Nashville Scene 4-11-24

PLAN SET FOR APRIL 19 RELEASE >> PAGE 7 NEWS: WHY A PUBLICIZED BILL FOR ABORTION EXCEPTIONS WAS NEVER FILED

MOVING ON

Dance is one of Nashville’s most vibrant art forms — and it’s evolving

Metropolitik: Transit Plan Set for April Release

Modest scope, supportive polling and community contacts lay groundwork for O’Connell’s April 19 unveiling

BY ELI MOTYCKA

Pith in the Wind

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

Advocates, Community Members Rally Against State’s Anti-Immigration Policies

Recently passed legislation requires law enforcement agencies to report undocumented individuals to federal authorities

BY KELSEY

Why a Publicized Bill for Abortion Exceptions Was Never Filed

Sen. Richard Briggs describes ‘biggest disappointment of the session’

COVER PACKAGE: THE DANCE ISSUE Contemporary Connections

Local luminaries Banning Bouldin and Becca Hoback discuss Nashville’s contemporary dance community

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

Dance Dance Evolution

Nashville Ballet explores the changing language of ballet

BY AMY STUMPFL

Get to Stepping

Nashville’s dance community is full of options for people of all skill levels

BY KELSEY BEYELER

CRITICS’ PICKS

Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival, Mannequin

Pussy, Danny Brown, Leslie Liao and more

FOOD AND DRINK

A Liminal Place

In the home of the former Stadium Inn, The Sun Room at the new Drift Hotel embraces Nashville’s transitional nature BY

MARGARET LITTMAN

CULTURE

Pudding Budget

Talking to The State’s Thomas Lennon about pudding, balls and everything

BY

In His Lane

Comedian Matteo Lane continues to expand his footprint

BY JASON SHAWHAN

THEATER

Deep Purple

Nashville Rep brings The Color Purple to brilliant life

BY AMY STUMPFL

MUSIC

Reckoning

My Black Country paints a fuller picture of Black artists’ relationship with country music

BY BRITTNEY MCKENNA

Heart of the Matter

Aaron Lee Tasjan looks in and reaches out on Stellar Evolution BY STEPHEN

TRAGESER

only)

The Spin

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Dear Nora and Cassie Berman at Drkmttr BY KATHERINE OUNG

FILM

Let’s Get Physical

Our quarterly look at new and essential works of physical media, from Dune ’84 to The Drifter

BY JASON SHAWHAN

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

AND THIS MODERN WORLD MARKETPLACE

ON THE COVER:

Banning Bouldin, Becca Hoback and Shabaz Ujima

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Clockwise from lower left: Shabaz Ujima, Banning Bouldin, Becca Hoback • PHOTO BY ANGELINA CASTILLO

LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

FROM BILL FREEMAN WHO WE ARE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF D. Patrick Rodgers

MANAGING EDITOR Alejandro Ramirez

SENIOR EDITOR Dana Kopp Franklin

ARTS EDITOR Laura Hutson Hunter

MUSIC AND LISTINGS EDITOR Stephen Trageser

DIGITAL EDITOR Kim Baldwin

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Cole Villena

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jack Silverman

AS A NASHVILLE NATIVE and businessman with a deep appreciation for our city and for the Democratic Party, I cannot help but feel a surge of optimism at the recent Democratic victories in Davidson County’s Super Tuesday elections. As reported by the Scene, Stephanie Williams and Vivian Wilhoite specifically won their elections with ease. I believe their wins reflect a desire for more progressive values. As the Scene noted, Williams “walloped incumbent Stan Kweller, appointed in January 2023 by Gov. Bill Lee, by more than 20,000 votes.” That’s a lot of votes. And though the Republican opposition, spearheaded by former President Donald Trump, may still pack a punch, I believe the tide is turning away from embittered divisiveness in favor of inclusivity, compassion and progress.

Williams’ and Wilhoite’s wins in the Democratic primary races, I believe, indicate that the electorate desires leaders who will prioritize the needs of all residents, regardless of background or circumstance. Williams’ victory in the Davidson County Circuit Court Division IV judge race and Wilhoite’s defense of her position as Davidson County assessor of property reaffirm the community’s faith in capable and dedicated public servants. It signifies a positive shift toward more representative governance.

In contrast, the Republican Party’s performance in Davidson County seems to reflect that the party is out of touch with the values and priorities of our diverse community. The GOP’s failure to secure significant victories in Davidson County might be attributed to the party’s struggle to appeal to a broad cross section of the electorate, particularly in urban areas where diversity and inclusivity are celebrated.

While Tennessee has traditionally leaned toward the right, the recent surge in Democratic support signals a seismic shift in the state’s political landscape. Prominent Democratic donors like Andrew Byrd and myself have invested heavily in supporting candidates who champion progressive policies and advocate for the

interests of all Tennesseans.

Further — and aside from being encouraged by these local Democratic victories — we can look at the broader economic national landscape. Last week, The New York Times reported that there has been a recent burst of strong job gains, with U.S. employers adding 303,000 jobs in March. This shows the resilience of the American economy under Biden’s leadership. The unemployment rate also fell to 3.8 percent, providing evidence as to the effectiveness of Biden’s economic policies in fostering growth and opportunity for all. Inflation has also fallen drastically from its peak, alleviating concerns that plagued the economy in previous years. “Better-than-expected gains in business productivity and workforce participation” have contributed to this positive trend.

Looking ahead to the November elections, I think the path to victory lies in continuing to rally behind Democratic candidates who embody the values of compassion, integrity and progress. President Joe Biden’s leadership, characterized by his commitment to unity and inclusivity, stands in stark contrast to the chaos and division that defined the Trump era. With Biden at the helm, I believe we can chart a course toward a brighter, more equitable future for all Americans.

Democratic victories in Davidson County’s Super Tuesday elections mean there is hope for change. While there is still much work to be done, we can see these wins as a powerful reminder of the strength of our democracy and the power of collective action. As we move forward, let us remain steadfast in our support for Democratic leadership and continue to work toward a more just and equitable society for all.

Bill Freeman

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

STAFF WRITERS Kelsey Beyeler, Logan Butts, John Glennon, Hannah Herner, Hamilton Matthew Masters, Eli Motycka, Nicolle Praino, William Williams

SENIOR FILM CRITIC: Jason Shawhan

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sadaf Ahsan, Ken Arnold, Ben Arthur, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Rachel Cholst, Lance Conzett, Hannah Cron, Connor Daryani, Stephen Elliott, Steve Erickson, Adam Gold, Kashif Andrew Graham, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Amanda Haggard, Steven Hale, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, P.J. Kinzer, Janet Kurtz, Christine Kreyling, J.R. Lind, Craig D. Lindsey, Margaret Littman, Sean L. Maloney, Brittney McKenna, Addie Moore, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Daryl Sanders, Nadine Smith, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Andrea Williams, Nicole Williams, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian

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BIDEN WITH UNION MEMBERS IN CHANDLER, ARIZ., MARCH 2024

TRANSIT PLAN SET FOR APRIL RELEASE

Modest scope, supportive polling and community contacts lay groundwork for O’Connell’s April 19 unveiling

Metropolitik is a recurring column featuring the Scene’s analysis of Metro dealings.

MAYOR FREDDIE O’CONNELL hopes to give Nashvillians a transportation answer this month. The release was initially slated for late March, but city officials have been going back and forth with hired consultants trying to nail down an accurate financial forecast for the city’s biggest transportation push since 2018.

Polling from Vanderbilt University and community coalition Imagine Nashville back up O’Connell’s bet on transit. Moving through Nashville was the now-mayor’s top campaign issue, matching the picture that emerges from survey respondents’ top ills (traffic, congestion, walkability) and top wants (improving public transportation). A lack of robust transit infrastructure and affordable housing have become the concrete consequences of a booming city without a plan to manage its growth. Administration executives Michael Briggs and Kendra Abkowitz lead the mayor’s public-facing efforts to gin up support among major city stakeholders, which have mainly taken place during biweekly meetings of O’Connell’s Technical and Community Advisory committees.

Pressure to get the plan — which requires direct voter approval — on the November ballot has dogged O’Connell since before he formally took office. Even before the plan’s official release, O’Connell has made public voters’ essential tradeoff: what you pay and what you get.

Transit improvements will secure dedicated funding from a 0.5 percent bump in Davidson County sales taxes, according to the administration. Interest rates, financing mechanisms and inflation all cloud the fiscal picture of what exactly that 0.5 percent sales tax bump could safely borrow for Nashville, the exact question the city is scrambling to answer before April 19. The city has indicated it will attempt to match local spending with state and federal dollars available to municipalities for infrastructure spending.

For at least a decade, O’Connell has raised the topic of dedicated transit funding in line with most other major cities. Dedicated funding matches a pledged money stream to transportation spending. This method is considered a more stable and predictable funding mechanism that avoids the need for year-by-year allocations, which is how Nashville funds WeGo today.

Categorized as a regressive tax because it imposes a flat cost on consumers regardless of income, the funding has already presented itself as a point of controversy in the plan.

“I was in Kroger the other day — there was a lady in front of me putting some things

BY ELI MOTYCKA

back,” Van Pinnock, a North Nashville resident and recently vacated TSU board member, told Briggs at a March 20 meeting of O’Connell’s Community Advisory Committee. “Her bill was $5 more than what she had. Five dollars doesn’t seem like a lot to us, but it’s a lot to a lot of families.”

“We want to deliberately talk about this and understand the impacts and some of the benefits gained by having a transit program too,” Briggs responded.

Black voters and working-class voters swung against Let’s Move Nashville, the failed 2018 referendum carried by former Mayor Megan Barry. O’Connell’s advisory committees have consciously included Black community leaders like Pinnock. Sometimes they function like focus groups, providing feedback to Briggs and other mayoral staff. Other times, they’re treated like influencers with whom the administration is courting support ahead of a six-month campaign.

The sales tax bump would cost consumers an additional 50 cents for every $100 spent in the checkout line. In return, Nashville revamps sidewalks, traffic signals and buses. Maps released on March 14 give the clearest picture of countywide spending, which comes in three categories. Expanded bus service — the plan’s headline item — clears dedicated rapid transit lanes on Dickerson Pike, Murfreesboro Road, Nolensville Pike and Gallatin Avenue.

An “abortion trafficking” bill criminalizing adults who help a minor who is not their biological child obtain an abortion continues to move through both chambers of the state legislature; it is similar to a 2023 Idaho law that has been blocked by a federal judge. State lawmakers are approaching agreement on a law that bans marriage between first cousins as this year’s session nears its final gavel. School staff with enhanced handgun permits may soon be able to carry firearms on school property thanks to a yearlong push from Republicans. Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s effort to secure an East Bank Authority continues to hit political roadblocks. The administrative restructuring would endow a local oversight body with certain legal and financial powers. Reporting and rumors suggest that, for O’Connell to secure the state’s cursory blessing, Nashville must clear the way for a contract between the city and Bristol Motor Speedway to develop a NASCAR track at the fairgrounds. Frustrated about being dragged into “political sport,” state Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) withdrew her sponsorship of the East Bank Authority legislation on Friday.

The Murfreesboro service artery includes branches to the airport and into Antioch. The plan also includes increased service, but not full dedicated routes, down Charlotte Avenue, Clarksville Pike and a downtown loop. At a March 20 advisory committee meeting, Briggs said working plans include dedicated bus rapid transit lanes on West End Avenue, previously planned as a corridor where bus service was integrated into car traffic. This is one of a few small tweaks from planners since maps were first presented in a March 6 Technical Advisory Committee meeting.

Proposed sidewalks will accompany increased bus service on each major thoroughfare to enable pedestrian access to and between bus stops and transit centers. Concept maps detail 86 miles of sidewalk construction, including additions to the grid around Green Hills, Antioch, Bellevue and Donelson. Modernized traffic signals are the plan’s final pitch, a combination of updates and needed coordination that will help integrate expanded bus service.

KraftCPAs will review the plan for the city before referring it to the state comptroller for approval by May 31, a necessary step before a vote. The mayor would then file the plan to the Metro Council by June 7 for review in its own approval process. If everything stays on track, voters will see it on the Nov. 5 ballot. ▼

STUDENTS PROTEST SUSPENSIONS AT VANDERBILT

Vanderbilt University expelled three students, suspended one and placed 22 more on disciplinary probation related to a March 26 sit-in at Chancellor Daniel Diermeier’s office in Kirkland Hall. In a closed-door meeting with faculty and in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Diermeier defended the university’s response to student protesters, who were demanding the administration allow a student government vote on a Boycott, Divest and Sanctions policy targeting Israel for its ongoing military campaign in Gaza Hundreds of students and faculty have publicly opposed Diermeier’s harsh consequences for student protesters. Four more students face criminal charges in Davidson County court.

Laugh to keep from crying, Scene columnist Betsy Phillips advises observers of Tennessee politics. Scandals dogging the state’s education commissioner Lizzette Reynolds are the latest evidence of public officials’ malfeasance, Phillips writes. As democracy breaks down around us, humor can be a useful human coping mechanism.

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

PHOTO: HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

ADVOCATES, COMMUNITY MEMBERS RALLY AGAINST STATE’S ANTIIMMIGRATION POLICIES

Recently passed legislation requires law enforcement agencies to report undocumented individuals to federal authorities

BY KELSEY BEYELER

“EL PUEBLO UNIDO JAMÁS SERÁ VENCIDO.”

“The people united will never be defeated.”

Hundreds of people chanted this classic protest phrase in both Spanish and English in downtown Nashville on April 4 as they rallied against the Tennessee General Assembly’s passing of HB2124/SB2576 and asked Gov. Bill Lee to veto the legislation. The bill requires law enforcement agencies to report knowledge of undocumented individuals to federal officials and cooperate with them in their “identification, apprehension, detention, or removal.”

The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Rusty Grills (R-Newbern), introduced the legislation to a committee as a way to “force [law enforcement agencies] to reach out to the feds” about having in custody someone who is not in the United States legally. Dozens of Republicans co-sponsored the legislation in both the House and Senate.

Critics of the bill see the mandate as extra work that will stretch understaffed law enforcement agencies and exacerbate distrust between police officers and the immigrant community. In March, Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) voiced another common criticism, calling the legislation “rooted in racism and xenophobia.”

WHY A PUBLICIZED BILL FOR ABORTION EXCEPTIONS WAS NEVER FILED

Sen. Richard Briggs describes ‘biggest disappointment of the session’

BY HANNAH HERNER

SEN. RICHARD BRIGGS says it’s his “biggest disappointment of the session.” The Knoxville Republican, who is also a physician, started the 2024 legislative session with a pitch to add exceptions to Tennessee’s nearly total abortion ban. He wanted to provide the option to terminate the pregnancy in cases of fatal fetal anomalies — fetuses with complications so severe that they could not sustain life outside of the womb.

He planned to call the bill the Freedom to Have Children and a Family Act and emphasized the idea that such complications in pregnancy could prevent future pregnancies and affect fertility. Briggs brought his pitch

Representatives from the Metro Nashville Police Department tell the Scene they’re concerned the legislation could “erode the trust that we have worked hard over a period of years to build with immigrant communities” and “dissuade cooperation with our officers among some Nashville residents” during investigations.

“This bill will exacerbate the racial profiling already happening in our communities, where anyone who looks like an immigrant or speaks with an accent will be targeted for traffic stops and arrests,” said American Muslim Advisory Council executive director Sabina Mohyuddin at last week’s rally.

Despite the protest and the demand for a veto, Lee is almost certain to sign the bill into law. It aligns with his politics and those of his Republican colleagues. During a recent trip to the Southern border, Lee committed to sending two waves of Tennessee National Guardsmen to help “secure our border” amid increasing numbers of migrants entering the United States.

Members of Tennessee’s U.S. congressional delegation have also visited the border and perpetuated anti-immigration rhetoric — even as they’ve voted against bipartisan border security

to several local media outlets in Nashville as well as Knoxville, including Scene sister publication the Nashville Post, and was featured on NPR’s national program All Things Considered. The outlets told the story of a man with cognitive dissonance: He voted for Tennessee’s abortion trigger ban in 2019 but wanted the chance to roll back its most punitive parts. He told the Scene his intention with press coverage was to educate people on the lack of exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies.

But lobbying groups saw the writing on the wall. There simply would not be enough votes to pass such legislation, and Briggs says Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Tennessee Medical Association encouraged him to table it. Both organizations declined to comment on the specifics of their strategy with the bill — though TMA said its members “support exemptions in the abortion law in cases of lethal fetal anomalies.”

Now the Tennessee General Assembly’s 2024 session is winding down, and the Freedom to Have Children and a Family Act was never introduced.

Briggs sought to transfer the bill to Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald), a colleague further to the right on the political spectrum. A spokesperson for Hensley told the Scene he would not carry such a bill in this session or future sessions.

In the words of Briggs, a cardiologist by trade, a pro-

legislation. U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) is facing a defamation lawsuit after wrongly accusing a Kansas man of being an “illegal alien” and a mass shooter, and several Republican state lawmakers spoke to a crowd of roughly 100 people during a “Protect Tennessee’s Borders” rally March 20 at the state Capitol. Amid the ongoing rhetoric, Tennessee’s conservative supermajority has been accused of creating a climate that emboldens white supremacists, including neo-Nazis who marched downtown in February while chanting “deport all Mexicans.”

HB2124/SB2576 is one of many pieces of xenophobic legislation that has come up during this session and in recent years. One bill that has since failed sought to make driver’s license tests available in English only. Another proposed bill that was ultimately tabled would have made transporting undocumented people into the state a class-A misdemeanor.

SB2770/HB1872, currently on hold, allows courts to enhance criminal charges up to a lifetime sentence without parole for undocumented individuals who commit violent crimes

cedure allowed by this legislation would not be an abortion but a “termination of pregnancy for medical reasons.”

“To me, this was a medical bill,” Briggs says. “I don’t even know why abortion should come up with it. This was really a bill where you had a child that was either dead or dying in the womb, could not live outside the womb, and at the appropriate time you would terminate the pregnancy in order to preserve the woman’s fertility. That’s a medical issue, not one of these social issues.”

— alongside any adult who commits violent crimes on school property. Another (HB2774/ SB2158) requires state agencies to track and compile a report on the costs of serving immigrants. Rep. Jake McCalmon (R-Franklin) has said the goal of the bill is “to quantify the cost of illegal immigration,” so the state’s attorney general “has standing to bring suit against the federal government if he deems necessary.” The bill comes with its own significant cost — millions of dollars in local expenditures to facilitate such reporting.

Dulce Castro, an immigrant and a longtime volunteer for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, told the Scene that showing up to the protest was “very scary.”

“A lot of people do not empathize with the immigrant story,” said Castro. “And that’s a constant challenge that immigrants will continue to face. But that will not let us just stay in the shadows, because we contribute to this state. We contribute to this country.”

Hamilton Matthew Masters contributed reporting. ▼

Had he decided to carry the legislation, Briggs seemingly would’ve had public support from Tennesseans.

A 2023 Vanderbilt University poll found that in cases in which the fetus could not survive outside the womb, 78 percent said abortions should be permitted; that included 62 percent of so-called non-MAGA Republicans, 71 percent of MAGA Republicans and 96 percent of Democrats.

Briggs tells the Scene that anti-abortion groups visited the Capitol at the top of the session and “lobbied very hard,” which affected the projected outcome of his

exceptions bill. (He couldn’t remember whether it was Tennessee Right to Life, and the organization did not respond to the Scene’s request for comment.)

Briggs also introduced abortion-related bills in the 2023 session. Some clinicians supported his SB0745 when it was introduced, at which point it allowed doctors to use their “good faith judgment” when treating a patient. The bill ultimately became what Republican legislators referred to as a “compromise bill” to appease Tennessee Right to Life.

In the 2024 session, bills that would allow abortion in cases of rape and incest were killed, including for children 13 years and younger. A bill that would make it illegal for an adult to help a child obtain an abortion without parental consent passed the Senate on April 2.

At the beginning of the session, Briggs was optimistic he could bring his bill this year and provide protection for Tennesseans faced with a difficult requirement: Give birth to a stillborn child or one who lives for hours or days. The process will restart next year. ▼

SEN. RICHARD BRIGGS

PHOTO: RAY DI PIETRO

WITNESS HISTORY

This traditional flamenco guitar was hand-crafted by influential singer, songwriter, and luthier Guy Clark in his home workshop in 1998. He stamped his thumbprint, in blood, on the maker’s label inside the instrument, and placed the “Easy Money” bumper sticker beneath the strings.

From the exhibit Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present

RESERVE TODAY

artifact photo: Bob Delevante

Dance is one of Nashville’s most vibrant art forms — and it’s evolving

MOVING ON CONTEMPORARY CONNECTIONS

Nashville is a hub for dance. But just as the sentiment “Nashville is more than just country music” has become so overused that it verges on cliché, it should go without saying that Nashville is more than just line dancing, as well.

The Nashville Ballet was established in 1986, and Tennessee Dance Theatre formed in 1993. But in recent years the dance scene has exploded, with new productions from groups including New Dialect, Enactor Productions, Garage Co., Py Dance, Visionary Vocal Collaborative, Shackled Feet, Mauve Taupe, and on and on. And that’s not to mention the bevy of community classes, which lower the dance world’s barrier for entry. The city’s vibrant dance community is made up of a closely connected web of personalities who are making some of the most interesting, progressive and exciting pieces of art in town.

In this week’s issue, we explore Nashville dance in three parts — Nashville Ballet’s role in helping a classic art form evolve; the city’s vibrant modern dance scene; and opportunities for those looking to learn and practice different dance styles.

Local luminaries Banning Bouldin and Becca Hoback discuss Nashville’s contemporary dance community

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

IF YOU WANT to talk about contemporary dance in Nashville, be prepared to hear a lot about Banning Bouldin and Becca Hoback. The two dancers — whose stories intertwine intricately as if they’d been choreographed — have played outsized roles in the development of the city’s status as a hub for contemporary dance. Their interwoven stories are as good an introduction as any to the appeal of contemporary dance in general, the reasons it’s found such strong footing in Nashville, and the bright future it’s reaching toward.

From an early age, both Bouldin and Hoback knew

they wanted to be dancers. Bouldin remembers being a kid in Nashville in the mid-1980s, dancing around to Madonna and cartwheeling through the house.

“From the time I was 5 years old, whenever people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer has never changed,” Bouldin says.

When the prestigious Juilliard School in New York held its first summer program for young dancers in 1996, Bouldin was there. She was only 15, but she had a head full of determination and a supportive family behind her.

PHOTOS: ANGELINA CASTILLO

BANNING BOULDIN BECCA HOBACK

“I went up there and thought, ‘Holy cow — this is amazing, people are inventing new dance languages,’” she says. “I came home from that summer, and I was like, ‘Mom, I love you so much. But I’ve got to move to New York, because there’s nowhere for me to train in the kind of dancing that I want to learn to do here.’’’ She was accepted into Juilliard the following year, and she completed her senior year of high school while enrolled as a full-time student there.

Bouldin, who is now in her early 40s, speaks about her time as a young dancer with a disarming kind of self-awareness that makes her precociousness seem clear, even now.

“I really dove into working with these people, many of them modern masters, and learning approaches and frameworks for combining and fusing different vocabularies, existing techniques and methodologies as a way of collaboratively creating new dance languages with up-and-coming choreographers,” says Bouldin. “So from a really young age, I was able to be a part of those kinds of processes with people who are now internationally defining the directions of contemporary dance. I feel really fortunate to have been drawn into that.”

In the eight-year stretch between graduating from Juilliard and returning to Nashville, Bouldin stayed busy. She worked in New York and Europe. She lived in Stockholm for about three years, and lived in Paris for a couple more.

“In a way, I was especially driven by this desire to be collaborating with different artists, to be creating new languages,” Boulding says. “I was able to meet so many wonderful choreographers and dancers, and when I moved back here, and when it became clear to me that I was interested in building something for the Nashville dance community, all of those international connections and creative friendships were really central and essential to the initial framework of New Dialect.”

New Dialect is the contemporary dance company Bouldin founded in Nashville in 2013. And as it turns out, one of the most important connections she’s made wasn’t in Stockholm or Paris, but rather in Appleton, Wis. — a midsize city about two hours north of Milwaukee. That’s where Becca Hoback had been training as a ballerina from the age of 4 — around the same time Bouldin had taken that summer intensive at Julliard.

“In my teen years I swore that ballet was the only thing for me,” Hoback says from her home studio in Nashville. “But joke’s on me — many years later I happened to fall in love with contemporary dance. But I’d already fallen in love with movement as a whole.”

Hoback’s ballerina youth is evident in her physicality. At 6 feet, she still appears demure — she is at once statuesque and refined.

“I grew up in a very small space, in a very conservative religious household,” she says. “As a dancer, my worldview opened up. I began interacting with people from all over the country with different ways of seeing the world. I think my teachers in Wisconsin tried to provide that as best they could, but there’s nothing like being

thrown into that environment.”

Hoback left home at 16 to study ballet in North Carolina, then in Montgomery, Ala., before finally landing in Nashville to dance with the Nashville Ballet in 2011. There she met Bouldin, who was teaching a contemporary movement class.

“When I first saw her,” Bouldin remembers of that time, “I was just stunned. She’s this tall, wonderful performer and a really interesting mover, and she didn’t really fit in a traditional ballet framework. Ballet is always trying to get women to be smaller.”

“I was the tallest female dancer in the room at all times,” Hoback says. “I felt like they didn’t really know what to do with me, just because I was so tall.”

Every type of dance carries its own traditions, and in ballet, one of those traditions is symmetry. Its aesthetics, traditionally, are based on everything being even, homogenous, symmetrical.

“It’s something I feel like they tried to work with and accommodate,” says Hoback. “It’s one of those things in ballet that I think and hope is slowly shifting. When you think about homogeny, you have to consider what else is being excluded from those spaces. I think the ballet world as a whole is really looking at that now in terms of diversity and equity, and making sure there are multiple kinds of people onstage. But I do wonder when body type — both height and weight — is going to be part of that conversation.”

The conversations around shifting aesthetic

principles are certainly occurring in the ballet world, and at Nashville Ballet in particular — see Amy Stumpfl’s story on p. 14 for more about that. Those conversations might also be among the primary reasons that contemporary dance is such fertile ground for artists in Nashville right now.

“In Nashville, there’s a real sense of supporting each other,” Bouldin says. “Collaboration and community care have been a huge part of that from the very beginning, before they were buzzwords, you know. That is not something that I’ve experienced anywhere else.”

One of Bouldin’s current collaborators, Shabaz Ujima, is also the one she’s known the longest — they grew up together and took classes at Nashville Ballet in the early 1990s. Ujima is an accomplished choreographer in addition to a dancer, and the founder of a radically inclusive troupe called Shackled Feet Dance.

“For me, New Dialect is really about trying to create and nurture this hub that we’re talking about,” she says, “and creating opportunities for artists and setting a structure in place to support them in their collaboration with each other.”

Community seems to be the core value of Bouldin’s practice. Through New Dialect, she wants to help other dancers fund collaborations, and give them access to training that they may have not had before — so that current and future generations of Nashville dancers won’t have to move to New York to be exposed to highlevel contemporary techniques.

“I wanted to allow multiple projects to emerge in Nashville so that we could catalyze

this scene together,” Bouldin says. “It’s not just about having like one dance company, almost like a ballet company exists as a piece of civic furniture in a city. But that we would together really work to build this scene where there’ll be lots of different things happening with lots of different artists at all times.”

Naturally, Hoback is among the network of dancers working on just such an endeavor. Her Enactor Productions is presenting an incubator series on Friday, April 12, at DancEast. The incubator series will feature solo works made in collaboration with The Fire Cycle, Visionary Vocal Collaborative, Mauve Taupe and Lenin Fernandez, in addition to Hoback’s own piece, Sacral, which is autobiographical and deconstructs notions of purity in the body. After Friday’s presentation, Hoback will take Sacral on tour, performing in Italy, Poland, Turkey and the Canary Islands. After that, she knows there’s more to come.

“There is so much rich, beautiful, contemporary dance that is sprouting up that just needs little homes, little opportunities to showcase,” Hoback says. “And I think ultimately that is going to bring the kind of variety and the kind of vibrance that I know is already brewing in our city, and just needs to be seen.” ▼

Enactor Productions Presents Artist Incubator: Final Showcase

7 p.m. Friday, April 12, at DancEast

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

CLOCKWISE FROM LOWER LEFT: SHABAZ UJIMA, BANNING BOULDIN, BECCA HOBACK

Nashville Ballet explores the changing language of ballet

BY AMY STUMPFL

BALLET IS A centuries-old art form, marked by beauty, grace and exquisite storytelling. And while there will always be a place for great classical works such as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the language of ballet is clearly changing — embracing new voices, fresh ideas and even different body types.

“The truth is that ballet has been shifting for years,” says Nick Mullikin, artistic director and CEO at Nashville Ballet. “It’s changed dramatically from when Marius Petipa originated choreography in his Swan Lake to what we do now. The demands have become far more athletic, more about strength. So some of the stereotypical body types of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s have given way to those who have the strength and physicality that allows them to be versatile, not only in ballet but also in other styles of dance.”

Beyond the changing physical demands, Mullikin points to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion as driving the evolution of ballet. Whether it’s through seasonal programming or increased arts access, he says the company is always striving to “give audiences the chance to find themselves within the art.”

“The different perspectives that were once relegated to the sidelines are now being included much more readily,” Mullikin says. “And yes, it took a lot of people recognizing where we, as a field, were coming up short. But we’re starting to have that moment of growth. I wouldn’t say

way — that’s the evolution of the language of ballet.”

Such language was on full display in February with Nashville Ballet’s Attitude — a popular program known for showcasing unique collaborations and contemporary movement. This year’s lineup featured three world premieres, including Weep by the award-winning choreographer Yusha-Marie Sorzano.

“We’re seeing choreographers take traditional ideas of structure in choreography and sort of pull them apart,” Mullikin says. “We saw a ton of that in Yusha’s work, where the group came together, sometimes in a really amorphous state — because that’s honestly just more interesting than a perfect circle or a straight line. For me as artistic director, that’s what’s really fascinating about this particular season. It demonstrates that range of form and structure, while also being able to dissect it. It also highlights the versatility of these dancers. They aren’t just doing one thing — they’re doing all the things.”

Mullikin points to company dancer Claudia Monja, who wowed audiences with her evocative solo in Weep, as a perfect case in point.

“There’s a moment where she drops down into a second position, and she’s turned out — and that’s a classical ballet position. But the way she uses her upper back and her body and face is very contemporary. It’s the exact same kind of step done in a way that allows us to feel something completely different. That’s the evolution we’re talking about, and Claudia has absolutely embraced it.”

GET TO STEPPING

Nashville’s dance community is full of options for people of all skill levels

BY KELSEY BEYELER

NASHVILLE’S PROFESSIONAL DANCE scene is clearly a force. But what opportunities are there for dance enthusiasts who aren’t willing or able to dedicate professional careers to the art? Plenty. Our city has a bevy of options for those who want to learn the basics, those who want to start competing and everything in between. The Scene talked to local dance instructors for advice on how to navigate it all.

Whatever your niche, you’re likely to find it in Nashville. Apart from the obvious — the dance floors of Lower Broadway bars and nightclubs — you can easily find groups dedicated to all kinds of dance styles. Swing-dancing enthusiasts can check out the Nashville Swing Dance Club, Swing Dance Nashville or STEP Country Swing and Dance Co. The Nashville Country Dancers create space for contra and English country dancing. There’s also the Global Education Center, which provides multicultural dance classes in forms including Bollywood, Latin dance, capoeira and more.

that we’re there, but there’s certainly an opportunity for us to listen and continue to evaluate our practices and processes.”

For example, at the beginning of each new season, Nashville Ballet fits all of its dancers with custom tights and shoes that match their individual skin tone. Traditional pink dance wear — long the standard in ballet — simply no longer reflects the company’s mission to create a more inclusive community.

“So the aesthetic is changing,” he says. “We’re no longer satisfied with this homogenous, Eurocentric aesthetic of beauty onstage. The real beauty lies with the individual dancer — who they are, and how they’re a part of our community. That’s always been Nashville Ballet’s aspiration — to be a true reflection of our community, as much as we can.”

That means celebrating diverse stories and perspectives, and opening the door to new ideas. But when it comes to the actual language of ballet, which Mullikin defines as “the structure of the technique,” the changes are often subtle — the way the arms are shaped, or the way the knees are bent.

“In ballet, we have no words — we have only our gestures and body position to convey the story. Pantomime is part of that. But how do we change the shape, while still holding onto the proper technique? How do we create new pictures, so that stories can be told in a different

For Monja — who was born in Havana, Cuba, and danced with Cuban National Ballet, Ballet de Camagüey and Joburg Ballet before joining Nashville Ballet in 2021 — it’s all about connecting with audiences.

“It is a very emotional and deliberate process to feel the connection with the audience when casting the story through movement,” Monja says. “I want the viewer to be enticed and feel the passion, the pain, the context of the character who is communicating through movements and harmony.”

Monja says that by working with different techniques and movements, she has developed “a new vision of ballet.”

“Weep is the perfect example of the changing language of ballet,” she adds. “It was a testament to how a student of the arts who is classically trained can interpret and embrace almost opposing movement expressions. Classical movements are pronounced differently to the new-age contemporary expression. Absorbing new movements into my repertoire permits me to create a signature style of movement suited to me — a hybrid movement, if you will.”

And perhaps it’s this hybrid approach that makes Mullikin so hopeful for the future.

“One of the things that really excites me is that we have the ability to tell so many different stories through dance,” he says. “Classical ballet has a place within the canon, but we also recognize that ballet can’t stay stagnant. Just like our community, we’re growing and changing, and there’s something really inspiring about that.” ▼

Those looking for less structured movement can find multiple ecstatic dance sessions around town in any given month. Dance instructor McKay House also hosts bi-weekly contact improvisation classes. The Chrome Bar and Miss Fit offer pole-dancing classes. Plaza Mariachi hosts regular salsa nights on Thursdays. Those who need practice can attend lessons that start at 7 p.m. before the dance floor opens up at 8 p.m. At the American Legion Post 82 in East Nashville, you’ll find folks cutting rugs each week during Honky Tonk Tuesdays. Construct Nashville offers street-style dancing classes like house and break dancing. DancEast Collective, Millennium Dance Complex, TMProductions and the Metro Parks Dance Division offer all kinds of classes. Even professional dance groups such as the Nashville Ballet or New Dialect offer lessons.

“Sometimes we have to shop around for instructors and classes,” says Global Education Center dance instructor Tirra Hargrow. “It’s OK if you go to a class, maybe give it a few times and trust yourself — if it just doesn’t feel right, it more than likely isn’t right. But just keep shopping around until you find the class, the dance final, the dance community that you really like, and it will work for you.”

Hargrow advises beginners to look for instructors who express enthusiasm about teaching new dancers. Likewise, DancEast Collective founder (and District 3 Metro Nashville Public Schools board representative) Emily Masters says to look for phrases like “ beginner,” “open-level” and “welcoming environment.” She also suggests asking if there are ranges of different ages or sizes of participants, or what a class might feel like for beginners.

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

NICK MULLIKIN, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR AND CEO AT NASHVILLE BALLET

There’s an overall welcoming and collaborative atmosphere in Nashville’s dance community, but each class is its own microcosm — so don’t be afraid to contact the studio beforehand to discuss different offerings and the crowds they attract. Sometimes beginner or open-level classes may still bring in experienced dancers, and how newer dancers fare in that environment depends on the teacher — some have more experience balancing different skill levels.

DancEast Collective instructor Lindsay Fine Smith tells the Scene she has been disappointed to see environments where newer dancers were ignored and made to feel unwelcome. She tries to avoid that when she’s teaching by maintaining a playful tone in class, providing flexible instruction that caters to multiple skill levels and giving attention to those who need extra help.

“We’re here to have fun,” says Smith. “If you’re not having fun in dance class, what are we doing? … It’s just setting the right tone to let people feel comfortable and

then just clocking everyone in class just to make sure that everyone is feeling welcome and feeling OK.”

When you’re ready to show off your dance skills, there are lots of ways to get moving. Maybe you just return to class each week, or start seeking out themed dance nights across town. Some studios train dancers to compete, or host showcases for class participants. Once you insert yourself into the dance scene, these kinds of events won’t be hard to find, and you’ll have a supportive community of people to enjoy them with. It might take some courage to get through your first couple of classes, or some time to find the best fit, but several dance instructors tell the Scene that repetition and practice are what lead to results.

“Life is short,” says Hargrow. “Everyone has a first day. … My first day, I was not good. But it felt so good, though. Even in not really understanding all of the moves, it just made me feel invigorated. Dance is a part of the human experience.” ▼

GLOBAL EDUCATION CENTER DANCERS

DANCEAST COLLECTIVE

PHOTO: SARAH BEATY, EYERIS PHOTOGRAPHY

APR 12 & 13 | 7:30 PM

APR 14 | 2 PM

Nashville Symphony

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

MAY 2 TO 4 | 7:30 PM

Nashville Symphony

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor

Gil Shaham, violin

MAY 9 TO 11 | 7:30 PM

FirstBank Pops Series

Amos lee with the Nashville Symphony

MAY 16 TO 18 | 7:30 PM

Classical Series mahler's monumental opus with the Nashville Symphony

MAY 25 | 7:30 PM

MAY 26 | 2 PM

Amazon Movie Series e.t. the extra-terrestrial in concert with the Nashville Symphony

MAY 30 TO JUN 1 | 7:30 PM

JUN 2 | 2 PM

Classical Series

CARMINA BURANA with the Nashville Symphony

Giancarlo Guerrero, music director

MAY 19 | 2 PM

Presentation

5 | 8 PM

JUN 13 TO 15 | 7:30 PM

FirstBank Pops Series

Nashville Symphony | Brent Havens, conductor and arranger

Justin Sargent, vocals | Dan Clemens, bass | Powell Randolph, drums

George Cintron, guitar | John Hines, background vocals

Eddie Williams, saxophone | Kathryn Key, piano and background vocals | Robert Cross, percussion

VOCTAVE: THE CORNER OF BROADWAY & MAIN STREET Presented without the Nashville Symphony

AN EVENING WITH TITUSS BURGESS with the Nashville Symphony

MAY 22 | 7:30 PM

Jazz Series

Marcus Miller with the Nashville Symphony

JUN 20 & 21 | 7:30 PM

Special Event

SMOKEY ROBINSON with the Nashville Symphony

NashvilleSymphony.org/Tickets

THURSDAY, APRIL 11

THEATER

[A GOOD EGG]

THE THEATER BUG: MEGG THE EGG

The Theater Bug is back this weekend with another world-premiere script from its innovative youth writing program, The Playground. Written by Huck Paisley, Megg the Egg offers a “whimsical comedy about the magic of cooking, the worries of overprotective parents and the importance of following your dreams.” Nate Eppler directs a cast featuring Sable Higginbotham in the title role, a terrific youth ensemble and local pros like Lauren Berst, Diego Gomez and Rachel Agee. I’m looking forward to checking out set designs by Will Butler and costumes by Melodie Madden Adams. As this year’s Playground Playwright, Paisley received a wide range of professional guidance and mentorship throughout the development of his play, including rewrites, casting, rehearsal and production. It’s a great program, and a unique opportunity for young writers to tell their own stories onstage. AMY STUMPFL

THURSDAY / 4.11

MUSIC

APRIL 11-14 AT THE 4TH STORY THEATER AT WEST END UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 2200 WEST END AVE. Visit calendar.nashvillescene.com for more event listings

[STRAITJACKETS OUTTA NASHVILLE] 30 AÑOS DE LOS STRAITJACKETS

Music City’s beloved Mexican-wrestlingmasked pioneers of modern surf rock are set to commemorate 30 years as Los Straitjackets with a two-night stand at The 5 Spot. Even among the wave of ’90s surf-revival groups formed in the wake of Quentin Tarantino’s acclaimed neo-noir blockbuster Pulp Fiction — which features a soundtrack ripe with seminal rockers such as The Centurians and Dick Dale — Los Straitjackets stood out with an infectious energy both on record and onstage. Fourteen studio albums, four collaboration albums, eight live albums and countless syncopated dance steps later, the group has evolved well beyond its initial surf outings. I caught their sold-out show at The Franklin Theatre in November backing longtime collaborator and Yep Records labelmate Nick Lowe. The Jackets’ mini set was a jolt of vitality amid an already spirited evening of showmanship that included sentimental versions of Lowe’s signature hits such as “Cruel to Be Kind” and “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace Love and Understanding” — the latter made famous by Elvis Costello. JASON VERSTEGEN APRIL 11-12 AT THE 5 SPOT 1006 FOREST AVE.

FRIDAY / 4.12

MUSIC [MULTITUDES]

MICHAEL HIX W/EVE MARET & ANAGRAMS

In 2022, Nashville Ambient Ensemble had a major project tied to the traveling Light, Space, Surface exhibit of contemporary minimal-ish art that visited the Frist. Eight compositions inspired by pieces in the exhibit, developed as a soundtrack to Frist patrons’ viewing experience, became the group’s second album Light and Space. From there, the group even performed live at the Frist and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the exhibit’s home museum. Friday, ensemble chief Michael Hix will be at West Side arts space Random Sample to showcase some new solo guitar pieces; whether they develop into new NAE material remains to be seen, but Hix is a thoughtful musician, so expect it to be intriguing. Everevolving electronic composer and fellow Nashvillian Eve Maret will join him, as will Atlanta’s Anagrams. The instrumental duo of veteran improvisational players JD Walsh and Jeff Crompton released a fantastic full-length

PHOTO: MA2LA

called Blue Voices in the fall that blends work on stringed instruments (including lap steel), keys and wind instruments that they aptly describe as “jazz/not jazz.” STEPHEN TRAGESER

8 P.M. AT RANDOM SAMPLE

407 48TH AVE. N.

SATURDAY / 4.13

[PERCUSSIONIST SUPREME]

MUSIC

ARI HOENIG

New York drummer, bandleader and composer Ari Hoenig is a superb rhythmic technician and an imaginative, often innovative composer whose work with both small and large groups has stamped him as a vital contributor to the 21st-century jazz scene. He got his early seasoning on the academic front, studying at both the University of North Texas and William Paterson University. He further developed those skills working with the great Philadelphia organist Shirley Scott and honed his talents in the New York City club marketplace. Since relocating to Brooklyn, he’s become both a familiar face and prolific participant, working with a host of top talents, among them the Jean-Michel Pilc Trio, Kenny Werner Trio and Kurt Rosenwinkel Group, as well as bands led by Wayne Krantz, Mike Stern, Richard Bona and Pat Martino. He’s had a steady series of releases as a leader since 2000, from solo sessions to trio dates and genre-bending items to conventional mainstream jazz works. Hoenig will demonstrate not only his facility as a drummer and percussionist, but also his versatility as a composer and interpreter when he teams up with Gadi Lehavi and Ben Tiberio to perform two sets at Rudy’s Jazz Room on Saturday night. RON WYNN

5:30 & 8 P.M. AT RUDY’S JAZZ ROOM

809 GLEAVES ST.

[IN BLOOM]

FESTIVAL

NASHVILLE CHERRY BLOSSOM

FESTIVAL

When cherry blossom trees bloom, it’s a

sure sign that spring is here to stay in Music City. Once upon a time in 2008, the ConsulateGeneral of Japan relocated to our budding city and launched an event to honor the sacred flower. The event formed with a mission to plant 1,000 cherry blossom trees across Nashville, but has since become a symbol of our bond with Japan and the melting pot of culture contained in our city. The free festival begins Saturday at 9:30 a.m. in Public Square Park downtown with hanami (flower viewing) on the 2.5-mile Cherry Blossom Walk. Other festival highlights include contemporary and traditional Japanese art, demonstrations and music, as well as a cosplay contest and the Pups in Pink Parade. There’s no better way to welcome the change in seasons than with a celebration of the flower representing hope and new life. JAYME FOLTZ 9:30 A.M. TO 5 P.M. AT PUBLIC SQUARE PARK

THIRD AVENUE AND UNION STREET

FILM [BE VERY AFRAID]

MIDNIGHT MOVIES: THE FLY

David Cronenberg isn’t necessarily the most mainstream-friendly director out there, but the Canadian horror maestro has flirted with the mainstream on a couple of occasions, most notably with 1986’s The Fly. The second adaption of George Langelaan’s 1957 short story — the 1958 version starring Vincent Price is also worth a watch — The Fly has Cronenberg’s typical gross-out body horror and bleak worldview. But with charisma factories Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis leading the way, The Fly is also funny and romantic in parts. It even won an Oscar for its truly disgusting (and impressive!) practical effects makeup. If you are new to Cronenberg and need somewhere to begin with his vast filmography, The Fly is the perfect starting point. Just make sure to bring a barf bag. LOGAN BUTTS

MIDNIGHT AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.

MUSIC [CLOSE SHAVE] THE TEMPLARS

While David Geffen, MTV’s 120 Minutes

and Spin magazine were raiding the early-’90s American underground for the next big punk act to break, there was a different kind of noise coming out of New York that flew too low for the radar of corporate rock to notice. The East Coast was home to a new wave of DIY punkers who wanted nothing to do with their flannelclad Sub Pop contemporaries. There was an explosion of bands playing every weekend running riots up and down every city and township from Philadelphia to New England. Chief among them were Long Island’s The Templars, a stylishly medieval-themed skinhead unit who set themselves apart by having catchy guitar hooks and a sense of loyalty to the same glam and pub-rock forefathers that the initial U.K. oi bands looked to for inspiration. Though guitarist and frontman Carl Fritscher relocated to Nashville several years ago, the band has never played Music City until now. With an enormous catalog of albums, singles and split EPs (my favorite still being 1995’s Kubrick homage Clockwork Orange Horror Show), there is plenty of music for their set list to draw from. The Jukebox Booking-sanctioned gig also features Buffalo’s Violent Way, Texan street rockers Liberty & Justice, repeat offenders CMI, and the Chicago-style-deep-dish oi of Fear City. Local support will come from master thrashers G.U.N., fresh off of their Midwest tour and armed with new songs for a forthcoming EP. P.J. KINZER

9 P.M. AT VINYL LOUNGE 1414 THIRD AVE. S.

MUSIC [BOLD AS LOVE] WILLI CARLISLE W/NAT MYERS

Willi Carlisle doesn’t do a thing by halves. Every emotional landscape he explores in his latest album Critterland is rendered at the peak of vividness — the love is so bright it almost hurts to imagine, the bitterness makes you think you might need to rinse your mouth, and if the grief were a color it’d be a blue so deep you couldn’t tell it from black. Carlisle exhibits the fierce conviction it takes to tear things down, and so the word “iconoclast” comes to mind, but Critterland is more generative. It’s a country-folk record that looks at the past and shakes its head while looking warily at our tenuous future, and it’s about holding family close without excusing the damage those closest to us can do with their carelessness or callousness. If Carlisle wrote books, I’d bet bookstores and libraries would be eager to host a reading, but song is his medium,

so The Basement East is the place to see him Saturday. Kentucky-residing Korean American bluesman Nat Myers, whose 2023 LP Yellow Peril was produced by Dan Auerbach, will support.

STEPHEN TRAGESER

8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.

SUNDAY / 4.14 MUSIC

[CELEBRATING THE MAGIC OF MARIAN]

WHEN MARIAN SANG

The great American contralto Marian Anderson made history when she performed for an integrated crowd on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, and again in 1955, when she became the first Black artist to sing a lead role at the Metropolitan Opera. This Sunday, you can learn more about Anderson’s extraordinary legacy, as Nashville Opera presents When Marian Sang: A Celebration of the Life of Marian Anderson. Created by Nashville Opera’s engagement director Stephen Carey and based on a picture book by Pam Muñoz Ryan, the piece features a blend of traditional spirituals, popular songs and opera arias. Vinéecia Buchanan (adjunct faculty member at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music) narrates, and soprano Alysha Nesbitt takes on the title role. Audiences may recognize Nesbitt as an alum of both Nashville Opera’s HBCU Fellowship and the Mary Ragland Emerging Artists program. It’s a free, family-friendly performance, but seats are first-come, first-served. AMY STUMPFL

1:30 & 3:30 P.M. AT THE FRIST ART MUSEUM

919 BROADWAY

[BRUNCH WITH THE PIANO MEN]

MUSIC

A TRIBUTE TO BILLY JOEL AND ELTON JOHN

My hometown is known for a lot of kitschy things — old-time photos, hillbilly dinner theater, wax museums and, of course, impersonators and cover bands. If you haven’t figured it out, I grew up down the road from Pigeon Forge, where if you throw a rock in any direction you’ll hit a venue hosting oldies cover artists. I always knew someone who worked for these theaters, so when there was nothing to do on a teenager’s budget, I’d go. Concerts were rare occurrences for me, so I had a soft spot for these shows that I carry still — there really is nothing quite like a live show, covers or not. And let’s be real, a cover band in Music City is going to be an entirely different tier of talent. The Piano Men, founded by Belmont music adjunct Chris Smallwood, is a nine-piece, A-list group of session musicians who give high-energy, notefor-note renditions of all the biggest hits from two of the biggest piano legends of the past century. The Piano Men will be performing their iconic, family-friendly tribute to Elton John and Billy Joel for Sunday brunch, so come hungry and ready to sing along. RYNE WALKER

NOON AT CITY WINERY

609 LAFAYETTE ST.

NASHVILLE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL

WILLI CARISLE

MUSIC

DANNY BROWN

Detroit rapper Danny Brown has had one of the most impressive careers and personal arcs captured over a 10-year period. His breakthrough mixtape/album XXX — or “30,” a reference to the MC’s above-average age for a rising-star rapper — saw Brown crash into the scene with hedonistic and even fatalistic rhymes. The debauchery could be fun and playful, but tracks like the reference-heavy “Die Like a Rockstar” and “DNA” showed a darker side to the MC’s hard-partying ways. A bit more than 10 years later, he dropped Quaranta, Italian for “40” — a clear bookend to the journey started by XXX. It’s not really an album about addiction (although Brown’s recent sobriety is part of the story surrounding the LP), but it is about how life as a full-time musician can wear you down, blur the lines between art and artist and threaten to make you hate the thing you love most. Luckily for fans, Brown ends the album making it clear he won’t be hanging up his mic anytime soon. While the 2023 album isn’t as debaucherous and high-energy as that same year’s collaboration with JPEGMAFIA, Scaring the Hoes, Danny Brown is a born entertainer — even if the show highlights more restrained tracks from Quaranta, you can expect the energy and showmanship to be on full display. He’ll be joined by hyperpop artist Alice Longyu Gao and fellow Bruiser Brigade member Bruiser Wolf. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

8 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL 925 THIRD AVE. N.

MUSIC [MIASMAS]

JOHN CONDIT W/TREVOR’S LIGHTNING PROJECT & KEVIN COLEMAN

Nashville is fertile ground for neo-prog bands and post-John Fahey improvisers. This shouldn’t surprise you — the sheer accumulated weight of all those Nashville musos and dedicated followers of the psych-rock aesthetic makes for a lively scene that traffics in unclassifiable weirdness. Guitarist and singer John Condit led prog band The Inscape on records like 2012’s No Expectations and the 2011 EP Detours. Condit’s music sounds something like early Yes mixed with early metal, with a smidgen of late-period Pretty Things thrown in. That description still doesn’t do justice to the crazed eclecticism of Inscape tracks like 2011’s “Dreams” and the title track for No Expectations, a compendium of heavy rock riffage that lasts for 11 minutes. Condit’s recent work, which includes pedal steel from fellow Nashville rock improviser Luke Schneider, is murky semi-pop — check out this year’s “Not Afraid,” which Condit has released ahead of his forthcoming album Return to the Center. Meanwhile, Kevin Coleman fuses postLeo Kottke guitar with a version of motorik rhythms on his new full-length Imaginary Conversations. The album’s “Truckers to Pulaski” extends various guitar moves lifted from Skip James, Fahey and Peter Lang into a 14-minute blues-Americana fantasia that earns its length. Rounding out the bill are Kentucky

psych rockers Trevor’s Lightning Project, who fuse motorik with metal and prog on their aptly titled 2023 album Miasma EDD HURT

7 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT 1604 EIGHTH AVE. S.

MONDAY / 4.15

MUSIC [GET HEAVEN]

MANNEQUIN PUSSY

Why settle for a band that just delivers cage-rattling punk music or self-exploratory indie rock when there’s a group that does both — really, really well? Enter Mannequin Pussy, the tenured Philadelphia outfit that’s mastered loud-and-quiet guitar music with a collection of albums chronicling often-hidden ideas with a well-balanced dose of growling tenacity and soft-to-the-touch empathy. Need an example? Press play on “I Got Heaven,” the 2024 track examining self-love in a world that often weaponizes religion. As spring rolls into town, it’s hard not to shout along to the near spoken-word verses with windows rolled down and speakers on full blast. The tune kicks off I Got Heaven, the band’s ripping Epitaph Records release that walks a sonic tightrope with songs like indie-pop-rock effort “Nothing Like,” the chaotically cathartic “Of Her,” foot-on-thegas punk cut “OK? OK! OK? OK!” and spacey rock jam “Softly.” Soul Glo opens the show.

MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER

8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.

TUESDAY / 4.16

COMEDY [DON’T LAUGH (I LOVE YOU)] LESLIE LIAO

The only way to enter the dating landscape in 2024 is with a heavy dose of humor. Comedian

Leslie Liao gets it. Liao’s matter-of-fact style of comedy centers on her experiences as a single Chinese American woman living in Los Angeles. Preview Tuesday night’s show by watching her on Netflix’s Verified Stand-Up. At 36, she jokes, “I’ve never been married, so I’ve never met The One. … But I don’t think we should hype up our soulmates. … And I’m not trying to sound mean, but I know he’s not going to be worth the wait. … I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but he’s just going to be some guy named Greg in a graphic tee.” You’ll want to see her before she meets Greg and has to change her whole act. TOBY ROSE

7 P.M. AT ZANIES

2025 EIGHTH AVE. S.

WEDNESDAY / 4.17

FILM [BEARLY BELIEVABLE]

SCIENCE ON SCREEN/ DOC

SPOTLIGHT: GRIZZLY MAN

When I first saw the Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man in 2005, I thought for sure this true, tragic story of amateur quasidelusional environmentalist Timothy Treadwell would inspire heaps of why-do-white-peoplefuck-with-wild-animals jokes from Black comics. (To my knowledge, the only comic who has talked about it is Blue Collar Comedy Tour alum/ cigar-chomping white guy Ron White.) After all, this is about a Carson Kressley-looking failed actor who became a dedicated mountain man, hanging out with grizzlies and giving them nicknames like Rowdy and Mr. Chocolate — until he and his girlfriend got mauled by one in 2003. (It was probably Mr. Chocolate.) In true Herzog fashion, the filmmaker takes video footage Treadwell recorded out in the wild and crafts another critically lauded portrait of a determined — and possibly deranged — man that occasionally veers into dark comedy. (The scene in which Herzog does voice-over

commentary over footage of Treadwell cursing out the National Park Service may elicit some chuckles.) Only the brilliant, batshit Herzog could make a nature doc where the true nature of both animals and humans are equally heavily scrutinized.

CRAIG D. LINDSEY

8 P.M. AT THE BELCOURT THEATRE

2102 BELCOURT AVE.

[HOT ONES]

SPORTS

OMAHA STORM CHASERS VS. NASHVILLE SOUNDS

Being a lifelong Kansas City Royals supporter has not always been emotionally healthy for me. Having seen them make the playoffs only twice in my adult years, I’ve resigned myself to the fate of most small-market baseball fans — hoping for a good run every 10 or 15 years built around young talent who will eventually move on to bigger contracts in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. In 2023 my Royals had nearly twice as many losses as they did wins, and not a single member of their rosters in the farm system made the MLB’s list of top 100 prospects. With very little hope for the future, why would a Kansas City fan in Nashville want to go see the Royals’ Triple-A club, the Omaha Storm Chasers, in person? Because the first 1,000 fans in the gates will receive a Squishmallow replica of the Sounds’ hot chicken mascot, Booster the Rooster, which I can hold as I cry myself to sleep over my baseball heartbreak. And Wednesday night games this year offer the four-pack promotion of four tickets, four hot dogs and four sodas for only $44 — so at least it won’t cost me much to spend my evening as a suffering fan. P.J. KINZER 6:35 P.M. AT FIRST HORIZON PARK 19 JUNIOR GILLIAM WAY

MANNEQUIN PUSSY

APRIL 16

MAY

APRIL 5

10TH

APRIL 19 & 20

HAMID RAHMANIAN

SONG OF THE NORTH

HAMID RAHMANIAN Song of the North

— Toute La Culture

MAY 16-18 BRAVE NEW WORKS LAB 2024

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A LIMINAL PLACE

In the home of the former Stadium Inn, The Sun Room at the new Drift Hotel embraces Nashville’s transitional nature

BY MARGARET LITTMAN

EVEN IN A CITY full of dramatic transformations and constant reinvention, the new Drift Hotel — with its Sun Room bar and Dawn coffeeshop — is notable.

Sure, it might just seem like a nice new bar and a nice new hotel in a city with a lot of those. But The Sun Room, Alexis Soler’s new bar at the Drift Hotel Nashville on Interstate Drive, is much more than that. It’s one of Nashville’s increasingly rare liminal spaces — somewhere locals and tourists don’t just coexist, but meet and hang out. That’s the goal, anyway. It’s also in a physical liminal space, located at an intersection that’s not quite East Nashville but not exactly downtown. The idea behind The Sun Room is transitional too. It’s more than a bar that serves food, but less than a restaurant. It’s

also a hotel lobby, and it could be a place for live music or a creative coworking space.

“I try not to design for Nashville as much as I try to make spaces that Nashville needs, or that [are] lacking for me,” explains Soler, who has been behind several of Nashville’s favorite bars, including the late and still-missed No. 308 and the tiled magnificence of Old Glory.

“I always wanted to do a hotel,” she says.

“That was something that’s just been in the back of my mind for some time. I didn’t know how I was going to get there.”

Soler, who is “curator of food and beverage and vibe creator” at the Drift, grew up in Miami, where hotel bars are a regular part of the city’s nightlife scene.

“In Miami, everyone kind of met up at the

hotel bar before they went out at night because there were so many great lobbies and great vibes, and that’s kind of what I wanted to do with this. … Hotels are just such interesting places to be.”

She notes that the trend toward vacation rentals rather than hotels has further siloed visitors. “You go to your Airbnb, you hang out with the people you came with, and you go to Broadway or drink in your Airbnb, and there’s not a moment where you just integrate into the culture.”

“If all my hopes and dreams come true, it’ll be that this place is one where people can spend the day,” Soler says. “They can come here to work, grab coffee, hang out at the bar and the pool and see sunrises to sunsets.

“The cocktail menu is really close to my heart,” she continues. “I wanted to do a program that was more guest-facing. I wanted a bar that was specifically about the guest’s experience. In recent years, we’ve gotten away from that, and made it more about the bartender and how great they are. That’s just to elevate our industry. And so I just wanted it to be super-simple cocktails, with two to three touches. To put the focus more back on the guest and less on the craft.”

The bar menu requires a lot of advance prep on the part of the bar staff, using juices and infusing spirits. But by the time someone orders a Pangea — with smoked red chili, raspberry and mezcal — it’s quick to make and serve. The same is true of the food menu, with tinned fish,

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

ALEXIS SOLER

cheese boards and oysters.

“Sometimes I just make a menu of something that I want to eat,” Soler says. “It’s just this simple approach. Give me a tinned fish with some accoutrement and some good bread and let me just snack on it. I love sharing food with people I love.”

At Poolside — the bar opening at, yes, Drift’s pool later this spring — the menu will include frozen drinks and buckets of beers.

“I’ve known Alexis for a while, and I’m a big fan of everything she does,” says Edgar Victoria of food truck Alebrije. “I didn’t know what [Drift] was going to be, but if she was involved, I wanted to do it.”

Soler’s vision was to serve Victoria’s Alebrije tacos poolside. He bought a second food truck that is nestled into a custom spot near the poolside bar. The menu will feature tacos and quesadillas, but not exactly what he serves when his other truck is posted up at Never Never or Bar Sovereign. “I try my best to pair the food with the concept,” he says. “I am thinking, like a nice hotel in Miami, we should have one or two seafood items.”

The Sun Room has a small corner that has already served as a stage for live music, and Poolside will host DJs. Movies will play on a screen in the basement, and day passes will be available for locals to use the pool.

For those who remember what the Drift building used to be — The Stadium Inn — it might be a shock to see the light-flooded lobby with midcentury modern styling, local art, live plants and floor-to-ceiling windows. A lyric from Lambchop’s 2012 song “Gone Tomorrow” kept floating through my head as I recently spent time in the lobby: “The wine tasted like sunshine in a basement.”

The official video “Gone Tomorrow” — an aptly named song for Nashville if there ever was one — was filmed at The Stadium Inn. The video, which shined a light on wrestling matches that took place in an old hotel banquet hall between 2005 and 2013, featured the late Joseph “Jocephus” Hudson.

The building has stood on this corner since 1965, and was home to a host of budget hotels before it was The Stadium Inn. Zack Dixon, Drift’s GM, shares “something in between a rumor and a fact”: Elvis Presley, they say, stayed in the hotel before it was The Stadium Inn. (The penthouse now has a gold toilet as a nod to Elvis’ apocryphal visit.) Before it closed, The Stadium Inn was a place where people could rent a room for a week or a night or a month or even a year, and was a safety net for people who couldn’t afford or find housing elsewhere.

The hotel has been completely gutted. Concrete columns — some of which sport faint graffiti — and the concrete floor are the only original elements. The intent was to save some exterior brickwork, Dixon says, but the 2020 tornado had other plans.

The renovation brought in new soundproof windows — it’s remarkable how little road noise you hear while you stay in a hotel next to the interstate — and art and design elements from the city’s best creative minds, some of whom

Soler has worked with on other projects. There’s tile from Lindsay Sheets’ Red Rock Tileworks (she’s the one who did the tile at Old Glory as well) and custom tapestry room numbers from Relic Home’s Alyssa Spyridon. Britt Soler, Alexis’ sister, is a woodworker who made the striking handles for the hotel’s front door.

Drift, The Sun Room, the Dawn coffeeshop and Poolside are opening their doors in a time of transition for this corner — just as construction has started on the new Tennessee Titans stadium and discussion is underway on what the surrounding East Bank will look like. The hotel’s penthouse — with Elvis’ gold toilet but otherwise understated furnishings — will likely be an in-demand spot for pre-gaming or afterparties for events at the new stadium.

Speaking with the Scene for the 2019 cover story “Hard Times at the Stadium Inn,” Lindsey Krinks — the co-founder of local homeless outreach organization Open Table Nashville — said: “If Stadium Inn closed tomorrow, it would create a silent crisis where dozens — if not hundreds — of vulnerable, economically disenfranchised people hit the streets in even more precarious conditions than they were in before.”

And indeed, Nashville — both right now and in its next phase — needs better safety nets for people in need. That’s not the Drift Hotel’s mission. But unlike many new developments that ignore Nashville’s past, Drift is not trying to operate in a vacuum. Soler is looking at compiling photos from the building’s history to display somewhere in the hotel, and wrestling organizers have reached out to Soler about bringing wrestling back for one night only. She’s undecided but says many folks who have stopped by are enthusiastic about the possibility of a temporary parking-lot event redux.

Maybe Lambchop sings its best again: “You can find me behind the stadium / Along the course of the purling river.” ▼

PUDDING BUDGET

Talking to The State’s Thomas Lennon about pudding, balls and everything

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

THE MTV SKETCH-COMEDY show The State aired for only 25 episodes in 1994 and 1995. But for those of us who were teenagers in the mid-’90s and whose pop-cultural awakenings occurred alongside Nirvana Unplugged and the first few seasons of The Real World, those years were formative, and The State’s cast members — who’ve been performing together since the late ’80s as a comedy troupe also called The State — are revered. We’ll all be gathered at the Ryman like true believers, chanting in unison about being outta here and dipping our balls in whatever, as The State performs its cult-classic sketches live onstage.

The Scene recently spoke with one of The State’s most recognizable figures — Thomas Lennon, who was half of LeVon and Barry and the porcupine of “Porcupine Racetrack,” and who’s gone on to create iconic characters like Reno 911’s Lt. Dangle — about what to expect. Turns out The State is just as excited to bring its absurd-but-sincere brand of comedy, its “Froggy Jamboree” and its “U.S. Men’s Bikini Thong Rollerblading Team” to Nashville as we are to watch them do it.

The State reunion tour — it’s such a good idea. I saw the Pixies play Doolittle in its entirety at the Ryman, and this feels sort of similar. This is very much similar. It’s not like we play an album in its entirety, but we for sure do a lot of hits, including new versions of old hits. It’s not a show where you are going to want to take a long bathroom break. The show does not have a half-hour lull anywhere.

I hear you’ll be doing “Porcupine Racetrack” — in the original costume. Oh the costume. There was a really pretty amazing moment that happened on our first leg of the tour when we were playing Denver. I was in the costume, and I didn’t

IN HIS LANE

Comedian Matteo Lane continues to expand his footprint

BY JASON SHAWHAN

realize it but I had full-blown COVID. I think I had a fever of about 104 or something like that, and I didn’t know what was going on, and I was starting to sort of hallucinate and fade out. And I was like, “Could it be that this is how I go? Like actually onstage in the old porcupine outfit?” And I was like, “In some ways it’s the best end of that story.”

Well I’m so glad you didn’t die, but that would have been amazing. “He went the way he lived — in a sweaty porcupine costume.”

Obviously the original sketch is fantastic, but you also did a version in 2020 during lockdown, during that weird time when entertainment was so earnestly wanted that weird ideas came out of the woodwork. Everyone’s a little stir-crazy and making use of what’s hanging around to make costumes, but there’s a moment when the Zoom cuts to Kevin Allison and he’s in this S&M gimp suit with these metal sex toys, and it’s just so lovely — just such a window into his real life. Absolutely. And that’s I think one of the great things about The State — we’ve always considered ourselves a fairly punk-rock kind of comedy group. You know, I think a lot of shows would have been like, “Hey, Kevin, maybe don’t do that, like, complete leather bondage gear for our ‘Porcupine Racetrack’ redux?” But with The State, it was like, “Yeah, this is exactly who we are.”

Visit nashcomedyfest.com for the full lineup of this year’s Nashville Comedy Festival, taking place April 12-21 at the Ryman, Zanies, Bridgestone Arena, TPAC and more.

The State

7 p.m. Monday, April 15, at the Ryman as part of the Nashville Comedy Festival

I’m a huge fan, and I assume that everyone in the audience will be as well. But I wonder if there’s going to be someone who’s never seen an episode, and is just like, “I like comedy. I want to go see this.” I’d love to know their perspective. I’m sure some people have come to see the show by accident, or with someone else who didn’t know what the sketches

FOR SO LONG comedy as an organized system of exhibition has done its queer male artists dirty. The ’80s heyday of comedy clubs built up careers and expectations for a space where knee-jerk homophobia held sway, and in response to that, you noticed queer audiences eschewing those kinds of situations for women’s voices — divas who hewed out a ribald, liberated and fun space where gay men as an audience could feel OK just having a good time. It was a legacy that started with Sandra Bernhard and Judy Tenuta and continues to this day with Kathy Griffin, Nicole Byer and Mae Martin.

And for some reason, for queer male comics, there was always this roadblock that the Dices and Kinisons (and lately, the Chappelles and Gervaises) laid down. But Matteo Lane has been breaking down those barriers with tenacity and elegance, as befits a polyglot who has worked in opera and as a visual artist.

Lane has a unique gift that goes beyond his ability to thread crowd work into a set that feels breezy and jazzy, yet understands the rewards of structure.

are. Because it almost feels a little cult. But I think if you’ve never seen The State, you’re not going to feel in any way excluded from the fun of this show. You might wonder, “Jesus, how are they famous from stuff this stupid? Wow, these are some dumb premises for sketches. But boy, they really, really commit.” Yeah, that’s the thing about The State — it really didn’t necessarily matter what the premise was. Because we commit so hard to every idea. Yes! I’m thinking of the tape-on-the-face people, the spaghetti and fried bumblebees. The State is like the comedy version of that trope of like — I could listen to Whitney Houston sing the phone book. You guys are so naturally funny that you could read the phone book and I would laugh. Oh, “The State reads the phone book” is absolutely an idea that we

He never pulls punches or sugarcoats the world he details, but he is relatable to an extent that seems like it should be at odds with the earthy matter-of-factness with which he talks about gay stuff. All you need to do is check out his Hair Plugs and Heartache special from last year to see how he can demolish a crowd in this fashion — a diaphanous glove around an iron wrist. For any artist, the modern world is a nonstop hustle. No one is allowed to be just one thing, so the entire taxonomy of the past in comedy that allowed entire careers to be built off of one attribute or perspective just doesn’t work anymore. Lane’s Instagram stories, his cooking videos, the I Never Liked You podcast he does with fellow comedian Nick Smith; they’ve all allowed him to use social media’s algorithms to get his work out there and into the most unexpected of spaces. With the way the internet works, lots of people can luck into attention — for a little bit. But the way Lane has expanded his footprint, building a career out of every kind of audience, is indicative of the kind of adaptivity that anyone who enjoys the comic arts loves to see, furthering the reach, expanding the grasp. ▼

MATTEO LANE

8 P.M. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, AT THE RYMAN AS PART OF THE NASHVILLE COMEDY FESTIVAL

would probably try to do, and then we’d have big fights about it. But I feel like we probably could land it for at least the first 20 minutes.

Anything specific you have planned for Nashville? I guess it’s like that old expression about bringing sand to the beach or coals to Newcastle, but I am bringing a very old banjo to Nashville for the “Froggy Jamboree.” But let me just say this. For some reason playing the Ryman in Nashville is the show that The State as a group is super excited about. I think we feel a little pressure to make that a particularly amazing show. It’s just a cool venue that looms so large. And get ready for partial nudity. I’m not sure if the Ryman does that, but there’s going to be some. To be honest, it’s mostly just me.

To read an extended version of this interview, visit nashvillescene.com ▼

PHOTO: ALEX SCHAEFER

DEEP PURPLE

Nashville Rep brings The Color Purple to brilliant life

BY AMY STUMPFL

THERE’S A GORGEOUS scene late in the second act of The Color Purple, currently onstage at Nashville Repertory Theatre. Here, the set’s towering back wall slowly opens to reveal a warm, shimmering glow. Celie — the story’s long-suffering protagonist — turns to face the light with her head held high, and for the first time, we get the sense that she’s finally free to live life on her own terms. It’s a striking image, and just one of many delights to be found in this outstanding production.

Based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film, The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a poor Black woman struggling to survive all manner of abuse and oppression in early-20th-century Georgia. It’s a sprawling tale that spans decades and crosses continents, and of course inspired the 2023 film directed by Blitz Bazawule. I must admit that when I first encountered the musical — catching the first national tour in Los Angeles in 2008, even as the original 2005 Broadway production was still chugging along at the Broadway Theatre — I struggled to connect with what felt like a disjointed narrative and overstuffed design.

Fortunately, Nashville Rep’s current staging sticks more closely to the sleek yet satisfying 2015 revival. Yes, Marsha Norman’s book is still rather simplistic, glossing over harrowing themes of rape, incest and racial violence. But the polished score — crafted by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray — offers a solid blend of gospel, blues and jazz. Director Reggie Law (impressive in his Rep debut) manages to strike a more balanced tone than I’ve seen in other productions, while eliciting some really marvelous performances from his cast.

As Celie, Carli Hardon provides the beating heart of this musical, turning in a thoughtful and beautifully measured portrayal that not only captures the depths of her character’s pain, but also the strength of her spirit. She’s in fine form vocally, whether offering the tender “Somebody Gonna Love You” or the lively “Miss Celie’s Pants.” But Hardon takes care not

to rush Celie’s journey, giving us a believable transformation, marked by hard-won grace and dignity. By the time she reaches Act II’s pivotal “I’m Here,” we feel that she’s really earned each gut-wrenching lyric.

Meanwhile, Tamica Nicole is bold and appropriately sultry as jazz singer Shug Avery, absolutely cutting loose in “Push da Button.” But there are unexpected bits of vulnerability too, which help solidify the bond Shug shares with Celie. Nicole’s rendition of “Too Beautiful for Words” is especially lush, and “The Color Purple” provides another highlight.

Shinnerrie Jackson inhabits the mighty Sofia with great style and swagger. Maya Antoinette Riley is excellent as Celie’s devoted sister Nettie. It’s lovely to see Riley and Hardon reunited onstage (both were sensational in Studio Tenn and TPAC’s 2022 staging of Aida), and their sisterly connection is on full display in “Huckleberry Pie” and “Our Prayer.”

Not surprisingly, women are front-and-center throughout The Color Purple. There’s even a trio of church ladies (played by the marvelous Lindsey Kaye Pace, Yolanda Treece and Meggan Utech), serving as a gossipy Greek chorus of sorts, providing sly commentary and some much-needed humor. But there’s also ample support from Elliott Winston Robinson (brutal yet clearly broken as Mister) and Gerold Oliver (perfectly charming as Harpo). In fact, the entire ensemble is fantastic — executing Joi Ware’s lyrical, often-jubilant choreography in big numbers like “Shug Avery Comin’ to Town” and “African Homeland.” Of course, music director Dion Treece and his stellar band also deserve credit for delivering such memorable musical moments.

Bathed in Dalton Hamilton’s sumptuous lighting, Joonhee Park’s rugged clapboard set easily takes us from the local church to Harpo’s juke joint and even a far-off village in Africa. And Nia Safarr Banks’ period costumes add another layer, with the monochromatic color palette becoming more vibrant as Celie comes into her own.

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It’s a story that’s been told many times and in many ways, but rarely with such focus. And in the capable hands of this cast and creative team, The Color Purple feels like a revival in every sense of the word, offering a true celebration of strength, hope and self-discovery. ▼

UPCOMING EVENTS

PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENT FOR TICKETS & UPDATES

THURSDAY, APRIL 11

6:30PM

JAMES PATTERSON with JOHN M. SEIGENTHALER at LANGFORD AUDITORIUM

The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians

6:30PM

LEIF ENGER at PARNASSUS

I Cheerfully Refuse

2:00PM

SATURDAY, APRIL 13

BOOK SIGNING with MAREN MORRIS & KARINA ARGOW at PARNASSUS

Addie Ant Goes On an Adventure

3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 | Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243

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Nashville Rep presents The Color Purple Through April 14 at TPAC’s Polk Theater

GRADY SPENCER & THE WORK WITH VINNIE PAOLIZZI

WMOT Roots Radio Presents Finally Fridays feat. ISMAY, DEBRA GRINER & SARAH GAYLE MEECH

FRI 4/12 12:00 8:00 8:00 8:00

THE FLOATING MEN

Backstage Nashville Daytime Hit Songwriters Show feat. JIM COLLINS, GORDIE SAMPSON, BILL LUTHER & AARON

RAITIERE + ANDREW GROOMS

THE FLOATING MEN

THE FLOATING MEN

Bluebird on 3rd feat. LANCE MILLER, BOBBY TOMBERLIN & MARLA CANNON-GOODMAN with MICHAEL CONLEY + ELIZA HARRISON SMITH

THE TIME JUMPERS

Sandra McCracken with Taylor Leondart SOLDOUT! SOLDOUT! SOLDOUT!

August Christopher 25th Anniversary Tour with Heartbreaker - A Tribute to Pat Benatar + American Scarecrow

BACKSTAGE AT 3RD Comedy on 3rdSecret Lineup of Top Local & Touring Coemdians!

l.a. edwards w/ jade jackson

may 3

nolan taylor w/ zandi holup willi carlisle w/ nat myers taylor acorn w/ world's first cinema mannequin pussy w/ soul glo rare hare 19 the history of heavy metal alice phoebe lou w/ sam burton giant rooks w/ friedberg soft kill w/ gumm & liberty & justice dylan leblanc w/ airpark ytb fatt w/ plug perry birdtalker w/ michael logen the secret sisters w/ jon muq twrp

rock & roll playhouse: The music of dolly parton for kids (12PM)

Donny Benét w/ otnes (8PM)

Black Country, New Road w/ camera picture

Spanish Love Songs & Oso Oso w/ sydney sprague & worry club pond w/ 26fix

gloom girl mfg w/ the weird sisters and wilby

may 4

may 5

may 6

may 7

may 9

may 10

may 11

may 13

may 14

may 15

may 16

may 18

may 22

may 23

may 24

may 25

may 26

may 30

may 31

jun 1

virginia man w/ creature comfort (9pm)

highwater w/ tommy womack & the ruins highwater w/ east kin

John Condit w/ Trevor's Lightning Project & Kevin Coleman

Helena Hallberg hustle souls

jonathan & abigail peyton w/ Will Overman (7pm)

peytan porter (9pm)

high fade w/ juke of june (9pm)

sierra carson w/ ethan regan (7pm)

apr 19

rickshaw billie's burger patrol w/ black venus (9pm)

the emo band live karaoke party psychedelic porn crumpets w/ spoon benders holly humberstone

nate smith & friends

sim w/ fame on fire, within destruction & crystal lake adeem the artist w/ Flamy Grant & Brandi Augustus enter shikari josh meloy alice merton Drowning Pool, Saliva, & Alien Ant Farm w/ above snakes dead poet society w/ andres hannah wicklund augustana w/ verygently wild child w/ oh he dead real estate w/ water from your

apr 20

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apr 21

apr 22

apr 22

apr 23

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apr 24

apr 25

apr 25

apr 27

apr 27

the welters w/ liv & jude (5:30pm)

ballhog! w/ the phoenix lights (8pm)

the tumbleweeds w/ levon

the wandering hearts (7pm)

launder (9pm)

cody belew (7pm)

gaby moreno (7pm)

the last revel (9pm)

andrew cushin w/ jacob & the dazey chain (7pm) the bright light social hour (9pm)

stephanie lambring w/ adam wright (7pm) the rainbow show (9pm)

RECKONING

My Black Country paints a fuller picture of Black artists’ relationship with country music

BY BRITTNEY M c KENNA

ALICE RANDALL’S My Black Country was a lifetime in the making.

The Nashville multihyphenate’s new memoir and accompanying collaborative album draw from Randall’s four-plus decades as a songwriter, professor, author and mother. Together they offer a glimpse at the life of a Black woman who deeply loves a genre that doesn’t typically love her back: country music.

“In some ways, the book truly, truly started 41 years ago when I moved [to Nashville],” Randall tells the Scene. “Some of those songs, like ‘Girls Ride Horses Too,’ also date to the ’80s. This really started way, way, way back.”

The impetus for this project is a bit more recent. A few years ago, Randall was living in an apartment downtown near the Cumberland River while working on her 2020 novel Black Bottom Saints, a vibrant tribute to her childhood hometown, Detroit. She was asked to create a Spotify playlist of songs she’d written, but a problem quickly presented itself: The songs, all recorded by white artists, didn’t capture Randall’s vision or experience.

“I was very frustrated when I was listening to those old songs, how the identities of the heroes and sheroes that I had tried to capture — this sort of Black West, Black South, the rural South, and some of the migrated-north urban Black South — had been erased from those songs by the recordings,” she says. “So I started to imagine there would be something different.”

Randall first envisioned “one great voice going through the songbook” to choose the songs that most resonated with them. Randall cites her daughter, author and poet Caroline Randall Williams, for helping brainstorm and enlist the album’s impressive roster of singers. Among them are Adia Victoria, Rissi Palmer, Allison Russell and Rhiannon Giddens.

Williams met Giddens in the mid-Aughts, while Williams interned in the music depart-

ment of the 2007 film Great Debaters. Giddens’ then-band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, performed in the film, and Williams, a quickly converted fan, shared the music with Randall, who fell in love too. Both Williams and Randall would cross paths with many of the other artists on the record in later years, giving the music a lived-in, familial feel.

“This album was everything I had wished for in 40 years,” says Randall. “Hearing these songs be fully real was a dream come true. [These women] rode to the rescue of my legacy. … The music business can be brutal and crushing. The generosity and the genius that these women brought to the party of the album was just extraordinary.”

The first track released from the record is a perfect example. The rendition of “Went for a Ride” cut by Radney Foster for his 1992 debut Del Rio, TX 1959 emphasizes a nostalgic view of the Old West. Adia Victoria’s version on My Black Country is astonishingly different: Though she sings all the same words, her delivery and the arrangement emphasize the description of cowboy life as unforgiving that’s right there in the lyrics but obscured by the production of the earlier version.

Randall returns the favor, exploring the legacies of several Black country stars in the book My Black Country. She weaves her own story into those of DeFord Bailey, Ray Charles, Lil Hardin, Herb Jeffries and Charley Pride. She connects the dots between her love for country music in her youth and how those artists helped her find her own path, all while preserving and celebrating the creative feats of pioneering Black artists who have largely been ignored by the broader country machine.

“Black country geniuses rode in to rescue my legacy,” she says. “I hope I have done that fiercely. There’s a wonderful song on the new Beyoncé album [Cowboy Carter] called ‘Protec-

HEART OF THE MATTER

Aaron Lee Tasjan looks in and reaches out on Stellar Evolution

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

“AT THE END of the day, for better or worse, it’s Aaron Lee Tasjan music — you can’t get it anywhere else,” says the singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer with a hearty laugh.

There are moments throughout Tasjan’s aptly named fifth solo LP Stellar Evolution that may remind you of artists as different as ’90s Technicolor vocal-pop revivalists Jellyfish, rock ’n’ roll hero Tom Petty, songwriter’s songwriter John Prine and electroclash titans Fischerspooner. There’s a rabbit hole of influences you can go down with Tasjan — prior to settling in Nashville about a decade ago, he played at different times with glammy rock outfit Semi Precious Weapons, revived proto-punks New York Dolls and Georgia rock legends Drivin N Cryin — though he prefers not to. However, he points

tor.’ It’s a mama song. Ray Charles didn’t need any protection. But I hope I have been the protector, in some very significant ways, of DeFord Bailey’s legacy, Lil Hardin’s legacy, Herb Jeffries’ legacy — because they need protection. I just had the joy of celebrating with Mr. Ray Charles and Mr. Charley Pride, because they didn’t need any protection.”

Randall’s tour in support of My Black Country starts April 10 in Brooklyn, the day after the book is out, and visits Parnassus Books on April 12, release day for the album. (Tickets were sold out at press time.) She’ll be the honored guest at the third anniversary celebration for Black Opry, an organization that’s been working hard to foster community among and support visibility for Black country and roots artists, April 25 at City Winery.

Randall carefully chose each location for the tour, noting a historical or personal connection to each. Her June 7 appearance at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, for example, is noteworthy for the institution’s understanding of the significance of both Randall’s work and Black country music more broadly. That museum, Randall says, “approached [her] first to collect [her] artifacts of country music” — notably, not a

out that the jazz guitar solo on the breezy Evolution track “Ocean Drive” owes a big debt to George Benson.

What defines “Aaron Lee Tasjan music” more than the ever-expanding sound is the lyrical style he’s cultivated. It’s heartfelt and thoughtful but conversational; even in the rare moments in his songs that call for dramatic singing, he always comes across as if he’s talking to one person. Tasjan has a well-developed knack for discussing human nature and needs in an honest and frequently funny way that also gives grace to folks, including himself when he needs it.

The theme at Stellar Evolution’s core is how important it is to have a supportive network to rely on when big changes and challenges inevitably come. Tasjan feels like he’s found a home in the greater Nashville music community, and much of the new album is specifically responding to the dehumanization of queer people like himself. It is by no means new or unique to Tennessee, but has been a big part of our state legislature’s agenda recently, through continual attacks on human rights for the LGBTQ community.

“People sometimes want to say, ‘Oh, this music is just for trans people … because the artist making it is trans,’ or something,” says Tasjan, who is

My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall out Friday, April 12 via Oh Boy

Author event 6:30 p.m. April 12 at Parnassus Books

My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present and Future published April 9 by Simon and Schuster

Black Opry Third Anniversary Celebration 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25, at City Winery

Nashville-based institution.

That anecdote is a resounding endorsement of the necessity of Randall’s My Black Country project, as Nashville has yet to recognize — or even acknowledge — the majority of Black artists’ contributions to country music. Randall reflects on Hardin, who also wrote a memoir; tragically, the manuscript was lost to time, leaving her story never fully told.

“I learned from Lil the absolute importance of telling your own story, and how important that will be to other people. I am the only Black woman who’s made it 41 years in country music, as far as I know, who’s also seen some success.”▼

bisexual. “That’s just wrong. These stories, when you really hear them, are everyone’s stories, and in that way, I feel a duty to share mine. And make sure that people know that I’m different in some ways, but in so many other ways, I see their face in the mirror when I look at my own.”

The record is a parade of highlights, starting with “Alien Space Queen,” a bopping electronically enhanced ode to a trans femme friend. Later there’s the synth-kissed snarly rocker “Horror of It All,” in which Tasjan looks back at times he’s felt pressure to downplay fundamental elements of his identity like his sexuality, in which he concludes: “Gotta be myself now / ’Cause everyone else is already taken / So honey, let’s shake it.” Poignant moments abound as well. “Dylan Shades” is a gentle examination of how hard it can be to be vulnerable in a relationship, while “Nightmare” looks at living as a queer person under constant threat of violence. It includes a harrowing self-eulogy: “I want all my friends to know I love ’em / Just in case I should disappear / I don’t have much to leave for you, but darling / Just sing this song and I will still be here.”

Tasjan explores an array of related topics and makes good use of his finely tuned sense of humor. “The Drugs Did Me,” about getting sober, begins

with funny anecdotes like being so high he forgot to put on pants before going to the mailbox. Gradually, he reveals the dark place he found himself in, singing, “I saw love but imagined danger / Ready to die just for a laugh.”

In “I Love America Better Than You,” a pointed critique of American exceptionalism that has evolved over several years in Tasjan’s repertoire, he doesn’t exclude himself; the hook changes every time it comes around, but he always mentions how much he likes hot dogs.

Ultimately, Tasjan feels like he’s struck the perfect balance between his need to lose himself in working on his music and his need to reach out and connect with the community that inspires and supports him.

“Living in a place like Tennessee where they’re trying to have drag bans — where, you know, being a gay person becomes illegal [in] a couple of towns for a day, right? Seeing someone like me, or seeing Adeem the Artist, Mya Byrne, Lizzie No — so many of us that are a part of what’s happening here and beyond — telling those stories makes you feel not so alone. We’re just tremendously isolated now, and I think the value of feeling like you’re not all by yourself is maybe worth more than it ever has been.” ▼

MUSIC: THE SPIN

KATY DID

BY KATHERINE OUNG

EIGHT HOURS BEFORE their Drkmttr set, Katy Davidson of Dear Nora had a problem. While touring solo under their band’s moniker, they hadn’t been traveling with an amp, and had forgotten to line one up for their performance in Nashville.

Cassie Berman, who was opening Sunday night, pulled through. The show that almost didn’t happen did, with the help of Berman’s 31-year-old Fender Bassman — which she bought at 18 to play bass for the first band she was ever a part of and has been using ever since.

MTTRS OF THE HEART: DEAR NORA’S

7AM TO 4PM CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE EVENT 4-12PM OPEN

Though Davidson’s mostly been calling up old acquaintances to be openers, they’d never met Berman before; she was instead a friend of the venue. A longtime Nashville resident, Berman drew acclaim and piqued curiosity as a lyricist, vocalist and occasional bassist of the pioneering indie-rock band Silver Jews, fronted by her husband David Berman until its dissolution in 2009.

Berman has been playing solo sparingly since her husband’s death five years ago — about twice a year, she estimated. Performing with just her acoustic guitar, Berman admitted her nervousness, how she still felt new to playing by herself instead of in a group. She eased into a rendition of “Slow Education” off the 2001 Silver Jews album Bright Flight. On Silver Jews recordings, Cassie shines through as a light, lilting companion to David Berman’s distinguishable deadpan rasp. Live, her voice took on a new, deeper tenor — warm and full-bodied, though still radiant — as she recited the familiar lines, “Oh, I’m lightning / Oh, I’m rain / Oh, it’s frightening / I’m not the same.”

Berman’s also still writing songs these days. Though none has been released as of yet, many are inspired by or dedicated to musicians she loves, like “Arthur,” after cellist and singer Arthur Russell. She closed her set with two more Silver

Jews songs from Tanglewood Numbers: “The Poor, the Fair and the Good” and a reworked version of “Animal Shapes” with the lyrics, “Are the lights on the signs that line Charlotte Avenue,” replaced with a reference to Dickerson Pike, where Drkmttr is located.

Like Berman, Davidson struck a solitary figure onstage with only a guitar as accompaniment. Davidson promised to play tunes both old and new, starting with “shadows” and the title track from Dear Nora’s most recent album human futures. For more than 25 years, Davidson’s songwriting has questioned the incongruity between nature’s magnificence and modernity’s stifling yet sinister banality, and “human futures” brings this thesis into clear-eyed focus. Lyrics like, “I remember rivers, I remember streams,” and, “The codes, they keep us shopping / and the data’s always watching” chafe against each other, but are buoyed by Davidson’s earnest, ever-playful tone and presence.

The last time Dear Nora performed in Nashville — 19 years ago — it was with a full band, in a vastly different city, in a very carpeted house. Davidson noted that songs credited to them off albums like 2000’s Dreaming Out Loud and 2004’s Mountain Rock were written by someone who’s a stranger to them now. New meanings emerged

as they played old refrains. “Cause now it is said there’s a change,” they sang in “The Lonesome Border, Pt. 1,” “and I sense the change in me.” When the set neared its end, Davidson asked the audience what they wanted to hear. Clamors for “Second Birthday” bounced around, but Davidson admitted they didn’t actually know how to play that one, so the crowd settled on “Second Guess.”

It’s hard to not run into the artists who grace the small stage of a venue like Drkmttr. After the show, Berman stood among a group of friends who’d come to see her play, while Davidson manned a merch table and chatted with concertgoers. Ghosts roamed the room: Davidson’s past selves, Berman’s late husband. Berman told me after the show that a lot of Silver Jews songs are difficult for her to play now that he’s gone, so she chose the ones that felt easy and fun. She said of her new songs: “Some of them belong to me, and some of them belong to David.”

In the announcement for the tour, Davidson explained that their own personal and musical future is uncertain after its run ends. Whatever new direction they — and Berman — decide to go, Nashville is fortunate to have witnessed this rare meeting of past and present, this conversation between two inimitable musical minds. ▼

Stellar Evolution out Friday, April 12, via Blue Élan Playing May 2 at The Blue Room at Third Man Records

PHOTO: MATT WEST

KATY DAVIDSON

PHOTO: SHERVIN LAINEZ

LET’S GET PHYSICAL

Our quarterly look at new and essential works of physical media, from Dune ’84 to The Drifter

BY JASON SHAWHAN

THERE WAS A TIME when streaming shaped the discourse. It wasn’t that long ago, when the pandemic first started (and it hasn’t ended), when Netflix and Prime and the various and sundry Pluses were throwing heaps of money at “new content” (their words) and the occasional beloved classic, that it felt like streaming could actually be the wave of the future — everything could be accessible and nothing need be out of reach (for someone with internet access and the ability to pay for it). And then things started disappearing. The streaming purge was not even immediately noticeable (they never start with massively popular things) unless you were looking for weird animation, or work by minority creatives, or that thing half-remembered from childhood that was driving you crazy with the impact of your own forgetfulness.

But then it accelerated — unclear factors behind what managed to get subsequent seasons, big deal talk that somehow never manifested itself, and then criminal-against-art David Zaslav decided that it made more sense to scrap finished works of art for tax purposes. And now, all of a sudden, the most mainstream places (venues that haven’t even said the word “DVD” in 15 years and that don’t even know UHD exists) are talking about the value of physical media and libraries when it comes to preserving art.

Far be it from us at the Scene not to help out in some capacity. And thus, Let’s Get Physical — our new quarterly look at new and essential works that can be held safe against the grabbing hands of CEOs and finance freaks who believe in endless unsustainable growth and not in aesthetics. So gear up for our dive into the emotional video store of whatever the hell the modern marketplace is.

DUNE ’84 ON ULTRA HD BLU-RAY (ARROW)

What with the two-part Denis Villeneuve take on Frank Herbert’s legendary 1965 sci-fi novel still sitting comfortably in theaters around the world, there’s no better time to take a look at Arrow’s impeccable pressing of the 1984 David Lynch version of Dune. Compromised, but also unafraid of the inherent weirdness of the Duneiverse, this film is a remarkable vision, and Arrow’s package for it is simply stunning — a transfer that is true to the film’s celluloid origins and the many complicated effects processes that went into it (pretty much all of them). There’s a great feature-length documentary, some deleted scenes and some great featurettes on different production aspects, and in some of the steelbook pressings, you get a reproduction of the poster art as well. If you dig wild sci-fi, or if you’re eager to explore more David Lynch, this is an easy start and a gorgeous presentation. See also: Max Evry’s exceptional oral history of the making of this film, A Masterpiece in Disarray,

now available from bookstores everywhere.

THE DRIFTER BLU-RAY (KINO LORBER)

Filmmaker and personality Pat Rocco isn’t particularly well-known outside of queer cinema studies, but that’s thankfully changing due to the efforts of scholar Elizabeth Purchell (Ask Any Buddy) and the work of the good folks at Kino Lorber, who’ve given this West Coast riff on Midnight Cowboy a proper release after 50 years in limbo. Rocco was a Renaissance man who worked in documentary and narrative cinema for years, making all manner of films that explored the gay experience. (See also: documentary Pat Rocco Dared.) KL’s package for this film also includes four of Rocco’s many short films, spanning genres from experimental freakout to half-hour softcore dramas, and what it does is give an essential starting point for this fascinating figure in film history.

muculence, exactly the detail with which it was photographed. Computers can do all manner of magic, but this is just a staggering achievement in things that were built and sculpted by brilliant artists with deeply twisted imaginations. There’s also a great featurette on the many creatures in the film, as well as interviews with co-stars Ernie Hudson and Hector Elizondo.

EXISTENZ ON ULTRA HD BLU-RAY (VINEGAR SYNDROME)

Visit nashvillescene.com for our review of Civil War opening at the Belcourt and Regal and AMC locations Friday, April 12.

LEVIATHAN ON ULTRA HD BLU-RAY (KINO LORBER)

The history of genre cinema is packed to the gills with films that had a great idea or moments of invention. But 1989’s Leviathan (from Tombstone/Rambo: First Blood Part II director George P. Cosmatos) is distinctive in a way that no film has tried to top in the intervening 35 years. During preproduction, the creative team had more than 40 monster designs for its mutagenic aquatic menace. But someone, in a moment of stonecold inspiration, said “this monster mutates, right? So let’s use all of these designs.” And they did. Also, the iconic Amanda Pays is along for the ride (as well as Daniel Stern at his uncharacteristically sleaziest). Kino Lorber’s UHD gives every bit of gore and grit, all the mutation and

For too long caught up in the asset dungeon of the time Disney and Miramax spent entwined, David Cronenberg’s 1999 sci-fi classic eXistenZ was only out there (domestically) on a budget pressing from Mill Creek that did the video master no favors. So as those films are gradually extricated from that situation, we’re finally getting proper presentations of them, and the lovable freaks at Vinegar Syndrome have gone all-out with this one. Biohorror espionage working on multiple levels, eXistenZ is the story of game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the “goddess of the game pod” driven on the run because religious fundamentalists consider her new video game to be a genuine threat to reality. A stellar film to begin with, eXistenZ allows Vinegar Syndrome to show what they can do. They (and their similarly depraved sibling, Severin) put so much work into giving every film the kind of love and treatment that we used to only be able to hope for if it was coming from the Criterion Collection. Compiling extras from previous Canadian and German releases (as well as several new selections), this is like a treasure chest served straight from the plasma pool. Easily the most essential sci-fi/body-horror offering of the first part of 2024. ▼

LEVIATHAN

HealthStream, Inc. seeks multiple Product Solutions Developer (multiple positions) in Nashville, TN to propose software application features and enhancements. Reqs. MS+2 yrs. exp. Salary range for position: $91,535.28 - $118,902.00. 100% telecommuting role. Reports to company headquarters in Nashville, TN. Can work remotely or telecommute. To apply mail resume to HealthStream, Inc., Attn: Whitney Drucker, 500 11th Ave N, Ste 1000, Nashville, TN 37023. Must reference Job Title & Job Code: 000091.

Commissioning Engineer II. Work with a team of controls professionals to commission and monitor installation of various equipment, plants, and systems on-site. Employer: Spring Automation, LLC. Location: Headquarters in Nashville, TN. May telecommute from any location in the U.S. Frequent domestic travel and incidental international travel required. Multiple openings. To apply, mail resume to C. Bruce, 720 Fessey Park Road, Nashville, TN 37204.

HealthStream, Inc. seeks multiple Sr. Quality Assurance Analyst (Multiple Positions) in Nashville, TN to analyze User stories, Business requirements, Functional documents to understand needs and process. Reqs. BS+5 yrs. exp. Salary range for position: $96,845.00$118,902.00. 100% telecommuting role. Reports to company headquarters in Nashville, TN. Can work remotely or telecommute. To apply mail resume to HealthStream, Inc., Attn: Whitney Drucker, 500 11th Ave N, Ste 1000, Nashville, TN 37023. Must reference Job Title & Job Code: 000097.

Supervisor, Point Solutions –(Nashville, TN) RSM US LLP: Cnsltng w/ acctng, fin, operational & other mgmt personnel to improve their businesses.

Reqs: Bachelor’s deg (or frgn equiv) in Acctng, Biz Admin or rltd; 2 yrs of exp as a Consultant, Analyst, Accountant, or rltd. Up to 50% domestic trvl may be req. Email resumes to: Attn: C Volkening – Ref # 3332 claudine.volkening@rsmus.c om

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