FEBRUARY 18–24, 2021 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 3 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE
THE
NEW CHIEF Does John Drake represent the change so many police reform advocates have been calling for? BY STEVEN HALE
CITY LIMITS: OFFICIALS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS WORK TOWARD EQUITABLE VACCINE DISTRIBUTION PAGE 8 FOR THE SOUL: DOCUMENTARY SHOWS CAMERON HIGH SCHOOL’S ROLE IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT PAGE 22 cover_2-18-21.indd 1
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— J.T. Gray Owner, The Station Inn
The Station Inn has been a musical beacon to generations of musicians, including Roland White, Sam Bush, Larry Cordle, Jerry Douglas, John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Sierra Hull, and many others. “Father of Bluegrass” Bill Monroe visited frequently, and when he died on September 9, 1996—a Monday, when the club normally would have been closed—pickers and fans went there anyway, holding an extended wake. Explaining the decision to open his club, owner J. T. Gray said the above. Learn more about the venerable Nashville club in the exhibition The Station Inn: Bluegrass Beacon.
DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE Visit CountryMusicHallofFame.org to buy tickets. photo:
Les Leverett
from the collection at the country music hall of fame and museum
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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
CONTENTS
6
24
Walk a Mile: Jefferson Street .................... 6
A Long, Strange Trip
CITY LIMITS
In the 14th installment of his column, J.R. Lind explores the rich history of a stretch of Jefferson anchored by a trio of HBCUs BY J.R. LIND
A Fair Shot ..................................................8 Safety-net health care providers, community leaders and Metro officials work toward equitable vaccine distribution BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ
Anti-Tax Crusader Gives It Another Go .....9 Proposed charter revisions would cap tax increases, make it easier to recall officials BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT
Pith in the Wind .........................................9
This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog
BOOKS
My Year Abroad traces an ordinary young man’s journey to a weird hell and back BY KIM GREEN AND CHAPTER 16
‘what haunts?’
A poem illustrated by Elisheba Israel Mrozik BY JOSHUA MOORE
26
MUSIC
Another Look ........................................... 26 The Scene’s music writers recommend recent releases from Reaux Marquez, Hayley Williams and many more
Cool Comfort ........................................... 27
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Katy Kirby trusts her instincts on Cool Dry Place
The New Chief
The Scene’s live-review column checks out Styrofoam Winos at Grimey’s
COVER STORY Does John Drake represent the change so many police reform advocates have been calling for? BY STEVEN HALE
15
CRITICS’ PICKS
Stream films by Black creators via the Belcourt, listen to Caveh Zahedi’s 365 Stories I Want to Tell You Before We Both Die, listen to Kurt Vile, visit Black-owned art galleries online, get a latch-hook kit, celebrate TPAC’s 40th anniversary, listen to Yasmin Williams’ Urban Driftwood, catch the virtual workshop reading of That Woman and more
18
FOOD AND DRINK That’s Amore
St. Vito Focacciaria serves up delicious sfincione-style pizza and more
BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
The Spin ................................................... 27
FEBRUARY 18, 2021
THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: Exit/In Property Listed for Sale; Venue Owners Working on Bid to Purchase the Site Bill Targeting Trans Athletes Advances First Bite: Willie B’s Is a Welcome Addition to ‘The Buc’ Rosemary Fossee Releases New EP in Honor of the Late David Compton’s Birthday
ON THE COVER:
John Drake, Chief of Police Photo by Eric England
BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
28 FILM
Primal Stream 43 ................................... 28 Bayou drama and Georgian drama, now available to stream BY JASON SHAWHAN
What a Dark Web We Weave ................. 29 Despite good performances, Silk Road squanders its moment BY JOE NOLAN
29 30
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD
MARKETPLACE
BY JACK SILVERMAN
20
CULTURE
Going Ham............................................... 20 Amateur radio users want to be of service when modern technology fails BY HANNAH HERNER
For the Soul: ‘The Past Is Prologue’....... 22 Emmy-nominated documentary shows Cameron High School’s role in the civil rights movement BY ASHLEY CURRIE AND URBAANITE
SCENERY
Arts and Culture News From the Nashville Scene Looking for the latest on art and culture in Nashville? Subscribe to Scenery, our weekly newsletter that covers visual art, theater, comedy, books, film and more.
Subscribe at nashvillescene.com/subscribe nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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‘THERE IS NO VACCINE FOR POLARIZATION’: VANDERBILT PROJECT TO TACKLE THE HARD WORK OF FACT-BASED RECONCILIATION Organizers of Vanderbilt University’s Project on Unity and American Democracy hope to help our country realize what we have in common by using well-documented events from our past. “There’s no vaccine for polarization,” say the project’s leaders. This project has a lofty goal, and one that will be reached by walking the long road to recovery, step by step. The most significant goal of the project is to separate fact from fiction — to ensure that more of our opinions are rooted in fact so that we return to a place of cooperation based on a shared history and experience. By finding commonality and illustrating pivotal points in our history where we have faced similar issues, we can better identify which actions led to improvement and which worked to tear down progress and recovery. After all, what good is an opinion without logic and reason? This project’s very foundation is an example of working to find common ground. As project co-chair Jon Meacham has noted, “The project is chaired by an unlikely but committed triumvirate: former Republican governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam, lawyer-activist and former Obama White House fellow Samar Ali and me, Jon Meacham, a presidential historian.” Successful nonpartisan organizations are rare, particularly in today’s political and cultural environment. Our institutions of higher education are well-positioned to encourage balanced thought and debate, and I am excited about Vanderbilt’s endeavor to repair the fabric of our country. Vanderbilt and Nashville sit at a crossroads. Nashville is a blue city in a red state. Vanderbilt is a progressive institution steeped in the Southern tradition. As a result, this project is poised to identify commonalities through historical evidence and modern-day experiences from scholars and governmental leaders across the entirety of the political spectrum. Despite the upheaval our country has endured throughout its history, and in recent years, I remain convinced that there is more that unites us than divides us. The loudest voice on each side of the divide does not necessarily speak for that side. The loudest voice is, well, just the loudest — not the most informed, the most
balanced or even the most popular. Far more Americans found themselves aghast at the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol than cheered it on, regardless of political affiliation. President John F. Kennedy spoke at Vanderbilt University in 1963, just six months before his assassination, and his call to action emphasized the importance of education and of public service to support our communities. That speech is a pivotal one in Nashville’s history and in the history of our country. But his brother Robert’s speech at Vanderbilt during one of our country’s most divisive points resonates the most with me. Speaking in 1968, at the height of a turbulent time in the civil rights movement, Robert Kennedy said: “I ask for your help. I come here to this state, I come here to this great university, and I ask for your help — to change the course of the United States, to give us back our spirit, to give us back our heart and give us back our soul.” We find ourselves at a similar point today. Division is more apparent than cooperation, and as the three chairs of Vanderbilt’s project stated in their recent Time magazine piece: “Unity is a little like exercise: A great idea, a noble idea, but hard, and all too easy to forego. Yet history tells us that America works best when just enough of us see politics as a mediation of differences rather than as total, unrelenting warfare.” We have much work to do to find cooperative solutions to our problems, but we can find them. Vanderbilt is beginning a noble effort to do just that. As the chairs of the Unity Project have said, “We don’t always agree on everything, but we share the conviction that the American experiment has the best chance of working when people of good will replace wishful thinking with facts and evidence.”
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 Editors Jack Silverman, Abby White Staff Writers Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Marcus K. Dowling, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Geoffrey Himes, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Chris Parton, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Andrea Williams, Cy Winstanley, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Editorial Intern Diana Leyva 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 Promotions Coordinator Caroline Poole Publisher Mike Smith Senior Advertising Solutions Managers Maggie Bond, Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Stevan Steinhart, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Advertising Solutions Manager Olivia Bellon, William Shutes Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Aya Robinson, Price Waltman Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis For advertising information please contact: Mike Smith, msmith@nashvillescene.com or 615-844-9238 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com
Copyright©2020, 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 | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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CITY LIMITS
JEFFERSON STREET In the 14th installment of his column, J.R. Lind explores the rich history of a stretch of Jefferson anchored by a trio of HBCUs
eet
Jefferson Str
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with J.R. Lind
levard
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BY J.R. LIND | PHOTOS BY ERIC ENGLAND
THE ROUTE: From Nashville General Hospital, north on Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Boulevard, left on Jefferson Street, then left on 28th Avenue to Hadley Park.
CRANES: 1 ABANDONED SCOOTERS: 2 Once a month, reporter and resident historian J.R. Lind will pick an area in the city to examine while accompanied by a photographer. With his column Walk a Mile, he’ll walk a one-mile stretch of that area, exploring the neighborhood’s history and character, its developments, its current homes and businesses, and what makes it a unique part of Nashville. If you have a suggestion for a future Walk a Mile, email editor@nashvillescene.com.
I
n the heart of the city on a gray and crisp February morning, it is still quiet. From Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Boulevard, the beeps of construction vehicles, the light whir of traffic, the comings and goings from Nashville General Hospital and its adjacent COVID-19 test site echo in whispers from the clutch of buildings that make up Meharry Medical College and its attached facilities. Founded in 1876 as the first medical school in the South dedicated to teaching Black doctors, nurses and dentists, Meharry is still the second-largest producer of Black health care providers in the United States. The motto of the school, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, tells the story: “Worship of God Through Service to Mankind.” And its graduates do indeed serve: More than three-quarters of them end up working with communities underserved by the health care industry, a laudable achievement gobsmacking in its reality. D.B. Todd Boulevard, named for a professor of surgery and the city’s first Black heart surgeon, acts as a boundary between Meharry and Fisk University. Fisk was founded as a school for freedmen of all ages in 1866, nine months to the day after the surrender at Appomattox, when the Civil War and the slavery that caused it were still the freshest memory. It was originally sited in what we now call the Gulch. Its namesake, a Union general who headed Nashville’s Freedmen’s Bureau, gave the school’s founders, a group from the American Missionary Association, the Union barracks near Union Station to hold classes. He also secured $30,000 — the equivalent of nearly half a million in today’s dollars — to help jump-start
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the school. It was a resounding success nearly from the start, enrolling 900 students, ranging in age from 7 to 70, in a few months. In 1870, with a charge to educate teachers in the wake of the Tennessee General Assembly’s decision to provide free public education, the school transitioned into a university proper. But it needed more room. Which meant it needed more money. Thus, the Fisk Jubilee Singers were born as a fundraising arm of the university. So popular were the Jubilee Singers that there were ersatz versions that toured the country claiming to be the originals — but none could stand up to the talent of the real deal. Their tour took them everywhere, including England, where they gave a performance for Queen Victoria, who is alleged to have declared that surely the group came from a musical city — which must have surely shocked her distant Habsburg cousins in Vienna. But some say that’s what gave Nashville its extant nickname. There is plenty of dispute whether Her Majesty actually uttered those words and whether, if she did, it is why we are still called Music City. But in any event, the tour was a success, raising $50,000 (nearly $1.1 million today), saving the school from dire financial consequences and providing the funding for Jubilee Hall, the first building in the country built specifically for the educa-
tion of freedmen. The architecture of the oldest buildings at Meharry and Fisk reflect one another. Dark bricks and a style that’s nearly Gothic, if not quite so, evoke a feeling of a stroll through an English academic village. The campuses are tree-filled. Of particular note are the magnolias, which even in the cold of February provide shocks of waxy green. Despite the decidedly unspringlike weather, an alarming number of mockingbirds flit and flutter about, enjoying the respite the pandemic has given them from students crisscrossing the brick sidewalks, and chattering together in the grassy expanse. At the corner of D.B. Todd and Jefferson is the Otey Center — home of, among other things, Helen’s Hot Chicken and the Spoken Word Cafe. Flem Otey Jr. operated a grocery store here, one of the most successful businesses in North Nashville. Later, Otey — one of the area’s many Black entrepreneurs — expanded into other enterprises, including real estate, a salvage yard and laundromat. Famously, the grocery provided peanutbutter-and-jelly sandwiches to students jailed during the sit-ins of 1960. Those students were no doubt already familiar with Otey’s wares; after all, the Nashville Student Movement Office was nearby, on the lot where a Smoothie King stands today. Those fearless pioneers would have no doubt found sustenance from the excellent Ooh Wee Bar-B-Q — just up Jefferson Street at 21st Avenue — had it existed 60 years ago. The smell of smoked pork shoulder, chicken and hot wings somehow flies farther and stronger on the February winds, a mouthwa-
tering symphony with the inevitable rumble of a too-empty stomach providing the timpani part. Ooh Wee shares its block with Jefferson Street Sound, a small museum jam-packed with artifacts from the time when the street rivaled Memphis’ Beale, and 12th and Vine in Kansas City, Mo., as a center of Black music in the United States. Lorenzo Washington — “Mr. Lorenzo” to nearly everyone — runs this reliquary and regales visitors with stories and memories of when Jefferson Street jumped with jazz and blues and proto-rock. Across Jefferson Street is a bank that, frankly, looks like any other bank built in the mid-20th century: low-slung roof and slightly modernist architecture, but evoking security and stability nonetheless. But this is no other bank. This is Citizens Savings Bank and Trust, founded in 1904 as the One-Cent Savings Bank (though the initial minimum deposit was a dime, not a penny), the first minority-owned bank in the state. Nine men, including W.H. Boyd and J.C. Napier, pledged $100 each to fund the enterprise. Citizens is now the oldest continuously operating minority-owned bank in the country, having survived the Depression with Richard Henry Boyd, son of W.H., encouraging conservative lending from his employees and emphasizing saving to his customers. When there were inevitable runs, he gave his account holders confidence by having the tellers stack cash in the windows of the bank, showing that deposits were safe. Jefferson Street was truly the pulsing heart of Nashville’s Black community in the early to mid-20th century. It was anchored
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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CITY LIMITS
by respected institutions of higher learning, populated by successful businesses like Otey’s and the bank, and given the soul and verve of culture from its clubs. But then, cynicism couched as progress ripped a hole through Jefferson Street’s middle: Tennessee leaders placed Interstate 40 right across the center of this galaxy, slashing it in two physically and piercing that soul and verve. There’s an overpass now where Club Del Morocco once was. The resident band there in the early ’60s had the improbably great name the King Kasuals, led by an extraordinarily talented former soldier named James Marshall Hendrix. He started his band in Clarksville after his discharge from Ft. Campbell, but came to Jefferson Street to absorb the mighty power and talent that thumped the walls of its clubs every night. The man remembered by history as Jimi Hendrix was already over-the-top — he played guitar with his teeth, he was popular with women (including a married barmaid at Club Del Morocco), folks called him “Marbles” (because he’d lost his), and he wanted to be the best. The story goes that one night, Jimi dragged his guitar and amp down Jefferson to Club Baron (now the Elks Lodge) to challenge Nashville’s reigning guitar legend, Johnny Jones, to a guitar duel. Marbles had to go back to Del Morocco a defeated man —
A FAIR SHOT
Safety-net health care providers, community leaders and Metro officials work toward equitable vaccine distribution BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ
I
t’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has hit some communities harder than others. People of color have seen higher rates of infection than white folks, while the disease is even more life-threatening to the elderly and people with medical conditions like diabetes or immune deficiencies. Now that the vaccine is rolling out, Nashville officials, safety-net health care providers and community leaders are ensuring that the people hit hardest by the pandemic have a fair chance of accessing the city’s supply of doses. “It’s really important that we have a tailored plan for these special populations or these different
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but Jones recorded an album in 1969 with the King Kasuals and covered “Purple Haze” as a tribute to the man he’d once schooled. Now the space under the overpass is a park, with pictures and brief biographies of all the greats of Jefferson Street: the academics, the musicians and the athletes. A chart on one display shows the Olympic medals won by Tennessee State University runners under the tutelage of the great Ed Temple, who once came back to Nashville with his Tigerbelles having won more medals than 80 countries. There are murals in this park, just as there are many along Jefferson Street remembering times gone by — the Freedom Riders are memorialized in one, the great musicians who played the street (in addition to Hendrix, Etta James made regular stops, along with Otis Redding, Little Richard and Marvin Gaye) on another. Other murals depict more contemporary figures and issues, serving as a reminder that the struggle fought on Jefferson Street decades ago is still ongoing. These murals explode with color and skill, and there’s not a set of angel wings in sight, thank God. Jefferson begins rising slightly beyond the interstate, the dorm towers of TSU in the distance. The houses here address the sidewalk closely, the eaves of their low, angular roofs
poking out nearly to the street, their tight gables stretching high. The block that was home to the Baron, between 26th and 27th, feels like it was once something of a town square for the neighborhood. The club itself shared a building with Brown’s Pharmacy and the first roller rink for Black Nashvillians. A row of one- and two-story brick buildings that wouldn’t be out of place across from the courthouse in, say, Centerville are across from where the Baron once was. Today there’s a hubbub of commerce a little farther west at the rather awkward intersection of Jefferson, 28th, Ed Temple Boulevard and John Merritt Boulevard (the latter named for TSU’s legendary football coach). Black-owned bookstore AlkebuLan Images has anchored the corner for a quarter-century, and shares said corner with beloved restaurants Seafood Sensation and Amazing Glaze Chicken & Fish (home to a life-changing yeast roll). Men hawk shoes and handbags under a tent. Turning left onto 28th, the vast expanse of Hadley Park — fronted by its midcentury library and futurist bandshell — spreads up the hill. The park opened in 1912 as Mayor Hilary Howse satisified a campaign promise that there would be a park exclusively for the use of Black Nashvillians in the segregated city. Howse was already a popular figure
in the Black community because he’d been instrumental in drawing the Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State Normal School for Negroes (later TSU) to the city despite Chattanooga being the odds-on favorite. Curiously, no one is quite sure which Hadley the park is named for. Conventional wisdom is that it’s named for John L. Hadley, a slave owner who, it is said, gave land for the park and land for TSU because he wanted the people he’d formerly enslaved to thrive. The property records are a little iffy on the point, and there’s at least some contemporary evidence the park was actually named for Dr. C.H. Hadley, a Black man who lived near what is now the park and was principal of one of the city’s segregated schools. There was, briefly, a movement to rename the park for Malcolm X, though the suggestion was rejected by the Parks Board because of its policy not to rename parks. There is still music on Jefferson Street. In fact, on this morning there are Parliament tunes coming from the community center. And there is still excellence and innovation from the universities, and there is still entrepreneurship and activism. And there is proof that it will take more than a slab of interstate to kill the soul of this street. EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
groups, because not everybody has the same ability to engage with the existing health care system or public health system,” says Leslie Waller, an epidemiologist with the Metro Public Health Department. Nashville’s special-populations plan focuses on Black communities, immigrants, people experiencing homelessness and other people vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19. Waller says that, among other efforts, the health department has hosted virtual town halls with community leaders and worked on translating health information into languages like Spanish, Somali and Kurdish. “If you want to reach the community, it’s better to go to where they are,” says Metro Councilmember Zulfat Suara. “And it’s better to go with organizations that are already on the ground that have made the community connection and that the people trust.” Suara says the recently opened downtown vaccination point at the Music City Center is helpful, but she hopes to see more locations throughout the city — accessible in the same neighborhoods with high concentrations of people of color and
immigrants. Waller says that is indeed the plan. While the timeline is tentative, the city hopes to establish vaccination events in sites identified by community partners — “whether that’s a religious institution, a community center or something completely mobile and temporary,” says Waller. When that effort begins ultimately depends on the city’s limited vaccine supply, Waller says, noting that the city began vaccinating the 70-and-older population and public schools teachers on Feb. 12. Sabina Mohyuddin of the American Muslim Advisory Council is one of the community leaders spreading information and eyeing potential vaccination sites. Mohyuddin says she hasn’t registered many people from the Muslim community over the age of 75 — the Muslim population in Nashville seems to skew younger, she says — but she is working with neighborhood clinics to get people onto waitlists for the vaccine. Mohyuddin has also helped with education efforts, since many rumors and misunderstandings about the vaccine have been spreading. Mohyuddin says she hopes to see some local
“IF YOU WANT TO REACH THE COMMUNITY, IT’S BETTER TO GO TO WHERE THEY ARE.” —METRO COUNCILMEMBER ZULFAT SUARA
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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CONGRATS to our #HotChickenWeek21 winners! Thousands of Nashvillians devoured $7 Hot Chicken February 1-7 and voted to crown the Best Dishes in town!
Red’s 615 Kitchen
Best Overall Dish
Royal Boba
Most Unique Dish
Participating Restaurants
Prince’s Hot Chicken
Best Traditional Dish
THANK YOU
to the hot chicken eaters, readers and supporters of Hot Chicken Week. Your support of our participating restaurants is always appreciated, but especially so this year. Thank you for showing so much love to local biz! Stay tuned for more food week fun from the Scene. “Thank you guys for putting this on, you got people out and we met so many new faces and actually saw some people having some fun!” - Nick, Peach Tree Drive In
“We sold about 1,000 Hot Chicken Dishes during the week- what an awesome week.” - Eric, Red’s 615 Kitchen
“Love seeing local restaurants put their own unique spin on hot chicken as we know it. Get your taste buds ready and go support!” - @nashvillehiddengems Instagram
nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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CITY LIMITS mosques host vaccination events. “If that mosque leadership allows the vaccination at their mosque, then [people may think], ‘Maybe that’s something I should get.’ ” Brian Haile of community health care provider Neighborhood Health notes that public education will be important, but he believes that “the real limiting factor for getting shots in arms [for] communities of color is access.” “We’ve got to get ... more vaccines in public health clinics in the community health centers,” Haile says. “Safety-net providers in Middle Tennessee have been caring for those without insurance or with other barriers to care for several decades,” says Dr. Morgan Wills, president and CEO of volunteersupported health care clinic Siloam Health. Siloam works closely with the immigrant community — about 90 percent of the community health provider’s patients are from countries outside the U.S. Partners in outreach efforts include groups like Conexión Américas and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, which help with translation services among other outreach efforts. While supplies are limited, Wills commends state and Metro officials for ensuring community health centers received enough doses, saying Siloam has “adequate supply for our existing patients who meet the age criteria.” But he also echoes calls to broaden access as a key element to reaching underserved communities. Metro’s public transit department has also gotten involved. For the past few Saturdays, WeGo has shuttled folks age 75 and older to vaccination appointments using Access, its paratransit service, partnering with the public health department, Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency and Neighborhood Health. A spokesperson with WeGo says that as of Feb. 13, the agency has given nine rides to public health department appointments and 31 rides to public housing residents going to appointments at Neighborhood Health. In a tweet last week, Mayor John Cooper said half the city’s 75-and-older population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. But as of Feb. 11, the rates of vaccination don’t yet reflect the city’s demographics. For example, African Americans account for 27 percent of Nashville’s population but just 13 percent of those who have been vaccinated. There’s also a gap for Hispanics — 10 percent of the population and 2 percent of all vaccinations. The average age of some populations may account for some of the differences — Latinos are typically a younger demographic in Tennessee — but Waller notes that the city wants to get the vaccine to everyone who’s eligible, whether it’s a small group of people or not. As of Feb. 11, private hospital Vanderbilt University Medical Center posts the highest number of vaccinations at 55,000. Initially hospitals were only allowed to vaccinate their existing patient population, as well as hospital employees. Then in late January, the state told hospitals to offer vaccines to the wider community — while also shifting the supply of doses to public health departments. Some hospitals slowed vaccination efforts after the rule change, but the Tennessee Hospital Association said it was due to a dwindling vaccine supply. Also according to city data, 9.3 percent of Davidson County residents have received the first dose, and 4.7 percent are fully vaccinated. More than 126,000 vaccinations have been conducted in Nashville. EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
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ANTI-TAX CRUSADER GIVES IT ANOTHER GO
Proposed charter revisions would cap tax increases, make it easier to recall officials BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT
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local attorney is pushing yet another change to city law that would limit city leaders’ power to raise taxes. Attorney Jim Roberts said last week that his group has mailed more than 200,000 petitions to Nashville voters, hoping to get six proposed revisions to the Metro Charter on the ballot in May or June. Last year, Roberts and his team secured the necessary signatures to get a different version of the proposal on the ballot, but a Nashville judge deemed it illegal and said it could not go before Davidson County voters. This time, Roberts said he has made changes that he believes will help his proposal pass legal review. Among them: The new version limits future tax increases to 3 percent, while the old would have clawed back the increase for the current city budget. Additionally, Roberts added specific citations to the Metro Charter; lawyers and experts said his previous version could not be added to the charter without declaring where each item should go and what it should replace in the existing charter. He also added severability clauses to some of the provisions — when the previous iteration was in court, the judge said she could not unilaterally remove some parts of the proposed charter revision without severability language.
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Roberts’ proposed revisions: Limit property tax rate increases to an annual maximum of 3 percent and set rates for 2021-22 and 2022-23 at the rate before last year’s increase Make it easier to recall elected city officials by reducing the number of signatures required on a recall petition, and add a new rule that recalled officials cannot run in the recall election Abolish lifetime benefits, like health insurance, for elected officials Protect voter-initiated charter amendments from revisions Require a Metro Council supermajority, rather than a simple majority, to transfer city property, and require a city referendum for property transfers valued at more than $5 million Claw back city land if a professional sports franchise stops competing for more than two years
“The bottom line is people are not happy about this,” Roberts says. “It’s not like I’m trying to sell them something they don’t want. Most people in this town think this is outrageous, they think it’s irresponsible, and they want these changes. … There’s going to be a vote.
There’s no way Metro is going to be able to stop all six of these. They shouldn’t be able to stop any of them, but there’s going to be an election.” Despite Roberts’ changes, legal and political challenges remain. Opponents cite state law that gives the Metro Council authority over tax rates. Additionally, critics question whether it would be legal to change the law related to sports stadium deals and apply those changes to deals that have already been finalized, like Nashville SC’s. Also, the line item related to city officials’ benefits appears to some to be too vague. Roberts says he expects the matter to go to court again. That’s not to mention the fiscal problems city leaders say Roberts’ proposed changes would cause. (Roberts declined to name his financial backers.) “If we think our departments are strained now in providing services for a rapidly growing city, it would make it even worse,” says Metro Councilmember Tanaka Vercher, a member and past chair of the Budget and Finance Committee. “If neighbors think response times now are long, it would be even worse. It would be catastrophic for the delivery of services. It would set the city back.” Vercher says she believes city officials have done “a terrible job” communicating with constituents about the cost of city services, but that people should see the impact of Mayor John Cooper’s proposed capital spending plan. The plan includes hundreds of millions of dollars in new projects and maintenance, including a new southeast police precinct Vercher says her constituents are eager for. Metro employee representatives also warned against the effects of the proposal. “Signing this petition means signing onto closing your community parks, community centers, libraries and fire stations,” says Brad Rayson, president of SEIU Local 205, which represents some Metro government, Metro Nashville Public Schools and Metro General Hospital workers. “It will cause drastic cuts in city services and cripple our school system. Anyone who cares about the city of Nashville should not sign this petition.” Cooper’s team and Metro councilmembers are already at work on next year’s budget. If Roberts’ proposal were to pass in May or June, the budget process could be upended as city leaders scramble to comply with its strictures before the start of the new fiscal year in July. “The consensus I got from my constituents was that they were not happy about paying a higher tax bill, but they understood why,” says Metro Councilmember Kyonztè Toombs, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee. “But they are very much expecting the services that go along with that higher tax rate.” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG: It took Tennessee just 59 days to go from 5,000 COVID-19 deaths to 10,000. While underlying metrics of infection and hospitalization are improving, Tennessee’s death rate is escalating relative to neighboring states. As of press time, 10,933 Tennesseans have died following a COVID-19 diagnosis. … Meharry Medical College president Dr. James Hildreth and Goodlettsville’s Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, are among the dozen members of President Joe Biden’s Health Equity Task Force charged with addressing disparities in the pandemic response in underserved communities. Hildreth, a Harvard alum and infectious disease expert who’s been at the fore of Nashville’s battle against the virus, says his work on the task force dovetails with Meharry’s mission. Said Hildreth: “As the President of a historically Black medical school that was founded to eradicate health disparities between majority and minority communities, this work is a focus for me and my institution.” … On Feb. 10, Markquett Martin, 21, died from what the Metro Nashville Police Department said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a semi-automatic pistol he was carrying. His grieving parents expressed doubts about MNPD’s version of events. Ballistics testing, according to the police, confirmed the only shell casing on the scene came from Martin’s gun. Officers were chasing Martin on foot following a complaint from a resident at J.C. Napier Homes of a man carrying a gun. … Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill that would force transgender high school student-athletes to compete in interscholastic sports in the sex they were assigned at birth, despite there being little if any evidence that this has been an issue in Tennessee. House Republicans and GOP Gov. Bill Lee claim the move is needed to protect the safety of and competitive balance for female athletes. As he has in the past with bills targeting LGBTQ residents, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally seems hesitant to take up the bill, which has analogs in numerous states with Republican-controlled legislatures. … Former U.S. Senate candidate Marquita Bradshaw has established a Tennessee-focused environmental justice organization known as Sowing Justice. The organization’s work could include helping community groups fundraise, develop communication plans and run voter education and registration efforts. “I met so many amazing communities during the campaign that wanted help, and now I have a vehicle to be able to deliver a way that empowers communities and gets people to become high-info voters that are civically engaged,” Bradshaw says.
NASHVILLESCENE.COM/PITHINTHEWIND EMAIL: PITH@NASHVILLESCENE.COM TWEET: @PITHINTHEWIND
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 11 – FEBRUARY 17, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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CHIEF JOHN DRAKE
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NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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NEW CHIEF Does John Drake represent the change so many police reform advocates have been calling for? BY STEVEN HALE
PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND
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hen John Drake was announced as the new chief of the Metro Nashville Police Department in November, the news was met in some corners with — at best — skeptical optimism. Activists, community organizations and an increasing number of Metro councilmembers had been agitating for the ouster of longtime MNPD Chief Steve Anderson for several years. Anderson was widely seen as an obstacle to reform, and his tenure had recently included two high-profile fatal shootings of Black men by white police officers. He announced his plan to retire in June amid the historic protests against police brutality and racism in Nashville and around the country, which had intensified calls for change. Shortly after that, allegations of sexual harassment, assault and discrimination inside the department surfaced, raised by women who described a toxic culture inside the MNPD. The question now: Does John Drake represent the change so many were calling for? He is a Black man and native Nashvillian taking over a police department with a complicated if not broken relationship with some of Nashville’s historically Black neighborhoods and a recent history of overwhelming whiteness in its upper ranks. At the same time, he has spent his entire 30-plus-year career at the MNPD, including the past decade working in the Anderson regime. Drake’s time as chief so far has been eventful. He has announced several new initiatives inside the department and made a slew of promotions as he reorganizes the MNPD command structure. But he has of course been confronted with more than just internal matters. The Christmas Day bombing on Second Avenue came a little more than a month after Drake was named chief, and he soon faced questions about the department’s handling of an earlier
warning about the bomber and his potential for violence. Drake spoke to the Scene earlier this month about his vision for the department, the challenges it faces and whether he will really be ushering in a new era of policing in Nashville. (Our conversation with Drake took place before the Feb. 10 death of Markquett Martin, a 21-year-old who was shot while being pursued by MNPD officers. Citing surveillance video and ballistic testing, the police department maintains that Martin was killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.)
YOU’VE BEEN ON THE JOB AROUND SIX MONTHS, FIRST AS INTERIM CHIEF AND NOW OFFICIALLY AS THE NEW CHIEF. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THAT TIME PERIOD? I was told there would be like a honeymoon period, I would get to shake hands and kiss babies and all that. But it’s been very little of that and a lot of action. But I enjoy challenges. Some were unforeseen. I didn’t expect some of these. I think overall, the police department [has] risen to the challenge and [provided] services to the community. So I feel good about that, and grateful for the work the men and women have done thus far.
IN YOUR PRESS CONFERENCE AFTER YOU WERE NAMED CHIEF, YOU TALKED ABOUT GROWING UP IN EAST NASHVILLE AND SPENDING YOUR WHOLE CAREER AS A POLICE OFFICER IN METRO. I’M CURIOUS — AS SOMEONE WHO GREW UP IN THE CITY AS A YOUNG BLACK MAN AND HAS NOW BEEN A BLACK POLICE OFFICER FOR SEVERAL DECADES, WHAT WAS YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON THE HISTORIC PROTEST MOVEMENT THAT WE SAW LAST SUMMER — IN NASHVILLE, BUT ALSO JUST AROUND THE COUNTRY? I grew up in lower East Nashville, and my dad — you know, my family is here several generations — and he endured … riding at the back
of the bus, and all those types of things, and sharing his thoughts with me, but he never shared anything that was negative. It was just a period of time that he went through in the civil unrest then with Dr. King and all that and how important that role was. In a way, that’s what I saw in this particular movement, is that people particularly have had enough of seeing incidents around the country, although I feel our police department is good here. It’s alarming to wake up and see on national news an incident such as [George Floyd’s killing in] Minneapolis, and feel heartbroken that you watch someone that wears a uniform similar to yours, kneeling on the neck of a man that looks similar to you without remorse. So I view the movement, not the riots, as what was needed. But I view the movement as something that was needed to get the attention of law enforcement around the country and to seek the necessary reforms. I feel there are some police departments that don’t have policy and procedure that’s as up to date as ours is, and I think that spurred that movement, to have more agencies have up-to-date policies and procedures and training methods. And we’ve even looked at ours too. We’ve updated ours to be even better than what we were. From a law enforcement executive [perspective], I view it as something that was needed. Something that was long overdue. But I think in the future it is going to help us go a long way.
OBVIOUSLY YOU KNOW THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO CHIEF ANDERSON LEAVING AND YOU TAKING OVER. THERE ARE A LOT OF FACTORS. BUT THERE WERE A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THE COMMUNITY WHO WANTED TO SEE CHANGE IN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP, CHANGE IN SOME OF THE POLICIES, CHANGE IN THE DIRECTION. YOU’RE A NEW CHIEF, BUT YOU’VE BEEN IN THE DEPARTMENT FOR MORE THAN
30 YEARS. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO PEOPLE WHO ARE SKEPTICAL THAT SOMEONE LIKE YOU CAN REALLY CHANGE THE DEPARTMENT IN THE WAYS THEY WANT TO SEE? We all have our own vision and ways of doing things, and I’ve already made significant changes within the department. I’ve rolled a few people back, promoted a few — all are capable of doing a great job. Created diversity at the highest level here. We now have three African American chiefs that’s part of our staff, we have three women that’s part of our executive staff, we have Caucasians, we have an Iranian. Very diverse executive staff, and that’s resonating through the ranks. I try to promote, every opportunity I can, any minority or woman within the police department. I’ve looked at moving away from proactive practices and [am] looking at community engagement more and doing precision policing. In the past, we had done a lot of saturating of areas, and hot-spot policing. But now we’re looking at problem people and problem areas. And we’ve had a lot of success, pulling people away in a do-no-harm approach to neighborhoods. So we’re just looking for individuals that have created problems. But then also, another thing is the alternative-policing-strategies concept, something that is new as well. And realizing we can’t arrest our way out of this. We’ve been arresting people for 200plus years, and some people have 200-plus charges. So we have to look at ways to intervene. How do we identify people, connect them to services and end the path through the criminal justice system? But then, how do we identify juveniles that are at high risk of the pipeline to prison, and how do we connect them to services? So that’s a major move for our police department.
AS YOU WERE TAKING OVER AS CHIEF, THERE WERE NUMEROUS ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND EVEN
nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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ASSAULT AND DISCRIMINATION COMING FROM WOMEN FROM WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT, AND THEY DESCRIBED A TOXIC CULTURE WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT. YOU’VE BEEN IN THE DEPARTMENT FOR MANY YEARS. DID YOU SEE THAT KIND OF CULTURE? WHEN YOU HEARD THOSE ALLEGATIONS — HAVE YOU SEEN THE KIND OF THINGS THEY WERE DESCRIBING? No, I didn’t see those types of things. In fact, I talked to one of our female deputy chiefs, and she said the same thing. She never saw it, and she even said no one even asked her about that kind of stuff. Didn’t see it, didn’t hear about it until some of the officers had left. But even after they had left, I wanted to address it. I talked to [Deputy Chief Kay Lokey]. She began meeting with all the female officers talking about their value to the department, their value as women and then procedures moving forward — how we’ve established a hotline through our HR division where they can call any type of complaint in, and also they can call directly to the chief of police, they can call me, without fear of retaliation, and know that I would have zero tolerance for anything like that. And then we also have an independent investigation going on with the TBI — they should be concluding their investigation soon and providing their findings. I’ve extended that to the [Community Oversight Board] and the Human Relations Commission. So we want to be transparent, give as many resources as possible to investigate a type of allegation, and then we’ll hold everyone accountable for it.
ANOTHER EVENT THAT HAPPENED RIGHT AFTER YOU TOOK OVER, OF COURSE, WAS THE CHRISTMAS MORNING BOMBING. I KNOW THAT’S BEING REVIEWED. BASED ON WHAT YOU KNOW, RIGHT NOW, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU BELIEVE THE POLICE DEPARTMENT COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY OR SHOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY, EITHER BEFOREHAND, OR IN RESPONSE TO THE BOMBING? Based on what I know right now, there’s nothing more that we could’ve done. We answered a call of a person that was suicidal [at the bomber’s house in 2019]. We removed two guns that were on the porch. There was talk of someone building bombs. Officers could have just made a report and said, “Hey, this lady is suicidal.” But they didn’t, they went above and beyond. They went and knocked on the door. We had sergeants that actually went to the scene. We had our Hazardous Device Unit officers go to the scene and follow up for days, talk to the neighbors. Sent it to the Specialized Investigation Division, sent it to the FBI. And so we have the after-action review committee going on. I’d like to thank [former United States Attorney] Ed Yarbrough and everyone else that came in to be a part of that. But I look forward to their findings to see if there’s any gaps that they identify.
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE ANY MORE CLARITY OR INSIGHT AS TO WHAT THE MOTIVE WAS HERE? You know, that’s been the talk everywhere. I finally had the chance to take a couple of days off, and I went down to Jacksonville last week and played golf, played with some guys down in Ponte Vedra Beach. They asked the same thing — what was the motive? Right now, the FBI should be giving their final conclusion to me within
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the week or so. I look forward to that. It’s really bizarre. The beliefs this person may have had, may have had some kind of mental disability, had some issues going there. So I look forward to what the FBI comes up with.
ONE THING YOU MENTIONED AT YOUR PRESS CONFERENCE WITH THE MAYOR RECENTLY IS THE HOMICIDE CLEARANCE RATE LAST YEAR FALLING TO 46 PERCENT. I KNOW YOU’VE ALREADY MADE SOME CHANGES IN RESPONSE TO THAT, LIKE GOING BACK TO A CENTRALIZED HOMICIDE UNIT, BUT WHAT ARE SOME OF THE REASONS YOU THINK THE CLEARANCE RATE WAS THAT LOW? Well, I believe one of the reasons — the main reason — was we had decentralized our homicide unit when it had a clearance rate of about 86 or 87 percent. When it was decentralized, detectives were sent to all of the precincts, and so investigations got diluted just a little bit. They didn’t have the manpower to follow up sufficiently the way that investigation calls for. For instance, you may have a detective assigned to a precinct that will get a homicide and then they’d be assigned a burglary, and that burglary would have hot leads. So you want to get that person off the street as well, so that pulls away from your homicide investigation. With a centralized unit, they’re all in one area, they can discuss what they have going on, they can respond in teams. At precincts, you may have one or two people respond, you may have some other detectives that may help or may not. But with the homicide unit you’ll have teams of six, sometimes 12, you have the TITANS [The Investigative Team Addressing Neighborhood Shootings], comprised of gang detectives and Juvenile Crime Task Force officers, to go back in the neighborhood and recanvass areas, making contact with any witnesses. Whenever a homicide — or any crime — occurs, it’s like putting a puzzle together. All the pieces are right there at the time of the incident — the victim, the suspect, the evidence, witnesses, everything is there. And then over time it goes cold. So if we can get as much information as quickly as possible, then I think we can be more effective. So that’s a theory, and so far, it’s paying off with the team.
YOU ALLUDED TO THIS EARLIER — THAT WE CAN’T ARREST OUR WAY OUT OF SOME OF THE PROBLEMS WE HAVE AS A CITY AND AS A SOCIETY. DO YOU THINK THAT WE ARREST, OR WE ASK OUR POLICE OFFICERS TO ARREST, TOO MANY PEOPLE FOR TOO MANY THINGS? ARE WE KIND OF SENDING OUR OFFICERS OUT TO HANDLE SITUATIONS THAT WOULD BE BETTER OFF HANDLED BY OTHER ENTITIES IF WE COULD CREATE THEM? You know, I feel like we respond to what we should and we make the arrests that we need to. The whole theme of this is just trying to connect people to more services. It seems like when things occur with the police department, if they take the lead, then we have more accessibility with people, we have more people involved to help us with what we have going on. I don’t feel like we over-respond. Look at crisis intervention. I looked at [whether] we should be a part of that with the Mental Health Cooperative, and they agreed to provide some of their personnel as well as some of our officers in plainclothes, not to escalate the situation. I am looking at some calls, where it’s just
a report — there’s no suspect information — people just need a report to be able to do that in an automated sense, and not have an officer respond, which would put officers on the street more to provide more services to the community.
WHEN IT COMES TO RESPONDING TO MENTAL HEALTH CRISES, WHY DO ARMED OFFICERS NEED TO BE PART OF THE FIRST RESPONDERS TO SITUATIONS LIKE THAT? OBVIOUSLY, SOME OF THESE CASES BECOME VIOLENT, AND IN SOME CASES THEY ESCALATE. BUT AS A SORT OF GENERAL RULE, WHY DO YOU THINK OFFICERS HAVE TO BE PART OF THAT FIRST RESPONSE TO SITUATIONS LIKE THAT? Well, you know, we’ve been talking to the Mental Health Cooperative, and they’re the experts. They don’t feel comfortable going on these types of calls by themselves without significant backup. And so if we can team up a couple of plainclothes detectives, just in case a situation goes awry, then we have the capability to try to mitigate any type of threat. Look at the FBI [recently] responding to a call in Florida, and somebody’s watching them on a Ring camera and then just gunning them down through the door. I think it would be beneficial to just partner them together. They feel it will be the best approach as well. And I think that they have better results. It will make them feel better about their job responding to unknown situations, which is what a lot of officers’ fear sometimes is. We don’t know what we’re getting into, whether it’s a domestic violence call or whether it’s a crisis intervention, what you’re gonna be met with.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY GLENN FUNK SAID LAST YEAR THAT HIS OFFICE WAS GOING TO STOP PROSECUTING PEOPLE FOR SIMPLE POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA, HALF AN OUNCE OR LESS. I’M WONDERING HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT POLICY AND IF THAT’S SOMETHING YOU’RE SUPPORTIVE OF GOING FORWARD. I can’t control what the district attorney chooses to prosecute or not, but state law still has it on the book as an illegal substance. So we still move forward with prosecution of that, and if they drop it, that’s fine. But as we look at some of the homicides that we’ve had, they’ve involved marijuana. And so people that are selling marijuana, getting targeted by some of these criminals, being robbed of drugs and money, and you can just smell the odor of marijuana in their residences. I don’t think we can just overlook this. We have to continue pursuing it on all levels. … The small crime sometimes leads to bigger crimes, and I think that’s what we’re seeing. [Drake followed up on the issue later, toward the end of the interview, strongly implying that officers have and will continue to use discretion when it comes to people who possess small amounts: “It’s still a violation of state law, and so we prosecute for that. But I’m pretty sure if an officer has come across someone that has a marijuana cigarette or whatever, they may have given him a break. This may have happened, I’m not sure.”]
ONE NEW INITIATIVE YOU TALKED ABOUT RECENTLY IS THE COMMUNITY FIELD INTELLIGENCE TEAMS. MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT THOSE ARE KIND OF REPLACING THESE CRIME SUPPRESSION UNITS. CAN YOU ELABORATE A LITTLE
MORE ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE TWO APPROACHES? Yeah, absolutely. The Crime Suppression Units were units that were just designed to suppress crime, whether it’s street-level narcotics, doing buy-bust situations, going in and doing some search warrants, going in areas and proactively trying to suppress crime, as opposed to the CFIT going in and identifying potential individuals, doing intelligence. Saying, “This person is committing robberies.” We had an incident like that this week — identified a female that made several robberies throughout several different precincts. Identified that person, convened an investigation, was able to make an arrest, go to the residence, get a search warrant, recover the money from the robberies, recover the clothes used in the robberies. They’ve also done that for homicide suspects — been able to identify and surveil and make arrests, without incident. And that’s a good, no-harm approach, as we’re not going into wholesale neighborhoods and dealing with everybody, but the targeted problem people in problem areas. That’s a big difference.
WHEN YOU SAY “NO HARM,” CAN YOU EXPLAIN A LITTLE BIT MORE WHAT THAT MEANS TO YOU? When I say “no harm,” it’s not going in and just saturating the neighborhood and trying to find one individual by pulling over everyone and doing Terry stops [i.e., stopping someone based on reasonable suspicion] on everyone, having the warrior mindset and just leaving the neighborhood. Actually identifying the person, targeting that person and removing that person without involving the entire community. … Sometimes you do these things and the community feels like they’re targeted, they feel like they’re overpoliced. By having this type of approach, we can go after the individual and remove them.
YOU’RE FAMILIAR WITH SOME OF THE TENSION THAT HAS EXISTED BETWEEN THE COMMUNITY OVERSIGHT BOARD AND THE POLICE DEPARTMENT SINCE ITS CREATION. AS A NEW POLICE CHIEF, HOW DO YOU WANT TO APPROACH THE COMMUNITY OVERSIGHT BOARD, AND WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP GOING TO LOOK LIKE WITH THEM IN TERMS OF MAKING SURE THAT’S A REAL ROBUST OVERSIGHT OPERATION? In my opinion, I feel the Community Oversight Board provides trust from the community and also legitimacy to the agency. There are over 130,000 people that voted for the Community Oversight Board, and for us to do anything other than have total cooperation with them would really go against the voters who are the citizens of Nashville. So from the minute I sat in the chief-of-police seat, I started working on the [memorandum of understanding] with the COB, having a relationship with the director, being able to pick up the phone, call or text. And that’s what we want moving forward. With that MOU agreement, they have the ability to investigate officers, investigate misconduct, and have oversight on some of our policies and procedures. And so as we move forward as a police department, I think the community feels better knowing that there’s an outside arm that can look at us and that they can go to and feel like they have trust when they report misconduct. EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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CRITICS’ PICKS W E E K L Y
R O U N D U P
O F
T H I N G S
T O
D O
NATHAN SMITH [CAN YOU DIG IT?]
STREAM FILMS BY BLACK CREATORS VIA THE BELCOURT
Big ups to the Belcourt Theatre for continuing to remind people that you can watch Black films by Black filmmakers for free — and you can do it anytime you damn well please. What was once a spreadsheet the Belcourt created amid the protests inspired by the police killing of George Floyd has become a handy resource (especially during this Black History Month) for those who want to keep tabs on where free Black-and-proud films can be found online. This month, you can head over to YouTube and watch the Netflix docs 13th (directed by Ava DuVernay) and Strong Island. If you’ve got a library card, you can go to library-media streaming service Hoopla, where you’ll be able to access such acclaimed works as Barry Jenkins’ Oscarwinning Moonlight and the fascinating James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro. But if you want to have a hilarious ol’ time,
BLACK ART: IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT 1976 exhibition Two Centuries of Black Art. He tells Tom Brokaw that it’s natural that some white critics wouldn’t understand the work, because they didn’t have enough knowledge of the Black experience. That perfectly succinct dismissal of the white gaze illustrates Driskell’s importance — he knew that the lack of Black art in major institutions was simply a byproduct of the [BLACK RAINBOW] white supremacist institutions that had STREAM BLACK ART: IN THE neglected them. In 2021, Black artists are ABSENCE OF LIGHT ON HBO MAX among the most celebrated in contemporary There’s a scene in the new HBO art, and their ideas live within Sam Pollard’s documentary Black Art: In the Absence film like Russian nesting dolls, each one of Light when artist and then-head of Fisk housing another. Interviews with University’s art department David Kara Walker, Faith Ringgold, Driskell responds to the mixed Kerry James Marshall, Kehinde reviews of his groundbreaking EDITOR’S NOTE: Wiley, Carrie Mae Weems and AS A RESPONSE TO THE ONGOING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, many, many more fill the WE’VE CHANGED THE FOCUS OF documentary with the stories THE CRITICS’ PICKS SECTION TO behind some of the best INCLUDE ACTIVITIES YOU CAN American art ever produced. PARTAKE IN WHILE YOU’RE AT HOME. It’s wonderful to see the film framed around Driskell, who died from COVID last year. His inclusion shows viewers that Black art — and Black Art — has a very specific connection to Nashville, something that’s too often overlooked. Watch it now on HBO Max. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
go over to Tubi. That’s where you’ll find all the blaxploitation favorites headlined by Dolemite himself, Rudy Ray Moore. There’s The Human Tornado, Disco Godfather, Petey Wheatstraw and, of course, the one that started it all — Dolemite! Find the full list at belcourt.org. CRAIG D. LINDSEY
[CAVEH TALK]
LISTEN TO CAVEH ZAHEDI’S 365 STORIES I WANT TO TELL YOU BEFORE WE BOTH DIE
No-budget New York-based filmmaker Caveh Zahedi is a somewhat scandalous
MUSIC
PODCAST
The nation has many lessons to learn from the 2020 election upset in Georgia. One of these is that the South is not static, and its people must not be defined by political leaders who consistently make decisions that are against the interests of marginalized folks. Scholars, artists and community leaders are working hard to reveal parts of the region’s history that residents and outsiders alike have little knowledge of. Some of those parts are the unsung stories of heroes. Others shed light on systemic injustice that still impacts the region today. In Wandering Dixie: Dispatches From the Lost Jewish South, Sue Eisenfeld explores the complicated history of Jewish life in the South, from those who aligned with the Confederacy to those who fought alongside Black activists in the civil rights movement. Eisenfeld calls it a “travel-through-history memoir.” In her introduction, she admits that prior to her research for the book, she had “always thought about the [Civil War] as being between the blue and the gray. I never considered it to be about the enslaved.” That’s a tough pill to swallow, and I’m eager to see how she reckons with this sentiment throughout her journey. She’ll discuss Wandering Dixie virtually with Scene contributor Margaret Littman as part of the Nashville Jewish Book Series. Register for the free event at nashvillejcc.org/book. 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, via the Gordon Jewish Community Center ERICA CICCARONE
“UNTITLED (CLUB COUPLE),” KERRY JAMES MARSHALL
TUNE IN TO AN AUTHOR EVENT WITH SUE EISENFELD
FILM
[DIXIE UNDERGROUND]
FILM
BOOKS
raconteur and master of self-deprecating visual autofiction. His voice and storytelling patterns are intimately familiar to those who’ve seen his web series The Show About the Show, so it’s only fitting his latest project is spoken word: 365 Stories I Want to Tell You Before We Both Die is a daily podcast of short stories culled from his personal life, memories and career. Episodes are often absurd anecdotes: taunting the CIA by charging his phone calls to their number, getting soaked by sprinklers in a field while losing his virginity, having his knee horribly injured by an Indian guru, the disappointment of learning that Ira Glass doesn’t like his movies, his experience with a college roommate coincidentally named David Lynch. But just as often, Zahedi tells emotional tales about uncomfortable regrets, painful mistakes and aching heartbreaks. In only a minute or two, he’s able to achieve a greater sense of poignancy and profundity than some artists can in hours. Listen to 365 Stories and find out more about Zahedi at cavehzahedi.com.
MOONLIGHT
[SONIC SANCTUARY]
LISTEN TO KURT VILE’S LATEST EP
Speed, Sound, Lonely KV — Kurt Vile’s October EP — was released when a lot of noise was polluting our attention, and
nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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CRITICS’ PICKS TPAC’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY
ART
[BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL]
VISIT BLACK-OWNED ART GALLERIES ONLINE
You might be familiar with Artsy as an artcollecting resource, but the digital platform also has a stellar editorial section. A recent post from Benjamin Sutton listed 10 mustsee shows at Black-owned galleries that you can view online, and it’s among the reasons I’ve begun to reexamine my understanding of Black History Month. Maybe it’s because there has simply been too much media to consume online this year, but I’m welcoming the idea that a month can be dedicated to amplifying what Judas and the Black Messiah director Shaka King calls the Black Excellence Industrial Complex. Sutton’s list
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LAURA HUTSON HUNTER [SWEET BIRTHDAY BABY!]
CELEBRATE TPAC’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY
Tennessee Performing Arts Center is marking a very special milestone this weekend, and you’re invited to join in the party from the comfort of your own couch. Hosted by Nashville favorite Tamiko Robinson Steele, TPAC’s 40th Anniversary Celebration promises to be a great evening of music and entertainment. Produced by Matt Logan and filmed in TPAC’s own Polk Theater, the program includes performances from all three TPAC resident companies — Nashville Ballet, Nashville Repertory Theatre and Nashville Opera — along with appearances by Tony nominee Susan Egan (the original Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast), actor/recording artist Diana DeGarmo, award-winning artist Nan Gurley, Lipscomb Academy Spotlight Award winner Hatty Ryan King and more. This virtual event is free, but at-home gourmet meal packages are available for purchase, with proceeds benefiting TPAC’s Forward! Recovery Fund. To learn more and to make your reservation, visit tpac.org. 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20, via TPAC
CRAFTS
includes Atlanta’s Arnika Dawkins Gallery, which is exhibiting the smart, insightful and relatively affordable work of Keris Salmon. With To Have and to Hold, Salmon uses the language of posters auctioning enslaved people with contemporary photographs. It’s haunting and effective — the series title references antebellum Virginia Gov. James Barbour’s nuptial bequeathment to his daughter of 32 human beings “to have and to hold.” Check out this exhibition and find out more about the other nine via artsy.com — all of them are currently accessible online.
THEATER
it can serve as a sanctuary from the toll the past 12 months have likely taken on your spirit. The EP includes two original songs, two John Prine covers and a track written by Nashville’s own late, great “Cowboy Jack” Clement. On one level, Speed, Sound, Lonely KV offers simple realism through observational humor (a Prine motif), powerful lyrics and mostly acoustic instruments. On another, it traces Vile’s artistic journey over several visits to Nashville. He recorded at The Butcher Shoppe, the now-shuttered Germantown studio where Sturgill Simpson made his recent bluegrass album Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1. The songs were engineered and mixed by David R. “Fergie” Ferguson, who’s worked on great Nashville records from the likes of Charley Pride, Johnny Cash and The Del McCoury Band, as well as several of Simpson’s records. According to Vile, the first Prine cover — “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” — was meant to get the Nashville songwriter’s attention and help entice him to record a duet. It achieved more than that: Not only did Prine sing his own “How Lucky” with Vile on the record, only a few months before Prine died from complications of COVID-19, but Prine also invited Vile to perform “Speed” onstage during his tour. “How Lucky” is a great pick-me-up, or a soundtrack for walking when it’s cold outside. “Dandelions” is a mellow song about the relationship Vile has with his daughters. In addition, there’s one more Vile original, “Pearls,” and a cover of Clement’s “Gone Girl” — the EP is full of mellow gratitude, love and appreciation. But it can still hurt. “There’s a fine line between rusty and slick, and you could be too much of either one,” Vile warned in “(bottle back),” a 2019 short documentary about his creative process. The songs on his newest EP ride that line in a way that pays homage to past Nashville singer-songwriters without getting too nostalgic. It’s an artifact with some of the city’s soul in it. Find it at Grimey’s, The Groove or wherever you buy your records. DAVID HOLLERITH
PHOTO: LAURA AND TONY MATULA
KURT VILE
[CRAFTY BASTARD]
GET A LATCH-HOOK KIT
Just as time spent reading has increased during the pandemic, so has time spent crafting. According to a December Teen Vogue article, Etsy has seen a 64 percent increase in searches in the craft supplies and tools category in recent months, and a 221 percent increase in searches for DIY kits. But if you, like me, don’t have the patience to learn knitting or the budget to buy pricey paints and brushes, go get yourself a latch-hook kit. Yes, latchhooking — the art of knotting strips of yarn through a mesh canvas to create fuzzy rugs and tapestries that look as though they should be hanging in a 1970s motel. The internet is full of kitschy latch-hook kits featuring all the designs that were popular decades ago — kittens, horses, mushrooms, butterflies — but more modern designs
are available too. Etsy has hundreds of latch-hook kits, including everything from Star Wars characters and sports team logos to contemporary abstract tapestries that utilize a variety of different types of fiber and yarn. If you want to start simple, head to East Nashville’s Gift Horse (1006 Fatherland St.) and grab one of Bobcat and Birdie’s B.Y.O.Y. (bring your own yarn) latch-hook kits for $22 — they’re available in creepy and cool designs like a skull, a tombstone, a spider web and Ouija board, and Gift Horse says they should be getting more patterns in stock soon. And because you supply your own yarn (don’t worry, the kits come with an easy yarn-cutting guide), you get to choose the colors and texture of the final piece. Don’t be afraid to get weird. MEGAN SELING
LATCH-HOOK KIT FROM BOBCAT AND BIRDIE
AMY STUMPFL
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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[WILLIAMS, IT WAS REALLY NOTHING]
LISTEN TO YASMIN WILLIAMS’ URBAN DRIFTWOOD
My introduction to solo-guitar newcomer Yasmin Williams was a Big Ears Festivalpresented livestream in November. Playing alongside native Nashvillian William Tyler and Portland, Ore.’s Marisa Anderson, the 24-year-old D.C.-area native — who, as the legend goes, picked up the instrument after mastering Guitar Hero — didn’t just hold her own with the seasoned vets. Her skillful fingerstyle-acoustic instrumentals stole the show. Williams’ recently released Urban Driftwood LP is just as spellbinding as that performance. Each of its 10 labyrinthine, percussive compositions — aided by cello, djembe and mbira — flows beautifully into the next. Her playing is busy yet relaxed, and technical but never in a way that beats you over the head — you could imagine the late Nick Drake singing over lovely tunes like “Dragonfly” or “I Wonder (Song for Michael).” And while the songs may not have words, they have meaning. Flipping the record from its breezier first side to its stormier second, I read along with the liner notes explaining the ways Williams, who is Black, drew inspiration for pieces like the remarkable “Through the Woods” from the civil unrest of 2020. “To walk through the woods for me is to walk in self-reflection,” she writes. “As a country, we are stuck in the woods with no clear way out.” Preview and buy Yasmin Williams’ Urban Driftwood at yasminwilliams.bandcamp.com. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
FOOD & DRINK
MUSIC
CRITICS’ PICKS [BOLDLY GO]
The rumors are true. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream has created something almost unfathomable: an everything-bagel flavored ice cream. It’s bold. It’s salty. It’s sweet. It’s laced with buttery strudel. The geniuses at Jeni’s do not hold back on the dried onions and garlic, and the creamcheese ice cream base is divine. I can’t promise that you’ll love it, but it will be unlike any ice cream you’ve tasted before. The everything-bagel trend has also made its way to Main Street’s East Park Donuts & Coffee, where you can get a perfectly baked brioche doughnut topped with a cream-cheese glaze and the everythingbagel spices of your morning commute. One East Park employee reports that some super adventurous customers order their egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwiches on this confectionary marvel. Though not a local business, Whole Foods offers a bagged salad complete with toasted bagel chips, seasoning and a tangy ranch — a tidy lunch to share with a pal. Once you sample these products and are ready to take it to the next level, get you some of your own everythingbagel seasoning, available at the Charlotte Avenue outpost Oak. Sure, you can throw together some spices on your own. But I take my everything seriously, and choose to leave the proportions to the pros. Now that we’ve been given hard evidence that the salty, garlicky medley can warp to new dimensions, the opportunities are limitless.
Guitarist, singer and songwriter Peter Laughner died in Bay Village, Ohio, on June 22, 1977, just as punk was starting to take hold in the United States. His early death — Laughner was two months shy of his 25th birthday when he succumbed to complications from pancreatitis — has helped keep him obscure. That’s changing: In 2019, the Chicago label Smog Veil Records released a five-CD set, Peter Laughner, that makes its case for Laughner as a proto-punk master. The box doesn’t include what may be his best-known work, the 1976 single “Final Solution,” which he recorded with Cleveland punk band Pere Ubu. In fact, Laughner co-founded both Ubu and another influential Cleveland group — Rocket From the Tombs. An uppermiddle-class devotee of Lou Reed and Television leader Tom Verlaine, Laughner was also a folkie who admired Richard Thompson and Michael Hurley. Smog Veil’s box collects live and home recordings that reveal Laughner as a compelling singer and accomplished guitarist. For a picture of Laughner’s struggles — he wrote the great tune “Life Stinks,” which Pere Ubu recorded for its 1978 debut album The Modern Dance — read singer and multi-instrumentalist Adele Bertei’s newly revised memoir of her time with Laughner, Peter and the Wolves. Bertei played organ with No Wave band The Contortions in New York in the late ’70s, and her memoir describes an era of political, musical and sexual upheaval. As she says, Laughner was a musician of infinite promise, and his work transcends punk. EDD HURT
THEATER
MUSIC
ERICA CICCARONE [LIFE STINKS]
DELVE INTO THE MUSIC OF PETER LAUGHNER
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[WHOA, MAN]
CATCH THE VIRTUAL WORKSHOP READING OF THAT WOMAN
More than 57 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his life and legacy continue to fascinate. Next week, a group of local artists is shining a light on some of the women involved with — or at least rumored to have been involved with — the 35th president. Tennessee Playwrights Studio has partnered with Angela Gimlin (founder of Nashville’s Inebriated Shakespeare) for a virtual workshop reading of That Woman, a collection of 10 original monologues presented from the perspectives of women linked to JFK. Some subjects are to be expected, such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Marilyn Monroe. But others are lesser known, including Danish journalist Inga Arvad and American painter Mary Pinchot Meyer. Either way, it’s an impressive lineup of talent, including Gimlin and Molly Breen (of TPS), along with April Hardcastle-Miles, Alicia Haymer, Ang Madaline-Johnson, Jennifer WhitcombOliva, Megan Dianne DeWald, Elizabeth Turner, Mary McCallum and Nettie Kraft. For complete details and to reserve free tickets, visit tnplaywrights.org/that-woman. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24, via Tennessee Playwrights Studio AMY STUMPFL
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nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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FOOD AND DRINK
THAT’S AMORE
St. Vito Focacciaria serves up delicious sfincione-style pizza and more BY JACK SILVERMAN
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PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS
Y
ou’ve likely read countless “pandemic pivot” stories over the past year — about recently unemployed people who’ve carved out a new path, trying to turn the moldy, desiccated lemon of the COVID-19 era into something at least resembling lemonade. What chef Michael Hanna has accomplished since the virus ground the restaurant industry to a near halt last year might be better described as a pandemic pole vault. Hanna moved to Nashville from his native Memphis about six years ago, and — before COVID-19 hit town, anyway — he’d had a good run, including stints at The Catbird Seat (under Ryan Poli), Urban Cowboy’s Public House and Philip Krajeck’s two restaurants, Rolf and Daughters, and Folk. His most recent gig was at Pastaria, but as pandemic restrictions strangled the restaurant industry, Hanna — like throngs of his fellow hospitality workers — was laid off. Suddenly out of work and facST. VITO OPERATES OUT ing grim employOF VANDYKE BED AND ment prospects, BEVERAGE AT 105 he started plotting S. 11TH ST.; OPEN WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY his next move. 4-10 P.M. (TAKEOUT UNTIL “I had been 9 P.M.) AND NOON-8 P.M. around pizza a lot,” SUNDAY says Hanna, who STVITONASHVILLE.COM has grandparents of Sicilian descent on both sides of his family. “I just started thinking, ‘I want to cook food that is familiar for everyone but at the same time creative enough to keep me on my toes.’ … I landed on what is called sfincione-style pizza because I remember eating it as a child. I started falling in love with doughs and bread and stuff as I got older, and I started just doing it on my own time.” What makes sfincione unique is the crust — focaccia, an airy bread that gives the pizza a lightness that belies the significant thickness of the pie. (Fear not, it’s still plenty filling.) After being out of work for a couple weeks, Hanna started churning out sfincione from his Inglewood home. “Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights and Sundays I’d have lines of cars coming, waiting down the road,” he says. “Everybody figured out I was selling pizzas, and they started getting in on the action.” As excited as Hanna was by the enthusiastic response, it soon became clear that running the business out of his home kitchen wasn’t viable. “We were crushing about 15 pizzas a night out of my house,” he says. “They’re bigger. Neapolitan style, your average dough ball is going to weigh 250 grams. Mine was 800. Took up a lot of fridge space, there’s dough everywhere.” Within a couple months, Hanna had secured some kitchen space at Hunters
MICHAEL HANNA
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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AVAILABLE
FOOD AND DRINK
Station, where he’d bring out orders to customers through a side door near the back of the building. He named his business St. Vito Focacciaria, a nod to one sfincione origin story that credits the nuns of the San Vito monastery in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, with the dish’s creation several centuries ago. After a few months at Hunters Station, it became clear St. Vito was outgrowing that kitchen space, which Hanna was sharing with The Grilled Cheeserie. On Feb. 10, St. Vito reopened in Five Points’ Vandyke Bed and Beverage. In addition to serving the Vandyke bar patrons, St. Vito is offering takeout. While Hanna fine-tunes his new setup at Vandyke, he’s keeping things simple, offering three sfincione options, occasional specials and a dessert. He plans to expand the menu in March. Two sfincione will be fixtures: the Classic Vito and the potato. The Classic Vito features fontina (studded into the raw dough), mozzarella, a simple and bright milled tomato sauce, fresh oregano and seasoned breadcrumbs. It’s a deeply satisfying balance of textures (gooey cheese, crusty edges and soft, airy dough underneath) and flavors (salty, sweet, acidic, herbal). At $28, it was enough for my wife and I to have three meals each — we don’t eat huge portions, but even those with larger appetites can expect to get four meals out of one pie. (He sells slices too.) We loved the Classic Vito and will be ordering it again, but the potato sfincione — despite its humble name — was downright revelatory. Taleggio and fontina cheese and bits of salty roasted russet potato are embedded in the dough, and the pie is topped with a potato cream sauce, breadcrumbs and what Hanna calls “summer flake” — his blend of six different chili peppers from Rocky Glade Farm in Eagleville, Tenn.,
and crispy garlic, Italian herbs, salt and smoked paprika. It’s a spectacular pizza. A third sfincione selection will rotate on the menu. For now, it’s a smoked-eggplant version, and it’s a formidable entry too, with a deep umami flavor. Buzz about St. Vito is growing. Chicago food writer Steve Dolinsky — winner of 13 James Beard Awards for his TV, radio and podcast work — featured Hanna on the Feb. 5 episode of his podcast Pizza City USA. Here’s Dolinsky’s take: “You know, I’m always careful about grand pronouncements, and saying, ‘This will change your life.’ But this pizza could change your life. I think it changed mine, actually.” And Hanna says he’s thrilled to have local pizza luminaries such as City House’s Tandy Wilson and Nicky’s Coal Fired’s Tony and Caroline Galzin among his early customers. And you know those scraps of uneaten pizza crust that so often wind up in the garbage? That’s much less likely with a St. Vito pie, because Hanna’s focaccia is so good. “I’ve had this dough recipe in my back pocket for years,” he says. “It’s actually a Spanish ciabatta dough … naturally fermented, really high hydration.” He plans to sell plain focaccia too. Though the sfincione is the star of the show at St. Vito, Hanna offers other Italian specialties from time to time. In fact, what is easily my most memorable pandemic-era meal came courtesy of St. Vito, and it didn’t involve sfincione. I first tasted Hanna’s food after I picked up his Christmas Eve special, braciole. A traditional Italian holiday meal, braciole features thinly pounded beef spiraled around a seasoned filling, then sliced into rounds. I ordered the dinner for two, which included four generous slices of braciole, a hearty gravy, delicious caponata, creamy polenta and a delightful tiramisu cheesecake — all for $35, which was a truly remarkable deal, given that I got four generous (and exceptional) meals out of it. Hanna says the braciole may come back for Christmas, and he’s pondering offering a similar dish with rolled lamb for Easter. And a porchetta (rolled pork) is likely coming even sooner. Another St. Vito special that knocked my socks off was the timballo di anelletti, which is essentially a baked pasta pie. For his version, Hanna used Sketti-O’s — inspired by a popular canned food item, as you might have guessed — from local pasta maker and 2020 Best of Nashville winner Mr. Aaron’s Goods. (“I want to use as much local product and support local people as much as possible,” says Hanna, who also cites Kathleen Cotter’s Bloomy Rind and the aforementioned Rocky Glade Farm among his favorite Nashville purveyors.) Both the braciole and timballo were as photogenic as they were delicious — check out St. Vito’s drool-worthy Instagram account (@st.vito_focacciaria), For now, St. Vito Focacciaria is open Wednesday through Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. (until 9 p.m. for takeout) and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. The Vandyke bar is a comfortable, relaxed space, and the patio out back should be delightful when spring weather returns. In mid-March, Hanna hopes to start offering brunch service on Sundays. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
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Columbia 1006 Carmack Blvd Columbia, TN 931-398-3350
nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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CULTURE
Amateur radio users want to be of service when modern technology fails BY HANNAH HERNER
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housands of Nashvillians were affected by the cell and internet service outage that came after the Christmas Day bombing downtown — but it was exactly the type of situation amateur radio operators prepare FOR MORE INFORMATION for. They pride ABOUT LOCAL HAM RADIO, VISIT NASHVILLE AMATEUR themselves on not RADIO CLUB’S WEBSITE AT needing internet or K4CPO.ORG; MONDAY NIGHT NETS TAKE PLACE AT 7:30 P.M. cell service to relay electronic mesAT 147.015 MEGAHERTZ sages. The Radio Act of 1912 required amateur radio operators, sometimes known as “hams,” to get a license, and in 1914 the national Amateur Radio Relay League was founded. Nashville Amateur Radio Club has been around for 85 years, making it one of the oldest clubs in the country. The group’s 70 members now look for ways to be of service in a world in which technology has evolved beyond amateur radio’s original usefulness. “When the news started coming out about the bombing, there were a lot of hams online, there to assist with the radio for people who worried about their relatives when they couldn’t reach them on the phone,” says Monvel Maskew, president of Nashville Amateur Radio Club. The Federal Communications Commission allocates parts of 29 different bands — or ranges of frequencies — for amateur radio operators. Some work best for chatting locally. Some are capable of national, international or even off-planet communication. (The International Space Station has a ham radio kit.) Taking a test to get a license is required to send messages, but not to listen. On Monday nights, area hams convene on a “net,” a planned gathering on a specific frequency. This serves as practice for when an emergency would call for an impromptu net. Most members of the club are also part of the local chapter of the Amateur Radio Emergency Service. Lee Alder, president of Davidson County’s ARES chapter, was inspired to join after Nashville’s historic 2010 flood affected internet connections and cell service. “Basically, we are radio people waiting for a place to be in the event that Metro needs us,” Alder says. “We fill this little gap of communication when everything else quits. And radio usually works.” When activated, Nashville’s Office of Emergency Management used to call on hams for help relaying messages, though they haven’t in recent years. Alder says in the event of the bombing, hams could have hooked up phones and email to a frequency that still works, albeit slower than we’re used to. But instead, for now, the hams try to help by passing information to friends and neighbors. “I think the Christmas Day bombing would have been a perfect event that we could have helped out had we had this un-
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derstanding going on,” Alder says. “But unfortunately, we didn’t.” The need for ham radio has of course been shrinking. Services like WhatsApp can connect us to people around the world. Improvements in weather radar erased the need for ham storm trackers to be in the same room as meteorologists, and the prevalence of reliable cell phones keeps us connected — most of the time. Even so, the practice has continued among hobbyists, and the barriers for entry for have been lowered. When Maskew first became interested as a teen, radio supplies were way out of his budget — $200 to $300 in 1970s dollars, the equivalent of roughly $1,500 today. Today, he says, you can get started for less than $100. Testing used to happen only in person, but now Maskew spends around 30 hours a week proctoring license tests over Zoom. Until 1991, aspiring hams had to learn Morse code, and while it’s still a common part of the hobby, it’s no longer required. Roger Womack learned to operate a radio with help from the Courage Kenny Handiham program, an organization in Minnesota that adapts radio supplies for people with disabilities. “There has been an upsurge in the last year or so of new members and people getting into the hobby,” says Womack, who is visually impaired. “Because people are sitting home, and new people are getting their license where they can talk to people and communicate. I can think of right offhand maybe 15 or 20 new ones [on local nets] I’ve heard in the last year, probably more than that just listening.” Though the hobby tends to skew boomerage and male, club member Cindy Leech would like to see that change. “The club has a great community of mostly guys that will help you out if needed,” she says. “They’re very welcoming. I just wish there were more women, because it’s a different thing for women. The guys tell me, and most other radio operators say, you can tell the difference on the radio. A woman’s voice carries better.” Leech got into the hobby to be closer to her father, who lives in New Mexico. He used to help relay messages to families from soldiers overseas. His loud machine’s beeps reverberated through the house when Leech was a child, and now the practice is something she’s made her own through volunteering with the club. Amateur radio operators often volunteer for things like charity horse races, runs and bike rides, especially in rural areas lacking adequate cell service. Leech says on one occasion that meant alerting bike riders to a llama on the path, though other times she’s needed to call for medical attention. “What was interesting to me and very fulfilling was the community aspect, where they’re always willing to volunteer and help out these organizations to make their event successful,” Leech says. Still other hams do “contesting,” wherein they try to make the most connections to other operators in a given period of time, or they’ll attempt to reach all 50 states, or 100 countries. On a national level, ARES maintains a partnership with the National Weather Service. Red Cross stations, including the one in Nashville, maintain radio rooms in the event of a disaster too.
MONVEL MASKEW
PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND
GOING HAM
CINDY LEECH “All they have to do is call and go, ‘Hey, come operate the radio,’ ” Alder says. “Usually, you don’t have to tell a ham twice about that.” The space granted to amateur radio operators by the FCC has been shrinking over the years, with most frequencies bought out by commercial radio stations and used by cell phones. Because hams can use radio waves for free, they don’t have much leverage when a larger entity wants to pay for them. So it’s “use it or lose it.” Part of the reason hams are so eager to get more people
involved is to fill up those frequencies, but it’s hard to say how long those frequencies and this practice will survive. In the meantime, the hams are here for backup. “I hope it doesn’t go away for phones,” Leech says. “Because sometimes phones, in an emergency, are not gonna work. They’re gonna lock up. So that’s one thing I don’t think people realize. It’s really important that we get people in ham radio so that we have plenty of coverage in case that happens.” EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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Soul For For Soul THE
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH URBAANITE.COM
CULTURE
THE
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH URBAANITE.COM
‘THE PAST IS PROLOGUE’
Emmy-nominated documentary shows Cameron High School’s role in the civil rights movement BY ASHLEY CURRIE
For the Soul is a collaboration between the Nashville Scene and local culture website Urbaanite that uncovers local gems in Nashville.
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ocumenting historical moments adds a needed texture in cities like Nashville, to ensure their significance is not lost as growth moves through like a roaring lion. “The Past Is Prologue: The Cameron Class of 1969,” a documentary short about Cameron High School’s role in the civil rights movement, is a record of one such moment, and it will guarantee that a piece of South Nashville history will never be lost. The film — conceived by executive producers Tanya Coplen Gray, Deborah Majors Bell and Ida Venson Currie — is an homage to a school’s undeniable mark on Nashville and a lesson in the history of the fight for racial justice. Located on First Avenue South near Lafayette Street, Cameron Middle School — formerly Cameron High School — now houses LEAD Academy, and carries a legacy in many Nashville homes. It’s named after professor Henry Alvin Cameron, an African American science teacher who fought and was killed in World War I. As I grew up, my mother, Ida Venson Currie, shared memories of her “blue and gold” days. But one memory stands out the most: the day that a sports event brought Cameron High School into the city’s civil rights movement.
FROM LEFT: EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS DEBORAH MAJORS BELL, IDA VENSON CURRIE AND TANYA COPLEN GRAY
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On March 8, 1968, Cameron faced Stratford High School at Municipal Auditorium in the 18th District basketball tournament. This game would determine whether Cameron, an African American school, or Stratford, a white school, would go to the championship. Bad calls and blatant favoritism led to Cameron losing the game. Days later, one school board member alleged to have evidence of fights breaking out among spectators. To this day, Cameron students dispute that claim. But the Tennessee Secondary School Athletics Association suspended all interscholastic athletic competition at Cameron for one year. Stratford was issued just a warning. It took a civil rights rally to get the attention of the city. Gray, a classmate of my mother’s, wanted to honor their high school’s story. “I was already isolated in where I could go as a little Black girl in Nashville,” says Gray, “so the suspension was devastating. When you pull these activities from a school and it’s your senior year, it leaves very little for you to do.” The students, parents and community rallied to support the school — including with a march down First Avenue — and lauded civil rights attorney Avon Williams Jr. brought the case to federal court. Gray expressed her desire to document the event and its aftermath to my mother and classmate Bell in 2017, and they began to envision how their story would be told. The three women began meeting over food, fellowship and a love for their community
PHOTO: DEANDRE HOLLAND VIA URBAANITE
For For Soul Soul
as they set out on their journey. “It was the first time I felt like a secondclass citizen,” says Bell, reflecting on when she heard about the Cameron suspension. It was enacted on April 4, 1968 — the day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The project took flight after they received funding from the Metro Arts Commission. They enlisted the help of filmmaker Mark Schlicher to direct and Lisa Venegas as a producer. Through their collective power with executive producers Gray, Bell and Currie, they assembled a mighty cast of people to bring the documentary to life through reenactments and interviews, including an appearance from rapper, actor, activist and spoken-word artist Rashad tha Poet. “We were blessed to have students from LEAD Academy to McGavock High School who helped to make each scene real,” says Currie. “From the reenactment of the basketball game to the march down First Avenue to the Seay-Hubbard United Methodist Church where the gathering and brainstorming took place.” “The Past Is Prologue” brings the producers’ fellow Cameron High School alumni into the storytelling, providing real-life accounts of a period in time that had a lasting impact on their lives. Set against a Nashville landscape not always seen, the documentary is a testament to what it means to champion a community and stand up for what is right. Originally released in 2019, “The Past Is Prologue” is currently nominated for a Midsouth Regional Emmy in the Documentary/Historical category. “We wanted to honor the teachers, students and the people who helped us in school,” says Gray. “This is why we wanted to create the documentary.” Urbaanite will offer a 24-hour screening window for the documentary on Tuesday, Feb. 23. Register for the viewing link at urbaanite.com. Visit thepastisprologue.com to learn more. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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DISTILLED AND AGED IN THE HEART OF JAMAICA
nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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BOOKS
A LONG, STRANGE TRIP My Year Abroad traces an ordinary young man’s journey to a weird hell and back
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n Chang-rae Lee’s sixth novel, My Year Abroad, we meet the 20-yearold narrator Tiller Bardmon in the aftermath of some undisclosed overseas trauma, “freshly adrift … smashed to raw bits by circumstances too peculiar MY YEAR ABROAD to recount.” But reBY CHANG-RAE LEE RIVERHEAD BOOKS count them he does, 496 PAGES, $28 in a nearly 500-page thrill ride of a story, CHANG-RAE LEE WILL with uneasy straightDISCUSS HIS BOOK 6 P.M. FRIDAY, FEB. 19, AT A aways and slow VIRTUAL EVENT HOSTED BY climbs building to PARNASSUS BOOKS zero-gravity plunges and gut-jolting inverted twists. The calmer sections describe Tiller’s current life in a drab New Jersey town. He’s shacked up with a sexy 30-something named Val (who’s in witness protection thanks to her Uzbek gangster ex) and playing unofficial stepdad to Val’s 8-year-old son Victor Jr., aka “VeeJ.” In the opening pages, Tiller drops hints about the mind-altering experience that has transformed him from an aimless mediocrity into an old-soul college dropout who revels in domestic caregiving and possesses a newfound capacity for heroic action. (He misdirects a sketchy character who’s possibly surveilling Val, then slashes a tire on the man’s car with a fancy Japanese knife — his sole souvenir from the trip abroad.) “The thing is, I am responsible now, and in a way I never imagined I could be,” he says. “Not just by taking care of things, not by way of being the type who’s steady and maintaining, but by understanding the need to alter the moment, whether directly or indirectly, and then decisively doing so, and not worrying about what the future might bring.” To explain the transformation in full, Tiller’s narration ricochets among scenes of the Before, During and After: childhood in an upscale Jersey town with a kindhearted but distant single dad; abandonment by his mother; an undistinguished two-year college stint; a dishwashing job; and a brief golf-caddying gig that puts him in the path of Pong Lou, a Chinese American entrepreneur who changes Tiller’s fortunes forever, for good and ill. Pong is the book’s inciting incident, in human form. For reasons that are never clear, he takes a shine to Tiller and decides the young man’s talents are indispensable to a scheme he’s cooked up to market Indonesian wellness elixirs to yoga studios in Asia. Tiller is unaware of any such talents — to that point, his abiding trait has been go-with-the-flow amenability. But a chaotic series of escapades in Hawaii as well as Macau and Shenzhen, China, reveal
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previously unknown aptitudes, from gutsy surfing moves to a knack for karaoke. The escalating weirdness of this supposed marketing junket, as well as his growing attachment to Pong, begin to desensitize Tiller’s internal alarm system and skew his moral compass. He abandons plans to resume his studies and follows Pong into increasingly debauched revelries and a spiraling peril he fails to recognize, despite many excellent clues. I won’t reveal the adventure’s bizarre denouement, but let’s just say it’s sensory overload that cannot be unseen, unsmelled or untasted. Along the way, Lee spins numerous diverting narrative tangents decorated with his spirited maximalist prose, like a linguistic-savant carnival barker conning you into buying a ticket to a sideshow attraction you actually end up loving. Pong’s backstory feels like a stand-alone biography inside the novel. His family’s history of persecution by Chinese Cultural Revolution zealots and his own emergence as an American magnate with a borrowed identity are weightier in tone than Tiller’s exuberant coming-of-age tale. But the two pair well as opposing stories of identity and reinvention. Pong’s is a rags-to-riches tale of a penniless Chinese immigrant who wholeheartedly adopts American zero-sum consumer culture. Tiller goes, in a few short weeks, from a privileged American slacker of fractional Asian heritage to an invisible cog in the bowels of an exploitative labor scheme. It’s a sort of ethnocultural role reversal that satirizes the perils of global capitalism and illuminates how the game of moneymaking can disrupt our own moral compasses, as individuals and societies, to the great detriment of an otherwise lovely planet. These lessons may have come late for Pong, but his parting gift to his accidental young protégé is a hard-won piece of wisdom: A rich life isn’t about satisfying appetites; it’s about treasuring time with one’s beloved people and being useful to them. And all experiences, from the prosaic to the painful, can become key ingredients. In scenes of Tiller’s “after” life, what he craves most is not only within reach, it’s happening in real time: shooting hoops with VeeJ; cooking dinner for the three of them — from a recipe he picked up in Macau, at great personal cost; sowing seeds with Val and VeeJ in a newly tilled garden. “I want to keep us planting and not worrying about a harvest,” he says. “Let it jungle. The bounty is here already.” For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
ILLUSTRATION: ELISHEBA ISRAEL MROZIK
BY KIM GREEN
‘WHAT HAUNTS?’
A poem illustrated by Elisheba Israel Mrozik BY JOSHUA MOORE — after Manuel Cinema’s A Christmas Carol these links, this stolen substance, siphoned off a life, & a life, & a life — debt mark, iron branding, blood-root fanning through $oil, $tocks, $tatutes — a ponderous chain, a present shackling, passed through time like prophesy. & the offspring turning it to music, clang of trammels clapping on the street, children making double-dutch of their bonds. Joshua Moore is a Nashville poet and lead producer of the podcasts Versify and Seizing Freedom. He received his MFA from Vanderbilt University. This piece was written as a part of the Art Wire Fellowship from OZ Arts Nashville and The Porch Writers’ Collective. Elisheba Israel Mrozik is an artist and owner of One Drop Ink Tattoo Parlour and Gallery. She is dedicated to making visual art accessible to the community through hands-on community events and arts programs. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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2/15/21 1:40 PM
CONGRATS to our #HotChickenWeek21 winners! Thousands of Nashvillians devoured $7 Hot Chicken February 1-7 and voted to crown the Best Dishes in town!
Red’s 615 Kitchen
Best Overall Dish
Royal Boba
Most Unique Dish
Participating Restaurants
Prince’s Hot Chicken
Best Traditional Dish
THANK YOU
to the hot chicken eaters, readers and supporters of Hot Chicken Week. Your support of our participating restaurants is always appreciated, but especially so this year. Thank you for showing so much love to local biz! Stay tuned for more food week fun from the Scene. “Thank you guys for putting this on, you got people out and we met so many new faces and actually saw some people having some fun!” - Nick, Peach Tree Drive In
“We sold about 1,000 Hot Chicken Dishes during the week- what an awesome week.” - Eric, Red’s 615 Kitchen
“Love seeing local restaurants put their own unique spin on hot chicken as we know it. Get your taste buds ready and go support!” - @nashvillehiddengems Instagram
nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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MUSIC
ANOTHER LOOK
The Scene’s music writers recommend recent releases from Reaux Marquez, Hayley Williams and many more BY EDD HURT, P.J. KINZER, BRITTNEY McKENNA, MEGAN SELING, STEPHEN TRAGESER, RON WYNN AND CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
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hile the COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues apace, most of the music industry remains in limbo. But that isn’t stopping Nashville FIND LINKS TO STREAM AND musicians BUY THESE RECORDS AT from offering NASHVILLESCENE.COM/MUSIC a dazzling variety of great work. Below, our music writers have 11 new recommendations for you. Add these releases to your streaming queue and get a physical copy from your favorite record store. Or put them on your wishlist for the next #BandcampFriday — the promotion where the platform waives its cut of artist fees — coming up on March 5.
REAUX MARQUEZ, NO ROADS (THE GARDEN) After living through a year that brought a devastating tornado and a deadly global pandemic, rapper Reaux Marquez felt inspired to craft an album that reflected the loss and tumult he and his North Nashville community experienced. No Roads is an immersive, narrative album, opening with the spoken line, “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” Marquez produced the album himself, and he adds flourishes of jazz, spoken word, R&B and field recordings into his fiery, moody soundscapes, which add color and texture to his versatile flow. To boot, Marquez also assembled a killer lineup of featured artists, including local mainstays like A.B. Eastwood, Jamiah, Namir Blade and Lauren McClinton.
BRITTNEY McKENNA VERA BLOOM, VERA BLOOM (SELF-RELEASED) Folks who aren’t from the 206 won’t understand, but the city of Seattle leaves a mark on its music. Maybe the salty air causes a chemical reaction in the amp tubes, maybe the damp morning fog slowly seeps into the wood of a guitar. Whatever it is that’s happening at a microscopic level, the Seattle sound is undeniable and forever, and you can hear it in Vera Bloom’s new self-titled EP. Now in Nashville, the former Northwesterner also known as AnneMarie Kelbon churns out songs that recall the fuzzy, riff-laden days of Seattle’s most famous musical genre (I hear echos of Hammerbox and I love it), blending it with the pop prowess of melody-loving acts like The Vaselines. Granted, The Vaselines are from Scotland, not Seattle, but they did release albums via Sub Pop and K Records. And just like that, I’m homesick for Seattle again. Anyone wanna go grab a bowl of pho or a hot dog with cream cheese? MEGAN SELING
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SPODEE BOY, SPODEE BOY RIDES AGAIN (GOODBYE BOOZY) Nashville is no post-punk hotbed, but you have to give it up for Connor Cummins’ efforts to make it one with the plethora of projects he’s got going at any given time. The 27-year-old’s latest, Safety Net, is his best to date — a top-shelf noise-pop power trio in the image of the mighty Mission of Burma. But Cummins’ punk-rock performance-art project Spodee Boy is his longest-running — his baby in the same way Guided by Voices belongs to Bob Pollard — and it returns from a two-year hiatus with a new EP, Spodee Boy Rides Again. The fourtrack release offers a squawking, ’verbedout cow-punk sound, cutesy faux-Western artwork and lyrics lampooning the Mad Libs-like laziness of country lyric writing, as in the title track: “As he comes to the OK Corral / With his gun in his hand and his dick in the other / Who knew who would fire the first shot?” The EP drips with sarcasm and more than a little frustration, as if to say, “Anyone can write using this imagery — who cares?” As piss-takes go, maybe it isn’t as committed as Ween’s 12 Golden Country Greats, but it’s good, satirical rock ’n’ roll all the same. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
CHICO RASHAD, COUNTRY MUSIC NEVER CRIES (BE DUMB) Across multiple media, Chico Rashad communicates powerful messages about mental health, social and political problems and identity. In November, he shared that work in musical form as Country Music Never Cries, a collection of inventive, melancholy tracks that blend the often-offkilter production of Soundcloud rap and the richness of forward-looking R&B. As noted by his friend Becca Mancari in our Year in Music interview, Rashad promoted the release with videos of himself decked out in Western gear down on Lower Broadway, the only Black person in a sea of white folks. It’s another way to ask a vital question: Why doesn’t Music City do a better job of supporting Black and brown residents in general and artists in particular?
STEPHEN TRAGESER BRIAN SISKIND, PASTURE AND LUSH (BEAT HOLLOW) A producer, drummer and filmmaker who grew up in Winston-Salem, N.C., Brian Siskind split time between Nashville and New York before settling in Music City a decade ago. Recorded under his musical sobriquet Fognode and released in 2001, Siskind’s full-length Beat Hollow caught Nashville at a musical and cultural flashpoint: big-city alienation meets pastoral idealism, with mutated folk-
country guitar and pedal steel riding above trip-hoppy beats. Siskind delves into the 1980s on a pair of new EPs, Pasture and Lush, which he recorded without using computers. It’s a retro strategy that works, since Siskind’s compositions often suggest ’80s soundtrack music. The Pasture track “Vacuum Beat” puts me in mind of a funkless Jon Hassell, while Lush features “Aurora Hotel,” which sounds like the opening credits for a John Carpenter movie that never got made. EDD HURT
MIKE FLOSS, GOD’S LEATHER (SPIRIT & SOL) On Jan. 29, Mike Floss released his EP God’s Leather, his first official multi-song release since his 2017 album Tennessee Daydreams. The five-track project shows the standout MC leveling up across the board. Floss especially flexes his lyrical muscles here, from the shape-shifting, conversational cadence of opening track “Pardon Me” to the rapid-fire flow on closer “Free Will.” Sonically, the production is brooding and stylized, skewing darker than much of Tennessee Daydreams and closer to his 2020 single “DTP.” BRITTNEY McKENNA
NALANI ROTHROCK, THE ROCK HOUSE SESSIONS (JOLANI MUSIC) Vocalist Nalani Rothrock delivers a strong mix of energetic and poignant material on her new three-song EP The Rock House Sessions. The project nicely combines the earnestness of traditional soul with the storytelling flamboyance of classic country. The menu of tunes opens with the powerfully grooving “How Long,” which immediately establishes Rothrock’s dynamic vocal range and style, followed by “Try,” a testament to the necessity for endurance and perseverance in life, and the gritty finale “Every Time I Close My Eyes.” She shares the writing spotlight on these originals with partner guitarist Josh Lamkin, while superb keyboardist Kevin McKendree performs and serves as producer-engineer for these sessions cut at his Rock House studios in Franklin. Unfortunately, the pandemic temporarily scuttled the duo’s plans for a complete LP, but these numbers proved too good to let languish in a vault. RON WYNN
RAINSTICKS, OCTOBER ONWARDS (OREO BOTTLE) Appropriately enough, Rainsticks released their sunny jangle-pop album October Onwards the day before Halloween on digital platforms, and just last month, the release hit the physical realm on CD and cassette. Courtesy of Asher Horton, a local MVP you’ll know from Sun Seeker, Fox Fun and other bands, October is a barrage
ALBUM ART: RAINSTICKS, OCTOBER ONWARDS; MIKE FLOSS, GOD’S LEATHER; HAYLEY WILLIAMS, FLOWERS FOR VASES / DESCANSOS
of hooks and effects pedals reminiscent of the formula in the Paisley Underground scene in Los Angeles nearly 40 years ago. You’ll find immensely sweet yet melancholy melodies, ringing guitars, layers of harmonies and an occasional nod to The Byrds. And you don’t have to take my word for it: Wilco picked the album as one of their favorites of 2020. P.J. KINZER
STUFFED SPIDER, SECRET SPEECH (WRONG WHOLE ARCHIVAL BUREAU) In a past life, Matt Parrish played in Ho-Ag, a Boston art-punk combo that orbited the same musical and geographical realm as Lightning Bolt. Today, he lives a quieter existence in Nashville as a dad and solo musician, but his synth-and-tape-collage project Stuffed Spider is anything but basic dad rock. Where Ho-Ag owed debts to Devo, Secret Speech recalls Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh’s soundtrack work in places — think Rugrats’ Stu Pickles sleepwalking down to his basement lair to work on his latest inventions. The album’s dozen soundscapes consist of loops, keys, guitars, melodica, spoken word, seemingly busted machinery and tons more indecipherable source material that Parrish has collected since 1997. Back then, they probably would’ve called this IDM, an obsolete acronym for “intelligent dance music”; by any name, Secret Speech is an excellent headphone listen and Stuffed Spider a welcome addition to the local experimentalelectronic landscape. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
HAYLEY WILLIAMS, FLOWERS FOR VASES / DESCANSOS (ATLANTIC) From the second you drop the needle on Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams’ outstanding 2020 solo debut Petals for Armor, the record grips you with rich, dark, danceable sounds. Her follow-up FLOWERS for VASES / descansos takes a softer approach, with lots of clean guitar and piano all performed by Williams at home during pandemic-induced lockdown. But once it starts to sink in, it’s as riveting and incisive as Petals, with Williams delving deeper into personal traumas that have shaped her life. Very broadly speaking, both solo records and Paramore’s 2017 LP After Laughter are about regaining control and agency. This one highlights the strength required to persevere in that endeavor when you’re alone with yourself in the unsettling quiet.
STEPHEN TRAGESER EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
NASHVILLE SCENE | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | nashvillescene.com
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COOL COMFORT
Katy Kirby trusts her instincts on Cool Dry Place BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
“S
omeone called me a songbird once,” Katy Kirby tells the Scene by phone. “That made me want to smash every acoustic guitar.” Ahead of the COOL DRY PLACE OUT release of her first FRIDAY, FEB. 19, VIA LP Cool Dry Place KEELED SCALES Friday via Keeled Scales Records, the Texas-born Kirby is reflecting on her time as a Belmont student and rookie songwriter during the peak of the folk revival of the mid-2010s. It was a scene she was on board with at first. “Big Mandolin got us all,” she jokes. “But with respect to The Lumineers — all the stomping and the clapping — I got tired of writing from that place. I knew that if I sang in my pretty girl voice, with my acoustic guitar in hand, I’d be trying to do something I’m not.” Rock music in general came a bit later for Kirby than most. Her hometown — Spicewood, Texas — sits 30 miles from Austin and is home to Willie Nelson’s 500-acre Luck Ranch. “We’d see his bus driving by sometimes,” she says. But for Kirby and her deeply religious family, the rock venues of Sixth Street may as well have been in another galaxy. Kirby was homeschooled from kindergarten through ninth grade — a cocoon-like upbringing she calls “a bit lonely, to be honest” — and for the remainder of high school, attended a private Christian academy in a neighboring town. At the school, she played in a worship band, where she met and befriended Joelton Mayfield — now a Nashville-based alt-country songsmith himself. Kirby is speaking to the Scene from Alabama, where
THE SPIN FINE VINTAGE BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
J
oe Kenkel, Trevor Nikrant and Lou Turner all have outstanding solo records, but their self-titled debut as Styrofoam Winos shows their strength as a unit. Styrofoam Winos marks the trio’s first set of songs written together after six years as members of each other’s backing bands. To commemorate the album’s release Friday, they streamed a live performance filmed at Grimey’s in East Nashville and broadcast on the YouTube channel of their Louisville-based label Sophomore Lounge. “Hello, everyone in there,” said Nikrant, greeting a chat box that included familiar names from the local underground like axman-about-town Josh Halper and outsider-folk songsmith Ziona Riley, whose latest EP Not Too Precious Nikrant produced. The group began with Nikrant on guitar, Kenkel behind the drum kit, Turner on bass and Ross Collier playing a Therevox analog synth and an Omnichord. “He’s our George
she’s co-producing Mayfield’s follow-up to his 2019 EP I Hope You Make It. Mostly, though, Kirby’s high school experience motivated her to leave home. “My parents observe the faith in a way that is pure and noble and good, but I hadn’t realized at the time how right-wing the school was,” she remembers. “I kind of wish I’d caused more trouble. There was some wild shit that was said out loud.” The absence of a classic-rock record or CD collection in the house left Kirby to discover secular music essentially on her own. She points to free iTunes singles as a critical jumping-off point — like the title track from Bay Area indie band Rogue Wave’s 2007 album Asleep at Heaven’s Gate, which inspired her first original song. It wasn’t much, she says with a laugh. “I ripped off the chord progression, and wrote new words.” But it instilled in Kirby the desire to pursue songwriting — which led her to Nashville and Belmont, and eventually to making Cool Dry Place. Of the nine tracks on the album, Kirby has been playing “Secret Language,” a tender ballad that subtly references Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” the longest. But “Juniper,” an ode to motherhood — not her own mom specifically, she clarifies — “felt the most like a catalyst” for the rest of the record. “I wrote it in early 2016, and [always] heard it as a rock song. It was the first thing I’d written that sounded like something I wanted to listen to.” Coming later was the loose, limber first single “Traffic!,” which features a digitally treated chorus in the style of Daft Punk’s “One More Time.” It’s a happy accident that throws the listener for a loop initially, but ends up making the song. Her voice depleted from her day job at a call center, Kirby was struggling to sing the part as intended, so producers Alberto Sewald and Logan Chung temporarily employed the pitch-correction filter “to distract from how bad I sounded,” she explains. “We ended up liking it so much we kept it.” The rest of Cool Dry Place is just as selfassured. Vivacious pop songs like “Pepper-
PHOTO: JACKIE LEE YOUNG
MUSIC
mint” highlight Kirby’s silvery voice and easy way with melody. The aforementioned “Secret Language” and album-closing “Fireman” are more laid-back, but get their hooks in the listener just as effortlessly. The slowburning title track — at five minutes, the longest on the record — rocks with abandon, going out with a cacophonous multi-guitarsolo pile-on. The concise 29-minute set defies easy categorization, suggesting the gaps in Kirby’s knowledge are more creative assets than blindspots. Sonically, with its clean, resonant guitars and indie-folk overtones,
Martin,” Turner recently said, explaining Collier’s role to the Scene in a portion of our interview that didn’t make it into our Feb. 11 feature story about the band. Opener “Stuck in a Museum” set an energetic tone. The New Wave-style number recalled The B-52s and They Might Be Giants with its gang-shouted historical allusions: “Tang Dynasty! Sir Lancelot!” The end of “Museum” seemed to mimic a boom box devouring a tape, with the band slowing down and letting the song fall apart, and Nikrant lowering his voice from a nasal Fred Schneider bark to a Calvin Johnson-esque baritone. More earnest in spirit and sound were the POWER OF THREE: tunes on which Kenkel took the lead. “Once” echoed STYROFOAM WINOS the starry-eyed post-country of golden-era Wilco or Lambchop, while his coolly detached drawl on the listener draw their own conclusions, ending not “Maybe More” called to mind Kurt Vile’s early fourwith resolution for Roy, but an ellipse in the form of a track recordings. nifty, Steely Dan-ish solo from Nikrant. Several instrument changeovers later, and with The set’s emotional peak was the languid, lovely Turner in the lead, they took on “Roy G. Biv,” which explores gentrification and historical erasure in a way “Nightbirds,” Styrofoam Winos’ penultimate song. It evoked Yo La Tengo with hushed group vocals, flute that shows rather than tells. The song personifies the and synth atmospherics, and a cameo from cellist acronym for the colors of the rainbow as a blue-collar guy living on borrowed time in the land of tall-andAustin Hoke. Like the pride of Hoboken, N.J., the skinnies. “Roy” showcases Turner’s knack for unorthoWinos take their music seriously, but are neither neudox hooks and vivid storytelling with just a few stray rotic about its imperfections nor too cool to show how details — a busted mailbox, an expired license. It lets much fun they’re having together. The pandemic “has
it maintains a refreshingly upbeat vibe — even when the subject matter is a downer. “There’s a bummer of a lyric in almost every song,” Kirby says. “Some darkness, some violence, some thrashing around like goldfish in a garbage bag. But I think my melody-focused CCM background wired me in a different way. It would be very hard for me to write a song that could alienate people, or be too weird to be approachable. That approachability is hard-wired in there. I don’t worry about making things friendly — if it sounds good to me, I trust it.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
reminded us how precious this all is,” Turner remarked during our interview. Both live and on record, the Winos’ music and vibe reflect this glass-half-full — maybe that should be “cup-half-full” — outlook. The best part: Styrofoam Winos feels like just the tip of the iceberg of what the trio is capable of. After all, Yo La Tengo took nearly a decade to go from a good band to a great one with Painful. A front-row seat to the Winos’ journey is something worthy of a toast. EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
nashvillescene.com | FEBRUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 24, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE
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FILM EVE’S BAYOU
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PRIMAL STREAM 43
Bayou drama and Georgian drama, now available to stream BY JASON SHAWHAN
I
’m hoping you had a nice Valentine’s Day, or whatever your personal commemoration of choice is for the day before all the candy goes 50 percent off. This week’s films are not particularly romantic, nor are they useful as aesthetic litmus tests for potential amours (unless you’re particularly hardcore when it comes to your cinema — in which case, respect). But these are films that dig deep into human experience and do not play around when it comes to big, complicated emotions. I hope you’re getting by, and that you’re cared for. I hope the state makes sure everyone gets a COVID vaccination instead of a gun, as the latter is apparently their priority right now. And I hope your candy of preference is in the post-holiday discount section, because it’s the little treats that keep us on the right side of the gator fence at the emotional zoo we are all currently living in. As always, look at past issues of the Scene for many, many more recommendations of what to stream.
EVE’S BAYOU ON HULU AND AMAZON PRIME It’s messed-up how limiting the language we use to commend art can be. When we talk about great works of creation devoted to the travails of the Southern family, it is customary to work in the medium of comparisons to artists like Flannery O’Connor, or Tennessee Williams, or William Faulkner. They’re all tremendous writers, yet comparisons to them implicitly reinforce the whiteness that achievements in that field are held up against. So what happens when we talk about Eve’s Bayou? The 1997 directorial debut from actor Kasi Lemmons (Candyman, The Silence of The Lambs) is a masterpiece of Southern Gothic, well-versed in the violent history of American genealogy and the variations of swamp witchery to be had, a Rashomon of how diaphanous and imprecise notions can become something tangible and dangerous. But the only explicit references to race and class come at the very beginning, when we are informed that the Batiste family is descended from a French military officer and the Black woman whose knowledge of herbs and medicine saved his life. So the drama that unfolds is built on the foundation
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of several generations of red hair and second sight, and though there is a distinctive Southern tragedy at work, the story of the Batiste family would have been just as enthralling to Aeschylus — there is some strife we as human beings can never escape. The women in this film play a remarkable assortment of characters — Debbi Morgan’s Mozelle, occasional seer and cursed to lose every man who takes her hand in marriage, is the story’s heart and soul. Neither victim nor victimizer, she has the gift of perspective (which is certainly apt for a fortuneteller) and a just-this-shy-of-ghoulish sense of humor. Eve’s Bayou has a kind of radiant endurance, and I would absolutely watch a series devoted to the rivalry between Mozelle and Elzora (Diahann Carroll!), the other fortune-teller/mambo who hangs out at the marketplace by the river. If you’ve never seen this film, you should absolutely remedy that. It is a landmark in ’90s independent cinema, and one with great power undiminished by the intervening decades.
BEGINNING ON MUBI Writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili made her feature debut with the focused and devastating Beginning, and I’m still in
awe of what she accomplishes in it. There are touchstones to be found for anyone who digs rigorous art cinema of the 20th century (Bresson, Tarkovsky, von Trier, even Breillat, Tolkin and Reygadas) and likes to play thematic trainspotting. But Kulumbegashvili is doing her own thing, and there aren’t simple comparative points to fit what she’s doing into a safe context. This is a film about religious persecution, human nature and the way that power structures sustain themselves by clinging to outmoded hierarchies and ideologies. Iana (Ia Sukhitashvili) and her husband David (Rati Oneli, who co-wrote the film with Kulumbegashvili) are part of the small Jehovah’s Witness community in an isolated part of the nation of Georgia. Their community is subject to indifference (at best), abuse and violence at the hands of the majority Georgian Orthodox population, with the ongoing small acts of aggression (as well as utterly horrifying larger acts of aggression) piling up, leaving Iana and David wondering if it’s even worth it. Kulumbegashvili has a gift for dramatic tension and utilizing off-screen space in a way that makes it very difficult to let your guard down as a viewer. The very first shot of the film makes it apparent that we’re in new territory as far as narrative guardrails are concerned, and though there are moments of an almost preternatural grace to be found, there’s not anyone in cinema to use for comparative sake. Though a formalist, Kulumbegashvili does not follow that aesthetic path through to becoming a scold (Michael Haneke, this means you), nor does she reverse-engineer the film to yield maximum cringe based on the audience’s response to the material as presented. And when Beginning lays into the throttle (relatively) in its last reel, it finds a common ground between the visceral and the transcendent in a way that had me dumbstruck and wishing I could see this on a proper giant IMAX screen. (Think Being There, Gerry and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but all at the same time.) The 2020 New York Film Festival was an overwhelming banquet of exceptional work, but this was my favorite, and there hasn’t been a day since that Beginning hasn’t haunted my subconscious in some fashion. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
BEGINNING
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WHAT A DARK WEB WE WEAVE
Despite good performances, Silk Road squanders its moment
BY JOE NOLAN
T
iller Russell’s new thriller Silk Road tells the story of Ross Ulbricht and the unregulated, almost-anything-goes market he created on the dark web. The real-life story of Silk Road is a gangster tale set in cyberspace — a little SILK ROAD bit Blade Runner, R, 117 MINUTES AVAILABLE VIA VIDEO ON a little bit GoodfelDEMAND FRIDAY, FEB. 19 las. When Ulbricht (Nick Robinson) makes his entrance on a San Francisco sidewalk in the opening frames of the film, we’re even treated to some voiceover narration — Ulbricht shares his inner thoughts and philosophies à la Henry Hill in Goodfellas. But in actuality, this isn’t Goodfellas or Blade Runner. Silk Road is a story of high crime on the high seas of vast digital content, and you could call it a Captain Blood for the 21st century. But that’s not exactly right either. Silk Road feels like a missed opportunity, but thanks to its talented cast it’s still a fun watch. Russell’s version of the story is a cat-andmouse game that pits Ulbricht against the “Jurassic Narc” — DEA agent Rick Bowden, played with raging pathos by Jason Clarke. Bowden is a self-described “door-kicker” cop with his own drug and alcohol problem, and his bad behavior nearly costs him his job before he’s reassigned to a cybercrimes unit. Meanwhile, Ulbricht dreams up the
super-secret Silk Road drug bazaar, and the two are set on a collision course. I enjoyed all of the performances here. Robinson’s dialog as Ulbricht is packed with exhausting exposition, but the actor somehow manages to beam his natural charisma through the bad scripting. Agent Bowden embodies nearly every grizzled-cop cliché you can imagine, but Clarke knows these muttering, physical character types so well that he’s fun to watch even if you can predict his every move. Darrell Brit-Gibson is hilarious as Bowden’s perpetually stoned informant, and Paul Walter Hauser almost steals the movie with his turn as one of the Silk Road site’s most prolific pushers. Russell’s Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer series on Netflix has been embraced by audiences and critics partly because Russell brings a unique vision to his true-crime series illuminating the killing spree of Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker. Russell’s documentary series highlights lesser-known aspects of Ramirez’s crimes, and keeps its focus on the families of victims and the police who captured the killer. Russell’s Silk Road script has a lot of heavy lifting to do when it comes to filling out Ulbricht’s anti-authority worldview alongside the byzantine machinations of cryptocrime on the dark web. But these fascinating subjects are why you make a film like this, even if they’re also where Russell’s film falls the flattest. I can’t think of more timely topics than digital autonomy and privacy, ending the drug war, Bitcoin and the evolution of cryptocurrency, and individual liberty versus the authority of the state. But Silk Road squanders this moment — and this complex, stranger-than-fiction story — to bring us a talented cast walking through a lazy script. It’s a fun flick that delivers more genuine humor than I expected, but nearly none of the deep exploration this story deserves. EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
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