CITY LIMITS: APPROACHING NINE MONTHS SINCE STATE ABORTION BAN, DCS REMAINS IN DISARRAY PAGE 8
CITY LIMITS: NEXT UP FOR THE TENNESSEE GOP — GUNS, GUNS, GUNS PAGE 10
BACK IN THE EASTERN CONFERENCE, NASHVILLE SC HAS ALL THE MAKINGS OF A 2023 CONTENDER
SPORTS: GETTING TO KNOW HANY MUKHTAR PAGE 16
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8
CITY LIMITS
Approaching Nine Months Since Tennessee’s Abortion Ban, DCS Remains in Disarray .................................................. 8
‘Tennessee is not equipped in the least to handle’ an influx of unwanted children, says Rep. Gloria Johnson
BY LAURA BROWNAs State Legislation Targets the LGBTQ Community, Pride Celebrations Adapt 9 Pride events in Franklin and Nashville will move forward, while Murfreesboro and Knoxville events are on shakier ground
BY MATT MASTERSMetropolitik: Gideon’s Army’s Campaign Against Violence in North Nashville 9
The nonprofit organization has a new grant, and the city has a new interest in alternatives to traditional policing
BY ELI MOTYCKAGuns, Guns, Guns .................................... 10
Next on the agenda for Tennessee’s Republican supermajority: further gun deregulation
BY CONNOR DARYANIPith in the Wind 10
This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog
13
COVER STORY
Pitch Perfect ............................................ 13
Back in the Eastern Conference, Nashville SC has all the makings of a 2023 contender
BY MICHAEL GALLAGHERGetting to Know Hany Mukhtar
16
Following Nashville SC’s German-born player — a star on and off the pitch
BY MIKEIE HONDA REILAND21
CRITICS’ PICKS
DakhaBrakha, The Tedeschi Trucks Band, Aftersun, Eric Gales and more
28
FOOD AND DRINK
Think of Laura
South Nashville’s latest Central American eatery hits the mark
BY ALIJAH POINDEXTERBOOKS
A Disaster and a Dauntless Town
Meet the heroes and martyrs of the Waverly Train Disaster in Walk Through Fire
BY PEGGY BURCH, CHAPTER16.ORG31
ART
Fleshed Out
A collaborative photo exhibition from Karen Elson and Emily Dorio is sexy and powerful
BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER33
MUSIC
Another Look
Exclusives Coming From Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell, More for Record Store Day
U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles Does Not Appear to Be Who He Says He Is
Germantown Set for Italian Restaurant Pelato
33
The Scene’s music writers recommend recent releases from Paramore, Mya Byrne, Brian Brown and more
BY HANNAH CRON, P.J. KINZER, DARYL SANDERS, AMY STUMPFL AND STEPHEN TRAGESER
‘Faces of North Nashville’ Is a Community Archive of the Historically Black Neighborhood
ON THE COVER:
It’s Time to Learn Portuguese
34 On the amazing life lessons of Os Mutantes’ classic anthology Everything Is Possible
BYSEAN L. MALONEY
Local Time
34
Guitarist Joseph Allred makes a move against the transient nature of contemporary life
BYEDD HURT
The Spin
35
The Scene’s live-review column checks out the star studded tribute to late actor and singer Leslie Jordan at the Opry House, featuring Eddie Vedder, Maren Morris and more
BY STEPHEN TRAGESER36
FILM
Morning Glory
Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning is melancholic, mature and beautiful
BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY37
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD
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American Currents: State of the Music
EXHIBIT NOW OPEN
Tennessee is approaching a milestone. It will soon be nine months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision rolled back federal protection of abortion rights and, soon after, Tennessee’s trigger law made abortion illegal in the state — even in cases of rape or incest. While state law does provide an exception for situations in which an abortion will prevent death or serious bodily harm to a pregnant person, it’s a narrow provision, and punishment is very harsh for doctors who can’t prove that an abortion was necessary to save a life.
In the decade preceding Dobbs, Tennesseans had roughly 12,000 abortions per year. Now, nearly nine months after the institution of Tennessee’s strict trigger ban, pregnancies are coming to term that might not have otherwise. Babies will be born as actual humans who need food, medical care and love.
“We the people have a responsibility to raise these children that nobody is raising — that is a big task,” says Fayette County General Sessions Court and Juvenile Court Judge Jim Gallagher, a Republican who is also a member of the Tennessee Council of Juvenile & Family Court Judges. “This is the scary trend that I see. Mamas drop these kids off. Daddies are gone. They drop them off as infants when they’re born, they drop them off when they’re 5, whatever. And I’m not obviously saying all of them, but the ones that come to court. ‘Well Grandma is gettin’ too old. She can’t deal with ’em. She
doesn’t have the energy.’ So where are these kids gonna go? Because Mama’s already dropped them off. She can’t pass a drug test. So they go to DCS.”
Before we’re faced with the consequences of the abortion decision on our already severely strained system for taking care of at-risk children, it’s a good time to stop and take a look at how that system is doing.
The short answer? The system is collapsing.
The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services is the agency responsible for reviewing complaints, investigating a child’s situation and ultimately getting children placed in temporary housing. With roughly 9,000 youth in DCS custody, the system is currently in disarray. In December, the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury issued a damning report on the department’s many failures. Another report released earlier this year by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth found that Tennessee’s foster children experience the highest levels of instability in the U.S.
“We’re traumatizing kids,” says state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville). “We remove them from their homes because of traumatic situations and then traumatize them further by making them sleep in offices across the state, or rushing them off to foster homes that weren’t fully vetted.”
Turnover of staff at DCS has reached crisis levels — a staggering 56 percent in 2022. Johnson doesn’t mince words about the reason why: “People don’t want to work
at a place where you have 52 kids on your caseload, when the standard is 12. You can’t humanely do that work. And if you can’t humanely do your job, no amount of money is going to entice someone to put kids in danger. Social workers are literally traumatized by concerns of not being able to get their caseloads complete.”
One of the biggest reasons cited by the state audit is a lack of available foster care options. Teenage boys are particularly difficult to find placement for. Social workers report they are making the hard choice of leaving kids in abusive homes, because they have no better alternative to offer. A whistleblowing social worker was fired in 2021 after she clued in the public on kids spending months at a time sleeping on the floor in state office buildings because there was nowhere to discharge them to. These kids reported not having consistent access to food, beds, clothes or showers. “There were recently several teenagers who went for five days without showers,” says Johnson. “All they had for entertainment were coloring books. There’s no television, no computer devices, or anything like that for them.”
In that environment, it’s not surprising that foster kids face a highly disproportionate risk of being incarcerated. Tennessee has a strong foster-to-prison pipeline, and lack of staff means poor oversight of the state’s juvenile detention centers. The DCS audit found that these centers are typically at 100 percent capacity. A 2021 ProPublica investigation into Rutherford County’s detention of children found that 48 percent of juvenile court cases ended with children behind bars — kids as young as 7, and disproportionately Black. DCS inspectors repeatedly failed to intervene despite the county’s frequent and egregious jailing of children.
“When I commit a child to DCS and they remain in my detention center for weeks, and sometimes into months, without a place to go, that’s wrong — it’s illegal,” says Knox County Juvenile Court Judge Tim Irwin. “But it’s happening, it’s happening in Knox County.”
A 2022 report by the Youth Law Center details extensive abuses at Wilder Youth Development Center, a facility run by DCS and located in Somerville, Tenn. Wilder serves teenage boys, 97% of whom are Black. Reportedly, staff at the facility used ramen noodle packets as bounties to incentivize children in their care to physically assault each other. This treatment has led to child suicides and attempts. Here’s one case from the YLC report: “Shortly after being released from protective custody, Isaiah was moving into his new dorm when he was attacked by several other youth. Multiple staff were already present when the attack began, having been called to the dorm because they heard some youth talking about jumping Isaiah. Several youth later reported that one of the staff members present had put noodles on Isaiah’s head, prompting youth to plan to assault him. As the attack now unfolded, staff stood by, doing nothing to intervene.”
So how does the situation get fixed?
“Throw money at it,” says Judge Irwin. “Throw tons of money at it. We’ve got to make positions attractive for people. They are vital to our children, and our state. Throw them some more money, make it a
Tennessee is desperate for foster homes. If you’re interested, you can start the application process via tn.gov. The state’s explicit requirements are:
Give without the expectation of immediate returns
Have room in your home and in your daily life
Learn and use proven behavioral management skills
Love and care for children with problems
Support birth families and help a child return home
Foster parents can be:
Single or married
With, or without, children of their own
Requirements:
At least 21 years of age
Must be fingerprinted and pass a background check
Participate in an informational meeting
Must complete a training program called TN-KEY
Participate in a home study
Provide documentation of a sufficient income
Complete a health exam
better place to work, give them benefits, shorten their work week.”
“Pay them,” echoes Judge Gallagher. “Pay them more now. The state has $1.5 billion in the rainy-day fund, and DCS’ budget is $1.1 billion. What’s the solution? I don’t know, but I think we can take both of those numbers and come up with a solution.”
In his State of the State address earlier this month, Gov. Bill Lee proposed putting an additional $190 million in the budget for DCS, along with an additional $10 million for Tennessee Fosters Hope, a grant program designed to increase options for care. Johnson says this is “too little, too late.”
“Yes, we need to raise salaries,” she says. “Are they going to be ‘real’ raises? Yes, he is giving money for some fixes, however, it’s too long to wait, and there are kids in trauma right now that we should be helping. He talked about higher salaries, but he did not talk about capping caseloads, and that is what is going to bring people to work at DCS, knowing they have a workload that’s manageable.”
How well-equipped is Tennessee to handle an influx of unwanted children after Dobbs babies start being born?
“Tennessee is not equipped in the least to handle that,” says Johnson. “They can’t even handle what they have now. An influx of thousands is something that is going to be a disaster in the state. There’s just no question.”
‘Tennessee is not equipped in the least to handle’ an influx of unwanted children, says Rep. Gloria Johnson
s state legislators debate a number of bills that would directly impact the LGBTQ community — including the possible criminalization of drag shows where children could be present — Pride celebrations in Tennessee are adapting to an uncertain future.
Senate Bill 3, introduced by state Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin), passed via a 26-6 vote on Feb. 9, with Johnson arguing that the bill targets obscenity and protects children from what he calls “overtly sexual entertainment.”
“We’re saying that you can’t do that in a public park, you can’t do that in a restaurant where kids are present,” Johnson said.
Opponents argue that other laws already on the books cover obscenity, and members of the LGBTQ community characterize the legislation as part of a larger attack on their rights.
Nashville Pride began in 1988 and will return June 24 and 25 with what organizers have said will be a celebration largely unchanged from recent years, adding that they continue to have a “strong partnership” with the Metro Nashville government. Drag performances will take place at this year’s public festival, along with the return of the festival’s parade, live musical performances, youth activities and hundreds of business and community vendors.
“[The legislation] is very disheartening and very concerning, but we’re looking forward to celebrating — that’s what Pride is,” says Zach Ledbetter, vice president of Nashville Pride’s board of directors. “It’s to
The nonprofit organization has a new grant, and the city has a new interest in alternatives to traditional policing
BY ELI MOTYCKAcelebrate the progress that has been made and coming together as a community to organize, volunteer and really support one another, and this year will be no different.”
The Knoxville News Sentinel reported earlier this month that Knox Pride will cancel its 2023 festival and parade if the GOP-backed legislation becomes law, with other celebrations deciding how to proceed. An October letter from Murfreesboro City Manager Craig Tindall called Pride event organizer Tennessee Equality Project Foundation’s 2022 application “misleading,” and pledged to deny future special-event permits submitted by the organization.
“The portion of the event was far from ‘family friendly’ and clearly unsuitable for ‘all ages,’ ” Tindall wrote, adding that the “event intentionally exposed young children to this conduct.”
Since that letter was issued, Boro Pride supporters have spoken out at Murfreesboro City Council meetings. While Murfreesboro Mayor Shane McFarland said in early January that the council believed there is room for compromise, it’s unclear at this time if and how Rutherford County’s LGBTQ community will celebrate in 2023.
Tennessee Equality Project executive director Chris Sanders declined to comment directly on the status of Boro Pride, as the nonprofit is seeking the counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has already pledged legal action regarding Tennessee bills targeting trans health care.
“We don’t want the government dictating what kind of clothes we wear, the composition of our festivals, the way we engage in
artistic expression, and drag is an artform, period,” Sanders says. “So I think every conservative can join anybody else in clinging to the Bill of Rights. That has to be common ground for our country. When the Bill of Rights is no longer the common ground, it would be hard to imagine what might be common ground for our country.”
Sanders says legislation could also empower citizens to “nitpick at every element of a public drag performance” in an attempt to get a performer cited or arrested. It’s scrutiny that Sanders believes will also be aimed at trans and nonbinary people in general and could lead to dangerous interactions.
In January, right-wing activist group Turning Point USA held its so-called “Teens Against Gender Mutilation Rally” in Murfreesboro, which drew both LGBTQ-rights supporters and members of far-right hate group the Proud Boys. Proud Boys also faced off with protesters during an anti-trans rally held on Nashville’s Legislative Plaza in October. The event was organized by right-wing media personality Matt Walsh and featured remarks from U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, state Sen. Johnson and state House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland).
State Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville)
calls the legislation and the extremist groups “the stirrings of fascism.” Nashville Pride’s Ledbetter says safety and security will continue to be a top priority for the event, which has a “zero tolerance policy” regarding threats and harassment. Nashville Pride will rely in large part on private security.
In Williamson County, Franklin Pride organizers have committed to continuing the annual celebration, which was first held in 2019 and takes place in the city-owned Park at Harlinsdale Farm. Organizers say they’ve had great experiences working with the city planning past events, and in 2022, the city issued a proclamation recognizing and celebrating Franklin Pride.
“There are people in the community that need this time and space, and to not have Pride would totally let down the youth, you know, that are depending one day a year to have a safe space to go,” says Franklin Pride President-Emeritus Robert McNamara. “Whatever it looks like, we will have a festival.”
Current Franklin Pride President Clayton Klutts says the group is awaiting final approval from the city, and confirms that this year’s festival will not include drag performances.
EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
Despite what you may hear on the campaign trail or see on the evening news, Nashville has been getting gradually safer over the past few decades. Violent crime in Nashville is down — way down — from its highs in the early 1990s. But North Nashville — the historic epicenter of the city’s Black community, ravaged by segregation, city disinvestment and, more recently, gentrification and displacement — continues to suffer from the city’s highest rates of violence. Years after 37208 was named the nation’s most-incarcerated ZIP code, gun deaths and violent crime still burden the tapestry of neighborhoods.
Through generations of systemic headwinds, North Nashville has built a commitment to community-based solutions. Rasheedat Fetuga formed activist organization Gideon’s Army for the neighborhood’s children. When she was a teacher at Carter Lawrence Elementary in the early 2000s, a student, Lamar Hughes, came to see her after being kicked out of class.
“Ms. Fetuga, I just don’t know why I should keep trying,” Fetuga remembers him telling her. “Look at my life. I’m not gonna live to see 18.”
“He told me that,” Fetuga tells the Scene. “At 9 years old.”
Hughes was shot and killed in Edgehill in 2010. Months after his death, he was remembered in a vigil along with fellow Hillsboro High School students Michael Walker Jr., also a victim of gun violence, and Damon Donelson, who was hit by a car. All had died that fall. At the vigil, family and friends were still asking for witnesses to come forward. No arrests had been made.
Fetuga turned Hughes’ memory into an effort to address endemic community violence. In 2017, Gideon’s Army brought in Cure Violence, a Chicagobased organization that runs anti-violence trainings to skill up members. They held events in the community, delivered direct services to families and were hired for contract work in Metro Nashville Public Schools, where Fetuga has worked on and off since 2000, most recently running restorative justice programs at Pearl-Cohn High School.
According to Fetuga, violence in North Nashville is neither structured nor random.
“Nashville is just different,” she says. “There are gangs, cliques, sets and groups, but no structure. Violence in North Nashville is interpersonal, and it’s all caused by poverty and a lack of resources. It’s caused by the criminalization of people who are living in these conditions.”
For a decade, Gideon’s Army has been trying to understand how and why violence happens and keep it from happening further, all without relying on traditional policing, courts or prisons. The group’s 2016 “Driving While Black” report documented racial bias in Nashville traffic stops, and members helped organize a community response to the police killings of Jocques Clemmons in 2017 and Daniel Hambrick in 2018. The group trained and hired violence interrupters to identify and mediate community conflict and serve as alternatives to a traditional police presence, considered dangerous in itself by many residents of North Nashville. After national scrutiny of violent policing in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in
Next on the agenda for Tennessee’s Republican supermajority: further gun deregulation
BY CONNOR DARYANITennessee doesn’t have many regulations around guns as it is. But according to Republican legislators and gun-rights activists, there is still lots of work to be done.
Of the thousands of bills being discussed in the Tennessee General Assembly during this session, a good number of them involve firearms. And while a few of them aim to introduce light regulations, most seek to bring the state closer to the so-called “constitutional carry” standard — the concept that the Second Amendment abides no restrictions to gun rights whatsoever.
“The [Supreme] Court quite clearly says if the restriction didn’t exist in 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted, it is unconstitutional to impose it today,” says John Harris, executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association. As a proponent
2020, the group emerged as a rare local authority on alternatives to traditional law enforcement.
That logic has now been adopted by top brass in the Metro Nashville Police Department. “We can’t arrest our way out of this,” Chief John Drake recently told a packed room on the eighth floor of 505 Church St., a new high-rise developed by real estate mogul Tony Giarratana. Ron Johnson, the city’s community safety director, invited media to the Feb. 15 roundtable with visiting consultants from the National Network for Safe Communities. Drake was joined at the table by Mayor John Cooper, Juvenile Court Judge Sheila Calloway, District Attorney Glenn Funk, the Community Foundation’s Hal Cato and others. They discussed collaboration between the city, police, businesses and the community, all agreeing that the city had to look beyond traditional law and order. Johnson’s work focuses on a coalition, called The Village, that claims hundreds of individuals and organizations as members, including Gideon’s Army.
In November, the city split a $1.5 million grant between Gideon’s Army and Why We Can’t Wait, a community organization working in the Napier-Sudekum Homes in South Nashville. NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams was quick to cover the grant, pointing out that the city had not “questioned Gideon’s Army” about “the involvement of its own people in acts of violence.” When reached by the Scene, Williams declined to comment for this story.
The piece capped a long string of reporting by Williams, who clocked 18 stories about Gideon’s Army over 14 months. NewsChannel 5 has a dedicated “Gideon’s Army” web tab, where it has churned out far-ranging reports contrasting Gideon’s Army’s mission to reduce violence with the personal lives of its members, scrutinizing the organization for working with individuals who own weapons or are tied to illegal activity. Williams operates at one speed, with a trademark doggedness that has helped him break big stories about government officials and civic scandals. When applied to a small nonprofit experimenting with alternatives to policing in an attempt to end violence, Williams’ desire for a juicy angle comes off to some as a clumsy misunderstanding of Gideon’s Army and its mission, burying North Nashville’s existing anti-
of constitutional carry, he believes the state still has a lot of work to do in the way of fully deregulating guns.
Bills concerned with deregulation range from legislation that lines up with the national firearm debate to other very atypical legislation. One bill would allow faculty and staff to carry handguns in school. Another limits people’s ability to file lawsuits against firearm manufacturers. Yet another bill “allows law enforcement officers to carry a firearm when under the influence of alcohol or controlled substances.”
The bill that seems to be drawing the most concern from the left and vigorous defense from some on the right is one that would lower the age at which a person can lawfully carry a handgun in public without a permit from 21 to 18. Tennessee first allowed permitless carry for people ages 21 and up back in 2021. Pro-gun groups see the age restriction as being antithetical to the concept of constitutional carry — though Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) has expressed skepticism over lowering the age.
According to Harris, age restrictions and other classes of regulation are not the only obstacles in the way of constitutional carry.
“If an officer sees a person [with a gun] walking down the street, they’ve got the authority because they see the commission of a crime to stop them, detain them, question them, ask to see a permit,” says Harris. “Ask them if they meet the elements of permitless carry. So that’s the big difference between having a constitutional carry law versus
violence efforts just as the city was turning its attention to policing alternatives.
Maintaining relationships with people close to patterns of violence, termed “credible messengers,” has become widely accepted by civic and law enforcement leaders as a tool for building community safety. MNPD first contacted Gideon’s Army about working with Cleveland Shaw Jr., a resident of MDHA’s Cumberland View Apartments later hired by Gideon’s Army on a contract basis to plan events and build community. After he was shot and killed in 2021, Shaw became a central focus for Williams because of his ties to drug dealing and guns. Individuals’ proximity to coexisting indicators of violence — drugs, weapons, concentrated poverty — comes with relationships, knowledge, trust and networks that qualify them to prevent its spread. It’s what the city required of Gideon’s Army when it issued its 2022 grant and in line with the prevailing logic for identifying and reducing violent crime in communities.
With recent funding from the city, Gideon’s Army will continue its violence interruption program in conjunction with the Metro Department of Health. Meanwhile, the city has bulked up police hiring as it prepares for a new downtown substation slated for 2024. Updated training for 911 operators will help emergency services take advantage of new Partners in Care and REACH non-police emergency response initiatives — a critical need that became more apparent last month when MNPD Officer Dylan Ramos killed an armed man on Buchanan Street who was, according to 911 callers, suffering from mental illness. The stakes remain high, with violence constantly threatening schools, streets and neighborhoods.
“North Nashville is on fire,” Fetuga tells the Scene “It’s a burning house, and there are children inside, and we are running into that building with the supplies that we have and bringing out children who are burned. Some don’t make it. We get burned. It’s traumatic work. There are people who want to sit on the sidelines and complain about how we’re doing it or that we’re not good enough — but we are out here. You can’t save children by having meetings. You do the work and you feel the pain when things go wrong. But you don’t quit.”
EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COMwhat we have now.”
“While I didn’t necessarily think permitless carry was good, 21 was a reasonable age for me for gun ownership,” says state Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis). “You know, it’s like people think 21 is a reasonable age for you to start drinking. So lowering it to 18 is a concern for me, because it means high school students can go and purchase guns.”
In May of last year, the country was rocked by the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when an 18-year-old gunman killed 21 people — both students and teachers. Studies are showing that the number of mass shootings carried out by younger assailants has increased over the past decade.
“I’m a big supporter of the Second Amendment,” says Lamar. “Citizens’ rights to own guns is not the issue. But when we put in laws like permitless carry that don’t require background checks, proving that you know how to use these deadly weapons, I think that it puts the community in a dangerous position.”
Tennessee consistently ranks at or near the top 10 in total annual gun deaths. From 2016 to 2020, Shelby, Davidson and Knox counties had the largest numbers of gun deaths in the state.
“I understand there tends to be commonality around the folks who introduced this type of legislation and where they’re from,” says Lamar. She says many of the legislators filing these bills represent rural districts where constituents want certain freedoms surrounding guns that may be dangerous in
Lots of questions are swirling about the résumé of freshman U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, who succeeded Jim Cooper in Nashville’s redrawn 5th Congressional District. After some basic research by Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5, it appears everything from Ogles’ educational background to his professional experience has gotten a generous dose of political spin on the campaign trail. Contributor Betsy Phillips digs into the dire implications of conservative lawmakers’ liberal relationship with the truth. … After its Belcourt premiere in the fall, Ben Oddo’s gonzo documentary “Nashville Bachelorettes: A Ben Oddo Investigation” is now available on YouTube. Follow Oddo through a whirlwind tour of the city’s Airbnbs, pedal taverns and wellness experiences as he reports and reflects on the tourism engine that locals love to hate. … State Sen. Jeff Yarbro is running for mayor, per an announcement late last week. Yarbro has represented Davidson County since 2015. He joins a crowded field that’s expected to grow bigger in the coming months. Voters will decide the city’s fourth mayor in the past five years when they head to the polls in early August. … Former Mayor Megan Barry, state Rep. Bob Freeman and At-Large Metro Councilmember Bob Mendes will not seek the post, quashing rumors that circulated after Mayor John Cooper announced he would not seek reelection. … Cooper has notified both the Republican and Democratic national committees that Nashville will seek both parties’ conventions in 2028. … Metro Nashville Public Schools board members met on Valentine’s Day to discuss local implications of several legislative changes pending at the state level. Authority changes over LEAD Neely’s Bend Middle School — a charter school in Madison — are forcing a shuffle in the school district, potentially resulting in two MNPS schools being converted to pre-K through eighth grade.
dense urban areas like Nashville or Memphis.
With a population of nearly 1 million, Shelby County has the second-highest gun death rate in the state — second only to Lewis County, which has a population of fewer than 15,000. Lamar has filed legislation that would require a person to have a permit in order to carry a handgun in Shelby or Davidson counties.
But given the Tennessee General Assembly’s Republican supermajority, Lamar’s legislation faces an uphill battle. Lamar points out that Black people and poor communities are disproportionately affected by gun violence. She says that while complete deregulation of guns might be what people want in more rural areas — areas such as the counties gun-deregulation bill sponsors Sen. Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) and Rep. Chris Todd (R-Jackson) represent — legislation like the bill she is filing is necessary to prevent more deaths in our most vulnerable communities.
“The people dying from gun violence are poor people and Black people,” says Lamar. “It seems that if you look at the data, only certain communities are suffering from this irresponsible legislation. And you can’t help but wonder, with so much support steadily pushing it forward, is there some type of motivation to attack these communities?”
The Scene reached out to multiple members of the Republican caucus for comment but did not receive any responses.
EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
IT CAN BE ARGUED that the first three years of Nashville SC’s residency in Major League Soccer have been more tempestuous than those of the typical expansion club.
The club navigated its inaugural season while playing during a global pandemic, spent its second year reacclimating to playing in front of increasing capacity crowds, and switched from the Eastern to Western Conference in year three. That year, they started the season with an eight-game road trip before opening a new state-of-the-art home stadium, Geodis Park. Nashville SC is
no longer the new kid on the block, and 2023 marks the first time the team will begin a season without any COVID- or infrastructure-related holdups.
This year can be — and should be — all about the soccer.
“We’ve talked about starting an expansion team in 2020 through a global pandemic being the most challenging success story in our sport — and maybe in any sport,” says general manager Mike Jacobs. “And not only having to [grow] a team during that pandemic but to have to go back and forth between the Eastern and Western Conferences, I think unless you’re playing through that yourself — even as a fan — it’s just hard to appreciate how challenging that is on an athlete’s body.
“When you think about how we started our season last year playing our first eight on the road … with distance traveled like no one has been asked to do before, it’s probably made us pretty battle-tested,” he continues. “Our NSC way is to try and demonstrate resiliency and respond positively to challenges. It’s one thing to talk about clichés or hang a sign on a wall, but it’s another
thing when you live something like that. The nucleus of this group has had to do that, and I think because of that, they’re more resilient.”
Switching conferences for the third time in four years, NSC is no stranger to Eastern Conference competition. The club compiled a record of 20 wins, 26 draws and 11 losses in its two previous years in the East, finishing in seventh place in 2020 and third place in 2021. Jacobs says Nashville’s one-season stint in the West, however — playing the likes of 2022 MLS Cup champion Los Angeles FC, FC Dallas and the Los Angeles Galaxy — made his club more battle-tested, likening the past three years of anarchy to a case of iron sharpening iron. Logging more than 18,000 travel miles through the first eight matches of 2022, playing a more “tranquil” style of play, as Jacobs phrases it, gives Nashville a competitive edge over its Eastern Conference
cohorts.
Nashville SC opens the 2023 regular season against New York City FC 3:30 p.m.
“I think the Eastern Conference in most sports, and especially in MLS, is more smash-mouth, more aggressive, more physical,” Jacobs says. “I think because of that, we were constructed a little differently than Western Conference teams, and I think we’re adept at playing differently in some regards.
Saturday, Feb. 25, at Geodis Park
“When you look at the amount of tread on our tires,” he adds, “the amount of work on the legs of our guys, based on travel.
… Fast-forward a year later, I definitely think that our group has probably been exposed to things that most other clubs in the league haven’t. In some regards, maybe it has [given us] a different idea of what to expect. I think having a veteran group that’s been there and done that — both in the West and the East — there’s probably not an awful lot that they haven’t already seen.”
Aside from what’s become an annual tra-
early January. He totaled four goals and seven assists in his three years with NSC, playing 2,000 minutes or more each year and appearing in 86 of 90 matches. His departure, according to Jacobs, opens the door
for 23-year-old Jack Maher — the team’s first-ever SuperDraft pick — to step into a more prominent role next season.
“For us, the reality is in a salary-cap league, you can’t just keep the same players, keep giving them more money each year and not be able to change your group around,” Jacobs says. “The reality is, having someone like Jack Maher who continues to ascend, I think it was just the right time to be able to take advantage of the opportunity to look at what we acquired Dave for, and for us to get as much money as we were for a player that [we have depth behind], it was just the right time to do that.”
As for Loba, it seemed the talented 24-year-old Ivorian forward fell victim to a numbers game. Acquired for a franchiserecord $6.8 million transfer fee in July 2021, Loba always felt like a square peg in a round hole in Nashville. He appeared in 40 matches over the past two years with just two starts, totaling 681 minutes with two goals and two assists. He played more than 45 minutes during the regular season just once. Nashville loaned Loba to Mazatlan FC of Liga MX in December.
“Ake came into a team that, from our standpoint, had a lot of attacking weapons,” Jacobs says. “Obviously, I think there were challenges. … One thing that’s important for our managers is to make sure there’s competition for places. To have two or three guys that play similar roles to him, it probably was a disadvantage from that standpoint. I still believe Ake is someone who can score a lot of goals. … I certainly think he’s capable of doing that, it’s just a different adaptation from players, and everyone responds differently.”
EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
This season, Nashville SC is unveiling its Man in Black Kit — an all-black ensemble dedicated to Johnny Cash. Created in collaboration with the estate of Johnny Cash, Sandbox Succession and Wasserman Music, the kit was inspired by Nashville SC fan organization the Backline Supporters Collective, known for its tifo featuring Cash. The new kit is “embellished by dark graphite and iron metallic accents, including a jocktag of Johnny Cash’s iconic photo at Folsom Prison” and “Cash’s autograph on the back of the neck.”
dition of conference musical chairs, Nashville has undergone its share of changes throughout the offseason. NSC built up its war chest through a series of moves. It traded five international roster spots for a total of $1.05 million in general allocation money, and it traded defender Dave Romney for another $525,000 in GAM. NSC also added $500,000 in GAM from transfer fees stemming from previous trades of Alistair Johnston and Daniel Rios.
Several players were also brought into the fold, including forwards Nebiyou Perry and Tyler Freeman, midfielder Kenny Amiche, defenders Nick DePuy and Laurence Wyke, and goalkeeper Ben Martino. NSC also sent $250,000 in GAM, plus an additional $50,000 in conditional GAM, to complete the transfer of Jacob Shaffelburg from Toronto FC.
The club also acquired Fafà Picault — a speedy 31-year-old midfielder who scored
18 goals the past two seasons with the Houston Dynamo. Picault has 42 career goals in 168 MLS appearances, including an 11-goal season in 2021 and a 10-goal season in 2018.
“If you ask others around the league, they would tell you he’s one of, if not the, fastest player in the league,” Jacobs states.
“If you ask executives to name the fastest player in MLS, my guess is his name is going to come up an awful lot. To be able to add pace like that and a genuine goal-scoring threat, when you see what he’s done at other places he’s been, it gives a different dimension to our attack.”
Among the roster turnover from 2022 are some familiar faces, including Romney, Ake Loba, Handwalla Bwana, Robert Castellanos, Irakoze Donasiyano, Bryan Meredith, Will Meyer and Eric Miller.
Romney, a vital part of Nashville SC’s backline for the past three seasons, was shipped to the New England Revolution in
a boutique warehouse sale
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IF YOU LIVE IN NASHVILLE, there are several things you probably already know about Hany Mukhtar. You probably know he’s Nashville SC’s best player, that he won Major League Soccer’s 2022 MVP Award, that he salutes the home crowd after goals. You might know that in 2021, The Tennessean named him Sportsperson of the Year, even though he lives in the same state as Derrick Henry. You might know that he’s at least as important to NSC as Henry is to the Titans. Last season, Hany scored or assisted 34 of NSC’s 53 goals.
You probably don’t know much about Hany as a person. Here are two short stories to remedy that.
MANY MIXED-RACE PEOPLE will tell you that to be part of two things is to be whole of neither. But South Berlin is built from such eclectic parts that a young Hany Mukhtar — the son of a Sudanese father, Abubakr, and a Polish-German mother, Ursula — always felt he belonged.
South Berlin is where refugees moved after World War II, where Erasmus kids tend to rent flats. A decommissioned airport looms over the Tempelhof district, where the Mukhtar family still lives. The Nazis built it as the symbol of their empire, but since its decommission, it’s served as a center for Syrian refugees. Now its grounds are a public park where families barbecue, immigrants play pickup soccer, people fly kites and tend community gardens — cultural and personal expression set against a dark backdrop. When Hany left his home for the playground, he’d walk through streets that smelled of spitting kebab and sweet Turkish pastries.
Hany joined Hertha Berlin’s soccer academy when he was 6. His parents drove him an hour across Berlin to training, and when he was older, he caught U-Bahn trains himself. Abubakr, the immigrant, was the parent who pushed Hany to max out his potential.
“Anything you do,” he told his son, “do it right. Whether it’s football or cleaning hotel rooms.”
Growing up in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city, Abubakr wanted to play professional soccer. “There’s no money in Sudanese football,” his father had advised him. “Get good grades.” Abubakr listened. In fact, he earned the best grades and got a scholarship to a university in Berlin, where he completed a Ph.D. There in Berlin, he met Ursula.
As a child, Hany could grasp the contours of his father’s story, the work he’d put in to create opportunities for his family. Hany could sense that his life was easier because of Abubakr. He didn’t want to waste the chance his parents offered him. “I didn’t do anything [special] to grow up in Germany,” he says. “I had the privilege.” The immigrant urge to scrap, that grindset, was something his father passed down. “It’s in my DNA,” Hany says.
Where Abubakr pushed and molded, Ursula soothed. In her gentle, lilting, Polishaccented German, Ursula would say her son’s name in singsong. Hallo Ha-ny! Their apartment was a space full of warmth, a place where the teakettle whizzed and a full breakfast — cooked by Ursula — sat on the table alongside fresh bread from local bakeries. Showing up for family mealtime was nonnegotiable.
During Hany’s first season in Nashville, in 2020, he struggled with injuries. To watch Hany play during his first year with Nashville Soccer Club was to read a great writer’s early novels — a clever sentence or metaphor here, a beautiful paragraph there, but all of it in fits and starts.
He’s talented, people whispered, but inconsistent
During that year, Hany repeatedly called his father. “You made this choice,” Abubakr reminded him. “Work hard. Stay focused. It’ll work out for you.”
Several times in his adult life, Hany has traveled back to Khartoum with Abubakr. He describes the experience as “humbling.” As Hany walked around Khartoum, seeing
how people lived compared with Berlin, his father’s decisions felt more immediate, more tangible. Hany understood what it had taken to make it out, how Abubakr set aside his dreams so that one day, his children might realize their own.
ON MAY 1 OF LAST YEAR, kickoff approached at Geodis Park on a cloudless, windless afternoon — the type of spring day that can make you forgive this city for its boiling summers. A sizzle reel flickered across the scoreboard, and Johnny Cash’s voice, like tires on gravel, rumbled from the speakers.
You can run on for a long time Run on for a long time
Sooner or later, God’ll cut you down Sooner or later, God’ll cut you down
Fireworks shot from the pitch to the sky, fans screamed, and the referees, the away team, and the Boys in Gold walked out of the tunnel. More smoke, more screams. Hany walked out last. He hopped on the balls of his feet, he prayed. On most game days, he looks to his left and locates Ashley Gowder, his fiancée, in the family section. If he doesn’t see her when the teams walk out, he’ll find her during the game.
On this afternoon — the first home game in the team’s new stadium — when Hany looked for Ashley, he saw Abubakr and Ursula, who’d flown in from Berlin. Abubakr wore a gold No. 10 jersey, “Mukhtar” splashed across the back. When he caught Hany’s eye in warmups, he held out a fist and smiled. Growing up in Khartoum, dreaming of a career as a footballer, per-
haps Abubakr could’ve pictured Hany’s life as his own — the No. 10 kit, the MVP award, a city that holds its breath every time you touch the ball.
But Abubakr achieved something just as good. He gave his son the chance to live that life instead.
IN THE FALL, Hany opened his own soccer academy for Nashville’s youth. It wasn’t so long ago that he was one of them, attending camps and learning from members of Hertha Berlin’s first team. He often thinks back to the opportunities he had as a kid, the chances his parents gave him, and he wants Nashville’s kids to have them too. He recruited a local coach, Pete Kipley, to help it grow. Ashley left her job in the music business in August to help build the academy. Ursula flew to Nashville for the Mukhtar Academy’s first camp, where she registered kids at the front table. At Thanksgiving, at around 9 p.m., the academy received a shipment of 500 Puma balls for camps the next morning. When Pete showed up at the facility, he found Hany, Ashley and Ursula pumping them up.
In October, Hany, Ashley and Pete drove to Lipscomb Academy to watch some academy players in a regional quarterfinal against Hutchison, a team from Memphis. Hany delivered the pregame speech to the Lipscomb girls. He’s a reluctant public speaker, but he’ll do it when it feels important.
“I know you worked hard to get here,” he said. “And this is an important game for you. Just go out there and lay it all out.” He pointed to his seat. “I’ll be cheering for you on the side.”
Lipscomb had earned the one seed, and
they were favorites to advance. But the first half passed without a goal. Then the second. The longer Hutchison hung in the game, the more uneasy the crowd grew. The sun had set and the field lights had switched on. The first half of extra time passed, still scoreless. Then the second. Penalties would decide the game. Hany and Ashley had spent all day hanging out with youth players, and Pete was sure they were going to leave. But there Hany sat, gripping the bottom of his seat.
Hutchison shot first. The standard five rounds passed, and the teams remained deadlocked. The sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth rounds passed. At this point, kids who hadn’t volunteered had to take penalties. It was painful, the possibility of being forced to witness the worst moment of a 16-yearold’s life. Relief flooded each girl’s face after she saw her shot find the net. In the 10th round, Hutchison scored their penalty. The Lipscomb player took the long walk from midfield to the spot. She needed to score to extend the match. She approached the ball. She sent it over the bar and into the night.
The Lipscomb girls collapsed in on themselves. Hutchison screamed and ran around the field — the bus ride back to Memphis would be a movie. For the Lipscomb seniors, this was it, the likely end of their careers. Hany turned to Pete and Ashley, embers in his eyes.
“I have to talk to them,” he said.
When Hany was 19 years old, he left Berlin to sign for Benfica, a team in Lisbon, the most storied club in Portugal. Benfica regularly played in the Champions League, and Hany dreamed of playing on the game’s brightest stage. The move didn’t work out, and Hany didn’t play much. He lived in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, but he couldn’t speak the language. He was lonely, away from home for the first time, missing the warmth of Ursula and Abubakr’s flat in South Berlin.
That summer, he played for Germany in the 2015 Under-20 World Cup in New Zealand. In the quarterfinals, Germany held a 1-0 lead against Mali. In the 56th minute, they earned a penalty, and the team chose Hany to take it. The previous summer, he’d scored the game-winning goal in the Under-19 Euro final. But the lost season in Lisbon weighed heavily. He missed. Two minutes later, Mali scored an equalizer and went on to win, eliminating Germany on penalties. By then, Hany had been subbed off.
So he knew what the Lipscomb girls felt. And he chose to share the story of one of his worst moments with them. Less than a minute after the match ended, Hany walked purposefully across the field. As he approached Lipscomb’s bench, the girls lay on the grass, devastated, flooded in an ocean of their own tears. “I know what this feels like, personally,” he told them. “When it came down to me, I missed a penalty in the U-20 championships.”
“But in soccer, there is always another opportunity. There is still another day.”
In the moment, nothing could’ve made what happened OK. But months later, some of those girls still talk about that speech.
About a week later, Hany won the 2022 MLS MVP award, for which he gave an acceptance speech. When he stepped down from the lectern, he found Ashley.
“That was nothing,” he said of the speech, “compared to the Lipscomb Academy girls.”
“BUT IN SOCCER, THERE IS ALWAYS ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY. THERE IS STILL ANOTHER DAY.”PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO
ART [PICTURE-PERFECT COLLABORATION]
In 2021, model and singer-songwriter Karen Elson asked commercial photographer Emily Dorio to shoot the images for her then-upcoming album Green. Dorio quickly said yes, feeling honored to shoot a model who has been the subject of award-winning photographers, including Annie Leibovitz. Elson and Dorio are friends, and that friendship led to a joyful collaboration. “So much of our [other] work is for other people, and there is always a motive, a point of view,” Dorio says. “This just felt like playing, and you don’t get that many opportunities to play with your friends as an adult. It felt like we were 18-year-olds, but we had technical skills and support.” The result of their creative process together is on exhibit this weekend only (don’t procrastinate!) at the Parthenon. See You Me is named for the
way in which friends see each other, and inspire us to see ourselves the way those who love us see us. The exhibition features large-format photographs, Super 8 footage and mixed-media sculptures, all with Alan LeQuire’s golden Athena sculpture looking on. It seems appropriate, given that Dorio describes Elson as looking like a “goddess” in some of the works. Dorio is a well-known and acclaimed commercial photographer, but this is her first exhibition. (Read Laura Hutson Hunter’s full review of the exhibit in our art section.) Don’t miss it. Feb. 24-26 at the Parthenon in Centennial Park, 2500 West End Ave. MARGARET LITTMAN
If there’s one thing Nashville loves, it’s a good story. This weekend you can check out one of the city’s newest storytelling events, as Third Coast Comedy Club hosts Spillit Slam: Rough and Rocky Travel. Billed as “the friendliest competition in town,”
Spillit Slams invite participants to share unscripted true stories in front of a live audience. There are no props or notes allowed. Participants simply drop their names in the bucket, and if selected, each will have seven minutes to offer a tale of true personal narrative — in this case, focused on things that got “rough and rocky.” After 10 stories, the audience will judge and choose a winner. This weekend’s event marks the Nashville debut for Spillit, which is based in Memphis, but local audiences will certainly recognize Spillit’s creative director Josh Campbell from past storytelling events and groups, such as The Nerve. 7 p.m. at Third Coast Comedy Club, 1310 Clinton St. AMY STUMPFL
FILM [NIGHT COMES FOR US]
INTERNATIONAL LENS: AFTERSUN
I’ve always been interested in the way I distill childhood memories into single images, which are really blurs, colors and feelings. Often what happens after an event
A BETTER
THEIR CHILDREN: JULIUS ROSENWALD, BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, AND THE 4,978 SCHOOLS THAT CHANGED AMERICA
EXHIBITION RUNS FEB. 24-MAY 31; AUTHOR WILL SPEAK AT 2 P.M. FEB. 25 Tennessee State Museum
magnifies the significance of the memory, and we bend it to help us understand what came later. In writer-director Charlotte Wells’ tender, shattering debut feature Aftersun, she remembers a vacation she took with her father. Sophie, the name of the 11-year-old main character who is loosely based on Wells as a girl, lounges poolside, gets into a bit of innocuous mischief and trains her father’s movie camera on him for short, funny interviews. Calum (Paul Mescal, who is up for the Best Actor Oscar for his role) dotes on Sophie as his own emotional threads fray. The
create a national park in Rosenwald’s honor, and will have a conversation with Frank and Charles Brinkley. The Brinkleys are educators and former students of Tennessee’s Cairo Rosenwald School. Feiler’s exhibit is one of two temporary exhibits about Rosenwald Schools at the Tennessee State Museum this year. The second, Building a Bright Future: Black Communities and Rosenwald Schools in Tennessee, opens in June and is created in partnership with Fisk University’s John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, home of the Julius Rosenwald Fund archive. Exhibition runs Feb. 24-May 31; Feiler will speak at 2 p.m. Feb. 25 at the Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L. Parks Blvd. MARGARET LITTMAN
film is meditative and relaxed — but also suspenseful, with moments of creeping terror. It’s the terror of reckoning, or putting the pieces together in an attempt to understand the father Sophie knew and the man she could not know. All the while, the brushstrokes are delicate, precise. Aftersun is a marvel. The film, part of the International Lens season at Vanderbilt, will be introduced by the whip-smart professor Iggy Cortez, who always provides compelling context to screenings. 7:30 p.m. at Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Cinema, 2301 Vanderbilt Place ERICA CICCARONE MUSIC
[MINNESOTA NICE]
acumen of the blues — not to mention the lyrical candor and flair of soul through Tedeschi’s anthemic lead vocals. They’ve released multiple studio and live albums over their tenure, among them the acclaimed 2011 debut LP Revelator, which earned them a Grammy for Best Blues Album, and 2021’s Layla Revisited (Live at LOCKN’), which paired the band with Phish’s Trey Anastasio and is a one-time live recording of the Derek and the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Their most recent project is the comprehensive release I Am the Moon, a quadruple album featuring 24 original songs that was originally released in four parts over the past year and as a box containing all four parts on Sept. 9. They will no doubt be performing selections from all four parts and other songs throughout their sets at this week’s three-night stand at the Ryman. 8 p.m. Feb. 23-25 at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. RON WYNN
2013, marking the 10th anniversary of the day he put in two weeks’ notice at his day job to pursue music full time. Since then he’s toured across the globe and won scads of awards, including six trophies from the International Bluegrass Music Association and the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album for his 2019 LP Home. The Michigan-born musician has become one of the most recognizable figures in contemporary bluegrass as a standout singer-songwriter and a mind-bending flatpicking guitarist who’s playing a key role in evolving the tradition for new generations. Like ’grass legends of old, he always plays with a fantastic band and sings thoughtfully of trying to find his place in a changing world. But he and his cohorts work outside influences — especially from the rock world — into their sound in ways that feel exceptionally natural. This weekend, he’s got a triumphant run of three sold-out shows here in his adopted hometown: Friday and Saturday he’s at Bridgestone Arena, and Sunday he’ll be at the Ryman. Feb. 24-25 at Bridgestone Arena, 501 Broadway; Feb. 26 at the Ryman, 1601 Rep. John Lewis Way N. STEPHEN TRAGESER
HISTORY
[HOUSES OF LEARNING]
A BETTER LIFE FOR THEIR CHILDREN: JULIUS ROSENWALD, BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, AND THE 4,978 SCHOOLS THAT CHANGED AMERICA
MUSIC
[KEEP ON TRUCKIN’]
Minnesota’s R&B lineage boasts heroes like The Time, Vanity 6, Lipps Inc. and Prince. But the newest addition is Duluth’s Derecho, a foursome playing strippeddown heavy funk and featuring Low’s Alan Sparhawk on guitar. Joining the North Star rockers are two upcoming luminaries of the junk-store glam revival. Austin’s Lord Friday the 13th calls to mind the heavier, trashier side of ’70s rock, devoid of the polished, nuanced sounds and leaning into the meatier filth. Meanwhile the gorgeously nasty tones of Gyasi’s Pronounced Jah-See LP have an obvious nod to Marc Bolan and Twink. If the album’s cover looks familiar to locals, it’s because it’s the front of a different Nashville rock haunt — Exit/In. 8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. P.J. KINZER MUSIC
The Tedeschi Trucks Band represents both the ultimate blues-rock supergroup and one of the most successful musical and personal teams in recent memory. What began as two separate bands has blossomed into a marvelous ensemble that features dynamic vocalist Susan Tedeschi and longtime premier guitarist Derek Trucks. The merger of the couple’s two distinct bands occurred in 2010, and over the past 13 years they’ve been among the most consistently enjoyable and musically inventive and intriguing groups whose sound and approach reflect both the showmanship of rock and the storytelling
[PULLING A FEW]
BILLY STRINGS
Billy Strings recently shared to his Instagram stories a post from his personal Facebook page dated Feb. 10,
In the early part of the 20th century, entrepreneur and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald read Booker T. Washington’s book Up From Slavery, and with it, changed his life and the country. Over the course of his life, Rosenwald gave away more than $70 million, much of it to a program to build Black schools and teacher housing throughout the South. This history is documented in Andrew Feiler’s book, A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America. Feiler, a native Georgian, devoted many years (and covered 25,000 miles) to photograph 105 of these Rosenwald Schools. Beginning Feb. 24, an exhibition that showcases images and stories from the book will run at the Tennessee State Museum. On Feb. 25, Feiler will talk about his experiences documenting these schools, as well as the efforts to
Kayla Graninger’s project Elke caught my ear with the 2021 full-length No Pain for Us Here. Featuring spare arrangements of lush textures that showcase Graninger’s distinctive deep voice, the songs reflect on the isolation of COVID quarantine. As lockdown fades further into the rearview, tons of pre-pandemic issues have come roaring back, along with lots of new ones. Accordingly, Elke’s 2022 EP My “Human Experience” is more intense, its seeking of hope in the darkness more urgent. Like the LP, it was produced by Graninger’s co-conspirator and life partner Zac Farro, who has his own project Halfnoise and also drums for Paramore. The tracks run the gamut from the punky opener “Call of the Void” through the gentle bossa nova “Zubie Zubie” to the dreamy-but-anxious “Milk Dipped Cloud,” in which Graninger sings, “I peel into pieces / So if one dies on the moon / It’ll just hurt a little.” Before Elke opens for Paramore on a string of dates across South America, they’ll warm up Friday at Third Man with an assist from Romanian-born, NYC-residing songsmith Vlad Holiday. 8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. STEPHEN TRAGESER
Twenty albums into a career that began in the 1970s, The Special Consensus keeps the flame of bluegrass alive. In a genre that’s about 80 years old, the band — led by Chicago banjoist Greg Cahill, who’s the only original member of The Special Consensus — fits into the great scheme of bluegrass as a style in search of material. Cahill is a fine player who partly derived his style from that of the late banjo innovator J.D. Crowe, which means Cahill has a flair for melody. I listen to albums like The Special Consensus’ 2020 Chicago Barn Dance as examples of modernist traditionalism that work best when the material is appropriate. The weightless, out-of-time approach that many disciples of Bill Monroe favor works pretty well on the Chicago Barn Dance cover of Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago,” while the band’s take on John Fogerty’s “Lookin’ out My Back Door” doesn’t make me rethink my complex relationship to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s work. Chicago Barn Dance peaks with “East Chicago Blues,”
6 NIGHTS A WEEK! *Closed Tuesdays THU 2.23 Pianokaraoke 9-12 w/Bella Dorian FRI 2.24 HAPPYHOURPIANOKARAOKE 6-9 w/Alyssa Lazar Pianokaraoke 9-1 w/Kira Small SAT 2.25 ALIMURPHY 7-9 Pianokaraoke 9-1 w/Alan Pelno SUN 2.26 *INDUSTRYNIGHT* 6-1 Pianokaraoke 8-12 w/Alyssa Lazar MON 2.27 SHOWTUNES@SID’S 7-9 Pianokaraoke 9-12 w/Krazy Kyle WED 3.1 HAGSREELTOREELHAPPYHOUR 6-8 BURLESK 8-9 ($7) Pianokaraoke 9-12 w/Paul Loren *AVAILABLEFORPRIVATEPARTIES!* 2/23 2/24 2/25 9pm The Dead Speak, Overlook & The Cancellations 2/26 4pm Springwater Sit In Jam 4pm Mac Lloyd & Deadhorse Rider FREE 3/1 5pm Writers @ the Water Open Mic 9pm Ape Vermin & Eye on the Sky Open Wed - Sun 11am - Late Night
DOWNTOWN
Saturday, February 25
SONGWRITER SESSION
Jerry Salley
NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, February 26
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Lisa Horngren
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Thursday, March 2
PANEL DISCUSSION AND LISTENING SESSION
The Bob Pinson Recorded Sound Collection at Age Fifty
with Nathan D. Gibson, Bill Ivey, and Tony Russell
3:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 4
SONGWRITER SESSION
Kelly Archer
NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, March 5
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Rob Ickes and
Trey Hensley
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 11
SONGWRITER SESSION
Miko Marks
NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 11
SONGWRITER SESSION
Sunny Sweeney
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, March 12
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
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in the narrative of violence,” she said. Although the movie is set in Brooklyn, it’s far from your standard, gritty ’hood flick. It’s simply a coming-of-age story in which a teenage girl (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) discovers herself, while her strict mother (Kim Weston-Moran) and free-spirited aunt (Mizan Kirby) butt heads on how she should do it. While it didn’t get much of a theatrical rollout upon release, a new 4K DCP restoration has been making the rounds at theaters and rep houses around the country. Before the Saturday screening, there will be a reception/mixer with an introduction from Belcourt staffer Sheronica Hayes (who programmed the Belcourt’s ongoing Beloved series). Noon Saturday and 5:30 p.m. Sunday at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY
BOOKS [TO THE LIGHTHOUSE]
RELEASE PARTY FOR A LIGHTHOUSE: THE IMMIGRANTS WRITE
written for the album by noted tunesmith and former Special Consensus member Robbie Fulks. In fact, Fulks wrote it as a narration by Bill Monroe himself, and the song does a great job of describing the country-meets-big-city theme that underlies country and bluegrass. 9 p.m. at The Station Inn, 402 12th Ave. S. EDD HURT MUSIC
MUSIC
[LATIN
Jelly Roll Morton often talked about “the Latin Tinge,” an essential rhythmic ingredient he felt was vital to both New Orleans and jazz. One of the contemporary masters of Latin jazz is the outstanding pianist and bandleader Martin Bejerano. His fierce, harmonically and rhythmically varied, and explosive solos and accompaniment have been a major part of several top Latin jazz combos, and have also featured in sessions and projects with a host of bop and mainstream jazz stars including Roy Haynes, Dave Holland, Christian McBride, Pat Metheny, Ron Carter and Russell Malone. His work has been featured on more than two dozen albums, and he’s been nominated for Latin Grammys multiple times. He’s also a highly respected educator and currently heads the jazz piano department at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Local fans will get two chances to see him this weekend — something not to be missed — as Rudy’s goes Latin. He’ll be joined by equally great musicians, among them famed Cuban drummer Ludwig Afonso and Grammynominated New York City bassist Edward Perez. A dynamite trio without a doubt. 8 p.m. Feb. 24-25 at Rudy’s Jazz Room, 809 Gleaves St. RON WYNN
[AMBASSADORS OF GOOD MUSIC AND GOODWILL] DAKHABRAKHA
Blending traditional folk melodies with
elements of indie rock, pop, hip-hop and more, the Ukrainian ensemble DakhaBrakha has long seen itself as an ambassador of culture and good will. But with last year’s horrific Russian invasion of Ukraine, the group’s familiar calls for freedom and solidarity (often punctuated with passionate cries of “No War!” and “Stop Putin!”) have become all the more urgent. Just a month into the war, the band — widely known for its rich harmonies, haunting rhythms and unique sense of showmanship — managed to escape its home city of Kyiv and immediately began touring in an effort to raise money and build international support. You can check out DakhaBrakha (the name means “give/take” in old Ukrainian) this weekend for one night only, as these dedicated musicians bring their unique sound and incredible story to OZ Arts. 8 p.m. at OZ Arts, 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle AMY STUMPFL
[GET HAPPY]
MUSIC
Whatever else you want to say about the 1970s, it was a decade when rock merged with experimental music to produce pop that was actually popular. On down the line in the ’90s and Aughts, the same aesthetic applied to records by bands like Jellyfish and The Shins, minus the mass popularity that, say, 10cc enjoyed in their heyday. Saturday at The 5 Spot, you can hear three bands that juggle power pop, prog, metal and, for all I know, Hall & Oates-style R&B to create interesting combinations. Hailing from Baltimore, Super City reminds me of 10cc — they perfected an eclectic nonstyle on 2018’s Sanctuary, which features the gorgeous track “Artificial Sin.” If Super City sometimes sounds like Jellyfish filtered through Led Zeppelin and progschlock masters Ambrosia, Nashville’s Smart Objects come across as winningly twee on 2022’s Smart Objects EP. Meanwhile, fellow Nashvillians Rock
Eupora sport the kind of content that separates formalists like 10cc and Jellyfish from Fountains of Wayne or The New Pornographers. The middling sound on Rock Eupora’s 2022 Pick at the Scab doesn’t detract from Clayton Waller’s songs about the impossibility of happiness and the pressures of pandemic life. As a rule, only committed formalists worry unduly about things like perfect production and calibrated performances in the context of rock ’n’ roll, and Waller & Co. have something to say and the superbly judged band dynamics to put it across. 9 p.m. at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. EDD HURT
MUSIC
[THE PICK OF DESTINY]
DESTINY BOND, SKINMAN & LOCAL 58
Something is happening in Colorado right now that is truly special, given that the quality of the region’s current metal/punk underground is higher than Nikola Jokić in the Rocky Mountains. Denver’s Destiny Bond is a heavyweight of ultra-fast hardcore, hearkening to the noisiest moments of American Nightmare’s Background Music or U.K. thrashcore architects Ripcord. Their hyper-distorted tourmates are Mississippi’s Skinman, a manic warhead of a band with a sold-out 2022 demo tape that shreds through seven songs in under nine minutes. Show up on time, because Murfreesboro three-piece Local 58 opens the gig. Their 2020 EP is Tennessee’s best take on early Japanese noise punk. 7 p.m. at Drkmttr, 1111 Dickerson Pike P.J. KINZER
[ALMA, RAINBOW AND RUBY]
FILM
Not too long ago, filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira told me why her 1994 feature debut Alma’s Rainbow isn’t as well-known as other debuts by Black filmmakers of that era. “There was not real interest in stories that were: 1. outside of that genre, and 2. that focused on the lives of Black women that perhaps were not set so deeply
In 2016, The Porch Writers’ Collective launched a workshop for immigrants and refugees. Free of cost, the workshop — which launched in the midst of Trump’s vitriolic presidential campaign — required no ID or documentation to enroll, and the organization stressed that fluency in English was not necessary. Six years later, the workshop is still going strong, teaching writers “how to transform life experiences into memoir, how to write fiction from the imagination, how to find a poem in a moment and make it grow, and how to play with language (and make languages play with each other).” Participants and the community will celebrate the newest fruits of the class’s labors with the release of A Lighthouse: The Immigrants Write Anthology. The celebration will be held at the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition in Antioch, and all are welcome. Food and beverages will be provided, but the real nourishment will come from readings by the authors. Past anthologies have featured compelling short-fiction stories, poetry that distills both painful and joyful moments, and memoiristic essays. A Lighthouse can serve as an introduction to others who might
with former Musicians Institute and Austin Guitar School instructor
MARK BISH
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SATURDAY, MARCH 4
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6:30PM
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6:30PM
DANA SCHWARTZ
TUESDAY, MARCH 7
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8
with SHARON CAMERON at PARNASSUS Immortality: A Love Story
6:30PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 16
ANDREW MCFADYEN-KETCHUM at PARNASSUS Fight or Flight
6:30PM
MONDAY, MARCH 20
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with ANN PATCHETT at PARNASSUS Poverty, by America
6:30PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 21
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enjoy the class, as well as a cross-culture lesson in understanding. The event is always a good time. RSVPs are appreciated at carolyn@porchtn.org. 6 p.m. at the Tennessee Immigrants and Refugee Rights Coalition, 3310 Ezell Road ERICA CICCARONE
FILM
[TAKE A WALK AROUND TIMES SQUARE] TIMES SQUARE
pilgrimage back to Black love.” Hayes will lead a Black Queer Creatives Q&A with DJ Afrosheen, poet Melissa Gordon and photographer Desirée Duncan after the screening. 3:30 and 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. ERICA CICCARONE
Renowned blues-rock guitarist Eric Gales began his career in the early ’90s as a hot-handed prodigy out of Memphis, where he quickly rose to the A-list of Stratocaster-wielding virtuosos. More than three decades and countless recordings later, Gales continues to push the boundaries of blues music, blurring the traditional framework with progressive rock and soul. His list of collaborators includes fellow luminaries such as Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Zakk Wylde and Joe Bonamassa, with the latter describing Gales in 2019 as “the best guitarist in bluesrock that the world has right now. Epic in every way!” Gales’ most recent album The
HANNAH CRON
Girl, Interrupted meets the New York punk scene in director Allan Moyle’s 1980 drama Times Square. The cult classic follows two teenage girls — Pamela Pearl (Trini Alvarado), the daughter of a wealthy politician, and Nicky Marotta (Robin Johnson), a street urchin with rock ’n’ roll aspirations — as they rebel against the man and the system after escaping a mental hospital. The legendary Tim Curry rounds out the main cast as the Howard Stern-esque shock jock Johnny Laguardia. Times Square captures the gritty reality of its namesake location and the tumultuous angst of female adolescence with stunning accuracy. To top it all off, the film has one of the greatest soundtracks ever made, with punk anthems from Suzi Quatro, Patti Smith, the Ramones and Talking Heads, not to mention “Damn Dog” from Pam and Nicky’s fictional Sleeze Sisters. Times Square is first and foremost a movie that portrays the intricate beauty of female relationships and the rebellious spirit that burns within every girl. The original riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna has named it as one of her favorite films, and if that’s not enough to convince you to break out your leather jacket and head to the theater, I don’t know what is. 3 and 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave.
FILM [METANONFICTON] BELOVED: THE WATERMELON WOMAN
An entry in the Belcourt’s Beloved: A Spotlight Series on Black Female Directors, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman is a charming, smart entry into New Queer Cinema. Using a mishmash of documentary styles, the 1996 film blurs the line between documentary and drama. Cheryl Dunye stars as a queer video store clerk (also named Cheryl Dunye) who is researching a 1930s actress credited only as “The Watermelon Woman” in films. She addresses the viewer throughout the film, and by the end, she feels like an old friend. Belcourt programmer Sheronica Hayes tells the Scene that “it’s such an invitation to think about the earliest appearances of Black women in film.” She also brings up her personal connection as a Black queer woman. Dunye is “a queer person on this search for this anonymous Black woman,” says Hayes, “but her lover in the movie is the white woman. … I think a lot of queer Black experience, especially in the South, is feeling really disconnected from your Blackness, because a lot of the first places that people find comfort in as a queer Black person are white environments. … Especially like in your early 20s or mid-20s, there’s always kind of this pilgrimage back to Blackness. … I’m really going into The Watermelon Woman thinking about that
Crown, released last year, reflects on his journey to sobriety while dealing with the effects of discrimination in America. On the Hendrixian ballad “Too Close to the Fire,” Gales sings, “I’ve got the devil at my door / Like Mississippi in ’64,” before launching into a blistering solo that highlights his emotive guitar work. At this stage in his career, Gales is arguably producing his most poignant and celebratory work to date.
8 p.m. at 3rd and Lindsley, 818 Third Ave. S.
JASON VERSTEGEN
BOOKS
[CUP OF AMBITION]
AMY PORTERFIELD
Local author Amy Porterfield might have discovered the key to life. Or at least work. Her new book is titled Two Weeks Notice: Find the Courage to Quit Your Job, Make More Money, Work Where You Want, and Change the World. How’s that for a call to action? A 9-to-5 escapee who built an eight-figure marketing business, Porterfield has helped thousands of entrepreneurs trade burnout for freedom. Join her in conversation at Parnassus as she discusses breaking free from the corporate rat race to find professional autonomy, independence and success. You can’t afford not to go. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike TOBY LOWENFELS
Many consider Nolensville Pike a nearly infallible source of global culinary delights, and it’s hard to disagree. If you want Middle Eastern or Mexican, Nolensville Pike has you covered; if you’re craving Indian, Thai, Vietnamese or Persian, then you’ll be in good hands.
But while the South Nashville thoroughfare is dotted with truly phenomenal restaurants, I can’t help but spot the gaps in culinary possibilities along the legendary strip lined with taco trucks and wholesale furniture stores. As wonderfully diverse as Nashville’s population is, there are cuisines that remain underrepresented in the Metro area. From the Philippines and Malaysia to
Ghana, Spain and Brazil, Nashville has become a melting pot — and to be sure, many of those nationalities are represented in the city’s food scene. But the never-satisfied eater and food writer in me can’t help but wonder why there aren’t more.
Central America has pretty solid representation in Nashville, but the options outside of pupusas and traditional breakfasts are precious few, and a true Nicaraguan, Costa Rican or Panamanian restaurant has yet to reveal itself. Enter Laura’s Cocina, a newish spot located in a quaint, low-key Nolensville Pike space, dishing out an array of homemade and hearty Honduran, Salvadoran and Mexican staples. The building has seen a few other businesses come and go over the years, most notably a Dominican cafe, and before that a tortilleria. But I have my fingers crossed that Laura’s Cocina is here to stay — while it isn’t the first Honduran spot to hit the area, it is one of the best.
I haven’t had a chance to meet the famous Laura in the few times I’ve gone, but that doesn’t diminish the deliciousness of the food on offer. While Mexican and Salvadoran options are on the menu, Laura’s Cocina appears
to specialize in Honduran food, a woefully underrated cuisine that bypasses the flashiness and burning spice of its neighbors to the north, leaning instead on elevated street food with an emphasis on balanced, earthy flavors.
A prime example is the baleada, a distant
cousin of the quesadilla with some important differences. On the outside the tortilla is thick, chewy and semi-sweet, closer to naan or Armenian lavash than the thinner, flakier varieties popular in Mexican cuisine. (It’s also house-made — listen for the per-
cussive slap-slap sounds of the tortilla being made in the kitchen.) Inside is a combination of scrambled eggs, beans, umami Honduran crema and crumbly queso duro. If you opt for a baleada “con todo,” you’ll also get a hearty helping of carne asada. It’s stripped down significantly compared to the betterknown quesadilla, but that’s part of what makes it so good. At one time, baleadas were considered peasant food, a simple dish that earned its stripes for its ability to satisfy with readily available ingredients. In a culinary landscape that’s increasingly indulgent and overly complicated, it’s refreshing to see something so spartan, laid-back and economical still manage to delight.
Then comes time for the main dish, and the complex and wide-ranging menu might make your head swim: chiles rellenos and burritos; barbacoa de res, salty-savory beef ribs, or a heaping plate of glistening carnitas; seafood fajitas, and ceviche; or pan con pollo, a Salvadoran sandwich of chicken, eggs, vegetables and coleslaw, drenched in spicy tomato and achiote sauce. There’s a lot to choose from, but the crown jewel, in my mind, is the pollo con tajadas, a dish that has to be seen to be believed.
If the chicken were dyed red and the plantains replaced with home fries or beeftallow tots, then pollo con tajadas wouldn’t be out of place at a trendy downtown hot
chicken joint. It’s a timeless dish in a way — fried chicken on a bed of fried green plantains and Honduran coleslaw (sweeter and slightly spicy), drizzled with a tangy ketchup-mayo sauce and served with pick led onions. You can find pollo con tajadas at a few other restaurants in the area, but the Laura’s Cocina version is the best I’ve had. The sauce is spicy and delectable, the plan tains are cooked evenly with no sogginess, and the quality of the chicken itself is very good — a factor that can sometimes take a back seat. I may be inviting controversy by saying this, but I prefer white meat, and I truly appreciate that the pollo con tajadas here features both dark and white meat, as opposed to the traditional approach (a giant thigh and leg piece that’s as big as the plate). This dish is just outstanding, and with a fair price point, it’s a must-get on the menu.
Laura’s Cocina is the latest to enter my ro tation of Nolensville Pike spots, and I don’t see it dropping out anytime soon. The food here is lovingly prepared, the quality of the ingredients is readily apparent, and there’s a lot of bang for your buck. Restaurants like Laura’s Cocina are the best of what Nolens ville Pike has to offer, and my hopes are high that it’s a harbinger of even more diverse, dynamic and underrated cuisines finding representation in Nashville.
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It’s a tragedy with a title: The Waverly Train Disaster. In its wake, the United States remade its emergency response and zeroed in on rail safety, but the story of heroes, martyrs and human triumph over catastrophe in the Middle Tennessee town of 4,000 had been left behind. In Walk Through Fire, Dr. Yasmine S. Ali sets the record straight.
7:30–9:00
Imagine if you were a child displaced from your home country, suddenly separated from your parents, and grappling to fit in among strangers.
Screening with panel discussion to follow with Dr. Mariano Sana, Dr. Karla McKanders, Dr. Fernando Segovia, Mohamed Hassen, and moderated by Dr. Jose Gonzalez.
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Even readers familiar with the facts about the inferno from 45 years ago will find a gripping drama in Ali’s recounting of the tense hours that led to the explosion of a propane-filled tank car in her hometown, as well as the harrowing hours afterward in a “two-room ER.” Relying on the memories of survivors as well as scrupulous research, Ali describes the first response to a latenight pileup of 23 L&N Railroad cars on Feb. 22, 1978, and the town’s gradual relaxing of its guard over two tank cars in the wreck as cleanup crews moved in. The horror began at 2:55 p.m. on Feb. 24, when thousands of gallons of flammable gas exploded.
The accident killed 16 and maimed dozens of others while incinerating a section of the town. It was national news, and set off intense investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration. On its heels, President Jimmy Carter created the Federal Emergency Management Agency by executive order.
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In the author’s narrative voice, which is simultaneously empathetic and authoritative, the facts are the backdrop to a story about grace in a town described on its website as “a very neighborly community.” Ali, a cardiologist and medical writer, has a gift for translating her scientific knowledge into clear prose, complemented by her deep knowledge of the place where she grew up and her affection for its people.
Ali is especially close to two of the heroes of the medical response to the explosion. Her parents, surgeon Dr. Subhi Ali and gastroenterologist Dr. Maysoon Ali, met at District of Columbia General Hospital in Washington, D.C., and found their way to Waverly by answering a classified ad in The New England Journal of Medicine. Luckily for the townspeople, the surgeon they recruited had done years
of training in a metropolis, where he treated not just gunshot and stab wounds, but burn injuries. Walk Through Fire is dedicated to Subhi and Maysoon Ali.
Before her husband was called in and took charge, Dr. Maysoon, as she was known in town, witnessed the first arrival of the blast’s victims. “She could not tell who any of them were, such was the extent of their burns. There was smoke rising from their skin, with the epidermis visibly sloughing off.” The reader is prepared for this horror by a pocket description of a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion, or BLEVE. Waverly Police Sgt. Elton “Toad” Smith had just been to a seminar where he learned about BLEVEs and how “just one gallon of liquid propane can vaporize, all at once, to more than 250 gallons of flammable gas.” The damaged tank car at the site of the derailment had him thinking about such details; roughly 15 minutes later he was engulfed in flame.
We meet Smith first in a prologue titled “Ball of Fire,” as he finds himself “waist deep in an all-consuming flame that formed a wall for as far as he could see.” His dauntless recovery is one of the tales of heroism Ali tracks, and she credits him with inspiring her project.
The book provides impressive quick histories of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, the Civil War-era use of the local rails, the state of rail travel in the 1970s, the state of America’s emergency response systems, and the founding of what was known then as the Nautilus Memorial Hospital in Waverly.
But the beating heart of Walk Through Fire is the people of the community. As her story gathers, from the night of the derailment to the explosion and its aftermath, Ali introduces key players who responded to the crisis: a police chief, a young officer named Buddy Frazier who is now the town’s mayor, volunteer firemen, a funeral director, nurses. The story goes deep because its subjects clearly trusted Ali with their memories.
The late country music star Loretta Lynn lived on a ranch nearby and wrote a blurb for Walk Through Fire, saying the train disaster “was one of the worst events ever to happen to the people of Waverly.” A reader might think that calling the explosion just “one of the worst” was overly cautious, but in fact, Waverly endured a similarly devastating disaster in August 2021, when a flash flood destroyed 272 homes in the county and took 20 lives. In a coda to Walk Through Fire, Ali finds solace in the thought that, just as the train wreck changed disaster response and rail safety in the country, the Waverly flood may galvanize a response to climate change, drainage and land-use issues.
For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.
A collaborative photo exhibition from Karen Elson and Emily Dorio is sexy and powerful
BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
Karen Elson might be the most photographed person in Nashville. Her modeling career began when Steven Meisel photographed her for the cover of Vogue Italia when she was 18. Since then, she’s been on more than 100 magazine covers — 48 of them for Vogue — and in ad campaigns for Gucci, Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. Name a living major fashion photographer and she’s likely worked with them. But when the
pandemic struck, she wasn’t able to travel to meet photographers in New York or London. That’s how her collaboration with photographer Emily Dorio began.
“I’ve known Emily for ages,” Elson tells the Scene. “But during the pandemic, it became sort of a necessity that I had a great photographer here in Nashville who I could work with, because it was difficult to travel to, say, New York, when New York was really in lockdown, and I had shoots I had to do, or contractual obligations. I thought, How am I going to do this safely? I can’t fly to New York, there has to be somebody here. A few friends suggested Emily, and we worked together, and we connected.”
“I feel like somehow I’ve won the lottery to have Karen as a playmate,” Dorio says. “It’s not often in this stage of life that you have someone to create with.”
In the three years since that first shoot, Elson and Dorio have continued to work together — first for Elson’s modeling work, and more recently for Elson’s third album, 2022’s Green
“Emily did all the artwork for that,” Elson says. “That was an opportunity when we didn’t have somebody breathing down our necks with a directive. We were able to get wild and creative, and it was a real collaboration and a way for us to stretch our own visionary muscles.
“I’ve been in fashion for such a long time,” Elson continues, “and with music, the challenge for me is to have the visuals match the level of what I do in fashion, while also being in its own world. So with Emily, it was the perfect creative collaboration. She’s got a vision, she’s an amazing photographer, and we were both able to come up with an idea — come up with many ideas — and just really flesh them out until the end, without having the sort of shadow that you have on most shoots, which is people questioning whether something is too dark or too edgy. We did it for ourselves, and that in turn led to many other shoots that were just for ourselves.”
The works in See You Me include large-format photographic prints, digital projections, multimedia sculptures and Super 8 film shot by another collaborator, Nashville-based cinematographer Mika Matinazad. Themes of muse and goddess, covens and communes repeat throughout the work.
“When the Parthenon was generous enough to offer us the space, it just felt like the perfect altar to lay it all out on,” says Dorio. “It feels like where the goddess lives.”
Elson agrees that the Parthenon is a wonderful setting for the exhibit, and points to the abundance of creative energy in Nashville.
“This town is exploding with creativity,” she says. “Obviously, Nashville is known for its great music, and we know that, but there’s so much more. There’s a thriving creative community in so many mediums, from how many brilliant writers live here to how many brilliant artists live
here. Even the sculpture of Athena in the Parthenon, which was by a local artist, [Alan] LeQuire. There’s just so much happening here right now.”
As a model, Elson is surely used to being not only the subject, but also the vessel for a photographer’s vision. Dorio’s photographs, however, center Elson — not just her face and body, but her vision. In one standout photo, Elson’s eye is spotlighted in sharp contrast to the otherwise moody, deep-green haze. Her face spirals around her head like a fractal, with the lit eye working like a constant reminder of her participation in the work. Here she is clearly seeing, not just being seen.
“This is my first exhibition,” Dorio says. “I’ve had work in other shows, but this is the first time I’m presenting an entire body of work. What an honor to do it with Karen.” EMAIL
And The Bear, Eli Howard (7pm)
GETDOWN for Matt Wiltshire for Mayor Campaign Fundraiser (7pm)
Tommy Prine (7pm)
Meg McRee w/ Harper O'Neill (9pm)
an evening with yo la tengo
Nonpoint w/ Blacktop Mojo and Sumo Cyco
The Breeders w/ Bully
King Tuff w/ Tchotchke
rubblebucket w/ lunar vacation
We Three w/ Casey Baer
CHIIILD w/ Isaia Huron
NOISE
Patzy, Turtledoves (7pm)
Karma Vulture, Omenbringer, Mother Maiden Crone (9pm)
Scott T. Smith (7pm)
Hew & The Gees, Nate Rose, Aaron Dews (7pm)
Katie Toupin, Austin Plaine (7pm)
Yam Haus w/ Teddy At Night (7pm)
Ben Chapman w/ Special Guests: Meg McRee, Katie
Pruitt, Brent Cobb & Channing Wilson (6:30pm)
Mikaela Davis w/ Zephaniah O’Hora (9pm)
Tommy Prine (7pm)
The Swell Fellas, Annie Dukes, The Dirty Janes (9pm)
GEORGE
JACKOPIERCE 35TH ANNIVERSARY
FREESHOW SOLDOUT FREESHOW
PAT MCLAUGHLIN BAND
FEATURING
The Scene ’s music writers recommend recent releases from Paramore, Mya Byrne, Brian
Brown
and more
BY HANNAH CRON, P.J. KINZER, DARYL SANDERS, AMY STUMPFL AND STEPHEN TRAGESERWhile a massive spring and summer concert season gets ready to unfold, musicians across Nashville and nearby continue their parade of exciting releases. The Scene’s music writers have seven new recommendations for you, one of which is technically 40 years old — more on that later. Add ’em to your streaming queue, pick them up from your favorite local record store or put them on your wish list for Bandcamp Friday. This installment of our column comes a little earlier than usual: The promotion in which Bandcamp waives its cut of sales for a 24-hour period returns March 3, and many of our picks are available to buy directly from the artists there.
Kill Rock Stars, isn’t out till April 28. But the record has a trio of advance singles that showcase her songwriting skill as well as the record’s understated production by fellow country-rock-Americana songsmith Aaron Lee Tasjan. “Autumn Sun” appeared first, a power-poppy reflection on changing seasons of life. “It Don’t Fade” came next, pulling from old-school folk and country in a way Guy Clark or John Prine might have as Byrne sings about perseverance; the music video appeared in rotation on CMT, featuring what Byrne & Co. believe to be the first nationally televised kiss between out trans lesbians. She looks at that theme from the other side in the most recent single “Lend You a Hand,” promising her partner that she’ll be a source of strength in the dark times.
STEPHEN TRAGESER
At the end of January, on the third release anniversary of his excellent full-length Journey, stellar Music City MC Brian Brown released Two Minute Drill, a four-pack of tracks in which he gives himself less than 120 seconds to make an impact in each song. He covers a phenomenal amount of ground, both sonically and lyrically, in this short span. It feels like a snapshot of the city as we’ve tried to cope with the pandemic and all its various phases. As Brown raps in “NBA Jam,” the opening track: “Suicide bombers in my own city / Whole thing really look too suspicious / Only shit that’s certain, I don’t know nothin’ / But I’m pretty sure that they’re up to somethin’.”
TEPHEN TRAGESER
ship, inspired original songs and a soulful vocal blend like no other. Recorded during a concert in June 2021 that was livestreamed from a studio in London, the EP features intimate, stripped-down performances of seven songs from their 2021 album Click Click Domino. As on the album, the duo was accompanied at the concert by Ethan Johns on drums and Nick Pini on bass and strings. Surprisingly, two of the performances included here even surpass the studio originals — the funkier rendition of “Learn to Love You Better” and the slower, longer, bluesier take on “Little Liars.” DARYL SANDERS
Paramore is finally back, sounding more grown-up and better than ever. This Is Why builds on the art-punk- and New Waveinspired grooves of 2017’s After Laughter, expanding further into post-punk and even exploring hints of dream pop. The title track serves both as the introduction and the album’s thesis, with each subsequent song exploring a different subject prompted by the titular single’s chorus, “This is why / I don’t leave the house!” The group’s reasons range from male chauvinists (“Big Man, Little Dignity”) to self-destructive behavior (“Figure 8,” “You First,” “Liar”) and fatigue from the barrage of awful happenings (“The News”). It signifies a shift from introspection to reflecting on the maddening state of modern society: This is why, and it’s exhausting.
HANNAH CRONMYA BYRNE, “LEND YOU A HAND,” “IT DON’T FADE,” “AUTUMN SUN” (KILL ROCK STARS NASHVILLE) Rhinestone Tomboy, Mya Byrne’s first LP for the Nashville arm of famed indie label
The Arcs — Dan Auerbach, Leon Michels, Nick Movshon, Homer Steinweiss and Richard Swift — came together out of a love of vinyl, especially classic R&B, garage rock and reggae. Their acclaimed 2015 debut Yours, Dreamily, drew more from garage rock and reggae, but their latest, Electrophonic Chronic, is a sonically delightful love letter to late-’60s and early-’70s soul and R&B. When co-writer and multi-instrumentalist Swift unexpectedly died in July 2018, the group had many unfinished recordings in the can. In 2021, co-producers Auerbach and Michels revisited those recordings and finished the dozen tracks included here as a way of honoring their fallen bandmate, who appears on seven cuts. Auerbach’s soulful lead-vocal work on the album, especially on the achingly beautiful “Heaven Is a Place” and “Love Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” goes beyond anything he’s released previously.
DARYL SANDERS
Beth Nielsen Chapman’s lyrical brilliance is well-documented, as is her ability to cross genres. But there’s something about CrazyTown that feels particularly fresh and freewheeling. It kicks off with the poppy “All Around the World” before jumping into the rhythmic anthem “Put a Woman in Charge,” which was co-written with Keb’ Mo’. “Hey Girl (We Can Deal With It)” and “Everywhere We Go” serve up plenty of bluesy goodness. But it’s melancholy ballads like “With Time” and “Walk You to Heaven” that remind us of Chapman’s uncanny ability to capture the aching beauty of life and loss through song. AMY STUMPFL
Ida Mae’s EP Live Under the Chalk Horse captures the essence of what makes the husband-and-wife duo of Chris Turpin (guitar, mandolin, vocals) and Stephanie Jean (piano, synth, vocals) so special: superb musician-
Punk history is full of stories about bands who went unnoticed when they were active, only to be canonized by collectors. Few bands have experienced this kind of renaissance quite like Koro, a group of five highschoolers from East Tennessee who were just trying to play faster than Circle Jerks. Koro’s existence was a brief two years, and they left behind a lone self-titled EP (sometimes known as 700 Club after the title of the first song), self-released in 1983. A blur of early U.S. hardcore, the record was called “skin-ripping thrash chock full of blistering spasms” in illustrator and hardcore master chronicler Pushead’s 1984 review for Maximumrocknroll. Dave Teague, one of the band’s guitarists, went to L.A. and joined The Dickies, while other members eventually landed in Music City. The eightsong 7-inch isn’t quite seven minutes long, but copies from the original batch of 500 sometimes fetch four-digit prices when they pop up for sale. Constant bootlegging and YouTube documentation finally led the band to officially reissue the EP in January via the chain-punk eggheads at Raleigh, N.C.’s Sorry State Records. P.J. KINZER
EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
Dear Os Mutantes: Thanks for everything. More specifically, thanks for World Psychedelic Classics Vol.
1: Everything Is Possible. Compiled by David Byrne and released via his label Luaka Bop in 1999, this best-of record cracked my consciousness wideopen and let a world of music come flooding in. The simple idea that I could drop a pin on the map and maybe find my kind of weirdos — my kind of mutants, you might say — was mind-blowing. The fact that there was an entire world of psychedelia to explore ran counter to the myopic view seen through the lens of Jan Wenner’s boomer-nostalgia industrial complex.
I’m a parochial kid from an Anglophilic part of Boston, where I grew up without much appreciation for other cultures beyond, say, taking a Spanish class in high school. Hollywood, London and New York dictated my tastes, including a distaste for San Francisco and hippies. A misunderstanding of how art and music exist beyond The Important Cities clouded my judgment during my early years as a listener. Stumbling onto Everything Is Possible opened up the spigot of global pop for me with brute force — think Stanley Spadowski screaming “You get to drink from the firehose!”
With the benefit of 24 years of hindsight, I can see how the record shaped friendships, listening habits and my sense of adventure. And these days, knowing that there is an entire world of creative people making music helps me sleep at night. It keeps me calm when American entertainment — Big Entertainment in general — feels creatively bankrupt and culturally stalled. The place where
Guitarist Joseph Allred makes a move against the transient nature of contemporary life
BY EDD HURTEven more than most musicians, guitarist and prolific record-maker Joseph Allred has a personal relationship to time. Allred, who travels to Nashville this week from the small town of Crawford, Tenn., to play a solo show at West Nashville performance space Random Sample, has created a musical universe that runs parallel to the space that pop and rock occupy. Allred’s intricate — and deeply emotional — guitar pieces draw from traditions that include hymns,
global musics intersect is my happy place, and I have Os Mutantes, supremely creative psych rockers from Brazil who sing mostly in Portuguese, to thank for pointing me there.
I remember the electric jolt that shot through my brain the first time I heard the opening track “Ando Meio Desligado” go from smooth and funky to TOTAL FREAKOUT. Deep in the stanky depths of my college radio station, reviewing records for airplay was a tedious and often thankless task that, for some nigh-unfathomable reason, I absolutely fucking loved. Record label budgets were huge, and promo CDs were everywhere in 1999; nü metal and faux grunge had taken over rock radio, indie rock
Piedmont blues and rock. You can hear a naturebased mysticism in their work on recent albums like Regeneration of Time and The Rambles & Rags of Shiloh, both released in 2022. Allred is also a singer, harmonium player and banjoist whose aesthetic is both sophisticated and based in the subjective time of rural life.
“My sense of time out here is kind of weird,” Allred tells the Scene via phone from Crawford, which lies in Middle Tennessee, about 30 miles northeast of Cookeville and 30 miles southwest of Jamestown.
“We’re on country time. Part of the reason I’m able to focus on music as much as I do is that I’m able to live in this old house that my great-grandparents built.
It’s still standing for the time being, but I’m about to have some renovations done on it, I think.”
For a musician who exists outside the pop arena, the setup makes perfect sense. Allred has released 14 albums, cassettes and EPs since 2019 alone, and each carries a stream of traditions that are reimag-
was getting more corporate by the minute, and hip-hop was trapped in a shiny suit. Possibilities seemed rather limited, frankly, until Everything Is Possible found its way into my stack.
Here was a band shifting gears through so many sounds — vaudevillian pop, baroque classical, bossa nova and full-fuzz garage stompin’. And yet for all of the musical ideas being thrown around, with all of the weirdness that they’re soaking in and breathing out, the songs are so catchy that they speed-vault over any language barrier and land squarely in your long-term memory. Everything Is Possible is a 14-song curriculum, teaching how art can be beautiful
and creative and political at the same time — it can contain multitudes. You can listen to “Cantor de Mambo,” a groovy number with wild guitar tones and over-the-top vocalizing just for fun. Translate the lyrics and you learn it’s about a nightclub singer who emigrates to Hollywood for the sake of his career and becomes king of the mambo singers, though no treasure can match the girlfriend he left behind.
When I first heard the album, I knew next to nothing about the Tropicália movement of Brazilian artists and musicians resisting that country’s dictatorship in the ’60s and ’70s, though I knew that pissing off dictators is and always will be cool as hell. The fact that Os Mutantes were so far away from the punk orthodoxy of my Maximumrocknroll youth but so close to the punk ethos I envisioned was a gift that has kept on giving.
Mostly though, dear Os Mutantes, I would like to thank you for the past couple of weeks. I spent a lot of time jamming your catalog with my kid while prepping this piece, ahead of your show at The Blue Room. He never lets me pick the music — a weird karmic roundhouse to my head, if we’re being honest — but this stretch has been different. Maybe it was the undeniable joyful bombast of “A Minha Menina” or the cinematic scope of “El Justecerio,” but one afternoon, he gave it his highest compliment: “This is Godzilla music!”
It has been a fortnight of “Bat Macumba” dance parties in the kitchen and dramatic interpretations of “Fuga No. 11” in the car. The look on his face as he puzzles out the coda to “Dia 36”? Priceless. And I haven’t had the Paw Patrol theme forced on me in ages — a minor miracle. I hope that, years from now, when my son is at a crossroads, looking for direction, that I’ll be able to drop this gem of an album on him again — to remind him that everything is possible.
EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
ined in the flow of a prodigious guitar technique. On The Rambles & Rags of Shiloh, “Blues for Terry Turtle” — a tribute to the late co-founder of experimental rock group Buck Gooter — depicts a dreamscape that lacks the tension that standard blues tunes often display. Another track from the album, “The Emerald City,” employs a 6/8 rhythm that buzzes with 16th notes designed to jostle the underlying pulse.
It’s a remarkable run of work that stretches back to 2013’s Mandorla Valley, and shows no sign of abating. In a switch for a composer who has usually favored the sound of acoustic guitars, a forthcoming LP, What Strange Flowers Grow in the Shade, is made up almost entirely of electric guitar sounds. Nashville percussionist Chris Davis, who plays with The Cherry Blossoms and promotes shows via arts nonprofit FMRL, also plays on the album.
“There’s not a single note of acoustic guitar on there,” Allred says about the new album, whose release date hasn’t been announced yet. “But there’s a lot of layered electric guitars. I was building these little orchestrations and trying to find an interesting sound or way of expression on it. I like the cleaner, more bell-like, ethereal sounds the electric guitar can make.”
Allred was born in 1983 in Jamestown, and moved to Crawford as a teenager. Playing initially in metal bands, the future acousticmusic exponent worked on the family farm. “I worked on the chicken houses quite a bit,” they say, “and [did] some occasional construction and renovation to the chicken houses, and did things that needed to be done.”
After a six-year stint studying theology and philosophy at Boston College, they returned to Crawford in September 2022. “I just ended up kind of piddling around, I guess, before finally realizing that academia wasn’t exactly a world I wanted to be in,” Allred says. “I wasn’t doing very well emotionally, and it was taking a toll on my physical health, so I decided to give that up for the time being.”
On albums like Regeneration of Time and 2019’s sprawling Hoddmímis Holt, their music mutes the noise of a culture that’s often out of touch with the sense of repose you’ll find in Crawford, which sits along the west fork of the Obee River. Compared to similar work by fellow guitarists Daniel Bachman and William Tyler, Hoddmímis Holt and Allred’s 2022 cover of Low’s “Laser Beam” come across as efforts to come to grips with the corrosive effects of mass culture.
“I think I find myself at odds with a whole lot that goes on around me in the music community,” Allred says. “It is hard to have some kind of integrity in a society that doesn’t value depth of subtlety. It’s not like I think Cardi B shouldn’t exist, and it’s not like I have anything against her personally. But I wish I had a choice as to whether I had heard her sing ‘W.A.P.’ or something.”
Indeed, the somewhat circumscribed tradition of solo guitar that started with John Fahey — and which stretches back to include pieces like Skip James’ 1931 recording of “I’m So Glad” — might seem to preclude efforts to sidestep the world of pop. That’s why Allred, who has played shows in Nashville for years, is always welcome in town. The show at Random Sample was organized by local synth-pop artist Brigid Oxhorn, who will play a set under the sobriquet Munnie Waters. In a world where time is a precious commodity, the work of individualists fights against the transience that can wear you down.
EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
It took nearly four decades for Leslie Jordan to become an overnight global sensation. The Chattanooga-born actor and singer was well-known for guest appearances on heaps of TV shows from the 1980s through his death in October at age 67. He was instantly memorable even if he was only in an episode or two, and his recurring roles on sitcoms like Will & Grace are legendary among fans. The diminutive raconteur took the giant bag of lemons that the pandemic handed us and made lemonade, becoming a prolific and beloved presence on social media. If future generations need a succinct approximation of everyday life in 2020, they could do a lot worse than his customary greeting, “Well shit, how y’all doin?” In early 2021, Call Me Kat premiered on Fox, marking his first role in a show as a regular cast member.
Sunday night at the Grand Ole Opry House, a stellar band and a dazzling array of Jordan’s colleagues, co-conspirators and others — all of whom he would probably just call “friends” — gathered to pay tribute at Reportin’ for Duty, an event named for one of Jordan’s other catchphrases, which was being filmed for later broadcast on the Opry-centric Circle TV channel. There were copious interludes featuring Jordan on video, and reflections from friends like Dolly Parton who couldn’t be at the show. The in-person guests included Jordan’s TV co-stars like Mayim Bialik, several of his duet partners on his 2021 gospel album Company’s Comin’, and musicians whose work he championed whether he’d met them in person or not.
From comedians Margaret Cho and Robyn Schall to journalist Anthony Mason to Company’s Comin’ co-producers Travis Howard and Danny Myrick and beyond, they told story after story of Jordan’s generosity of spirit, usually expressed through his proudly Southern, proudly gay brand of self-deprecating humor. Whether the spotlight was on Jordan or not, he was forever unapologetically and flamboyantly himself, encouraging everyone around him to be the same.
The show ran close to four hours, and
FELLOW HUNKERDOWNERS: REMEMBERING LESLIE JORDAN
while no performance was a true dud, it might not have hurt to rein in the lineup. Still, the massive bill is another reminder of how broad and deep Jordan’s impact was, and proceeds from the event benefit a noble cause: the EB Research Partnership. The nonprofit funds studies to cure epidermolysis bullosa, a group of rare genetic disorders that leaves children’s skin incredibly fragile and unable to heal itself. Among the nonprofit’s co-founders are Jill and Eddie Vedder, the latter of whom you know as Pearl Jam’s frontman. More on him to come.
Proceedings started on a high note with Tanya Tucker singing her indelible debut hit “Delta Dawn,” assisted on the chorus by an eager audience. Accompanied only by a pianist, Maren Morris and Ryan Hurd gave a heartfelt rendition of “What Would This World Do?,” a song the couple wrote for songwriter, producer and mentor busbee shortly before his death from cancer. Morris noted that the song was never a hit, but Jordan loved it just the same. Introducing her breakout single “Sober and Skinny,” Brittney Spencer noted how Jordan not only shined his spotlight on up-and-comers’ music, but did his damnedest to make everyone feel confident in being who they are. Before singing her gentle “Beautiful, You Are,” Ruby Amanfu gave her appreciation as well, thanking Jordan in spirit for “turning our songs into your songs.”
Despite the acceptance of some queer stars and business folk, the country music industry and community still have active hostility toward the LGBTQ community in general and trans people specifically — a prevailing trend in politics, especially at the state level. Many of Sunday’s most poignant moments came from openly gay musicians. Fancy Hagood stunned the room to silence with his take on Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High on That Mountain,” dedicated to queer kids across the state. Brothers Osborne, whose singer T.J. Osborne came out in 2021, dedicated “Younger Me” to a gay couple in the audience who sent him a message that they were celebrating their 20th anniversary. Osborne noted that just as he didn’t think his career would be possible when he was starting out, he imagined they might not have thought that joyously celebrating their relationship in the open would be possible when they got together.
It was a night for celebrating the normal-
ity of queerness, the weird side of Southerness and the joy of being together, reveling in what makes us unique and telling lots of dirty jokes. It’s possible the production set a record for the number of times “well shit” has been said on the Opry stage. Katie Pruitt (who also sang “This Little Light of Mine” as she did on Company’s Comin’) and Cheyenne Jackson added to the count with an original showtune, telling Jordan’s life story using “well shit” as the refrain.
The parade of kickass performances continued. Jake Wesley Rogers took a triumphant run through “Jacob From the Bible”; Ashley McBryde’s solo acoustic version of “Girl Goin’ Nowhere” was met with cheers at every chorus. Jelly Roll embodied a charismatic preacher with “Son of a Sinner,” while Lainey Wilson and Lukas Nelson channeled Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers with “You Can’t Make Old Friends.”
As the end drew near, the aforementioned Mr. Vedder took the stage to thunderous applause. With the band at his back and Nelson at his side, he dove into “Maybe It’s Time,” which Jason Isbell wrote for Bradley Cooper to sing as a character loosely modeled on Vedder in the 2018 remake of A Star Is Born Vedder wryly acknowledged a couple of goofs in the performance: “I made two mistakes in that fuckin’ song … and now I’m cussing in front of my kids,” he said with a laugh, ultimately chalking it up to the emotional impact of putting together a tribute to someone who meant so much to so many. He then spent a few minutes discussing the EB Research Partnership, how the work of many doctors and research scientists has made a breakthrough tantalizingly close, and how they hope that the framework they’ve developed will speed up the search for cures for other rare illnesses.
Ahead of the grand finale — an allhands sing-along to “I Shall Be Released” — Tennessee State University’s W. Crimm Singers, aka the Wakanda Chorale, joined Vedder for “The One Who Hideth Me,” which he sang with Jordan on Company’s Comin’. Vedder quipped that it takes 17 singers to take Jordan’s place, an appropriate epitaph for someone who seemed determined to do the most good he could with every second he had on earth.
EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning is melancholic, mature and beautiful
BY CRAIG D. LINDSEYLéa Seydoux is a sought-after woman with some sad eyes. That’s the thing I got most out of One Fine Morning, the latest film from French writer-director Mia HansenLøve. Although Seydoux has mastered the art of playing exotic/erotic temptresses, ready to get butt-bald-naked at the drop of a beret if a role calls for it, this film has Seydoux playing a modern-day woman who’s struggling — and trying not to break into tears because of it. Sure, she gets butt-bald-naked a couple of times. But when she’s at her most naked and vulnerable, it’s usually when she’s clothed.
In this picture, we follow Seydoux’s Sandra, a pixie-haired Parisian woman raising a young daughter (Camille Leban Martins) by herself and earning a living as a translator, taking such gigs as guiding American vets through a Normandy trip or interpreting conference talks. She also makes time to check in on her father Georg (Pascal Greggory). The old man unfortunately has Benson’s syndrome, a rare form of dementia that keeps him blind, disoriented and hunched over. Sandra finds solace in Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a friend who eventually becomes something more — even though he’s married with a child. (And their kids are chums!) Nevertheless, they have a torrid, on-again/off-again affair.
Morning has Hansen-Løve continuing her journey of making pragmatic, neo-
realistic films about women quietly going through it — women who serve as stand-ins for Hansen-Løve herself. Her short-lived relationship with significant other Olivier Assayas served as fodder for her last film, the sneakily meta Bergman Island. That scenic hall of mirrors starred Vicky Krieps as a filmmaker, with a more-successful filmmaker partner (Tim Roth), trying to write a movie about a woman (played by another Mia — Mia Wasikowska) having an affair with an old friend.
This time around, Hansen-Løve practically takes that same story and weaves in her experiences looking after her ailing father. As Sandra spends a lot of fleetingbut-still-tender moments with Georg (Greggory does devastating work as a man trying to stay cognitive even when it’s a futile endeavor), she also has to constantly confer with her family on putting him in a proper home and determining what to do with his belongings. For these scenes, it almost feels like Hansen-Løve got inspiration from her ex’s brilliant film Summer Hours (aka the most unsentimental film about the impor-
tance of sentimental value ever made), which is also about a family figuring out what to do with a parent’s stuff.
In a movie in which several characters could easily be the bad guy, Hansen-Løve refuses to cast judgment on these flawed souls. Yeah, Sandra could be seen as a homewrecker, but the woman is clearly lonely — a bit lost, even. And as much as you may want to despise Clément for making her a side piece, it does appear that dude can’t stand to be away from her. Hansen-Løve even has sympathy for the health care workers who do what they can for Georg and other senior citizens who wander out of their rooms.
Morning is yet another melancholic, mature, beautifully constructed feather in the cap of Hansen-Løve, one of the most personal (and most human) filmmakers out there. By once again using her own life as source material, she gives us an unabashedly moving portrait of a woman holding on to her loved ones and — as Seydoux’s sad eyes often show — shedding some tears when she has to let them go.
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40 Isla de la Juventud locale
42 ___ change (profound transformation)
44 Damage
45 M.M.A. finale?
47 Home run specialists, slangily
48 Log feature
50 Canny
53 Word after circle or square
54 Compound in pheromones
56 “Ditto here”
57 Like V.I.P. accommodations
59 Palm reader’s lead-in
61 Enjoy a bit of downtime
63 Candy originally marketed as a smoking cessation aid
65 ___ Newsroom (daily newscast)
66 Short-armed “Toy Story” character
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Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit
Docket No. 22A71
ADRIAN EUGENE LAVENDER, et al.
vs. DESTINY RENEE WAKEFIELD
In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon DESTINY RENEE WAKEFIELD. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after MARCH 2, 2023, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on April 3, 2023.
It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day, Clerk
M. De Jesus , Deputy Clerk
Date: February 3, 2023
Wende Rutherford Attorney for Plaintiff
NSC 2/9, 2/16, 2/23, 3/2 /23
Non-Resident Notice
Third Circuit
Docket No. 22D1726
VERONICA HERNANDEZ SOTO vs. ARMANDO DIAZ AISPURO
In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ARMANDO DIAZ AISPURO. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after MARCH 16, 2023, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on April 17 2023.
It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day Clerk
M. De Jesus Deputy Clerk
Date: February 16, 2023
Matt Maniatis Attorney for Plaintiff
NSC 2/23, 3/2, 3/9, 3/16/23
VERONICA
In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ARMANDO DIAZ AISPURO. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after MARCH 16, 2023, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on April 17, 2023.
It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day Clerk
M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk
Date: February 16, 2023
Matt Maniatis Attorney for Plaintiff
NSC 2/23, 3/2, 3/9, 3/16/23
Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 22D1606
BRENDA NICOLE ADAGEYUDI vs. REGINALD ADAGEYUDI
In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon REGINALD ADAGEYUDI. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after MARCH 16, 2023, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on April 17, 2023.
It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day Clerk
M. De Jesus Deputy Clerk
Date: February 16, 2023
M. Oliver Osemwegie Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 2/23, 3/2, 3/9, 3/16/23
thirty (30) days after MARCH 16, 2023 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on April 17 2023.
It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day, Clerk
M. De Jesus , Deputy Clerk
Date: February 16 2023
M. Oliver Osemwegie Attorney for Plaintiff
NSC 2/23, 3/2, 3/9, 3/16/23
Non-Resident Notice
Fourth Circuit
Docket No. 22D309
AMBER M. WORD vs. THOMAS L. DILLARD
In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a nonresident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon THOMAS L. DILLARD. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after MARCH 16, 2023, same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on April 17, 2023.
It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day, Clerk
L Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: February 15, 2023
Robyn L. Ryan Attorney for Plaintiff
NSC
cession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.
Joseph P. Day, Clerk
L Chappell, Deputy Clerk
Date: February 15 2023
Robyn L. Ryan Attorney for Plaintiff
NSC 2/23, 3/2 3/9, 3/16/23
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