Nashville Scene 4-7-22 by FW Publishing

APRIL 7–13, 2022 I VOLUME 41 I NUMBER 10

NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

CITY LIMITS: THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE STATE’S CONGRESSIONAL RESIDENCY BILL

FOOD & DRINK: FIVE LOCAL PASTRY CHEFS CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT DESSERT

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FEVER PITCH

AHEAD OF NASHVILLE SC’S THIRD MLS SEASON, WE TAKE A LOOK INSIDE THE TEAM’S BRAND-NEW STADIUM

BY MICHAEL GALLAGHER

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NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

CONTENTS

APRIL 7, 2022

Vaught Trial Captures the Nation’s Attention .....................................................6

Fortified

CITY LIMITS

Health care workers rally behind the former VUMC nurse after negligent homicide conviction BY HANNAH HERNER

The Unconstitutionality of the State’s Congressional Residency Bill ....................6 Lawmakers are seemingly aiming to disqualify Republican congressional hopefuls Morgan Ortagus and Robby Starbuck BY J.R. LIND

The Difference Between Supported Decision Making, Conservatorships and Power of Attorney ......................................7 Distinctions between the legal designations reveal an evolution in the disability community

ART

Thanks to its STATE Gallery + Studios project, Fort Houston is bigger and better than ever

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: SNL Mocks Marsha Blackburn

BY JOE NOLAN

BOOKS

Disaster-Colored Glasses Mary Laura Philpott confronts life’s toughest questions with humor and heart in Bomb Shelter BY TINA CHAMBERS AND CHAPTER 16

MUSIC

BY HANNAH HERNER

Between Worlds ...................................... 33

Genesis Owusu reflects many facets of his experience on Smiling With No Teeth

Fever Pitch

De Piratas shows off potent rock ’n’ roll chemistry on their debut LP F.U.

On People Like Steve Smith Steering the Future of Nashville The Band Box Announces New Season of Guest Chef Pop-Ups The Theater Bug Launches New Youth Writing Program ON THE COVER:

Hany Mukhtar (left) and Dax McCarty Photo by Casey Gower (caseysphotography.co)

BY SABY REYES-KULKARNI

COVER STORY

As Fun as It Sounds ................................ 33

Ahead of Nashville SC’s third MLS season, we take a look inside the team’s brand-new stadium

BY DARYL SANDERS

In Remembrance .................................... 34 Lee Oskar seeks peace through the profound sorrow of Passages Through Music: Never Forget

BY MICHAEL GALLAGHER

BY RON WYNN

CRITICS’ PICKS

The Spin ................................................... 36

KDSML and Friends, Rigoletto Noir, Gayface, Mike Floss Contraband Listening Party, The Lost Melody, Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival, Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live in Maui, Ocean Vuong and more

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Mitski at the Ryman and Bully at Mercy Lounge

Sugar Shock: Just Desserts

The Best of All Possible Worlds

FOOD AND DRINK

BY LORIE LIEBIG AND STEPHEN TRAGESER

FILM

Five local pastry chefs who are changing the way we think about dessert

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a dizzying collage of sci-fi, action and comedy

BY MEGAN SELING

BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

Slice of Heaven

Cleaning Up

The Automat is a touching tribute to a bygone restaurant chain

CULTURE

BY CORY WOODROOF

Plant-based company Buff City Soap now operates stores in 11 states BY KATELYNN WHITE

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

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Editor-in-Chief D. Patrick Rodgers Senior Editor Dana Kopp Franklin Associate Editor Alejandro Ramirez Arts Editor Laura Hutson Hunter Culture Editor Erica Ciccarone Music and Listings Editor Stephen Trageser Contributing Editor Jack Silverman Staff Writers Kelsey Beyeler, Stephen Elliott, Hannah Herner, J.R. Lind, Kathryn Rickmeyer, William Williams, Katelynn White Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Steve Erickson, Nancy Floyd, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Kashif Andrew Graham, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steven Hale, Steve Haruch, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Daryl Sanders, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Nadine Smith, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Abby White, Andrea Williams, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Editorial Intern Ashley Barrientos Art Director Elizabeth Jones Photographers Eric England, Matt Masters, Daniel Meigs Graphic Designers Mary Louise Meadors, Tracey Starck Production Coordinator Christie Passarello Events and Marketing Director Olivia Britton Marketing and Promotions Manager Robin Fomusa Publisher Mike Smith Senior Advertising Solutions Managers Maggie Bond, Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Advertising Solutions Managers Richard Jacques, Deborah Laufer, William Shutes, Niki Tyree Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Jada Goggins, Audry Houle, Alissa Wetzel Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis

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nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

CITY LIMITS

VAUGHT TRIAL CAPTURES THE NATION’S ATTENTION

Health care workers rally behind the former VUMC nurse after negligent homicide conviction

edical malpractice cases are far from uncommon. Health care providers face lawsuits and civil charges regularly, and a few are even prosecuted in criminal court each year. But the case of RaDonda Vaught is one that has captured public attention nationwide. Shortly after Christmas 2017, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse administered the wrong medication to a patient, resulting in the patient’s death. Nurses seem to see themselves in Vaught, who was found guilty of gross neglect of an impaired adult and of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Charlene Murphey in a Davidson County court late last month. The latter was a lesser charge than the reckless homicide charge originally brought. The guilty verdict, decided by a jury including multiple health care providers, could mean years in prison. A joint statement from the Tennessee Nurses Association and American Nurses Association says the verdict sets a “dangerous precedent.” “The nursing profession is already extremely short-staffed, strained and facing immense pressure — an unfortunate multiyear trend that was further exacerbated by the effects of the pandemic,” the statement reads. “This ruling will have a long-lasting negative impact on the profession.” Vaught has been vocal about the case following the verdict. Her conversation with nursing advocate @the.nurse.erica on TikTok has 1.3 million views. Nurses from

around the country paid for the influencer’s flight to Nashville and a hotel room so she could meet with Vaught and, eventually, Sara Beth Myers, a former federal prosecutor who is running against Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk this year. In the viral video, Vaught offers advice for those interested in becoming nurses. “Just remember why you entered this profession in the first place, why you decided you wanted to go to school to be a nurse,” Vaught says. “It’s a scary place that we work in for a lot of reasons. More than just this, more than just the risk of fucking up so terribly to the extent that you could be responsible for someone’s death. There are risks every day in this field. Be cognizant, be diligent at your job, trust your gut and be the voice for change.” An online petition calling for clemency in her case has garnered nearly 175,000 signatures. Supporters are selling merchandise and collecting donations on Vaught’s behalf, and a rally is planned for May 13, her sentencing date. Myers has gotten a lot of health care worker support for her stance that she will never try a nurse for medical malpractice in criminal court, instead leaving it to civil courts and professional boards. She accuses current DA Funk, who brought the charges against Vaught in the criminal case, of “headline grabbing.” Election Day in the Democratic primary is May 3. “This has sent a shockwave through the country and hit a nerve in a very crucial time, not only for our city, which is a health care city, but for our country as a whole,” Myers

THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE STATE’S CONGRESSIONAL RESIDENCY BILL Lawmakers are seemingly aiming to disqualify Republican congressional hopefuls Morgan Ortagus and Robby Starbuck BY J.R. LIND

he Tennessee General Assembly often passes laws that dance delicately on the penumbra of constitutionality. Rarely, though, are legislators so blatant in their acknowledgement that a bill defies the United States Constitution and Supreme Court decisions that flow from it as they have been with Senate Bill 2616. An even more ancient tradition is the legislature passing laws aimed at a specific entity. Thus the cavalcade of census exceptions in various laws, designating that some measure does or does not apply to, say, “a county with a population between 22,650 and 22,660 in the 2020 census.” (That’s Grainger County.) The state’s liquor laws are full of these things — Assembly Food Hall, for example, is described as, among other things, “across a public street from a live performance

venue that was originally constructed in 1892 as a religious facility” and “adjacent to a facility originally constructed in 1925 that houses the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Tennessee.” SB 2616, which is awaiting Gov. Bill Lee’s signature, isn’t quite so comically specific. But it too is aimed squarely at very specific people. In short, the bill requires: “In order to qualify as a candidate in a primary election for the United States senate [sic] or for member of the United States house of representatives [sic], a person shall meet the residency requirements for state senators and representatives contained in the Tennessee constitution.” The Tennessee Constitution requires that each member of the legislature be a resident in their district, and requires that legislators be Tennessee residents for

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

BY HANNAH HERNER

tells the Scene. “For me, if it is a case of negligence, it should not be pursued criminally, unless it involves a degree of recklessness that is self-induced by the person. For example, if a nurse has been drinking or taking large amounts of drugs that impair that person’s judgment, and then they make a fatal error, that’s a very different situation.” Prosecutors said Vaught’s charges were a result of a series of errors: overriding the electronic medicine cabinet when she couldn’t find the right drug, ignoring the difference in size and substance of the drug, ignoring the warning label, administering the drug, leaving the room without monitoring the patient and not scanning the medication into the patient’s file. Vaught’s nursing license was revoked by the Tennessee Board of Nursing in July 2021 after the nursing board initially chose not to investigate the death. She has taken respon-

three years. The worst-kept secret on Capitol Hill is that lawmakers are aiming to disqualify Republican congressional hopefuls Morgan Ortagus and Robby Starbuck, neither of whom has lived in Tennessee for three years. Presumably, removing them from the ballot would boost the chances of former state House Speaker Beth Harwell, who — like Starbuck and the Trump-endorsed Ortagus — is seeking the Republican nomination in the newly redrawn 5th Congressional District. Supporters of Ortagus filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court last week to enjoin the state from enforcing the law (which, as of press time, has yet to be signed). The plantiffs seem to have plenty of legal heft behind them. The United States Supreme Court has ruled time and time again that states cannot enact more stringent requirements on congressional candidates than those prescribed in the United States Constitution. It’s kept states from enacting term limits and from requiring representatives to live in the district they represent. The legal underpinning is that the list of qualifications set by the Framers is an exhaustive one, unable to be supplanted by the states. None of this should catch supporters of the bill by surprise. After all, Senate Republican Caucus Chairman Ken Yager said he had some “real serious considerations” about the bill’s constitutionality. (These con-

sibility for her actions, and her defense cited systemic issues as the reason for the error. “The proof that we had shows that all of the specific errors that Ms. Vaught made independent of Vanderbilt, the protocols they had set out, like the [medicine cabinet] overrides, just went so far outside of the parameters of her job at the time, and that’s what led to this unfortunate event,” assistant DA Chad Jackson tells the Scene. VUMC’s Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement status came under scrutiny when, in 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that VUMC failed to report the incident to the Tennessee Department of Health as required by law. Around the same time, the Tennessee Department of Health and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation got involved. In contrast to the voices of nurses, the victim’s family has been largely quiet — mostly because they settled out of court with VUMC, including a nondisclosure agreement. In a 2018 interview with WSMV, Murphey’s children said that their mother would have forgiven Vaught. Last week, Chandra Murphey said those using her mother’s death “for personal gain should be ashamed.” This situation with the victim’s family is commonplace in medical malpractice, says Randall Kinnard, a local personal injury and medical malpractice attorney — though he calls the Vaught case an outlier. “This is extremely rare, because most of the time nursing errors are brought in the civil courts, where monetary damages are sought for injuries that occur, and justice is sought that way,” Kinnard says. Jackson, the prosecutor, tells the Scene that Murphey’s family was glad to see the outcome. He adds that his group at the DA’s office has tried at least five health care providers in criminal court since 2020. VUMC declined to comment on the case, as did Vaught and her lawyer, Peter Strianse. EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

cerns did not keep Yager from voting for the bill.) The legal counsel for the state Senate’s State and Local Government Committee told the panel, “There have been cases like this before, and they have all been ruled unconstitutional.” Only one member thereafter voted against moving the bill along. The technicality the bill’s sponsors are pinning their hopes on is that the bill applies only to primary elections, not the general election. It doesn’t prohibit Ortagus or Starbuck from running as independents, after all. It’s an argument likely to be found wanting by a judge. The only supplemental bars to the primary ballot, beyond those specified by the Constitution, are the party bona fides of candidates, and even those are determined by the political parties themselves rather than the legislature. While the law is universally on their side, the calendar isn’t doing Ortagus and Starbuck any favors. The qualifying deadline for the August primary is April 7. Unless Lee exercises his veto — in Tennessee, a very weak protest that can be overcome by simple majority votes in the legislature — the bill will become law with or without his signature April 9. In what was already a scrambly pre-primary season while candidates awaited district maps, the latest move by the legislature threw yet another spanner in the works. EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUPPORTED DECISION MAKING, CONSERVATORSHIPS AND POWER OF ATTORNEY

Distinctions between the legal designations reveal an evolution in the disability community BY HANNAH HERNER

onservatorships have been in the spotlight lately, but they’re a concept that the disability community has reckoned with for decades. Just last month, news landed that iconic downtown business Ernest Tubb Record Shop and its building are up for sale after 75 years on Lower Broadway. Phillip McCormick is the brother and conservator of longtime Ernest Tubb owner David McCormick. Phillip recently brought charges against the people the shop was sold to in 2020, JesseLee Jones and Emily Ann Cousins, who had power of attorney for David at the time of the sale. Phillip alleges that the couple took money from David’s personal account without his knowledge. Jones and Cousins deny wrongdoing — the two say David McCormick was fully aware of the transactions. Will McMillan has Down syndrome. When he turned 18, rather than a conservatorship, he and his family opted to abide by a concept called supported decision making. Instead of having a conservator, McMillan consults with a trusted circle of people before making big decisions. “I’ve learned a lot from my friends who make their own decisions,” McMillan says. “I made my decision to actually be independent and also supported from parents.” When McMillan goes to the doctor, his father usually goes with him. But because he’s over 18 and not in a conservatorship, McMillan has to give permission to have another person in the room. He and his mother have joint access to his bank account. Supported decision making, power of attorney and conservatorship all fall under the umbrella term “decision-making supports.” While there are statutes in states including Indiana, Louisiana, Texas and Wisconsin, supported decision making is something that isn’t yet embedded in Tennessee law. What is codified in the state, however, is the idea that in all of this, the court should abide by the “least restrictive alternative” for those with disabilities. “We would like to see supported decision making adopted into Tennessee law at some point, but for now, our focus is on fulfilling the needs of individuals and families who are exploring options when it comes to making decisions,” says Penny Johnson, coordinator for the Tennessee Center for Decision-Making Support. “We trust that the work we’ve been doing on a daily basis since 2020 will showcase the need for Tennessee law to include [supported decision making] in the near future.” Erica Reed is senior associate counsel for the Tennessee Department of Intellec-

tual and Developmental Disabilities. She warns that when someone is granted power of attorney, while less restrictive than a conservatorship, it’s still significant. A person with power of attorney can access the individual’s bank account and health care records — and act on their behalf on basically anything, Reed says. “With a power of attorney, the individual can still make his or her own decisions,” says Reed. “They’re not giving that up. But they are giving that other person that ability to make it for them.” In a conservatorship — the type of guardianship agreement that entered international headlines last year due to the case of pop star Britney Spears — rights are taken away. The court is meant to go category by category and remove an individual’s rights only when absolutely necessary to keep the person safe. If a right isn’t specifically transferred to a conservator — like property ownership or the ability to make financial decisions — it remains with the individual. The court also appoints a guardian ad litem, who has the duty of considering whether a prospective conservator is a good fit for the role. If someone doesn’t have a person in their life to serve as a conservator, public guardians, law offices and advocacy groups such as The Arc Tennessee can step in. “Decades ago, you would see orders that would refer to a full conservatorship, and that is basically when the courts would just strip away all rights to the person and give those to a conservator,” Reed says. “That is not something that you see very much at all in modern times, because the courts, they’ve evolved — just as we’ve evolved in society — realizing that just because a person may have a limited capacity in one area, that doesn’t mean that he or she needs all of their rights and decision-making authority stripped from them.” Will McMillan’s mother Elise McMillan serves as co-director for Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. She says supporting Will in his decision-making reminds her that to some degree, all of us use supported decision making when making big life decisions. “We all need support in different areas,” she says. “And it’s the same for people with disabilities too. But we have to give folks also the opportunity to make mistakes. Will has taught our family a great deal. And one of the things we learned from him early on is that he has his own life to lead. He can make his own decisions.” For more information on decision-making support, visit tndecisionmaking.org EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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FEVER PITCH

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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AHEAD OF NASHVILLE SC’S THIRD MLS SEASON, WE TAKE A LOOK INSIDE THE TEAM’S BRAND-NEW STADIUM BY MICHAEL GALLAGHER | PHOTOS BY CASEY GOWER

clock sits in the office of Nashville SC CEO Ian Ayre — temporarily relocated to a construction trailer at The Fairgrounds Nashville. Its purpose is to count down the days, hours and minutes until the completion of the team’s Major League Soccer stadium,

GEODIS Park. It wasn’t that long ago, Ayre recalls, that the days were displayed in triple digits and represented the daunting task his group of designers and architects faced: erecting the largest soccer-specific stadium in the United States, and completing the project in time for the 2022 MLS season. Now that clock reads 0:00:00, and the club finally has a home of its own after playing its first two MLS seasons at Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans. The significance of the long journey Nashville SC took to get there isn’t lost on Ayre. “It’s kind of in that balancing period where every time you come in over the last few months, it feels like you’ve made incredible progress because something big changes — the video board gets switched on, the field gets laid down, the lights go on,” says native Brit Ayre, who formerly served as the CEO of the Premier League’s Liverpool F.C. “It’s satisfying that we’ve made the progress to finish on time and on budget, and it’s just incredible to look at it and know that our fans and our city can be proud of it.” Ayre has been exceptionally busy over the past two years, between meetings with designers, architects, contractors, financial advisers and Major League Soccer. His two main objectives during that time: finish the stadium on time and don’t go over budget. “If you do anything of this scale, you’re always worried [about cost], because the world changes,” says Ayre. “And no more so than the two or so years we’ve been building [the stadium] — the world really changed. I think there were a number of things that contributed to us staying on the straight and narrow. First was working with first-class construction partners. They gave us great direction, great support. And we had plenty of bumps in the road — COVID was a big issue,

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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IAN AYRE

Nashville SC offers 25 private suites, three club areas and several premium seating options, each with its own price point and amenities:

TRANSCARD TERRACE AND STUDIO Located below the scoreboard on the Northwest corner of GEODIS Park All-inclusive food and beverages (including beer and wine) Invitations to exclusive team events Discounted merchandise Tickets to all NSC regular-season home matches and playoff options

PHOTO: CASEY GOWER — CASEY’S PHOTOGRAPHY

CORNER KICKS Located in the southeast and southwest corners of GEODIS Park All-inclusive food and beverages (including beer and wine) Private bar Invitations to exclusive team events Discounted merchandise Tickets to all NSC regular-season home matches and playoff options C SPIRE CAPTAIN’S CLUB All-inclusive food and beverages (including beer and wine) Private access to the C Spire Captain’s Club Personalized, exclusive merchandise and gift program Preferred pricing for non-match-day private event rental space Invitations to exclusive team events Discounted merchandise

but fortunately we were ahead in terms of ordering and setting aside product for the stadium. “COVID in a way actually helped us,” he continues. “For a long time, we were just digging a hole, and we were removing hundreds and thousands of tons of rock out of that hole, doing that 100 trucks a day at one point when there was no traffic on the road. Sometimes these things are overrun because of weather or supply or mistakes, and we didn’t have any of those. The end result is a successful one.” Of the stadium’s $335 million cost, $200 million was paid by revenue bonds, $25 million from Metro in general obligation bonds for infrastructure, $25 million from the team as a capital investment, and the remainder was privately funded by Nashville SC. Messer Construction project executive Mieah Turner says what helped the project stay ahead of the proverbial eight ball was locking in the stadium material at cost before COVID began wreaking havoc on the economy. “We want to be mindful of how we do spend those contingency funds,” Turner says. “Construction alone is challenging, then you throw in a global pandemic, and it really throws us a curveball. We made sure that we started the submittal process quickly, and that process basically — once approved — actually releases the material to be made and procured. “I feel like we were really fortunate on this project because we broke ground in July 2020,” she continues, “and I think at that time a lot of other construction projects around the U.S. kind of stopped or halted, and we kept going. So there was room to get in our material, and we weren’t competing as much [for materials].”

THE 30,000-SEAT VENUE, which was initially given a cautious mid-May completion date, finished approximately four weeks ahead of schedule. That’s thanks in part to the estimated 600 workers the club had on site putting the finishing touches on the stadium over the past few months, allowing the club to play its entire slate of home games for the 2022 season at the new venue. The team has already sold more than 20,000 season tickets — approximately two-thirds of the stadium’s capacity. If just those season ticket holders show up, the club would still have the fifth-highest average attendance in MLS. As the anticipation builds and that May 1 match against the Philadelphia Union draws near, Ayre expects to see a surge in ticket sales that will pack the place. He has good reason to believe that will come to fruition too. The last time the city was this jazzed for a soccer

match, 59,069 fans turned up at Nissan Stadium in February 2020 and set a state attendance record for a soccer event. Nashville averaged just under 20,000 fans each of its first two seasons at Nissan Stadium, a venue not exactly conducive to highlighting the awes and wonders of professional soccer. With every element of the new stadium designed to cater to both the die-hard and the casual fan — not to mention one of the top teams in the league — Ayre and the club are expecting a sellout for GEODIS Park’s debut. “We sold out all of the premium seating,” Ayre says. “I think that’s a great testament about what they’re hearing or seeing that’s available. It put us in the top five of the league [in terms of attendance], and we’re not finished yet. We’re still a couple of weeks away from opening day, and we know Nashville is a late market, so we absolutely expect that number to keep growing. “I think what that does is it shows there’s a real belief and a real demand for the sport in this stadium in this city,” he adds. “I think the other thing it does is it gives us confidence that, you know, I really want people to come who have never been into soccer. I really want them to come just once and experience it, because I guarantee you if you have not been, you’ll love it because it’s so different. And in a soccer stadium, it’s so different. There’s already 20,000 people showing up, so it’s going to be full. The atmosphere will be incredible.” Providing a uniquely Nashville experience was central to the vision of GEODIS Park. The club aimed to have something for everyone regardless of age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or degree of fandom. Ayre says the club wanted to take care of its die-hard fans without alienating newcomers or guests who just happen to be attending their first-ever soccer match. That approach was carried out through the stadium’s multicultural food and drink menu, attention to accessibility for disabled attendees, kid-friendly activities and what Nashville SC hopes will be a festival-like atmosphere that reflects what Nashville is at its core. “The reason [team owner John Ingram] chose soccer, more than anything I would say, is that in every other country in the world it’s the No. 1 sport,” Ayre says. “If you look at Nashville and how it’s developing as a city, it’s attracting a lot of people from a lot of other places. Not just people from places in the U.S. but places all around the world, like myself. “Second, if we’re going to build something for everyone, it has to be for every age group,” he adds. “So kids are

C SPIRE CAPTAIN’S CLUB GOLD All-inclusive food and beverages (including beer and wine) Private access to the C Spire Captain’s Club Reserved table with personalized nameplate Preferred pricing for non-match-day private event rental space Invitations to exclusive team events Discounted merchandise VALKYRIE PREMIER CLUB Midfield seating with a luxury club environment All-inclusive food and beverages Pre- and post-match player, coach and mascot visits Priority access to purchase other events at GEODIS Park Preferred parking option Invitations to exclusive team events Preferred pricing for non-match-day private event rental space Personalized, exclusive merchandise and gift program Tickets to all NSC regular-season home matches and playoff options GEODIS WeHo CLUB Music-themed environment with live music, food and drink options Private lounge access Preferred pricing for non-match-day private event rental space Discounted merchandise Invitations to exclusive team events Personalized, exclusive merchandise and gift program Tickets to all NSC regular-season home matches and playoff options GOAL POST CLUB Game-day sports bar that offers a variety of food and drink options All-inclusive food and beverages Invitations to exclusive team events Personalized, exclusive merchandise and gift program Preferred pricing for non-match-day private event rental space Tickets to all NSC regular-season home matches and playoff options PRIVATE SUITES All-inclusive food and beverages VIP parking spaces Access to away trips Tickets to all Nashville SC matches LOGE BOXES All-inclusive food and beverages Seating for four to eight guests VIP parking spaces Access to Premier Club Lounge Access to away trips Tickets to all Nashville SC matches

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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4/4/22 3:18 PM

BE THE SONG. B E T H E G R O OV E .

Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present EXHIBIT NOW OPEN

DOWNTOWN MKTG_BeHere_SceneAd_1-13-22 RAY CHARLES.indd 1

VISIT TODAY

CountryMusicHallofFame.org

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

1/10/22 10:06 AM

PHOTOS: CASEY GOWER — CASEY’S PHOTOGRAPHY

important. All of the people having access is important. Food is important, music is always going to be important in Nashville. People have a lot of choices of how they get entertained in this city, so we tried to mix in a little bit of it all. I think we’ve got it right, but I guess we’ll only know when we turn the thing on and open the door.”

AYRE SAYS HAVING something for everyone “is easy to say and quite difficult to do.” “We had to ask, ‘Where is the lowestpriced seating going to be, and how do we make that affordable?’ And then design it around that. I would say we have about 20 different products available for seating and viewing, and that’s important.” Neighbors the Nashville Predators essentially provided a blueprint for Nashville SC to follow in terms of growing its sport and creating an enjoyable fan experience. Ayre, who says he’s good friends with Predators president and CEO Sean Henry, admits he and Ingram borrowed a few ideas from the Preds and improved upon a few others for a soccer-friendly crowd. “The Predators are a great example, and one John used to me when we were talking about me coming to do this,” Ayre says. “It’s a great testament to Sean and everyone with the Predators, because not only did they get Nashville to love hockey, but so many people go to their games for the game experience as much as the hockey. I think it was definitely in our mind when we created this. Putting on a soccer game is relatively the easy part — what we have to do is make people come here and feel like it’s a great day-out experience. … I genuinely want people to leave this stadium — of course the greatest memory I want is us to be winning the game on the pitch — but I want them to go away and tell their friends about how cool the food is and how much fun they had and that they saw some live music at the game. And that, for me, is hitting the jackpot.” The club also took on the responsibility of investing in the community outside of the park’s gates. The stadium project was

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE COMMUNITY BENEFITS AGREEMENT INCLUDE: ➡ Nashville Soccer Holdings setting aside 20 percent of all housing units at the development as affordable and workforce housing ➡ NSH reserving a 4,000-squarefoot child care facility near the mixed-use development ➡ NSH reserving a 4,000-squarefoot area earmarked for small business retail space in the mixed-use development with a reduced rental rate ➡ NSH donating new and used soccer equipment to Metro schools and hosting an annual coaching clinic for coaches of Metro schools

contingent on Nashville SC signing a community benefits agreement with advocacy group Stand Up Nashville. The point of the CBA is to invest in the community directly impacted by the stadium development in its surrounding area. Both organizations established a community advisory committee responsible for monitoring NSC’s compliance with the CBA and producing an annual public report.

GEODIS PARK HAD a number of roadblocks thrown in its way between conception and completion, and Ayre says it took a village to get the thing done. As he reflects on not just the challenges of the construction project itself but also Nashville SC’s abnormally trying first two seasons in MLS — winning though they were — Ayre cracks a smile and credits those hardships for helping the team truly earn its place in the community. “We don’t shout about ourselves or make

too much noise, we just get on with it, just like Nashville does,” he says. “I think the biggest part of our success came from having a genuine place in the community. I learned that in my almost four years here. If you don’t become a good citizen of Nashville, you won’t really make it. “I think as we go forward, our real challenge comes this year, and even more so next year, which will be the first year where we have a normal year,” he adds. “Year One, we play two games, then pandemic, we come back to an outbreak then lockdown. Year Two, we’re still in a pandemic and kind of coming out of that. Year Three, we come in with eight straight road games in the Western Conference, and moving into a new stadium. But I think one of the things about MLS — it’s so well set up that there’s so much parity between teams. Your fans show up in Game One, and everyone’s got a chance to go and win the whole thing.” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

➡ NSH directly hiring and not outsourcing stadium employees, and paying them a minimum of $15.50 per hour ➡ NSH establishing a targeted hiring program in Nashville to connect individuals who have barriers to employment to potential job opportunities at the stadium ➡ NSH including minority contractors in the construction project Last month, the club made good on the first part of the CBA when it hosted a job fair at the Easley Community Center. Nashville SC was searching to fill open positions in maintenance, parking and security at the stadium. Additionally, the first phase of the housing development is underway, and the proposed child care facility is said to be in the works shortly after.

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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4/4/22 3:19 PM

A WiLD DiSPLAY OF LiGHT & SOUND

APRiL 15 - JULY 17 Lorem ipsum

After sunset, stroll along the Zoo's pathways through a captivating show of stunning projections. Lights will dance up and down trees, shimmer on water, and illuminate the Zoo's scenery in a kaleidoscope of color.

FOR MORE INFORMATiON: WWW.NASHViLLEZOO.ORG/NiGHT-ViSiONS

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

NO JUS UN T CE D

coming soon

MENDELSSOHN'S VIOLIN CONCERTO & DEBUSSY’S LA MER April 8 to 10

A Gospel Mother's Day

YOLANDA ADAMS May 8

Presented without the Nashville Symphony.

ON SALE FRIDAY 4/8 • October 23

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE™ IN CONCERT May 12 to 15

BALLET EXTRAVAGANZA

GUERRERO CONDUCTS

MESSIAH

with the Nashville Ballet May 19 to 22

TOWER OF POWER

A Celebration of the Roaring ‘20s

PROHIBITION

AN EASTER ORATORIO WITH THE NASHVILLE SYMPHONY

May 25 Presented without the Nashville Symphony.

SERIES PARTNER

April 14 to 16

LESLIE ODOM, JR. May 26 to 28

April 22

CHAKA KHAN May 29*

THE MUSIC OF JOHN WILLIAMS

BEETHOVEN'S NINTH June 2 to 5

90TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION WITH THE NASHVILLE SYMPHONY

WI T H T HE

NASHVILLE SYMPHONY

SERIES PARTNER

ABBA: THE CONCERT

NATHAN ASPiNALL, CONDuCTOR

April 28 to 30

June 8*

May 1

*Presented without the Nashville Symphony.

EXPLORE OUR CONCERT CALENDAR AND BUY TICKETS 14

NashvilleSymphony.org/Tickets | 615.687.6400

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

WITH SUPPORT FROM

CRITICS’ PICKS W E E K L Y

R O U N D U P

O F

T H I N G S

T O

D O

[MEALS ON WHEELS OF STEEL]

[VERDI MEETS NOIR]

NASHVILLE OPERA PRESENTS RIGOLETTO NOIR

Like your opera with a bit of an edge? Nashville Opera has got you covered with John Hoomes’ long-awaited film-noir staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s classic tale of love and vengeance, Rigoletto. Nashville Opera was just weeks away from opening this imaginative new production when COVID shut everything down in 2020. Now the company is back and ready to deliver a timeless work where “lush melodies blend with dark intrigue.” The cast features a number of notable Nashville Opera debuts, including Ukrainian-born American baritone Aleksey Bogdanov in the title role, along with soprano Sarah Coburn (as Rigoletto’s beloved daughter Gilda) and tenor Daniel Montenegro (as the philandering Duke). The production will also showcase the winning entry from 2020’s Nashville Opera Noir Filmfest — Penumbra Entertainment’s Rigoletto’s Lament. The opera is sung in Italian with projected English titles. April 7 & 9 at TPAC’s Jackson Hall, 505 Deaderick St. AMY STUMPFL

[SYNTHESIZER HEARTS]

BOY HARSHER

Boy Harsher, one of the first touring bands to sell out Drktmttr at its current Dickerson Pike location back in 2019, returned to the local DIY stronghold back in January to live-score its own ’80s B-horrormovie-inspired short film “The Runner.” Partners in life as well as in music, vocalist Jae Matthews and producer Augustus Muller came together in sunny Savannah, Ga., in 2014. Now based in New England — colder climes better befit Boy Harsher’s icy electronic-pop sound — the duo graduates to a larger Nashville room in Mercy Lounge. With or without visual accompaniment, the 28-minute “The Runner” is as viable a showcase of Matthews and Muller’s talents as either of the preceding Boy Harsher studio LPs (2016’s Yr Body Is Nothing and 2019’s Careful), toggling stealthily between claustrophobic, ghostly synth-scapes, optimistic OMD-style pop and full-on club bangers. Cliff Martinez and Giorgio Moroder would be proud. The un-Googleable Club Music supports. 8 p.m. at Mercy Lounge, 1 Cannery Row CHARLIE ZAILLIAN [THE BIRTHDAY PARTY]

THE THEATER BUG PRESENTS BIRTHDAY WISHES FOR EMILIA

It’s no secret that The Theater Bug is one of Nashville’s top youth arts programs, known for presenting original works that tackle everything from bullying and

adoption to suicide and mental health. But this weekend, you can check out a new play from one of its own students. Written by Tigris Parada, Birthday Wishes for Emilia follows a teen who loses her best friend to an accidental drug overdose and must then face her loss on what would have been her friend’s 18th birthday. Exploring themes of grief, redemption and forgiveness, the play also digs into some of the “accumulative microaggressions experienced by mixed POC.” Birthday Wishes for Emilia was originally part of the Bug’s first-ever Young Writers Festival (presented in partnership with Nashville Rep in 2021), and developed under the mentorship of Bug Teaching Artists. The cast features a solid youth ensemble, along with local pros Melodie Madden Adams, Diego Gomez and Anastasia Teel. René Millán directs, and there’s an original score composed by Joshua Dent. April 7-10 at OZ Arts, 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle AMY STUMPFL

FRIDAY / 4.08 [ABOUT FACE]

GAYFACE: A PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION OF MODERN QUEER IDENTITY ART

THEATER

STEPHEN TRAGESER

GAYFACE: A PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION OF MODERN QUEER IDENTITY

MUSIC

For more than a decade, beat-crafter extraordinaire Jesse Shacklock — better known as KDSML — has stood out among the producers blurring the lines between Music City’s hip-hop and underground dance-party scenes. Like everyone else, he was sidelined from in-person performance by the pandemic; one of very few chances to catch him on the decks in person was a March 2021 event supporting independent venues during which Exit/In briefly became a skate park. In the post-Christmas season, there’s historically been a reunion of some of the DJs and producers who picked up the beat for the instrumental hip-hop and dance scene here in the Aughts and early 2010s. KDSML attempted to take up the mantle in December, but the Omicron wave tried to crash the party, and so it was postponed — this Thursday, April 7, is the makeup date. Dono Dagger will be your emcee, and a variety of DJs will man the wheels of steel: Rate (co-founder of massive hip-hop party The Boom Bap), OHB (the duo of rappers Sofa Brown and Evan Blocker), Spice J (Music City’s bounce ambassador), Gates (whose sideways-sliding beats you’ve heard local MCs like Case Arnold rapping over) and Dread Savage (whose mixes lean toward the high-bpm end of the spectrum). Per tradition, there will also be live painting from muralist and graffiti artist Bryan Deese, known to the old Nashville heads as REX2. 9 p.m. at Exit/In, 2208 Elliston Place

PHOTOS: LAUREN TABAK

KDSML AND FRIENDS

THEATER

MUSIC

THURSDAY / 4.07

In 2015, San Francisco’s last lesbian bar, The Lexington Club, shuttered. Photographer Lauren Tabak tells the Scene that, at the time, there was a lot of chatter about whether dedicated spaces for queer women

were really necessary in 21st-century San Francisco. “The question for me still remains,” says Tabak, “and I’m curious about what queer community looks and feels like in other places outside of my little bubble I’ve called home for over two decades.” Tabak’s ongoing photography project, Gayface: A photographic exploration of modern queer identity, shows that she is committed to creating space for the LGBTQ community on gallery walls. For a community of people who don’t often see ourselves represented authentically — like when straight cis actors play queer characters in [checks notes] Oscar-winning films — being given the opportunity to show up and be counted is powerful. Nashville’s own photographer Emily April Allen told the Scene last year that having a queer person behind the lens allows subjects to “strip away all of those societal barriers and just be there in the portrait, capturing visually and internally who you are in that moment.” With Gayface, Tabak takes, prints and exhibits portraits of members of the queer community. Their peachy-pink background gives the works pop-music vibes — fresh and jaunty — so they read as a celebration. An exhibition of works from the project is on view through April 10 at the Madison art space @Sometimes. Opening reception 7 p.m. at @Sometimes, 213 Brawner Ave. ERICA CICCARONE

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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4/4/22 2:38 PM

MIKE FLOSS CONTRABAND LISTENING PARTY

MUSIC

One of several exciting new artists emerging from the so-called neo-soul sound, Lucky Daye uses his charisma, sharp vocals and love for more traditionalstyle R&B to put a unique twist on modern soul and pop. His second album, March’s Candy Drip, sees the New Orleans singer experimenting with more trap beats, but still owes much more to fluid guitar riffs, throwback orchestration and even samples of Aughts-era R&B. It’s smooth, punchy, has a bit of a story line and is a very fun listen. Singer Joyce Wrice, a master in her own right of marrying modern and classic R&B styles, is also on the bill. 8 p.m. at Cannery Ballroom, 1 Cannery Row ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ [LOST AND FOUND]

THE LOST MELODY

It’s been a long couple of years, but The Lost Melody is back on tour, and returns to the Nashville Jazz Workshop this Friday. This hardworking trio — featuring pianist Joe Davidian, bassist Jamie Ousley and drummer Austin McMahon — has been together since 2000, and has held an annual residency at NJW since 2008. They even recorded two of their albums there — Live at the Jazz Cave: Vol. 1 in 2013 and Live at the Jazz Cave: Vol. 2 in 2017. Of course, Nashville fans may best remember the group as the Joe Davidian Trio. But after 20 years of performing together, these talented musicians have taken on a new name that better reflects their collective approach. Their new album, New Songs for Old Souls, was released in May 2020 and features a polished collection of “new songs influenced by the great melodic craftsmen of the 20th century.” Tickets for the live performance are $30, and there’s also a digital option for $10. To learn more, visit nashvillejazz.org. 7:30 p.m. at the Nashville Jazz Workshop, 1012 Buchanan St. AMY STUMPFL

COMMUNITY

[NOTHING BUT FLOWERS]

NASHVILLE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL

Over the past decade, there have been 1,000 Japanese cherry trees planted throughout the city. And each year, the city spends a day in April celebrating the beautiful pink blossoms at the Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival. The day begins at 9:30 a.m. with a 2.5-mile Cherry Blossom Walk, to be led by Mayor John Cooper and Consul-General of Japan Yoichi Matsumoto. It winds from Nashville Square Park down the Cumberland River Greenway, looping at Sister Cities’ Magdeburg Connector to Morgan Park in Germantown. The festival includes everything from a cosplay contest and sumo wrestling to children’s activities and a pups-in-pink parade. If you can’t make it downtown, the Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival website has a neat interactive map of the closest cherry trees near you planted through the project. 9:30 a.m. at Public Square Park, Union Street and Third Avenue North AMANDA HAGGARD

SUNDAY / 4.10 [MANSIONS IN THE SKY]

TANYA TUCKER ‘DELTA DAWN’ 50TH ANNIVERSARY

Written by rockabilly singer Larry Collins and West Tennessee-born tunesmith Alex Harvey, “Delta Dawn” is one of those standards that sounds like it’s always been around. Harvey and Collins wrote “Delta Dawn” about Harvey’s mother, who grew up in the Mississippi Delta area. Its hymn-like melody and down-home imagery endeared it to singers as diverse as Bette Midler, Dianne Davidson, Scott Walker and Helen Reddy. Still, it’s arguable that the version cut by country singer Tanya Tucker, who was all of 13 when she recorded it with producer Billy Sherrill, is the most interesting. (Harvey, who died in 2020, released his own version of the song in 1971.) I think the song lays out a myth about the South that’s obviously false, but taking issue with a song like “Delta Dawn” is like saying country music itself is fake — well, sure it is sometimes, and so what? Tucker — and

Reddy and Midler, if not Scott Walker — sings the heck out of it, and Tucker is one of the great country singers. Director Kathlyn Horan’s new documentary film The Return of Tanya Tucker depicts Tucker recording her Grammy-winning 2019 album While I’m Livin’ with producers Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings. Sunday at the Ryman, Tucker marks the half-century since she released “Delta Dawn.” 7:30 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way N. EDD HURT [HANDS ON THE WHEEL]

CAR SEAT HEADREST W/BARTEES STRANGE

In the early 2010s, Northern Virginia native Will Toledo parlayed a steady stream of home-recorded, Strokes- and Guided by Voices-inspired Bandcamp releases into a deal with Matador Records. Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial (2015) and its companion Teens of Style (2016) were both ambitious in scope, and featured a new attention to fidelity that gave material like the instant-classic “Fill in the Blank” generational anthem-contender status. Better yet, Toledo & Co. backed it up with a killer live show that added an unexpectedly danceable dimension to the work. Car Seat’s latest, 2020’s Making a Door Less Open — tracked at Seattle’s Avast! Studios, where Soundgarden, The Gits and Unwound all made records in the ’90s — breaks from Teens with its slight return to a more lo-fi aesthetic and a newfound interest in synthesizers. There are some head-scratchers (the bratty “Hollywood” probably should’ve been left on the cutting room floor), but the collagelike pop of “Martin” and the soaring, tender “Life Worth Missing” should translate great in the live setting. Get there early to catch buzzed-about opener Bartees Strange, a D.C.-residing hip-hop/post-punk amalgamator who recently signed to 4AD. 8 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, 925 Third Ave. N.

ERICA CICCARONE [BEYOND REALITY]

REALITY GAYS LIVE

Not many people will admit to being fans of 90 Day Fiancé, TLC’s highly rated mega-hit that features hapless Americans who often go to the ends of the earth for love, with generally disastrous results. But more people in your life watch it than you probably realize. There’s a reason the show and its myriad spinoffs have struck a chord, as evidenced by the veritable cottage industry of weekly podcasts it’s spawned seeking to get to the bottom of the 90 Day phenomenon. My gateway was 90 Day Fiancé Cray Cray, which I’ve covered in these pages before; there’s also Pink Shade, for a uniquely Gen-X-age mom perspective. But the only one taking its show on the road is Reality Gays, the brainchild of L.A.-residing best buds Matt Marr and Jake “Poodle” Anthony — self-proclaimed “shady queens boggling at the insane ways people search for love in this world.” The duo’s rapport on the pod is heartwarming, their laughter contagious, and their commentary remarkably insightful — given the vapidity of the subjects. To boot, their volume of output is staggering — beyond 90 Day, Marr (a psychologist by day) and Anthony (a teacher) recap Love Is Blind, Love After Lockup, Below Deck and other guilty pleasures. Reality Gays’ Nashville gig lands fortuitously closely with the finale of 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days’ doozy of a fifth season, which airs April 3. 7 p.m. at City Winery, 609 Lafayette St. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

CHARLIE ZAILLIAN [SWIMMER’S EAR]

AUTHOR EVENT: LISA DORDAL W/ DESTINY O. BIRDSONG & KENDRA DECOLO

It’s National Poetry Month, and the East Nashville nook The Bookshop has you covered with a book launch and reading to celebrate Water Lessons, a new collection

MONDAY / 4.11 MUSIC

LUCKY DAYE W/JOYCE WRICE

SATURDAY / 4.09

MUSIC

[SWEET SOUL]

TANYA TUCKER

BOOKS

MUSIC

Mike Floss has been one of the strongest voices in Music City hip-hop throughout the past decade and change. Circa 2017 and 2018, he pulled back from the scene a little bit and started spending some of his energy on building relationships elsewhere. With new experiences under his belt, Floss refocused himself on Nashville in 2021, opening up a studio space and releasing two outstanding EPs, the harder-sounding God’s Leather and the more soulful Oasis. He’s completed another project called Contraband, and to celebrate it, he’s joining forces with the Civil Rights Corps, a nonprofit dedicated to reforming the criminal justice system, to host a listening party Friday night at Clarence Edward’s Ce Gallery in Madison. In addition to getting your first chance to hear the new record, with Floss himself there to talk about it, there’ll be a virtual art exhibit, some additional DJ sets, a photo booth, exclusive merch and opportunities for important conversation. Admission is free but registration is required via Eventbrite, and the dress code calls for all-black attire. 9 p.m. at Ce Gallery, 112 Gallatin Pike S., Madison STEPHEN TRAGESER

of poetry by Vanderbilt University professor Lisa Dordal. She is a recipient of an Academy of American Poets University Prize and the Robert Watson Poetry Prize; her first collection, Mosaic of the Dark, was a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. “Dordal demands that we not only see the past, but that we step into its deceptively gentle tide, one that sweeps us back to the people, places, and eras that still haunt us,” writes author Destiny O. Birdsong about Water Lessons. “In these poems, no one is truly safe, no one is truly innocent, and no one is truly gone.” Dordal will be joined by Birdsong and Kendra DeColo. Birdsong is a masterful storyteller both in poetry and prose. I am midway through her recently released novel Nobody’s Magic — which immerses us in the lives of three Black Louisiana women with albinism — and I can already tell that the characters will be unforgettable. DeColo’s gripping 2021 poetry collection I’m Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World molds a more honest representation of the mother archetype than we are accustomed to — one that is defiant, joyful and feminist. Register ahead of time via Eventbrite. 4 p.m. at The Bookshop, 1043 W. Eastland Ave.

COMEDY

[LISTEN UP]

MUSIC

CRITICS’ PICKS

[TRUE CONFESSIONS]

AMY SPEACE ALBUM RELEASE

I have a soft spot for folkies — those sincere guitar pickers and pianists who sing about how you can’t let the world kill your inner liberal. Being a liberal myself

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

criticspicks_4-7-22.indd 16

4/4/22 2:39 PM

Join us for a lively evening of entertainment by The Downtown Band, dancing, cocktails, and light bites in support of

Tennessee Performing Arts Center and its nonprofit mission and community engagement efforts.

Saturday, April 9 | 8:00 PM War Memorial Auditorium For tickets, visit

www.TPAC.org/LateParty

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

CRITICS’ PICKS

EDD HURT [LIFE LIKE LAVA]

MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE: LIVE IN MAUI

I don’t know about y’all, but personally, I feel there’s never a bad time to rock out to Jimi Hendrix, the groovy guitar

god who died at 27. Along with his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the funky, foxy trailblazer shredded his way into music history by merging rock, soul and blues, often under the trippiest and most psychedelic of circumstances. With this 2022 documentary, audiences will learn about the time he did an intense, insane live concert in Maui — performed near a volcano — shortly before he died. The movie features interviews from the men and women who were there — most of them the cast and crew of Rainbow Bridge, a counterculture head-scratcher that Hendrix, who both appeared in the film and served as its soundtrack composer, was a reluctant yet integral member of. Nashville bassist Billy Cox, who performed

with Hendrix and appears in the doc, will recall all the wild times at a post-screening discussion. 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY MUSIC

Holy Roman Emperor as she navigates the banality of travel. “And though it’s rental cars and chain hotels / Cafés with clever names / Some nights it’s me and the ghost of Charlemagne,” Speace sings. Dory Previn couldn’t have said it any better. Today Speace marks the release of her latest album Tucson, which finds her operating in confessional mode on a set of new originals. 8 p.m. at City Winery, 609 Lafayette St.

FILM

and a big fan of blatant commerciality and open tunings on the guitar, I find the approaches of folkie art-song purveyors like Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Judy Henske and Amy Speace bracing and inspirational. There are some excellent examples of arty folk-pop on Amy Speace’s 2002 album Fable, including “Arizona 160,” a beautiful example of post-Joni Mitchell songwriting and modal guitar parts. By the time Speace, who grew up in Baltimore and now lives in Nashville, released her 2019 album Me and the Ghost of Charlemagne, the spirit of Judy Collins was coexisting with the restless ghost of Dory Previn, and the album is a textbook of timeless folkiedom. The title track is set in the life of a touring musician who thinks about the famed

[DELTA VARIATIONS]

DELTA SLEEP

Brighton, U.K., math-pop foursome Delta Sleep can play their asses off, but they prioritize tunefulness and songcraft over melodrama and shredding. The group’s 2018 LP Ghost City drew on the jangly, stop-start hijinks of late-1990s Midwestern emo, with a flair for the epic. Their latest, last year’s Spring Island, goes for the pop jugular on tracks like “The Detail” — a dead ringer for their countrymen Tears for Fears’ iconic “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” — but is more nuanced and atmospheric on the whole. The album’s stripped-down closing track, “Water Rise” — a softly sung meditation on finding respite from anxiety in nature’s simple splendor — is also its most affecting. Philly’s Caracara and locals Khamsin open. 8 p.m. at The End, 2219 Elliston Place CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

BOOKS

TUESDAY / 4.12 [TIME IS A MOTHER]

OCEAN VUONG AUTHOR EVENT

The summer of 2019 is notable for many reasons. Maybe it was the last time you took a summer vacation. For a lot of us, it was when we read Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Vuong, a 2019 MacArthur fellow, has a new poetry collection that’s in conversation with the themes in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The poetry collection is called Time Is a Mother, and in it, Vuong explores loss, grief, family and survival. On Tuesday, Vuong will be in conversation with author and poet Major Jackson for an in-store event at Parnassus Books. Tickets include a pre-signed copy of Time Is a Mother. A percentage of all sales will go to help support The Porch. The event is sold out, but check out a review of Time Is a Mother at nashvillescene.com. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike, Suite 14. KIM BALDWIN

MUSIC

WEDNESDAY / 4.13 [GIVE IT TO ME EASY]

THE ZOMBIES W/BRUCE SUDANO

Back in December 1964, a group of lads from St Albans, England, joined The Beatles, The Animals and all the other British Invasion bands storming America’s shores, when their debut single “She’s Not There” hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Looking back now, it’s a bit wild that The Zombies never landed in Billboard’s top spot, considering just how impactful songs like 1965’s “Tell Her No” and virtually every track from 1968’s era-defining and

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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4/4/22 2:39 PM

DOWNTOWN

Saturday, April 9

Sunday, April 17

SONGWRITER SESSION

HATCH SHOW PRINT

Mary Gauthier

Block Party

NOON · FORD THEATER

3:00 pm · HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP

Saturday, April 16

Saturday, April 23

SONGWRITER SESSION

CJ Solar

Frank Ray

NOON · FORD THEATER

Saturday, April 16

Sunday, April 24

FAMILY PROGRAM

HATCH SHOW PRINT

DeFord Bailey

Block Party

HARMONICA SALUTE AND LESSON

3:00 pm · HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP

With Carlos DeFord Bailey, Jake Groves, and Ketch Secor

Saturday, April 30

2:30 pm · FORD THEATER

Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert

SONGWRITER SESSION

NOON · FORD THEATER

Check our calendar for a full schedule of upcoming programs and events. CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Calendar

Museum Membership Museum members receive unlimited Museum admission, concert ticket pre-sale opportunities, and much more. JOIN TODAY: CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Membership

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

PHOTO: ANA VIOTTI

CRITICS’ PICKS

ATA KAK

PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENT FOR TICKETS & UPDATES

THURSDAY, APRIL 7

6:30PM

Nashville’s Family-Owned Boutique Music Shop 933B WOODLAND STREET · 629.256.6092 caldwellguitarsnashville.com

GRANT GINDER at PARNASSUS Let’s Not Do That Again

SATURDAY, APRIL 9

2:00PM - 3:00PM

SIGNING with ERIKA LEWIS at PARNASSUS Kelcie Murphy and the Academy for the Unbreakable Arts

MONDAY, APRIL 11

6:30PM

JAY FARRELL

at PARNASSUS Abandoned Tennessee Treasures Nashville’s ONLY vinyl record store with full bar and 24 seasonal craft beers on tap. 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.12 4.13 4.14

Rock Night w/ DJ Shea-What & The Den-15 Club Beats, Dub, Cumbia, & Afro-Rhythm with DJ Los DJ Cream Jeans Plays Songs to Make You Feel Juicy DJ DeFrost Afternoon Set / 7 PM: Adam Meisterhans Trio LIVE: Katie Sharbaugh LIVE: Paul Burch Like You Mean It Records Acoustic Showcase

vin

ashville .c

n ta p yl

6:30PM

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13

MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL with SUSAN EADDY at PARNASSUS Molly On the Moon

TUESDAY, APRIL 19

6:30PM

JENNA BUSH HAGER & BARBARA PIERCE BUSH

TICKETED VIRTUAL EVENT with ANN PATCHETT The Superpower Sisterhood 6:00PM

THURSDAY, APRIL 21

CHRIS WHITAKER

VIRTUAL EVENT with CAROL FITZGERALD We Begin at the End 3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 | Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243 Shop online at parnassusbooks.net @parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks1

@parnassusbooks Parnassus Books

[SPIN TRIMMER]

WEEDEATER W/REBELMATIC & ADAM FAUCETT

The lineup for this Weedeater show — a mix of stoner metal, sad-bastard acoustic crooning and high-energy punk — would be a good fit for the grungiest of basements. But if it can’t be a damp house show, Springwater is the next-best thing. The aforementioned sad bastard and singer-songwriter Adam Faucett of Little Rock, Ark., will open, and also on the bill is Rebelmatic, a Black New York punk band whose lead vocalist called their sound “James Brown in a mosh pit” in an interview with No Echo. And then there’s Weedeater, whose Dave “Dixie” Collins has the best story in doom metal about losing a toe — he accidentally shot off one of his little piggies while he was cleaning a shotgun. (Second place goes to Sleep’s Matt Pike — his toe was amputated after a gross infection.) Get ready for a good and gritty one at Springwater. 8 p.m. at Springwater, 115 27th Ave. N. AMANDA HAGGARD [GHANIAN GROOVES]

ATA KAK

The influential blog Awesome Tapes From Africa shared a lot of out-of-print and obscure music from Western Africa, and one of the most heralded tapes shared

was Obaa Sima — recorded in the 1990s by a mysterious figure called Ata Kak — to little fanfare. The blog’s owner didn’t figure out Ata Kak’s true identity until 2017, six years after posting the music online, and their meeting was captured in a short online documentary. All the while, the tape was played by DJs around the world, as listeners were drawn to the fast-paced synth and drum machine that combined African rhythms with pop, house, dancehall and hip-hop. Ata Kak — Yaw Atta-Owusu, a selftaught musician — was living away from Ghana in Ontario when he recorded the tape, and wanted to combine the music he loved from home with the exciting sounds he found in North America. Now he’s able to tour his music all these years later. 8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, 623 Seventh Ave. S. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ MUSIC

UPCOMING EVENTS

MUSIC

for independent people

MUSIC

an independent bookstore

iconically misspelled Odessey and Oracle were. But it’s just as well, as founding members Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone have about as much longevity as anyone in the game (they’ve been a band since before even The Who and The Rolling Stones!), and few artists can claim a song as resonant as “Time of the Season.” On April 13, Argent, Blunstone and their crew of ringers will bring their enchanting psychedelic pop to the Mother Church. The band’s flacks tell the Scene “there are plans for a new recording getting released sometime this year, and audiences will be treated to hearing some of that material on this tour.” Sure enough, set lists from over the past few months turn up new songs right alongside classics like “Care of Cell 44” and “This Will Be Our Year.” A CD-DVD combo, The Zombies Live From Studio 2 — recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London — will also be available only at shows. Acclaimed songwriter Bruce Sudano will open. 7:30 p.m. at the Ryman, 116 Rep. John Lewis Way D. PATRICK RODGERS

[HELLO WALLS]

CHUCK MEAD RESIDENCY

Back around 1995, when the tone of Nashville changed and what was once déclassé became hip, I lived in Memphis, where a visitor looking for the essence of the Bluff City’s music history might not find any traces of it. I visited Nashville a lot in the ’90s, and I remember seeing Greg Garing, Paul Burch and the revivalist country-rockabilly-British Invasion band BR549 at Lower Broadway venues Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge and Robert’s Western World. In its modest way, the band — led by singer and guitarist Chuck Mead — helped set the course of modern Nashville as a touristfriendly repository of country-adjacent music that appealed to hipsters who mostly decry the commerciality of mainstream country. BR549’s records sound good today, and Mead’s solo work — particularly his 2019 album Close to Home, which he recorded in Memphis — is worth your attention. Close to Home contains some rockabilly, a little country and a splash of rock ’n’ roll. Mead’s talent for reworking clichés comes through on my favorite track on the album, “Daddy Worked the Pole,” which rewrites Chuck Berry and shows off a worldview that doesn’t take anything too seriously. This week, Mead kicks off a threeweek Wednesday residency at The 5 Spot — I hope you remember how to boogie just like Faron Young used to. 6 p.m. April 13, April 20 and April 27 at The 5 Spot, 1006 Forrest Ave. EDD HURT

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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April in... 4/07 THURSDAY

FEAR OF THE DAWn listening party

4/13 WEDNESDAY

21 +

4/14 THURSDAY

hosted by CHLOE STILLWELL TICKET

GueRilla Toss

21 +

COMEDY NIGHT

with REAUX MARQUEZ

4/16 SATURDAY

4/09 SATURDAY

TICKET

JAZZ NIGHT

with JACK SILVERMAN QUARTET 21 +

ata kak

4/08 FRIDAY

4/21 THURSDAY

21 +

NASHVILLE DON’T UNDERSTAND

with SNOOPER

AARON STEELE & FRIENDS

4/23 SATURDAY

jOSH HALPER’S BOSSA NOVA BAND

TITICKCKETET

4/27 WEDNESDAY

creature feature FILM NIGHT

VINYL RANCH PRESENTS:

DISKO COWBOY 4/15 FRIDAY

21 +

DJ NIGHT: The Cramps

4/22 FRIDAY

closed to

the public

music trivia night

21 +

hosted by BEN BLACKWELL

sol

t! d ou

sol

BRELAND & FRIENDS

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS DIERKS BENTLEY, KANE BROWN, RUSSELL DICKERSON, MICKEY GUYTON, CHARLES KELLEY & MORE

APRIL 13

LIVE AT THE OPRY HOUSE

4/29 FRIDAY + 4/30 SATURDAY

DIJON

APRIL 12 AMAZON PRESENTS BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST

4/28 THURSDAY

TICKET

21 +

JOHNNYSWIM

t! d ou

WITH SPECIAL GUEST KATELYN TARVER JUNE 6

DARIUS & FRIENDS BENEFITING ST. JUDE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM JULY 25

AT ASSEMBLY FOOD HALL

Apr 8

BLACK STONE CHERRY + GEORGIA THUNDERBOLTS

April 21

MOLLY HATCHET

NASHVILLE'S LARGEST ROOFTOP

Apr 20

PARTY TIME WITH SHY CARTER May 13

APR 9

Donny Lee + Sara Spicer

APR 29 Sam McCrary & The Mix

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

A.R. RAHMAN

APR 30 Stairway to Zeppelin

APR 16 Kayley Green + Flying Buffaloes

MAY 7

APR 20 Party Time With Shy Carter

MAY 13 Justin Furstenfeld of Blue October

Cinco de Mayo Weekend Fiesta

APR 21 Molly Hatchet + True Villains

MAY 21 8 Tracks Band + Fly 2K

APR 22 A Springsteen Celebration + Hyndesight

MAY 25 Leonid & Friends MAY 27 Eagles Tribute: 7 Bridges JUN 3

Dee Jay Silver

JUL 6

Everclear + Fastball + The Nixons

LIVE MUSIC EVERY FRI - SUN @ 2PM

CHARLI XCX

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

OF BLUE OCTOBER

APR 28 Boots Above Broadway Line Dancing Kickoff

APR 27 Brassville

AUGUST 3

AUGUST 10

Black Stone Cherry + Georgia Thunderbolts

APR 23 That 90s Show

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

JUSTIN FURSTENFELD

APR 8

APR 15 Disco Night With The Groove Line

PAT BENATAR & NEIL GIRALDO

OCTOBER 6

FATHER JOHN MISTY WITH SUKI WATERHOUSE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

Learn More at AssemblyFoodHall.com or Scan Here 5055 Broadway Pl, Nashville, TN 37203 Q E /skydeckonbroadway

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

THIS WEEKEND!

KID + P E FRIEND T LY

TO FREE D N AT T E

APRIL 9 + 10

O N E C 1 T Y / 1 0 A M T O 4 P M B O T H DAY S

Join the Nashville Scene for our bi-annual Craft Fair extravaganza! Our spring fair will feature nearly 100 curated artisan vendors showing off their homemade goods including home decor, clothing, pet goods, jewelry, pottery and so much more! Guests will enjoy activities, giveaways, music, craft cocktails, craft brews and indulge in food truck fare while shopping. S P O N S O R E D BY

SCAN TO VISIT WEBSITE AND SEE PARKING MAP L I B AT I O N S F R O M

FOOD VENDORS

craftybastards.com // #CraftyBastards22 // @CraftyBastards

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

FREE TO ATTEND FESTIVAL EVENT LOCATION

EVENT KEY

ONEC1TY - WEST NASHVILLE 8 CITY BLVD NASHVILLE, TN 37209 FREE PARKING

CRAFT VENDORS FOOD VENDORS SPONSORS BARS

VENDORS

7 S6 54 61 S1 S8 44 23 19 F2

1220 Bloom Street Action 24/7 Alex Daley Designs AlpacaSoaps Anhueser-Busch Craft Breweries Anhueser-Busch NUTRL Soda anne franklin designs Atelier Glass Studio Bebo Folk Art Ben & Jerry’s

42 Bite Club Baked Goods 78 Black Sheep Bottling Co. 39 Black Sheep Goods 8 Brieck Draw 76 Brooke Schneider Ceramics S2 + S3 Burning Acre 13 Butter My Biscuits 15 Cayligraphy 86 Cedar & Howl 10 CEMENT6 64 Chattanooga Clay Company 20 Cheiman Tea 11 Cold Brew Woodworking 87 Collarbone Jewelry S9 Compost Nashville F8 Daddy’s Dogs 89 De-Lish by Deb 51 Earth Reverie 71 Elle & Jo Tea Co

35 ERIN BODY CARE 74 EVOriginals (EVO) 84 Eyedot Creative 57 Feather Wild 32 Flair City Supply Co 4 Flora + Moon 49 Forestdale 31 FoxHen Creatives 67 + 68 Friendly Arctic Printing and Design 16 FurEver Friends Nashville 69 Garner Blue 41 Green Blanky Studio 26 Hannah Vaughn Gogh F6 Haute Wheels Rolling Sandwich Co. 96 Hey J Printing and Design F7 Hifi Cookies 21 Hiraya Flowers 43 Hot Sauce Nashville 80 Howl Revival 24 HYGGE & HONEY 79 Ibu Textiles 14 Indigo Bee Co 18 J. Paris Designs 30 Jennie Okon 58 Jerika Renee Art 90 JKBarrelWorks 59 Josh Black 75 Keaton Sanders Design

2 KnotHead Studios 46 Laura K. Murdoch and As the Crow Flies 63 Lazarus Artisan Goods F1 Little Weirdo Eats S7 Love & Exile Wines F3 Marigold Popcorn 53 Mbabazi house of style 38 mercer & jayne 56 Midnight Grove Candle Co. 48 Mini Kitty Designs 6 Music City Creative S5 Music City Pyschic 37 n.b. goods 1 Nashville Blanket Project 27 Nashville Picks 92 O Gallery 91 Oh Just Dandy 52 Penelope Design Studio 34 Pet Musings 5 Prickly Pear Pottery 17 Pure Approach Skincare 3 Quarter Spring Farm 45 Rachael Bee Artwork F5 Radical Rabbit 65 remi + lola 94 Richard D Hanson 33 RileyMade 73 Roam Collective

40 rosmarino candles VT1 Sacer and Savive 62 Sacred Harvest Co 81 sammijean.clay 55 SAOR perfume 95 SC Design Susie Campion Design S4 SealSmart 50 SkyCo Designs 36 Sovereign Mama 25 Stitch the Joy 66 Strings for Hope 22 Style by Steffi 93 substance jewelry 28 Tenn Prairie F4 The Horn 85 The Pandemic Pup 70 The Pharm TN 72 Thunder Moon Collective 9 TreeBee 82 TreeLilys 77 Undercurrent 60 Wandering Wine Glass 29 Whiskey Roots 47 White Clove Pet Shop 88 Wind Blown Jewelry 12 Woodbine Home & Body 83 Y & LIGHT

APRIL 7 – APRIL & 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE nashvillescene.com |// 23 Shop Pet Products // Home Decor // Bath & Body // Leather Works // Clothing & Accessories Food Drink // &SCENE More!

tennessee

s ta n

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nashville

ISK Y C E

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

Who said Whiskey couldn’t be

g n i h s e r f e R

LOW TICKE T ALERT

4.10 Nashville Beatles Brunch featuring Forever Abbey Road

4.10 Amy Speace

“Tucson” Album Release Show with Special Guest Robbie Hecht

4.10

Reality Gays Live! with Mattie and Poodle!

4.12 The Music of Cream

Disraeli Gear & Clapton Classics Tour with Lilly Winwood

LOW TICKE T ALERT

4.13 Spilling Tea

with Zack Peter & Adam Newell Live in the Lounge

4.15

RODNEY ATKINS FEATURING ROD + ROSE

4.17

ELLE VARNER PRESENTED BY LOVENOISE

4.20

MIKAELA DAVIS IN THE LOUNGE

4.20

BAND OF OTHER BROTHERS

4.13 Lockeland Strings

Featuring Louis Prince, Josh Gilligan, MORGXN, and Lydia Luce

4.23 4.24

TONY LUCCA IN THE LOUNGE

4.21

CANDLEBOX UNPLUGGED TOUR 2022

4.22

RON POPE WITH LAUREN MORROW

4.23

SOLD OUT, JOIN WAITLIST

4.24

JESSE TERRY & BRUCE SUDANO IN THE LOUNGE

4.25

FRANK MCCOMB IN THE LOUNGE

FT. JEFF BABKO, KEITH CARLOCK, JEFF COFFIN, NIR FELDER, AND WILL LEE 4.25

4.21

DINING WITH DIVAS DRAG BRUNCH JAMES MCMURTRY (SOLO)

SHELBY LYNNE & ALLISON MOORER SOLD OUT, JOIN WAITLIST

4.26 4.27

EMILY MCGILL IN THE LOUNGE STEPHEN KELLOGG

4.28

ATLANTA RHYTHM SECTION

LOW TICKET ALERT

4.29

CHANTÉ MOORE

ALAN DOYLE WITH SPECIAL GUEST CHRIS TRAPPER LOW TICKET ALERT

4.30

AN EVENING WITH SARAH HARMER IN THE LOUNGE

SOLD OUT, JOIN WAITLIST

April 17

now offering private

Cocktail

classes

Scan the QR code for more info.

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

feat u ri ng

REBECCA SAYRE QUARTET 609 LAFAYETTE ST. NASHVILLE, TN 37203, NASHVILLE, TN 37203 @CITYWINERYNSH . CITYWINERY.COM . 615.324.1033

FOOD AND DRINK

JUST DESSERTS

Five local pastry chefs who are changing the way we think about dessert SUGAR SHOCK

t would appear that dessert is making a comeback. Local pastry chefs say sales of their sweets have noticeably increased since prepandemic days. “I don’t know if it was the pandemic and people are trying to grasp at bits of happiness, but it was kind of a shock in the beginning,” says Claire Jordan, pastry chef at Beard-nominated chef Philip Krajeck’s East Nashville eatery Folk. Noelle Marchetti, executive pastry director for The Joseph and Yolan, has seen her dessert sales spike too. She estimates that up to 70 percent of diners order dessert at the end of their meals. “I think because it was taken away for so long, people don’t want to miss out again,” she says. “People realized

BY MEGAN SELING what they missed.” Also a likely factor? Dessert has gotten better. A lot better. Historically, upscale restaurants have had a hard time justifying a full-time pastry chef. Desserts can have smaller margins than entrées and drinks, and they’re ordered less frequently, so restaurateurs will ask line cooks or whoever is working the pantry station to cobble together some kind of satisfactory sweet. Worse, they’ll bring in frozen mass-produced goods and just reheat and serve, which is why every mediocre steakhouse has the same mediocre chocolate lava cake. Today’s pastry chefs are redefining what dessert can be, using not just sweet but also savory, sour and even umami-packed ingredients. Michael Werrell and Keaton

Vasek put mustard in The Continental’s white chocolate caramel ganache, and Jordan’s menu at Folk currently features a bright and luscious sweet-pea ice cream. A dessert at Yolan called the Rubino features a beautiful ruby-red tart filled with sugared beet custard, and in the fall the pastry team flavored their seasonal gelato with toasted hay. “People understand dessert is a lot more than just a slice of cake,” says Marchetti. “The perception has moved from simple to something that can be more elaborate. Pastry was a dying art for so long — seeing it come back up and be more appreciated is really amazing. Especially in Nashville right now, there’s an amazing pastry scene.” Nashville, it’s time to get reacquainted with dessert. Here are five fantastic places to start.

1&2 MICHAEL WERRELL AND KEATON VASEK, THE CONTINENTAL AND AUDREY

PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS

MICHAEL WERRELL (LEFT) AND KEATON VASEK

I’m hit in the face with a thick cloud of fog as I walk into The Continental’s kitchen. It gets thicker and thicker as the restaurant’s pastry director Keaton Vasek continues pouring liquid nitrogen into a stand mixer to flash-freeze a fresh batch of vanilla bean custard. Co-pastry director Michael Werrell is next to him stirring a container of dark liquid — it’s the “chocolate liquid shortbread,” he tells me. It’s the coating for the restaurant’s fantastic Cookies & Cream Quenelles, two-bite ice cream bonbons booming with chocolate flavor. Any cookie can be liquefied, Werrell says. “You bake it, cook it, dehydrate it until it’s super crispycrunchy, then liquify that in a blender with any fat, oil or butter,” he says. “If you want to go savory, you can do ham fat, bacon fat — anything that will set back up. We dip [the frozen ice cream quenelles] into the liquid shortbread, and it sets instantly like a Magic Shell. The fact that we use the oil allows it to not freeze hard in the freezer so it still has that shortbread texture, but in this liquid, velvety, delicious sense.” Werrell and Vasek — who got engaged in 2020 — came to Nashville from New York, where Vasek was the lead pastry cook at Eleven Madison Park and Werrell was the pastry sous chef at Eleven Madison Park and Dominique Ansel Bakery. Here they head the pastry programs for Sean Brock’s restaurants The Continental, Audrey, Joyland and, soon, June. Their desserts are joyful playgrounds of flavors and textures. Also on the current menu is a creamy quenelle of chocolate ice cream and banana sherbet that floats on top of a glossy cloud of maple-and-roasted-banana foam and a decadent cookie ganache. This season’s cream ice is a silky smooth vanilla bean custard topped with icy-and-sweet pomelo granita and a pool of bergamot curd that’s tart enough to trigger the salivary glands at the back of your jaw. The dish looks like an abstract painting of a single cherry blossom. “Approachability is big for us — you’ll normally only see three to four things on our plates,” says Werrell. “There’s always things hidden, fun things and textures. Then, when you dive in, the flavors start developing on your palate. That’s the fun part for us, keeping it simple but letting the food shine for itself.”

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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4/4/22 4:54 PM

FOOD AND DRINK

Claire Jordan’s approach to pastry at East Nashville’s Folk is also simple, but don’t mistake that for boring. “My chef still always says that simple food is actually very difficult,” says Jordan. “You only have a few ingredients to make an impression. I think it translates well with people because nobody wants to feel like ‘What is this?’ Or, ‘I’m not cultured enough.’ We want everyone to look at our food and think, ‘Man, this looks like something my mother or my grandmother used to make,’ and then blow your mind with flavor.” As Jordan says this, she’s methodically constructing four apple galettes — a sort of free-form apple pie. Her rounds of crust are first filled with a layer of frangipane, the “really gooey, luscious, almond-flavored stuff” you find in an almond croissant. Then she peels and chops apples, tosses them in some house-made apple butter, and piles ’em on top. She folds the crust over, leaving some filling peeking through, and the galettes are ready to bake after a quick egg wash and a sprinkling of coarse sugar. Just like your mama made. Unlike traditional galettes, however, Jordan’s crust is a flavor-packed rye crust that’s especially flaky and earthy — the caraway is strong with this one — and it’s served with a dollop of whipped cream that’s dotted with fresh dill. Alone, the galette is deeply comforting and cozy, like a fall day, but the dill cream makes it a different dish entirely. It transforms the galette into a bright, fruity and grassy dessert that feels appropriately light and breezy for spring. Another mind-blower? Jordan’s sweet-pea ice cream with chunks of white chocolate. She adds a small pile of toasted pine nuts on top for a satisfying salty and buttery crunch. My first bite made me feel like a kid again, recalling warm summer afternoons in my backyard, where I’d pull pea pods off the vine in the garden and scrape the bright-green orbs out of their shell with my teeth while I waited to hear the jingle of the ice cream truck. Jordan has been with Folk for only a little more than a year now, and one might assume she’s simply benefiting from this wave of dessert’s popularity. But really, she’s contributing to its rise. Not every chef can pull off vegetable ice cream. (Believe me, I have tasted disastrous attempts.) “I feel very lucky, I feel like I’ve been really well-received in Nashville,” she says. “I feel like there has been a community here that was willing to embrace what Folk was doing before, throughout, and on the other side of the pandemic. It’s really nice to see.”

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

CLAIRE JORDAN

CLAIRE JORDAN, FOLK

It’s not rare for passionate chefs to name some of their most crucial kitchen tools. Sean Newsome at Hi-Fi Cookies named his floor mixer Jolene. The staff at Nicky’s Coal Fired calls their giant brick oven Enrico. The floor mixer at City House, which pastry chef Rebekah Turshen has been using to make some of Nashville’s best cookies and cakes since 2009, is called Breadly Cooper. On a recent Sunday morning, Mr. Cooper was hard at work helping Turshen prepare the day’s dessert special, a lemon-poppy-and-cornmeal butter cake with ricotta Bavarian and passionfruit curd frosted with toasted marshmallowy seven-minute frosting. “This is some sprouted wheat flour,” she says as she sprinkles it into the bowl of all-purpose flour, cornmeal and salt. “It adds a little digestive enzymes, and I like the texture, too. I’m really into texture.” Turshen’s desserts look familiar when they hit the table — fat wedges of pie with whipped cream, slices of layered cake with scoops of ice cream and City House’s beloved cookie plate are almost always on the menu. But Turshen is rightfully respected around town for her ability to elevate the classics with playful and surprising twists. “I like people to, when they eat [dessert], feel like they remember it,” she says. “But I hope to make it just a little bit more. When people are paying $10 for a plated dessert, you want it to have a little more magic, you know?” A recent slice of ooey, gooey fudge pie, for example — with a filling even more decadent than the deepest brownie batter — was topped with a smattering of rum-and-Coke raisins. Plump and soft with the marinade, the raisins were a lovely complement to the pie filling’s sturdy texture. Turshen is inspired by flavors in the South as well as her own family’s recipes. The coconut cake she serves is based on one of her grandmother’s recipes, and buttermilk, sorghum, cornmeal, bourbon and other favorite Southern ingredients are always around. “I have one Brooklyn Jewish grandmother, and I have one Southern grandmother, so I’m sort of combining those two things with the food style here and Italian influence,” she says. “That’s what’s wonderful right now — people are pulling from all their different histories and putting them together. Everything is personal.”

REBEKAH TURSHEN

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

REBEKAH TURSHEN, CITY HOUSE

PHOTOS COURTESY OF REBEKAH TURSHEN

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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4/4/22 4:55 PM

FOOD AND DRINK Famous Lamb Dip

Hot Chicken Kabob

BBQ Duck Crepes

Gift cards available, Private party space available.

329 Peachtree Street Nashville TN. 37210 615-717-7180

www.peachtree-grill.com Pimento cheese burger

Pistachio custard

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE JOSEPH

NOELLE MARCHETTI

Falafel

NOELLE MARCHETTI, THE JOSEPH AND YOLAN

The desserts at Yolan are dazzling, each one a menagerie of colors and textures with sometimes as many as a dozen different components on the plate. The Rubino is a celebration of beets. A beet-custard tart is adorned with a whimsical, looping ribbon of bright-white-chocolate-citrus crème, sangria sorbet, shiny beads of pomegranate caviar, dollops of red wine gel, cubes of sour apple compressed in beet puree, pink chocolate curls and tufts of airy, fuchsia-colored moss that’s not actually moss at all. The Zucca Dolce, my favorite on the current menu, is all things candy-roaster squash — squash custard, cubes of squash cake, bright-orange squash gel. There’s a quenelle of tangy quark gelato to cut the sweetness, and it’s all under a swirly, whirly baked meringue cage that you can either lift away or shatter with your spoon. (Always shatter with your spoon if presented with the opportunity!) Each element takes a turn on your tongue, leaping from tangy to sweet to creamy to crunchy and around again in a matter of seconds. Noelle Marchetti says she and her pastry team — “I will say over and over again pastry is a team sport” — follow two rules: The texture rule and the count rule. The texture rule is having “something crispy, creamy, sweet and acidic” in every dish. The count rule is all about having things in odd numbers. “Your eye doesn’t like things in even numbers,” she says. “So we try to do one or three of things.” One beet tart, three plops of red wine gel; one scoop of pine gelato, three clove meringue cookies. It’s a lot to take in, so don’t be ashamed if you’re at a loss for what to do as your eyes dart across the plate. “I tell everyone to try to get a little bit of everything,” says Marchetti. “When we create these desserts, we try our best to make sure these textural components are in different areas around the plate. We want you to get something crunchy and something creamy and something sweet and have all those flavors in your mouth at the same time. They’re designed to create this little musical in your mouth — as much as you can fit on your fork, take a bite and close your eyes.” Subscribe to Scene contributor Megan Seling’s newsletter — where she writes about feelings, music and snacks — at snackanddestroy.com. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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4/4/22 4:55 PM

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CULTURE

CLEANING UP Plant-based company Buff City Soap now operates stores in 11 states BY KATELYNN WHITE

Buff City specializes not only in plantbased soaps, but also bath bombs, whipped body butter, stick lotion, epsom salts and laundry detergent. Customers are also able to create a fragrance by combining multiple scents. According to Ross, the best seller is laundry detergent, and that’s due to the mixture it’s made from. “It has three ingredients in it,” she says. “Coconut oil, citric acid, washing powder. We don’t use any harsh chemicals or detergents, so people with allergies and sensitivities can use our products.” Ross also says customers have noticed a change in how moisturized their skin is after using the plant-based products. She hopes that by the time the Hermitage location’s second anniversary arrives, more residents will come in and try the products. Since launching Buff City Soap, Kellum and his wife have progressed as business owners and started another brand. “Buff grew so quickly we took partners to help us navigate in 2019,” says Kellum. “Today Jen and I live in Colorado and work on our new venture, Bad Boy Boards, where we make cutting boards, charcuterie boards, chess boards, et cetera, from the available and renewable hardwoods found here. Look out for our website coming soon.” EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND

n 2013, former firefighter Brad Kellum and his then-girlfriend Jennifer Ziemianin Kellum founded the plant-based soap company Buff City Soap. Since then, the pair — now married — have expanded to locations in 11 states, including Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio and Georgia. Buff City Soap’s Hermitage location is celebrating a year of servicing residents with natural handmade soap, and employees are pleased with how business has gone. “This is awesome,” says general manager Emma Lorenz. “It is the fastest year of my life, absolutely phenomenal. It doesn’t feel like a year has gone by. We are super busy.” The idea of creating plant-based soap came to Kellum after reading what was in the soap he used daily. “I had recently tried a homemade soap, and the experience was so different than the grocery store soaps I’d used my entire life,” Kellum tells the Scene by email. “It motivated me to research soap. I discovered most soaps were made from cow fat (literally), and I started experimenting with plant-based recipes in my garage back in Memphis.” Before going nationwide, Kellum started off selling his product to his neighbors. After seeing their reaction, he expanded. “I’d make soaps at home and sell them at [Nashville School of Law, where I attended] while my girlfriend Jennifer attended farmers markets back in Memphis,” he says. Kellum took his products online, and in 2014 opened his first brick-and-mortar location. During Buff City Soap’s first year, he says, the company brought in $75,000 in sales. Overall, Kellum says the company has made more than $20 million in sales and has opened more than 200 stores nationwide. Kellum and his wife remain shareholders of Buff City Soap, but are no longer active in day-to-day business. Paige Ross, Buff City Soap’s brand specialist, believes customers gravitate toward their products for a couple of reasons. “One, it’s healthier for you and safe for the environment,” she says. “Two, I think there is such a need for healthier products right now, and with COVID, self-care.”

nashvillescene.com | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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ART

FORTIFIED

Thanks to its STATE Gallery + Studios project, Fort Houston is bigger and better than ever BY JOE NOLAN

“TREASURE ISLAND,” MAGGIE SANGER

ort Houston is a cornerstone of Nashville’s contemporary art scene, and its new STATE Gallery + Studios project — a decade in the making — is a boon for local artists. MAGGIE SANGER: FACADE Fort HousOPENING 6-10 P.M. SATURDAY, APRIL 9; THROUGH MAY 20 ton’s maker AT FORT HOUSTON, spaces act like 217 WILLOW ST. microbusiness incubators for design and fabrication upstarts, and its gallery is a don’t-miss destination for First Saturday art crawlers. Perhaps most notably, Fort Houston helped establish the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood as Nashville’s busiest and best arts district. But the organization’s latest move finds Fort Houston starting a new era in a new location where its signature mix of creative industries and fine art continues to grow and become more refined. Fort Houston began as the Brick Factory at Cummins Station 10 years ago. It made its public debut during the First Saturday events in February 2012, where it was the site for an official After Crawl party. At that time, Brick Factory was offering space for artists, access to equipment — including an array of woodworking tools — and various classes. Even back then, live performances, events and exhibitions were on the drawing board of possibilities for the space. Through most of 2012, The Brick Factory’s After Crawl events established the space as the go-to spot for late-night art crawlers — it nearly always took the last mention in my Crawl Space column in the Scene at that time. Founders Ryan Schemmel, Daniel Heering and Josh Cooper — along with Zach Duensing, who joined the team soon after — also made good on their event plans right away, hosting rotating exhibitions of contemporaneous local artists. Exhibitions featured Emily Clayton, Greg Pond and Chris Zidek, notable national artists including Lani Asuncion and Jordan Martins, and performances by Nashville bands like Birdcloud. The Brick Factory was already outgrowing its space in Cummins Station near the end of 2012, and when it moved to the storied May Hosiery building in Wedgewood-Houston in 2013, the project had already been redubbed Fort Houston. The move helped establish Wedgewood-Houston as Nashville’s goto neighborhood for contemporary art, and it was indicative of a trend that’s seen galleries like Coop, Open, Watkins Art Gallery and Unrequited Leisure all leaving downtown to be a part of the Wedgewood-Houston scene. At May Hosiery, the dedicated exhibition space got

MAGGIE SANGER INSTALLING WORK AT STATE GALLERY smaller, but the organization and the After Crawl continued to grow. Since then, the blood, sweat and tears of Wedgewood-Houston’s creative class has triggered a wave of development and gentrification that pushed artists and organizations out of the spaces that their efforts made valuable. The May Hosiery building’s transformation from a warren of artist-run studios and gallery spaces

into a massive members-only hotel and club — the Nashville outpost of the Londonbased Soho House — was a traumatic loss for Nashville’s visual art scene. Fort Houston’s move to 2020 Lindell Ave. managed to keep its team in Wedgewood-Houston, and it also marked a coming of age that found Fort Houston officially establishing its eponymous fabrication company alongside the separate Artisan Support Project — the

nonprofit that runs the shops, maker space, gallery, studio program and community education. Fort Houston relocated to 217 Willow St., just south of downtown, in the middle of the pandemic at the end of 2020. The new space is — in a word — sprawling. Artisan Support Project’s artistic director Alyssa Beach spent her time during the COVID crisis wisely, growing a new program that’s providing artists with studio spaces and exhibition opportunities. “The new studio program was conceptualized over the course of quarantine,” says Beach, “and the first year was officially April of 2021 through May of 2022.” During this time, the STATE Gallery + Studios project has hosted six artists who were given free studio space for a year along with solo exhibitions in the STATE Gallery. This is all funded by a scholarship program Beach created through a partnership with the Tennessee Titans. “They’re the reason we were able to open the program and build the studios,” says Beach. “Annual endowments from the Titans are the type of sustaining gifts that allow our organization to help artists in need.” Exhibitions from program artists like Dylan Lynch and Joe Geis have been recent gallery highlights alongside shows by invited artists like Bob Bechtol. A new group of artists will be coming to the program on May 1. The six artists in this next round were chosen from 65 applicants, and most represent underserved BIPOC and LGBTQ communities. “Our first group of studio artists was amazing, and I can’t wait for our next group to arrive,” says Beach. But before STATE’s next chapter begins, the gallery is hosting the latest exhibition from their class of 2021-22: Maggie Sanger’s Facade is an ebullient display of geometric abstracts that has me yearning for visual art to trend back toward abstraction and formalism. Sanger had a show of her sculptural, shaped paintings at Modfellows last spring, but Facade is a more purely painterly project. Sanger’s flat, smooth surfaces are meticulously arranged in compositions of elemental geometric shapes borrowed from blueprints and Sanger’s own memories of the architecture of various buildings where Sanger has lived or worked. Here, the artist paints in palettes that lean into grayscale, with some canvases punctuated by muted blues, violets, greens and oranges. These geometric paintings resemble some of the mural designs Sanger’s created around the city, but the color schemes with their subtle tonal shifts are more sophisticated and thoughtful than her purely decorative designs. And these more personal, expressive works speak to how resources like free space to work in and a clean well-lighted gallery to show work in can empower artists to improve and expand their practices. Fort Houston will hold a reception for Facade on Saturday, April 9, from 6 until 10 p.m. Stop by to see the show, tour the new digs, and raise a glass to one of Nashville’s most resilient and innovative arts organizations. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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4/4/22 2:39 PM

BOOKS

DISASTER-COLORED GLASSES

Mary Laura Philpott confronts life’s toughest questions with humor and heart in Bomb Shelter BY TINA CHAMBERS

hen Nashville author Mary Laura Philpott was in college, her father regularly sent care packages from home. But instead of the typical homemade-cookies-and-encouraging-notes variety, his packages were filled with canned goods — lots of canned goods. She and her roommate laughingly nicknamed them “bomb shelter” boxes, but it’s hard not to think that the apple fell pretty close to BOMB SHELTER: LOVE, TIME, AND OTHER EXPLOSIVES BY MARY LAURA PHILPOTT ATRIA BOOKS 288 PAGES, $27 PHILPOTT WILL CELEBRATE THE LAUNCH OF HER BOOK 4 P.M. SUNDAY, APRIL 10, AT THE HILTON GREEN HILLS. REGISTER AT PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET. the tree in this case. Anticipating and preparing for the worst is Philpott’s sweet spot. In fact, making sense of the land mines of life is the theme of her new memoir in essays, Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. A wearer of “disaster-colored glasses” from a young age, Philpott was thrilled to be introduced to the concept of foreshadowing as an English major, and she determined she would mine reality, as well as literature, for clues to future hazards. (A lifelong lover of sad books, she quips, “Of course, sad books had the most foreshadowing; that’s why it was called foreshadowing and not foresparkling.”) Decades later, Philpott’s already intense protective instincts go into overdrive when her son suffers a terrifying medical emergency, and she suddenly finds herself confronted — as never before — with some of life’s toughest questions. Her only weapons are her irresistible charm, infectious good humor and disarming honesty — and she pulls no punches, especially with herself. After taking an online personality test, she exclaims, “Two traits showed up tied in first place for me — anxiety and cheerfulness. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so validated. Am I here to tell you we’re all going to die? Yes. Am I here to give you a pep talk along the way? Also yes!” Philpott’s greatest gift as a writer is her ability to tell a story as if she is simply sharing the events of her day with a friend. A master of the timely digression, she is as skilled at handling painful subjects as she

is offering hilarious glimpses inside her life and mind, and she often intersperses the two with great effect. In “Calm Yourself,” Philpott, a practitioner of guided meditation, accurately depicts the problem of “monkey mind,” an inability to focus one’s thoughts that is all too familiar to those who meditate. “I didn’t mean to think about reindeer,” she apologizes to the relentlessly soothing voice on the recording. “I always mean to let my thoughts drift on the breeze.” Pivoting quickly from lighthearted humor to hard-earned insight in the same essay, she advises, “No one knows how anything is going to turn out, which means you can’t get all indignant because it turned out differently. There is no differently. There’s only the way it turns out. There’s only the ending that was always going to happen; you just didn’t know it.” The list of Philpott’s worries is long, and they range from very common fears to those that are unique to her. Prominent among them is the thought of her teenage children leaving the nest, about which she declares, “I had a primal urge to swallow them whole, just absorb them back into my body and keep them with me forever.” Yet she’s also heavily invested in the survival of a wild turtle named Frank (pictured on the cover) who lives in and around her yard, and she is determined to overcome her dog’s eating disorder — one successful strategy for which involves playing the soundtrack from Les Misérables as an enticement. Readers will likely identify with many of her struggles, even as her comical take on reality allows them to temporarily forget their own. And ultimately, though unable to quell her own fears completely, Philpott does manage to find some solace in the midst of the chaos. “The kind of ‘home’ I craved was a feeling, not a place,” she realizes. “A sense of safety and wholeness, of good intentions and predictable outcomes, or, at the very least, the comfort of togetherness when things fall apart.” In that case, Philpott has provided her readers a very sturdy bomb shelter indeed. For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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may 3 may 4 may 5 may 6 may 7 may 8 may 9 may 11 may 12 may 13 may 14 may 15 May 16 may 17 may 19 may 21 may 22 may 23 may 24 may 25

clinton kane w/ lexi jayde sold out! built to spill w/ itchy kitty & prism bitch the menzingers w/ oso oso & sincere engineer teddy swims w/ fly by midnight sold out! taylor swift night the band of heathens w/ chicago farmer

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RAY WYLIE HUBBARD WITH JACKSON DEAN GABE DIXON WITH SHANNON LABRIE THE TIME JUMPERS

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COUNTRY OUTDOORS FEAT. WALKER MONTGOMERY, JORDAN ROWE, NOAH HICKS & ELLA LANGLEY TUNES, TALES & TROUBADORS FEAT. BRETT JONES, FRANK MYERS & JAMES DEAN HICKS ROONEY’S IRREGULARS FEAT. JIM ROONEY, PAT ALGER, SAM BUSH, SHAWN CAMP,

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MUSIC

BETWEEN WORLDS Genesis Owusu reflects many facets of his experience on Smiling With No Teeth BY SABY REYES-KULKARNI

ofi Owusu-Ansah, born in Ghana in 1998 and raised in Australia’s capital city of Canberra, had no interest in making music as a youngster. His older brother Kojo, who PLAYING TUESDAY, APRIL rechristened Kofi as 12, AT THE BASEMENT “Genesis” when the EAST two were in primary school, was fiercely determined to pursue a career as a rock artist. When the boys were teens, Kojo turned the family living room into a recording studio. Genesis wanted to stake out his own lane, and channeled his creativity into writing short stories. As brothers will do, Kojo conscripted Genesis to rhyme on his tracks, and soon enough the pair was performing and recording as a rap duo called The Ansah Brothers. Watching old Ansah Brothers videos, you can hear that the artist now known as Genesis Owusu’s flow is a bit rough around the edges. But even then, the way Owusu carried himself — with an air of confident sophistication and a flair for eye-catching hats and bow ties — stood out. Today he’s far more polished, an international touring artist who took home multiple ARIA Music

Awards (Australia’s equivalent to the Grammys) for Smiling With No Teeth, the fulllength debut he released last year. Between The Ansah Brothers’ recordings circa 2015 and Smiling With No Teeth, Owusu released a solo EP called Cardrive and a stream of singles, across which he gradually expanded his palette. Though he’s still broadly identified as a hip-hop artist, Owusu effectively blurs the lines dividing a host of genres. Just skimming the first few tracks of Smiling, Owusu and his backing band The Black Dogs rifle through hardcharging glitchy hip-hop in “On the Move!,” put a contemporary twist on New Wave with “The Other Black Dog,” dive into richly melodic futuristic R&B in “Centrefold” and draw on vintage ’70s soul music in “Waitin’ on Ya.” Owusu shifts effortlessly between a gruff bark, a falsetto croon and a punk-like sneer, his energy and conviction beaming through regardless of his vocal guise. The larger-than-life MC and post-punk R&B experimentalist holds everything together. But there’s a sense of never knowing exactly where you are, stylistically or within a narrative, which is important. “I love disorientation,” Owusu tells the Scene. “That’s my favorite kind of art, like

when I watch a movie and it just messes with me. The stuff I’m talking about on the album — to me that’s how it feels in real life. Like, when you’re going through a depressive slump, or feeling paranoid because all these people are watching you because of the color of your skin. It feels disorienting and woozy, like a nightmare state. I wanted to put that into the music for conceptual reasons, but I also just like making people feel confused. More than I like hearing that people enjoy the album, I like hearing that they’re confused by it.” That said, Smiling With No Teeth isn’t haphazard. Owusu, his band and co-producer David Hammer culled the album from some 60 hours of recorded jams. Owusu was very deliberate in his attempt to craft the album as a complete listen. In the process of sifting through raw material, he began to notice contrasts between his perspective as a listener and as someone who makes music. “As a music consumer, I was like, ‘Yeah, it needs to be a 40-minute album of bangers and hits,’ ” says Owusu. “But I’ve been a writer for longer than I’ve been a musician, and there were narrative elements — plot points, you could say — that I put the highest priority on that I felt needed to get in there. The creator version of me won out.” While Owusu is open about how the story arc charts his mental health struggles and his pervasive sense of alienation growing up in predominantly white Canberra, he prefers not to spoonfeed the audience regarding how the dots connect within the music. The image of a black dog reappears periodi-

cally throughout the record. Sometimes it can scan as a representation of mental illness, and other times as a way to explore the pressure of discrimination. When we speak, Owusu prefers not to elaborate on the meaning or meanings of the metaphor, leaving the audience to explore it for ourselves. “Being part of the diaspora is like a culture in itself,” he says. “I was exposed to Ghanaian music quite a bit, thanks to my parents blasting it throughout the house. But I wasn’t raised there culturally, and I’m not super fluent in Twi, the main language. In Australia, I’ll get asked where I’m from. And it’s kind of the same thing in Ghana. So it’s something that I’m making an effort to delve into and get the most out of both cultures.” Though Owusu’s stateside tour was delayed by the Omicron wave, U.S. fans are getting the full experience of his art this spring on a tour that hits The Basement East on Tuesday. Instead of The Black Dogs, who appear on the album, he’ll perform with The Goons, who he describes “not as a band but almost a theatrical [troupe made up of] the guys I’ve been around since 2014 — they’re hype men, backup dancers, sometimes backup vocalists and to a very loose degree, actors. We’re elevating the visual side of the album. We get to express motifs and metaphors visually.” So is it safe to say that the show lands somewhere between experimental theater, a musical revue and a fashion runway? “Something like that,” he says with a laugh. “It’s a lot easier just to come and see it.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

AS FUN AS IT SOUNDS

De Piratas shows off potent rock ’n’ roll chemistry on their debut LP F.U. BY DARYL SANDERS

PHOTO: DANIELA FEDERICI

he members of De Piratas — Jonathan Bright, Warner Hodges and Jeff Johnson — all admit they had no idea if their musical collaboration would work when they first got together. But it takes only one listen to their debut album F.U. to know they had nothing to worry about. The album, which the band will self-release April 8, features eight tracks of unadulterated rock ’n’ roll — not surprising to anyone familiar with the trio’s work prior to coming together in De Piratas. What brought them together was The Rock Block, an irregular podcast series co-hosted by Bright and Frank Sass that explores Nashville’s rock history. Hodges and Johnson were invited to be guests on the podcast in August to talk about the early days of punk rock in Nashville. Of course, Hodges and Johnson are best known as founding members of Jason and the Scorchers. Before the formation of the Scorchers, Hodges was a member of Johnson’s punk band The Electric Boys. After taping the episode, the former bandmates, who hadn’t seen each other in more than a decade, adjourned to a nearby restaurant to continue their reunion. “Warner and I went to some barbecue place, and we texted J.B. and said, ‘Why don’t you come join us,’ ” Johnson recalls. “He said, ‘I’ve got stuff to do tonight, but I’ve got a studio, we ought to jam.’ Warner and I looked at each other and said, ‘Why not?’ So the next APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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MUSIC week, we went over there.” Hodges and Johnson knew they had chemistry, but had no idea whether they would click with Bright. They both had been acquainted with him, however, from his earliest days in the Nashville rock scene as a member of the band Swing in the late ’80s. “I didn’t know where it was gonna go,” Hodges says. “I had known Jonathan from afar for years, been semi-buds — ‘Hey, man, how’re you doing?’ — but never really worked with him.” The first time they got together, Johnson brought in a number of musical ideas, and the first one they worked on would become the album’s title cut, “F.U.” They initially approached the song with Hodges on guitar, Johnson on bass and Bright on drums, but they soon decided that both Hodges and Johnson should play guitar. “We played through it a couple of times and listened back, and it was like, ‘Well, that’s pretty fucking happening,’ ” Johnson says. Bright suggested Johnson play the rhythm guitar part to a click track, and that became the band’s basic approach to the entire album. Johnson and Hodges added lead guitar parts to the rhythm guitar track, and then Johnson recorded a bass part. When they reconvened at the studio a week later, Bright had not only added drums to the song, he also had written a melody and lyrics, and sung the lead and backing vocal parts. “We didn’t really have any idea of who was going

F.U. WILL BE SELFRELEASED FRIDAY, APRIL 8

to sing,” Bright explains. “Every song was written and arranged before we had any idea of melody lines or lyrics. After we were three or fours songs in, I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to try and sing on this one.’ After I did it, I was like, ‘I don’t know if they will like it, but this shit sounds great to me.’ ” “I’ve been hearing Dan Baird coming out of the speakers, or me or Joe Blanton or Jason Ringenberg,

for the past 25 years,” Hodges says. “When Jonathan’s voice came out of the speakers on that first mix I heard with him singing, it was like, ‘Oh God, we’ve got something here.’ It was good. I knew he could sing — I didn’t know it was going to be that great.” Johnson puts it more succinctly: “J.B.’s a fucking genius.” As both the title track and album opener, “F.U.”

sets the tone for the record both musically and lyrically. It’s a tight hard rocker with a powerpop coating and a chorus that epitomizes the defiant rock ’n’ roll attitude that permeates the entire album: “I don’t care what you say ’cause it doesn’t matter anyway, I’m OK / You say it’s not fair ’cause I’m gonna do exactly what I want to do / So fuck you.” “One of the places Jonathan really hit it off with Jeff and me was he’s a smart-ass,” Hodges says with a laugh. “He’s as sarcastic as we are, and Jeff and I are pretty sarcastic guys.” Bright doesn’t disagree. “I’m just as big a smart-ass as them,” he admits. Because they are mining similar influences, De Piratas have been compared to Cheap Trick. They acknowledged their kinship with that legendary rock outfit by inviting bassist Tom Petersson to play on the master version of “F.U.” He’s the only outside musician to appear on the record. It’s clear all three members of De Piratas are pleased with their first offering as a band. “I’m just thrilled we actually made something that we can put out, because I thought maybe we would do a song or two, but we just kept plowing through,” Bright says with excitement in his voice. “We knew what we were doing was good.” Hodges sums up their collective feeling: “It was as fun as it sounds like it was.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

IN REMEMBRANCE

Lee Oskar seeks peace through the profound sorrow of Passages Through Music: Never Forget

ost music fans know Lee Oskar for his superb harmonica solos and other contributions to the dynamic sound of funk and soul band War. More than half a century after War began, Oskar ART EXHIBIT OPENING still maintains ties EVENT APRIL 13, PERFORMANCE APRIL 14 with his former War AT GORDON JEWISH colleagues, guitarist COMMUNITY CENTER Harold Brown and drummer Howard Scott; in the 1990s, the three and bassist B.B. Dickerson, who died last year, formed the War follow-up the Lowrider Band. But Oskar’s expressiveness and talents are multifaceted, even beyond his array of solo records. He’s also been an impressive painter and visual artist for decades. His newest album Passages Through Music: Never Forget, released in January, is a tour de force for both his music and visual art. Oskar will be in Nashville April 13 and 14 for the opening of an exhibit of his paintings at the Gordon Jewish Community Center. From 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, he’ll give a talk and a brief performance to introduce his work that will be on display in the GJCC’s Sig Held Gallery through the month, and he’ll perform again from 12:45 to 1:45 p.m. on Thursday in the Senior Lounge adjacent to the exhibit. Oskar has always viewed music and art as vehicles to inspire and to serve the greater good. “I’ve always felt as an artist that reaching people — bringing them together — was my primary purpose,” Oskar tells the Scene. “One thing that really hit me while putting

together this album, which is very special, is the fact that there were — and are — so many people who focus on division, on conflict. I wanted to make music and art that was about unity, and also about emphasizing the good part of humanity that triumphs over the worst of it.” The inspiration for Never Forget comes from his family heritage. During World War II, Oskar’s mother and aunt — teenagers at the time — survived the Holocaust by escaping from the Nazi concentration camp at Stutthof in northern Poland. In the bitter cold, they traveled on foot to evade almost certain death, eventually settling in Denmark. As the number of living Holocaust survivors dwindles, it’s vitally important to Oskar to keep these stories alive. “Those stories, those memories, have been with me all my life,” says Oskar, “and this album contains music and songs that I’ve written over the years.” Unlike you’ll find with the archetypal LP that features just a couple of key tracks designed for radio, there isn’t an ounce of filler among the nine tunes on Never Forget. The presentation of the mostly instrumental pieces is deceptively mellow — the sequence allows the passion of compositions like “Far Away Dreams,” “Last Moments (Saying Goodbye)” and “Liberty (An American Waltz)” to resonate with a unified power and authority. The eclectic orchestration includes vocalists, a string section, horns, reeds, piano, flamenco guitar and oud, creating a work that combines symphonic majesty and timeless relevance. The record is a natural showcase for his virtuosic and expressive harmonica playing,

PHOTO: MICHAEL BRUCE

BY RON WYNN

which includes ferocious solos as well as lyrical melody work throughout the pieces. Oskar began playing the instrument as a child, and shaped his technique not by studying the style of such blues giants as Little Walter Jacobs or Rice Miller (aka Sonny Boy Williamson II), but as an instrumental echo of Ray Charles’ soulful vocals. Such War classics as “Lowrider,” “The World Is a Ghetto” and “Me and Baby Brother” (and its earlier, bluesier rendition “Baby Brother”) were enhanced by Oskar’s flamboyant yet disciplined harmonica solos and their interplay with Charles Miller’s energetic sax performances. Oskar’s soaring, melodically intense approach reflects his love for the instrument, and is also the driving force behind his very popular line of signature harmonicas. The instruments are built so that users can replace the reed plates inside if they’re worn down by constant use, or if the player wants to change the tuning. Since 1983, they’ve

been manufactured in a partnership with Japan’s Tombo Musical Instrument Company. Visual art in general and painting in particular have long been an important part of Oskar’s life. He contributed to the art for many of War’s hit albums, and the impressionistic portraits that accompany Never Forget add an extra personal dimension. “I look at Never Forget as my premier statement,” he says. “It’s the one that I feel really summarizes and presents a lot of the thoughts and feelings I’ve had for years — not just about the Holocaust, but also about how we relate to each other as human beings. For me, if as an artist you’re not trying to say and do something to make things better, then you’re not really fulfilling your duty. We have the power to inspire and reach people, bring them together. That’s what I hope to do with my art and the music on Never Forget.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

THE SPIN

RESONANT FREQUENCY BY LORIE LIEBIG

first experienced Mitski’s work in miniscule clips on social media, the enthusiasm stayed high for songs from across her catalog. The performance was anchored by Mitski’s interpretive dancing, which added dramatic visual cues to her wordplay. Aside from a door positioned at center stage, the setup was minimal, allowing her to use most of the space as a dance floor. This isn’t the type of performance art you necessarily expect to elicit frantic chants and screams unless you’re at, say, one of Kate Bush’s exceptionally rare concerts, but the crowd at the Mother Church was clearly way into it. It’s easy for both older fans and critics to discount the feelings of young teens, many of whom are searching for connection, or a way to vocalize the confusing, often overwhelming emotions that emerge in those formative years. The cathartic joy on many of these tear-streaked faces shows just how far Mitski’s style of storytelling can reach. The lyrical themes she presents tend to have something to do with maturing, whether she’s singing about navigating romantic relationships, career choices or something else that shapes and is shaped by your identity; even if you haven’t experienced the exact thing she’s singing about, she shares it in a way that hits home. And at the end of the day, who are any of us to decide whose emotional connections to music are less valid? As the show wound down, Mitski and her band circled back to songs from Be the Cowboy, ending the main set with “A Pearl.” They retreated from the stage but were

LIGHT ON HER FEET: MITSKI

PHOTO: H.N. JAMES

DAMN RIGHT, I’VE GOT THE BLUES: BULLY

PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO

ver the decade that she’s been releasing albums, acclaimed indie-rock architect Mitski has shepherded a diverse flock of fans into her carefully crafted musical universe. From her 2014 breakout DIY record Bury Me at Make Out Creek to her 2018 mainstream success Be the Cowboy, the singer-songwriter has consistently expanded her sound in new ways. But the beating heart of Mitski’s evolving sonic macrocosm is her writing. Her lyrics offer simplicity and raw vulnerability in a balance that’s relatable to a wide audience. Those qualities helped launch her into a new type of fame, thanks to the pandemicdriven explosion in popularity of TikTok. This almost-overnight exposure to a new, even younger fan base was clearly evident from one look across the pews packed with a sold-out crowd at the Ryman Thursday night. Young teenagers accompanied by parents or guardians turned out in abundance. That shift is one of many that Mitski has rolled with since she announced that a September 2019 show in New York would be her last. In the months that followed, she moved to Nashville, just in time to become one of a huge variety of creative people working on a new project amid a pandemic. In February, she released Laurel Hell, a critically acclaimed and commercially successful album on which she’s reached a new dimension of gripping honesty. For her sixth studio fulllength, she traded the gritty rock elements that marked much of her early work for more stylized, ’80s-pop-inspired sensibilities. Still, the added synths and pounding beats don’t distract from the distress and uncertainty she voices in “Working for the Knife” or the soft ache of “There’s Nothing Left for You.” Mitski’s Ryman debut was originally scheduled to feature support from New York indie outfit Michelle, but a COVID-19 case in their touring party forced them off the road. Some of Mitski’s tour dates were rescheduled due to a positive test in her touring party, as well — a concern shared by a broad range of musicians as mask requirements dwindle. A pre-recorded message from Mitski herself, asking fans to wear their masks for the entirety of the show, played over the speakers as we shuffled to our seats. The lack of an opener wasn’t a hindrance for the immersive 23-song performance. Cast in a glow of pink and purple, Mitski began by slowly gliding toward center stage to perform Laurel Hell’s “Love Me More” and “Should’ve Been Me.” Her energy seemed to intensify with each subsequent song, and the crowd responded with unbridled excitement — especially for the tunes that have been the basis for thousands of fanmade videos on TikTok, like “Nobody,” “Me and My Husband” and “Washing Machine Heart” from Be the Cowboy and “I Bet on Losing Dogs” and “Your Best American Girl” from her 2016 album Puberty 2. Though many in the audience may have

gone only a few seconds before returning for the encore, “Two Slow Dancers.” From its first lines, the love song conveyed how recalling and processing your feelings is something more important than nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. “Does it smell like a school gymnasium in here?” she sang, as the melancholy chords pulsed like a slow heartbeat. “It’s funny how they’re all the same / It’s funny how you always remember.”

HAVE MERCY BY STEPHEN TRAGESER Bully’s show at Mercy Lounge on Saturday had a lot in common with the many others that the world-beating rockers have played at the venerable venue over the past decade. Singer-songwriter-guitarist Alicia Bognanno and her band came roaring out of the gate, seldom pausing for banter. There was a substantial mosh pit that was more gleeful than aggro, as an almost-tangible air of excitement about Bully’s always heartfelt and often intense tunes permeated the room. As the band’s lineup has shifted and Bognanno has broadened its sonic palette, what has never changed is that Bully is one of the best rock bands you’ll see anywhere. One thing different about this show: It was Bully’s farewell to Mercy Lounge, a space Bognanno & Co. have come back to again and again, even following international tours. After 19 years, Mercy and its sister venues — Cannery Ballroom, The High Watt

and private event space ONE — are set to close in May. The proprietors of the venues say they hope to set up shop elsewhere; the owner of the property announced that he’s planning to have new venues in the soon-tobe-vacant building. What’s certain is that these places have been an important proving ground for up-and-comers and a great place to see a huge variety of touring acts and local legends. And to see them go away, forever or not, makes the city feel a little less like home. An almost-full house gave openers Bleary an enthusiastic welcome. The dreamy, kinda-shoegaze-y quartet has always been a treat to watch, but seems to have emerged from pandemic lockdown with even more confidence and passion. Singer-guitarists Callan Dwan and Peter Mercer toggled between cooperating on interlocking melodies and supporting each other in separate roles. Dwan leaned toward lead guitar, her solos curling and swirling while Mercer sang lead on their narratives of unease and longing. Meanwhile, bassist Taro Yamazaki and drummer Luke Fedorko drove the whole thing forward with athletic grace. When it was time for the main event — which was livestreamed, a win for anyone who couldn’t make it in person — Bognanno and band took the stage to Alanis Morissette’s “Hand in My Pocket,” an anthem for making the best of what you’ve got. They tore right into “Hate and Control,” a furious punk response to the intolerance in our social and political climate made manifest in the Trump administration. There were absolute rippers aplenty throughout the set, but they were interspersed with tunes like “Hours and Hours,” which spreads out its emotional impact at a more relaxed pace as Bognanno examines letting go of anger. Bully has evolved into Bognanno’s solo project, but her bandmates for live shows are always fully invested in the performance, working in sync like fingers on the same hand. This time out, drummer Benji Coale (who you’ll know from outstanding punks Peachy) and bassist Nick Byrd laid down a rock-solid foundation for Bognanno and music-scene MVP Chappy Hull on guitar. They focused on songs from 2020’s Sugaregg, but went all the way back to “Brainfreeze” and “Milkman,” which have been fan favorites pretty much since Bully started playing around town circa 2013. The finale of the main set was an appropriately frenetic cover of PJ Harvey’s “50ft Queenie,” one of the fiercest smackdowns ever given to the pathetic idea that women should have to compete against each other for a predetermined tiny sliver of the music business. The band left the stage and the chant for “one more song” began almost immediately. Bognanno returned alone and sat down at the front of the stage to sing a new song she’d written for Mezzi. The goofy, charming and loyal dog who’s been Bognanno’s best friend and traveling companion of 13 years died in March. “I’m doing all I can to manage,” Bognanno crooned gently, “but lately I can’t stand it.” The song offers a poignant lesson for surviving a life in which grief is a given. The severity varies with what or whom you’ve lost, but expressing the hurt is important — both for restoring some balance and for honoring memories as you carry on. EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JULY 21 – JULY 27, 2016 | nashvillescene.com

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THU 4.07  BOY HARSHER

THU 4.14  THE ZACH DAY TAKEOVER

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THU 4.07  BREAKING SOUND: NASHVILLE

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SUN 4.24  LUNA LUNA & DREAMGIRL THE HIGH WATT

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FILM

SCENERY Arts and Culture News From the Nashville Scene

THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a dizzying collage of sci-fi, action and comedy BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY

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f you’re looking for a review to sum up Everything Everywhere All at Once in one tidy little package, you can forget about it. The new film from directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as Daniels) — the EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE same guys who had ALL AT ONCE Paul Dano playing R, 140 MINUTES OPENING FRIDAY, APRIL 8, AT around with a dead, THE BELCOURT AND REGAL farting Daniel RadAND AMC LOCATIONS cliffe on a deserted island in 2016’s Swiss Army Man — is a bigger, grander smorgasbord of what-the-fuck. Let me see if I can actually sum up the plot: Michelle Yeoh is Evelyn Wang, a Chinese-American woman who has a lot of things to worry about, from running a laundromat business with her husband (Ke Huy Quan) to getting audited by an IRS inspector (a frumpy, menacing Jamie Lee Curtis). She’s also keeping her dad (veteran character actor James Hong) in the dark about her daughter (Stephanie Hsu, successfully stepping into a role originally intended for Awkwafina) liking girls. Things get even more complicated when she finds out she can bounce through dimensions and assume different versions of herself. She also has to save the whole multiverse from slipping into an everything-bagel-sized void. (Just take my word for it.) As Bill Hader’s SNL city correspondent Stefan would say, this movie has everything:

rocks, dildos, cookies, people with hot-dog fingers, a talking raccoon, various objects used as buttplugs, Jenny Slate swinging a dog around by the neck. Call it Daniels’ kitchen-sink approach to telling, basically, a dysfunctional-family dramedy. The whole movie is practically a wildly ambitious shout-out to parents who always try their best, even when they’re at their worst. Yeoh’s matriarch quantum-leaps through time and space, jumping into different stories in various aspect ratios, all in order to keep her family — and herself — from falling apart. As it happens, between this and the smart-ass way Ti West opens up his enjoyably naughty recent release X, it’s fun watching these genre filmmakers show up to A24 — the film company that notoriously drops movies from indie auteurs who like to mess with aspect ratios — with films that take the piss out of all of them. Every last flower in the world should go to Michelle Yeoh, who absolutely kills it here. You may know her as the mean mom from Crazy Rich Asians, but to fans of Hong Kong cinema, she’s the queen, an asskicking Meryl Streep. But even when hits like Supercop and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon showed off Yeoh’s star power decades ago, Hollywood didn’t know what to do with her. (Remember when they made her a crafty Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies?) But those blatant film nerds Daniels know exactly what to do, having Yeoh front-andcenter in a film where she gives off everything from radiant beauty to chopsocky skills to heartfelt emotion. They even salute her status as a global movie star by having her play a global movie star in one universe — the boys also get to salute Wong Kar-wai by filming that whole segment in his style. They also give Quan, the onetime child actor who won over ’80s audiences in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, major time to shine. Along with having his own acrobatic action moments, he plays his nebbish husband as the movie’s pacifistic heart, continually trying

to maintain peace and sanity across varying dimensions. Dude makes one hell of a classy comeback. Not since The Matrix have I seen a film that jacks a whole bunch of movie genres in order to come up with something bewildering, energetic, relentlessly entertaining and, ultimately, surprisingly profound. This has fight scenes that are both awe-inspiring and guffaw-inducing. And yet, Everything Everywhere also pulls off the amazing feat of being moving and soul-stirring. What’s more, it also has multiple generations of Asian actors giving outstanding performances. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a dizzying collage of sci-fi, action, comedy and drama that’s also the most amazing thing I’ve seen in ages. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

SLICE OF HEAVEN

The Automat is a touching tribute to a bygone restaurant chain BY CORY WOODROOF

he way Mel Brooks talks about a piece of pie? That alone is worth the price of admission for the new documentary The Automat. It’s not just the fact that Brooks waxes poetically THE AUTOMAT about a dessert, but NR, 78 MINUTES OPENING FRIDAY, APRIL 8, rather the way he does it — floating AT THE BELCOURT back in time on a cloud of a memory to one of the simplest times in his life. It’s a bit like that scene in Ratatouille when austere food critic Anton Ego flashes back to his childhood and that humble plate of ratatouille that made him love food in the first place.

NASHVILLE SCENE | APRIL 7 – APRIL 13, 2022 | nashvillescene.com

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PHOTO COURTESY OF A SLICE OF PIE PRODUCTIONS

FILM

famous actors, budding businessmen and just plain The smallest things in our lives can often have the folks could congregate and enjoy simple pleasures on biggest impact. the plate. Even during segregation, Horn & Hardarts It isn’t difficult to explain the premise of The were melting pots of American experience — places Automat, but it’s a little challenging to describe how that didn’t discriminate based on origin, race and it makes you feel. On the surface, it’s a case study gender. They only hoped to sweep you in with grandiabout an early-20th-century restaurant chain in the ose architecture and unbeatable prices (as long as Northeast, with a gimmicky window turnstile device you remembered to bring your coin purse). (that’s the Automat) via which a few nickels could get Clocking in at roughly 80 minutes, Hurwitz’s film you a slice of pie or a ham sandwich. Most folks who doesn’t overstay its welcome. While most rearview watch The Automat have most likely never used an documentaries like this one are reliably informaAutomat, or even been to the restaurant chain Horn & tive, The Automat stands apart with its bittersweet Hardart. The whole thing might sound like something melancholy, with its mourning of the way things used you’d walk in on your grandma “watching” (i.e., snoozto be — when all you had to worry about was having ing through in her comfy chair) on PBS. enough nickels in your pocket for that oh-so-sweet But that’s right where the documentary wants you — and The Automat takes on an unexpected reso- piece of pie. Horn & Hardart restaurants were known for taking care of their people — company executives nance. Director Lisa Hurwitz’s film explains how Horn would attend the funerals of workers who’d passed. & Hardart took over major metropolitan areas like The company itself gained a reputation as a business New York and Philadelphia in the early 1900s, and that focused not only on the bottom line, but also does so with a careful power. It wields its nostalgia in empathy for its workers and customers. a warm, inviting manner. Imagine this: Art Deco exteSome of the documentary’s participants — namely riors; seas of windows previewing all the desserts and Ginsburg, Reiner and Powell — have since passed, pastries you could ever want; cheap, delicious cups adding to the profundity of what Hurwitz has crafted. of coffee dispersed by regal dolphin-shaped spigots; Brooks, the beloved comic mind, becomes so friendly conversations with strangers; and the world’s involved in the film’s production that he writes and best mac-and-cheese and baked beans. sings a sweet little ditty about what those cheap cups For us Southerners, you could call the Automat of coffee still mean to him all these years later. a midcentury New Yorker’s Waffle House — a place Even if you’ve never been to an Automat, you might that glows on the darkest night, welcoming passersrecall the simpler days of hitting up a Luby’s cafeteria by who just need a hot cup of java and a good rest. at the mall, or rolling up to a Mr. Gatti’s for a slice of Hurwitz recruits an illustrious group of A-list Automat Friday-night pizza. Change isn’t always a bad thing devotees, including Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ruth Bader — most times, it’s necessary. But The Automat posits Ginsburg, Colin Powell, Howard Schultz and Elliott that sometimes, society abandons things that are truly Gould, to help add context as to why this now-ancient valuable for the sake of convenience. We might leave restaurant chain wove itself so delicately into the places like the Automat behind, but they never leave us. fabric of American culture. In doing so, Hurwitz shows How wonderful it is to be reminded of their power. how places like the Automat were a great equalizer. They were places where future Supreme Court justices, EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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