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JUNE 3–9, 2020 I VOLUME 39 I NUMBER 18 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

CITY LIMITS: POLICE PUT THE WRONG MAN IN PRISON FOR A NORTH NASHVILLE KILLING. NOW A DIFFERENT SUSPECT HAS BEEN ARRESTED. PAGE 6

FOOD & DRINK: THE INFLUENTIAL AND HISTORIC CAPITOL GRILLE IS POISED FOR BIG CHANGES PAGE 18

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NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

CONTENTS

JUNE 3, 2021

Justice Delayed

Mother Lode ............................................ 22

CITY LIMITS

BOOKS

A decade after Paul Garrett completed a prison sentence for killing Velma Tharpe, another man is charged with the murder

In Kendra DeColo’s new collection of poetry, motherhood is hardcore

BY STEVEN HALE

‘Why in Some Hospitals They Don’t Let You Hold Hands During Labor’ ............... 23

BY ERICA CICCARONE

A poem illustrated by Alexandria Hall BY KENDRA DeCOLO

COVER STORY

We’re [Pretty Much] Open How Nashville’s Independent Music Venue Ecosystem Can Come Back Stronger .......8 Looking at support for venue ownership in general, and Black venue ownership in particular BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

How Restaurants Are Approaching Problems Caused (and Worsened) by the Pandemic ..................................... 10

MUSIC

Parental Advisory .................................... 24 With Aquatic Flowers, pop great Tristen draws inspiration from the challenges and joys of parenthood BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

In Memphis Space .................................. 25

Talking to a handful of local restaurateurs about staffing, safety, pay and more

Mark Harrison’s new solo album updates power pop

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

BY EDD HURT

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: The 33rd Annual ‘You Are So Nashville If ...’ Submissions Are Now Open Allison Russell,Adia Victoria, More to Play Musicians Corner JP Café Opens Inside the Nashville Entrepreneur Center South Nashville Tenants Rally Against Sudden Notice to Leave Homes

The Spin ................................................... 25

R.LUM.R in The Lounge at City Winery BY LORIE LIEBIG

CRITICS’ PICKS Go to Movies in the Park, check out Brew at the Zoo, attend Outloud Music Festival, stream Tennessee Women’s Theater Project’s Natural Shocks, see Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue at the Belcourt and more

26 FILM

Rock the Vote .......................................... 26 Saudi director Haifaa al-Mansour’s The Perfect Candidate depicts the punishing work of fighting for equality BY SADAF AHSAN

FOOD AND DRINK

Something in the Water ......................... 26

Capitol Gains

The historic Capitol Grille is poised for big changes — including the addition of renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten

German director Christian Petzold’s Undine keeps passion at arm’s length BY STEVE ERICKSON

Primal Stream 56 ................................... 27 A supernatural slasher, Snyder’s zombiology and more, now available to stream

BY MARGARET LITTMAN

BY JASON SHAWHAN

VODKA YONIC

Scrounging Season

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

What future does a possum portend? BY SARAH NORRIS

MARKETPLACE

ART

Crawl Space: June 2021 June’s First Saturday offers a peek at the Nashville art scene’s new normal BY JOE NOLAN

Walk a

Mile

with J.R. Lind

With feet on the street, we discover Nashville’s own unique beat – one mile at a time

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FROM BILL FREEMAN ARE TENNESSEE’S REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS THE REAL ‘WELFARE QUEENS’? A recent article by Tennessee Lookout’s Holly McCall caught my eye — mainly because of its use of the old term “welfare queens” in its headline. McCall took readers back to the days of Ronald Reagan, who popularized the term. It’s completely inappropriate terminology for any time, and Reagan used it to describe poor and predominantly Black Americans who he said were gaming our safety-net system to reap benefits rather than take a job to provide for their families. Using the story of one welfare “cheat,” Reagan and his followers made vast generalizations. But as McCall points out, while there are some people who are gaming the system to get benefits, “anyone who thinks most people enjoy applying for welfare, food stamps or unemployment are insensitive and immune to facts.” Now some GOP leaders — including our governor — are making similar generalizations, voting to reduce unemployment benefits and suggesting that unemployed Tennesseans are gaming the system. When withdrawing Tennessee from a federal COVID-19 supplementary unemployment fund, Gov. Bill Lee tweeted: “Work is good for the soul, good for families and good for Tennessee. We shouldn’t be incentivizing people not to do it.” Sure, the statement “work is good for the soul” is true enough, but the folks who are out of work aren’t in that position because they decided to sit back and suck up welfare benefits. They are in that position because Tennesseans have dealt with so many difficulties — the March 2020 tornadoes that destroyed so many properties, and days later, a pandemic forcing the closure of hundreds of businesses. People were displaced and out of jobs. Gov. Lee is not only making generalizations, he is insulting hardworking Tennesseans who are looking forward to getting back in the workforce. Other GOP leaders have been equally or more insulting. House Republican Caucus chairman Jeremy Faison suggested in a tweet that if one doesn’t have a college degree, they are not worthy of the “living wage.” The Tennessee Democratic Party noted that Gov. Lee’s administration set the poverty level for a family of one at $23,606 — and the average annual salary for a McDonald’s employee is only $21,933. Are they not deserving of a living wage just because they don’t have a different skill set at this time or season in their lives? That’s just ridiculous and cruel. Further, according to The Washington Post, repeated studies have proven that receiving unemployment benefits does not stop people from returning to the workforce. A WKRN story from December notes that tens of thousands of Tennesseans were still looking for work. Tennessee’s own website shows that Tennesseans are getting back to work across the state and that nearly all counties experienced a decrease in unemployment during the month of April. So it’s unsettling, given the information, that the governor and others in his party would be making such derogatory comments about their fellow Tennesseans. Despite all the GOP’s claims about how government benefits are making Tennesseans lazy and

REP. JEREMY FAISON slow to return to work, logic says something different. One would think these legislators would be mortified and embarrassed if they had to collect government assistance. But apparently they aren’t. Tennessee’s GOP leaders are taking advantage of government funds even while they condemn their constituents for doing the same. Faison took a Payroll Protection Plan loan for $23,875 for his company, Rocky Top Pest Control. Rep. Jason Zachary of Knoxville, who tweeted that people were “choosing to stay home” rather than work, got $309,000 for his business. Rep. Kevin Vaughan, who tweeted that “unnecessary gov help is hurting small business,” found it necessary to accept more than $67,000 in PPP benefits in 2020. Granted, that’s what these government benefits are for — to be utilized by those who need them. If these leaders needed the funds, I do not fault them for applying for and receiving them. In fact, the Nashville Scene accepted a PPP loan so that it could continue to employ its reporters, editors, contributors and other staff during the pandemic with so many of its advertisers closed for business. I’ll let McCall finish my thought here — because I wholeheartedly agree: I have no problem with these legislators taking advantage of a government program designed to help small businesses during the pandemic. What I do have a problem with is these same legislators voting to cut the time period on which Tennesseans can draw unemployment by more than 50%, from 26 weeks to 12 weeks. I have a problem— and every Tennessean should—with elected officials who are partaking of government assistance themselves and taunting working men and women for doing the same thing.

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 Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Marcus K. Dowling, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Geoffrey Himes, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Chris Parton, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Nadine Smith, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Abby White, Andrea Williams, Cy Winstanley, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Art Director Elizabeth Jones Photographers Eric England, Matt Masters, Daniel Meigs Graphic Designers Mary Louise Meadors, Tracey Starck Production Coordinator Christie Passarello Events and Marketing Director Olivia Britton Promotions Coordinator Caroline Poole 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 Olivia Bellon, William Shutes, Niki Tyree Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Aya Robinson, Price Waltman Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis For advertising information please contact: Mike Smith, msmith@nashvillescene.com or 615-844-9238 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

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

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

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

JUSTICE DELAYED

A decade after Paul Garrett completed a prison sentence for killing Velma Tharpe, another man is charged with the murder BY STEVEN HALE

AN UNABASHED,

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NASHVILLESCENE.COM 6

n late 2004, a little more than a year after a Nashville man named Paul Garrett was sent to prison for the killing of a sex worker named Velma Tharpe, police and prosecutors received a piece of information that should have set off alarms. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had run a DNA sample taken from Tharpe’s stomach and vaginal area and run it through the national Combined DNA Index System. They found a match, but it wasn’t Paul Garrett: The DNA was from a Nashville man named Calvin Atchison. But this revelation led to little more than a yellow sticky note in a prosecutors’ case file. The note read, “Someone should look into this.” On May 25, Metro Cold Case Unit detectives arrested Atchison at his home on the north end of the city near Brick Church Pike and charged him with Tharpe’s murder. So now, more than 20 years after Tharpe’s body was discovered in an alley in North Nashville, and a decade after Garrett completed an eight-year stint in prison for her killing, authorities say they have the right man in custody. The arrest follows a remarkable May 11 court filing from Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk in which he disavowed Garrett’s conviction, which took place under Funk’s predecessor Torry Johnson. The filing was accompanied by a 35-page report from the DA’s office’s Conviction Review Unit detailing misconduct by police detectives, negligence by prosecutors and, at best, a failure by authorities to act, despite having the profound issues brought to their attention more than once. Remarkably, an internal DA’s office report on the case in 2011 came to many of the same conclusions but led to little action. According to the report from CRU director Sunny Eaton, those issues started almost as soon as then-Metro Police Dets. Roy Dunaway and E.J. Bernard brought Garrett in for questioning. It made sense that police would want to talk to him, and although Garrett consistently maintained his innocence in Tharpe’s killing, he did make generally incriminating statements — in particular, the CRU report notes, he was initially evasive about how frequently he had sex with area sex workers. But the detectives also used a number of troubling tactics over the course of multiple interrogations. They lied to Garrett about having received reports from sex workers that he was violent, and later lied to him about things Garrett had told them in previous interviews. In an arrest report, they falsely said that Garrett had made “various admissions about killing” Tharpe. Later, during a preliminary court hearing, Dunaway — the lead detective on the case — lied on the stand about statements Garrett had made to police. Less than a week after that hearing, police and prosecutors received a DNA

report from the TBI excluding Garrett as the source of DNA found on Tharpe’s body. That report prompted then-Assistant District Attorney Pam Anderson to go back through the recorded police interviews with Garrett, where she discovered that Dunaway — the only witness she called to the stand during the preliminary hearing — had given false testimony. She informed then-DA Torry Johnson and others in the office of this discovery, according to the report. A note from another prosecutor in the case file even said “I don’t think we can make a case.” But soon after that, two jailhouse informants told prosecutors that Garrett had made inculpatory statements to them while they were locked up together. The case moved ahead toward trial. The new lead prosecutor on the case, ADA Dan Hamm, was apparently not made aware of the detective’s false testimony, according to the CRU report. Garrett had not wavered in maintaining his innocence, but he’d also seen the case against him proceed despite the absence of any physical evidence against him. So, as Garrett told detectives reviewing the case years later, when his attorney warned him that he was facing a life sentence and there was a good chance a jury would convict him, he decided to offer prosecutors a deal. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and took a 15-year-maximum sentence, with the hope that he’d be out on parole soon. But he wasn’t. In the end he served eight years in prison. But shortly before Garrett’s 2011 release, two Cold Case Unit officers — Det. Mike Roland and Sgt. Pat Postiglione — stumbled upon the Tharpe murder while investigating other unsolved killings of Nashville sex workers. The case looked all wrong to them, and after reinvestigating it themselves, they became convinced that Garrett had been wrongfully convicted. Not only that, they believed they knew who the real killer was. They didn’t keep their conclusions secret. They convened a meeting of the city’s most powerful criminal justice officials — Johnson and two deputies from the DA’s office along with then-Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson. The agencies’ public relations officials — Susan Niland and Don Aaron, respectively — were there too. The detectives’ presentation prompted Johnson to order a review of the case by then-ADA Kathy Morante, who went on to become the director of the MNPD’s Office of Professional Accountability in 2013. She reached the same conclusion the detectives had, writing in her report: “I believe that Garrett is not guilty of this murder,” and later, “I also believe Atchison probably did murder Tharpe.” She also recommended that the office reexamine “all homicide cases with convictions that were handled by Dunaway,” the detective who had given false testimony and was later demoted for giving false testimony in a different

GARRETT HAD NOT WAVERED IN MAINTAINING HIS INNOCENCE, BUT HE’D ALSO SEEN THE CASE AGAINST HIM PROCEED DESPITE THE ABSENCE OF ANY PHYSICAL EVIDENCE AGAINST HIM. murder trial. Morante wrote that Garrett “deserves to be released immediately with no conditions and to have his record clear.” Morante’s report notes that when the detectives went to interview Garrett in prison, he asked them, “Guys, what took you so long?” But Johnson apparently did not act with much urgency. He wrote to the Board of Probation and Parole saying that he didn’t believe Garrett could be exonerated but that he should be released. A year later, when defense attorney Laura Dykes filed a petition for writ of error coram nobis on Garrett’s behalf, citing the TBI report matching the DNA found on Tharpe’s body to Atchison, Johnson’s office defended the conviction in court. Ten years went by. Garrett had been released, but his name had not been cleared. It still hasn’t happened legally, although both the DA’s office and the MNPD now say they believe he is innocent. The CRU’s interest in the case was prompted by Roland, the detective who had reinvestigated the case in 2011 and hadn’t been able to shake it since. He approached an ADA in Funk’s office in October of last year to ask the CRU to review the case. Now, the Tennessee Innocence Project is working in court to see Garrett’s conviction vacated. At the same time, prosecutors will be pursuing the conviction of Atchison. The CRU’s report notes that the cold case detectives reinvestigating the case in 2011 spoke to Atchison as well as his exwife. According to Morante’s 2011 report, Atchison told detectives that he was living in Nashville at the time of Tharpe’s murder, as well as doing a lot of drugs and frequently having sex with sex workers. He denied killing anyone, although he did confess to detectives that he’d been violent with his wife. “He admitted to choking his wife,” the report reads, “but was emphatic that he always helped her off the ground afterward.” The report also says that during a second interview with police, Atchison said he couldn’t remember if he’d committed the murder. “At one point he said, ‘I’m not saying I did, but not saying I didn’t.’ ” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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nashvillescene.com | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

[Pretty Much] Looking at what's been made better and made worse by COVID-19 in the restaurant and venue industries By Chris Chamberlain and Stephen Trageser

How Nashville’s Independent Music Venue Ecosystem Can Come Back Stronger

Looking at support for venue ownership in general, and Black venue ownership in particular BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

he ecosystem of independent music venues in Nashville, along with its counterparts around the U.S., has been on a roller-coaster ride since the pandemic began. Every time you breathe a sigh of relief, it seems there’s a white-knuckle drop waiting. The second stimulus package in December included $15 billion in Shuttered Venue Operators Grants for venues that have been unable to operate normally since March 2020. As of press time, venues across the city have returned to limited-capacity operation, but not a dime has been disbursed.

Following twists and turns like this has offered an up-close view of long-standing problems in an industry that’s so important to our cultural identity and our economy. None of these issues has an easy solution, but the Scene has reached out to industry pros to learn more about how we might address two of them. First, how do we keep our independent venues from being squeezed out by gentrification? And as we tackle that, how do we expand venue ownership to better include Black and brown communities, which are vastly underrepresented? Over the past four months, a landmark Nashville venue has faced a predicament that’s become all too familiar: The Elliston Place property home to historic rock club Exit/In and its sister bar Hurry Back was put up for sale. Chris and Telisha Cobb, who own the business, set a plan in motion to buy the site with backing from North Carolina real estate firm Grubb Properties’ Live Venue Recovery Fund. Reportedly out of spite, the owners chose to decline the offer, and instead the buildings went under contract to AJ Capital Partners, whose projects include luxury hotels and multiuse developments. AJ Capital has made a pledge to preserve the building, but there’s a great deal of concern about maintaining the contributions that Exit/In has made to Music City since 1971 — and for most supporters of the local music scene, that means keeping the Cobbs in control of the business. The Cobbs are continuing their bid to buy: They still have Grubb’s financial support, equivalent to the undisclosed figure that AJ has paid, and they launched a campaign to raise

how do we keep our independent venues from being squeezed out by gentrification? And as we tackle that, how do we expand venue ownership to better include Black and brown communities, which are vastly underrepresented? funds to sweeten an offer. Since April, more than 4,000 donors have contributed roughly $270,000 — including $45,000 from a special T-shirt sale organized by Paramore’s Hayley Williams — and the goal has been raised to $500,000. Jeff Syracuse is among a group of vocal Metro councilmembers who are keenly aware of the risks faced by independent venues, most of which lease their spaces. When owners decide it’s time to sell, rent tends to skyrocket. Following the news about Exit/In, Syracuse asked the Metro Council’s Planning, Zoning and Historical Committee for a full rundown of laws at the Metro or state level that could potentially help venues and other small businesses remain in place. The closest thing they found was a program in which Rutherford County offers a property tax abatement to encourage maintenance and repair of historic homes and commercial buildings. A similar program enacted in Nashville could push property owners to renovate rather than sell. But it would most likely focus on historic architecture, and Nashville

music venues are mostly significant for what happens inside. Frustrated by the lack of options, Syracuse proposed a thorough inventory of the city’s independent venues to the Metro Council, which adopted his resolution May 4. Some organizational meetings have taken place, and he expects a consulting firm will carry out the work of gathering and analyzing the data. “We need to figure out the kind of property that a venue is in, what is their sustainability as far as length of time of leasing,” says Syracuse. “And then be able to hopefully craft some tools around that. I want to be able to look both short term and long term. I do think that we have an opportunity through the American Rescue Plan Act. We have money coming to us, which I know will be going to support small businesses and nonprofits and getting people back on their feet after the pandemic. Other cities are already looking at using their ARPA funds to help support the creative economy.” The U.S. Treasury has issued broad guidance for how money from the relief bill, signed in March, can be spent, but it’s up

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

ERIC HOLT, CO-FOUNDER OF LOVENOISE Holt notes the importance of creating a sustainable business model, which requires someone to thread a lot of needles. Increased investment in the city from massive corporate concert promoters like Live Nation and AEG makes it harder for entrepreneurial promoters to compete for top-drawing acts. That said, establishing thoughtfully balanced partnerships with those big players can be a help to both the venue and the promoter. Adrian Granderson is one of the few Black businesspeople who’ve recently run a ticketed venue in Nashville. In 2010, he and his partners opened Jazz and Jokes at 174 Third Ave. N., the space now home to rock club Bowie’s. Ultimately, the economics of doing shows in the relatively small but expensive space didn’t work out over time, and they closed down Jazz and Jokes in 2013. Not long after, they opened the nightclub WKND Hang Suite on Church Street, and

JAZZ NIGHT AT THE LOCAL DISTRO

more recently the bar Minerva on Buchanan Street in North Nashville. They also ran the Gulch-area nightclub Agenda. As he’s run these businesses, Granderson explains, he’s had constant battles with landlords, neighbors and more. “There is a mastery that you have to develop over time,” says Granderson. “That is the balance between being popular and the place that people want to be — and making enough noise to get the business that you’re looking for — but not being too loud to be out there where the police are coming by you all the time and where the residents around you are calling you a nuisance.” But as much work as that is, Granderson feels that what the city’s Black business community in general needs to thrive is better integration into formal and informal business networks. That way, it’s easier to identify opportunities and avoid pitfalls. “Not even a hand up — I’m looking for

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

to city governments to determine the best uses and work out many granular details. Seattle’s City Council included music venues in its resolution on how it plans to spend its share. Arts Alliance Illinois is gathering support for a proposal to put $500 million of the ARPA funds coming to Illinois cities into venue relief and other programming over the next four years. That’s on top of Arts77, a program Chicago launched without ARPA money that includes $60 million in public arts support. One notable element of Arts77 is Chicago Presents, a grant program that will cover costs of producing concerts and other events in the city this summer. States can play a role, too: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a substantial bill that sets aside $10 million for tax rebates for small music venues and festival promoters, based on state alcohol taxes that have already been paid. Though Metro hasn’t announced a specific initiative for aiding venues, the city has helped before: Among other initiatives, the Metro Council approved $2 million in CARES Act funding to support venues in the fall. Looking forward, the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp could launch a program similar to Chicago Presents, using $500,000 earmarked by Mayor John Cooper for events highlighting the city’s diverse communities. A nonprofit called Sow Good has created a proposal for a series of concerts in 2022 called Music City Bands Together that would generate funds for nonprofits, venues and many other beneficiaries, to be paid for out of Metro’s Event Marketing Fund. The proposal will be considered in the June 24 Metro budget vote. Any assistance can’t come quickly enough. Exit/In’s Chris Cobb is also the president of the 15-member trade group Music Venue Alliance Nashville, whose achievements include lobbying for that CARES disbursement. He notes that as the federal Shuttered Venue Operators Grant process has dragged on, MVAN member venues that are able to generate some revenue have contributed to help others pay rent. “In theory we’re open, but the reality is that there’s a huge mountain to climb — to get the band together, rehearse the songs, get the show ready, get beer back in the coolers, get kitchen staff back in the kitchen,” Cobb says. “There’s the cost of additional cleaning that we all need to do.” With so many immediate concerns, it’s hard to focus on the future. But as we look at ways our music venue ecosystem can come back stronger after the pandemic, it’s hard not to notice that the business side of it is a very white space — something MVAN’s members are aware of. Black and brown businesspeople across the city own nightclubs and lounges that sometimes offer live music. While they are very important for the city, those businesses don’t interact with the creative community in quite the same way. “What I envision, and what hasn’t been consistent in my lifetime, is a ticketed live music venue that’s Black-owned — [one that is] intentional, that’s ‘This is all we do, live music,’ ” says Eric Holt, co-founder of the long-running soul, hip-hop and R&B concert promotion group Lovenoise. “Having that opportunity is something that will push Nashville up a notch, and will spread the experience. It’s not here. It used to be here — on Jefferson Street, during those years [before the construction of I-40 in the 1960s]. But we need to bring it back.”

a heads-up,” Granderson says. “Help me know what I don’t know. Show me that you can be my ally — not when it seems like an opportunity for you, but when you can see that there’s a group of guys that know how to run businesses [and ask] ‘How do we enhance those guys?’ That seems like it would be the smart play for the city.” That kind of support is growing organically. Holt says there’s a possibility that Lovenoise could open or partner in a venue venture. They’d need a lot of help, and some well-known businesses are willing to pitch in. “The Black live music history in North Nashville is so unbelievably rich and was so horrifically erased,” says Chris Cobb. “It’s definitely way past time for it to be reestablished. It’s not my place to be an owner of it, but I would do anything I can to help move that forward.” The night before he spoke with the Scene, Holt went to Monday Night Jazz at The Local Distro on North Nashville’s Garfield Street. He explains that years ago, that corner was known to people who lived nearby as a dangerous place. Today, gentrification is driving longtime residents out of the neighborhood. But The Local Distro and Monday Night Jazz are symbols of ways that positive change can include everyone, with Black ownership at the center. “Having a Black-owned business serve that to the community is important for everybody to see and for everybody to experience,” says Holt. “It does feel different for me as an African American male to stand there on the corner, proud of my culture — jazz being played, real authentic jazz by TSU graduates, the owner of the facility is a TSU graduate as well, an African American male. It sends the right message. It’s not, ‘They took this neighborhood from us.’ It’s like, ‘OK, the neighborhood changed, and we participated in its success.’ ” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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How Restaurants Are Approaching Problems Caused (and Worsened) by the Pandemic Talking to a handful of local restaurateurs about staffing, safety, pay and more

Q-JUAN TAYLOR, CO-OWNER AND PARTNER AT SINEMA AND 8TH & ROAST

“we realLy neEd to adDresS the acCesSibility to the Metro area for workers in the restaurant industry that can’t live close to where they work.” —Q-Juan Taylor

challenge. “It’s overwhelming to see people in the space after looking at each other’s faces for so long,” he says. “We’ve been overwhelmed, emotionally and literally, with all the people coming out to eat. As we ease out of COVID, people are finding that they really miss restaurants and common experiences with your feet under a table with friends.” Q-Juan Taylor — co-owner and partner at both Sinema and 8th & Roast — has also been encouraged by the recent rush of business. “People are so excited about congregating,” he says. “It’s sort of a communion, a celebration of survival.” That said, Taylor’s business is nowhere close to whole again. “I’m seeing a progressive bounce-back,” he explains. “We’ve still got a long way to go for people to feel comfortable with their small businesses. Large events like restaurant buyouts, receptions and private dinners still

JIM MYERS, ELLISTON PLACE SODA SHOP

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

he Nashville hospitality industry has been hit particularly hard by the one-two punch of COVID-19 and last year’s unimaginable series of disastrous events. As quickly as the dining spigot was cut off by mayoral fiat back in March 2020, it has reopened to a gushing cascade as capacity constraints and mask regulations have been lifted. This has introduced an all-new series of challenges for local food and beverage workers. It’s easy to assume that some of the things that have gone away — think family-style and buffet dining — will never return. But Monell’s, for instance, is back with full tables around the lazy Susan. Other new aspects of the dining experience — like carryout from fine-dining establishments and the option to buy booze to-go — will probably remain a regular part of the industry, but their future impact on revenue is still an open question. While the rampant issues regarding staffing difficulties are definitely real, how businesses are scrambling to attract workers involves a wide range of potential solutions. To attribute the paucity of available workers to past and future servers sitting on their couches playing video games and cashing their stimulus and unemployment checks — well, that’s beyond reductive. To find out some of the real answers about where we’ve come and where we might be headed, the Scene spoke with restaurateurs, a brewery owner and other hospitality pros. Their responses reveal the nuances that don’t show up in investigations looking for easy answers to the problems at hand. They also demonstrate just how frustrating it is to essentially reassemble an aircraft that’s flying at Mach 1. Jim Myers comes at these issues from a unique perspective. He’s a former longtime food and drink writer currently working as the self-described Minister of Culture at the recently opened shiny new location of the classic Elliston Place Soda Shop. As per usual with restaurant openings (and not just ones that happened during the past year-and-change), the date of the shop’s grand debut moved out constantly thanks to construction and permitting delays, capacity issues and staffing difficulties. But now that the soda shop has welcomed streaming crowds of diners who’ve been waiting for a long time, Myers welcomes the

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

aren’t happening. It’s nice to see people at four-tops, but dining has changed. We don’t see groups ordering five bottles of wine and paying with their corporate cards.” Wesley Keegan, the owner of TailGate Brewery, made the shrewd decision to diversify his business years ago. In addition to operating a large commercial brewery at his Bellevue headquarters, Keegan has opened additional taprooms in East Nashville and on Music Row. All his locations have robust food programs revolving around pizza, and TailGate’s wide array of crowd-pleasing draft beers and ciders kept his business relatively stable throughout 2020. “We shut down for two months, but carryout saved us as it slowly ramped up until we could reopen for dining in,” he says. “Business wasn’t good, but it was manageable. We were able to keep our people and still give raises throughout the year.” The fact that all of Keegan’s facilities produce beer and/or cider also meant that they could sell products to go under their brewery license when the city clamped down on Broadway and Midtown establishments that were bad actors. “They just didn’t want Lower Broad to turn into a giant outdoor cocktail party and saw a lot of places that weren’t following the rules,” says Keegan. “Retail spots got left to carry the bag. We had to pay our lawyers and contact our councilmembers to figure it out, but all things considered, the Beer Board was very proactive, and Nashville did a great job.

Small businesses are used to figuring out how to survive.” Along the way, Keegan remained committed to his business. “We saw how people who pivoted to operate within the rules have survived better than those who didn’t. Outdoor dining was really good for us and many of our retail accounts. We have been really aggressive, and we paid for it. We invested in ourselves. If you waited for prices to come down, they just didn’t. If a box of gloves cost 10 times more than it used to, we just ponied up if it made our guests more comfortable. Closing the doors was never an option.” All four of these businesses have had to address staffing issues that can seem desperate at times. “It’s the 10,000-pound gorilla in the room,” says Myers. “It’s citywide and countrywide. We ran into the perfect storm of everyone trying to open at the same time. We’ve got this fancy new sports car, but we haven’t been able to run it at full-throttle until we can be fully staffed. We thought we would open in January and got great responses to want ads. Then the opening date changed, and all those people were gone when we finally did open. We’ve been using every online venue available to attract people. It’s always been competitive to hire in Nashville, but this feels really different. It’s naive to think that the added government benefits don’t play a part in the problem, but people are definitely struggling with child care, and many people have left the sector.”

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

TAILGATE BREWERY Taylor agrees and adds a few other factors. “There are three problems, in my opinion,” he says. “A lot of potential employees just aren’t in town anymore. Others simply didn’t come back to the restaurant industry and switched careers. But we really need to address the accessibility to the Metro area for workers in the restaurant industry that can’t live close to where they work. Many of my people live in Madison, Antioch and Hendersonville. We have to find solutions to affordable housing, because they can’t afford to live near Sinema.” From Keegan’s perspective, many of the industry’s problems with staffing are selfinflicted. “We had been receiving fewer applications than ever, almost zero over the past few months,” he says. “Then we realized that we hadn’t been doing a good job marketing how we pay and treat our employees. We offer great wages, access to health care, a 401K — things that are pretty unique in our business. We just didn’t do a good job sharing that with potential employees. “We looked at our online job listings, and all of them were old,” he continues. “It’s probably our fault that we weren’t doing a good job spreading that message. Once we fixed that, we got more applicants than we know what to do with. Now we’re fully staffed and have more than a dozen employees that have been with us longer than five years, which is pretty good when you consider we’ve only been open for six years. Keeping people is more challenging than hiring them. We’ve learned that in order to retain employees, you’ve got to pay them right, treat them right, talk to them and listen to them.”

Keegan goes on: “Consumers are more conscious, and they appreciate businesses that treat their employees right. Our job is to market what we’re about. In a brewery, your highest [profit-and-loss] item is labor, and it should be that way. Investing in yourself pays dividends, but getting there is hard. The life cycle of a small business is great when you’re really small or really big. In between fucking blows.” Taylor admits that his team threw a lot of spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick to get to where they are now. Sinema opened a small bodega to sell kitchen staples and produce to customers in need, and even operated a ghost-kitchen taco shop online for a little while. Ghost kitchens, for the unfamiliar, are food-prep facilities that are set up for delivery-only meals — and they saw a boom during the pandemic. The restaurant was forced to switch its popular weekend brunch buffet with multiple action stations to a family-style service at the table, but Taylor and his team have been surprised how successful the change has been. “We’re not going back,” he says. “We’re very proud of how our staff has been so creative coming together to still create a fun interactive experience at the table. You have to figure out what vibe a consumer is seeking out this evening. Is it takeout or dining out? You’ve got to have all those elements. We survived because we have all the things involved in dining. We’re still around and will be lucky to have been here seven years this month. I have great respect for the people who have fought through this and continued to survive with us.” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

HOP SPRINGS

JUNE 19 & 20, 2021 MURFREESBORO, TN

FIRESIDE LINE-UP WILL VARY PENDING TRAVEL AND/OR SAFETY LIMITATIONS (4-7 BAND MEMBERS)

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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SHOWING

27th Annual

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Food trucks, games & fun start at 5 p.m. Movies start at sundown.

N A S H V I L L E M O V I E S I N T H E PA R K . C O M SPONSORED BY

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

#MIP21 FOOD VENDORS

Princess and Olaf costumes are encouraged! I N PA R T N E R S H I P WITH

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

THEATER

nashvillezoo.org for more details. 6:3010:30 p.m. June 4, at the Nashville Zoo, 3777 Nolensville Pike STEVEN HALE

WATCH FROZEN II AT THE SCENE’S MOVIES IN THE PARK

MUSIC

For nearly three decades, we at the Scene have been delighted to present Movies in the Park — a free summertime series of family-friendly flicks shown outdoors on a big screen. We delivered 2020’s MIP series drive-in-style due to COVID concerns, but this year we’re returning to Elmington Park for a four-week run of films offering a little something for everyone. Up first is this year’s sole animated selection, 2019’s Frozen II. Beloved by whippersnappers far and wide, the Disney-produced sequel features much of the same voice cast as 2013’s smash hit Frozen (Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad, Jonathan Groff), plus a few top-tier additions (Evan Rachel Wood, Sterling K. Brown, Alfred Molina). Of course, your tyke probably won’t care how stacked the cast is. Attendees can expect food trucks, contests and more, so get there early and bring something to sit on. Upcoming for Movies in the Park 2021: 2019’s Little Women (June 10), Thor: Ragnarok (June 17) and 9 to 5 (June 24). Find more details at nashvillemoviesinthepark.com. 5 p.m. Thursday, June 3 (with the movie beginning at sundown), at Elmington Park, 3531 West End Ave. D. PATRICK RODGERS

Carlos Jobim and guitarist João Gilberto helped define ’60s popular music. I’m also a fan of Nashville’s Swan Dive, which has been making sparkling pop records since 1993. In the universe of super-sophisticated songwriters, the group’s Bill DeMain ranks with greats like Marshall Crenshaw and Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon, while vocalist Molly Felder is a master of the cooled-out approach to pop singing. DeMain shows off his bossa nova chops on Swan Dive’s 2001 album June, one of the band’s best records. The album’s “Safe and Sound” and “One-Sided” really do update bossa nova — DeMain has the guitar style down cold — while “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” which DeMain co-wrote with Crenshaw, is superb. This week, Swan Dive marks the 20th anniversary of June’s release with a free livestream featuring DeMain, Felder and multi-instrumentalist Jim Hoke, who will play the album and talk about its making. With June, DeMain and Felder created their own world out of the varied strains of ’60s pop, from Jobim to Dusty Springfield and Brian Wilson. If it’s possible to feel good about being slightly melancholy in the summertime, June can help you achieve that state of mind. 7 p.m. June 3, via Swan Dive’s Facebook and YouTube pages EDD HURT

[DRINK AND SQUEAK AND SQUAWK WITH THE ANIMALS]

GO TO BREW AT THE ZOO

OK, if we’re being honest, the pandemic didn’t really disrupt our beer intake. Supply and demand remained steady. But there sure weren’t any exotic animals around. Now, with things seemingly on their way back to normal, you can head out to the Nashville Zoo, enjoy a craft beer from one of dozens of local breweries, and take in some animal life that’s more exotic than the squirrels in your backyard. Food trucks and more dining options will be available, as will 3-ounce samples of more than four dozen beers. As of this writing, general-admission tickets are sold out, but special “Conservation Champion” tickets still remain. Get to

CATCH STREET THEATRE’S VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE OF FUGITIVE SONGS

Street Theatre Company is back this weekend with a new virtual performance of the intimate song cycle Fugitive Songs. Featuring music by Chris Miller and lyrics by Nathan Tysen (the award-winning team behind Tuck Everlasting and The Burnt Part Boys), this innovative work has been called “a musical journey across America,” blending traditional folk music with contemporary pop and even gospel. The story follows an unlikely collection of people — including “a disgruntled Subway sandwich employee, a jilted ex-cheerleader, a pair of Patty Hearst fanatics and a stoner forced to rob a convenience store against his will” — all running away from something in their lives. Fugitive Songs is directed by Sawyer Wallace, with musical direction by Randy Craft. The cast includes Katie Bruno, Colin Carswell, Aaron Castle, Blake Holliday, Rebecca Keeshin and Jasmine Robertson. Tickets are $10, and you can purchase them via showtix4u.com. 7:30 p.m. June 4-6 via Street Theatre AMY STUMPFL MUSIC

[DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING]

FOOD & DRINK

FILM

FROZEN II

[REASONS TO RUN]

[STEPPING OUT]

SEE JAPANESE BREAKFAST, SOCCER MOMMY, TODRICK HALL & MORE AT OUTLOUD

Back in 2017, the inaugural Outloud music festival came roaring out of the gate with a lineup of powerhouse LGBTQ artists and allies topped by New Orleans

[SUMMER BREEZE]

LISTEN TO SWAN DIVE’S LIVESTREAM OF JUNE

I’m a fan of Ruy Castro’s book Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World, which originally appeared in Brazil in 1990 and saw an English edition a decade later. Even if you don’t follow every detail of Castro’s account, the book makes it clear that bossa nova marks the beginning of modern pop. The first bossa nova records were released in the late 1950s, and the jazz-derived architecture created by composer Antonio

JAPANESE BREAKFAST

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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CRITICS’ PICKS

MUSIC

This year’s Science on Screen series at the blessedly reopened Belcourt is bookended by films about a doomed search for the origins of humankind and a dystopian near-future vision of its potential end. Feels appropriate enough for the return of the series after skipping last year because [gestures wildly at all the things]. The annual series kicks off on Friday with 2001: A Space Odyssey, and if you haven’t seen a movie in public for some time, you could do far worse than Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic for your first trip back to the theater. The film will screen Friday, Saturday and Sunday and will be introduced by NASA scientist and Vanderbilt alum Tracie Prater, who manages space habitat systems development at the Marshall Space Flight Center. After that comes 1956’s undersung but influential Forbidden Planet (showing June 12-13) and 2011’s fresh take on alien invasion Attack the Block (June 16) — the latter coming after the recent announcement of a sequel that will bring John Boyega back to the story that introduced him to most of us. The series closes with Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (June 23), arguably one of the best films so far this century and a reminder of the days when Clive Owen was a movie star. 2001: A Space Odyssey screens Friday-Sunday, June 4-6; Science on Screen continues through June 23 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. STEVEN HALE [MAY YOUR TINSEL CURTAIN ALWAYS HANG]

CELEBRATE SPRINGWATER’S GRAND REOPENING

Not even a pandemic could kill Centennial Park-adjacent dive bar

THEATER Springwater. Though it’s changed names and hands several times since the 1890s, the establishment proudly touts its reputation as the oldest bar in continual operation in Tennessee. For more than four of those many decades, the watering hole’s tiny venue area has played a mighty role in Music City’s ever-evolving creative community, offering space for folk-schooled songwriters, punks, metalheads, experimental electronic musicians, comedians and more to mingle and hone their respective crafts. Springwater celebrates a return to inperson performances with shows June 4 through 6 featuring a slew of notable locals. Check out philosophically inclined rock ’n’ soul-ish groups The Altered Statesman and Styrofoam Winos at an early show on Friday with free-jazz quartet In Place; the late show features Black Venus, who are fans of heavy blues and Baudelaire, alongside ferocious garage rockers Beat Creeps and grunge expanders Vera Bloom. Saturday, the raucous Voltagehawk and shape-shifting Cloudmouth team up with thrashy boogiemen Electric Python. Sunday, the bill starts on a more frenetic note with The Dirty Delusions, cools things down just a tad with Casey Jo and the Friday Night Dads and gets heavy and dark with Year of October wrapping up. Visit thespringwater. com for advance tickets and complete scheduling info. June 4-6 at Springwater, 115 27th Ave. N. STEPHEN TRAGESER

can expect to hear some melodically rich folk-indebted indie rock. A Sunrise in a Basement songs “IFSN” (which features vocals from excellent local psych-pop artist Liza Anne) and “Gettin’ Tired” are lush and tuneful, informed by the kind of ’60s and ’70s sunshine pop that was perfected by songwriters like Brian Wilson, Emitt Rhodes and Harry Nilsson. Sun Seeker will be joined by their friends Nightingail and Styrofoam Winos at Saturday’s show, with a DJ set from Briston Maroney. Cover is $5, and the show will take place in the parking lot, with masks required. 2 p.m. Saturday, June 5, at The Basement, 1604 Eighth Ave. S. D. PATRICK RODGERS [MUSIC TO YOUNG EARS]

CHECK OUT NASHVILLE JAZZ WORKSHOP’S JAZZ AM AT HADLEY PARK

For more than 20 years, the Nashville Jazz Workshop has been making a difference in Music City, promoting the art form through a unique model that stresses both education and world-class performance. And this weekend, NJW will introduce its latest initiative, Jazz AM — a monthly series of free Saturday morning programs geared toward children ages 2 to 10 and their caretakers. Designed to “encourage creativity, promote collaboration, and build musical awareness,” the interactive concerts will feature music, puppets, rhythm and movement, while exposing

[SHOCK AND AWE]

STREAM TENNESSEE WOMEN’S THEATER PROJECT’S NATURAL SHOCKS

Goodbyes are never easy. But last month’s news that Tennessee Women’s Theater Project would present its final production in June was particularly bittersweet. Founder and artistic director Maryanna Clarke established the stalwart company in 2005 with the simple mission of “giving voice to women through theater arts.” Over the years, she (along with her husband Chris) has done just that — producing thought-provoking works with a particular focus on women, and providing countless job opportunities for women in professional theater. TWTP has also served as a strong community partner, bringing live theater to underserved audiences and even offering free tickets to clients of agencies that serve at-risk women. So it seems only fitting that TWTP’s final project would be a filmed staging of Lauren Gunderson’s Natural Shocks, a play that deals with guns and domestic violence. The company actually had just opened Natural Shocks last year when Nashville suffered the devastating one-two punch of both a tornado and a global pandemic, so this certainly feels like a full-circle moment. And I’m delighted that actor Brittany Nelson is back to revisit the meaty role of Angela. Visit twtp.org for details on the streaming performance. June 6-19 via Tennessee Women’s Theater Project AMY STUMPFL

FILM

WATCH SCIENCE ON SCREEN: 2001 — A SPACE ODYSSEY AT THE BELCOURT

SUN SEEKER

MUSIC

[RETURNING ATTRACTIONS]

kids to legendary jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and more. Jazz AM kicks off this Saturday with a program titled “The First Sounds of Jazz, Louis Armstrong.” The event will be hosted at Hadley Park Community Center for June and July, and will eventually move to NJW’s new home at 1012 Buchanan St. To learn more or to register for free tickets, visit nashvillejazz. org. 10 a.m. Saturday, June 5, at Hadley Park Community Center, 1037 28th Ave. N.  AMY STUMPFL

MUSIC

FILM

bounce queen Big Freedia. In spite of the pandemic, the Outloud crew managed to put on a spectacular drive-in show (which also featured Big Freedia) in the fall. Friday and Saturday, a limited-capacity, socially distanced audience can head down to the Main Event Parking Lot on James Robertson Parkway for the glorious return of Outloud. At the top of Friday’s lineup is the great pop-rocker Michelle Zauner, aka Japanese Breakfast. That day, she’ll also be celebrating the release of her new LP Jubilee. Local support includes conquering heroes Soccer Mommy and glam-revival aces The Blam Blams, plus divine drag divas Cya Inhale and Vidalia Anne Gentry. Saturday, actor-singer-rapper Todrick Hall and grooving soulful outfit Tank and the Bangas top the bill, with an appearance from RuPaul’s Drag Race lip-sync legend Coco Montrese, local support from pop champ Freak Daddy and more. Tickets are sold in tiers with prices reflecting how close the seating-and-dancing areas are to the stage; VIP ticket buyers can also check out a pre-party on June 3 at The Dive Motel. It’s recommended you make sure to buy a ticket on the same tier as the friends you want to go with — and that you get tickets soon, as attendance is limited to 30 percent of the venue’s capacity. Check out the Outloud Festival site at outloudmusicfestival.com for all the details. 7:30 p.m. June 4-5, at Main Event Parking Lot, 14 James Robertson Parkway STEPHEN TRAGESER

[SWIMMING STUDIES]

WATCH SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE AT THE BELCOURT

For almost three decades, Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has studied and depicted the radical transformations his home country has undergone with emotional tenderness and investigative thoroughness.

[SUN’S SET]

CHECK OUT SUN SEEKER’S ALBUM RELEASE FEAT. NIGHTINGAIL, STYROFOAM WINOS & DJ BRISTON MARONEY

On June 4, Nashville psych-folk trio Sun Seeker will release its debut full-length, A Sunrise in a Basement. As anyone who’s been paying attention to the local rock scene for the past half-decade or so can tell you, it’s been a long time coming. The outfit released its Biddeford EP back in 2017 via Jack White’s Third Man Records, and was a regular presence at venues and house shows around town until, you know, the whole pandemic thing. But Sun Seeker will be back to celebrate the release of Sunrise — out via Pittsburgh indie Misra Records — this weekend at The Basement, and attendees

SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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16 workshop, which will help you prepare your first-person story for an event like The Moth or Tenx9 Nashville. On June 23, join Scene favorite Meg Wade for a bold venture into writing about the pandemic — trust me, Wade is good for it. She’ll also lead workshops about Southern women’s voices (June 30) and protest poetry (July 7). After that, you can get otherworldly with Nathan Elias (July 14) and explore speculative fiction. The folks from Nashville’s excellent street paper The Contributor will be there hawking their latest issue as well as coffee, so bring a few bucks if you’d like to partake. There’s no need to register beforehand. Just show up, and The Porch will provide notebooks, pens and inspiration. Learn more at porchtn.org/happening/happenings. Noon-1 p.m. Wednesdays, June 9-July 14, at Church Street Park, 600 Church St.

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SEE THE SHINDELLAS AT EXIT/IN’S OUT/BACK CONCERT SERIES

After remaining closed for more than a year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, historic rock club Exit/In is reopening its doors for limited-capacity crowds. Indoor shows are coming back soon, but they’ll be interspersed with installments of the 50-year-old club’s newly launched Out/ Back concert series. The Out/Back shows will be held — as you might expect — in a converted parking lot behind the venue and its sister bar Hurry Back, not too far from the erstwhile rear entrance that gave the club its name. Headlining Wednesday’s installment of Out/Back are The Shindellas, a girl-group-inspired trio of songsmiths who organically cultivate poise, polish and precision in their art. Stacy Johnson, Tamara Chauniece and Kasi Jones each moved to Music City to work with Louis York’s Chuck Harmony and Claude Kelly as part of their Weirdo Workshop collective and label, which is set to release The Shindellas’ debut LP Hits That Stick Like Grits sometime this summer. Opening up the show are soulful singer Kyndle Wylde and pop R&B trio The Magi. An important aside: Exit/In owners Chris and Telisha Cobb launched a campaign to buy the property the venue stands on, so check out the GoFundMe campaign and help out if you can. 7 p.m. June 9 at Exit/In, 2208 Elliston Place STEPHEN TRAGESER WRITING

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His most recent films, Ash Is Purest White and Mountains May Depart, take place over decades and use genre tropes of the action movie and melodrama to capture the vast historical sweep of a changing society. His latest film, Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, also looks at decades of transformation, but on a much more micro scale: The documentary sees Jia returning to his hometown, Shanxi, for a NASHVILLE literary festival, celebrating authors born in the region who made their names in bigger cities like Beijing and Shanghai. It’s a homecoming for all parties involved, and as Jia does so eloquently in both fiction and nonfiction, the bittersweet event is a lens through which to explore the tension between the rapid onset of industrialization and the pastoral roots of rural China. June NASHVILLE 12-15, at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave.

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Chef Makini Howell opened Plum Bistro in Seattle in 2009, years before plant-based food was widely embraced or trendy. To many, veganism was still the butt of a joke, but Howell showed vegans and omnivores alike there can be a comforting, indulgent side to grains and vegetables. Her dishes — approachable food like burgers, sandwiches, pizzas, salads and more — have earned praise from The New York Times, Modern Farmer and Tasting Table, and Plum has been called one of the best vegan restaurants in the U.S. several times over. One especially fun anecdote: When Stevie Wonder lunched at Plum while in Seattle in 2015, he loved his meal so much that he hired Howell to be his personal touring chef. Now, Plum exists in many forms — Plum Bistro, Plum Chopped, Sugar Plum, Pantry by Plum and Plum Truck — and, thankfully for those of us not in Seattle, Howell has also released Plum: Gratifying Vegan Dishes From Seattle’s Plum Bistro. The cookbook features more than 60 recipes, many of which will make good use of the summer produce that’s starting to fill local markets’ tables. It’s a must-have for anyone who’s received an unfamiliar item in their CSA box and wondered, “What do I do with this?” Buy it via Parnassus, The Bookshop, or wherever you like to buy your books. MEGAN SELING

After months of having to stay home and make my own fun, my imagination is tapped. And thanks to my gardening addiction, so is my wallet. If you also suffer from these afflictions, The Porch Writers’ Collective has got you covered with free creative writing workshops at Church Street Park. The workshops will take place at noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesdays, June 9 through July 14. In this week’s session, Anne Malin Ringwalt will lead an exploration into the role of voice in diary writing through communal reading and creative prompts. The workshop description teases: “When you write about your life, what are the stories you tell yourself?” If you’ve got aspirations for the stage, check out Steve Ettinger’s June

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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FOOD AND DRINK LADIES LUNCHING, 1936

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CAPITOL GRILLE

THE GRILL ROOM OPENING, 1911

CAPITOL GAINS

The historic Capitol Grille is poised for big changes — including the addition of renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten BY MARGARET LITTMAN

ven if you’ve never stepped inside the restaurant, if you care about good food in Nashville and appreciate local chefs, Capitol Grille has had an influence on you. For more than a century, even under different names and — obviously — led by different chefs, Capitol Grille’s kitchen has been more responsible for Nashville’s culinary development than any other. Originally called the Grill Room, the restaurant and its bar — the now-famous Oak Bar — have been supplying Nashvillians and guests with food and drink from inside The Hermitage Hotel since it opened in 1910. Befitting its cosmopolitan reputation, it recruited European chefs who introduced Nashville to new tastes. Those included Manuel A. Silva, an immigrant from Portugal who put broiled Spanish mackerel on the menu. The restaurant has been renovated many times in the past century, including when Terry Hagen took over in 1981 and showed the city why the restaurant still mattered, and again when Sean Brock came in after a 2003 overhaul. Brock brought avantgarde dining to the restaurant, which had changed its name to Capitol Grille in 1995. Now, Capitol Grille is morphing again. In February The Hermitage Hotel announced that Jean-Georges Vongerichten will oversee the kitchen and bar following a complete remodel. The spaces will reopen with new names this fall. Considering all the big headlines as of late, this bit of news may have flown under the radar for some folks. But make no mistake — this is big. “I cheered so loudly when I heard,” Brock says. “I love living here so much, and I am so happy we get a legend like Jean-Georges, someone who has influenced our cooking and so many restaurants for so many years.” “Over the years, I’ve watched from afar

as Nashville has distinguished itself as a major destination on the global stage,” Vongerichten tells the Scene via email. “Now, I’m thrilled to enter this captivating city with my first presence in the Southeast, and at a hotel that is integral to the very fabric of the region no less. With a celebrated history spanning more than a century, I found in The Hermitage Hotel the perfect partner to make my Nashville debut, with the authenticity and longevity of both this storied hotel and its renowned restaurant program.” Capitol Grille’s renovations will include a new entrance that will allow visitors to walk into the restaurant from the street rather than through the hotel. (Though that means missing the restored painted-glass and ornamental-plaster lobby ceiling in all its glory.) Hotel managing director Dee Patel won’t yet divulge the new restaurant and bar names, but says, “We wanted to choose a name that is unique and magical and a playful nod to the hotel’s history.” Like many who talk about their years working at Capitol Grille, Tyler Brown is reverent of his experience there and how it helped prepare him for his next project, Southall in Franklin. Brown took over the kitchen from Brock in 2006. Among the most lasting takeaways from Brown’s time at Capitol Grille was the forging of relationships he utilized to start the gardens at Glen Leven Farm — Capitol manages the gardens on property owned by the Land Trust of Tennessee. The hotel has raised more than $1 million across the state for the Land Trust, according to Patel. Brown also oversaw the purchase of 250 head of cattle for beef in the kitchen. Vongerichten plans to continue that relationship with Glen Leven. “It is not that often that you find somewhere you can say, ‘I want to start a garden,’ and they say ‘Tyler, we trust you,’ ” says Brown. “That was amazing and scary. I was

JEAN-GEORGES VONGERICHTEN

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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always interested in our relationships with purveyors and what it took to grow vegetables and get vegetables to our door. I was extremely impressionable and they let me seek and seek.” The Southall project, which is creating an experience around a 325-acre farm and helping customers connect with agriculture, is an extension of what Brown started at Capitol Grille. Before Brown, it was Brock who changed both the way the city thought about the restaurant and the way the world thought about Nashville food. Brock says he had “the complete freedom to purchase the best ingredients and to be as creative as I could. The support I had from the hotel team was instrumental and had such a big impact on my life. Their support and freedom gave me the courage that I needed to continue my journey.” Brock left Capitol Grille in 2006 to take a job at McCrady’s in Charleston, S.C., a position he says he wouldn’t have gotten without the Hermitage on his résumé. Fortunately, he eventually returned to town. Brock’s time at Capitol Grille, he says, “is when I fell in love with Nashville. Having locals constantly coming and wanting 30-course

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DEE PATEL, HERMITAGE HOTEL MANAGING DIRECTOR

tasting menus. That was not the case in Charleston. That was one of the reasons I wanted to move back here.” Brock has been back in Nashville for years, heading up Husk for a time before recently opening The Continental at the Grand Hyatt with East Nashville’s Audrey to follow next. “Going to work every day and constantly being curious about what had happened in these walls, I was constantly researching,” says Brock. “The Continental is the result of all that research and all the learning.” The list of chefs and restaurateurs who worked in Capitol Grille’s kitchen and went on to influence Nashville diners is impressive: Trey Cioccia, chef-owner of The Farm House and The Black Rabbit; John Lasater, former executive chef at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken; Kayla May, former pastry chef at Josephine; Andy Hayes, chef-owner at Rosie Food & Wine in Hendersonville; Chris Carter and James Peisker, owners of Porter Road Butcher; and Hal Holden-Bache, chefowner at Lockeland Table. It isn’t just the rosy hue of nostalgia coloring these memories. Holden-Bache, who worked under Brown, says he was aware even at the time that something special was

SEAN BROCK

going on in the kitchen. “I knew that everybody was talented,” he says. “You could just feel that in the kitchen. The work ethic was strong. We were serving the best food we possibly could.” Capitol Grille has long been big on organization, emphasizing best practices that have stuck with Holden-Bache — such as grabbing only what you need from the walk-in cooler and nothing more, so that ingredients don’t come up to room temperature only to go back in again. Capitol Grille has personal significance for Holden-Bache — he got engaged there, while sampling a 16-course tasting menu designed by Brock. For Carter, who grew up in Hendersonville, Capitol Grille also has “a place in [his] heart,” which it did even before he started working there. It was his family’s specialoccasion restaurant before making trips to TPAC, and he remembers that it was the first place he ever tried veal. Working at Capitol Grille under Brown transformed the way Carter thought about where meat comes from. When Peisker was hired in 2010, the two quickly learned they had the same core values. Within weeks they decided to open Porter Road Butcher — four months later they were back as vendors,

PHOTO: EMILY DORIO

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

TYLER BROWN

PHOTO:HEATHER DURHAM PHOTOGRAPHY

FOOD AND DRINK

selling to the restaurant. “Jean-Georges is going to make that the best restaurant in the city,” Carter says. “This is great for consumers. It used to be that everybody was doing pickled okra, and now not everyone is doing the same thing. You can almost eat out every night and have a different experience. Just like Sean created this amazing following for a place that was already really special.” While a future renovation had been planned at the hotel, Patel says the slowdown of travel in 2020 moved up the start date. Hermitage’s independent ownership allows the hotel to be flexible, just as it’s able to give chefs the autonomy that Brock and Brown cite as being transformative. Tom Vickstrom is the hotel’s director of finance — and he moonlights as its historian. “Part of the magic of the hotel is that we are independently owned and managed,” says Vickstrom. “We are empowered to be creative. The investment in the new decor and new theme and new menu and new uniforms is going to be like opening a new business in some ways, and we are going to be able to introduce the latest generation of great chefs.” EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

5/28/21 3:55 PM

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What future does a possum portend? BY SARAH NORRIS

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

he first time I saw a possum, I said, “That is the ugliest cat I’ve ever seen!” To be clear, I don’t recall this. It’s an encounter my dad describes quite well. Thirty years later, I’ve got nothing against them, and I’ll take a possum over a rat any day — if that’s my only choice. But frankly, I don’t want to cohabitate with any long, skinny tails and whatever they’re attached to. I’m also not a huge fan of nocturnal creatures, with the exception of my pet hamster, Small Henry, who clocks miles on his wheel every night. When I saw a possum in my East Nashville backyard earlier this year, it confirmed that my feelings have not changed since I was a girl. I didn’t want to kill the thing, skulking around the yard with its beady eyes. Like a memory of a terrible first date, I just wanted it to go away. After I saw it again a few nights later, I got the worst-case-scenario idea that this possum could potentially crawl into the siding of my house, get trapped, die and rot. It was the desire to save the animal from such a fate — not a calling to kill it — that caused me to start asking friends if they knew any possum trappers. Two of the friends, both of whom I know from yoga, sent me links to articles about the mystical meaning of an encounter with a possum and what it portends for my life: “This spirit animal message comes to you because things are not entirely what they appear to be.” First, is that not always the case? Second and more importantly, every use of the word “auspicious” only served to make me feel suspicious. I called a neighbor, who said she’d heard good things about a trapper named J.P. She warned, however, “I don’t know what he does with them.” OK, fine. I texted J.P., who came by the next day with another guy he introduced as Mike Hunt. Say that name out loud. J.P. was wearing at least 16 bandannas. He had a couple of them on his head, one around his neck, two on his wrists, on and on. I don’t know if it was the bandannas, My C*nt or the entire situation, but I started to get a bad feeling. “What do you do with the possums you catch?” I asked, trying to appear casual as opposed to running away from my own house. “Ah,” J.P. said, “well, that all depends on the possums.” I nodded.

They walked around my house looking for holes. “It’s sealed up real tight,” J.P. said. “Whoever sealed up this house, they sealed it up good.” “Great!” I replied. “What about the possum?” “Can’t see no possum now,” he said, “what with it being daylight and all. You almost never see ’em in the sunshine. But I can tell you right now where he’s coming from.” He pointed to a house next door that has, by even the least discerning eyes, fallen into disrepair. “Imma tell you what,” J.P. told me. “Please,” I said. “That possum you’ve seen, he’s scrounging. He’s scrounging because it’s scrounging season.” I told J.P. and Mike Hunt — who never said a word, by the way — that I feel like I’m also scrounging. J.P. laughed. “It’s scrounging season!” he said again. “We’re all scrounging. I can set you a trap for that possum, but I’ll tell you already that there’s more where he come from.” “How many more, do you think?” I asked. “You don’t want to know,” J.P. said. “I could snatch one and free him down by the river, but you’ll be hitting me up again because another one will come scrounging around.” “What should I do?” I asked. Forty and single, I’ve done the work of becoming my own husband. I know how to use a chainsaw and romance myself. I wasn’t asking this dude for advice about anything other than a possum. “Live your life,” J.P. advised. “Scrounge around till you find what you need.” I didn’t know if he was speaking metaphorically, but that line made more sense to me than anything I’d heard from a doctor in a long time. I asked, “When does scrounging season end?” J.P. laughed and laughed. “Never!” he yelled. He raised a bandanna-clad fist toward the sky. “Scrounging season is life.” There was no charge for the visit. That was a month ago, and I haven’t seen the possum since. On the other hand, I can’t say I’ve been looking. I’ve been busy, busier than I’ve been since 2019, scrounging for what I want. Real love. To let myself know what I already know. Sometimes things are not entirely what they appear to be. More often, it’s not that complicated. A possum is a fucking possum. Me? I always deserve to ask for what I need. We should all remember this; it’s universally true. The person/spirit animal/whatever? Y’all are welcome to say no. Go ahead. This is the end of the tail tale. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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5/28/21 3:41 PM

ART

June’s First Saturday offers a peek at the Nashville art scene’s new normal BY JOE NOLAN

“UNTITLED,” ALICIA THOMPSON

CLIMATE CHANGE AT COOP

ashville’s First Saturday gallery-crawling events continue to creep back to normal as we reach the halfway point of 2021. Virtual presentations and talks are waning as real-life displays and happenings return, but social distancing and less-thanfestive vibes still hold a significant sway over the scene. Lots of galleries have new shows opening in June, but it looks like we won’t have a return to a full First Saturday night slate of celebratory opening receptions until later in the summer. That said, maybe more than a year of masks and distancing and lockdowns will have a permanent effect on the shape of First Saturdays to come. Perhaps afternoon events are here to stay for some galleries that don’t want to return to providing the cheapest date night of the month for less-than-engaged art audiences.

WEDGEWOOD-HOUSTON

Coop opens an exhibition by the newest members of its collective this Saturday, but the opening will be an afternoon affair at the space in The Packing Plant from 3 until 6 p.m. Climate Change includes work by Amirmasoud Agharebparast, Blythe Colvin, Han Service-Rodriguez, Alicia Thompson and Patrick Vincent. The exhibition’s title con-

jures images of melting glaciers and seared farmland, but Climate Change is also about political, social and economic climates in this unusual moment when the future feels like it’s up for grabs. Agharebparast’s documentary photography reflects his perspectives as an Iranian native, and ServiceRodriguez’s rough collage works spark with vibrant potential. Colvin’s surreal portraits cast personal anxieties in cartoon colors, and Thompson’s intensely chromatic paintings and sculptures incorporate found and recycled objects to point at the new religion of consumerism. Vincent’s prints feature human/plant chimeras and reference myths and narratives to demonstrate how people are simultaneously enmeshed in and stand apart from the natural environment. At Unrequited Leisure, Memory Work is an exhibition by three video artists exploring their heritages and femininity. Tiffany Joy Butler adds a welcome dash of the absurd to her videos examining subjects like addiction, colorism and the life of her Black Puerto Rican family. Sarah Imani is a U.S.-based Iranian artist whose surgeon father inspired her interest in how intimacy manifests in clinical environments. Julie Yunhee Moon borrows from pop culture and casts her own Korean American family in her videos examining stereotypes of Asian femininity.

The gallery will hold an opening reception from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturday. One of June’s most anticipated shows is the multimedia Structure-Identity-Transformation group show, which will span both the Nashville and Memphis outposts of David Lusk Gallery simultaneously. Curated by former Nashvillian Brandon Donahue, Structure-Identity-Transformation includes photography, installation, video and sculpture in its examinations of its eponymous subjects. Paul Stephen Benjamin is an Atlantabased multimedia artist whose photographic portraits examine Blackness while simultaneously pointing at the metaphorical capacities of photography as an illuminating medium. Dell M. Hamilton’s body-centric works investigate gender and citizenship by drawing on the colonial and folkloric traditions connected with her Caribbean roots. Shaun Leonardo’s drawings of 1991 New York City police brutality victim Freddy Pereira address the reductive nature of memory and its effects on future narratives. Leonardo’s work asks questions like “What is being forgotten?” and “What is being ignored?” Justin Thompson’s videos are inspired by diverse sources from Martin Luther King Jr. to Ezra Pound, and Leila Weefur’s video installation features Black men recalling the first time they realized they were visibly Black and male. Donahue will be displaying a pair of large tapestries made from airbrushed Tshirts sewn together in the style of memory quilts. The show opened on June 1, and David Lusk will hold its Nashville reception on June 12 from noon until 3 p.m. The gallery will be open during regular hours on Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Brianna Bass is primarily a painter and Brian Jobe is primarily a sculptor, but Modular Stages at Channel to Channel demonstrates these artists’ shared preoccupations with minimalism and grid-like compositions.

Jobe’s distinctly formal sculptures employ found industrial objects and construction materials to arrange sensual displays highlighting textures, mass and space. Bass’ paintings translate sound data into colorful canvases that nod to Op Art and interact unexpectedly with viewer’s perceptions.

EAST NASHVILLE

Speaking of unexpectedly interactive art, June finds the great Lindsy Davis returning to the walls at The Red Arrow Gallery. Davis is one of my favorite local artists — her abstract works are gorgeously composed, and they’re informed by the artist’s obsessive examinations of gestalt design principles, which involve how human vision naturally groups similar shapes together and interprets various degrees of change in tone as a change in the depth of the picture plane. If you like your art to be both beautiful and smart, Davis delivers. If you follow Davis on Instagram, you know that the prolific artist created a new body of sculptural works during the pandemic lockdowns, and the debut of these new 3-D pieces makes Objective Nostalgia’s opening reception a don’t-miss destination this Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m.

DOWNTOWN

An exhibition of James Perrin’s intensely dynamic abstract paintings is always an event, and the artist’s latest exhibition at Tinney Contemporary includes new lighting systems developed by the artist to cast his canvases in optimal color temperatures and rendering indexes. Opening this Saturday from 2 until 8 p.m. Chauvet Arts will be opening a new group show of equine art featuring works by Jaime Corum, Meagan Kieffer and Rachael McCampbell. Reception this Saturday from 6 until 9 p.m. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

“MOURNING ROUTINE,” LINDSY DAVIS

CRAWL SPACE: JUNE 2021

OBJECTIVE NOSTALGIA AT THE RED ARROW GALLERY

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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BOOKS

MOTHER LODE

In Kendra DeColo’s new collection of poetry, motherhood is hardcore BY ERICA CICCARONE

The epigraph that starts your collection is by Julio Cortázar: “and let the pleasure we invent together be one more sign of freedom.” I feel a striking sense of pleasure when I read your poems — even the more grisly ones. Can you talk about your relationship with pleasure in regard to this project? Pleasure was such a compass and anchor. … I gave birth to my daughter, and I didn’t write for the first seven months. … When I returned to writing, I felt really

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

he mother archetype is sacred across cultures. She is both nature and nurture, virginal and sexual, powerful and benign. Meanwhile, we expect perfection from mothers, judge them when they fall short, and I AM NOT TRYING TO HIDE MY HUNGERS FROM THE fail to value their WORLD contributions. Poet BY KENDRA DeCOLO Kendra DeColo BOA EDITIONS drops the baggage 104 PAGES, $17 of these expectations. Her poetry collection I’m Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World, published last month by BOA Editions, rejects the usual tropes of mothering. In their place, she molds a more honest representation of the mother — one that is defiant, joyful and feminist. DeColo’s first two collections — 2014’s Thieves in the Afterlife and 2016’s My Dinner With Ron Jeremy — use various American landscapes to mine the contents of desire: lust, shame, disgust. In I’m Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World, the body is the landscape. It’s a site of creation, transformed by childbirth in graphic detail, and capable of a more spiritual transformation as well. The collection is rich with imagery, like that of a woman hand-pumping her own breast milk into the filthy sink of a bar’s restroom, “milky graffiti tagging the spitclogged drain.” In another poem, she describes menstrual blood on the sheets during sex as “the rasp of stain beneath us / like a bat fluttering its wings.” Other poems take self-righteous aim at foes — some common, like Donald Trump, and some surprising, like Pablo Neruda. Unafraid of a bit of whimsy, she muses about Nicolas Cage’s character Cameron Poe in the movie Con Air. DeColo is a master at building tension and tricking you down a path you didn’t agree to follow. It’s rollicking good fun, but the crest of the wave in this collection is the title poem, in which she describes first being aware of her pregnancy as she climbed through the mountains. She writes that she wept with joy and grief, adding: “and isn’t it good to know when / life is about to swallow you whole / take you in its arms and say / ‘Live, bitch, live.’ ” The Scene talked to DeColo about pleasure, humor and the taboos of writing about motherhood.

KENDRA DeCOLO desperate, like this was something that I needed to do to feel whole. There was this added pressure to produce because I hadn’t done it for so long, and I felt like I needed to keep up with my peers. … Pleasure was my way of unlearning grind culture to get back to the reason why I write. I went through a phase where I was trying to hustle, like, “I’ve got to produce, I’ve got to write a poem because I only have two hours a week, and this better be good.” My whole body shut down, like, “Fuck you. I’m not gonna write.” … I really had to get back to that sense of

play and pleasure. I started making lists of things that gave me joy, and those lists opened up into the poems that are in the book. It was a gift to feel that kind of invisibility that new mothers feel. I felt like no one really cared what I had to say anymore. First, that was really painful. But then I was like, “No, this is freedom. I can really do whatever I want.” I gave my poet self permission to take my time and do it for my own pleasure. The more that I allowed myself those moments of play, I could really stretch beyond what I was allowing

myself to say before.

I see this book as an ode to mothers, giving women permission to create their own sort of archetypes of motherhood and rejecting the ones that don’t work. When I was in grad school, I was really resistant to reading anything about motherhood. It wasn’t because I had any disdain for mothering … but it felt like it was expected of me to eventually write about domestic life. There was a certain kind of poem that was allowed to be published in the ’80s and ’90s about motherhood — in the confessional mode but grounded in

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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BOOKS the everyday realities of mothering — that felt really oppressive to me. I had a sense of these male gatekeepers who were curating them. … That is the thing that I caught myself most pushing against — this fear that editors would not want to publish these poems about motherhood. If pleasure is one vehicle for me, rage and vengeance is another. Like, I want to go even deeper into this. I love people who write from that impulse: “You’re telling me that I can’t do this, so I’m gonna hardcore go for it.” That was part of me wanting to write to expand narratives around motherhood, to expand the way that I can see myself. There’s so much pressure to be perfect. It’s so toxic. That was another thing — being OK in not presenting myself in any kind of way as a mom and just being really honest.

In “I Don’t Like to Have Sex While I’m on My Period,” you write, “if you want to go deep / you better be willing to draw blood.” I think this is great advice for reading this book. To witness a poem’s speaker being “a little bit in love with the abundance of my body,” the reader also has to watch the “flurry of racoons cutting” that is vaginal tearing. I love hearing those lines together. I’ve never liked an aesthetic that felt sterile or too on-thesurface. For me, I always start there — the safe place where I hover above the surface, just describe, and then go for the blood.

Your poems in the two first collections didn’t shy away from body fluids and sex. But this book is grossly, gloriously bloody. What draws you to this? That’s more on the narratives of motherhood that are available to us. You might see scenes of painful childbirth or bloody childbirth as comic relief in a sitcom. … But beyond that, the images we have of motherhood are really placid, and we don’t see the dark stuff, which is so much a part of it. It’s so hardcore, so dark, not just the childbirth part but raising an infant and losing yourself and all of the exhaustion that comes with it. It’s doing such harm to mothers to not have that available as something that’s so common, and thinking of women as needing to be angelic and delicate. No. We are hardcore.

There’s also so much humor in the book. Where does this sense of playfulness come from? I’ve always loved using sexual vaudeville in a way, that kind of burlesque comedy. For me, poetry is so connected to the structure of comedy — how the couplet is connected to the one-liner joke. I really loved Rodney Dangerfield when I was first writing. I learned so much about how to structure an ending. I think comics teach us how to feel tension and then release it — or not release it. Being in Nashville really pushed me deeper. I worked with Third Man [Records] early on. I’d do these shows opening for Mike Floss or Tobi Vail and Bikini Kill. No one wants to hear the poet before these shows. … I’d get onstage and see the light dim and [see] people’s eyes, and immediately be like, “I’m gonna get these motherfuckers’ attention.” That is part of how I approach the page. “How can I keep some of that tension if I’m gonna read this out loud?” Imagining wanting to say something so insane that it makes my husband laugh or makes my mother laugh, and I love imagining a small audience of people listening to me read. Read a poem from I’m Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World at right. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

‘WHY IN SOME HOSPITALS THEY DON’T LET YOU HOLD HANDS DURING LABOR’ A poem illustrated by Alexandria Hall BY KENDRA DECOLO

Consider the perineum stretched like cheap nylons

his hand at ten centimeters, bit his knuckle as if excavating

each night, two fingers then three dipped in oil

myself from a wreck; excrement and buckets of ice,

opening the taint’s buttery seam. Consider

the mirror someone placed between my legs until I understood

the bloody asterisk of mucus plug,

I didn’t need it, closed my eyes and orchestrated my own

amniotic sac that refused to break

resurrection, cupping the dark oil of my daughter’s hair

until I unhooked from the saline drip

as she emerged. Yes, I would have pulled my husband into the abyss with me,

and danced until I pissed myself, urine streaming pink

tearing open in every direction like a star. I would have cracked

down my legs. Consider the wedding band

his carpals like a piano’s brittle keys like snapping the neck of a dove.

my husband removed before I crushed

I would have burned the whole place down to get where I needed to go.

Kendra DeColo is the author of I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World, My Dinner With Ron Jeremy and Thieves in the Afterlife. Learn more at kendradecolo.com. Alexandria Hall is an illustrator and muralist based in Nashville who uses vivid color, symbolism and the human figure to convey messages of joy, curiosity and the human experience. You can find her work on Instagram (@alexandriaolivia) and at alexandriahall.com.

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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MUSIC

PARENTAL ADVISORY

With Aquatic Flowers, pop great Tristen draws inspiration from the challenges and joys of parenthood BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

PHOTO: DANIELLE HOLBERT

etween coronavirus lockdowns and outrage at police violence and racism reaching a fever pitch, 2020 presented a conundrum for artists and bands with albums completed but yet to be released. Should they AQUATIC FLOWERS OUT NOW VIA MAMA put the record out BIRD RECORDING CO.; anyway — because ALBUM RELEASE SHOW who knows how and STREAMING FRIDAY, JUNE when all this might 11, VIA THE 5 SPOT ON STAGEIT end, or whether the work will still seem relevant once things get back to something like normal? Or should they wait it out, banking on better days ahead? The singer-songwriter born Tristen Gaspadarek, but known to most as just Tristen — a star student in the Nashville rock scene’s gifted class of 2009, alongside fellow then-newcomers Those Darlins and Caitlin Rose — decided to hold her latest work back for just a bit. Tristen and her husband, bandmate and co-producer Buddy Hughen, wrapped her fourth LP Aquatic Flowers last summer. For the two, making a decision on releasing the album all came down to how Election Day played out. “In a world continuing to self-destruct, my little feelings didn’t feel that important at that time,” says Tristen, filling me in on the genesis of Aquatic Flowers over afternoon coffee. The 37-year-old Chicago-area native’s earnest, observant songs have always leaned into feelings. A theme more specific to the latest batch, she explains, is “the whole life cycle — [how] some things must die to let others live.” Two-and-a-half years ago, Tristen and Hughen became parents to a son, a blondhaired, blue-eyed boy named Julian. (“He got the recessive gene, for sure,” she says of his features — Mom and Dad both have brown hair and brown eyes.) The pair met years earlier when Hughen was co-fronting Nashville-via-Boston power-pop phenoms Eureka Gold with Jordan Lehning, who’d go on to lead the equally rocking Non-Commis-

sioned Officers. “I’d just moved to town,” Tristen recalls. “I thought their band was really good, and [Buddy was] also very handsome. Buddy and I first went out a week later, and spent every day together since.” They’ve been bandmates for nearly as long. Hughen moonlit on guitar for Tristen’s 2011 debut Charlatans at the Garden Gate, then joined as full-time axman when she took the record on tour. They married the next year and spent the rest of the decade on the write-record-tour treadmill. Between 2013’s C A V E S and Sneaker Waves in 2017, Gaspadarek landed a gig as a touring member of Jenny Lewis’ backing band — a favor the longtime Rilo Kiley frontwoman and indie-pop queen returned with a cameo on the Sneaker Waves track “Glass Jar.” (Lewis is also one of many guests set to appear during the Tristen the Night Away livestream set for June 11.) Tristen’s first three LPs proved her apti-

tude for multilayered songcraft, as she and her ever-evolving band toggled gracefully between guitar and synth soundscapes. The home-recorded Aquatic Flowers builds on these traits, with understated production but crystal-clear lyricism. “Complex,” the album’s opening song (and interestingly, the last tune written for it) fuses three equally catchy hooks as it plays on its title’s dual meanings — the noun meaning a personal hangup, and the adjective, a synonym for something difficult. “Athena,” the rollicking centerpiece of the 11-song set, honors the Greek goddess of wisdom and war while addressing the ways that contemporary society pressures women to keep quiet: “When you break the silence / Does it feel like violence?” But Aquatic Flowers’ MVP isn’t a musician — yet. Tristen and Hughen’s embrace of parenthood yielded the record’s tear-jerking, show-stopping standout, titled, naturally, “Ju-

lian.” The melody grew from a lullaby Tristen used to serenade her then-infant as she cradled him in her arms. (“He loved it,” she remembers, beaming.) The song captures a mother’s ongoing flood of emotions — and absence of sleep — as she guides her child through his early years. “In a time before you, I had so many plans,” she sings wistfully on the track. “Now none of that matters / You can tell me where to go, my baby boy.” “I spent a solid 16 years traveling around, doing whatever I wanted,” Tristen says. “Jaded, melancholy — that’s just my personality, and it comes out in my songs. I don’t want to project negativity — I just notice problems and fixate on them. But becoming a mom broke me wide open, made me care about something else. Children bring you into the moment. And right now, my son is in the moment. … [He said,] ‘That siren is crying.’ He hears everything. He’s the man.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

Mark Harrison’s new solo album updates power pop BY EDD HURT

ark Harrison, who has lived in Nashville for a quarter-century, doesn’t come across like a typical Nashville rocker. In fact, you might mistake the guitarist, singer and songwriter for a low-key session cat from the past. Harrison speaks carefully and, when you get to know MARK HARRISON AND him, humorously THE HAPPY TRAMPS’ about things like WAY OUT! OUT NOW VIA TWISTER RECORDS the Nashville music business, Memphis rock ’n’ roll and the imperiled state of modern democracy. He is also a serious golfer who works on his game year-round. Still, Harrison is one of Nashville’s greatest rockers, and one of the few remaining exponents of Memphis power pop, a form specific to the Bluff City that’s known today via 1970s records by Big Star, Van Duren and Tommy Hoehn. Harrison has led one of Nashville’s finest bands, Snakehips, for more than three decades, and his new solo album Way Out!, credited to Mark Harrison and the Happy Tramps, combines R&B grooves with post-1960s songwriting. Like his work with Snakehips, Way Out! takes you down the highway toward Memphis, but you might end up making a few unplanned stops. Harrison began recording Way Out! in late 2016, early in the Trump era. As he says via phone from his Nashville home, he didn’t

set out to make an overtly political album. Way Out! doesn’t come across that way, but some of Harrison’s music — Snakehips’ 2012 song “Tennessee,” for example — seems political in its analysis of the effects of capitalism on culture. “We did a session in December, and Trump had just gotten elected,” Harrison says. “Suffice to say, after that, I kind of, like, was depressed. I thought, ‘This is not gonna be good.’ ” Harrison cut the initial tracks for Way Out! in Memphis with producer and guitarist Doug Easley, whose credits include albums by Pavement and Sonic Youth. Harrison resumed work on the record in 2020, collaborating long-distance with Easley. Some of the tracks were recorded at Harrison’s home and then sent to Easley for additional work. Harrison also recorded at Silver Space, a Nashville studio owned by his brother Price Harrison, himself a power popper who plays guitar in Snakehips and leads his own band, Sour Ops. As Mark Harrison tells me, Easley’s contributions to Way Out! proved essential to the process of making the record. Their relationship goes back to Harrison’s days in Memphis in the 1980s, when he learned from the likes of Alex Chilton and Tav Falco, who were playing around town in the avant-rockabilly band Tav Falco’s Panther Burns. Harrison, who grew up in Murfreesboro, went to Memphis in 1981 to attend Southwestern at Memphis, now called Rhodes College, and he says he got the kind of musical education that would be inconceivable in Nashville — or just about anywhere else on the planet. Playing guitar on a track that would end up on the Panther Burns’ 1984 full-length Now!, Harrison got introduced to a wild

new way of making records. “The thing that I played on [for Now!] was done live at the Antenna Club, and we just went down there one night and did it, and Doug recorded it,” Harrison recalls. “That’s the first time I ever met Doug, and I had never heard the songs before.” Harrison formed the first version of Snakehips in the late ’80s during a brief sojourn in Nashville. As he told Memphis Flyer writer John Floyd in 1994, shortly after the release of Snakehips’ first album Lit: “Nashville was becoming very cheesy. … The bands up there at that time were all concerned with getting signed, as opposed to

THE SPIN HOW THIS FEELS BY LORIE LIEBIG

PHOTO: LANCE CONZETT

f you’ve been to one of the often-packed shows headlined by Nashville pop standouts R.LUM.R or Phangs, you likely experienced a performance awash with dramatic lighting and danceable, beat-driven instrumentation. But for May 25’s show in The Lounge at City Winery — the second of the pair’s two sold-out nights in a row — the longtime friends stripped things down and gave fans a more intimate glimpse of what drives their art. Since stepping away from his role as frontman of now-defunct local rock band Cardboard Kids, Jake Germany has been serving up some of the most infectious earworms to come out of the local pop scene under the moniker Phangs. With only his guitar in hand, Germany told the audience how the personal project quickly evolved into something he didn’t expect. “I just put out some songs on the internet, and then people started getting tattoos of my lyrics,” Germany said. “It suddenly started to mean something bigger to people.” He rolled through songs from his 2020 record Who’s Gonna Break Your Heart Tonight?, including “Powerline” (partially inspired by the beloved ’90s classic A Goofy Movie) and a few older fan favorites like “N°1 Loves You.”

RENAISSANCE MAN: R.LUM.R

He also talked about his evolution from writing self-described “emo songs” to the cautious optimism of numbers like “Good Now.” That one, he said, came from his engagement to his now-wife. He also discussed his brief move to Texas, at a time when he was questioning his identity and his purpose, that inspired the reflective “Nothing to Do With You.” Before wrapping things up, Germany invited R.LUM.R., born Reggie Lamar Williams Jr., to come up for his last song:

making music. And that’s not really where we were coming from; we just liked bashing out stuff.” Harrison moved back to Memphis in 1989, and returned to Nashville in 1997. After he made the move to Nashville, Harrison and Snakehips released a series of albums that includes 2012’s Must Be Present to Win and 2015’s Left for Dead. On songs like Left for Dead’s “Break Me,” Harrison & Co. achieve a concise style that derives from the work of Hoehn and Big Star founder Chris Bell, complete with Harrison’s terse guitar licks and allusive lyrics. Way Out! continues in the vein of the Snakehips records, and Harrison and Easley play guitar in the broken-up, rhythm-oriented style of Memphis axmen on the order of Chilton and Steve Cropper. “Believe It or Not” is modified blues that chugs along like something off of guitarist Richard Lloyd’s underrated 2016 album Rosedale. Meanwhile, “El Elle” subtly subverts the familiar chord changes of British Invasion rock. Harrison’s music respects the rhythmic space of Memphis music, and Way Out! registers as power pop that never gets saccharine. Way Out! shows off Harrison’s songwriting chops, but as you might expect, he doesn’t think like a typical Nashville songwriter. “I don’t really try to write songs,” he says. “Usually, something will just come to me, and then maybe it’ll become a song. I’m not one of these Nashville people. I don’t ever tell people I’m a songwriter. I don’t want to say it.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM PHOTO: PRICE HARRISON

IN MEMPHIS SPACE

their infectious 2017 collaboration “Always Been U.” After a brief intermission, Williams reemerged onstage with keyboardist Joshua Blaylock and kicked off his set with the soulful “Love Less” from his 2017 EP Afterimage. Williams briefly introduced a brand-new, unreleased number called “In My Arms” as “a little head bopper.” The cheers from the crowd were loud and immediate — the song was an exciting glimpse into what greatness might be coming down

the pipeline. The set was an eclectic mix of songs with moments that highlighted the impact of Williams’ wide-ranging influences. There was a soaring cover of Fleet Foxes’ mellow and melancholy “Oliver James,” as well as a mind-boggling finger-tapping solo that served as an impromptu showcase of his classical guitar training. Before going into his song “What If I (Still Feel)” from his 2019 LP Surfacing, he noted the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder and the profound and long-lasting effect it has had on him. “I remember having the talks with my parents about keeping your ID on you, saying, ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘No, sir’ to police,” Williams said. “My Blackness is something I’m very proud of, but I spent the entire last year questioning even the validity of my own personhood. That happened after I wrote this song, and it’s wild that it’s still happening and still something I have to think about.” A setting so intimate can often find artists in unfamiliar waters, facing the awkwardness of silence between songs that needs to be filled. However, this environment was a welcome shift for Williams, allowing him to show off the magnetic personality and thoughtful perspective that are so tightly woven into his songs. After showing off his flawless falsetto on his breakout hit “Frustrated,” Williams kindly advised attendees to “love each other and be merry.” Then he retreated from the Lounge’s compact stage, closing out a night that seemed to feel both joyful and therapeutic for everyone in the room. EMAIL THESPIN@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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FILM

ROCK THE VOTE

Saudi director Haifaa al-Mansour’s The Perfect Candidate depicts the punishing work of fighting for equality BY SADAF AHSAN

or some women of color, great aspirations and bold voices can feel like a burden, particularly when their families would rather not disrupt the status quo due to log kya kahenge — “what people might think,” practically a proverb in Urdu and Hindi. It can be especially difficult for such bold women to live according to age-old norms. But once an individual has found herself butting against one too many boundaries, she will inevitably fight back. Such is the story of The Perfect Candidate, a Saudi Arabian drama that follows Maryam (a quietly captivating performance from Mila Al Zahrani), a young doctor who finds herself hitting one wall after another, entirely due to her gender. While she might be the best doctor working at the local clinic, she is still brutally berated by a male patient who demands she not even look him in the eyes — he prefers to be examined by inept male nurses, even as he screams in agonizing pain. Later, when Maryam reaches out to her councilman in the hopes that he’ll advocate for having the road to the clinic paved, she is rudely rebuffed as if she is being overdramatic about the issue — a whole medical degree be damned. Then comes the final straw. Planning to attend a medical conference in Dubai where she’d be able to interview for a

SOMETHING IN THE WATER German director Christian Petzold’s Undine keeps passion at arm’s length BY STEVE ERICKSON

erman director Christian Petzold’s Undine is a slippery film. Haunted by a German past that the film talks about at great length — as if trying to psychoanalyze Berlin’s state of mind — it feels unsure of its relationship to the present. It plays like a sister to Petzold’s 2007 film Yella, which took place in a liminal state where East Germany’s introduction to capitalism and democracy were actually death throes rather than a promising integration into the larger country. UNDINE NR, 91 MINUTES; IN Like Yella, Undine inGERMAN AND ENGLISH troduces an element of WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES fantasy to its story. OPENING FRIDAY, JUNE 4, The film’s title refers AT THE BELCOURT to a mythological water sprite, first cited by physician and alchemist Paracelsus in a text published in 1566, decades after his death. This being can walk on dry land and pass for a woman, but if her attempts to earn an immortal soul

THE PERFECT CANDIDATE NR, 104 MINUTES; IN ARABIC WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES SHOWING JUNE 5-8 AT THE BELCOURT

better position at an esteemed hospital, Maryam borrows a large sum from her sister for the plane ticket and takes time off work — but naturally, she doesn’t manage to make the flight. Her travel permit has expired, and her guardian — her father — is unable to renew it in time. (The Perfect Candidate, for the record, was filmed before, in 2019, Saudi Arabia began allowing women to travel without the permission of a male guardian. Leaves quite a lump in the throat, doesn’t it?) Much like the viewer, Maryam is left frustrated. No matter how hard she works and how good she is at that work, her gender keeps getting in the way of her goals. And when she responds with anger, she is largely met with jeers. This is when Maryam hits her threshold. Out of pure convenience, she signs up to run for municipal council — doing so helps her get an appointment with a higher-up who might be able to help with her travel permit. But it occurs to her that this

through marriage to a human fail, she heads back to her home in the sea. The idea of the undine has been written about by Oscar Wilde, Hans Christian Andersen and opera composer E.T.A. Hoffmann, among others, and Neil Jordan’s 2009 film Ondine saw Colin Farrell encounter one in Ireland. As Undine begins, Undine Wibeau (Paula Beer) is happily living in Berlin and working at the City Museum. But the rules of her existence among humans have been shattered. Her lover Johannes (Jacob Matschenz) has cheated on her — she tells him, “If you leave me, I’ll have to kill you.” She soon meets a much nicer man, Christoph (Franz Rogowski), who works as a diver in Wuppertal, where he encounters a giant catfish underwater. They develop a sweet relationship, and one of their dates consists of diving together. But the demands of life as an undine are not quite the same as those of a human, and Christoph eventually tests those bonds. Undine — which was completed and debuted last year — documents Berlin as it experienced the 30th anniversary of its reunification. For a paranormal creature, Undine’s day job is rather material, even dry. She gives lectures to visitors about the history of Berlin, walking around a room full of scale models of the city. Writing about the significance of the charac-

opportunity could be exactly the path she needs in order to free herself from needing a man’s permission to do, well, most things. It is, predictably, an incredibly difficult road. After winning her two sisters’ support, Maryam meets with the women of her town. While at first they question if “this is just another women’s rights thing,” she eventually wins them over — but they ultimately tell her they won’t vote for her for fear of ruffling feathers, or because their husbands won’t approve. And of course, winning the men over is an almost impossible obstacle, with one naysayer commenting on her campaign video, “How long will we let women speak out in this impudent way? Shameless!” Even her own typically supportive and progressive father declines to show up for Maryam, dismissing her efforts as “craziness.” Nevertheless, she blazes forward. But as charming as Al Zahrani is, and as inspiring as Maryam is, The Perfect Candidate makes for a rather simplistic

ter’s identity combined with her work as a historian, Michael Sicinski writes, “On the surface, the wall split the city, but underground, at the core, there remained unity — one that a sea creature could experience in a way surface creatures could not.” The city feels devoid of solid ground, like the impossible house in Dario Argento’s Inferno whose cellar is a vast lake. Petzold’s work has synthesized his two biggest influences: the leftist documentaries of Harun Farocki and American genre films. Farocki’s cool, observational 2004 film Nothing Ventured, about venture capitalists, directly inspired Yella. Petzold’s very early made-for-TV films even hint at the ambitious sleaze of Brian De Palma and Paul Verhoeven, although he doesn’t have their relish for sex and violence. But

tale that follows all the traditional beats of a feminist’s journey with few surprises. In that sense, this story might have been better served as a more fleshed-out miniseries. Writer-director Haifaa al-Mansour was the first woman to make a Saudi feature film with her 2012 debut Wadjda, which was also the first film shot entirely in the country. The Perfect Candidate marks al-Mansour’s return to her homeland after establishing a career in Hollywood over the past decade with 2017’s Mary Shelley and 2018’s Nappily Ever After. And her connection to her home country shows — there’s a familiarity to alMansour’s lens. Real change in a patriarchal society takes time and starts small, sometimes with just a single vote. If that sounds like a one-dimensional message, there is something more to it — it’s the victims who must often be the ones to fight, at first alone, and eventually with a chorus behind them. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

the idea that there’s something ghostly about German life lingers behind much of Petzold’s work — like Transit, which adapted a 1944 novel about a Jewish refugee to be set in present-day Europe. Undine is a much more romantic film, but its mixture of the real and the fanciful takes a while to gel. Is it meant as a joke when Undine and Christoph don’t get around to having sex because she spends minutes talking about Berlin’s history? Petzold depicts their physical affection very well, but he holds back. He frequently returns to the image of an aquarium being smashed, a symbol of the couple’s passion and Undine’s connection to water. Rogowski really brings out Christoph’s tenderness and vulnerability, especially compared to Johannes. Instead of being allusive in a productive way, Undine sometimes feels like a metaphor for the conditions of ordinary German women — but for the most part, it doesn’t gain anything from using water sprites as allegory. The film wants to explore a lifechanging romance but keeps passion at arm’s length, repressed by an arbitrary set of rules about what Undine and Christoph can do. It’s trying to be much more than a love story, but the baggage doesn’t fully cohere. Like its heroine, Undine is stuck between land and sea. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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FILM

PRIMAL STREAM 56 A supernatural slasher, Snyder’s zombiology and more, now available to stream BY JASON SHAWHAN

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

tepping outside lately feels like being stuck in a Western — and not just because of the irresponsible attitude toward permitless handgun carrying from our state “leaders.” Obstinacy has become the dominant characteristic for dealing with, well, everyone. So it’s back to genre this week, finding comfort in fake murder, skillfully executed surprises, and no-nonsense lesbian energy.

SEANCE VIA VIDEO ON DEMAND There are certain states of being that might as well be death sentences in mainstream cinema. It could be the authority figure who’s just a few days away from retirement, the model working in any capacity in the 1970s, the family pet lurking in the background of shots for the first couple of reels or the person who teaches a main character a valuable lesson that will help them improve their life. But worse off than any of those are the poor souls who attend remote boarding schools where we never see anything of the outside world and mysterious rumors encircle the very land. Seance is a film about a girls’ school with a body count, and it delivers on the title immediately — serving up a second séance within the first 10 minutes, which is the right kind of cuprunneth-over attitude to have here. If you want a traditional supernatural slasher, Seance more or less delivers that. Writer-director Simon Barrett (he wrote You’re Next, The Guest, Blair Witch and A Horrible Way to Die) knows the movies you know, and finds interesting ways in and around the material. There’s a girlfight that feels like it popped in from a Tony Jaa movie, a dancer’s rehearsal that dialogues with the superlative Cassandra sequence from Scream 2, and a moment of gorgeous violence that feels like a shout-out to the recently deceased master of Italian splatter Gianetto De Rossi. There are also some nice touches that help the genre as a whole

move in interesting new pathways. A future slumber-party classic.

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW ON NETFLIX The starting point of The Woman in the Window is a bestselling novel ankle-deep in real-life mysteries of all sorts (including a pathological-liar author). The end point is a compromised film that got sold off to Netflix and has wrangled a sizable audience of people starved for suspense and tension that has nothing to do with things in the news. And in the middle is a sometimes effective, sometimes ludicrous, but never boring

gumbo of every imaginable kind of thriller. To put it another way: Any film with Amy Adams, Julianne Moore and Jennifer Jason Leigh in it is worthy of your attention. The Woman in the Window is the kind of messy adaptation that benefits from a nice box of wine and a powerful air conditioner. It doesn’t hurt that it’s periodically exquisitely directed (by Joe Wright), with set pieces that shake up the soul, even as sometimes it gets really, really stupid in what feel like studio-mandated reshoots. Anna (Adams) is an agoraphobic child psychologist in the middle of a separation from her husband (Anthony Mackie) and daughter following a suicide attempt. She haunts her gorgeous Harlem brownstone, deriving joy and chaos from casks of wine, old movies and shifting adventures in pharmacology. But then some new neighbors with a weird teen son (Fred Hechinger giving off some serious Emory Cohen-onSmash vibes) move in across the street, and before you know it, it’s snowing inside, there’s been a murder, and Jennifer Jason Leigh and Julianne Moore seem to be the same person — or are they? What I first thought was a shambly reshoot was actually apparently how the book ended, so this one is full of surprises. Surprises like how much haterade has been dumped on it, because what’s good in it certainly outweighs what’s dumb. A lot will depend on how much joy you derive from unhinged actressing and soaking in mystery upon mystery. More so, there’s a second-act reveal that shouldn’t work at all, yet it sticks the landing in a way that keeps you on board no matter how bat-shit crazy things go (and, oh, do they). As far as airport-bestseller adaptations go, this one is something distinctive.

ARMY OF THE DEAD ON NETFLIX Truthfully, if Zack Snyder’s Army of the

Dead was the story that the involved parties wanted to tell, it could have been done in a less derivative fashion — or at least a shorter one. At two-and-a-half hours, this film shouldn’t have as many loose strands hanging all about. And if you let the kitten of your subconscious start batting at one or two of them, it all starts unraveling. I honestly can’t say if the situation is improved or laid bare by the online community embracing time-loop theories to explain some of the particularly egregious choices, as well as balance the forthcoming prequel and animated series. Army of the Dead is a great launch for a media empire, because there’s already an infrastructure for Snyderians on the internet — and who wouldn’t want to at least take a glance at Las Vegas overrun by the voracious undead, laid out in a consistently shallow depth of field that does work on the nerves? But comparing this film to Snyder’s 2004 breakthrough remake of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead compels a viewer to appreciate the contributions of James Gunn, whose screenplay for that film remains the best that Snyder has worked with. On the plus side, we do get Dave Bautista wearing tiny glasses, which is never not captivating, and a pleasant-enough pinch-hitter performance from Sarah Silverman Program alumna Tig Notaro, digitally composited in to replace alleged sexual predator Chris D’Elia. There’s an abundance of gore, and some intriguing evolutions in zombiology (as well as some deeply silly ones) involving possible alien DNA and mechanisms. But there’s also a shameless cribbing from plot points and even dialogue from Aliens, as well as a character who may as well be billed as Vasquez 2.0. Considering how rewarding the Snyder Cut of Justice League was when unleashed ages ago (actually, in March), I expected more than this. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

ARMY OF THE DEAD

nashvillescene.com | JUNE 3 – JUNE 9, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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ONEC1TY PARK

JUNE 12

A FREE FEST FOR DOGS

(AND THEIR HUMANS)

BARK MARKET | OFF LEASH DOG PARK | PET PHOTO BOOTH PET ADOPTIONS | CRAFT COCKTAILS | FOOD TRUCKS

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Rental Scene

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THOMAS CHRISTIAN vs.

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Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 21D228 TINA GAYLE GRESHAM vs. CURTIS LEON GRESHAM

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Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: May 5, 2021

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www.rockylawfirm.com LEGALS Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 21D228

TINA GAYLE GRESHAM vs. CURTIS LEON GRESHAM In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon CURTIS LEON GRESHAM. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after June 3, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 5, 2021. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4)

NSC 5/13, 5/20, 5/27 & 6/3/2021 Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 20D1328 THOMAS CHRISTIAN vs. KARLA CHRISTIAN In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon KARLA CHRISTIAN. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after June 3, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 5, 2021. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville. Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: May 5, 2021 Elizabeth Woodard Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 5/13, 5/20, 5/27 & 6/3/2021

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: May 5, 2021 Elizabeth Woodard Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 5/13, 5/20, 5/27 & 6/3/2021

Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 21D156 ANGELA P. BAILEY vs. ALBERT E. DIXON, JR. In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon ALBERT E. DIXON, JR. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein within thirty (30) days after June 17, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 19, 2021. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville. Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell, Deputy Clerk Date: May 19, 2021 Mary S. Foust Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 5/27, 6/3, 6/10 & 6/17/2021

Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 20D54 DARIUS J PARHAM vs. NOVINA R KING In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon NOVINA RAE KING. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after June 10, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 12, 2021.

JESSIE SCOTT KEVIN SCOTT 1184 PACK RD. WHITE BLUFF, TN 37167 Petitioners, v ANDREA ZELTNER WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN Respondent.

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INGRAM, Jr., DOB: Studio / 1 BathJACK 1 Bed / 1 Bath 04/25/2007 Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit 517 sq ft A Child Under Eighteen Years 700 sq ft of Docket No. 20D54 Age $1825 - $1975 DARIUS$1600 J PARHAM - $1625 vs. NOVINA R KING

ORDER for PUBLICATION It appearing to the Court from the sworn allegations of the Pro Se Petition for Dependency and Neglect and Custody that the whereabouts of the Respondent, Andrea Zeltner, is unknown and cannot be ascertained with reasonable diligence, it is, therefore, ORDERED that Respondent be served by publication of the following notice for four (4) consecutive weeks in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper of general circulation published in Davidson County, Tennessee.

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In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon NOVINA RAE KING. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after June 10, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 12, 2021. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

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Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: May 12, 2021 Ellis H. Marshall. Ill Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 5/20, 5/27, 6/3 & 6/10/2021

IN THE JUVENILE COURT FOR DICKSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE AT CHARLOTTE Docket No.: 01-21-008-DN JESSIE SCOTT KEVIN SCOTT 1184 PACK RD. WHITE BLUFF, TN 37167 Petitioners, v ANDREA ZELTNER WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN Respondent. IN RE: JACK INGRAM, Jr., DOB: 04/25/2007 A Child Under Eighteen Years of Age ORDER for PUBLICATION It appearing to the Court from the sworn allegations of the Pro Se Petition for Dependency and Neglect and Custody that the whereabouts of the Respondent, Andrea Zeltner, is unknown and cannot be ascertained with reasonable diligence, it is, therefore, ORDERED that Respondent be served by publication of the following notice for four (4) consecutive weeks in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper of general circulation published in Davidson County, Tennessee. It is further ORDERED that if Respondent does not enter an appear-

It is further ORDERED that if Respondent does not enter an appearance or otherwise answer the petition, further personal service or service by further publication shall be dispensed with and service of any future notices, motions, orders or other legal documents in this matter may be made upon Respondent by filing the same with the Clerk of the Juvenile Court of Dickson County, Tennessee. NOTICE ANDREA ZELTNER Jessie and Kevin Scott, have filed a petition seeking custody of Jack Ingram, Jr. You are hereby ORDERED to appear for trial on that petition on June 22, 2021, at 1:00 PM, at Dickson County Juvenile Court, 500 Spring St., Charlotte, TN 37036, phone number 614-7890250, or to otherwise enter an appearance in this matter. If you fail to do so, an order may be entered against you for the relief requested in the petition. You may view and obtain a copy of the petition and any other subsequently filed legal documents in the Juvenile Court Clerk’s Office at the address shown above. ENTER this the 4th day of May, 2021. Judge Honorable Michael Meise NSC 5/13, 5/20, 5/27 & 6/3/2021

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In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon CURTIS LEON GRESHAM. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after June 3, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 5, 2021. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon KARLA CHRISTIAN. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after June 3, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on July 5, 2021. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

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