rock, hip-hop and various production techniques to create country that sits on the shelf with Orville Peck, The Kernal and, you know, an album you could imagine Waylon Jennings cutting in his spare time while he was riding in a space capsule that was pointed toward Alpha Centauri, a star that’s probably a lot like East Texas. Cauthen’s 2019 album Room 41 has plenty of ghostly, entertaining jams that draw from funk and rock. He has a new record set for release in 2022, Country Coming Down, and he’s filmed a video for one of its songs. “Country as Fuck” is the dark side of everything commercial country stands for: The video features tractors, domestic disputes, firearms and women in shorts. It’s shot in an invigorating atmosphere of dissolute behavior, and Cauthen makes sure to call out Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney for being inauthentic. I say he needs to invite them over and show them what having a good time is all about. Cauthen plays two shows at Cannery Ballroom, with Danny Kiranos, who performs under the name Amigo the Devil, opening Friday. Singer Taylor McCall fills the slot on Saturday. 8 p.m. Dec. 10-11 at Cannery Ballroom, 1 Cannery Row EDD HURT

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NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CRITICS’ PICKS

[EXTRA BENEFITS]

GET BEHIND THE MULE

Those of you who want to contribute to a worthy cause and catch a show that sums up a basic Nashville aesthetic could do worse than hit The 5 Spot on Saturday. The event, Get Behind the Mule, benefits Nashville’s Second Harvest Food Bank, and the aesthetic I mentioned is that of East Nashville music, which has become one of the city’s most recognizable exports. Who would have predicted in 1973 or even 2003 that East Nashville, and by extension Music City itself, would someday be known as a place where the music of the post-punk era — along with the eternal art of singersongwriters like Guy Clark — helped define a town once known solely for country? Get Behind the Mule, which is named for a Tom Waits song and features a slew of performers singing Waits compositions, has been running since 2006. This weekend’s show will feature a lineup of great singers and players out of one of the world’s deepest pools of talent. I’m a fan of Texasborn singer and songwriter Noel McKay, whose superb new album Blue Blue Blue finds the Guy Clark acolyte carrying the great songwriter’s legacy into the future. Meanwhile, Amelia White is another firstrate singer-songwriter who will be essaying Waits tunes. Also on hand will be Cristina Vane, who is a master of blues and folk guitar styles, along with Bark, a band that gets into the territory of X and The Mekons on the 2019 album Terminal Everything. In addition to the music, there will be a silent

[BANNED, ON THE RUN]

WEEKEND CLASSICS: CHESS OF THE WIND

The story of Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Reza Aslani’s 1976 feature Chess of the Wind is a wild one: After screening once at that year’s Tehran International Film Festival, it was later banned in 1979 by the Islamic regime. While badly dubbed, censored VHS copies circulated among cinephiles, the negatives were considered lost — until the director’s children found them in a Tehran antiques shop in 2015. It eventually got a full 4K restoration — shout-out to Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project — finally getting its chance to screen all over the world. It’s crazy how the film got banned, considering all dude did was make a more sophisticated, visually sumptuous version of Diabolique, with a very young Shohreh Aghdashloo (a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for House of Sand and Fog) as a servant who aids her paralyzed heiress employer (Fakhri Khorvash) in murdering and disposing of her tyrannical stepfather (Mohammad-Ali Keshavarz). I guess the powers that be back then weren’t too keen on having an Iranian movie with that much suspense, seduction and savage social commentary out in the world. 12:30 p.m. Dec. 11 & 8 p.m. Dec. 15 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave.

HOLIDAY Market

CRAIG D. LINDSEY

MUSIC

A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR YOU FROM SHE’S A REBEL

FILM

[YOU DON’T OWN ME]

For the better part of a decade, a group of Nashville musicians under the banner She’s a Rebel has been putting on a series of tribute shows dedicated to 1950s and ’60s girl groups including The Ronettes, The Supremes, The Shirelles, The Crystals, The Shangri-Las and beyond. With a band led by ace guitar-slinger and musical director Ellen Angelico — who was nominated for a 2020 Instrumentalist of the Year Americana Music Award — She’s a Rebel does more than put powerhouse women vocalists in front of world-class women instrumentalists for goosebump-inducing renditions of classic tunes, although it does that in spades. The series, which is now in its seventh year, also educates attendees about an era and style of pop music that helped bring conversations about racial integration and gender equality into the mainstream. In addition to the aforementioned groundbreaking girl groups, past installments of the series have featured tunes by Lesley Gore, The Blossoms, Dixie Cups and many more, and Saturday’s edition will include two sets — one featuring classic girl-group songs, and another featuring Christmas- and holiday-themed girl-group songs. Guest vocalists will include marquee names like Allison Russell, Kyshona, Kasheena Sampson, Jessie Breanne and many more. For those who can’t make it to the show in person, a streaming option is available for $10 (find those via linktr.ee/ shesarebel). 8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. D. PATRICK RODGERS MUSIC

auction and live painting during the show. 8 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. EDD HURT

[IN PERFECT HARMONY]

CELEBRATING NASHVILLE SYMPHONY’S 75 YEARS OF HARMONY

This weekend the Nashville Symphony will celebrate 75 years of bringing classical music to life with a special fundraising concert featuring world-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman. The concert, held 75 years and one day after the symphony’s first performance at War Memorial Auditorium in 1946, is being hosted in lieu of the Symphony Ball, the organization’s annual white-tie fundraising gala. The musicians of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra will be honored with the Harmony Award, an annual recognition for individuals who “embody the harmonious spirit of Nashville’s music community.” Past honorees include Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Marty Stuart and Carrie Underwood. The evening will include a private pre-party for patrons, and a dessert reception will follow the performance for all attendees. Tickets start at $150 with proceeds benefiting the Nashville Symphony’s free music education programs. 8 p.m. at the Schermerhorn, 1 Symphony Place NANCY FLOYD SHOPPING

MUSIC

SATURDAY / 12.11

[HOW BAZAR]

CONEXIÓN AMÉRICAS HOLIDAY BAZAR

Few things give me greater pleasure than avoiding the mall during the holiday season. On Saturday, you can get some serious shopping done while supporting local and immigrant entrepreneurs at Conexión Américas’ annual Holiday Bazar. Hosted at Casa Azafrán, this year’s event showcases a great selection — from art and jewelry to health and beauty products, and even food items. Vendors include Delicias Colombianas RR, Nelly’s Peruvian Sweets, Karla’s Catering, Magdalena’s Creations,

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Roof-Top Christmas Pop-Up Bar

Soft-open menu of your BTE Favorites Now non-smoking Inside Come have a drink with us: M-F 4:30p-1a | S-S 11a-1a

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NOW OPEN Five Points at 112 S. 11th St. 615-226-EDGE

Jairo Prado Art, Marcela Castano Loom Artist, Mat’s Jewelry, Peke Custom Designs, Valentina Designs, Piñatas Miriam, The Llama House and more. While you’re there, you can learn more about Conexión Américas’ programs, and check out volunteer opportunities. For those not able to attend the Holiday Bazar in person, you can still connect with local businesses and services online. To learn more, visit conexionamericas.org/bazar2021. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. at Casa Azafrán, 2195 Nolensville Pike AMY STUMPFL

SUNDAY / 12.12 FILM

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NASHVILLE’S NUTCRACKER

[COMPLEX, EXOTIC, NOTORIOUS]

WEEKEND CLASSICS: CHAMELEON STREET

While Spike Lee, John Singleton and a new, young legion of African-American filmmakers were getting opportunities to make Hollywood films all through the ’90s, Wendell B. Harris Jr. unfortunately got left behind. His debut 1989 film Chameleon Street — which he wrote, directed and stars in — received critical raves when it screened at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival, where it also won the Grand Jury Prize. And yet, this satire was considered unmarketable by studios and distributors who passed on it. (It eventually ended up on home video — that’s how I first saw it.) Warner Bros. even offered to do a remake with Will Smith in the lead role. Unlike the studio-friendly hood movies of its era, Street is eccentric, unpredictable and undeniably indie. Harris plays real-life con artist William Douglas Street Jr., who went on a wild streak impersonating doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc. Even though Hollywood didn’t know what to do with this black (and Black) comedy, it has gotten a 4K restoration and will play the Belcourt this week. 7 p.m. Dec. 12 & 8 p.m. Dec. 16 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY

MUSIC

WEDNESDAY / 12.15 [NEW TRADITIONS]

GEORGE JACKSON ALBUM RELEASE

On his new full-length Hair & Hide, fiddler and composer George Jackson gets into a musical timespace that is often genuinely innovative. For the most part,

I find re-creations of old-time fiddle and banjo tunes arid — when musicians simply plug into a well-worn mode and play really fast, I tend to tune out. Hair & Hide is split between Jackson’s originals and traditional tunes, with a couple written by other composers. Jackson, who was born in New Zealand and moved to Nashville in 2016, does just fine with traditional tunes like “Ida Red” and “Smoky Hole.” Because he’s a student of old-time styles, he’s able to create intricate rearrangements of tunes that exist in the murk of what’s called public domain. Hair & Hide also works off a concept: Jackson gets down with some amazing banjo players who match his virtuosity lick for lick, and his collaborators — pickers like Uma Peters and Brad Kolodner — bring a lot to the project. Still, my favorite track on the album, “Three Shoes,” was written by Judy Hyman, a violinist who has ranged between Appalachian music and rock. “Three Shoes” amounts to jazz-folk fusion, and it’s slightly unsettling and quite beautiful. Meanwhile, Jackson’s “Food, Coffee & Kisses” displays a similar compositional integrity. Canadian bluegrass group The Slocan Ramblers opens. 6 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. EDD HURT

DANCE

C A N DY C A N E JA N E ' S

PHOTO: KARYN KIPLEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Sports on 30 Screens

[RETURN OF THE ’CRACK]

NASHVILLE’S NUTCRACKER

After 20 months of virtual and outdoor performances, Nashville Ballet is set to take the stage once more with the much-anticipated return of Nashville’s Nutcracker. In his delightful twist on the classic story, artistic director Paul Vasterling sets the timeless tale against the backdrop of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897, infusing young Clara’s dreams with a host of local landmarks and plenty of stage magic. The production itself is quite memorable, with colorful costumes, storybook sets and, of course, the live performance of Tchaikovsky’s stunning music. But this year’s performances promise some added fun — a commemorative photo booth (courtesy of the Tennessee Titans), meet-and-greets with familiar characters from the story, and pre-performance story times hosted by Nashville Ballet teaching artists. Dec. 15-24 at TPAC’s Jackson Hall, 505 Deaderick St. AMY STUMPFL

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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Winner: Readers’ poll

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DOWNTOWN

Thursday and Saturday, December 9 and 11

Friday, January 21

LIVE IN CONCERT

Keb’ Mo’ 7:30 pm

•

CMA THEATER

Saturday, December 11 SONGWRITER SESSION

Steve Dean and Bill Whyte NOON – 12:45 pm

•

FORD THEATER

Friday, December 17 LIVE IN CONCERT

Mike Farris Sings! The Soul of Christmas 7:30 pm • CMA THEATER

SONGWRITER SESSION

Frank Ray •

A Jazz Celebration of the Allman Brothers Band 8:O0 pm • CMA THEATER

Saturday, January 22 SONGWRITER SESSION

Leah Turner NOON – 12:45 pm

FORD THEATER

SONGWRITER SESSION

Jim Collins •

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Saturday, February 12 SONGWRITER SESSION

Josh Jenkins NOON – 12:45 pm

Saturday, January 15

•

Saturday, January 29

NOON – 12:45 pm

Saturday, January 8

NOON – 12:45 pm

Big Band of Brothers

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FORD THEATER

SONGWRITER SESSION

Nicolle Galyon NOON – 12:45 pm

•

FORD THEATER

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nashvillescene.com | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

FOOD AND DRINK

DREW HOLCOMB

GOLF & WHISKEY

Talking whiskey with local Americana hero Drew Holcomb — who’s serious about his brown liquor BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

f you’ve read about Sweetens Cove Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey in the spirits press, you’re probably familiar with the premium whiskey’s backstory — it was inspired by and gets its name from a quirky golf course near South Pittsburg, Tenn. The fascinating nine-hole course offers challenges for golfers of all abilities and is often booked six months in advance. One of the interesting aspects of the ingeniously designed Sweetens Cove is the tradition of doing a shot of whiskey before teeing off to steel yourself against the travails that await on the course. Since the location first opened, guests and members have stashed bottles under the desk in the trailer that serves as a pro shop. That attitude morphed into a whiskey company, led by developer Mark Rivers. If you’ve heard anything else about Sweetens Cove (the whiskey, not the golf course), it’s probably that two major investors in the company are star athletes Andy Roddick and Peyton Manning, both

major ambassadors for the brand and actively involved in the product. What you might not know, however, is that another of the owners has a Nashville connection. Memphis-born Americana star Drew Holcomb is best known for his work with his backing band the Neighbors — so named because Holcomb and his bandmates all lived in the same East Nashville ZIP code when the group was formed. Over the past decade, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors have toured all over the country spreading their brand of rootsy alt-rock, but Holcomb has managed to carve out time along the way for two of his passions: golf and whiskey. Sweetens Cove Golf Club opened in 2014, after genius landscape architect Rob Collins wielded his earthmover like an artist to convert a former goat patch of a course into a track that has since won national design awards — and Holcomb has been a fan all along the way. He was intrigued when he heard about the chance to invest in a whiskey brand and the golf complex. “Two

things I really love in my home state?” he says. “It was an easy yes.” The first release of Sweetens Cove’s whiskey was a blend of five lots of 13-yearold Tennessee whiskey, selected and blended by rising whiskey star Marianne Eaves. Even at a premium price in the middle of a pandemic, the initial run sold out quickly to collectors and a few locations. In honor of the second release, which is just now hitting store shelves in Tennessee, the Scene jumped on a call with Holcomb as he was preparing to board a flight home from California to talk about his latest passion project. Read our interview below.

How did you get started with bourbon? It actually started on the other side of the ocean. I studied in Scotland in college, and I was a 20-year-old in a random church near my dorm. I started at the top when a preacher poured me a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue Label. I was hooked! I was an Old Charter 8 Year guy for a while, but then my manager got really into bourbon. He was a collector and taught me a lot about some amazing bourbons.

Are you a collector now? I’m pretty deep into it now. I’ve probably got a 400-bottle collection at home, and I still love scotch. My collection runs the gamut. I’m a big fan of Wellers and the Blantons

that people love to hunt. I’ve got a pre-fire Heaven Hill bottle and a bottle of Weller 107 from 1964, the last year that Pappy Van Winkle ran the distillery. I’ve got a bunch of the Willett purple tops and a few bottles of Pappy. I also have samples of all five of the batches from the original Sweetens Cove and got Marianne to sign the bottles, so those are really special. As for scotch, I’m a big Macallan fan.

How did you first connect with Sweetens Cove? I started playing the course pretty soon after it opened. I got involved through three parallel tracks. First of all, I was a big fan of the course, and Andy Roddick has been a golf buddy of mine. When I heard he was part of the group that was starting the whiskey brand, I was immediately interested. The third connection was through Peyton. He actually paid for me to go to college. He established the Manning Scholarship at the University of Tennessee, and I was the recipient in ’99. To his credit, he stayed in touch with me through the years. When Andy asked me to join the group, I jumped at the chance.

How were you involved in the process of creating the whiskey? They had already started working with Marianne when I got involved, and I went with Andy and Mark to meet with her and taste all five batches. I learned a lot from

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LIVE MUSIC | URBAN WINERY | RESTAURANT | BAR | PRIVATE EVENTS

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Jonatha Brooke

Jon McLaughlin

12.14

12.15

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12.15 Clare Bowen & Brandon Robert Young

12.16

A Royale Holiday! with alanna royale

12.17

RON POPE PRESENTS: THE CHRISTMAS MUSICAL

12.21

MORGAN JAMES: A VERY MAGNETIC CHRISTMAS TOUR

12.17

LAUGHS IN THE LOUNGE

12.26

AVERY*SUNSHINE (EARLY & LATE SHOW)

12.18

DINING WITH DIVAS DRAG BRUNCH BENEFITTING NASHVILLE PRIDE

12.27

12.18

MAC MCANALLY

NASHVILLE JAZZ ORCHESTRA BOXING DAY CONCERT FEATURING SPECIAL GUEST VOCALIST SANDRA DUDLEY

12.28

12.19

SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS HOLIDAY CARAVAN TOUR 2021

AN EVENING WITH SHAWN MULLINS

NASHVILLE BEATLES BRUNCH FT. FOREVER ABBEY ROAD

12.29

12.19

PETER MAYER - RING OUT THE BELLS

12.30

MARC BROUSSARD FULL BAND WITH HORNS

12.19

A SONGWRITERS CHRISTMAS FEATURING JAY BRAGG AND SPECIAL GUESTS IN THE LOUNGE

12.31

MARC BROUSSARD FULL BAND WITH HORNS - EARLY

12.20

HOW DOES CHRISTMAS SOUND? WITH KIRK WHALUM

12.31

MARC BROUSSARD FULL BAND WITH HORNS - LATE

12.20

CRAIG CAMPBELL FAMILY & FRIENDS CHRISTMAS SHOW IN THE LOUNGE

12.31

MR. TALKBOX NYE PARTY WITH SPECIAL GUEST LIL BYRON! IN THE LOUNGE

her, and I love how being a blender is a mix of chemistry and artistry, picking the right barrels and choosing the profiles to blend into the final product. Unlike some other celebrity-branded spirits where they just slap their name on the label, Peyton and Andy have done some serious work learning about the process and the industry, when they could’ve just coasted. Their names aren’t even on the label.

What was it like launching a new brand in the middle of a pandemic? We launched in January of 2020, right before the world fell apart. All the bars closed, but people were at home really paying attention. It was really wellreceived.

What are you most proud of about Sweetens Cove? When you go to high-end whiskey bars, the lists of Tennessee whiskeys are usually pretty short, while the Kentucky bourbon lists go on and on, especially in the premium categories. It’s nice to be able to add a premium Tennessee whiskey to those lists, to be at the forefront of that. Tennessee distilleries have really been upping their games lately, increasing production and getting into blending.

What can you tell us about the new release of Sweetens Cove? While the first one was made from all 13-year-old barrels, this year’s is a blend of 16-, 6- and 4-year-old whiskey. It’s also a little higher proof — around 108 to 109, so it’s a little punchier. But the blend also shows off the more youthful and spicier notes, too. My wife [singer-songwriter Ellie Holcomb] likes bourbon, but she doesn’t love it. If it’s higher proof and she can drink it, I know we’ve done well!

What are your hopes for the future of the brand? We want to continue to explore different profiles every year — I love that picking barrels is like a treasure hunt within the distillery. We keep slowly finding our people as we explore state by state. For me, it’s a matter of telling people about it. The main thing we can do is keep telling the story. I just hope people find it. Enjoy it and share it with their friends! Drew Holcomb will make an appearance at Bellevue’s Red Spirits & Wine (7066 Highway 70 S.) on Friday, Dec. 17. He’ll sign bottles from 5 to 7 p.m., just in time to pick up a special gift for whoever’s at the top of your holiday shopping list. He’ll also be happy to talk golf. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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VODKA YONIC

SOMETHING BORROWED

On planning my big, fat, Indian wedding — and reckoning with my mother’s hopes and dreams

Vodka Yonic DECEMBER 12

MUSIC CITY CHORUS A BARBERSHOP HARMONY CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION JANUARY 26

DIANA KRALL FEBRUARY 28

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RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

BY POOJA SHAH Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of women and nonbinary writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find in this column, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.

he concept of love was different in the ’80s — especially for my parents, who grew up a couple of alleys apart in Gujarat, India. They shared the same circle of friends, but there was no courtship, no romantic chemistry between them. My four grandparents met in my mom’s living room, conferred over chai and samosas, exchanged pleasantries and bank statements and granted my parents permission to have a singular private conversation in the back garden. At the end of that afternoon, it was decided that they were to be engaged that weekend. Two months later, they were married. Ten months after that, I was born. Stories like this are far less common now in India. Times have evolved, and both parties often have the autonomy to choose their life partner and plan their weddings. They also have the right to leave unhappy marriages, should they choose. Whenever my parents told me the story about their meeting, I swore that I would pick my own spouse. After all, the concept of arranged marriage was so heavily ridiculed by Western culture that the thought of experiencing it myself was simply out of the question. I vividly remember a student from Nebraska in my freshman-year English class asking me if my parents would pick my husband because that’s what he saw in Monsoon Wedding. I was mortified. I dreamed of having a big, fat, Indian wedding with my chosen partner at a beautiful destination. Many childhood dreams don’t come true, but this one did. In March, my partner and I will get married in London. Wedding planning is stressful in general, but a four-day Indian affair in the midst of a never-ending global pandemic takes it to a different level. My mom also adds to this distress. When my parents got married, my mom had no decision-making power in the matter. In addition to her husband being chosen for her, she was given the wedding dresses and matching jewelry to wear and the address of the venues where she should show up. She had to simply smile for the photographs, eat when told to and thank the elders for their blessings. Since we immigrated to America, I have watched her evolve into an independent woman who has raised me to advocate for myself. She’s been my biggest confidant and supporter. Despite our closeness, wedding planning has caused novel strains in our relationship and has brought

EVERY WOMAN DREAMS OF HER SPECIAL DAY, BUT MY MOM NEVER HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO CELEBRATE OR EXPERIENCE THE SURROUNDING JOY. out the worst in each of us over trivial matters: She will recommend pink roses to flank my aisleway, I will opt for red; I will suggest wearing a navy lehenga during my reception, and she will select a black gown instead; I will opt for a chaat during cocktail hour, but she will choose a biryani. I met these initial differences in opinion with stubborness, which resulted in many heated arguments. After all, this was my wedding and the moment I have waited so many years for. How could I let anyone else play a part in the decision-making? It took some self-reflection to understand that my mom saw in my wedding the dreams and aspirations she wasn’t able to realize when it came to her own nuptials. Every woman dreams of her special day, but my mom never had the opportunity to celebrate or experience the surrounding joy. Heck, she didn’t even get a voice in where they honeymooned! I am the only daughter in our Indian family, and my parents have one chance to participate in the traditions and customs they have waited so long for. Our bickering and the fluctuation in our relationship showed me the importance of communication. We decided to abandon modes of communication more prone to passive-aggression, like email and text messaging, and opted to be candid about how we were feeling. We scheduled weekly phone calls to hash out vendor details and give each other the opportunity to vent any frustrations. I had to relearn the nature of our dynamic and realize that our relationship was shifting because we were both changing as people. I practiced empathy and realized that this is the moment all moms both look forward to and fear: their daughters growing up and, possibly, out of reach. There are 94 days left until our wedding. I have asked my mom to give a speech at the reception. This is the moment we both have been waiting for. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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10:00am Special Guest Performance 10:30am Franklin First United Methodist Church Handbells 11:10am Grassland Elementary 11:50am Overture 12:30pm Franklin’s Christmas Jazz Trio 1:10pm Pitch Perfect from Act Too Players 1:50pm Lipscomb 3:10pm Franklin Light Opera 3:50pm West Franklin Choir 4:30pm Janice Gaines 5:30pm Town Sing

11:10am Southern Irish Dance 11:50am TBD 12:40pm The Church at West Franklin Choir 1:20pm Kendall Ray 2:30pm Bluegrass Band 3:10pm The Master’s Brass 3:40pm Yule Tide Carolers 4:00pm Processional to Historic Franklin Presbyterian Church 4:15pm Town Sing at Historic Franklin Presbyterian Church

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WHERE A SHOW IS ONLY THE BEGINNING Dec 11 Dec 12

• Studio Tenn’s A Christmas Carol

• Jars of Clay Family Christmas Show • Steve Wariner: Feels Like Christmas Time

Dec 14

• The Gatlin Brothers: Country & Christmas

Dec 17-18

Dec 20

• Tommy Howell’s Cowboy Christmas

Dec 31

• New Year’s Eve with Studio Tenn & Franklin Theatre Jan 21-22

• Mariachi Divas

Feb 5-6 Feb 11-12

• Black Violin

• Giordano Dance Company Feb 18

• Hot Tuna

• Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone

Feb 26

Feb 27 March 4-5

• Popovich Comedy Pet Theatre

• Los Vivancos: The Flamenco Kings March 6

• James Hunter Six

March 30 - April 1 April 8-9

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April 22

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Shop for unique holiday gifts and festive home décor from GasLamp Antiques and GasLamp Too. Voted Nashville’s BEST antique store – and so much more -- open daily!!

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HANDMADE CERAMICS BY PAPER & CLAY TENNESSEE STATE MUSEUM | 1000 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. http://tnmuseum.org

Memphis-based Paper & Clay makes small batches of handmade functional ceramics, like these mugs, vases, and ring holders.

BOOKS FOR GIFTING

PARNASSUS BOOKS | 3900 Hillsboro Road, Ste 14 Nashville, TN 37215 www.parnassusbooks.net There’s something for everyone! From cooks to art lovers, bibliophiles to nature enthusiasts, we have gift books for everybody on your list.

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It’s no secret, Nashville is delicious. Now you can make some of Music Everyone loves some warm hot chocolate or cider in the cold V I S I T U S D E C . 1 0 T H + 1 1 T H AT City’s best dishes from the comfort of your own home! The Scene’s new weather! Take a sip out of your new favorite mug, representing 50 cookbook, Nourish Nashville, is available now. Inspired in part by the years of Exit/In. time we’ve all had to spend at home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — experimenting and honing our home-cooking skills while social distancing — this cookbook features 40-plus of the city’s most celebrated chefs sharing their most beloved recipes.

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14K ROSE GOLD “ATHENA” BY BVLA WITH ROSE CUT LABORADITES AND GRAY SAPPHIRES.

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BIGGEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

PARNASSUS BOOKS | 3900 Hillsboro Road, Ste 14 Nashville, TN 37215 www.parnassusbooks.net From your longtime favorite authors to talented up-and-comers, there is no shortage of incredible titles from this year. Need recommendations? Come chat with us. Our knowledgeable staff would love to help!

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COFFEE LIQUEUR

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EXIT/IN | 2208 Elliston Place | exitin.com Stay warm and look cool with the new Exit/In 50th Anniversary beanies, available in black and orange decorated with an Exit/In 50th-anniversary patch.

51 NOURISH NASHVILLE COOKBOOK

NASHVILLE SCENE | nourishnashville.com

It’s no secret, Nashville is delicious. Now you can make some of Music City’s best dishes from the comfort of your own home! The Scene’s new cookbook, Nourish Nashville, is available now. Inspired in part by the time we’ve all had to spend at home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — experimenting and honing our home-cooking skills while social distancing — this cookbook features 40-plus of the city’s most celebrated chefs sharing their most beloved recipes.

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Fun for family read-alouds and beginning readers, our children’s section is full of modern classics in the making!

THE ESSENTIALS COLLECTION

PEDAL STEEL NOT TAVERNS HAT

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Shake things up with an island style eggnog. A Puerto Rican specialty made of coconut cream, eggs, evaporated milk, rum, island spices. $35 for 750ml.

Gummy Bears that pack more than just a sugar high. Each bear is bursting with 25mg of Delta-10 THC to keep you rocking around the Christmas tree. $30 for a pack of 10.

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HEMP FACTORY OUTLET 6165 CLARKSVILLE PIKE, JOELTON, TN 37080 | WWW.HEMPFACTORYOUTLET.COM | @hempfactoryoutlet @xtractsllc This highly refined Full Spectrum is powerful tincture that allows more flexibility in adjusting your daily dose to find what works best for you. And it’s a value-added bargain for the price. Price: $40.00. 15% Off at check out with code BON21 and FREE SHIPPING.

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NOVELTY DRINK TUMBLERS

VIVA NASHVILLE! BOUTIQUE 2808 Bransford Ave. | @vivanashvilleboutique

Customize your holiday spirits with these cute 12 oz. insulated mugs. Real Housewives of Nashville cups are available or create your own! $28 each / 2 for $50

NASHVILLE SYMPHONY GIFT CERTIFICATE NASHVILLE SYMPHONY | One Symphony Place nashvillesymphony.org/GiftGuide

Give the gift of music, and treat someone special to a spectacular evening with the Nashville Symphony. With a $200 gift certificate, they can choose from a wide range of concerts, from classical to jazz to pops.

THE TURMERIC SALVE

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We like to use our Turmeric Salve as our own version of ‘tiger balm’ applied directly to the skin. This formulation works best with tackling inflammation, sore muscles, aching joints and helps with muscle recovery post-workout. USE CODE SCENE10 FOR 10% OFF.

FLICKER – GIFT BOXED CANDLE FLIGHT

CLIFTON + LEOPOLD | Nashville | cliftonandleopold.com Our boxed candle flight includes one of each of our four scent profiles, One, Deux, Tres, and Tessera, along with a glass vial of matches. This discovery collection is ideal for travel or gift-giving.

PREMIUM CIGARS AND GIFTS FOR THOSE WITH THE FINEST TASTE

Belle Meade Premium Cigars and Gifts is a locally owned store that sells the finest cigars, gifts, pipes, and tobacco-related products. Stop by today to purchase the finest tobacco in town ... you don’t even have to leave the store to sample your purchase! Complete with a smoking lounge where cigar connoisseurs relax, smoke and enjoy themselves. Join us here this holiday season.

FUNCTIONAL ALCOHOL-INK ARTWORK BY NATALIE CORWIN

TENNESSEE STATE MUSEUM | 1000 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. http://tnmuseum.org The Museum gift shop features gorgeous alcohol-ink coasters, trinket trays, and artworks by Natalie Corwin, like these 8” x 8” landscapes on mahogany or maple.

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NEW! EXIT/IN BEANIES

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LIMITED EDITION VINTAGE STYLE HOODIE FROTHY MONKEY | 201 Hill Blanton Ave. Nashville, TN 37210 | frothymonkey.com

EXIT/IN: 50 YEARS

EXIT/IN | 2208 Elliston Place | exitin.com Book available in limited and standard editions, This commemorative book tells the history of one of Nashville’s most important cultural institutions through a well-researched narrative text and never-before-seen photographs of the shows and people who made Exit/In legendary.

GREEN PEA SALON | 2900 12th Ave South, Nashville, TN 37204 | www.greenpeasalon.com

This Frothy Monkey limited edition vintage style hoodie is a crowdpleaser. It has a roomy fit that’s perfect for lounging in or layering on a chilly day.

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MISS KITTY’S DOG RESORT | 4308 Kenilwood Drive Nashville, TN 37204 | misskittysnashville.com Indulge your pup this holiday season with some decadent holiday cookies baked just for them. Makes for the perfect stocking stuffer!

CLIFTON + LEOPOLD | Nashville | cliftonandleopold.com This formal western tie is quintessentially dapper. The banded collar makes looking brilliant easier than ever. One caution - be ready to turn heads and start conversations when you walk into the room.

A collection of eau de parfume, perfume oils, and candles inspired by traditional apothecary ingredients + favorite memories, each dynamic scent is formulated for everyday wear and becomes a favorite in anyone’s home with gender-neutral appeal.

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BOW TIE FOR DAPPER HUMANS

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This bow tie, designed specifically for the dapper humans on the younger side of life is made from the same exquisite fabric and with the same quality and care as our full-sized bows. The pre-knotted design guarantees the perfect look every time.

SEASONAL DOG SWEATERS

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EXIT/IN | 2208 Elliston Place | exitin.com

Stay warm this winter while celebrating 50 years of Nashville’s Music Forum. A soft & comfortable classic hoodie with the Exit/In 50th logo.

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For the pup parent in your life, purchase a Miss Kitty’s gift certificate, redeemable for any service or merchandise in our store.

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FRIST ART MUSEUM

FRISTARTMUSEUM.ORG/ MEMBERSHIP A gift of membership to the Frist Art Museum is a passport to see the world’s greatest art! Members enjoy unlimited admission for a year, free guest passes, gift shop discounts, and more! Remember, memberships help sustain the Frist’s mission.

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Perfect for everyone you know who loves the movies! A Belcourt membership provides discounted tickets and other benefits — and helps support Nashville’s nonprofit film center.

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THEATER

NASHVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE CELEBRATES ITS 90TH ANNIVERSARY Talking with Bob Roberts about the lasting impact of the city’s oldest performing arts institution BY AMY STUMPFL

In the course of your research, you dug through periodicals and published writings as well as the organization’s own archival material and conducted 21 interviews. What surprised you most in the course of your research? I was really shocked by just how different the day-today operations looked in those early years. In the beginning, the Children’s Theatre was a completely volunteer-led organization, created by the Junior League of Nashville. We didn’t have our first full-time employee until 1960, when Charles Doughty was hired as NCT’s first artistic director. So in those early days, volunteers actually visited local schools, selling season membership cards directly to the students. It was sort of like a Scholastic Book Fair Day — volunteers visited the classroom, talked about the upcoming shows, and at the age of 8 or 9, these kids became season pass holders at the Children’s Theatre. It continued that way into the early 1980s, which just amazed me. And it was only possible because of this dedicated group of volunteers. In its heyday, NCT had one of the most incredibly organized local support networks you could imagine, and it was regarded nationally as a template for other organizations to follow. The training manuals and regimens, communication protocols, bookkeeping practices and other processes they developed — which allowed a highly professional theater to function on almost entirely volunteer labor — were as sophisticated as systems you’d find in place today in a lot of major national corporations. This company wasn’t just a hobby for these women — it was a calling, a duty and a lifelong cause to support.

I think there’s always been that sense of purpose — the why we do what we do. Another common theme was just how much people love it here. The stories and memories that surround this place are so amazing. Almost every single person I talked to spoke of how rewarding or energizing, or just how fun the work was, and how it fulfilled something within them as artists and as people.

What impressed you most about NCT’s impact on the city? The Children’s Theatre has been a consistent presence in the local arts scene for the last century, often leading and shaping the community. When Charles Doughty created the company’s first education program, he kick-started a whole new way to serve the community. In the ’70s, NCT helped ease Nashville’s integration struggles by presenting shows during school hours, and in the early ’90s they stepped up to cover the costs for kids who couldn’t afford those field trip fees. I also think the decision to go professional [NCT officially affiliated with the Actors’ Equity Association in 1998] was significant. NCT recognized that by promoting a

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1983)

What common themes have carried through over time? Certainly the dedication to the kids was a constant. There’s always been a feeling that all children deserve to have access to top-quality professional theater.

FRANKENSTEIN (1989)

TREASURE ISLAND (2004)

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NASHVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE

f you’ve ever visited Nashville Children’s Theatre, you’ve likely seen Bob Roberts — the tireless front-of-house and box office manager — bustling about with his trusty clipboard, answering questions, coordinating volunteer ushers or helping out at the merchandise stand. As a child, Roberts often attended NCT shows on field trips, and he eventually came to work with the city’s oldest performing arts institution in 2013. In 2020, Roberts completed his master’s thesis at Belmont University on NCT’s history, covering the years 1977-2019. (Previous theses by students at other universities documented the organization’s history prior to 1977.) As NCT prepares to celebrate its 90th anniversary, Roberts spoke with the Scene about what he learned, what surprised him most, and how NCT continues to affect local children.

stronger artist community, they could Many of NCT’s best works have been the promulgate stronger art. If you look ones that help audiences see a perspective at the painted bricks in the backstage that’s different from their own. Ramayana, hallway [a long-standing tradition, actors in 1995, helped students learn stories commemorate their time at NCT by important in the Hindu religion. Most signing/decorating individual Valuable Player tackled racism bricks], or peruse the cast lists by examining the life of Jackie I’ve been reconstructing, Robinson. Mockingbird it’s a veritable who’s-who put an important focus on JOIN NCT FOR ITS 90TH BIRTHDAY AT 1 P.M. SATURDAY, DEC. 11. of Nashville theater and how life is experienced GUESTS WILL ENJOY A HOST OF beyond. Roger Bedard, one on the autism spectrum. GOODIES AND FUN, PLUS A SPECIAL of the great modern minds Former education director PERFORMANCE OF THE ELVES AND of children’s theater theory Martha Goodman’s THE SHOEMAKER. LEARN MORE AT NASHVILLECHILDRENSTHEATRE.ORG and criticism, directed for groundbreaking drama us in the 1980s. The best curriculum in the 1990s playwrights — Charlotte helped students learn Chorpenning, Sara Spencer, about Tennessee’s Cherokee Moses Goldberg, Aurand Harris, inhabitants up through the Trail of Laurie Brooks, Max Bush, Idris Goodwin — Tears, as well as the lives of Tennesseans have premiered and/or workshopped plays during the Civil War. So many Nashville at NCT. Actors and directors tied to nearly adults today were shown both the world every other Nashville theater company around them, and their own history, in have performed here — The Nashville performances and classes at NCT. Shakespeare Festival’s Denice Hicks and Just the other day, I spoke with someone Donald Capparella, BroadAxe’s Jeremy about a season membership for her Childs, Amun Ra’s jeff obafemi carr, granddaughter and great-grandchild. The Chaffin’s Barn’s Martha Wilkinson, Actors caller explained that she’d helped design Bridge’s Vali Forrester, Wishing Chair’s costumes for NCT in the early 1960s, and Mary Tanner, all three artistic directors of was so happy her great-grandchild would get People’s Branch Theatre, Destiny Theatre to experience art in the very same theater Experience’s Shawn Whitsell, and of course where she’d worked almost 60 years ago. René Copeland of Mockingbird Public With all the changes that Nashville has Theatre and Nashville Rep. All Nashville undergone in recent years — and even across theater roads lead to — or through — NCT. the last 90 years — I feel like that simple gesture speaks volumes about the consistent, And what about its impact on local children? multigenerational reach and presence of Another way that NCT has contributed, and NCT, and about how an artistic institution can indeed the way all theater contributes when contribute to a community over time. it’s done well, is that it helps start important EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM conversations and promote understanding.

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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BOOKS

A SOFT PLACE TO FALL Allison Moorer’s new memoir describes life with her profoundly autistic child

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917 Woodland Street Nashville, TN 37206 thebasementnashville.com

BY TINA CHAMBERS

“A

utism is just as much a part of my son as his blue eyes and long fingers,” writes Nashville recording artist Allison Moorer in her second memoir, I Dream He Talks to Me. “Autism is here with us, here in him, and it isn’t going anywhere.” Just before turning 2, John Henry Earle — Moorer’s son with her ex-husband, singer-songwriter Steve Earle — was diagnosed with autism, later revealed to be Level 3, the most severe degree of disability. Now 10 years old, John Henry is nonverbal with extreme sensory issues. He is prone to behavior such as head-butting, scratching and hair-pullI DREAM HE TALKS TO ME: ing, as well as screamA MEMOIR OF LEARNING HOW TO LISTEN ing fits, BY ALLISON MOORER toileting HACHETTE BOOKS issues and 240 PAGES problems $28 sleeping. In sometimes excruciating detail, Moorer describes the reality of life with a profoundly autistic child: the doctors, the therapists, the constant vigilance, the public embarrassment, the private shame, the loneliness, the anger, the fear — the physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. But despite John Henry’s special needs, his mother is quick to point out his special gifts, including his affinity for music, his generally sweet nature and, especially, “the blinding brightness — the life — in his face and behind his eyes.” I Dream He Talks to Me includes Moorer’s poetry, letters and dreams, as well as chapter topics such as “A Guide to Getting Through,” which provides 18 sanity-protecting rules for parents. Moorer’s advice ranges from “grow elephant-sized balls” (deflecting the judgment of others when in public) to “learn how to swim through snake oil” (when well-meaning people suggest “cures” that are anything but). She bristles at the labels others would apply to her son. When an acquaintance insists that in a few years, John Henry will be “fine,” Moorer wonders, “What is fine? … Would fine mean that he is like every other person? Because no person is like any other person. I am like no one else, yet I am considered fine. And I know plenty of people who appear to be fine but who are definitely not fine. Where is the line between fine and not fine and who decides where it lies?” Then there is the endless worrying. What will his future be like? And who will take care of John Henry if Moorer cannot? Having lost her own parents at an early age to murder/suicide, Moorer is no stranger to

JD MCPHERSON CHRISTMAS SHOW // DEC 19

DOPAPOD // DEC 18

W/ JOEL PATERSON

RARE HARE // DEC 20

MADDIE POPPE // DEC 28

THE EMO BAND // DEC 29 & 30

THE SHADOWBOXERS // JAN 7

A HARD ROCK & HEAVY METAL TRIBUTE

EMO & POP PUNK LIVE BAND KARAOKE

Upcoming shows dec 9

the shocking detours of life or the resulting post-traumatic stress. In her worst moments, she blames the terrible baggage she carries for her shortcomings as a parent: “The weight of abbreviated and inadequate parenting twists around me like a heavy chain and tells me that I will fail him. It rattles and clanks as I drag it around and it distracts me. I can’t shake it off. It’s grown into my skin.” But most of all she strives to understand the world from John Henry’s perspective and, in so doing, comes to admire his strength and persistence in the face of overwhelming obstacles. “I think about what he must have to process, what hurdles he has to clear in order to communicate even the smallest thing,” she writes. “He has to figure out how to say it all without saying it. So much is missed with such an imperfect system. So much is lost.” Moorer’s saving grace is her deep and fierce love for her son and his surprising ability to connect with her when she least expects it. A gesture as simple as looking into her eyes and touching her cheek can fill her heart with peace and hope for days. “We are not perfect, and we never will be,” she admits, “but some days we’re more perfect than others.” Moorer’s candor, humility and courage shine throughout this inspiring memoir and will likely resonate with parents of children with disabilities, as well as those who love and support them. For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

brittney spencer w/sam williams & camille parker

dec 10 Dec 11 Dec 12 Dec 14 Dec 16 dec 18 Dec 19

armor for sleep w/never loved She's a rebel christmas show Julian Lage POUYA w/jasiah, kxllswxtch & lu baby sold out! katie pruitt w/ Tré burt dopapod jd mcphersonSocks christmas show

dec 20 dec 28 dec 29 dec 30 jan 7 jan 8 jan18 jan19 jan 20 jan 22

rare hare maddie poppe live emo band karaoke live emo band karaoke the shadowboxers the emo night tour sam fischer nita strauss w/ black satellite and abby k jake scott w/josie dunne sold out! the vegabonds & grady spencer and the work tenille townes w/alex hall

jan 27

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MOLLY PARDEN // DEC 9

Dec 11 Dec 11 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec 13 Dec 15 Dec 15 Dec 16

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Current Joys w/dark tea nile w/incantation, sanguisugabogg, and I am The Weather Station w/cassandra jenkins powerslave: iron maiden tribute

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Muna sold out! rumours - A fleetwood mac tribute

Feb 12 Feb 16 feb 17 feb 18 feb 19 feb 20 feb 21 feb 22 feb 24 Feb 25

signs of the swarm, and great american ghost

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w/nomenclature K.Flay w/g.flip & corook Bendigo fletcher w/abby hamilton john moreland w/will johnson mansionair w/may-a

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W/ SPECIAL GUESTS

Dec 9 Dec 10 Dec 10

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UPCOMING SHOWS

molly parden w/special guests fox grin & safari room (7 PM) henry conlon, zachary scott kline, & hollier (9 PM) riddy arman w/the local honeys (7 PM) the weird sisters, the bobby lees, & the ragcoats (9 PM) jordan lindley w/molly martin & abigail osborn pepper said (7 PM) willi carlisle w/dylan earl (9 PM) danielle nicole (7 PM) the prescriptions w/rainsticks (9pm) jd clayton (7 PM)

Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 17 Dec 18 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec 29 jan 7 jan 8 jan 13 jan 14 jan 15 jan 15

William Elliott Whitmore w/ miss tess (9 PM) nané w/ emily deahl (7 PM) the swell fellas, soot, & eddas (9 PM) sarah buxton w/lera lynn (7 PM) weekend jimmy & the easy party (9 PM) emily nenni w/tommy alexander the 1952 eric slick w/jenny besetzt brandy zdan & rose hotel will overman step sisters w/heinous orca & crave on brandy zdan & molly martin (7 PM) the kernal & friends (9 PM)

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nashvillescene.com | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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MUSIC

PARADISE REVISITED

A new set of 1970s demos from Loney Hutchins sheds light on a neglected master of country music BY EDD HURT

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

s the country singer-songwriter Loney Hutchins tells me via phone from his home near Nashville, he wasn’t shy on the day in 1973 when he caught up with June Carter Cash at her house in Hendersonville, where she lived with her husband, Johnny Cash. “She had one leg literally in that RollsRoyce, and I hollered, ‘Hey, June, I’m Loney Fred Hutchins, and I’m from Hiltons, Va.,’ ” Hutchins says in his soft East Tennessee accent. “She got out of her car, and I had rang her bell. When I told her where I was from, it was like a light went off in her head.” Hutchins had moved to town that year, and he determined to meet Johnny Cash by simply driving to the Cash farm and hoping for a break. He got it: June Carter Cash was, as he describes, impressed by both his BURIED LOOT: DEMOS bravado and their FROM THE HOUSE OF shared geographic CASH & “OUTLAW” ERA ’73-’78 OUT FRIDAY, roots. Hutchins got DEC. 10, VIA APPALACHIA his meeting with RECORD COMPANY Johnny Cash that day. Cash invited him into his office, where he listened to a few of Hutchins’ songs. One of them, “Jesus,” would appear on Cash’s 1974 album The Junkie and the Juicehead Minus Me. The two men hit it off, and Hutchins went on to record music at Cash’s studio, House of Cash, and manage The Man in Black’s publishing company. Despite his talent and his roots in the Tennessee-Virginia border region — that’s where the Carter Family lived — Hutchins never became a country star. Still, his work ethic and natural feel for country music transpire throughout his new album Buried Loot: Demos From the House of Cash & “Outlaw” Era ’73-’78, which is being released on Friday. It’s a testament to Hutchins’ beguiling vocal skills and highly developed songwriting chops. The 24 tracks on Buried Loot skip lightly over the border between outlaw country and pre-1970s country — just as Hutchins, in his youth, moved between Tennessee and Virginia in an area marked by both natural beauty and poverty. Buried Loot collects a sampling of the many tracks Hutchins cut at both House of Cash and a nearby recording studio, Lee Hazen’s Studio by the Pond, during his tenure as one of Johnny Cash’s associates. It’s also a family affair. Hutchins’ son Loney John Hutchins, owner of the Cleft Music label, assembled the collection after spending years wondering about the reels of tape his father had accumulated in the 1970s. The younger Hutchins had grown up listening to his father’s music, but the contents of the tapes remained unknown until he decided to decode their mysteries. “I had it in my mind that he was just sitting on tons of four-track cassettes, or really,

really rough demos,” Loney John says. “In my mind, the word ‘demo’ said to me halfbaked recordings, or stuff that was just vocals and guitar. The first one I strung up was one of those reels that had, like, 20 songs on it, and I recognized the first track. It was a song called ‘Pinball King,’ which is the first track on the album. That’s a song I grew up with, and I’d heard it a million times.” Indeed, Loney John Hutchins quickly figured out that the demos were polished recordings cut with some of Nashville’s finest players — musicians like pedal-steel master Buddy Emmons and bassist Henry Strzelecki. He selected the Buried Loot tracks from among the hundreds his father had cut in the ’70s, and the collection was mastered by John Baldwin. Buried Loot is both a vivid picture of a lively era in country history and a tribute to Loney Fred Hutchins, whose story embodies country music’s power to transform ordinary life into transcendent art. Talking to the elder Hutchins, I immediately feel the pull of a forceful presence. Coming from a place where money was scarce and cultural niceties even scarcer, he turned himself into an artist with an air of the mysticism he derived from the beauty of nature. “The way it worked back then, you had to tell the mailman you had a child, and they would record it for you in Nashville,” he says. He was born in Sullivan County, Tenn., on Nov. 7, 1946. The area is noted for its ridge-and-valley topography, and it’s only about 20 miles east of Kingsport. Still, it was isolated and about as far away from big-city values as you could get. He moved with his family to a house at Timbercreek Branch, just a few miles up

the road in Virginia. “My grandfather’s family lived over there in a log house back in the holler — just a hidden place,” he says. “We often went over there. My parents couldn’t read or write, and I learned to read. I became a bookworm, and I just wanted to be the first [person in my family] to finish high school, and I wanted to be the first to go to college.” After leaving home in 1966, he did a stint in the Army, which led him to Fort Riley, Kan. By 1969, when he left the Army, he had put together a band in Kansas called Hickory Wind, named after Gram Parsons and Bob Buchanan’s celebrated song. “That’s where my head was at, to do progressive country music,” Hutchins says. “We started doing some originals, but covers first. I was a short-haired guy straight out of the Army, and my band was longhaired hippies. We couldn’t get work if [club owners] saw them. So I kept my hair short for a long time until I got around and made our bookings.” Hutchins moved to Nashville in 1973. He sold mobile homes for a while, writing songs in his spare time. After he met Johnny Cash, the country star signed the fledgling tunesmith to a contract that earned him a $75 weekly draw against future songwriting royalties. Although he managed Cash’s song catalog, he says he didn’t work hard to push his own tunes. “I also had all these other writers to deal with,” he recalls. “So I just put myself aside in terms of exposure, because I didn’t want that conflict of pushing my own stuff versus their stuff.” Working for Cash, he handled the catalogs of Billy Joe Shaver, Chris Gantry, Billy Edd Wheeler and many others.

Hutchins left his job with Cash in 1977, and says he made the move because he believed traditional country was on its way out. After finishing college in 1979, he continued to play live shows and write songs. Along the way, he released an album, 1983’s Appalachia Music. It features a Southernrock-meets-country shuffle titled “Son of a No Good Man,” which sounds like the outlaw country of the previous decade. Despite its subtitle, Buried Loot doesn’t contain a lot of outlaw country. A few tracks sport electric guitars, and “Pinball King” rides on a clavinet lick played by session cat Bobby Ogden. Hutchins casts journalist and songwriter Hazel Smith’s “Stoney Creek” as a country waltz, and “Whippoorwill” uses a modified Appalachian-ballad style that amounts to a take on folk-country. Hutchins’ approach throughout Buried Loot makes a case for the timelessness of country, and the album contains an overarching theme whose implications continue to inform country today. Again and again, Hutchins sings about the disappearance of an ideal world of nature that human beings are intent on defiling. “Nashville Suite” is about a struggling couple who think their pay-by-the-day hotel room is paradise, while “Paradise” is about what happens when country folk go to the big city. The most chilling track is “Hillbilly Ghetto,” in which sharecroppers endure floods, death, drought, hunger and the ravages of the Vietnam War. It’s bracing, tough stuff. Hutchins earns his place in country history by not shrinking away from the harsh realities that force us to reaffirm the values we hold dear. EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

VINYL ANALYSIS

Indie record stores and labels cope with bottlenecks in the vinyl supply chain

BY BRONTE LEBO

PHOTO: MICHAEL W. BUNCH

UNITED RECORD PRESSING fornia, one of the only major suppliers of the lacquer discs required for traditional vinyl pressing — the ultimate impact of which isn’t yet known. A few weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic forced pressing plants to shut down temporarily or operate at greatly reduced capacity and sparked an ongoing shipping crisis. Unfortunately, artists and labels operating on a smaller scale find themselves bearing the brunt of these problems. They are often the most vulnerable to lasting impacts when bottlenecks cause a release to get delayed. “Smaller artists are trying to schedule tours, they’re trying to do record release shows, and they can’t afford to sit on an album for a year before it finally reaches the masses,” says Mannix. “And they’re the ones that are already on the edge of, ‘Is music my career, or am I going to have to do something else?’ ” Even artists who operate on a larger scale are experiencing hold-ups. Sturgill Simpson’s latest album The Ballad of Dood & Juanita came out digitally and on CD in August. Hedrick notes that the vinyl release, which was originally set for Dec. 3, has now been pushed back to February. This can cause headaches for artists as well as independent shops like Vinyl Tap, where Hedrick collects preorders and scrambles to adjust his marketing plans when a release gets postponed at the last minute. For now, it seems like both the popularity of vinyl and the inability to resolve any of these problems quickly are here to stay, and businesses like Vinyl Tap and Centripetal Force are trying to adapt. “I think this is going to be an issue well into 2023,” Mannix says. He cites Centripetal Force’s LP edition of Lou Turner’s 2020

PHOTO: BRANDON DE LA CRUZ

emand for vinyl records has been climbing for more than a decade and has truly exploded in the past few years. But many independent artists and labels are facing major delays in pressing and distributing vinyl, forcing them to push back vinyl releases by months. The situation has also made the challenge of operating an independent record store even tougher. The increased interest in the format over the past 15 years isn’t all bad news. In the first half of 2021 alone, revenue from vinyl records grew to $467 million according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Compare that to 2019, when the vinyl revenue for the entire year was $504 million, noted then as the highest figure since 1988. While smaller labels and independent artists were the first to move back toward vinyl, mainstream FIND CENTRIPETAL players have FORCE RELEASES AT taken notice, CENTRIPETALFORCERECORDS. BANDCAMP.COM AND VISIT VINYL especially in TAP AT 2038 GREENWOOD AVE. the past five to OR VINYLTAPNASHVILLE.COM seven years. “I think a lot of that demand is wrapped up in large independent record labels and major record labels,” says Mike Mannix, owner of Centripetal Force, a Nashville independent label that leans toward psychedelia. “If anything, it makes it harder for me to sell my records, because there’s so much vinyl in the marketplace now.” The Big Three record label conglomerates — Universal, Sony and Warner — pressing massive quantities of their most popular artists’ releases might have less of an impact if there weren’t a finite supply of the presses that make vinyl records. Until Third Man Pressing opened in Detroit in 2017 with a small batch of new presses, the last time the machines were manufactured regularly was in the early 1980s. “There are only a handful of plants,” notes Todd Hedrick, owner of East Nashville bar and record shop Vinyl Tap. “And only one of them is pretty big — the one that’s here in Nashville, United Record Pressing. In a good sense, the demand is super high. But they don’t have the capacity. Even running [some of its presses] basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they can’t keep up.” Production capacity is only one of the complex factors behind the long turnaround times between finishing an album and getting vinyl copies to sell. Hedrick also points to an issue that dates to late 2019, when the Big Three centralized all of their vinyl shipping. Dealing with the distributor Direct Shot exclusively, rather than spreading the work of getting records to stores among several companies, has slowed down the process significantly. In February 2020, a fire caused catastrophic damage at Apollo Masters Corp. in Cali-

VINYL TAP album Songs for John Venn. He submitted the master to be pressed in January 2021 but didn’t receive copies until the end of October. Now, he’s being told it could take up to a year to receive new records. Mannix notes that some pressing plants are experimenting with direct metal mastering, a process that doesn’t require the hard-to-find lacquers. He is also working with partners in the U.K. to do split-label releases, which helps circumvent the shipping delays and high postage rates from the U.S. to international customers. Independent record shops are also banding together.

Hedrick says they’re leaning on the Record Store Day team for more information, which they’re more likely to have because of the close work they do with labels. “That being said, all the conversations we’ve had in the past year-and-a-half to two years are that this is just how it is,” he continues. “I don’t know that there’s any solution other than being able to build more pressing plants to keep up with the demand, and that just doesn’t seem like that’s an option for anyone. I think it’s incredibly expensive to get working parts for those plants.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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MUSIC

Country songs TO MAKE A HOUSE A HOME Black Opry Revue fosters vital connections available for artists The for Black country musicians BY LORIE LIEBIG

scan here to listen

I GUITAR LESSONS

with former Musicians Institute and Austin Guitar School instructor

MARK BISH.

n early 2021, country music journalist and longtime fan Holly G found herself searching for an outlet that spotlighted Black artists within the genre. Aside from country artist Rissi Palmer’s landmark Apple Radio show Color THE BLACK OPRY REVUE Me Country Radio, COMES TO EXIT/IN ON which focuses on BISATURDAY, DEC. 18 POC artists and hosts conversations on inclusion and inequality, her search came up empty. She decided to do the work herself and launched Black Opry, a website that creates a space for Black artists in country, folk, Americana and beyond to be discovered and celebrated. Within just a few months, the site became the headquarters of a grassroots coalition of sorts, where Black artists could connect with listeners and each other. During AmericanaFest in September, fellow music journalist Marcus K. Dowling rented a house in East Nashville that they nicknamed the Black Opry House. The building is not far from a place where the late Guy Clark once lived; decades ago, that now-demolished building was a place where musicians constantly trickled in from across the country to share songs and conversation while

PHOTO: MARY GLEN

uscp123@gmail.com

traveling through town, and the Black Opry House fostered a new version of that same magic. Black artists visited throughout the week, sharing songs, stories and forging important, life-altering connections. Just a few weeks later, the first iteration of The Black Opry Revue was held at New York City’s Rockwood Music Hall. The emotional one-night-only event featured performances from talented singer-songwriters Tylar Bryant, Lizzie No, Roberta Lea, Joy Clark and Jett Holden, and pushed Holly G to keep thinking big. On Dec. 18, The Black Opry Revue will head to Exit/In for its first Nashville showcase. She says that bringing the Revue to Nashville was important to her because the city is seen globally as the home and heart of country music. “So many of these performers have had experiences with the doors in Nashville being shut in their face due to the color of their skin,” Holly G tells the Scene. “It means a lot to be able to hold a door open for them and hopefully demonstrate to Nashville that continuing to ignore the diversity that exists within country music is a mistake.” The Music City installment of the showcase will once again feature sets from Holden, Clark, Lea and No, along

with Aaron Vance. In a town that’s rarely lacking for live entertainment, the Revue helps create a much-needed, long-overdue space for artists in a genre that is still overwhelmingly white. “The beautiful part about our Revues is that they do such a good job of demonstrating the diversity in sound within Black country music,” says Holly G. “All of these artists have their own unique perspective and approach and represent a different iteration of the future of country music.” You can also expect some very recognizable surprise guests to drop by, including Frankie Staton. The singer-songwriter co-founded the Black Country Music Association and has worked tirelessly to bring awareness to the racial inequality that has thrived in the country music industry. “It feels monumental to have Frankie, who has been working for over 30 years to diversify this space, join this new generation of artists looking to do the same,” Holly G notes. “It’s important to me to honor those that have come before us doing this work, so it feels like a great privilege to have her join us.” Holly G hopes The Black Opry Revue will feel like a safe space to share art and forge connections. She aims to eventually bring the Revue to other iconic country venues like the Ryman and even overseas, so the Exit/In show serves as a first step in what may well be a long journey for the Black Opry. These shows are much more than just a place to sing some songs, or a way to clear a seat at the country music industry’s table. It’s a method to break down the walls that have kept Black artists out of the genre they helped build from the beginning. “I think what people will experience at the show is a homecoming,” she says. “For so many years Black people have been kept out of country music even though it was our talent and efforts that originated the sound. Whenever the Black Opry community gets together — whether it’s for a show, at a house, doing a panel or anything else — no matter what it’s for or where we are, there’s an intense feeling of home, created simply by us being in the same room and celebrating this music that we all love. That feeling resonates throughout whatever space we are in, and it never fails to feel like a healing experience.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

THE SPIN CUT THE CAKE BY P.J. KINZER

512-619-3209

markbishmusic@gmail.com

ORANGE IS THE NEW HAT: JOSH GILLIGAN

PHOTO: LANCE CONZETT

Jazz, Rock, Blues, Country, Fusion, Funk, Flamenco, etc. Technique, theory, songwriting. Programs available. 40 years exp.

t a first birthday party, it’s typical for the guest of honor to not be fully aware of what’s going on, let alone plan the whole thing. But when that 1-year-old is a public radio music-discovery station launched during a pandemic — which took home Best New Radio Station honors in the Scene’s recent Best of Nashville issue — that infant has earned the right to celebrate however it wishes. On Dec. 1, 366 days after Nashville Public Radio swapped the format on 91.1 FM and 91.One WNXP took to the airwaves, the WNXP crew

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

RUN FOR IT, MARTY!: LIZA ANNE

commemorated the station’s first orbit of the sun with three hours of sets at Exit/In from local artists they have been championing. While waiting in the new-normal line of folks showing vaccine cards, I could hear the ethereal synth pop of Bantug pulsing through the walls. Both tranquil and seductive, her sound seemed to have cast a spell over the room by the time I got inside. Her abbreviated set featured a few tunes from her 2021 album 12 Songs About Loneliness, which was WNXP’s Record of the Week back in May. After a quick changeover, songsmith Josh Gilligan shared his neo-yachtrock-ish style with the crowd. His jazzy take on pop is smoother than freshly polished marble. One highlight of the evening was seeing Liza Anne throw down her thunderous rock ’n’ roll gauntlet in person. Her most popular streaming tracks at the moment are from earlier records, which might lead you to expect various takes on pop that alternate between melancholy and hopeful. In the run-up to her 2020 record Bad Vacation, Liza Anne and her co-conspirators fully embraced the furious beast within. At this show, she came armed with her Flying V, chopping heads and showing no mercy. There were moments that called to mind everything from Siouxsie and the

Banshees to Earth to the most aggressive corners of Nirvana’s catalog. Her other guitar player’s lead lines came across as equal parts prog rock and noise-punk, sounding like they came straight out of the mixing board on a late-’80s Sub Pop single. Consummate professional pop ’n’ rockers *repeat repeat give it 110 percent every time they get the opportunity to play. Whether you see them at Bridgestone Arena opening for The Black Keys, at Live on the Green or Bonnaroo, or at a small local bar, Kristyn and Jared Corder and their band expend more energy onstage than you’d think they could possibly contain. The enthusiasm that radiates from the group for music — playing it, hearing it, seeing it — seems untarnished by the patina of cynicism most rock vets build up over years of active duty. Their set at the party, hot on the heels of a new EP called Songs for a Nice Drive, was no exception, as they bounced around the stage and cheered on the other acts. The whole night was a lot of good clean fun to celebrate WNXP’s rookie season, but the final act was a force of nature. Namir Blade, who had the distinction of being the radio station’s first Nashville Artist of the Month, closed out the night. Blade had the whole stage to himself and his MacBook, rapping over tracks he’d produced on his own and others from Imaginary Everything, his collaboration with North Carolina producer L’Orange (which also took home Best Hip-Hop Album honors in Best of Nashville). No local record has spent more time in my headphones this year than Imaginary Everything — like much of the work Blade has been doing around town over the past several years, it’s a lucid dream of rap. He is both introspective and buoyant, affable and isolated, equal parts head trip and body buzz. There is no artist in this whole city that I am more excited about going forward. While some Nashville musicians are doing a pretty damned good job of making their way into the upper stratosphere, Blade is colonizing new planets. It’s great to have a radio station that celebrates this kaleidoscopic array of music all at once and in such depth. In their first year alone, WNXP’s staff has done a phenomenal job of making the crowded airwaves in Music City better represent the diverse array of musicians living and working here. Now that they’re firmly established, it’s exciting to imagine what they might do next. EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

THU 12.9  AN EVENING WITH NOAH GUNDERSEN  SOLD OUT THE HIGH WATT

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nashvillescene.com | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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FILM

LET ME ROLL IT TO YOU Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy makes relatable emotions startlingly new BY NADINE SMITH

he phrase “magical realism” implies the meeting of the mundane and the otherworldly. Few directors have crystallized that dichotomy like Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, one of the preeminent Japanese filmmakers of the past decade, whose work consistently bridges the all-too-familiar and the completely unknown. Though he’s been making films since the late Aughts, Hamaguchi finally broke through in the United States with what on its surface might seem like his most inaccessible WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND work — the six-hour FANTASY Happy Hour, which NR, 121 MINUTES; IN centers on four feJAPANESE WITH ENGLISH male friends whose SUBTITLES OPENING FRIDAY, DEC. 10, circular lives are inAT THE BELCOURT timately bound up in one another. His latest, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (opening this week at the Belcourt), is one of two feature films he released in 2021, alongside Drive My Car (opening Dec. 29 at the Belcourt). Despite the shape described by its title, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy appears on its surface to be more triangular than round, but its three separate moral tales all do indeed come full circle: Each third is focused on one of three women, who are at similarly chaotic junctures in their lives and grappling with unraveling layers of buried feelings. The term triptych seems more befitting than anthology or compendium, despite the obviously literary quality of Hamaguchi’s storytelling, as these three

SOME EXPLAINING TO DO Being the Ricardos somehow works BY JASON SHAWHAN

went into Being the Ricardos expecting a disaster. The trailer I had seen inspired no confidence whatsoever, and the vibe being projected was hermetically sealed and inert. When you’re telling the story of one of the most gifted physical BEING THE RICARDOS NR, 121 MINUTES comedians of all time, OPENING FRIDAY, DEC. 10, you’ve got to convey a AT THE BELCOURT AND very specific energy — a AMC THOROUGHBRED 20 clown with the eyes and instincts of a bird of prey. Well, as always, shame on me for doubting Nicole Kidman. Despite being saddled with prosthetic makeup that, as a viewer, you never really get past, Kidman digs deep into a part that has all the emotions, and she and Javier Bardem are really good together as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Their performances are a masterful dance that, even when the script feels a little forced, keeps the audience enthralled.

lives are separate but parallel. Hamaguchi was a student of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, best known for unsettlingly existential horror movies like Pulse and Cure, and he co-wrote his teacher’s most recent film, The Wife of a Spy. Both filmmakers construct something of an uncanny valley, but unlike Kurosawa, who peels back the bland veneer of reality to expose cosmic dread, Hamaguchi finds deep and sincere connection between human beings. In the first episode of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, two women bond over their relationship histories — only for one member of the pair to realize that a man described by the other is her ex-lover. That prompts emotional outbursts and the reignition of long-buried feelings between two former partners who seem similarly committed to self-sabotage. In the second part of the film, a bitter college student convinces his older girlfriend to ensnare a professor he dislikes in a “honey trap” after she admits to being turned on by an erotic passage in the professor’s award-winning novel. It’s a situation that deals with loaded subject matter that might leave you sitting on a dreadful edge, only for Hamaguchi to disarm the situation in the most surprising way possible, as a deeply uncomfortable scenario becomes unexpectedly moving and affirming for the aging professor and the woman uncomfortably coerced into tempting him. The third and final encounter has the most explicitly surreal context, set in a speculative reality in which a computer virus leaks everyone’s secrets and forces a return

Part of this is the humanizing factor of letting stars of the ’50s and ’60s engage in the kinds of human behavior that network censors and sponsors would never allow in the public sphere. Everyone up through the very first millennials knew who Lucy and Desi were even if they never actively watched an episode, and there’s something comforting about being let in behind the black-and-white TV screen to see aspects of these icons that just weren’t out there unless you had the best Old Hollywood gossip connections. The film’s hook is a good one: the week when the entire I Love Lucy production waltzed on eggshells waiting to see if the national media was going to do anything with Ball’s 1936 registration as a member of the Communist Party. Tensions are high, Lucy has just found out that she’s pregnant, and worst of all, this week’s episode has serious script problems. The presence of writer-director Aaron Sorkin requires some degree of healthy skepticism — last year’s The Trial of The Chicago 7 demonstrated that he was much more concerned with getting the vibe right than going in for historical accuracy, and that applies here as well. In this particular instance, we’re fortunate that he does have extensive experience being on the business end of running a weekly television show, and there are moments that ring with a verisimilitude that, even if it isn’t exactly what was happening in the lives of Lucy and Desi at that specific moment, feels

to more primitive forms of telecommunications. A woman returns home for a high school reunion, hoping to confront a former partner she hasn’t seen in years, only to confuse a woman she’s never met for her lost love. After the initial awkwardness and disappointment of mistaken identity fades, the two strangers bond over the losses in their lives, and even engage in a bit of therapeutic role-play as they imagine the confrontations they wish they could have. Hamaguchi’s color palette is drained and muted but still alive: all cotton whites, soft grays and stonewashed blues, like a Brandy Melville catalog. The camera is sometimes straight-on, confronting us with the fragile contours and teary eyes of the human face, but regardless of position, our perspective is frequently static, with characters on screen similarly withdrawn in their physical expression. The words they say are melodramatic, but captured in a way that’s restrained and guarded, which in some ways only enhances the emotionality, the heartbreak, the anguish. Every scene is underwritten with a sense of calm that in one moment can feel warming and restorative, and in the next frigid and isolating.

correct. Most of the involved parties at that time are long dead, and the couple’s daughter Lucie Arnaz endorsed the film wholeheartedly, so set your filters accordingly. As for Sorkin, I still don’t fully trust him — Martin Sheen is not Josiah Bartlett from The West Wing, he’s always going to be Greg Stillson from The Dead Zone. And in this instance, Sorkin’s propensity for speechifying generally works in service of the story. I can’t find fault with the on-screen reunion of Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat and Tony Hale (as writer’s assistant Madelyn Pugh and co-creator/ showrunner Jess Oppenheimer, respectively), or with Nina Arianda’s haunting turn as Vivian Vance. This is an adult story, both in terms of ribald language and some low-key sexual content — but also

The plot, too, is pure melodrama, a circuit of relationships founded on coincidences, dramatic ironies and startling revelations. There’s a feeling of mysterious uncertainty, but what’s hidden and waiting to be uncovered are the emotions and truths that we keep inside, not the twists or revelations of more conventional movie plots — more unknown than the supernatural or any alternate reality is the interior of another human being. Though the feelings are recognizable, Hamaguchi’s presentation makes relatable emotions startlingly new, reframing our perspective through the simplest of visual suggestions. At one moment in the second episode, when the woman who wants to tempt a literary professor confesses her genuine love of his novel, she admits she hasn’t read many other books. “I’m envious of that,” the professor says sincerely, implying that he’s jealous of all the words, images and experiences she has yet to absorb. Hamaguchi’s films similarly remind me that there are endless perspectives to observe from, infinite ways to reframe or interpret a memory, and still undiscovered depths of the human heart to sink into. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

because unless you’ve dealt with shitty jobs or relationships unraveling in cheap motels and on luxury yachts, you’re not necessarily going to find that emotional on-ramp. I’m not going to lie: There are moments when Kidman’s Lucy takes on confrontational meetings in executive boardrooms or reshapes a gag on set and you get to luxuriate in a perceptive woman putting people who aren’t willing to do the work in their place with razor-sharp logic, and it is awesome. The perennially jarring makeup has the remarkable effect of never letting you take the performance for granted, keeping you on edge in a deeply nervous space. Being the Ricardos is a very smart tribute to Ball, who delighted in finding the big emotions you could wring from taking goofy steps on a tightrope above an unfathomable chaos (and who is also unexpectedly great in the 1947 Douglas Sirk suspense thriller Lured). Bardem and Kidman are never anything less than captivating, even when you can see the metaphorical brick wall on the horizon of the Arnaz marriage. But hey, if you want to watch something like a snuff film for a legendary Hollywood marriage, Vincente Minnelli’s Lucy- and Desi-starring The Long, Long Trailer is as cruel a portrait of watching love die as you can imagine. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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FILM

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT Adam McKay’s apocalyptic burlesque is more sanctimonious than savage

BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

on’t Look Up, Netflix’s latest big-budget holiday offering, is a what-if scenario stretched out to two hours and 25 minutes: If a comet were hurtling toward Earth, ready to annihilate everybody and everything, just how would the public and the powers that be respond? Well, they probably wouldn’t respond the same way the characters in 1998’s summer blockbusters Deep Impact and Armageddon did — with everyone (particularly the U.S. of A.!) banding together and sending a badass, ready-to-die DON’T LOOK UP crew of Americans R, 145 MINUTES up in space to OPENING FRIDAY, DEC. 10, AT MALCO SMYRNA CINEMA; detonate the damn COMING TO NETFLIX DEC. 24 thing.

According to this movie, we’d have a nightmare on our hands even before the comet showed up. Astronomers Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio, giving us the same amusingly neurotic vibes he provided in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence, looking like an alt Journeys employee and often blowing up with rage like a middle-aged mom demanding a refund) discover the comet. First, they try to inform the president (Meryl Streep) and her staff, but their warning falls on deaf ears. (Although it is kinda messed up that the movie inadvertently posits that, when the apocalypse comes, it’ll be under a woman’s watch.) And when they try to alert the media, a bad appearance on a morning show gets them pilloried on social media, where folks are more concerned about the recent breakup of a couple of pop stars (played by Ariana Grande and Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi). Don’t Look Up has director Adam McKay (The Big Short, Vice) once again doing a satire that’s heavily on-the-nose, presenting a view of contemporary society that’s full of self-centered haves and clueless have-

nots. Virtually everyone our protagonists meet in their mission to get the word out are shallow assholes — even Grande’s pop diva calls DiCaprio’s man of science an “old fuck” for awkwardly giving condolences for her breakup — too lazy and selfish to even come to an agreement that the world is coming to an end. McKay rounded up some real stars to play straight-up douchebags. There’s Jonah Hill as the president’s hilariously vapid chief of staff and son; Mark Rylance, playing a more unhinged version of the same character he played in Ready Player One, is a Zuckerberg/Musk-esque tech tycoon; Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry are the chipper morning-show hosts. The astronomers do have some allies: character actor Rob Morgan (rocking a sad-ass wig) plays a scientist who aids the pair, while everyone’s crush Timothée Chalamet (also be-wigged) shows up halfway through as an evangelical street punk who romances Dibiasky. McKay dumps his usual bag of tricks (fourth-wall breaks, hyper-surreal moments) in order to present a black comedy that’s deadly serious even when it’s being relentlessly absurd. There are scenes in which the camera woozily lingers on DiCaprio and Lawrence’s faces, capturing the hazy panic they’re experiencing while everyone else is blissfully ignorant. But considering that a lot of us have been living in a pandemicfueled farce these past couple of years, the targets McKay and co-writer/journalist David Sirota go after seem like lowhanging fruit. Do we really need a two-anda-half-hour movie about how everyone — from politicians to journalists to the public at large — will do the wrong thing when an impending catastrophe looms? Hell, we’re still living through that scenario. This film will most likely depress some and infuriate others. While McKay has said that this is a movie for everyone, I hardly think anyone from the MAGA nation will sit down and watch a Bernie stan shit on them for a couple hours. McKay obviously wants his film to be in the company of such satires as Dr. Strangelove, Network and Wag the Dog, and anyone who’s seen those movies will notice how much McKay bites from them here — DiCaprio even has his own Howard Beale-style meltdown in front of TV cameras. But even as he’s not-so-subtly presenting the argument that maybe mankind should be extinct, McKay is still too much of a storytelling softie to go quite that dark and cynical. DiCaprio and Lawrence’s astronomers constantly fight the good fight, trying to save a world that’s unfortunately filled to the brim with dicks. An apocalyptic burlesque that’s more sanctimonious than savage, Don’t Look Up might make you understand why Will Ferrell recently parted ways with his longtime collaborator McKay. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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TANESHA TUCKER vs. JOSE ANTONIO PAGEN JR. In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon JOSE ANTONIO PAGEN, JR.. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after December 16, 2021 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 17th, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon JOSE ANTONIO PAGEN, JR.. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after December 16, 2021 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 17th, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville. Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell Deputy Clerk Date: November 18, 2021 D. Scott Parsley Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 11/25,12/2,12/9,12/16/2021 Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 21D1177 KARLA YESENIA GARCIA vs. NICOLAS GARCIA PEREZ In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon NICOLAS GARCIA PEREZ. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after December 16, 2021 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 17th, 2022. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville. Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell Deputy Clerk Date: November 18, 2021 Morgan E. Smith Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 11/25,12/2,12/9,12/16/2021

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Welcome to British Woods Morgan E. Smith Attorney for Plaintiff

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FEATURED APARTMENT LIVING

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell Deputy Clerk Date: November 18, 2021 D. Scott Parsley Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 11/25,12/2,12/9,12/16/2021

Your Neighborhood

Neighborhood Dining and Drinks: · Larry’s · Tony’s Mexican · McNamara’s Irish Pub · Kobe Asian Fusion · Darfon’s · Fat Boys BBQ Enjoy the outdoors: · Hamilton Creek Recreation Area · Smith Springs Community Center · Anderson Beach at Percy Priest Lake

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264 British Woods Drive Nashville, TN 37217 | www.britishwoodsapartments.com | 615.205.1862 58

NASHVILLE SCENE | DECEMBER 9 - DECEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

Southaven at Commonwealth 100 John Green Place, Spring Hill, TN 37174

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To advertise your property available for lease, contact Keith Wright at 615-557-4788 or kwright@fwpublishing.com

Studio 330 sq feet $900 - $1000

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Nashville is a diverse city, and we want a pool of freelance contributors who reflect that diversity. We’re looking for new freelancers, and we particularly want to encourage writers of color & LGBTQ writers to pitch us.

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